Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - The photo is not the problem
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
April 30, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1550990,CST-EDT-edit30b.article
A photo of two women kissing, which ran on the front page of Tuesday's Sun-Times, offended many readers, perhaps including you. We received plenty of calls and e-mails.
The photo, no doubt, also pleased more than a few readers, although admittedly we didn't hear from many of them. The rule at every newspaper is that readers write and call far more often when they are upset.
Our own view is that this photo belonged on Page One -- it was played just right -- reflecting the big news of the day: Gay marriage was now legal next door in good ol' heartland Iowa.
When the Iowa Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision written by a Republican judge, has legalized gay marriage, it's difficult to see how a photo of two lesbians kissing after getting hitched is inappropriate, even in a family newspaper.
It is the news.
Those of us on the Sun-Times Editorial Board didn't make the call to run the photo, by the way. The decision was made by the news editors. We're just glad they did.
A number of readers said their primary worry was that children might see the photo, which we find ironic because young people are overwhelmingly less anti-gay than their elders. Fifty-seven percent of those under 40 support gay marriage, according to a recent New York Times/CBS poll, while only 31 percent over 40 feel that way.
We respect the right of critics to believe that gay marriage is wrong, often as a matter of faith. And we know that they will, as dutiful parents, share those views with their children who see the photo.
But our respect for differing views and values does not alter the fact that gay marriage is now legal in Iowa -- and there is nothing illicit about the behavior in that photo.
We're not troubled by the photo, but by the idea that people in Iowa are more open-minded and tolerant than we are in Illinois.
When did that happen?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Obama injects message of hope into 100-day speech
Obama injects message of hope into 100-day speech
He uses a prime-time news conference to lay out the range of serious problems facing his administration and the nation, calling for patience and asserting again that 'America will see a better day.'
By Peter Nicholas and Christi Parsons
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
April 30, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-obama-press30-2009apr30,0,7779358.story
Reporting from Washington - A somber President Obama warned a recession-weary nation Wednesday that its resilience would be tested even more in the second hundred days of his presidency, as he grapples with a series of crises including two wars, a teetering economy and an outbreak of swine flu.
On the 100th day of his administration, Obama used a prime-time news conference to appeal for patience from Americans who have given him high approval ratings, laying out in unsparing detail the full scope of what the country faces.
The typical president, he said, "has two or three big problems. We've got seven or eight big problems. And so we've had to move very quickly."
At times Obama sounded almost wistful as he suggested that some past presidents had only a war or a natural disaster to contend with.
"If you could tell me right now when I walked into this office . . . that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting healthcare passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal," he said. "I would love a nice, lean portfolio to deal with, but that's not the hand that's been dealt us."
Underscoring the severity of the domestic problems, Wednesday began with a sober reminder of the recession's depth: The U.S. economy shrank at a rate of 6.1% in the quarter that ended last month.
Given so many serious problems demanding such urgent action, Obama said, improvement would not come quickly.
"The ship of state is an ocean liner; it's not a speedboat," the president said. "If we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, we may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now, or 20 years from now."
Though much of Obama's news conference focused on domestic problems and politics, some of his most sobering comments involved Pakistan, the rising threat posed there by the Taliban and the challenge of keeping Islamabad's nuclear weapons secure.
Describing the Pakistani regime as "extremely fragile," Obama said its military leaders and government officials only belatedly were recognizing that their half-century-long preoccupation with India had blinded them to the more immediate threat posed by the Taliban.
"You're starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally," he said.
This week, Pakistan's military began a significant counter-attack against the Taliban, which has moved within 60 miles of Islamabad.
U.S. officials have been critical of the Pakistani government in the past, but Obama went further. Most critiques have focused on Islamabad's failure to provide services or combat insurgents in the border areas. Obama's criticism was sharper, pointing up failures that he said extended throughout the country.
The Pakistani government's hold on power was weak, he said, because it could not provide basic services to its people -- including education, healthcare and a widely accepted system of law and judicial administration.
"And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people," Obama said.
Nonetheless, the president expressed confidence that Islamabad's nuclear weapons would not fall into Taliban or terrorist hands.
"I'm confident that we can make sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure," he said, "because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands."
Discussing the swine flu crisis, Obama rejected the idea of closing the border with Mexico, where the outbreak is most severe and is thought to have originated, because he said public health officials said border closures had not proved effective in the past.
"It would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out," the president said. Tacitly appealing for calm, he said: "We have to make sure that we recognize that how we respond -- intelligently, systematically, based on science and what public health officials have to say -- will determine in large part what happens."
At times sounding more like school nurse in chief than commander in chief, Obama repeatedly urged people to inhibit the spread of the flu by washing their hands frequently, covering their mouths when coughing, and staying home if they feel sick to avoid the possibility of exposing others.
With so many pressing priorities, Obama said, some goals may be delayed. He has pledged to overhaul the nation's immigration system. But he sounded a note of caution about how quickly a plan could be enacted, committing himself only to beginning the process this year.
"I'm going to be moving it as quickly as I can," he said. "I've been accused of doing too much. We are moving full steam ahead on all fronts." He noted, however, that he did not control the legislative calendar on Capitol Hill.
Taking a question about Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's surprise announcement Tuesday that he was leaving the GOP for the Democratic Party, Obama offered Republicans an overture and a warning. He said that he wants to work cooperatively with the minority party, and believes that he can.
But he also said that the GOP must be willing to compromise and perhaps rethink long-held nostrums. Obama said that if Republicans believe that bipartisanship amounts to him agreeing to "go along with ideas that have been rejected by the Americans in an historic election, we're probably not going to make progress."
With violence rising in Iraq in recent weeks, the president stood by his plan to draw down American troops. He said that although there had been some "spectacular bombings," civilian deaths and incidents were low in relation to what was going on last year.
Obama said he was confident his military team in Iraq would work with Iraqi officials "to create the conditions for an ultimate transfer after the national elections," which are scheduled in December.
The 100th-day stock-taking was a benchmark the administration embraced only after some initial hesitation.
White House aides had dismissed the date as a "Hallmark holiday." But with the media so focused on the calendar, aides wound up cooperating to the fullest.
The White House released intimate photos of the president and his family, made aides available for TV interviews and circulated written summaries of Obama's record. And his opening remarks included a catalog of what he considers his administration's achievements thus far.
Earlier in the day, the president marked the occasion with a campaign-style event near St. Louis. Both there and in his news conference, Obama delivered much the same message: He has put the nation on a better path, although the kind of economic recovery he has promised may be years away.
National polls show that his approval rating tops 60%, and that growing numbers of people believe the country is on the right track since he took office.
In his opening remarks in the East Room of the White House, Obama said: "We have plenty of work left to do. It is work that will take time. It will take effort. But the United States of America will see a better day."
Americans, he said, "can expect an unrelenting, unyielding effort from this administration to strengthen our prosperity and our security -- in the second hundred days, and the third hundred days, and all the days after."
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
cparsons@latimes.com
Julian E. Barnes and Noam N. Levey in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
He uses a prime-time news conference to lay out the range of serious problems facing his administration and the nation, calling for patience and asserting again that 'America will see a better day.'
By Peter Nicholas and Christi Parsons
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
April 30, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-obama-press30-2009apr30,0,7779358.story
Reporting from Washington - A somber President Obama warned a recession-weary nation Wednesday that its resilience would be tested even more in the second hundred days of his presidency, as he grapples with a series of crises including two wars, a teetering economy and an outbreak of swine flu.
On the 100th day of his administration, Obama used a prime-time news conference to appeal for patience from Americans who have given him high approval ratings, laying out in unsparing detail the full scope of what the country faces.
The typical president, he said, "has two or three big problems. We've got seven or eight big problems. And so we've had to move very quickly."
At times Obama sounded almost wistful as he suggested that some past presidents had only a war or a natural disaster to contend with.
"If you could tell me right now when I walked into this office . . . that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting healthcare passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal," he said. "I would love a nice, lean portfolio to deal with, but that's not the hand that's been dealt us."
Underscoring the severity of the domestic problems, Wednesday began with a sober reminder of the recession's depth: The U.S. economy shrank at a rate of 6.1% in the quarter that ended last month.
Given so many serious problems demanding such urgent action, Obama said, improvement would not come quickly.
"The ship of state is an ocean liner; it's not a speedboat," the president said. "If we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, we may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now, or 20 years from now."
Though much of Obama's news conference focused on domestic problems and politics, some of his most sobering comments involved Pakistan, the rising threat posed there by the Taliban and the challenge of keeping Islamabad's nuclear weapons secure.
Describing the Pakistani regime as "extremely fragile," Obama said its military leaders and government officials only belatedly were recognizing that their half-century-long preoccupation with India had blinded them to the more immediate threat posed by the Taliban.
"You're starting to see some recognition just in the last few days that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally," he said.
This week, Pakistan's military began a significant counter-attack against the Taliban, which has moved within 60 miles of Islamabad.
U.S. officials have been critical of the Pakistani government in the past, but Obama went further. Most critiques have focused on Islamabad's failure to provide services or combat insurgents in the border areas. Obama's criticism was sharper, pointing up failures that he said extended throughout the country.
The Pakistani government's hold on power was weak, he said, because it could not provide basic services to its people -- including education, healthcare and a widely accepted system of law and judicial administration.
"And so as a consequence, it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people," Obama said.
Nonetheless, the president expressed confidence that Islamabad's nuclear weapons would not fall into Taliban or terrorist hands.
"I'm confident that we can make sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure," he said, "because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands."
Discussing the swine flu crisis, Obama rejected the idea of closing the border with Mexico, where the outbreak is most severe and is thought to have originated, because he said public health officials said border closures had not proved effective in the past.
"It would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out," the president said. Tacitly appealing for calm, he said: "We have to make sure that we recognize that how we respond -- intelligently, systematically, based on science and what public health officials have to say -- will determine in large part what happens."
At times sounding more like school nurse in chief than commander in chief, Obama repeatedly urged people to inhibit the spread of the flu by washing their hands frequently, covering their mouths when coughing, and staying home if they feel sick to avoid the possibility of exposing others.
With so many pressing priorities, Obama said, some goals may be delayed. He has pledged to overhaul the nation's immigration system. But he sounded a note of caution about how quickly a plan could be enacted, committing himself only to beginning the process this year.
"I'm going to be moving it as quickly as I can," he said. "I've been accused of doing too much. We are moving full steam ahead on all fronts." He noted, however, that he did not control the legislative calendar on Capitol Hill.
Taking a question about Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's surprise announcement Tuesday that he was leaving the GOP for the Democratic Party, Obama offered Republicans an overture and a warning. He said that he wants to work cooperatively with the minority party, and believes that he can.
But he also said that the GOP must be willing to compromise and perhaps rethink long-held nostrums. Obama said that if Republicans believe that bipartisanship amounts to him agreeing to "go along with ideas that have been rejected by the Americans in an historic election, we're probably not going to make progress."
With violence rising in Iraq in recent weeks, the president stood by his plan to draw down American troops. He said that although there had been some "spectacular bombings," civilian deaths and incidents were low in relation to what was going on last year.
Obama said he was confident his military team in Iraq would work with Iraqi officials "to create the conditions for an ultimate transfer after the national elections," which are scheduled in December.
The 100th-day stock-taking was a benchmark the administration embraced only after some initial hesitation.
White House aides had dismissed the date as a "Hallmark holiday." But with the media so focused on the calendar, aides wound up cooperating to the fullest.
The White House released intimate photos of the president and his family, made aides available for TV interviews and circulated written summaries of Obama's record. And his opening remarks included a catalog of what he considers his administration's achievements thus far.
Earlier in the day, the president marked the occasion with a campaign-style event near St. Louis. Both there and in his news conference, Obama delivered much the same message: He has put the nation on a better path, although the kind of economic recovery he has promised may be years away.
National polls show that his approval rating tops 60%, and that growing numbers of people believe the country is on the right track since he took office.
In his opening remarks in the East Room of the White House, Obama said: "We have plenty of work left to do. It is work that will take time. It will take effort. But the United States of America will see a better day."
Americans, he said, "can expect an unrelenting, unyielding effort from this administration to strengthen our prosperity and our security -- in the second hundred days, and the third hundred days, and all the days after."
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
cparsons@latimes.com
Julian E. Barnes and Noam N. Levey in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
Quigley shows commitment to GLBT issues
Quigley shows commitment to GLBT issues
By Amy Wooten
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagofreepress.com/node/3427
Shortly after new Congressman Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) was sworn into office, the longtime GLBT ally put to action his promise to fight for equality.
On April 22, Quigley co-sponsored his first bill, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
“We’ve come a long way in the last 20 years when it comes to equality,” said Quigley in a statement. “But we’ve still got a lot of work to live up to the idea that all Americans are created equal.”
“We cannot and should not allow anyone to use race, gender or sexual orientation to divide us and distract us from our shared responsibility to ensure that justice is for every man, woman and child,” he added.
Quigley also recently submitted his requests for millions of dollars in earmarks, including a $475,000 earmark request to support Center on Halsted’s Services and Advocacy for GLBT Seniors (SAGE) program. According to a press release, Quigley requested funding for this program because “this century has seen a growing number of seniors dealing with not only the challenges of becoming older, but also with challenges unique to being LGBT seniors.
“These challenges include dealing with the consequences of financial inequities directed toward LGBT community as well as lingering stigmatization, particularly among providers of senior services,” Quigley continued.
Quigley’s earmarks also included a $150,150 request for the Puerto Rican Cultural Center’s Vida/SIDA HIV/AIDS program to help with education and community outreach.
By Amy Wooten
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagofreepress.com/node/3427
Shortly after new Congressman Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) was sworn into office, the longtime GLBT ally put to action his promise to fight for equality.
On April 22, Quigley co-sponsored his first bill, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
“We’ve come a long way in the last 20 years when it comes to equality,” said Quigley in a statement. “But we’ve still got a lot of work to live up to the idea that all Americans are created equal.”
“We cannot and should not allow anyone to use race, gender or sexual orientation to divide us and distract us from our shared responsibility to ensure that justice is for every man, woman and child,” he added.
Quigley also recently submitted his requests for millions of dollars in earmarks, including a $475,000 earmark request to support Center on Halsted’s Services and Advocacy for GLBT Seniors (SAGE) program. According to a press release, Quigley requested funding for this program because “this century has seen a growing number of seniors dealing with not only the challenges of becoming older, but also with challenges unique to being LGBT seniors.
“These challenges include dealing with the consequences of financial inequities directed toward LGBT community as well as lingering stigmatization, particularly among providers of senior services,” Quigley continued.
Quigley’s earmarks also included a $150,150 request for the Puerto Rican Cultural Center’s Vida/SIDA HIV/AIDS program to help with education and community outreach.
Chicago Free Press Editorial: Miss California and Mr. Obama?
Chicago Free Press Editorial: Miss California and Mr. Obama?
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagofreepress.com/node/3436
It’s hard to imagine that Carrie Prejean—the current Miss California whose answer to Perez Hilton’s question about gay marriage riled up Hiton and many others in the media—and Barack Obama have that much in common.
“We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or (the) opposite,” Prejean said on the topic, adding, “And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”
Prejean doesn’t seem like she’ll be winning a Nobel Prize anytime soon, but it’s not hard to figure out where she stands on gay marriage and why she stands there. She’ll become a conservative darling for fifteen minutes and will be mercifully forgotten.
Unfortunately, though, Prejean’s stated viewpoint pretty much mirrors that of our current president. Yes, he’s said he’s all in favor of civil unions and giving gay couples the same rights as straight ones. But he’s also said that the institution of marriage should be reserved for a man and woman.
What’s most frustrating is that few people who follow the news actually think Obama believes that. Indeed, back in the 1990s, he gave an interview to a Chicago GLBT publication wherein he said he supported gay marriage. His current stance seems to have been chosen because it is the most politically expedient.
While we have been impressed with much Obama has done in his first months in office, he has proven to be a politician who doesn’t like to get his hands very dirty, and our community’s issues can be particularly messy and inconvenient.
But just because we are happy with his performance elsewhere does not mean that we should let him off the hook with our issues. If we do, those are likely to be procrastinated on and nothing will be done.
As a community, we’re not afraid to lambaste people like Carrie Prejean, or organizations like Amazon.com, when we feel slighted. At the same time, though, all but a handful of activists seem hesitant to hold Democratic politicians’ feet to the fire.
So Obama never pledged to bring about gay marriage in his campaign. But he can change his mind—he wasn’t afraid to do so before. He can also get going on overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell—he did pledge to change that, and his administration has made no inroads there whatsoever. He can similarly do much to promote a federal non-discrimination law covering GLBTs.
Back when George W. Bush was president, we would constantly harp on the fact that politicians are paid to serve their public. Unfortunately President Obama sometimes needs to be reminded of this, too, especially when it comes to his GLBT constituents.
The House voted Wednesday to pass a bill that would give gay victims of violence protections under a revived and expanded hate crimes bill. President Obama urged its support and called for its passage in the Senate.
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagofreepress.com/node/3436
It’s hard to imagine that Carrie Prejean—the current Miss California whose answer to Perez Hilton’s question about gay marriage riled up Hiton and many others in the media—and Barack Obama have that much in common.
“We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or (the) opposite,” Prejean said on the topic, adding, “And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”
Prejean doesn’t seem like she’ll be winning a Nobel Prize anytime soon, but it’s not hard to figure out where she stands on gay marriage and why she stands there. She’ll become a conservative darling for fifteen minutes and will be mercifully forgotten.
Unfortunately, though, Prejean’s stated viewpoint pretty much mirrors that of our current president. Yes, he’s said he’s all in favor of civil unions and giving gay couples the same rights as straight ones. But he’s also said that the institution of marriage should be reserved for a man and woman.
What’s most frustrating is that few people who follow the news actually think Obama believes that. Indeed, back in the 1990s, he gave an interview to a Chicago GLBT publication wherein he said he supported gay marriage. His current stance seems to have been chosen because it is the most politically expedient.
While we have been impressed with much Obama has done in his first months in office, he has proven to be a politician who doesn’t like to get his hands very dirty, and our community’s issues can be particularly messy and inconvenient.
But just because we are happy with his performance elsewhere does not mean that we should let him off the hook with our issues. If we do, those are likely to be procrastinated on and nothing will be done.
As a community, we’re not afraid to lambaste people like Carrie Prejean, or organizations like Amazon.com, when we feel slighted. At the same time, though, all but a handful of activists seem hesitant to hold Democratic politicians’ feet to the fire.
So Obama never pledged to bring about gay marriage in his campaign. But he can change his mind—he wasn’t afraid to do so before. He can also get going on overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell—he did pledge to change that, and his administration has made no inroads there whatsoever. He can similarly do much to promote a federal non-discrimination law covering GLBTs.
Back when George W. Bush was president, we would constantly harp on the fact that politicians are paid to serve their public. Unfortunately President Obama sometimes needs to be reminded of this, too, especially when it comes to his GLBT constituents.
The House voted Wednesday to pass a bill that would give gay victims of violence protections under a revived and expanded hate crimes bill. President Obama urged its support and called for its passage in the Senate.
Time Warner Is Moving Closer to AOL Spinoff
Time Warner Is Moving Closer to AOL Spinoff
By TIM ARANGO
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/business/media/30warner.html?th&emc=th
Time Warner is inching closer to an untangling of what many consider one of the worst mergers in American corporate history by shedding America Online.
Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive. The company’s first-quarter results were dismal, but beat expectations.
Could the company’s vast magazine empire under Time Inc., which publishes Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune and People, be next?
In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Time Warner said it was nearing a decision to spin off America Online, and put an end to the travails that began with the merger in 2000 of the two companies, a deal that has resulted in the evaporation of more than $100 billion of shareholder value.
“Although the company’s board of directors has not made any decision, the company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions,” the company said in the filing.
The announcement, which was not unexpected, came on the same day that the company reported first-quarter earnings, which surpassed Wall Street analysts’ expectations. But the numbers for both AOL and Time Inc. were equally dismal.
When asked during a conference call about the future composition of Time Warner, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the company’s chief executive, said it “may well include publishing, but we’re not making a religious statement about it either way at this point.”
That seemed to leave open the door for a potential sale or spinoff of Time Inc. “They’ve been smart to not box themselves in either way,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “I think they are going to see if this downturn is more cyclical than secular, and see if they can start charging for some of their online content.”
By this, Mr. Nathanson meant the company would wait to see how much of Time Inc.’s troubles were because of the cyclical nature of the economy and how much was permanent because of the flight of readers to the Internet.
Robin M. Diedrich, an analyst at Edward Jones, said much of Time Inc.’s revenue loss was “not necessarily going to come back when the economy improves.” Ms. Diedrich added, “It’s not surprising that the company is considering what the long-term options are.”
As for AOL, Mr. Nathanson echoed what many on Wall Street believe. “We’re pleased AOL will finally be on its own,” he said. “It’s been a distraction for a number of years.”
If Time Inc. were eventually to be lopped off, Time Warner still would include several profitable cable networks — TNT, TBS, CNN and HBO — as well as the Warner Brothers movie studio. It would be in keeping with Mr. Bewkes’s stated vision of Time Warner as a company centered on producing television and movies for a mass audience.
“Today, we are a much more content focused company,” he said.
Time Warner, under Mr. Bewkes, who became chief in 2007, has become a stripped-down conglomerate focused on producing content rather than delivering it. This year the company, which was once the world’s largest media company, spun off its cable division, Time Warner Cable, into a separate publicly traded company.
Revenue at both AOL and Time Inc. declined by 23 percent compared with the previous year’s first quarter. In the case of AOL, revenue fell to $867 million. Subscription revenue fell 27 percent, while advertising fell 20 percent.
Revenue at Time Inc. fell by $239 million, to $806 million. Advertising fell by 30 percent, or $167 million, and subscription revenue declined by 16 percent, or $58 million.
“Advertising at AOL and Time Inc. especially is proving tougher than we expected when we last talked a few months ago,” Mr. Bewkes said during the conference call.
Over all, the company said revenue declined 7 percent to $6.9 billion, when compared to the same period last year.
Revenue from publishing, AOL and Warner Brothers all declined, while revenue at the cable networks, which have been the most durable segment of the media industry during the recession, rose to $2.8 billion from $2.7 billion.
Net income for the quarter was $661 million, or 55 cents a share, compared with $771 million and 64 cents a share in the previous period. Excluding some items, earnings were 45 cents a share. By this measure, the company beat Wall Street analysts’ expectations of 39 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.
At Warner Brothers, while revenue dipped 7 percent, operating income increased 10 percent to $308 million, partly because of reduced marketing and advertising costs for movies.
Time Warner received a nearly $9 billion dividend from spinning off Time Warner Cable, cash that Mr. Bewkes said he would use to buy back stock after the company announces firm plans for AOL. The company still has $2.2 billion left on a stock repurchase plan approved by the board.
The rest of the Time Warner Cable cash could be used to pay dividends or make acquisitions, but Mr. Bewkes was cautious on this last point.
“We know that most M&A in the media sector has not created value,” he said.
By TIM ARANGO
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/business/media/30warner.html?th&emc=th
Time Warner is inching closer to an untangling of what many consider one of the worst mergers in American corporate history by shedding America Online.
Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive. The company’s first-quarter results were dismal, but beat expectations.
Could the company’s vast magazine empire under Time Inc., which publishes Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune and People, be next?
In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Time Warner said it was nearing a decision to spin off America Online, and put an end to the travails that began with the merger in 2000 of the two companies, a deal that has resulted in the evaporation of more than $100 billion of shareholder value.
“Although the company’s board of directors has not made any decision, the company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions,” the company said in the filing.
The announcement, which was not unexpected, came on the same day that the company reported first-quarter earnings, which surpassed Wall Street analysts’ expectations. But the numbers for both AOL and Time Inc. were equally dismal.
When asked during a conference call about the future composition of Time Warner, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the company’s chief executive, said it “may well include publishing, but we’re not making a religious statement about it either way at this point.”
That seemed to leave open the door for a potential sale or spinoff of Time Inc. “They’ve been smart to not box themselves in either way,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “I think they are going to see if this downturn is more cyclical than secular, and see if they can start charging for some of their online content.”
By this, Mr. Nathanson meant the company would wait to see how much of Time Inc.’s troubles were because of the cyclical nature of the economy and how much was permanent because of the flight of readers to the Internet.
Robin M. Diedrich, an analyst at Edward Jones, said much of Time Inc.’s revenue loss was “not necessarily going to come back when the economy improves.” Ms. Diedrich added, “It’s not surprising that the company is considering what the long-term options are.”
As for AOL, Mr. Nathanson echoed what many on Wall Street believe. “We’re pleased AOL will finally be on its own,” he said. “It’s been a distraction for a number of years.”
If Time Inc. were eventually to be lopped off, Time Warner still would include several profitable cable networks — TNT, TBS, CNN and HBO — as well as the Warner Brothers movie studio. It would be in keeping with Mr. Bewkes’s stated vision of Time Warner as a company centered on producing television and movies for a mass audience.
“Today, we are a much more content focused company,” he said.
Time Warner, under Mr. Bewkes, who became chief in 2007, has become a stripped-down conglomerate focused on producing content rather than delivering it. This year the company, which was once the world’s largest media company, spun off its cable division, Time Warner Cable, into a separate publicly traded company.
Revenue at both AOL and Time Inc. declined by 23 percent compared with the previous year’s first quarter. In the case of AOL, revenue fell to $867 million. Subscription revenue fell 27 percent, while advertising fell 20 percent.
Revenue at Time Inc. fell by $239 million, to $806 million. Advertising fell by 30 percent, or $167 million, and subscription revenue declined by 16 percent, or $58 million.
“Advertising at AOL and Time Inc. especially is proving tougher than we expected when we last talked a few months ago,” Mr. Bewkes said during the conference call.
Over all, the company said revenue declined 7 percent to $6.9 billion, when compared to the same period last year.
Revenue from publishing, AOL and Warner Brothers all declined, while revenue at the cable networks, which have been the most durable segment of the media industry during the recession, rose to $2.8 billion from $2.7 billion.
Net income for the quarter was $661 million, or 55 cents a share, compared with $771 million and 64 cents a share in the previous period. Excluding some items, earnings were 45 cents a share. By this measure, the company beat Wall Street analysts’ expectations of 39 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.
At Warner Brothers, while revenue dipped 7 percent, operating income increased 10 percent to $308 million, partly because of reduced marketing and advertising costs for movies.
Time Warner received a nearly $9 billion dividend from spinning off Time Warner Cable, cash that Mr. Bewkes said he would use to buy back stock after the company announces firm plans for AOL. The company still has $2.2 billion left on a stock repurchase plan approved by the board.
The rest of the Time Warner Cable cash could be used to pay dividends or make acquisitions, but Mr. Bewkes was cautious on this last point.
“We know that most M&A in the media sector has not created value,” he said.
Bank of America Chief Ousted as Chairman
Bank of America Chief Ousted as Chairman
By LOUISE STORY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/business/30bank.html?th&emc=th
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The applause thundered inside the Belk Theater on Wednesday for a fading star of American finance: Kenneth D. Lewis, the beleaguered head of Bank of America.
Walter E. Massey, the president emeritus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, will replace Kenneth D. Lewis as chairman.
But all those huzzahs, offered up by loyal employees and steadfast believers, did not sway Mr. Lewis’s shareholders.
Mr. Lewis, who helped build Bank of America into the nation’s largest bank, was stripped of his chairman’s title — a stinging blow that leaves his stewardship and legacy in doubt. At a contentious annual general meeting, angry investors held him accountable for what they view as a series of missteps that forced the once-mighty bank to accept not one but two government bailouts.
For Mr. Lewis, the bad news arrived shortly before 6 p.m., after a gathering that seemed to captivate much of Charlotte, where Bank of America’s soaring headquarters punctuates the skyline.
While Mr. Lewis remains chief executive — the board expressed its unanimous support for him — many inside and outside the bank wonder if he can hang on. Mr. Lewis confronts daunting challenges, and many of his investors are losing patience. Even after receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, some analysts say, the bank may still need to raise more to shore up its weakened finances.
“Ken Lewis has now become the lightning rod of controversy, and that is highly distracting,” said Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, who believes Mr. Lewis should resign. “Even if everything he did was appropriate, it has hampered his legitimacy to lead.”
It was not long ago that Mr. Lewis was celebrated for his vision. His daring takeover of Merrill Lynch was the latest in a series of high-profile acquisitions that helped transform Bank of America into a national powerhouse. His conquests included the Countrywide Financial Group, the giant mortgage lender which, for many, came to symbolize the excesses of the subprime era. In December, the American Banker, the daily chronicle of the banking industry, named him 2008 Banker of the Year.
But that was then. Now Mr. Lewis is drawing fire for overpaying for Merrill, whose gaping losses prompted Bank of America to seek a second rescue from Washington. The attorney general of New York is examining whether Mr. Lewis adequately disclosed the risks of the takeover to his shareholders, drawing headlines — and more ire. The timing could hardly be worse. Bank of America is bracing for another wave of loans to go bad as the recession drags on.
Walter E. Massey, the president emeritus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, will replace Mr. Lewis as chairman.
On Tuesday night, before the shareholder gathering, Mr. Lewis seemed chipper as he chatted with colleagues over drinks at Sonoma, a swanky restaurant at the base of the bank’s headquarters. As usual, he and his executives wore red, white and blue Bank of America pins on their lapels.
But by 7 a.m. Wednesday, news crews were setting up outside the bank, expecting a showdown. Employees made their way through the growing crowd.
Jonathan Finger, a prominent bank shareholder and a vocal critic of Mr. Lewis, strode from camera to camera. A few protestors turned up with signs. One of them, Judy Koenick, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a phrase that summed up the view of Mr. Lewis’s most ardent detractors: “Fire!!! Kenneth Lewis Fire!!!”
Soon the Belk Theater was packed. The throng overflowed into the lobby, where a crowd watched on video monitors. Some 2,200 people turned up, a bank spokeswoman said.
Many of them welcomed Mr. Lewis, a man who helped put Charlotte on the world’s financial map. The applause rang out for more than half a minute. Shareholders took turns at the microphone to offer testimonials.
“If we don’t have Ken, who do we have?” one asked. Even Evelyn Davis, the corporate gadfly who calls herself “Queen of the Corporate Jungle,” defended Mr. Lewis. At one point, she ran up and kissed him on the cheek.
The president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce spoke in support of Mr. Lewis, as did representatives from Habitat for Humanity and several environmental groups. One shareholder suggested Mr. Lewis donate his $1.5 million salary to charity. Someone in the audience yelled: “Oh, stop!”
Mr. Lewis, who has worked for the bank for 40 years, replied: “Unfortunately, because of my pledges, I actually did give away more than I make." Again, applause.
Mr. Lewis shed little light on the Merrill transaction, though he did say in his prepared remarks that both Merrill and Countrywide helped the bank’s first-quarter results.
“These acquisitions are not mistakes to be regretted. Both are looking more like successes to be celebrated,” Mr. Lewis said. “We are building this company for the long run.”
Gradually, the crowd thinned and, after four hours, the meeting broke up, with Mr. Lewis’s fate still unknown. So many shareholders cast votes that it took the bank longer than expected to count them all.
Robert Stickler, a bank spokesman, said some large shareholders had told the bank they voted to remove the chairman title from Mr. Lewis because of corporate governance concerns, not because they did not support him.
In the end, it was close: 50.34 percent of shareholders — 25 million votes — opted to remove Mr. Lewis as chairman. A third voted to remove him from the board altogether. Even before the vote count was final, the bank’s directors were considering replacing Mr. Lewis as chairman because it was clear he had lost the support of so many shareholders.
Carl Wagle, a retired machinist from nearby Greensboro who said he had lost most of his $65,000 life savings on Bank of America stock, left the meeting shaking his head. He said he had come to suggest that Bank of America pay higher interest rates on savings accounts.
“They need to understand what the average American person thinks of banks,” Mr. Wagle said. “They see banks as a place where fat cats live. Americans are not going to start having confidence in their banks until they see the bankers changing.”
Mr. Lewis, hewing to his routine, stopped in at Sonoma. Several executives hugged him. Then he emerged, waved and smiled at people gathered in the courtyard, and disappeared into Bank of America’s headquarters.
By LOUISE STORY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/business/30bank.html?th&emc=th
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The applause thundered inside the Belk Theater on Wednesday for a fading star of American finance: Kenneth D. Lewis, the beleaguered head of Bank of America.
Walter E. Massey, the president emeritus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, will replace Kenneth D. Lewis as chairman.
But all those huzzahs, offered up by loyal employees and steadfast believers, did not sway Mr. Lewis’s shareholders.
Mr. Lewis, who helped build Bank of America into the nation’s largest bank, was stripped of his chairman’s title — a stinging blow that leaves his stewardship and legacy in doubt. At a contentious annual general meeting, angry investors held him accountable for what they view as a series of missteps that forced the once-mighty bank to accept not one but two government bailouts.
For Mr. Lewis, the bad news arrived shortly before 6 p.m., after a gathering that seemed to captivate much of Charlotte, where Bank of America’s soaring headquarters punctuates the skyline.
While Mr. Lewis remains chief executive — the board expressed its unanimous support for him — many inside and outside the bank wonder if he can hang on. Mr. Lewis confronts daunting challenges, and many of his investors are losing patience. Even after receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, some analysts say, the bank may still need to raise more to shore up its weakened finances.
“Ken Lewis has now become the lightning rod of controversy, and that is highly distracting,” said Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, who believes Mr. Lewis should resign. “Even if everything he did was appropriate, it has hampered his legitimacy to lead.”
It was not long ago that Mr. Lewis was celebrated for his vision. His daring takeover of Merrill Lynch was the latest in a series of high-profile acquisitions that helped transform Bank of America into a national powerhouse. His conquests included the Countrywide Financial Group, the giant mortgage lender which, for many, came to symbolize the excesses of the subprime era. In December, the American Banker, the daily chronicle of the banking industry, named him 2008 Banker of the Year.
But that was then. Now Mr. Lewis is drawing fire for overpaying for Merrill, whose gaping losses prompted Bank of America to seek a second rescue from Washington. The attorney general of New York is examining whether Mr. Lewis adequately disclosed the risks of the takeover to his shareholders, drawing headlines — and more ire. The timing could hardly be worse. Bank of America is bracing for another wave of loans to go bad as the recession drags on.
Walter E. Massey, the president emeritus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, will replace Mr. Lewis as chairman.
On Tuesday night, before the shareholder gathering, Mr. Lewis seemed chipper as he chatted with colleagues over drinks at Sonoma, a swanky restaurant at the base of the bank’s headquarters. As usual, he and his executives wore red, white and blue Bank of America pins on their lapels.
But by 7 a.m. Wednesday, news crews were setting up outside the bank, expecting a showdown. Employees made their way through the growing crowd.
Jonathan Finger, a prominent bank shareholder and a vocal critic of Mr. Lewis, strode from camera to camera. A few protestors turned up with signs. One of them, Judy Koenick, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a phrase that summed up the view of Mr. Lewis’s most ardent detractors: “Fire!!! Kenneth Lewis Fire!!!”
Soon the Belk Theater was packed. The throng overflowed into the lobby, where a crowd watched on video monitors. Some 2,200 people turned up, a bank spokeswoman said.
Many of them welcomed Mr. Lewis, a man who helped put Charlotte on the world’s financial map. The applause rang out for more than half a minute. Shareholders took turns at the microphone to offer testimonials.
“If we don’t have Ken, who do we have?” one asked. Even Evelyn Davis, the corporate gadfly who calls herself “Queen of the Corporate Jungle,” defended Mr. Lewis. At one point, she ran up and kissed him on the cheek.
The president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce spoke in support of Mr. Lewis, as did representatives from Habitat for Humanity and several environmental groups. One shareholder suggested Mr. Lewis donate his $1.5 million salary to charity. Someone in the audience yelled: “Oh, stop!”
Mr. Lewis, who has worked for the bank for 40 years, replied: “Unfortunately, because of my pledges, I actually did give away more than I make." Again, applause.
Mr. Lewis shed little light on the Merrill transaction, though he did say in his prepared remarks that both Merrill and Countrywide helped the bank’s first-quarter results.
“These acquisitions are not mistakes to be regretted. Both are looking more like successes to be celebrated,” Mr. Lewis said. “We are building this company for the long run.”
Gradually, the crowd thinned and, after four hours, the meeting broke up, with Mr. Lewis’s fate still unknown. So many shareholders cast votes that it took the bank longer than expected to count them all.
Robert Stickler, a bank spokesman, said some large shareholders had told the bank they voted to remove the chairman title from Mr. Lewis because of corporate governance concerns, not because they did not support him.
In the end, it was close: 50.34 percent of shareholders — 25 million votes — opted to remove Mr. Lewis as chairman. A third voted to remove him from the board altogether. Even before the vote count was final, the bank’s directors were considering replacing Mr. Lewis as chairman because it was clear he had lost the support of so many shareholders.
Carl Wagle, a retired machinist from nearby Greensboro who said he had lost most of his $65,000 life savings on Bank of America stock, left the meeting shaking his head. He said he had come to suggest that Bank of America pay higher interest rates on savings accounts.
“They need to understand what the average American person thinks of banks,” Mr. Wagle said. “They see banks as a place where fat cats live. Americans are not going to start having confidence in their banks until they see the bankers changing.”
Mr. Lewis, hewing to his routine, stopped in at Sonoma. Several executives hugged him. Then he emerged, waved and smiled at people gathered in the courtyard, and disappeared into Bank of America’s headquarters.
G.O.P. Debate: A Broader Party or a Purer One?
G.O.P. Debate: A Broader Party or a Purer One?
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/us/politics/30repubs.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — A fundamental debate broke out among Republicans on Wednesday over how to rebuild the party in the wake of Senator Arlen Specter’s departure: Should it purge moderate voices like Mr. Specter and embrace its conservative roots or seek to broaden its appeal to regain a competitive position against Democrats?
With consensus growing among Republicans that the party is in its worst political position in recent memory, some conservatives applauded Mr. Specter’s departure. They said it cleared the way for the party to distance itself from its record of expanding government during the Bush years and to re-emphasize the calls for tax cuts and reduced federal spending that have dominated Republican thought for more than 30 years.
“We strayed from our principles of limited government, individual responsibility and economic freedom,” said Chris Chocola, a former Indiana congressman who is head of Club for Growth, a group that has financed primary challenges against Republicans it considers insufficiently conservative. “We have to adhere to those principles to rebuild the party. Those are the brand of the Republican Party, and people feel that we betrayed the brand.”
But Republican leaders in Washington argued that Republicans would be permanently marginalized unless they showed flexibility on social issues as well as economic ones.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he would seek to recruit candidates who he thought could win in Democratic or swing states, even if it meant supporting candidates who might disagree with his own conservative views.
Mr. Cornyn said he was taking a page from Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the last head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who led his party to big gains by embracing candidates who, for example, opposed abortion rights or gun control.
“If you think about it, Schumer has been very good at this; I complimented him this morning in the gym,” Mr. Cornyn said, adding, “Some conservatives would rather lose than be seen as compromising on what they regard as inviolable principles.”
Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said: “We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing.”
The debate broke out as the party found itself in a particularly dire state. Mr. Specter’s departure came a week after Republicans lost a special Congressional election in an upstate New York district with a significant Republican voter edge; as such, it underlined the extent the party was contracting, not only ideologically but also geographically.
In 2006, there were 55 Republicans in the Senate, compared with 45 Democrats. With Mr. Specter’s departure, there will be 40 Republicans. Depending on the outcome of the election between Norm Coleman and Al Franken in Minnesota, Democrats could end up with 60 votes, enough, assuming they hold the party together, to take away the minority party’s most powerful weapon, the filibuster.
The wide margin puts Democrats in a strong position as they prepare to deal with President Obama’s agenda on issues like health care and global warming.
Politics are cyclical; not long ago Karl Rove, at the time the chief political adviser to President George W. Bush, was boasting about the Republican Party enjoying a permanent majority.
The dominance now enjoyed by Democrats could prove equally transitory. Several Republicans said Democrats could suffer a backlash if economic policies pushed by Mr. Obama failed to lift the country out of a recession.
“These policies that he is pursuing expanding the size of the government are going to be policies which the country will find hard to accept when they look at the levels of debt and the levels of spending that they require,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire.
Saying that their party should do more to draw economic contrasts with the Democrats, several Republicans said Mr. Specter’s departure was in effect a purification rite for the party that would make it better able to make its case to the public.
“I’m not hurt by Arlen Specter walking away,” said Michael Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan and a conservative talk show host. “At least now the party doesn’t waste money supporting someone who does not support the party.”
“It’s interesting that people say the right has taken over the Republican Party — but no one can say what we’ve done,” Mr. Reagan said. “We’ve been closeted for the last eight years; it’s time for the right to come out of the closet.”
Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina said ideological purity was the road to success. “The best way to get to 60 is to have a core group of Republicans who really do what they say and stand for their principles,” Mr. DeMint said.
Patrick J. Toomey, a former head of the Club for Growth whose primary challenge to Mr. Specter led the senator to bow out in the face of what he thought was a probable defeat, said Republicans should be open to a “wide range of opinions on a wide range of issues.”
“But I think fundamental common ground that the vast majority of Republicans share is the belief in limited government, freedom and personal responsibility,” Mr. Toomey said.
The question of how the party should respond to Mr. Specter’s departure was the main subject of a Senate Republican lunch on Wednesday. The party can be a “big tent,” said Senator John Ensign of Nevada, “but here are some core principles: fiscal responsibility, more personal responsibility, looking for a smaller, more effective government.”
Mr. Graham scoffed at the notion that the party was suffering because it was not conservative enough.
“Do you really believe that we lost 18-to-34-year-olds by 19 percent, or we lost Hispanic voters, because we are not conservative enough?” he said. “No. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The truth is we lost young people because our Republican brand is tainted.”
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/us/politics/30repubs.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — A fundamental debate broke out among Republicans on Wednesday over how to rebuild the party in the wake of Senator Arlen Specter’s departure: Should it purge moderate voices like Mr. Specter and embrace its conservative roots or seek to broaden its appeal to regain a competitive position against Democrats?
With consensus growing among Republicans that the party is in its worst political position in recent memory, some conservatives applauded Mr. Specter’s departure. They said it cleared the way for the party to distance itself from its record of expanding government during the Bush years and to re-emphasize the calls for tax cuts and reduced federal spending that have dominated Republican thought for more than 30 years.
“We strayed from our principles of limited government, individual responsibility and economic freedom,” said Chris Chocola, a former Indiana congressman who is head of Club for Growth, a group that has financed primary challenges against Republicans it considers insufficiently conservative. “We have to adhere to those principles to rebuild the party. Those are the brand of the Republican Party, and people feel that we betrayed the brand.”
But Republican leaders in Washington argued that Republicans would be permanently marginalized unless they showed flexibility on social issues as well as economic ones.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he would seek to recruit candidates who he thought could win in Democratic or swing states, even if it meant supporting candidates who might disagree with his own conservative views.
Mr. Cornyn said he was taking a page from Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the last head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who led his party to big gains by embracing candidates who, for example, opposed abortion rights or gun control.
“If you think about it, Schumer has been very good at this; I complimented him this morning in the gym,” Mr. Cornyn said, adding, “Some conservatives would rather lose than be seen as compromising on what they regard as inviolable principles.”
Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said: “We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough. If we pursue a party that has no place for someone who agrees with me 70 percent of the time, that is based on an ideological purity test rather than a coalition test, then we are going to keep losing.”
The debate broke out as the party found itself in a particularly dire state. Mr. Specter’s departure came a week after Republicans lost a special Congressional election in an upstate New York district with a significant Republican voter edge; as such, it underlined the extent the party was contracting, not only ideologically but also geographically.
In 2006, there were 55 Republicans in the Senate, compared with 45 Democrats. With Mr. Specter’s departure, there will be 40 Republicans. Depending on the outcome of the election between Norm Coleman and Al Franken in Minnesota, Democrats could end up with 60 votes, enough, assuming they hold the party together, to take away the minority party’s most powerful weapon, the filibuster.
The wide margin puts Democrats in a strong position as they prepare to deal with President Obama’s agenda on issues like health care and global warming.
Politics are cyclical; not long ago Karl Rove, at the time the chief political adviser to President George W. Bush, was boasting about the Republican Party enjoying a permanent majority.
The dominance now enjoyed by Democrats could prove equally transitory. Several Republicans said Democrats could suffer a backlash if economic policies pushed by Mr. Obama failed to lift the country out of a recession.
“These policies that he is pursuing expanding the size of the government are going to be policies which the country will find hard to accept when they look at the levels of debt and the levels of spending that they require,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire.
Saying that their party should do more to draw economic contrasts with the Democrats, several Republicans said Mr. Specter’s departure was in effect a purification rite for the party that would make it better able to make its case to the public.
“I’m not hurt by Arlen Specter walking away,” said Michael Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan and a conservative talk show host. “At least now the party doesn’t waste money supporting someone who does not support the party.”
“It’s interesting that people say the right has taken over the Republican Party — but no one can say what we’ve done,” Mr. Reagan said. “We’ve been closeted for the last eight years; it’s time for the right to come out of the closet.”
Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina said ideological purity was the road to success. “The best way to get to 60 is to have a core group of Republicans who really do what they say and stand for their principles,” Mr. DeMint said.
Patrick J. Toomey, a former head of the Club for Growth whose primary challenge to Mr. Specter led the senator to bow out in the face of what he thought was a probable defeat, said Republicans should be open to a “wide range of opinions on a wide range of issues.”
“But I think fundamental common ground that the vast majority of Republicans share is the belief in limited government, freedom and personal responsibility,” Mr. Toomey said.
The question of how the party should respond to Mr. Specter’s departure was the main subject of a Senate Republican lunch on Wednesday. The party can be a “big tent,” said Senator John Ensign of Nevada, “but here are some core principles: fiscal responsibility, more personal responsibility, looking for a smaller, more effective government.”
Mr. Graham scoffed at the notion that the party was suffering because it was not conservative enough.
“Do you really believe that we lost 18-to-34-year-olds by 19 percent, or we lost Hispanic voters, because we are not conservative enough?” he said. “No. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The truth is we lost young people because our Republican brand is tainted.”
Baghdad Is Shaken by a Series of Bombs
Baghdad Is Shaken by a Series of Bombs
By SAM DAGHER and SUADAD AL-SALHY
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
BAGHDAD — A series of bombs went off in Baghdad on Wednesday, extending a period of violence that has rattled Iraq’s government and security forces.
The pattern of Wednesday’s attacks — including three car bombs in predominantly Shiite areas and two at a Sunni mosque — raised fresh concern that sectarian passions could be inflamed anew.
Accounts of the death toll varied, from at least 17 people to as many as 48, with dozens wounded. So far in April, at least 300 Iraqis have been killed in bombing attacks, making it the bloodiest month since the start of the year and reversing the sharp drops in civilian deaths in January and February.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has blamed Sunni insurgents and members of Saddam Hussein’s ousted Baath Party for the recent violence, including four suicide bombings last week that killed almost 160 people, mostly Shiites. Mr. Maliki is torn between demands from the United States and some Sunni leaders to reconcile with some former members of the Hussein government and his Shiite partners, who reject an accommodation.
In the deadliest attacks on Wednesday, two car bombs went off in the Muraidi market in the impoverished Shiite district of Sadr City. The first went off around 4:30 p.m., a peak shopping hour, in a section of the market where live birds are sold. About 10 minutes later, a second exploded in front of a popular ice cream and juice shop in the market.
Iraqi forces sealed off the area, but struggled to disperse angry crowds by firing their weapons into the air for almost an hour. Witnesses said some of those who lost loved ones in the attacks threw bricks and rocks at the soldiers, whom they blamed for security lapses in the area.
Two hospitals in Sadr City, Imam Ali and Shaheed al-Sadr, said the car bombings killed at least 10 people and wounded 63. But a security official with the Interior Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the attacks with reporters, said the market bombings killed 41 people and wounded 68.
Gen. Aboud Gambar, head of the Iraqi military’s Baghdad operations command, told state-owned television Al Iraqiya that three other car bombs were intercepted before they detonated.
Almost 30 minutes after the Sadr City attacks, a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a minibus on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, killing five of its occupants and wounding eight, the Interior Ministry official said.
Around 6 p.m., a car bomb went off in another market in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Shurta Rabia in southwestern Baghdad, wounding five, the official said.
Later in the evening, two car bombs exploded in front of the Nida Allah Sunni mosque in the predominantly Shiite district of Huriya in northwestern Baghdad, killing at least two and wounding eight, he said.
In Sadr City, some residents blamed the Baathists and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners, for the violence, while others said it was the work of American intelligence officers and the Baathists to put pressure on Mr. Maliki’s government to relent on his refusal to reconcile with the Baathists.
“Islamist Shiites will never accept the return of the Baathists or America’s schemes,” said Mohammed Ali, 44, of Sadr City.
Abdullah al-Hilfi, 38, said the bombings were “a gift” from Baathists to commemorate Mr. Hussein’s birthday, which was Tuesday.
Both wanted the militia of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, to resume its role in securing markets and neighborhoods.
Mohammed Hassan Dhari, 45, was simply tired of it all. “I want a solution,” he said. “We are tired. We need solutions.”
Despite the varying theories about who might have been behind the bombings, almost everyone agreed that Iraqi forces were either unable or too corrupt and infiltrated with militants to take control of the security situation.
At Imam Ali Hospital, some of the wounded said soldiers in Sadr City received bribes in return for relaxing vehicle searches at checkpoints.
“We fear things are getting out of control,” warned Ahmed al-Massoudi, a Shiite member of Parliament from the bloc of Mr. Sadr.
On Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said, “Iraq has 29 million people and there is no force in the whole world, security apparatus or anyone from Adam’s time until now that can dedicate one cop to every single Iraqi.”
Atheer Kakan contributed reporting.
By SAM DAGHER and SUADAD AL-SALHY
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
BAGHDAD — A series of bombs went off in Baghdad on Wednesday, extending a period of violence that has rattled Iraq’s government and security forces.
The pattern of Wednesday’s attacks — including three car bombs in predominantly Shiite areas and two at a Sunni mosque — raised fresh concern that sectarian passions could be inflamed anew.
Accounts of the death toll varied, from at least 17 people to as many as 48, with dozens wounded. So far in April, at least 300 Iraqis have been killed in bombing attacks, making it the bloodiest month since the start of the year and reversing the sharp drops in civilian deaths in January and February.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has blamed Sunni insurgents and members of Saddam Hussein’s ousted Baath Party for the recent violence, including four suicide bombings last week that killed almost 160 people, mostly Shiites. Mr. Maliki is torn between demands from the United States and some Sunni leaders to reconcile with some former members of the Hussein government and his Shiite partners, who reject an accommodation.
In the deadliest attacks on Wednesday, two car bombs went off in the Muraidi market in the impoverished Shiite district of Sadr City. The first went off around 4:30 p.m., a peak shopping hour, in a section of the market where live birds are sold. About 10 minutes later, a second exploded in front of a popular ice cream and juice shop in the market.
Iraqi forces sealed off the area, but struggled to disperse angry crowds by firing their weapons into the air for almost an hour. Witnesses said some of those who lost loved ones in the attacks threw bricks and rocks at the soldiers, whom they blamed for security lapses in the area.
Two hospitals in Sadr City, Imam Ali and Shaheed al-Sadr, said the car bombings killed at least 10 people and wounded 63. But a security official with the Interior Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the attacks with reporters, said the market bombings killed 41 people and wounded 68.
Gen. Aboud Gambar, head of the Iraqi military’s Baghdad operations command, told state-owned television Al Iraqiya that three other car bombs were intercepted before they detonated.
Almost 30 minutes after the Sadr City attacks, a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a minibus on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, killing five of its occupants and wounding eight, the Interior Ministry official said.
Around 6 p.m., a car bomb went off in another market in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Shurta Rabia in southwestern Baghdad, wounding five, the official said.
Later in the evening, two car bombs exploded in front of the Nida Allah Sunni mosque in the predominantly Shiite district of Huriya in northwestern Baghdad, killing at least two and wounding eight, he said.
In Sadr City, some residents blamed the Baathists and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners, for the violence, while others said it was the work of American intelligence officers and the Baathists to put pressure on Mr. Maliki’s government to relent on his refusal to reconcile with the Baathists.
“Islamist Shiites will never accept the return of the Baathists or America’s schemes,” said Mohammed Ali, 44, of Sadr City.
Abdullah al-Hilfi, 38, said the bombings were “a gift” from Baathists to commemorate Mr. Hussein’s birthday, which was Tuesday.
Both wanted the militia of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, to resume its role in securing markets and neighborhoods.
Mohammed Hassan Dhari, 45, was simply tired of it all. “I want a solution,” he said. “We are tired. We need solutions.”
Despite the varying theories about who might have been behind the bombings, almost everyone agreed that Iraqi forces were either unable or too corrupt and infiltrated with militants to take control of the security situation.
At Imam Ali Hospital, some of the wounded said soldiers in Sadr City received bribes in return for relaxing vehicle searches at checkpoints.
“We fear things are getting out of control,” warned Ahmed al-Massoudi, a Shiite member of Parliament from the bloc of Mr. Sadr.
On Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said, “Iraq has 29 million people and there is no force in the whole world, security apparatus or anyone from Adam’s time until now that can dedicate one cop to every single Iraqi.”
Atheer Kakan contributed reporting.
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Obama’s hundred days of ambition
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Obama’s hundred days of ambition
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 19:00 | Last updated: April 29 2009 19:00
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3c468b42-34e6-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
Barack Obama’s presidency is off to an impressive start. Far from seeming daunted by the economic conditions he inherited from his predecessor, Mr Obama has maintained the posture, so familiar from his election campaign, of purposeful energy, steady calm and preternatural self-confidence. Polls say he continues to enjoy strong personal support. Although his policies are a little less widely admired, the country is behind him and wants him to succeed.
After so brief a time, it is frivolous to insist on solid achievement, though Mr Obama does have some to boast of. Congress passed an enormous fiscal stimulus that was much along the lines he first requested. Its design could have been better, and if anything it should have been bigger, but few would have been willing to bet last November that Mr Obama would succeed as well as he did on this issue. On the unfinished business of financial stabilisation, the record is less good. But here Mr Obama is entitled to ask for patience: this is a really difficult problem and, much as his critics may deny it, one that admits of no easy solution.
In foreign and security policy, the new president has departed abruptly from the policies of the previous administration on some subjects, and pressed on with little change in others. In striving to wind down the US commitment in Iraq while building up US forces in Afghanistan, Mr Obama is essentially following the path set out by Mr Bush. Soon a new course on Afghanistan and Pakistan will be needed; his thinking on this is not yet clear.
In other regards, there is a clean break, guided partly by his regard for international opinion. He has promised to close the Guantánamo prison. He has sent conciliatory messages to Iran and Venezuela. He seeks friendlier relations with Russia. These welcome innovations should not be dismissed as mere mood music – not yet, anyway. A president who listens rather than hectors, and who treats foreigners with respect, is one who is capable of learning. Warm feelings aside, that is a trait that is likely to serve his country and the world beyond well.
Hard choices in foreign policy of the sort that Mr Obama says he is keen to confront are certain to present themselves shortly and it is too soon to say how he will fare: whether, on the Middle East, he will stand up to Israel, for example, and whether, if his overtures are rebuffed, he will stand up to Iran. But it is not too soon to welcome the new tone, so refreshingly different from that of Mr Bush, and to hope that it will get results. So far, the response of US allies – on fiscal stimulus and support in Afghanistan, for example – has been disappointing. This is a criticism of them more than of Mr Obama.
Aside from energy and unflappability, Mr Obama has demonstrated another key trait: ambition. The sheer scale of the economic problems facing the new administration would have persuaded a less visionary president to scale back his plans. Mr Obama has made no concession. On the contrary, he has seized on the economic turmoil as all the more reason to press on with comprehensive healthcare reform, a decisive shift to a lower-carbon economy and a far-reaching programme of public investment.
If he succeeds in these endeavours, he will be regarded as a great president, and rightly so. If he fails, he will be accused of hubristic overreach, with equal justification. He has staked his presidency on this gamble.
One danger that will become more apparent with time is that Mr Obama’s long-term plans, as laid out in his first budget, are fiscally unbalanced: projected taxes fall a long way short of projected public spending. In other words, he is not yet being honest with the electorate about the costs of his policies.
The scale of his ambition, and its marked partisan character, also carry another risk, that of dividing the country. Part of Mr Obama’s appeal to the electorate was that he sought a bipartisan approach to government. In this he seems genuine: his friendly respect for people who disagree with him is unfeigned. But his policy goals are those of a bold progressive liberal. Mr Obama can significantly increase the size of government and reform the tax system to make it more progressive, but he cannot do this and be bipartisan too.
One might ask, why should that matter? Democrats won the White House and have majorities in both houses of Congress. Mr Obama is striving to do nothing he did not say he would do. But remember that US voters are more sceptical of the policies than they are of the man. At 100 impressive days, that sounds a note of caution.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 19:00 | Last updated: April 29 2009 19:00
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3c468b42-34e6-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
Barack Obama’s presidency is off to an impressive start. Far from seeming daunted by the economic conditions he inherited from his predecessor, Mr Obama has maintained the posture, so familiar from his election campaign, of purposeful energy, steady calm and preternatural self-confidence. Polls say he continues to enjoy strong personal support. Although his policies are a little less widely admired, the country is behind him and wants him to succeed.
After so brief a time, it is frivolous to insist on solid achievement, though Mr Obama does have some to boast of. Congress passed an enormous fiscal stimulus that was much along the lines he first requested. Its design could have been better, and if anything it should have been bigger, but few would have been willing to bet last November that Mr Obama would succeed as well as he did on this issue. On the unfinished business of financial stabilisation, the record is less good. But here Mr Obama is entitled to ask for patience: this is a really difficult problem and, much as his critics may deny it, one that admits of no easy solution.
In foreign and security policy, the new president has departed abruptly from the policies of the previous administration on some subjects, and pressed on with little change in others. In striving to wind down the US commitment in Iraq while building up US forces in Afghanistan, Mr Obama is essentially following the path set out by Mr Bush. Soon a new course on Afghanistan and Pakistan will be needed; his thinking on this is not yet clear.
In other regards, there is a clean break, guided partly by his regard for international opinion. He has promised to close the Guantánamo prison. He has sent conciliatory messages to Iran and Venezuela. He seeks friendlier relations with Russia. These welcome innovations should not be dismissed as mere mood music – not yet, anyway. A president who listens rather than hectors, and who treats foreigners with respect, is one who is capable of learning. Warm feelings aside, that is a trait that is likely to serve his country and the world beyond well.
Hard choices in foreign policy of the sort that Mr Obama says he is keen to confront are certain to present themselves shortly and it is too soon to say how he will fare: whether, on the Middle East, he will stand up to Israel, for example, and whether, if his overtures are rebuffed, he will stand up to Iran. But it is not too soon to welcome the new tone, so refreshingly different from that of Mr Bush, and to hope that it will get results. So far, the response of US allies – on fiscal stimulus and support in Afghanistan, for example – has been disappointing. This is a criticism of them more than of Mr Obama.
Aside from energy and unflappability, Mr Obama has demonstrated another key trait: ambition. The sheer scale of the economic problems facing the new administration would have persuaded a less visionary president to scale back his plans. Mr Obama has made no concession. On the contrary, he has seized on the economic turmoil as all the more reason to press on with comprehensive healthcare reform, a decisive shift to a lower-carbon economy and a far-reaching programme of public investment.
If he succeeds in these endeavours, he will be regarded as a great president, and rightly so. If he fails, he will be accused of hubristic overreach, with equal justification. He has staked his presidency on this gamble.
One danger that will become more apparent with time is that Mr Obama’s long-term plans, as laid out in his first budget, are fiscally unbalanced: projected taxes fall a long way short of projected public spending. In other words, he is not yet being honest with the electorate about the costs of his policies.
The scale of his ambition, and its marked partisan character, also carry another risk, that of dividing the country. Part of Mr Obama’s appeal to the electorate was that he sought a bipartisan approach to government. In this he seems genuine: his friendly respect for people who disagree with him is unfeigned. But his policy goals are those of a bold progressive liberal. Mr Obama can significantly increase the size of government and reform the tax system to make it more progressive, but he cannot do this and be bipartisan too.
One might ask, why should that matter? Democrats won the White House and have majorities in both houses of Congress. Mr Obama is striving to do nothing he did not say he would do. But remember that US voters are more sceptical of the policies than they are of the man. At 100 impressive days, that sounds a note of caution.
Second hardliner in Iran presidential race
Second hardliner in Iran presidential race
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 15:43 | Last updated: April 30 2009 15:43
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8e5cc668-3594-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
Mohsen Rezaei, former commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, has announced his intention to run for president, underlining the failure of Iran’s fundamentalists to reach a consensus candidate.
His candidacy will offer fundamentalists an alternative to President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad who is also expected to run in the June elections.
Many conservatives have refused to line up behind the incumbent, accusing Mr Ahmadi-Nejad of neglecting long-term economic planning and adopting policies that have led to 25.4 per cent inflation and 12.5 per cent unemployment.
Mr Rezaei, 55, was Iran’s top commander during the deadly Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). He left the guards over a decade ago and now holds an influential job as secretary of the Expediency Council which drafts macro economic and political policies.
In a statement on Wednesday, he warned of the “dangers” facing Iran. These included lost economic and political opportunities, high inflation and unemployment, poverty, immorality in politics and a widening gap between the regime and ethnic and religious minorities. He also warned of the creation of a new front in the Islamic world against Iran.
He said he hoped to ease national and international concerns by a reform of the executive, the drafting of long-term strategies and by employing alternative forces committed to the Islamic regime and national interests.
Mr Ahmadi-Nejad isolated many senior officials and diplomats when he came to power on the grounds that they were not loyal enough to the regime.
With the late entrance of Mr Rezaei, Iran’s presidential election now has four main candidates. The reformists, who are also divided, have two nominees: Mir-Hossein Moussavi, a former leftist prime minister between 1981 to 1989, and Mehdi Karroubi, a former reformist parliamentary speaker.
Analysts expect the main competition to be between Mr Ahmadi-Nejad and Mr Moussavi, but they say Mr Karroubi may be able to attract several million votes, unlike Mr Rezaei whose popularity is untested.
Divisions in the two main political camps may mean that no candidate is able to win over 50 per cent of the votes, which is the level required to win the election in the first round on June 12. A second round is considered increasingly likely.
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 15:43 | Last updated: April 30 2009 15:43
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8e5cc668-3594-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
Mohsen Rezaei, former commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, has announced his intention to run for president, underlining the failure of Iran’s fundamentalists to reach a consensus candidate.
His candidacy will offer fundamentalists an alternative to President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad who is also expected to run in the June elections.
Many conservatives have refused to line up behind the incumbent, accusing Mr Ahmadi-Nejad of neglecting long-term economic planning and adopting policies that have led to 25.4 per cent inflation and 12.5 per cent unemployment.
Mr Rezaei, 55, was Iran’s top commander during the deadly Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). He left the guards over a decade ago and now holds an influential job as secretary of the Expediency Council which drafts macro economic and political policies.
In a statement on Wednesday, he warned of the “dangers” facing Iran. These included lost economic and political opportunities, high inflation and unemployment, poverty, immorality in politics and a widening gap between the regime and ethnic and religious minorities. He also warned of the creation of a new front in the Islamic world against Iran.
He said he hoped to ease national and international concerns by a reform of the executive, the drafting of long-term strategies and by employing alternative forces committed to the Islamic regime and national interests.
Mr Ahmadi-Nejad isolated many senior officials and diplomats when he came to power on the grounds that they were not loyal enough to the regime.
With the late entrance of Mr Rezaei, Iran’s presidential election now has four main candidates. The reformists, who are also divided, have two nominees: Mir-Hossein Moussavi, a former leftist prime minister between 1981 to 1989, and Mehdi Karroubi, a former reformist parliamentary speaker.
Analysts expect the main competition to be between Mr Ahmadi-Nejad and Mr Moussavi, but they say Mr Karroubi may be able to attract several million votes, unlike Mr Rezaei whose popularity is untested.
Divisions in the two main political camps may mean that no candidate is able to win over 50 per cent of the votes, which is the level required to win the election in the first round on June 12. A second round is considered increasingly likely.
Congress approves $3,400bn budget
Congress approves $3,400bn budget
By Andrew Ward in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 03:06 | Last updated: April 30 2009 03:06
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8f7b025a-3524-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
Congress on Wednesday passed a $3,400bn budget resolution that laid the foundation for healthcare reform and a series of other Democratic policy goals, handing President Barack Obama a key victory on his 100th day in office.
The plan sailed through the House and Senate with overwhelming Democratic support but not a single Republican backed the measure, highlighting deep partisan division over a budget that would sharply increase government spending and expand the national debt.
The budget resolution is a nonbinding blueprint and more tough debate remains ahead before the plan is fleshed out in final appropriations and taxation legislation over the summer.
But Wednesday’s votes demonstrated strong Democratic backing for most of Mr Obama’s budget proposals, including healthcare reform and investments in education and green energy.
”This budget was hugely important to the president. This is the starting point for everything he wants to do,” said Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
”For every one of his key priorities, reducing dependence on foreign energy, making possible healthcare reform, a focus on excellence in education, none of those things could have been pursued effectively without this budget.”
The House approved the resolution on a vote of 233-193, while the Senate voted 53-43.
In addition to every Republican, 17 House Democrats and four Senate Democrats voted against the budget plan, highlighting anxiety among party moderates over the ballooning budget deficit.
Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania senator who defected from the Republican party to the Democrats on Tuesday, was among those who voted against the resolution – providing an early warning that he will not always side with his new party.
The plan included an option for Congress to pass healthcare reform – one of Mr Obama’s top legislative priorities – as part of the fast-track budget reconciliation process. Such a move would allow Democrats to pass healthcare reform with 50 Senate votes rather than the 60 normally required to overcome Republican opposition.
Some of Mr Obama’s proposals were abandoned or scaled back by congressional Democrats, including his signature middle class tax cuts, which will expire next year under the Senate plan, and his call to include climate change legislation in the budget, which was ignored by both chambers.
But Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House speaker, said most of the president’s priorities had survived. ”It’s a budget that reduces taxes, lowers the deficit and creates jobs. It honours the three pillars of the Obama initiatives: energy, health care and education.”
Republicans blasted the resolution as a big government juggernaut that would undermine economic recovery. ”It spends money we don’t have, piles unprecedented debt on our children and grandchildren, and raises taxes on families and small businesses, while taking away the middle-class tax cut the president promised during the campaign,” said John Boehner, the House Republican leader.
By Andrew Ward in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 03:06 | Last updated: April 30 2009 03:06
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8f7b025a-3524-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
Congress on Wednesday passed a $3,400bn budget resolution that laid the foundation for healthcare reform and a series of other Democratic policy goals, handing President Barack Obama a key victory on his 100th day in office.
The plan sailed through the House and Senate with overwhelming Democratic support but not a single Republican backed the measure, highlighting deep partisan division over a budget that would sharply increase government spending and expand the national debt.
The budget resolution is a nonbinding blueprint and more tough debate remains ahead before the plan is fleshed out in final appropriations and taxation legislation over the summer.
But Wednesday’s votes demonstrated strong Democratic backing for most of Mr Obama’s budget proposals, including healthcare reform and investments in education and green energy.
”This budget was hugely important to the president. This is the starting point for everything he wants to do,” said Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
”For every one of his key priorities, reducing dependence on foreign energy, making possible healthcare reform, a focus on excellence in education, none of those things could have been pursued effectively without this budget.”
The House approved the resolution on a vote of 233-193, while the Senate voted 53-43.
In addition to every Republican, 17 House Democrats and four Senate Democrats voted against the budget plan, highlighting anxiety among party moderates over the ballooning budget deficit.
Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania senator who defected from the Republican party to the Democrats on Tuesday, was among those who voted against the resolution – providing an early warning that he will not always side with his new party.
The plan included an option for Congress to pass healthcare reform – one of Mr Obama’s top legislative priorities – as part of the fast-track budget reconciliation process. Such a move would allow Democrats to pass healthcare reform with 50 Senate votes rather than the 60 normally required to overcome Republican opposition.
Some of Mr Obama’s proposals were abandoned or scaled back by congressional Democrats, including his signature middle class tax cuts, which will expire next year under the Senate plan, and his call to include climate change legislation in the budget, which was ignored by both chambers.
But Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House speaker, said most of the president’s priorities had survived. ”It’s a budget that reduces taxes, lowers the deficit and creates jobs. It honours the three pillars of the Obama initiatives: energy, health care and education.”
Republicans blasted the resolution as a big government juggernaut that would undermine economic recovery. ”It spends money we don’t have, piles unprecedented debt on our children and grandchildren, and raises taxes on families and small businesses, while taking away the middle-class tax cut the president promised during the campaign,” said John Boehner, the House Republican leader.
US personal income and spending slide- New jobless claims eased last week
US personal income and spending slide- New jobless claims eased last week
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 16:22 | Last updated: April 30 2009 16:22
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afca7b6a-3599-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
US consumer spending slipped for the first time in three months in March as incomes fell back and people saved more while they coped with the recession and fears of rising job cuts.
Personal consumption expenditure fell by 0.2 per cent to $24.2bn, more than economists expected, according to commerce department figures. This followed a revised increase of 0.4 per cent in February. In the first quarter of this year consumption rose at an annualised rate of 2.2 per cent, but much of this was due to cheaper petrol and a boost from tax rebates.
Incomes fell back for the third straight month in March, declining by 0.3 per cent to $34.4bn. Job cuts, pay freezes and eliminated bonuses have savaged salaries in recent months.
The commerce department’s closely-watched gauge of prices slipped by 0.1 per cent in March, but was up by 0.2 per cent excluding food and energy for the second month running.
Meanwhile the savings rate, which is measured as the proportion of income left after spending and taxes, rose to 4.2 per cent from a revised 4.0 per cent in March. Economists at Capital Economics predict that the savings rate could reach 8 per cent as household wealth has collapsed.
“Looking forward, another steep drop in employment is on the way for April and we expect consumers to stay cautious,” said Nigel Gault, chief US economist at IHS Global Insight.
New US jobless claims surprisingly eased last week, declining by 14,000 to 631,000. However labour department figures showed that those making continuing claims rose to 6.27m, a fresh record high.
Economists took hope that the four-week moving average for new claims was 637,250, a 3.3 per cent decline over the last three weeks.
“A decline in the four-week average of claims is important because the peak in claims always comes around the end of a recession,” said Abiel Reinhart, economist at JPMorgan Chase.
Some economists expect the unemployment rate, which rose to 8.5 per cent last month, to reach 9 per cent in April. Official figures on Wednesday showed that the US economy contracted at an annualised rate of 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, after declining by 6.3 per cent during the fourth quarter of last year.
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 16:22 | Last updated: April 30 2009 16:22
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afca7b6a-3599-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
US consumer spending slipped for the first time in three months in March as incomes fell back and people saved more while they coped with the recession and fears of rising job cuts.
Personal consumption expenditure fell by 0.2 per cent to $24.2bn, more than economists expected, according to commerce department figures. This followed a revised increase of 0.4 per cent in February. In the first quarter of this year consumption rose at an annualised rate of 2.2 per cent, but much of this was due to cheaper petrol and a boost from tax rebates.
Incomes fell back for the third straight month in March, declining by 0.3 per cent to $34.4bn. Job cuts, pay freezes and eliminated bonuses have savaged salaries in recent months.
The commerce department’s closely-watched gauge of prices slipped by 0.1 per cent in March, but was up by 0.2 per cent excluding food and energy for the second month running.
Meanwhile the savings rate, which is measured as the proportion of income left after spending and taxes, rose to 4.2 per cent from a revised 4.0 per cent in March. Economists at Capital Economics predict that the savings rate could reach 8 per cent as household wealth has collapsed.
“Looking forward, another steep drop in employment is on the way for April and we expect consumers to stay cautious,” said Nigel Gault, chief US economist at IHS Global Insight.
New US jobless claims surprisingly eased last week, declining by 14,000 to 631,000. However labour department figures showed that those making continuing claims rose to 6.27m, a fresh record high.
Economists took hope that the four-week moving average for new claims was 637,250, a 3.3 per cent decline over the last three weeks.
“A decline in the four-week average of claims is important because the peak in claims always comes around the end of a recession,” said Abiel Reinhart, economist at JPMorgan Chase.
Some economists expect the unemployment rate, which rose to 8.5 per cent last month, to reach 9 per cent in April. Official figures on Wednesday showed that the US economy contracted at an annualised rate of 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, after declining by 6.3 per cent during the fourth quarter of last year.
WHO warns of ‘imminent’ flu pandemic/Mexico shuts down to fight swine flu
WHO warns of ‘imminent’ flu pandemic
By Harvey Morris in New York, James Boxell in London, Frances Williams in Geneva and agency
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 11:40 | Last updated: April 30 2009 16:05
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95684290-349d-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
A man carries his coffee past empty tables at the ’Cafe La Habana’ after all restaurants were closed to inside dining in Mexico City. The city’s mayor said he would consider easing the citywide shutdown if the death toll kept tapering off
The World Health Organisation warned a global swine flu pandemic was imminent as it raised the global alert level on Wednesday to five out of six.
By Thursday morning, 236 cases had been confirmed worldwide, said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general in charge of tackling the crisis. The disease has hit at least 13 countries, but Mexico remained the epicentre of the outbreak.
Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, said anti-flu measures must now be undertaken with increased urgency. “All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans,” she told reporters in Geneva. “It really is all of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic.”
The phase five alert means that a pandemic is imminent and the disease can be spread from humans to humans in a sustainable manner.
The move came after the US reported the first death from the disease outside Mexico, where the new virus has killed up to 176 people though only a handful have been confirmed as stemming from infection.
Slideshow: World reaction to the growing outbreak
Switzerland became the most recent country to confirm a case, saying a man returning from Mexico had tested positive. A three-year-old child in the Netherlands was also infected, while closer to Mexico, Costa Rica and Peru also reported cases. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 109 cases in the US on Thursday.
Following the WHO’s Wednesday announcement, Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, ordered government offices and private businesses not crucial to the economy to stop work for five days from Friday to avoid further infections.
”There is no safer place than your own home to avoid being infected with the flu virus,” Mr Calderon said in his first televised address since the crisis erupted last week.
Mexico’s peso currency weakened sharply early on Thursday in response, falling 1.6 percent to 13.83 per dollar, but world stocks, powered by gains in Asia on Thursday, struck a four-month peak after the outbreak initially weighed on markets.
Texas health officials said a 23-month-old child on a visit from Mexico had died from the disease in a Houston hospital.
Rick Perry, Texas governor, issued a disaster proclamation for the state which has 16 cases of the disease. He said closing the Mexican border was an option but would be premature.
Ms Chan said: “The world is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history.”
Speaking shortly before Ms Chan’s announcement in Geneva, Janet Napolitano, US homeland security secretary, said: “We’ve been preparing all along as if this is going to be stage 6. We are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”
The WHO said the new flu strain appeared to be spreading from person to person, with its dissemination exacerbated by international travel.
France said it would seek European Union support for a continent-wide ban on flights to Mexico. The EU, US and Canada have already advised against non-essential travel to Mexico.
Mr Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general, said earlier that analysis showed, “this was a new swine influenza virus behaving like a human virus”. He noted that most cases outside Mexico had so far been mild.
Before the Texas death, all deaths had been confined to Mexico, where 159 may have died from the disease, although only seven cases have been confirmed as resulting from the new flu strain.
US authorities extended the availability of anti-viral drugs and released 12m doses of the Tamiflu drug from federal stockpiles, as health officials reported the number of confirmed US cases had risen from 64 to 91 in New York and nine other states.
Egypt began a precautionary cull of the country’s 300,000 pigs, a move described by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as “a real mistake”. Russia and China have banned US pork products, although Mr Fukuda repeated on Wednesday there was no evidence that people were being infected by exposure to pigs.
In Mexico, schools were also suspended until May 6 and the government assumed new powers to isolate infected people.
As companies worldwide stepped up precautions to protect employees, Patricia Espinosa, Mexican foreign minister, called at the United Nations Security Council for all countries to work together to respond to the crisis.
The southern African regional bloc is holding talks with WHO about increasing its stocks of drugs to treat swine flu, Barbara Hogan, South Africa’s health minister, said on Thursday, after the country reported the continent’s first two suspected cases of the virus.
”We have no confirmed cases of swine flu in the country yet [but] we have everything on high alert,” Ms Hogan told local radio.
additional reporting from Tom Burgis
Mexico shuts down to fight swine flu
By By Harvey Morris in New York, Stanley Pignal in Luxembourg and Frances Williams in Geneva
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 17:22 | Last updated: April 30 2009 18:40
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b58601e2-35a2-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
Mexico on Thursday ordered the shutdown of all but essential public services to help combat the spread of swine flu, as a major US food producer denied speculation one of its pig farms in the country was the origin of the disease.
President Felipe Calderón said only essential businesses such as supermarkets, hospitals and pharmacies should stay open, and only critical government health and security workers would be on duty from Friday until Tuesday. A nationwide school closure was already in effect.
Officials in Mexico City said there was no evidence of an exponential growth in the number of flu victims after 176 deaths throughout the country that might be linked to the disease. Eight have so far been confirmed as linked to the new strain.
Worldwide, 236 cases have been confirmed, said Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organisation’s assistant director general in charge of tackling the crisis. The disease has hit at least 13 countries, but Mexico remained the epicentre of the outbreak.
Smithfield denial
In the US, Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based food producer, rejected claims in Mexico that a joint venture it runs in Vera Cruz was the source of the virus – officially designated on Thursday as Influenza-A (H1N1).
C. Larry Pope, Smithfield chief executive, said in a letter to employees that Mexican authorities had found no evidence of the virus at the Vera Cruz farm where the herd was routinely vaccinated. The results of further independent tests would be available and released by the company in a few days, he wrote.
The World Organisation for Animal Health said the virus was spreading person-to-person and there was no reason to cull pig herds. “There is no evidence of infection in pigs, nor of humans acquiring infection directly from pigs,” the Paris-based organisation said.
Egypt began had begun a precautionary cull of the country’s 300,000 pigs, a move described by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as “a real mistake”. Russia and China have banned US pork products.
In Washington, Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said information so far indicated the flu outbreak was a relatively minor economic event. But the eventual economic impact on some countries could be “quite drastic”.
Travel limits
In Luxembourg, European Union health ministers reacted coolly to a French proposal to restrict travel to Mexico when they held an emergency meeting to coordinate the bloc’s response to the outbreak.
The meeting came after the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday night it was raising its global alert level to 5 on a 6-point scale, indicating a global pandemic was imminent.
A suggestion by the French health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, to ban outbound flights to Mexico was not seized upon by fellow EU members, many of whom said they doubted the effectiveness of such a measure.
Ms Bachelot’s calls echoed those made by the EU’s health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, earlier this week, to avoid Mexico, which were quickly downgraded to ”personal recommendations”.
More likely to gain support than a travel ban was a suggestion from Italy for some sort of joint strategy in stockpiling antivirals and vaccines for use across the EU.
The EU’s focus was on reassuring its citizens after a slew of new cases brought the total to over 20 infections in six countries including a new case each in Switzerland and the Netherlands.
In Spain, the worst affected EU state with 13 confirmed cases, Air Europa said it was cutting flights to Mexico by 80 percent.
All the European confirmed cases of the flu can be directly traced back to victims travelling to Mexico, except one case in Spain in which it is thought the member of a carrier’s household caught the disease.
Some passengers currently travelling in Mexico, are at odds as to whether to cut their trips short. Thirty Bulgarians, currently on vacation in Mexico, have approached authorities asking whether they should cut short their trip, said Anguel Kunchev from the country’s health ministry.
In the US, with the highest number of confirmed cases at 109, most of them mild, Joe Biden, vice-president, caused a stir in the travel industry by telling an interviewer he would advise his family to avoid air travel. His office later said he was merely restating government advice against non-essential travel to Mexico.
US officials, including President Barack Obama, have said they had no plans to close the border with Mexico and that such a measure was unlikely to prevent the spread of a virus that was already present in the US.
Global reaction
Governments and health organisations were making plans on Thursday to step up efforts to combat and contain the disease.
The southern African regional bloc is holding talks with WHO about increasing its stocks of drugs to treat swine flu, Barbara Hogan, South Africa’s health minister, said on Thursday, after the country reported the continent’s first two suspected cases of the virus.
”We have no confirmed cases of swine flu in the country yet [but] we have everything on high alert,” Ms Hogan told local radio.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, one of the world’s biggest humanitarian organisations, also made a Thursday appeal for an initial $4.4m from donors to fund its response to the swine flu outbreak, saying there was an ”imminent risk of a global pandemic”. It said more than 130 of its 186 national branches worldwide were already working to mitigate the virus’ impact.
In the US, Mr Obama had asked Congress for for $1.5bn to combat swine flu earlier in the week.
Bulgaria ordered swine flu tests from the US, according to officials. The country currently has no way of identifying the disease other than to send tests to a foreign lab, but has announced measures to quarantine anyone with a suspected case, using thermal scanners at the airport to identify passengers with elevated temperatures.
Additional reporting from Tom Burgis in Johannesburg and Theodor Troev in Bulgaria
By Harvey Morris in New York, James Boxell in London, Frances Williams in Geneva and agency
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 11:40 | Last updated: April 30 2009 16:05
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95684290-349d-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
A man carries his coffee past empty tables at the ’Cafe La Habana’ after all restaurants were closed to inside dining in Mexico City. The city’s mayor said he would consider easing the citywide shutdown if the death toll kept tapering off
The World Health Organisation warned a global swine flu pandemic was imminent as it raised the global alert level on Wednesday to five out of six.
By Thursday morning, 236 cases had been confirmed worldwide, said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general in charge of tackling the crisis. The disease has hit at least 13 countries, but Mexico remained the epicentre of the outbreak.
Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, said anti-flu measures must now be undertaken with increased urgency. “All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans,” she told reporters in Geneva. “It really is all of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic.”
The phase five alert means that a pandemic is imminent and the disease can be spread from humans to humans in a sustainable manner.
The move came after the US reported the first death from the disease outside Mexico, where the new virus has killed up to 176 people though only a handful have been confirmed as stemming from infection.
Slideshow: World reaction to the growing outbreak
Switzerland became the most recent country to confirm a case, saying a man returning from Mexico had tested positive. A three-year-old child in the Netherlands was also infected, while closer to Mexico, Costa Rica and Peru also reported cases. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 109 cases in the US on Thursday.
Following the WHO’s Wednesday announcement, Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, ordered government offices and private businesses not crucial to the economy to stop work for five days from Friday to avoid further infections.
”There is no safer place than your own home to avoid being infected with the flu virus,” Mr Calderon said in his first televised address since the crisis erupted last week.
Mexico’s peso currency weakened sharply early on Thursday in response, falling 1.6 percent to 13.83 per dollar, but world stocks, powered by gains in Asia on Thursday, struck a four-month peak after the outbreak initially weighed on markets.
Texas health officials said a 23-month-old child on a visit from Mexico had died from the disease in a Houston hospital.
Rick Perry, Texas governor, issued a disaster proclamation for the state which has 16 cases of the disease. He said closing the Mexican border was an option but would be premature.
Ms Chan said: “The world is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history.”
Speaking shortly before Ms Chan’s announcement in Geneva, Janet Napolitano, US homeland security secretary, said: “We’ve been preparing all along as if this is going to be stage 6. We are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”
The WHO said the new flu strain appeared to be spreading from person to person, with its dissemination exacerbated by international travel.
France said it would seek European Union support for a continent-wide ban on flights to Mexico. The EU, US and Canada have already advised against non-essential travel to Mexico.
Mr Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general, said earlier that analysis showed, “this was a new swine influenza virus behaving like a human virus”. He noted that most cases outside Mexico had so far been mild.
Before the Texas death, all deaths had been confined to Mexico, where 159 may have died from the disease, although only seven cases have been confirmed as resulting from the new flu strain.
US authorities extended the availability of anti-viral drugs and released 12m doses of the Tamiflu drug from federal stockpiles, as health officials reported the number of confirmed US cases had risen from 64 to 91 in New York and nine other states.
Egypt began a precautionary cull of the country’s 300,000 pigs, a move described by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as “a real mistake”. Russia and China have banned US pork products, although Mr Fukuda repeated on Wednesday there was no evidence that people were being infected by exposure to pigs.
In Mexico, schools were also suspended until May 6 and the government assumed new powers to isolate infected people.
As companies worldwide stepped up precautions to protect employees, Patricia Espinosa, Mexican foreign minister, called at the United Nations Security Council for all countries to work together to respond to the crisis.
The southern African regional bloc is holding talks with WHO about increasing its stocks of drugs to treat swine flu, Barbara Hogan, South Africa’s health minister, said on Thursday, after the country reported the continent’s first two suspected cases of the virus.
”We have no confirmed cases of swine flu in the country yet [but] we have everything on high alert,” Ms Hogan told local radio.
additional reporting from Tom Burgis
Mexico shuts down to fight swine flu
By By Harvey Morris in New York, Stanley Pignal in Luxembourg and Frances Williams in Geneva
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 17:22 | Last updated: April 30 2009 18:40
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b58601e2-35a2-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
Mexico on Thursday ordered the shutdown of all but essential public services to help combat the spread of swine flu, as a major US food producer denied speculation one of its pig farms in the country was the origin of the disease.
President Felipe Calderón said only essential businesses such as supermarkets, hospitals and pharmacies should stay open, and only critical government health and security workers would be on duty from Friday until Tuesday. A nationwide school closure was already in effect.
Officials in Mexico City said there was no evidence of an exponential growth in the number of flu victims after 176 deaths throughout the country that might be linked to the disease. Eight have so far been confirmed as linked to the new strain.
Worldwide, 236 cases have been confirmed, said Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organisation’s assistant director general in charge of tackling the crisis. The disease has hit at least 13 countries, but Mexico remained the epicentre of the outbreak.
Smithfield denial
In the US, Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based food producer, rejected claims in Mexico that a joint venture it runs in Vera Cruz was the source of the virus – officially designated on Thursday as Influenza-A (H1N1).
C. Larry Pope, Smithfield chief executive, said in a letter to employees that Mexican authorities had found no evidence of the virus at the Vera Cruz farm where the herd was routinely vaccinated. The results of further independent tests would be available and released by the company in a few days, he wrote.
The World Organisation for Animal Health said the virus was spreading person-to-person and there was no reason to cull pig herds. “There is no evidence of infection in pigs, nor of humans acquiring infection directly from pigs,” the Paris-based organisation said.
Egypt began had begun a precautionary cull of the country’s 300,000 pigs, a move described by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as “a real mistake”. Russia and China have banned US pork products.
In Washington, Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said information so far indicated the flu outbreak was a relatively minor economic event. But the eventual economic impact on some countries could be “quite drastic”.
Travel limits
In Luxembourg, European Union health ministers reacted coolly to a French proposal to restrict travel to Mexico when they held an emergency meeting to coordinate the bloc’s response to the outbreak.
The meeting came after the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday night it was raising its global alert level to 5 on a 6-point scale, indicating a global pandemic was imminent.
A suggestion by the French health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, to ban outbound flights to Mexico was not seized upon by fellow EU members, many of whom said they doubted the effectiveness of such a measure.
Ms Bachelot’s calls echoed those made by the EU’s health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, earlier this week, to avoid Mexico, which were quickly downgraded to ”personal recommendations”.
More likely to gain support than a travel ban was a suggestion from Italy for some sort of joint strategy in stockpiling antivirals and vaccines for use across the EU.
The EU’s focus was on reassuring its citizens after a slew of new cases brought the total to over 20 infections in six countries including a new case each in Switzerland and the Netherlands.
In Spain, the worst affected EU state with 13 confirmed cases, Air Europa said it was cutting flights to Mexico by 80 percent.
All the European confirmed cases of the flu can be directly traced back to victims travelling to Mexico, except one case in Spain in which it is thought the member of a carrier’s household caught the disease.
Some passengers currently travelling in Mexico, are at odds as to whether to cut their trips short. Thirty Bulgarians, currently on vacation in Mexico, have approached authorities asking whether they should cut short their trip, said Anguel Kunchev from the country’s health ministry.
In the US, with the highest number of confirmed cases at 109, most of them mild, Joe Biden, vice-president, caused a stir in the travel industry by telling an interviewer he would advise his family to avoid air travel. His office later said he was merely restating government advice against non-essential travel to Mexico.
US officials, including President Barack Obama, have said they had no plans to close the border with Mexico and that such a measure was unlikely to prevent the spread of a virus that was already present in the US.
Global reaction
Governments and health organisations were making plans on Thursday to step up efforts to combat and contain the disease.
The southern African regional bloc is holding talks with WHO about increasing its stocks of drugs to treat swine flu, Barbara Hogan, South Africa’s health minister, said on Thursday, after the country reported the continent’s first two suspected cases of the virus.
”We have no confirmed cases of swine flu in the country yet [but] we have everything on high alert,” Ms Hogan told local radio.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, one of the world’s biggest humanitarian organisations, also made a Thursday appeal for an initial $4.4m from donors to fund its response to the swine flu outbreak, saying there was an ”imminent risk of a global pandemic”. It said more than 130 of its 186 national branches worldwide were already working to mitigate the virus’ impact.
In the US, Mr Obama had asked Congress for for $1.5bn to combat swine flu earlier in the week.
Bulgaria ordered swine flu tests from the US, according to officials. The country currently has no way of identifying the disease other than to send tests to a foreign lab, but has announced measures to quarantine anyone with a suspected case, using thermal scanners at the airport to identify passengers with elevated temperatures.
Additional reporting from Tom Burgis in Johannesburg and Theodor Troev in Bulgaria
GM bondholders launch counter-offer
GM bondholders launch counter-offer
By John Reed in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 14:24 | Last updated: April 30 2009 16:25
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c0f4b0fc-3587-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
General Motors’ bondholders on Thursday launched a counter-offer to the carmaker’s debt exchange proposal made earlier this week that would see them claim majority control of the company, but the US federal government hold no shares.
GM’s ad hoc bondholders’ committee said they would be willing to swap their $27bn of notes for 58 per cent of the carmaker’s shares. The plan would see a healthcare fund managed by the United Auto Workers’ union own 41 per cent of “the new GM” and current shareholders retain 1 per cent of Detroit’s largest carmaker.
The proposal would see no ownership role for the government and “prevent the nationalisation of one of the country’s largest companies,” the group said in a statement.
GM’s exchange offer, made on Monday, proposed that bondholders swap their paper for 10 per cent of the company. The carmaker’s proposal would see the government take majority control in exchange for retiring $10bn of emergency loans made since December. GM’s remaining shares would mostly be owned by the UAW.
The offer was rejected by many of GM’s bondholders, who oppose retiring their debt for a minority stake in a company that many think has an uncertain future.
“Unlike the current proposal, our plan does not grant a controlling interest in GM to the federal government,” said Eric Siegert, senior managing director of Houlihan Lokey Howard and Zukin, and advisor to the bondholders’ committee. “We think that this is an extremely attractive proposition given our current fiscal crisis.”
The group said their proposal would “save the U.S. taxpayer $10bn.” GM was not immediately available for comment on Thursday morning.
Shares in GM were 8 cents higher at $1.89 in early New York trading.
GM faces an end-May deadline to swap most of its debt and much of its healthcare obligations for equity in the company, or file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Chrysler, its smaller rival, has until midnight on Thursday to complete its own restructuring plan and an alliance with Italy’s Fiat, or file for creditor protection.
By John Reed in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 14:24 | Last updated: April 30 2009 16:25
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c0f4b0fc-3587-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
General Motors’ bondholders on Thursday launched a counter-offer to the carmaker’s debt exchange proposal made earlier this week that would see them claim majority control of the company, but the US federal government hold no shares.
GM’s ad hoc bondholders’ committee said they would be willing to swap their $27bn of notes for 58 per cent of the carmaker’s shares. The plan would see a healthcare fund managed by the United Auto Workers’ union own 41 per cent of “the new GM” and current shareholders retain 1 per cent of Detroit’s largest carmaker.
The proposal would see no ownership role for the government and “prevent the nationalisation of one of the country’s largest companies,” the group said in a statement.
GM’s exchange offer, made on Monday, proposed that bondholders swap their paper for 10 per cent of the company. The carmaker’s proposal would see the government take majority control in exchange for retiring $10bn of emergency loans made since December. GM’s remaining shares would mostly be owned by the UAW.
The offer was rejected by many of GM’s bondholders, who oppose retiring their debt for a minority stake in a company that many think has an uncertain future.
“Unlike the current proposal, our plan does not grant a controlling interest in GM to the federal government,” said Eric Siegert, senior managing director of Houlihan Lokey Howard and Zukin, and advisor to the bondholders’ committee. “We think that this is an extremely attractive proposition given our current fiscal crisis.”
The group said their proposal would “save the U.S. taxpayer $10bn.” GM was not immediately available for comment on Thursday morning.
Shares in GM were 8 cents higher at $1.89 in early New York trading.
GM faces an end-May deadline to swap most of its debt and much of its healthcare obligations for equity in the company, or file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Chrysler, its smaller rival, has until midnight on Thursday to complete its own restructuring plan and an alliance with Italy’s Fiat, or file for creditor protection.
Obama plots path for Chrysler’s future
Obama plots path for Chrysler’s future
By John Reed in London and Tom Braithwaite in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 14:12 | Last updated: April 30 2009 18:19
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/76ccd92c-3588-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Chrysler would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and confirmed a partnership with Italy’s Fiat aimed at giving a new lease on life to what he called “one of America’s most storied automakers.”
The announcement came after dissenting creditors failed to fall in line with a government-brokered deal with big banks to cut Chrysler’s $6.9bn secured debt by more than two-thirds. Mr Obama attributed the failure of an out-of-court restructuring to “a small group of speculators.”
In a midday address, Mr Obama sought to assure carbuyers that their warranties on Chrysler cars had US federal government backing, and he announced a series of other measures to support the beleaguered domestic American car industry.
Fiat said that its partnership would see the sale of “substantially all” of Chrysler’s assets to a new company under provisions of the US bankruptcy code allowing companies in creditor protection to split their operations into more and less viable parts.
The Italian carmaker said Chrysler would ask a bankruptcy court in New York on Thursday to approve the sale of its business to a new company, also to be called Chrysler.
Pending approval of the deal, the current Chrysler would continue its normal business operations. The company would receive US Treasury and Canadian government financing and “continue normal business” while awaiting the approval.
Fiat is expected to take a 20 per cent initial stake in Chrysler, to rise later to 35 per cent. “As part of the agreement, every dollar of taxpayer money will be repaid before Fiat can take a majority stake,” Mr Obama said.
Bob Nardelli, the chairman and chief executive of Chrysler, will step down to be replaced by a new board agreed by the government and Fiat.
Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s chief executive, said the deal represented “a constructive and important solution to the problems that have plagued not just Chrysler in recent years, but the global automotive industry as a whole.”
He said that Fiat looked forward to “delivering on the vast potential this alliance holds.” Fiat entered discussions on the alliance nearly a year ago.
Mr Obama gave no details on the government’s desired timetable for what his task force on the auto industry had previously described as a “surgical” bankruptcy filing aimed at giving Chrysler the shortest possible trip through the courts.
“The process will be quick, it will be efficient,” he said. “It’s designed to deal with the last few holdouts, and it will be controlled.”
However, analysts say Chrysler’s efforts to emerge from Chapter 11 protection quickly could be bogged down by legal challenges from dissenting creditors, dealers, and others.
Mr Obama described the US car industry as “pillar of our industrial economy” that had “helped to make the 20th century an American century.”
He praised efforts to turn around Detroit’s smallest carmaker by Fiat, Chrysler, its chief executive Bob Nardelli, the United Auto Workers Union, his own automotive task force, and banks led by JPMorgan, who agreed a deal this week to restructure the majority of Chrysler’s secured debt.
Mr Obama said he was naming Ed Montgomery as “director of recovery” for US areas hit by the decline in carmaking, and that Mr Montgomery would be travelling soon for meetings in Michigan.
Mr Obama said that Chrysler Financial, the carmaker’s loans arm, would need a constant stream of taxpayer money, and that GMAC had agreed to finance its vehicles. Fiat said the new arrangements would take effect from the beginning of May.
The spotlight in the controversial government-supervised restructuring of the US auto industry now turns to General Motors, which has until the end of May to follow Chrysler in reaching an agreement with workers and debtholders to cut costs.
That process is also turning acrimonious with some GM bondholders criticising the company’s plan that offers them 10 per cent of the new company’s equity in return for cancelling $27bn of unsecured loans.
Chrysler timeline
1925: Walter Chrysler, a former railway mechanic and head of General Motors’ Buick division, forms Chrysler from the ashes of ailing Maxwell Motor.
1979: US government agrees to guarantee $1.5bn in Chrysler debt to keep the carmaker out of bankruptcy
1983: Last of government-guaranteed loans paid off as new models gain popularity.
1984: Launch of pioneering Dodge and Plymouth minivans.
1987: Chrysler acquires American Motors, maker of Jeep
1998: Germany’s Daimler-Benz acquires Chrysler, changing its own name to DaimlerChrysler
2001: Plymouth brand discontinued after 73 years
2007: Daimler sells 80 per cent stake in Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management. New management installed under former Home Depot chief executive Bob Nardelli
2008: A series of plant closures and employee buy-outs as sales and market share fall. Four models discontinued
April 2009: Chrysler files for bankruptcy protection. Workforce has shrunk by more than 30,000 since Cerberus takeover
By John Reed in London and Tom Braithwaite in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 14:12 | Last updated: April 30 2009 18:19
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/76ccd92c-3588-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Chrysler would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and confirmed a partnership with Italy’s Fiat aimed at giving a new lease on life to what he called “one of America’s most storied automakers.”
The announcement came after dissenting creditors failed to fall in line with a government-brokered deal with big banks to cut Chrysler’s $6.9bn secured debt by more than two-thirds. Mr Obama attributed the failure of an out-of-court restructuring to “a small group of speculators.”
In a midday address, Mr Obama sought to assure carbuyers that their warranties on Chrysler cars had US federal government backing, and he announced a series of other measures to support the beleaguered domestic American car industry.
Fiat said that its partnership would see the sale of “substantially all” of Chrysler’s assets to a new company under provisions of the US bankruptcy code allowing companies in creditor protection to split their operations into more and less viable parts.
The Italian carmaker said Chrysler would ask a bankruptcy court in New York on Thursday to approve the sale of its business to a new company, also to be called Chrysler.
Pending approval of the deal, the current Chrysler would continue its normal business operations. The company would receive US Treasury and Canadian government financing and “continue normal business” while awaiting the approval.
Fiat is expected to take a 20 per cent initial stake in Chrysler, to rise later to 35 per cent. “As part of the agreement, every dollar of taxpayer money will be repaid before Fiat can take a majority stake,” Mr Obama said.
Bob Nardelli, the chairman and chief executive of Chrysler, will step down to be replaced by a new board agreed by the government and Fiat.
Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s chief executive, said the deal represented “a constructive and important solution to the problems that have plagued not just Chrysler in recent years, but the global automotive industry as a whole.”
He said that Fiat looked forward to “delivering on the vast potential this alliance holds.” Fiat entered discussions on the alliance nearly a year ago.
Mr Obama gave no details on the government’s desired timetable for what his task force on the auto industry had previously described as a “surgical” bankruptcy filing aimed at giving Chrysler the shortest possible trip through the courts.
“The process will be quick, it will be efficient,” he said. “It’s designed to deal with the last few holdouts, and it will be controlled.”
However, analysts say Chrysler’s efforts to emerge from Chapter 11 protection quickly could be bogged down by legal challenges from dissenting creditors, dealers, and others.
Mr Obama described the US car industry as “pillar of our industrial economy” that had “helped to make the 20th century an American century.”
He praised efforts to turn around Detroit’s smallest carmaker by Fiat, Chrysler, its chief executive Bob Nardelli, the United Auto Workers Union, his own automotive task force, and banks led by JPMorgan, who agreed a deal this week to restructure the majority of Chrysler’s secured debt.
Mr Obama said he was naming Ed Montgomery as “director of recovery” for US areas hit by the decline in carmaking, and that Mr Montgomery would be travelling soon for meetings in Michigan.
Mr Obama said that Chrysler Financial, the carmaker’s loans arm, would need a constant stream of taxpayer money, and that GMAC had agreed to finance its vehicles. Fiat said the new arrangements would take effect from the beginning of May.
The spotlight in the controversial government-supervised restructuring of the US auto industry now turns to General Motors, which has until the end of May to follow Chrysler in reaching an agreement with workers and debtholders to cut costs.
That process is also turning acrimonious with some GM bondholders criticising the company’s plan that offers them 10 per cent of the new company’s equity in return for cancelling $27bn of unsecured loans.
Chrysler timeline
1925: Walter Chrysler, a former railway mechanic and head of General Motors’ Buick division, forms Chrysler from the ashes of ailing Maxwell Motor.
1979: US government agrees to guarantee $1.5bn in Chrysler debt to keep the carmaker out of bankruptcy
1983: Last of government-guaranteed loans paid off as new models gain popularity.
1984: Launch of pioneering Dodge and Plymouth minivans.
1987: Chrysler acquires American Motors, maker of Jeep
1998: Germany’s Daimler-Benz acquires Chrysler, changing its own name to DaimlerChrysler
2001: Plymouth brand discontinued after 73 years
2007: Daimler sells 80 per cent stake in Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management. New management installed under former Home Depot chief executive Bob Nardelli
2008: A series of plant closures and employee buy-outs as sales and market share fall. Four models discontinued
April 2009: Chrysler files for bankruptcy protection. Workforce has shrunk by more than 30,000 since Cerberus takeover
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - Time to stand up to end corruption - An occasional series on fixing our politics and government
Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - Time to stand up to end corruption - An occasional series on fixing our politics and government
Copyright by the Chicago Sun-Times
April 29, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1549335,CST-EDT-edit29a.article
People of Illinois, are you tired of being the laughingstock of the nation when it comes to political corruption?
Outsiders dub us "the Nigeria of the Midwest."
The Brits, in the Economist magazine, sniff at Illinois as "exceptionally corrupt" and "exceptionally lawless."
When corruption scandals hit other states -- Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Louisiana -- politicians react by passing meaningful statewide reforms.
That's right -- even Louisiana.
But in Illinois, where one former governor sits in prison and his successor is under indictment, what have our state lawmakers given us in the way of reform?
Peanuts.
Forty-six states impose limits on how much campaign cash people can give state and local politicians.
Not Illinois.
Forty-six states grant local prosecutors commonsense legal tools to go after public corruption.
Not Illinois.
Do you see a pattern here?
On Tuesday, the Illinois Reform Commission, appointed by Gov. Quinn and led by former federal prosecutor Patrick Collins, unveiled an 88-page report that suggests a series of fundamental changes in how this state should operate.
The commission was assigned to dig through the muck and propose sensible ways to fumigate state government, and it has done a terrific job.
In 100 short days, these unpaid commissioners traveled the state, listened to dozens of citizens, consulted a slew of experts and produced a thoughtful, practical and even inspiring document.
A document we wholeheartedly endorse, with a few quibbles. (The commission, for instance, suggests moving election primaries from February to June, while we think March or April makes more sense.)
The commission's report recommends:
• • Limiting how much politicians can receive in campaign donations -- following the federal model -- while increasing how frequently and quickly they must disclose those contributions.• • Improving the way the state buys goods and services by eliminating loopholes in the law and setting up a monitor with true power to stop dirty deals before they happen.• • Reforming the way the state draws congressional and state legislative districts so incumbents don't have a built-in unfair advantage when running for re-election. • • Giving local prosecutors some of the tools federal authorities have had for decades, such as a practical state racketeering law, to go after political corruption.• • Making it easier for citizens to get public information about how their governments are spending their money.• • Changing the culture of corruption by combatting patronage in state government with the help of an independent hiring monitor.
In this short space, we can't do justice to spelling out the report's recommendations, and we urge readers to read the entire report at suntimes.com/news/commentary.
For all the report's good sense, though, it's nothing but an 88-page doorstop if the people of Illinois -- all of us -- fail to rally behind the urgently needed reforms.
Cynics are already carving its tombstone.
Dead on arrival, they say.
And they may be right.
Our state's most powerful lawmakers, truth be told, want nothing to do with most of these reforms. Some of the proposed changes would whittle away their power. Others would embolden local prosecutors to go after crooked pols and their cronies. Still other reforms would make it much tougher to award sweetheart deals to pals.
In the coming weeks, you'll hear plenty of arguments against these reforms, many of which will sound perfectly reasonable. But we urge you to question those arguments and find the self-serving nonsense at their core.
A number of lawmakers have already suggested that the proposed reforms are impractical and even radical and would slow the state's everyday workings to a crawl.
In truth, most of the suggested reforms are already the law in other states -- and work just fine.
In the area of campaign finance reform, some lawmakers worry that the commission's proposed campaign contribution limits are too low and would put them at a huge disadvantage against a millionaire opponent with a huge personal war chest.
More nonsense.
We just don't know many millionaires who pine to make a second career in the Illinois General Assembly.
In Congress, sure.
In Springfield, not so much.
We're not saying the commission's proposals couldn't stand a little tinkering, but we'll be looking for suggestions for improving -- not gutting -- them.
If this bold package of political reforms is not enacted into law now -- in this spring legislative session -- we fear it never will be.
We have a public that is disgusted by the shenanigans of two disgraced former governors. We have an incumbent governor who has built his career on championing reform. We have a Legislature that surely must understand, finally, that the usual fake gestures of reform won't cut it with the public and the press this time.
There is only one thing state lawmakers fear more than enacting true political reform: not getting re-elected.
We agree with Quinn's suggestion that state lawmakers should vote on each of the commission's proposals up or down -- no shuffling a bill off to die in a committee -- to let the public know where they stand.
When this legislative session is over, we'll report to you who voted for real reform and who faked it -- and come re-election time, we'll tell you again.
But even before then, let your state senator and representative know you want 100-proof, real reform, not the watered-down stuff.
In the end, we, the people of Illinois, will get the political reform we deserve.
If we sit back and fail to speak out, we'll get more of the same -- peanuts.
And we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
1) Contact Illinois Senate and House leaders
• • Senate President John Cullerton 327 Capitol Building, Springfield, IL 62706. Phone: (217) 782-2728 E-mail: justine@senatorcullerton.com
• • House Speaker Michael Madigan 300 Capitol Building, Springfield, IL 62706 Phone: (217) 782-5350 Fax: (217) 524-1794
2) Contact your legislators
• • If you live in Chicago and don't know who your state representative and state senator are, go to www.repsheet.com. Names and contact information are provided.
• • Illinois residents can find the names of state legislators and contact information at elections.il.gov/DistrictLocator/ SelectSearchType.aspx.
3) Support a reform group
Change Illinois is a coalition of civic, business, professional and philanthropic groups pushing for campaign contribution limits. Learn more at www.changeil.org.
4) Learn more
To read the Illinois Reform Commission's final report, go to www.reformillinoisnow.org.
Copyright by the Chicago Sun-Times
April 29, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1549335,CST-EDT-edit29a.article
People of Illinois, are you tired of being the laughingstock of the nation when it comes to political corruption?
Outsiders dub us "the Nigeria of the Midwest."
The Brits, in the Economist magazine, sniff at Illinois as "exceptionally corrupt" and "exceptionally lawless."
When corruption scandals hit other states -- Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Louisiana -- politicians react by passing meaningful statewide reforms.
That's right -- even Louisiana.
But in Illinois, where one former governor sits in prison and his successor is under indictment, what have our state lawmakers given us in the way of reform?
Peanuts.
Forty-six states impose limits on how much campaign cash people can give state and local politicians.
Not Illinois.
Forty-six states grant local prosecutors commonsense legal tools to go after public corruption.
Not Illinois.
Do you see a pattern here?
On Tuesday, the Illinois Reform Commission, appointed by Gov. Quinn and led by former federal prosecutor Patrick Collins, unveiled an 88-page report that suggests a series of fundamental changes in how this state should operate.
The commission was assigned to dig through the muck and propose sensible ways to fumigate state government, and it has done a terrific job.
In 100 short days, these unpaid commissioners traveled the state, listened to dozens of citizens, consulted a slew of experts and produced a thoughtful, practical and even inspiring document.
A document we wholeheartedly endorse, with a few quibbles. (The commission, for instance, suggests moving election primaries from February to June, while we think March or April makes more sense.)
The commission's report recommends:
• • Limiting how much politicians can receive in campaign donations -- following the federal model -- while increasing how frequently and quickly they must disclose those contributions.• • Improving the way the state buys goods and services by eliminating loopholes in the law and setting up a monitor with true power to stop dirty deals before they happen.• • Reforming the way the state draws congressional and state legislative districts so incumbents don't have a built-in unfair advantage when running for re-election. • • Giving local prosecutors some of the tools federal authorities have had for decades, such as a practical state racketeering law, to go after political corruption.• • Making it easier for citizens to get public information about how their governments are spending their money.• • Changing the culture of corruption by combatting patronage in state government with the help of an independent hiring monitor.
In this short space, we can't do justice to spelling out the report's recommendations, and we urge readers to read the entire report at suntimes.com/news/commentary.
For all the report's good sense, though, it's nothing but an 88-page doorstop if the people of Illinois -- all of us -- fail to rally behind the urgently needed reforms.
Cynics are already carving its tombstone.
Dead on arrival, they say.
And they may be right.
Our state's most powerful lawmakers, truth be told, want nothing to do with most of these reforms. Some of the proposed changes would whittle away their power. Others would embolden local prosecutors to go after crooked pols and their cronies. Still other reforms would make it much tougher to award sweetheart deals to pals.
In the coming weeks, you'll hear plenty of arguments against these reforms, many of which will sound perfectly reasonable. But we urge you to question those arguments and find the self-serving nonsense at their core.
A number of lawmakers have already suggested that the proposed reforms are impractical and even radical and would slow the state's everyday workings to a crawl.
In truth, most of the suggested reforms are already the law in other states -- and work just fine.
In the area of campaign finance reform, some lawmakers worry that the commission's proposed campaign contribution limits are too low and would put them at a huge disadvantage against a millionaire opponent with a huge personal war chest.
More nonsense.
We just don't know many millionaires who pine to make a second career in the Illinois General Assembly.
In Congress, sure.
In Springfield, not so much.
We're not saying the commission's proposals couldn't stand a little tinkering, but we'll be looking for suggestions for improving -- not gutting -- them.
If this bold package of political reforms is not enacted into law now -- in this spring legislative session -- we fear it never will be.
We have a public that is disgusted by the shenanigans of two disgraced former governors. We have an incumbent governor who has built his career on championing reform. We have a Legislature that surely must understand, finally, that the usual fake gestures of reform won't cut it with the public and the press this time.
There is only one thing state lawmakers fear more than enacting true political reform: not getting re-elected.
We agree with Quinn's suggestion that state lawmakers should vote on each of the commission's proposals up or down -- no shuffling a bill off to die in a committee -- to let the public know where they stand.
When this legislative session is over, we'll report to you who voted for real reform and who faked it -- and come re-election time, we'll tell you again.
But even before then, let your state senator and representative know you want 100-proof, real reform, not the watered-down stuff.
In the end, we, the people of Illinois, will get the political reform we deserve.
If we sit back and fail to speak out, we'll get more of the same -- peanuts.
And we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
1) Contact Illinois Senate and House leaders
• • Senate President John Cullerton 327 Capitol Building, Springfield, IL 62706. Phone: (217) 782-2728 E-mail: justine@senatorcullerton.com
• • House Speaker Michael Madigan 300 Capitol Building, Springfield, IL 62706 Phone: (217) 782-5350 Fax: (217) 524-1794
2) Contact your legislators
• • If you live in Chicago and don't know who your state representative and state senator are, go to www.repsheet.com. Names and contact information are provided.
• • Illinois residents can find the names of state legislators and contact information at elections.il.gov/DistrictLocator/ SelectSearchType.aspx.
3) Support a reform group
Change Illinois is a coalition of civic, business, professional and philanthropic groups pushing for campaign contribution limits. Learn more at www.changeil.org.
4) Learn more
To read the Illinois Reform Commission's final report, go to www.reformillinoisnow.org.
Cheney's tortured argument
Cheney's tortured argument
By Clarence Page
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0429pageapr29,0,542921.column
What a difference an election makes. Our national position has now shifted from "we don't torture" to "we don't torture anymore." Let us, then, disabuse ourselves of former President George W. Bush's notion that waterboarding and the other so-called "harsh" or "enhanced" interrogation techniques are anything but torture. Euphemism is the first refuge of scoundrels -- and the desperate.
President Barack Obama wants to help us as a country to reconcile our shameful torture period. He says -- repeatedly -- that he wants to "look forward" and "not backward." He absolved CIA officers from prosecution for the inhumanities of harsh interrogation. That's OK by me. It's not quite fair to prosecute lower ranks of the food chain while top policymakers walk free. And, this country has little appetite for a criminal trial of Team Bush.
But the torture debate won't go away soon, especially since the disclosure on April 16. That's when the Obama administration released four Justice Department memos in which Bush's administration defined "enhanced" techniques. The disclosures have only fired up the already heated debate about whether torture techniques actually prevented any acts of terror.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says they did. Obama says, uh, not so fast.
This is not a small question, since about 70 percent of the public tells pollsters they support worse torture than waterboarding if it will prevent an attack. Sure. Who wouldn't? Unfortunately, as scholars in counterterrorism point out, real life ain't like the movies.
So now that Cheney has a legacy to salvage and a sure-to-be-best-selling book in the works, he is relaxing his famous obsession for secrecy. To back up his case, he is requesting through his publisher that the Obama administration release previously classified documents. Do it. Please.
In fact, don't stop there, Mr. Cheney. Let's have a full-fledged truth-commission-style investigation into torture techniques during the Bush years -- not necessarily to prosecute anyone, since the debate has become so muddied by misinformation and disinformation, but to separate fact from enhanced non-fiction.
Cheney growls a good game as he complains about Obama's anti-torture stance. But the Bush-Cheney evidence and arguments have raised more questions than they have answered.
For example, former Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen argues dramatically in an April 21 Washington Post op-ed that "without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York."
Specifically, Thiessen argues, the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, "led to the discovery" of a plot to crash planes into the U.S. Bank Tower, then known as the Library Tower, in Los Angeles.
But, as Slate.com senior editor Timothy Noah was the first to note, the big flaw in Thiessen's claim is chronology. Bush's counterterrorism officials told reporters that the L.A. plot effectively ended when its cell leader was arrested in February 2002. Sheikh Mohammed was not captured until March 2003. So much for Thiessen's hole in the ground.
Does torture work? Contrary to the certainty expressed by Cheney and Co., torture has been a topic of heated debate within the intelligence community and among the CIA, FBI, State Department and Justice Department for years.
More significant, Ali Soufan, an FBI interrogator who worked closely with Abu Zubaydah, a high-level Al Qaeda operative, says the FBI did extract crucial intelligence, but long before Zubaydah was subjected to harsh techniques.
Then there's National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, Obama's top intelligence adviser. Blair told intelligence personnel on April 16 that "high-value information" came from harsh interrogation methods. But in a later statement, he backed away, saying "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means." Besides, he conceded, "the damage" these techniques "have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security." Nice backpedaling.
The truth? We need a bipartisan commission in the spirit of the 9/11 commission to hear some of that. A truth commission won't satisfy everyone. Americans still argue, for example, about the Warren Commission and whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But at least those of us who have a quaint, old-fashioned interest in facts will have something on which to build new laws and a new torture policy. I suggest we begin with the words: "Don't do it."
cptime@aol.com
By Clarence Page
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0429pageapr29,0,542921.column
What a difference an election makes. Our national position has now shifted from "we don't torture" to "we don't torture anymore." Let us, then, disabuse ourselves of former President George W. Bush's notion that waterboarding and the other so-called "harsh" or "enhanced" interrogation techniques are anything but torture. Euphemism is the first refuge of scoundrels -- and the desperate.
President Barack Obama wants to help us as a country to reconcile our shameful torture period. He says -- repeatedly -- that he wants to "look forward" and "not backward." He absolved CIA officers from prosecution for the inhumanities of harsh interrogation. That's OK by me. It's not quite fair to prosecute lower ranks of the food chain while top policymakers walk free. And, this country has little appetite for a criminal trial of Team Bush.
But the torture debate won't go away soon, especially since the disclosure on April 16. That's when the Obama administration released four Justice Department memos in which Bush's administration defined "enhanced" techniques. The disclosures have only fired up the already heated debate about whether torture techniques actually prevented any acts of terror.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says they did. Obama says, uh, not so fast.
This is not a small question, since about 70 percent of the public tells pollsters they support worse torture than waterboarding if it will prevent an attack. Sure. Who wouldn't? Unfortunately, as scholars in counterterrorism point out, real life ain't like the movies.
So now that Cheney has a legacy to salvage and a sure-to-be-best-selling book in the works, he is relaxing his famous obsession for secrecy. To back up his case, he is requesting through his publisher that the Obama administration release previously classified documents. Do it. Please.
In fact, don't stop there, Mr. Cheney. Let's have a full-fledged truth-commission-style investigation into torture techniques during the Bush years -- not necessarily to prosecute anyone, since the debate has become so muddied by misinformation and disinformation, but to separate fact from enhanced non-fiction.
Cheney growls a good game as he complains about Obama's anti-torture stance. But the Bush-Cheney evidence and arguments have raised more questions than they have answered.
For example, former Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen argues dramatically in an April 21 Washington Post op-ed that "without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York."
Specifically, Thiessen argues, the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, "led to the discovery" of a plot to crash planes into the U.S. Bank Tower, then known as the Library Tower, in Los Angeles.
But, as Slate.com senior editor Timothy Noah was the first to note, the big flaw in Thiessen's claim is chronology. Bush's counterterrorism officials told reporters that the L.A. plot effectively ended when its cell leader was arrested in February 2002. Sheikh Mohammed was not captured until March 2003. So much for Thiessen's hole in the ground.
Does torture work? Contrary to the certainty expressed by Cheney and Co., torture has been a topic of heated debate within the intelligence community and among the CIA, FBI, State Department and Justice Department for years.
More significant, Ali Soufan, an FBI interrogator who worked closely with Abu Zubaydah, a high-level Al Qaeda operative, says the FBI did extract crucial intelligence, but long before Zubaydah was subjected to harsh techniques.
Then there's National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, Obama's top intelligence adviser. Blair told intelligence personnel on April 16 that "high-value information" came from harsh interrogation methods. But in a later statement, he backed away, saying "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means." Besides, he conceded, "the damage" these techniques "have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security." Nice backpedaling.
The truth? We need a bipartisan commission in the spirit of the 9/11 commission to hear some of that. A truth commission won't satisfy everyone. Americans still argue, for example, about the Warren Commission and whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But at least those of us who have a quaint, old-fashioned interest in facts will have something on which to build new laws and a new torture policy. I suggest we begin with the words: "Don't do it."
cptime@aol.com
Gay marriage in Iowa: Court ruling gives hope that Illinois could follow - Many gays, lesbians willing to wait, rather than rushing to Iowa to wed
Gay marriage in Iowa: Court ruling gives hope that Illinois could follow - Many gays, lesbians willing to wait, rather than rushing to Iowa to wed
By Rex W. Huppke
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-gay-marriage-illinois-29-apr29,0,7527686.story
Rather than head to Iowa, many same-sex couples in Chicago who want to marry seem content to wait until they can legally wed in Illinois, demonstrating a sense of optimism about the issue once unheard of in the gay and lesbian community.
Tiffine Bourland has been with her partner, Alicia Diaz, for three years. Bourland has family in Davenport, Iowa, and was thrilled when she learned Illinois' neighbor had legalized same-sex marriages earlier this month.
She and Diaz have talked about getting married, but the more they thought about going to Iowa the more confident they became that Illinois would eventually come around.
"We got excited when we heard about Iowa because it was the first state in the Midwest," Bourland said. "But we want to wait because we're even more excited now that it might happen here."
Up to this point, few have had the confidence Bourland and Diaz share. People have flocked to Massachusetts, Connecticut and California over the last few years, hoping to wed while they had a chance.
But now many couples who waited decades for the right to marry have done so, and some of the pent-up desire across the country has been satisfied.
"I think what we're seeing now is people greeting this progress as an opportunity to do marriage the way they always envisioned it, not under the pressure caused by newness or the threat that it might, at any moment, be taken away," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of the national advocacy group Freedom To Marry. "In some sense, I think we're seeing a more normalized response on the part of gay people."
Take, for example, an event Gay Chicago Magazine held on Friday. In the front of the magazine's North Side office, couples could fill out Iowa marriage license applications, then have them notarized and sent out. But only about 25 applications were picked up and no couples filled them out on the spot.
"There are probably some people going to Iowa, but we're not finding them," said Modesto Tico Valle, executive director of the Center on Halsted. "I think people are waiting for Illinois."
It's unclear how long that wait might be. A bill to legalize civil unions, which would grant same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples, awaits a vote in the House and would then need to clear the Senate. State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) has sponsored a gay marriage bill, but it has never made it out of committee.
Chad Gearig and Thom Howe-Duff plan on marrying in Iowa on May 14. Together for four years, the Chicago couple decided they didn't want to wait on Illinois, but they know most in their circle of friends are planning patience.
"I think a lot of people are waiting and seeing as far as what's going to happen in Illinois," Gearig said. "We don't know a lot of people rushing out there to do it, offhand."
Andrew Koppelman, a professor of law and political science at Northwestern University, said the fact that people don't seem poised to rush into Iowa to marry marks a significant moment for the gay rights movement. He said he thinks people in the gay and lesbian community have become more educated and empowered with regard to marriage and may no longer be willing to wed out of state only to see the rights that come with marriage vanish when they return home.
"It matters a lot to any social movement that you believe that you have a chance to win," Koppelman said. "There can be a strong social movement for equality, but if it meets with enough defeats it eventually runs out of steam. What has happened here is there have been steady gains in public opinion. People are confident because they've been winning."
Of course gay marriage remains legal in only four states: Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Gay rights advocates suffered a significant setback in November when Californians voted in favor of Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage; and more than 20 states have constitutional bans on gay marriage.
Still, public opinion polls over the years have shown an increasing comfort level with same-sex marriages, and Iowa's ruling -- followed days later by the legislative decision to approve gay marriage in Vermont -- has instilled a sense in the gay and lesbian community that the tide is turning.
"You have people in Illinois and Missouri and other surrounding states who want to be married but they aren't willing to go anyplace except their own county clerk," said Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois. "They also know that the Iowa ruling is right here in the heartland, and a lot of people believe that if Iowa did it, why can't we?"
rhuppke@tribune.com
By Rex W. Huppke
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-gay-marriage-illinois-29-apr29,0,7527686.story
Rather than head to Iowa, many same-sex couples in Chicago who want to marry seem content to wait until they can legally wed in Illinois, demonstrating a sense of optimism about the issue once unheard of in the gay and lesbian community.
Tiffine Bourland has been with her partner, Alicia Diaz, for three years. Bourland has family in Davenport, Iowa, and was thrilled when she learned Illinois' neighbor had legalized same-sex marriages earlier this month.
She and Diaz have talked about getting married, but the more they thought about going to Iowa the more confident they became that Illinois would eventually come around.
"We got excited when we heard about Iowa because it was the first state in the Midwest," Bourland said. "But we want to wait because we're even more excited now that it might happen here."
Up to this point, few have had the confidence Bourland and Diaz share. People have flocked to Massachusetts, Connecticut and California over the last few years, hoping to wed while they had a chance.
But now many couples who waited decades for the right to marry have done so, and some of the pent-up desire across the country has been satisfied.
"I think what we're seeing now is people greeting this progress as an opportunity to do marriage the way they always envisioned it, not under the pressure caused by newness or the threat that it might, at any moment, be taken away," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of the national advocacy group Freedom To Marry. "In some sense, I think we're seeing a more normalized response on the part of gay people."
Take, for example, an event Gay Chicago Magazine held on Friday. In the front of the magazine's North Side office, couples could fill out Iowa marriage license applications, then have them notarized and sent out. But only about 25 applications were picked up and no couples filled them out on the spot.
"There are probably some people going to Iowa, but we're not finding them," said Modesto Tico Valle, executive director of the Center on Halsted. "I think people are waiting for Illinois."
It's unclear how long that wait might be. A bill to legalize civil unions, which would grant same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples, awaits a vote in the House and would then need to clear the Senate. State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) has sponsored a gay marriage bill, but it has never made it out of committee.
Chad Gearig and Thom Howe-Duff plan on marrying in Iowa on May 14. Together for four years, the Chicago couple decided they didn't want to wait on Illinois, but they know most in their circle of friends are planning patience.
"I think a lot of people are waiting and seeing as far as what's going to happen in Illinois," Gearig said. "We don't know a lot of people rushing out there to do it, offhand."
Andrew Koppelman, a professor of law and political science at Northwestern University, said the fact that people don't seem poised to rush into Iowa to marry marks a significant moment for the gay rights movement. He said he thinks people in the gay and lesbian community have become more educated and empowered with regard to marriage and may no longer be willing to wed out of state only to see the rights that come with marriage vanish when they return home.
"It matters a lot to any social movement that you believe that you have a chance to win," Koppelman said. "There can be a strong social movement for equality, but if it meets with enough defeats it eventually runs out of steam. What has happened here is there have been steady gains in public opinion. People are confident because they've been winning."
Of course gay marriage remains legal in only four states: Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Gay rights advocates suffered a significant setback in November when Californians voted in favor of Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage; and more than 20 states have constitutional bans on gay marriage.
Still, public opinion polls over the years have shown an increasing comfort level with same-sex marriages, and Iowa's ruling -- followed days later by the legislative decision to approve gay marriage in Vermont -- has instilled a sense in the gay and lesbian community that the tide is turning.
"You have people in Illinois and Missouri and other surrounding states who want to be married but they aren't willing to go anyplace except their own county clerk," said Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois. "They also know that the Iowa ruling is right here in the heartland, and a lot of people believe that if Iowa did it, why can't we?"
rhuppke@tribune.com
Study finds conservative viewers of Stephen Colbert's comedy show think he's on their side
Study finds conservative viewers of Stephen Colbert's comedy show think he's on their side
by Steve Johnson
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-talk-colbertapr29,0,1905472.column
Do conservatives not understand that Stephen Colbert is joking?
A new academic study suggests Comedy Central's faux-foaming right-winger may be, at minimum, a blank screen onto which people can project their own beliefs. At maximum, he's working a kind of ultimate political con.
Liberals get that he's sending up Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly and his ilk four nights a week at 10:30 CST. And conservatives still find "The Colbert Report" host funny.
"Our results aren't that conservatives don't get the joke. It's that how you see the joke depends on who you are," says Kristen Landreville, a PhD student in communications at Ohio State University and one of three co-authors. "If you're conservative, you think the joke's on liberals because he's openly making fun of liberals."
"The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report" was published in the April issue of the International Journal of Press/Politics.
The researchers asked 332 undergraduate communications students for their interpretation of a clip of Colbert interviewing liberal radio host Amy Goodman. And despite Landreville's generous interpretation, the paper suggests conservative viewers weren't quite comprehending the "deadpan satire" Colbert employs.
"Conservatives not only processed the messages as targeting liberals, but also processed the source as being conservative, Republican, and disliking liberals," the paper says. "By contrast, liberals perceived Colbert as just kidding."
As for Colbert, Landreville says he would probably take the study, in character, as "Here's evidence that everyone loves me." Sure enough, at the show's Web site, the article about the study is headlined, "Science Proves Stephen Colbert Also Popular With Conservatives."
by Steve Johnson
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 29, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-talk-colbertapr29,0,1905472.column
Do conservatives not understand that Stephen Colbert is joking?
A new academic study suggests Comedy Central's faux-foaming right-winger may be, at minimum, a blank screen onto which people can project their own beliefs. At maximum, he's working a kind of ultimate political con.
Liberals get that he's sending up Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly and his ilk four nights a week at 10:30 CST. And conservatives still find "The Colbert Report" host funny.
"Our results aren't that conservatives don't get the joke. It's that how you see the joke depends on who you are," says Kristen Landreville, a PhD student in communications at Ohio State University and one of three co-authors. "If you're conservative, you think the joke's on liberals because he's openly making fun of liberals."
"The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report" was published in the April issue of the International Journal of Press/Politics.
The researchers asked 332 undergraduate communications students for their interpretation of a clip of Colbert interviewing liberal radio host Amy Goodman. And despite Landreville's generous interpretation, the paper suggests conservative viewers weren't quite comprehending the "deadpan satire" Colbert employs.
"Conservatives not only processed the messages as targeting liberals, but also processed the source as being conservative, Republican, and disliking liberals," the paper says. "By contrast, liberals perceived Colbert as just kidding."
As for Colbert, Landreville says he would probably take the study, in character, as "Here's evidence that everyone loves me." Sure enough, at the show's Web site, the article about the study is headlined, "Science Proves Stephen Colbert Also Popular With Conservatives."
We Didn’t Have to Lose Arlen Specter
We Didn’t Have to Lose Arlen Specter
By OLYMPIA SNOWE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29snowe.html?ref=global
Washington
What Kind of Democrat Will Specter Be?
IT is disheartening and disconcerting, at the very least, that here we are today — almost exactly eight years after Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party — witnessing the departure of my good friend and fellow moderate Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for the Democratic Party. And the announcement of his switch was all the more painful because I believe it didn’t have to be this way.
When Senator Jeffords became an independent in 2001, I said it was a sad day for the Republicans, but it would be even sadder if we failed to confront and learn from the devaluation of diversity within the party that contributed to his defection. I also noted that we were far from the heady days of 1998, when Republicans were envisioning the possibility of a filibuster-proof 60-vote margin. (Recall that in the 2000 election, most pundits were shocked when Republicans lost five seats, resulting in a 50-50 Senate.)
I could have hardly imagined then that, in 2009, we would fondly reminisce about the time when we were disappointed to fall short of 60 votes in the Senate. Regrettably, we failed to learn the lessons of Jim Jeffords’s defection in 2001. To the contrary, we overreached in interpreting the results of the presidential election of 2004 as a mandate for the party. This resulted in the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008, which combined for a total loss of 51 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate — with a corresponding shift of the Congressional majority and the White House to the Democrats.
It was as though beginning with Senator Jeffords’s decision, Republicans turned a blind eye to the iceberg under the surface, failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness as a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered.
It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party.
Senator Specter indicated that his decision was based on the political situation in Pennsylvania, where he faced a tough primary battle. In my view, the political environment that has made it inhospitable for a moderate Republican in Pennsylvania is a microcosm of a deeper, more pervasive problem that places our party in jeopardy nationwide.
I have said that, without question, we cannot prevail as a party without conservatives. But it is equally certain we cannot prevail in the future without moderates.
In that same vein, I am reminded of a briefing by a prominent Republican pollster after the 2004 election. He was asked what voter groups Republicans might be able to win over. He responded: women in general, married women with children, Hispanics, the middle class in general, and independents.
How well have we done as a party with these groups? Unfortunately, the answer is obvious from the results of the last two elections. We should be reaching out to these segments of our population — not de facto ceding them to the opposing party.
There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”
I couldn’t agree more. We can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand. Rather, we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal. That is the political road map we must follow to victory.
Olympia Snowe is a Republican senator from Maine.
By OLYMPIA SNOWE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29snowe.html?ref=global
Washington
What Kind of Democrat Will Specter Be?
IT is disheartening and disconcerting, at the very least, that here we are today — almost exactly eight years after Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party — witnessing the departure of my good friend and fellow moderate Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for the Democratic Party. And the announcement of his switch was all the more painful because I believe it didn’t have to be this way.
When Senator Jeffords became an independent in 2001, I said it was a sad day for the Republicans, but it would be even sadder if we failed to confront and learn from the devaluation of diversity within the party that contributed to his defection. I also noted that we were far from the heady days of 1998, when Republicans were envisioning the possibility of a filibuster-proof 60-vote margin. (Recall that in the 2000 election, most pundits were shocked when Republicans lost five seats, resulting in a 50-50 Senate.)
I could have hardly imagined then that, in 2009, we would fondly reminisce about the time when we were disappointed to fall short of 60 votes in the Senate. Regrettably, we failed to learn the lessons of Jim Jeffords’s defection in 2001. To the contrary, we overreached in interpreting the results of the presidential election of 2004 as a mandate for the party. This resulted in the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008, which combined for a total loss of 51 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate — with a corresponding shift of the Congressional majority and the White House to the Democrats.
It was as though beginning with Senator Jeffords’s decision, Republicans turned a blind eye to the iceberg under the surface, failing to undertake the re-evaluation of our inclusiveness as a party that could have forestalled many of the losses we have suffered.
It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of “Survivor” — you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party.
Senator Specter indicated that his decision was based on the political situation in Pennsylvania, where he faced a tough primary battle. In my view, the political environment that has made it inhospitable for a moderate Republican in Pennsylvania is a microcosm of a deeper, more pervasive problem that places our party in jeopardy nationwide.
I have said that, without question, we cannot prevail as a party without conservatives. But it is equally certain we cannot prevail in the future without moderates.
In that same vein, I am reminded of a briefing by a prominent Republican pollster after the 2004 election. He was asked what voter groups Republicans might be able to win over. He responded: women in general, married women with children, Hispanics, the middle class in general, and independents.
How well have we done as a party with these groups? Unfortunately, the answer is obvious from the results of the last two elections. We should be reaching out to these segments of our population — not de facto ceding them to the opposing party.
There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.
It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”
I couldn’t agree more. We can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand. Rather, we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal. That is the political road map we must follow to victory.
Olympia Snowe is a Republican senator from Maine.
New York Times Editorial: One Hundred
New York Times Editorial: One Hundred
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29wed1.html?_r=1&ref=global
Crises, not days, is the first word that comes to mind when we think about the number 100 and Barack Obama’s presidency.
The list of failed policies and urgent threats bequeathed to him by former President George W. Bush could easily be that long. In his first 14 weeks plus two days, President Obama has made a strong start at addressing many of the most critical ones.
He is trying to rebuild this country’s shattered reputation with his pledge to shut down the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, his offer to talk with Iran and Syria, and, yes, that handshake with Venezuela’s blow-hard president, Hugo Chávez.
Mr. Obama has not allowed a once-in-four-generations recession — or politically driven charges that he is over-reaching — to rob him of his ambition. He is right that there can be no lasting recovery until the country reforms its health care system and tackles the clear and present danger of global climate change.
The government is promoting women’s reproductive rights. It is restoring regulations to keep water clean and food safe. The White House has promised to tackle immigration reform this year.
Mr. Obama and the country still have a long way to go. The Taliban’s power grabs in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a reminder of why the White House must chart a swift exit from Iraq so it can focus on the real front in the war on terror. Recent horrifying bombings are a reminder of how far Iraq is from political conciliation and how much remains to be done to ensure an orderly exit.
We are skeptical that the bank rescue plan is aggressive enough to salvage those that are at the edge of insolvency or protect the taxpayers’ investment.
We know that President Obama, and many voters, don’t want the fight, but until there is a full investigation of detainee abuse, “extraordinary rendition” and the other outlaw policies authorized during the Bush years, there is no way to ensure they will never be repeated.
These are very tough times, but Mr. Obama seems to have lifted the spirits of a divided and fearful nation. In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, 72 percent of Americans said they were optimistic about the next four years. They also recognized that some problems may be too difficult to solve even in four years.
Here is a look, by no means comprehensive, at the president’s early efforts:
THE WORLD Mr. Obama has promised to quickly bring home American troops from one of the longest and most divisive wars in American history. He must now persuade Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government to reconcile with the Sunnis and to defuse tensions with the Kurds. Iraq still has not agreed on a law to equitably share its oil resources. Thousands of members of the Sunni Awakening Councils, the former insurgents whose decision to switch sides helped change the course of the war, are still waiting for promised government jobs.
Mr. Obama pressed his advisers to come up with a comprehensive plan for the dangerously inter-related conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now they must implement it — and quickly. Last week, the Taliban advanced within 60 miles of Islamabad. Pakistan’s leaders still do not seem to grasp the mortal threat.
The president has begun new negotiations with Russia to reduce nuclear arsenals. The Pentagon has started to make the tough choices to shift spending to weapons needed by troops fighting today’s wars. Mr. Obama’s commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace is already being tested by Israel’s new prime minister, who says he doesn’t believe in a two-state solution.
Americans can feel both pride and relief at the enthusiastic welcome Mr. Obama has received in his early travels abroad. The president will soon have to find ways to leverage that popularity. He must persuade European allies to contribute more troops and resources to Afghanistan. If negotiations with Iran fail, he will have to convince Europe, Russia and China to impose tough sanctions to try to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
THE ECONOMY After eight dismal years, the president’s stimulus bill, his budget and even the flawed bank rescue strategy offer a welcome return to the rational proposition that some problems are so big that the government must step in. Our main concern is that he has been too reluctant to challenge traditional interests on Wall Street or Capitol Hill.
His attempt at bipartisan consensus-building crashed against Republicans’ obstruction of the stimulus package and weakened the final legislation. The $787 billion stimulus is small when compared with the size of the contraction; the 3.5 million new jobs projected pale against the 5 million lost since the end of 2007.
The administration has been similarly timid on the banking crisis. The White House is so far refusing to consider a temporary takeover of foundering banks — the best way to ensure that they are efficiently restructured and the taxpayers’ money is protected. Instead, the administration has offered hundreds of billions in subsidized loans to hedge funds and other private investors to entice them to offer inflated prices for bad assets.
We are concerned that Mr. Obama’s anti-foreclosure plan — which relies on lenders to voluntarily modify troubled loans — will falter unless Congress quickly reforms the bankruptcy code. All of this fosters the belief that the White House and Congress will not stand up to the banks. It is also likely to slow the recovery.
CIVIL LIBERTIES Less than 12 hours after taking office, Mr. Obama halted the military tribunals at Guantánamo. Then he ordered the detention camp closed within a year. He has issued orders to prohibit torture and shut secret prisons overseas and to create a detainee policy based on the law and Constitution rather than Mr. Bush’s grandiose visions of executive power.
Earlier this month, Mr. Obama overruled his C.I.A. director and ordered the release of four horrifying memos on prisoner interrogation written by the Bush Justice Department. He has ruled out punishing C.I.A. interrogators who participated in the detainees’ abuse and reluctantly decided to leave it to the Justice Department to make the call about other prosecutions.
Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has not dropped overly broad state secrets claims used by the Bush team to try to block lawsuits on rendition, torture and illegal wiretapping. He needs to rethink that position as well as his opposition to a full public inquiry to determine why, how and by whom so many orders were given to violate the law and the most cherished Constitutional rights.
ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT Mr. Obama and his new team have been as aggressive on these issues as Mr. Bush was passive or obstructionist. The Environmental Protection Agency quickly issued a formal determination that greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare — the necessary prelude to regulating those pollutants. The Interior Department has rejected Mr. Bush’s industry-driven drill-anywhere policies in favor of a more balanced approach to energy production.
The stimulus package includes money to encourage energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, higher-mileage cars and coal that is truly clean. Mr. Obama has also endorsed, in general terms, legislation that would put strict caps on greenhouse gas emissions and invest in technologies to make it easier to achieve those caps.
HEALTH CARE Far too many Americans still have no health insurance; those who do pay too much and the quality of care is too low. Mr. Obama’s bold 10-year budget plan proposed a substantial $634 billion down payment to widen coverage and improve the delivery of care. He offered sensible proposals to pay for these reforms — including higher taxes on the rich and eliminating unjustified subsides for private Medicare plans — that met with immediate Congressional resistance.
This is going to be a tough fight. Mr. Obama must keep reminding Americans that reforms are essential for their personal health and the nation’s economic health.
EDUCATION Mr. Obama has demonstrated a welcome breadth of knowledge on education but will need to use bare-knuckled clout to get needed changes. That is especially true of his student loan plan, which would end wasteful subsidies to private lenders and permit college students to borrow directly from the government. The president’s plan for using stimulus money to force reforms that the states were supposed to carry out under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 will also require energy, vigilance and an end to loopholes in education regulations.
During the campaign, then-Senator Obama declared that “government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves.” In his first 100 days, President Obama has started to show Americans just what he meant.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29wed1.html?_r=1&ref=global
Crises, not days, is the first word that comes to mind when we think about the number 100 and Barack Obama’s presidency.
The list of failed policies and urgent threats bequeathed to him by former President George W. Bush could easily be that long. In his first 14 weeks plus two days, President Obama has made a strong start at addressing many of the most critical ones.
He is trying to rebuild this country’s shattered reputation with his pledge to shut down the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, his offer to talk with Iran and Syria, and, yes, that handshake with Venezuela’s blow-hard president, Hugo Chávez.
Mr. Obama has not allowed a once-in-four-generations recession — or politically driven charges that he is over-reaching — to rob him of his ambition. He is right that there can be no lasting recovery until the country reforms its health care system and tackles the clear and present danger of global climate change.
The government is promoting women’s reproductive rights. It is restoring regulations to keep water clean and food safe. The White House has promised to tackle immigration reform this year.
Mr. Obama and the country still have a long way to go. The Taliban’s power grabs in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a reminder of why the White House must chart a swift exit from Iraq so it can focus on the real front in the war on terror. Recent horrifying bombings are a reminder of how far Iraq is from political conciliation and how much remains to be done to ensure an orderly exit.
We are skeptical that the bank rescue plan is aggressive enough to salvage those that are at the edge of insolvency or protect the taxpayers’ investment.
We know that President Obama, and many voters, don’t want the fight, but until there is a full investigation of detainee abuse, “extraordinary rendition” and the other outlaw policies authorized during the Bush years, there is no way to ensure they will never be repeated.
These are very tough times, but Mr. Obama seems to have lifted the spirits of a divided and fearful nation. In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, 72 percent of Americans said they were optimistic about the next four years. They also recognized that some problems may be too difficult to solve even in four years.
Here is a look, by no means comprehensive, at the president’s early efforts:
THE WORLD Mr. Obama has promised to quickly bring home American troops from one of the longest and most divisive wars in American history. He must now persuade Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government to reconcile with the Sunnis and to defuse tensions with the Kurds. Iraq still has not agreed on a law to equitably share its oil resources. Thousands of members of the Sunni Awakening Councils, the former insurgents whose decision to switch sides helped change the course of the war, are still waiting for promised government jobs.
Mr. Obama pressed his advisers to come up with a comprehensive plan for the dangerously inter-related conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now they must implement it — and quickly. Last week, the Taliban advanced within 60 miles of Islamabad. Pakistan’s leaders still do not seem to grasp the mortal threat.
The president has begun new negotiations with Russia to reduce nuclear arsenals. The Pentagon has started to make the tough choices to shift spending to weapons needed by troops fighting today’s wars. Mr. Obama’s commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace is already being tested by Israel’s new prime minister, who says he doesn’t believe in a two-state solution.
Americans can feel both pride and relief at the enthusiastic welcome Mr. Obama has received in his early travels abroad. The president will soon have to find ways to leverage that popularity. He must persuade European allies to contribute more troops and resources to Afghanistan. If negotiations with Iran fail, he will have to convince Europe, Russia and China to impose tough sanctions to try to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
THE ECONOMY After eight dismal years, the president’s stimulus bill, his budget and even the flawed bank rescue strategy offer a welcome return to the rational proposition that some problems are so big that the government must step in. Our main concern is that he has been too reluctant to challenge traditional interests on Wall Street or Capitol Hill.
His attempt at bipartisan consensus-building crashed against Republicans’ obstruction of the stimulus package and weakened the final legislation. The $787 billion stimulus is small when compared with the size of the contraction; the 3.5 million new jobs projected pale against the 5 million lost since the end of 2007.
The administration has been similarly timid on the banking crisis. The White House is so far refusing to consider a temporary takeover of foundering banks — the best way to ensure that they are efficiently restructured and the taxpayers’ money is protected. Instead, the administration has offered hundreds of billions in subsidized loans to hedge funds and other private investors to entice them to offer inflated prices for bad assets.
We are concerned that Mr. Obama’s anti-foreclosure plan — which relies on lenders to voluntarily modify troubled loans — will falter unless Congress quickly reforms the bankruptcy code. All of this fosters the belief that the White House and Congress will not stand up to the banks. It is also likely to slow the recovery.
CIVIL LIBERTIES Less than 12 hours after taking office, Mr. Obama halted the military tribunals at Guantánamo. Then he ordered the detention camp closed within a year. He has issued orders to prohibit torture and shut secret prisons overseas and to create a detainee policy based on the law and Constitution rather than Mr. Bush’s grandiose visions of executive power.
Earlier this month, Mr. Obama overruled his C.I.A. director and ordered the release of four horrifying memos on prisoner interrogation written by the Bush Justice Department. He has ruled out punishing C.I.A. interrogators who participated in the detainees’ abuse and reluctantly decided to leave it to the Justice Department to make the call about other prosecutions.
Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has not dropped overly broad state secrets claims used by the Bush team to try to block lawsuits on rendition, torture and illegal wiretapping. He needs to rethink that position as well as his opposition to a full public inquiry to determine why, how and by whom so many orders were given to violate the law and the most cherished Constitutional rights.
ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT Mr. Obama and his new team have been as aggressive on these issues as Mr. Bush was passive or obstructionist. The Environmental Protection Agency quickly issued a formal determination that greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare — the necessary prelude to regulating those pollutants. The Interior Department has rejected Mr. Bush’s industry-driven drill-anywhere policies in favor of a more balanced approach to energy production.
The stimulus package includes money to encourage energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, higher-mileage cars and coal that is truly clean. Mr. Obama has also endorsed, in general terms, legislation that would put strict caps on greenhouse gas emissions and invest in technologies to make it easier to achieve those caps.
HEALTH CARE Far too many Americans still have no health insurance; those who do pay too much and the quality of care is too low. Mr. Obama’s bold 10-year budget plan proposed a substantial $634 billion down payment to widen coverage and improve the delivery of care. He offered sensible proposals to pay for these reforms — including higher taxes on the rich and eliminating unjustified subsides for private Medicare plans — that met with immediate Congressional resistance.
This is going to be a tough fight. Mr. Obama must keep reminding Americans that reforms are essential for their personal health and the nation’s economic health.
EDUCATION Mr. Obama has demonstrated a welcome breadth of knowledge on education but will need to use bare-knuckled clout to get needed changes. That is especially true of his student loan plan, which would end wasteful subsidies to private lenders and permit college students to borrow directly from the government. The president’s plan for using stimulus money to force reforms that the states were supposed to carry out under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 will also require energy, vigilance and an end to loopholes in education regulations.
During the campaign, then-Senator Obama declared that “government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves.” In his first 100 days, President Obama has started to show Americans just what he meant.
Eurozone economic confidence rebounds
Eurozone economic confidence rebounds
By Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 11:04 | Last updated: April 29 2009 11:04
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/305f3ed8-349f-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
A larger-than-expected rebound in eurozone economic confidence has added to evidence that the worst of continental Europe’s recession is over, even though its effects continue to hit consumers and businesses.
The European Commission reported its “economic sentiment” index for the 16-country region had risen for the first time in almost a year, from 64.7 in March to 67.2 this month – the highest since December.
The eurozone recession – the worst in continental Europe since the second world war – is thought to have intensified in the first quarter of this year. But the latest data suggested the second quarter will see a slower pace of decline and may raise hopes of a return to growth might be on the horizon.
Separately, the German VDMA engineering association offered hope that the worst is also over for the country’s export-dependent industry. Although it reported that orders for machinery and equipment last month were 35 per cent lower than a year before, it said export orders had risen a little compared with the period between December to February.
However the VDMA warned the volatility of monthly data meant the latest data were “no reason to sound the all clear”.
Meanwhile, economists warn that the impact of the global slowdown on eurozone unemployment has yet to feed through – especially in Germany.
The eurozone economy was “likely to shrink further over the rest of 2009” and with domestic demand in the area likely to remain weak, “any resumption in growth may have to wait for world demand to recover,” said Colin Ellis, European economist at Daiwa Securities SMBC.
Separate data published by the European Central Bank showed that eurozone credit growth has been thrown into reverse with consumers and businesses repaying loans last month.
That almost certainly reflected the sharp fall in demand for credit by corporations and households as a result of the recession. But constraints on the supply of credit also appear to be biting.
The credit turnaround will increase the pressure on the ECB to intensify its efforts to combat the downturn.
According to a separate “bank lending survey” released by the ECB banks reported a further tightening of credit standards in the first three months in the year. However the ECB noted that the pace of tightening had slowed compared with at the end of last year, which is said “could point to some stabilisation of the current tightening cycle”.
In March, non-financial corporations repaid loans of €12bn – the second consecutive monthly decline, according to the ECB data. Compared with a year before, loans to business were 6.3 per cent higher – down from an annual growth rate of 7.7 per cent in February. Before the intensification of the global financial crisis late last year, eurozone loans to business had been expanding at double-digit growth rates.
Households, meanwhile, repaid €5bn of loans last month, but the deceleration in annual growth rates was more dramatic than for businesses. Loans to households in March were just 0.4 per cent higher than a year before. Lending for house purchases was just 0.1 per cent higher.
By Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 11:04 | Last updated: April 29 2009 11:04
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/305f3ed8-349f-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
A larger-than-expected rebound in eurozone economic confidence has added to evidence that the worst of continental Europe’s recession is over, even though its effects continue to hit consumers and businesses.
The European Commission reported its “economic sentiment” index for the 16-country region had risen for the first time in almost a year, from 64.7 in March to 67.2 this month – the highest since December.
The eurozone recession – the worst in continental Europe since the second world war – is thought to have intensified in the first quarter of this year. But the latest data suggested the second quarter will see a slower pace of decline and may raise hopes of a return to growth might be on the horizon.
Separately, the German VDMA engineering association offered hope that the worst is also over for the country’s export-dependent industry. Although it reported that orders for machinery and equipment last month were 35 per cent lower than a year before, it said export orders had risen a little compared with the period between December to February.
However the VDMA warned the volatility of monthly data meant the latest data were “no reason to sound the all clear”.
Meanwhile, economists warn that the impact of the global slowdown on eurozone unemployment has yet to feed through – especially in Germany.
The eurozone economy was “likely to shrink further over the rest of 2009” and with domestic demand in the area likely to remain weak, “any resumption in growth may have to wait for world demand to recover,” said Colin Ellis, European economist at Daiwa Securities SMBC.
Separate data published by the European Central Bank showed that eurozone credit growth has been thrown into reverse with consumers and businesses repaying loans last month.
That almost certainly reflected the sharp fall in demand for credit by corporations and households as a result of the recession. But constraints on the supply of credit also appear to be biting.
The credit turnaround will increase the pressure on the ECB to intensify its efforts to combat the downturn.
According to a separate “bank lending survey” released by the ECB banks reported a further tightening of credit standards in the first three months in the year. However the ECB noted that the pace of tightening had slowed compared with at the end of last year, which is said “could point to some stabilisation of the current tightening cycle”.
In March, non-financial corporations repaid loans of €12bn – the second consecutive monthly decline, according to the ECB data. Compared with a year before, loans to business were 6.3 per cent higher – down from an annual growth rate of 7.7 per cent in February. Before the intensification of the global financial crisis late last year, eurozone loans to business had been expanding at double-digit growth rates.
Households, meanwhile, repaid €5bn of loans last month, but the deceleration in annual growth rates was more dramatic than for businesses. Loans to households in March were just 0.4 per cent higher than a year before. Lending for house purchases was just 0.1 per cent higher.
Citigroup scrambles to raise capital
Citigroup scrambles to raise capital
By Francesco Guerrera in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 19:20 | Last updated: April 29 2009 00:29
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f1bcd8f0-341e-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
Citigroup has told US regulators it could fill the capital shortfall identified in the government’s “stress test” by selling large businesses, asking more investors to convert their preferred shares into common stock and reducing its balance sheet.
Executives are trying to persuade the government Citi does not need more capital beyond its recent plans to bolster its battered balance sheet and cut costs.
However, with days to go before the results of the tests are announced, Citi, which has been bailed out three times by the authorities, is looking for ways to avoid receiving more government help if the authorities insist on an increase in capital.
Bank of America, another lender whose test has highlighted the need for funds, is in talks with regulators over its needs and the possibility of converting the government’s preferred shares into common stock, bankers said. Analysts have estimated BofA could require up to $70bn in extra capital.
Citi executives argue that divestitures, such as the planned $5.2bn sale of Japan’s Nikko Cordial to Sumitomo Mitsui, the possible expansion of an existing conversion offer, and cost-cutting would ensure it has enough capital to withstand the crisis.
People close to the situation said Citi could sell several units in Citi Holdings, the division that holds its non-core activities. Citi executives do not rule out shedding businesses deemed as core but argue that, if the company has to raise capital, the first option is to accelerate plans to sell unwanted businesses.
Citi has also looked at adding to its planned conversion of $52bn of preferred shares held by the government and other investors by including trust-preferred shares, although that idea was losing ground last night. Some insiders argue it could be difficult to persuade holders of such shares – a hybrid of debt and equity – to exchange them for common stock because they rank as debt and pay interest.
People close to the situation said both Citi and BofA were contesting some of the conclusions made in the stress tests. Citi executives, led by finance chief Ned Kelly, are believed to have told regulators the estimates for losses on credit cards – based on rising unemployment – are too high.
Citi is also asking regulators to take into account the capital boost it will receive from the expected sale of a majority stake in its brokerage unit Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley as well as the likely disposal of Nikko.
That deal is expected to generate an accounting loss, because Citi’s acquisition price for the business is higher than the likely sale price but it would still result in a cash boost for Citi.
People close to the situation cautioned that discussions between Citi, Treasury and the Federal Reserve were fluid and details of the plans could change ahead of the release of the results of the stress tests next week.
Some Citi executives believe the government may still have to convert more of its preferred shares into common stock, raising its holding above the 36 per cent it is due to take following the latest bail-out in February.
Citi shares closed down 5.9 per cent. BofA shares closed down 8.6 per cent at $8.15.
BofA declined to comment. Citi said its capital base was “strong”.
Additional reporting by Greg Farrell in Charlotte
By Francesco Guerrera in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 19:20 | Last updated: April 29 2009 00:29
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f1bcd8f0-341e-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
Citigroup has told US regulators it could fill the capital shortfall identified in the government’s “stress test” by selling large businesses, asking more investors to convert their preferred shares into common stock and reducing its balance sheet.
Executives are trying to persuade the government Citi does not need more capital beyond its recent plans to bolster its battered balance sheet and cut costs.
However, with days to go before the results of the tests are announced, Citi, which has been bailed out three times by the authorities, is looking for ways to avoid receiving more government help if the authorities insist on an increase in capital.
Bank of America, another lender whose test has highlighted the need for funds, is in talks with regulators over its needs and the possibility of converting the government’s preferred shares into common stock, bankers said. Analysts have estimated BofA could require up to $70bn in extra capital.
Citi executives argue that divestitures, such as the planned $5.2bn sale of Japan’s Nikko Cordial to Sumitomo Mitsui, the possible expansion of an existing conversion offer, and cost-cutting would ensure it has enough capital to withstand the crisis.
People close to the situation said Citi could sell several units in Citi Holdings, the division that holds its non-core activities. Citi executives do not rule out shedding businesses deemed as core but argue that, if the company has to raise capital, the first option is to accelerate plans to sell unwanted businesses.
Citi has also looked at adding to its planned conversion of $52bn of preferred shares held by the government and other investors by including trust-preferred shares, although that idea was losing ground last night. Some insiders argue it could be difficult to persuade holders of such shares – a hybrid of debt and equity – to exchange them for common stock because they rank as debt and pay interest.
People close to the situation said both Citi and BofA were contesting some of the conclusions made in the stress tests. Citi executives, led by finance chief Ned Kelly, are believed to have told regulators the estimates for losses on credit cards – based on rising unemployment – are too high.
Citi is also asking regulators to take into account the capital boost it will receive from the expected sale of a majority stake in its brokerage unit Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley as well as the likely disposal of Nikko.
That deal is expected to generate an accounting loss, because Citi’s acquisition price for the business is higher than the likely sale price but it would still result in a cash boost for Citi.
People close to the situation cautioned that discussions between Citi, Treasury and the Federal Reserve were fluid and details of the plans could change ahead of the release of the results of the stress tests next week.
Some Citi executives believe the government may still have to convert more of its preferred shares into common stock, raising its holding above the 36 per cent it is due to take following the latest bail-out in February.
Citi shares closed down 5.9 per cent. BofA shares closed down 8.6 per cent at $8.15.
BofA declined to comment. Citi said its capital base was “strong”.
Additional reporting by Greg Farrell in Charlotte
North Korea threatens fresh nuclear tests
North Korea threatens fresh nuclear tests
By Christian Oliver in Seoul
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 09:36 | Last updated: April 29 2009 09:58
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2043629c-3498-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
North Korea on Wednesday threatened to test a nuclear device unless the UN Security Council apologises for imposing sanctions, heightening already strained tensions on the peninsula.
Pyongyang’s defiant threat came as a response to sanctions imposed over the communist state’s launch of a long-range rocket over Japan on April 5. This would be North Korea’s second such test, after first detonating an atomic device underground in 2006, sparking international outrage.
“If the UN Security Council does not apologise, we are going to conduct an intercontinental ballistic missile test and a nuclear test, as a self-defence measure,” the North Korean foreign ministry said in a statement released by the official KCNA news agency.
“We have decided to build a light-water reactor plant and are going to develop uranium enrichment technologies.”
South Korea had no immediate comment.
Tensions are running at a 10-year high on the peninsula, with the North insisting a second Korean war is imminent. North Korea has torn up its non-aggression pacts with the affluent South and is threatening not to recognise a tense maritime border.
Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s dictator, is furious that Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s conservative president, has insisted that Pyongyang apply to Seoul for much-needed food aid. This is anathema to the North, which regards itself as the only legitimate government on the peninsula.
Political analysts speculate Mr Kim could be trying to win direct talks with Barack Obama, the US president, through his latest round of brinkmanship. However, the US has said it will not be bullied into negotiations by Pyongyang’s sabre-rattling.
The UN sanctions blacklisted three North Korean companies and Pyongyang has already retaliated by saying it will restart reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods, a process that can yield weapons-grade plutonium.
The US has accused Pyongyang of running a clandestine uranium enrichment programme, but South Korean security sources do not believe this has reached the industrial level needed to be effective.
By Christian Oliver in Seoul
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 09:36 | Last updated: April 29 2009 09:58
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2043629c-3498-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
North Korea on Wednesday threatened to test a nuclear device unless the UN Security Council apologises for imposing sanctions, heightening already strained tensions on the peninsula.
Pyongyang’s defiant threat came as a response to sanctions imposed over the communist state’s launch of a long-range rocket over Japan on April 5. This would be North Korea’s second such test, after first detonating an atomic device underground in 2006, sparking international outrage.
“If the UN Security Council does not apologise, we are going to conduct an intercontinental ballistic missile test and a nuclear test, as a self-defence measure,” the North Korean foreign ministry said in a statement released by the official KCNA news agency.
“We have decided to build a light-water reactor plant and are going to develop uranium enrichment technologies.”
South Korea had no immediate comment.
Tensions are running at a 10-year high on the peninsula, with the North insisting a second Korean war is imminent. North Korea has torn up its non-aggression pacts with the affluent South and is threatening not to recognise a tense maritime border.
Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s dictator, is furious that Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s conservative president, has insisted that Pyongyang apply to Seoul for much-needed food aid. This is anathema to the North, which regards itself as the only legitimate government on the peninsula.
Political analysts speculate Mr Kim could be trying to win direct talks with Barack Obama, the US president, through his latest round of brinkmanship. However, the US has said it will not be bullied into negotiations by Pyongyang’s sabre-rattling.
The UN sanctions blacklisted three North Korean companies and Pyongyang has already retaliated by saying it will restart reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods, a process that can yield weapons-grade plutonium.
The US has accused Pyongyang of running a clandestine uranium enrichment programme, but South Korean security sources do not believe this has reached the industrial level needed to be effective.
US reports first swine flu death
US reports first swine flu death
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 11:40 | Last updated: April 29 2009 13:18
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95684290-349d-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
Workers disinfect a classroom in Canyon Creek Elementary School in Texas which was shut down hours before US authorities reported the first US death outside Mexico – of a 23-month-old child in Texas– from the virus
The US reported the first death outside Mexico from the swine flu virus on Wednesday as governments around the world stepped up preparations for a possible pandemic.
As Austria became the ninth country to report cases of the infection, a US government official confirmed to Reuters that a 23-month-old child had died in Texas from the new H1N1 virus.
Meanwhile, China lifted its objections to Taiwan attending the World Health Organisation’s annual meeting, in a powerful diplomatic gesture demonstrating the growing international political impact of the swine flu epidemic.
The Chinese move, a sign of broader political warming between the two foes, stands in contrast to tensions between other countries triggered by the rapid spread of the flu virus around the world.
Despite scientific advice to the contrary, Russia and China are among the nations to ban pork from Mexico and China, while many countries have advised cancelling non-essential travel to Mexico.
Egypt has ordered the culling of all pigs in the Arab country as a precaution against swine flu, the country’s health minister said.
Before Austria and Germany reported four new cases, the WHO said on Wednesday that at least 105 infections have been confirmed in seven countries – the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, New Zealand, Israel and Spain, as well as Mexico, where the outbreak started. Seven of the Mexican deaths have been confirmed as caused by the H1N1 virus and more than 150 are suspected to have resulted from infection.
The US death came less than 24 hours after Barack Obama sought an extra $1.5bn from Congress on Tuesday as the US sharply stepped up its response.
The US president called for a substantial increase in funding to help build stockpiles of antiviral drugs, work on vaccines and strengthen international co-operation as other countries escalated measures against a likely global pandemic.
His request came after a Senate committee heard that the disease was expected to spread after affecting at least six states and that cases might become more severe than the mild ones so far identified in the US.
The Centers for Disease Control reported a total 64 confirmed cases on Wednesday across the country, the worst affected after Mexico.
But in one sign of countries being drawn closer together by the threat, China dropped its perennial resistance to Taiwan attending the World Health Assembly. It stressed the two countries had intensified cooperation as fears grow of a global pandemic.
The UK, which by Wednesday had reported five cases, said leaflets about the swine flu virus would be distributed to all households next week. It also announced it was in talks to “urgently increase current stockpiles’’ of surgical face masks – to be used by health professionals such as nurses and doctors working with infected patients in the event of a pandemic.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 11:40 | Last updated: April 29 2009 13:18
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95684290-349d-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html
Workers disinfect a classroom in Canyon Creek Elementary School in Texas which was shut down hours before US authorities reported the first US death outside Mexico – of a 23-month-old child in Texas– from the virus
The US reported the first death outside Mexico from the swine flu virus on Wednesday as governments around the world stepped up preparations for a possible pandemic.
As Austria became the ninth country to report cases of the infection, a US government official confirmed to Reuters that a 23-month-old child had died in Texas from the new H1N1 virus.
Meanwhile, China lifted its objections to Taiwan attending the World Health Organisation’s annual meeting, in a powerful diplomatic gesture demonstrating the growing international political impact of the swine flu epidemic.
The Chinese move, a sign of broader political warming between the two foes, stands in contrast to tensions between other countries triggered by the rapid spread of the flu virus around the world.
Despite scientific advice to the contrary, Russia and China are among the nations to ban pork from Mexico and China, while many countries have advised cancelling non-essential travel to Mexico.
Egypt has ordered the culling of all pigs in the Arab country as a precaution against swine flu, the country’s health minister said.
Before Austria and Germany reported four new cases, the WHO said on Wednesday that at least 105 infections have been confirmed in seven countries – the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, New Zealand, Israel and Spain, as well as Mexico, where the outbreak started. Seven of the Mexican deaths have been confirmed as caused by the H1N1 virus and more than 150 are suspected to have resulted from infection.
The US death came less than 24 hours after Barack Obama sought an extra $1.5bn from Congress on Tuesday as the US sharply stepped up its response.
The US president called for a substantial increase in funding to help build stockpiles of antiviral drugs, work on vaccines and strengthen international co-operation as other countries escalated measures against a likely global pandemic.
His request came after a Senate committee heard that the disease was expected to spread after affecting at least six states and that cases might become more severe than the mild ones so far identified in the US.
The Centers for Disease Control reported a total 64 confirmed cases on Wednesday across the country, the worst affected after Mexico.
But in one sign of countries being drawn closer together by the threat, China dropped its perennial resistance to Taiwan attending the World Health Assembly. It stressed the two countries had intensified cooperation as fears grow of a global pandemic.
The UK, which by Wednesday had reported five cases, said leaflets about the swine flu virus would be distributed to all households next week. It also announced it was in talks to “urgently increase current stockpiles’’ of surgical face masks – to be used by health professionals such as nurses and doctors working with infected patients in the event of a pandemic.
US economy shrinks 6.1%
US economy shrinks 6.1%
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 13:59 | Last updated: April 29 2009 15:04
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06299c8e-3437-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
The US economy continued to contract in the first quarter of this year as business investment collapsed in the face of eroding global demand.
Preliminary commerce department figures showed on Wednesday that US gross domestic product declined by an annualised rate of 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, after declining by 6.3 per cent during the fourth quarter of last year. The decline was worse than the 4.7 per cent that economists expected and marks a slight improvement from the fourth-quarter contraction, which was the sharpest since 1982.
The US economy has not contracted for three consecutive quarters since the first quarter of 1975 and the last six months have been the weakest such period in 51 years.
The economic slowdown was blunted by an uptick in consumer spending and a rebalancing of the trade gap due to a steep decline in imports. In the first quarter imports plunged by 34.1 per cent while exports fell by 30 per cent, as trade dried up. It was the biggest quarterly decline in exports since 1969.
Business investment was the biggest drag on economic growth. The 51.8 per cent decline drained 8.83 percentage points from GDP, as the recession spread from consumers to companies. Private businesses decreased inventories by $103.7bn in the first quarter compared with a decline of $25.8bn in the fourth quarter. That sapped 2.79 per cent from overall GDP, as companies worked to clear stocks.
“What started out as a housing-led downturn that would hit consumption hardest is now clearly having a much bigger impact on businesses,” said Paul Ashworth, US economist at Capital Economics.
Economists took hope that the US consumer proved resilient, with spending rising by 2.2 per cent compared with a decline of 4.3 per cent during the last quarter. Spending was focused on durable goods and lifted overall output by 1.5 percentage points.
Government spending, which helped to buoy GDP in the last quarter, eased so far this year. Federal consumption was off by 4 per cent in the first quarter compared with a 7 per cent increase the quarter before, as defence spending dipped.
Although the US economy has been mired in the worst recession since the Great Depression and unemployment, at 8.5 per cent, sits at a 25-year high, better-than-expected data and a stock market rally had recently offered some glimmers of hope. And though most figures continue to show declines, there had been signs of stabilisation in consumer confidence, home sales and construction.
During the last three months analysts hoped US economy would begin to feel the effects of an array of unprecedented government stimulus programmes.
In March the Federal Reserve announced it was increasing its purchases of mortgage debt to upwards of $1,250bn and would buy $300bn of government debt. Meanwhile the US Treasury announced its ”public-private investment programme” (PPIP), offering large investors, hedge funds and small fund companies government loans to buy troubled securities from banks. Lending also began through the $1,000bn term asset-backed security loan facility (Talf).
Economists predict that the impact of the $787bn government stimulus package will not be felt until the second half of this year and that the economy could contract further in the second quarter before flattening.
The US government’s latest 10-year budget outline projected that the economy would contract by 1.2 per cent in 2009 before rebounding to 3.2 per cent growth in 2010. However, many economists suggest those forecasts are overly optimistic.
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 13:59 | Last updated: April 29 2009 15:04
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06299c8e-3437-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
The US economy continued to contract in the first quarter of this year as business investment collapsed in the face of eroding global demand.
Preliminary commerce department figures showed on Wednesday that US gross domestic product declined by an annualised rate of 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, after declining by 6.3 per cent during the fourth quarter of last year. The decline was worse than the 4.7 per cent that economists expected and marks a slight improvement from the fourth-quarter contraction, which was the sharpest since 1982.
The US economy has not contracted for three consecutive quarters since the first quarter of 1975 and the last six months have been the weakest such period in 51 years.
The economic slowdown was blunted by an uptick in consumer spending and a rebalancing of the trade gap due to a steep decline in imports. In the first quarter imports plunged by 34.1 per cent while exports fell by 30 per cent, as trade dried up. It was the biggest quarterly decline in exports since 1969.
Business investment was the biggest drag on economic growth. The 51.8 per cent decline drained 8.83 percentage points from GDP, as the recession spread from consumers to companies. Private businesses decreased inventories by $103.7bn in the first quarter compared with a decline of $25.8bn in the fourth quarter. That sapped 2.79 per cent from overall GDP, as companies worked to clear stocks.
“What started out as a housing-led downturn that would hit consumption hardest is now clearly having a much bigger impact on businesses,” said Paul Ashworth, US economist at Capital Economics.
Economists took hope that the US consumer proved resilient, with spending rising by 2.2 per cent compared with a decline of 4.3 per cent during the last quarter. Spending was focused on durable goods and lifted overall output by 1.5 percentage points.
Government spending, which helped to buoy GDP in the last quarter, eased so far this year. Federal consumption was off by 4 per cent in the first quarter compared with a 7 per cent increase the quarter before, as defence spending dipped.
Although the US economy has been mired in the worst recession since the Great Depression and unemployment, at 8.5 per cent, sits at a 25-year high, better-than-expected data and a stock market rally had recently offered some glimmers of hope. And though most figures continue to show declines, there had been signs of stabilisation in consumer confidence, home sales and construction.
During the last three months analysts hoped US economy would begin to feel the effects of an array of unprecedented government stimulus programmes.
In March the Federal Reserve announced it was increasing its purchases of mortgage debt to upwards of $1,250bn and would buy $300bn of government debt. Meanwhile the US Treasury announced its ”public-private investment programme” (PPIP), offering large investors, hedge funds and small fund companies government loans to buy troubled securities from banks. Lending also began through the $1,000bn term asset-backed security loan facility (Talf).
Economists predict that the impact of the $787bn government stimulus package will not be felt until the second half of this year and that the economy could contract further in the second quarter before flattening.
The US government’s latest 10-year budget outline projected that the economy would contract by 1.2 per cent in 2009 before rebounding to 3.2 per cent growth in 2010. However, many economists suggest those forecasts are overly optimistic.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - Patients deserve right to medical marijuana
Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - Patients deserve right to medical marijuana
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
April 28, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1546659,CST-EDT-edit28a.article
In Illinois, people who suffer from cancer and smoke marijuana to stem their nausea, reduce their pain or improve their appetite -- well, those folks are criminals.
This must end, and fortunately a proposal before state lawmakers would bring much-needed common sense to the medical use of marijuana by legalizing it.
People ravaged with cancer or AIDS or other horrible illnesses don't smoke marijuana to get high.
They smoke pot to reduce the bone-shaking pain and the constant urge to vomit.
For them, marijuana is medicine.
This measure is not about whether lawmakers are sufficiently tough on crime. It's about whether we as a society are caring enough to extend compassion to people who are suffering.
Nor is this an extremist move. Thirteen other states already have legalized the medical use of marijuana.
It makes little sense that patients in severe pain are denied access to marijuana when they can obtain prescription drugs that can be much more harmful when abused, such as OxyContin.
Nationally, polls show that roughly 80 percent of Americans support legalizing the medical use of marijuana.
In Illinois, a key supporter of the measure is state Sen. William R. Haine, who for 14 years was the state's attorney in Downstate Madison County.
Hardly a radical.
Also among the bill's supporters are dozens of clergy throughout the state.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration would stop raiding marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal, fulfilling a campaign promise by President Obama.
Critics of the proposal fear that Illinois could become another California, where the voters legalized the medical use of marijuana in 1996 and have since had to deal with some unintended consequences. California, in fact, has provided a number of horror stories that critics of medicinal marijuana love to cite.
There are the large-scale illegal pot dealers hiding behind the medical marijuana law as a legal defense.
There are the people with negligible aches and pains shopping around for compliant doctors to get quickee prescriptions for pot.
There are pot vending machines -- marijuana at the push of a button.
While there are kernels of truth to such cautionary tales, they tend to be exaggerated and sensationalized and should not be allowed to derail the bill in Illinois.
The proposal in Illinois is much more narrowly drafted than the general measure in California, precisely to safeguard against the abuses seen in California.
Patients in Illinois would have to have relationships with their doctors before getting their OK for medical marijuana, and that prescription would have to be approved by the state.
If a patient abused their new right, it could be taken away.
State Sen. Haine has suggested that a commission be created to monitor the impact of the law; if the commission detected serious abuses of medicinal marijuana, the law could be fine tuned.
An additional safeguard is built into the proposal itself -- the law would expire in three years. In the highly unlikely event that reefer madness had descended upon the state, state lawmakers could then refuse to extend the law.
We suspect many state lawmakers would like to vote for this measure but fear the political backlash, though the vast majority of them come from safe districts.
We suggest they consider a few facts.
• • By and large, voters are not stupid.
• • By and large, they understand the difference between legalizing marijuana for severely sick people under tight controls and passing out joints on playgrounds.
• • The vast majority of voters have a relative or friend who has suffered greatly from cancer, AIDS or another brutal illness.
Are we a compassionate society?
If so, we will pass this bill.
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
April 28, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1546659,CST-EDT-edit28a.article
In Illinois, people who suffer from cancer and smoke marijuana to stem their nausea, reduce their pain or improve their appetite -- well, those folks are criminals.
This must end, and fortunately a proposal before state lawmakers would bring much-needed common sense to the medical use of marijuana by legalizing it.
People ravaged with cancer or AIDS or other horrible illnesses don't smoke marijuana to get high.
They smoke pot to reduce the bone-shaking pain and the constant urge to vomit.
For them, marijuana is medicine.
This measure is not about whether lawmakers are sufficiently tough on crime. It's about whether we as a society are caring enough to extend compassion to people who are suffering.
Nor is this an extremist move. Thirteen other states already have legalized the medical use of marijuana.
It makes little sense that patients in severe pain are denied access to marijuana when they can obtain prescription drugs that can be much more harmful when abused, such as OxyContin.
Nationally, polls show that roughly 80 percent of Americans support legalizing the medical use of marijuana.
In Illinois, a key supporter of the measure is state Sen. William R. Haine, who for 14 years was the state's attorney in Downstate Madison County.
Hardly a radical.
Also among the bill's supporters are dozens of clergy throughout the state.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration would stop raiding marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal, fulfilling a campaign promise by President Obama.
Critics of the proposal fear that Illinois could become another California, where the voters legalized the medical use of marijuana in 1996 and have since had to deal with some unintended consequences. California, in fact, has provided a number of horror stories that critics of medicinal marijuana love to cite.
There are the large-scale illegal pot dealers hiding behind the medical marijuana law as a legal defense.
There are the people with negligible aches and pains shopping around for compliant doctors to get quickee prescriptions for pot.
There are pot vending machines -- marijuana at the push of a button.
While there are kernels of truth to such cautionary tales, they tend to be exaggerated and sensationalized and should not be allowed to derail the bill in Illinois.
The proposal in Illinois is much more narrowly drafted than the general measure in California, precisely to safeguard against the abuses seen in California.
Patients in Illinois would have to have relationships with their doctors before getting their OK for medical marijuana, and that prescription would have to be approved by the state.
If a patient abused their new right, it could be taken away.
State Sen. Haine has suggested that a commission be created to monitor the impact of the law; if the commission detected serious abuses of medicinal marijuana, the law could be fine tuned.
An additional safeguard is built into the proposal itself -- the law would expire in three years. In the highly unlikely event that reefer madness had descended upon the state, state lawmakers could then refuse to extend the law.
We suspect many state lawmakers would like to vote for this measure but fear the political backlash, though the vast majority of them come from safe districts.
We suggest they consider a few facts.
• • By and large, voters are not stupid.
• • By and large, they understand the difference between legalizing marijuana for severely sick people under tight controls and passing out joints on playgrounds.
• • The vast majority of voters have a relative or friend who has suffered greatly from cancer, AIDS or another brutal illness.
Are we a compassionate society?
If so, we will pass this bill.
HANDLING THE AFFAIRS OF AN ESTATE WHEN SOMEONE DIES
HANDLING THE AFFAIRS OF AN ESTATE WHEN SOMEONE DIES
by Roger V. McCaffrey-Boss
Copyright by Gay Chicago Magazine and Roger V. McCaffrey-Boss
April 30-May 5, 2009
http://www.gaychicagomagazine.com/advice/legallyspeaking.shtml
Q: My brother recently died due to liver cancer. No one in the family would take care of him except me. Now that he has passed away, what are my rights and responsibilities?
A: First, you need to determine what bills and debts your brother left that need to be paid. You then need to determine what property your brother owned in his name alone and what property your brother owned in joint tenancy with others. Also, did he have life insurance benefits, IRA and KEOGH accounts with named beneficiaries?
If your brother owned his house and his bank accounts in joint tenancy, that property would go to the surviving co-owner without deduction for payment of any of your brother’s bills. Creditors of a decedent may only go after property in a decedent’s estate, that means property your brother owned in his name alone, which does not include joint tenancy property.
Also benefits paid under a life insurance policy, IRA or KEOGH account with a named beneficiary are not considered part of someone’s estate and are not subject to claims of creditors. Accordingly, the life insurance, IRA and KEOGH funds with named beneficiaries would go to those named beneficiaries and would not have to be used to pay creditors or hospital bills.
Second, if there is any property in your brother’s name alone (no joint owner or named beneficiary) you may have to probate the will to transfer the estate’s assets. This means presenting it to the probate court, which declares it valid, appoints you as executor and declares the Heirship of the testator (a formal order stating who the testator’s heirs at law are).
Once appointed as executor you are authorized to administer the estate, which includes paying the debts, taxes and other expenses and distributing the estate according to the terms of the will. Your legal obligation as executor is to go out and marshal the assets of the estate.
Once you have found all the assets, including pension benefits and other employer related benefits, you may have to value the estate assets that don’t have a value. For example, you may need appraisals for a house and other real property and for valuable tangible property like art and jewelry.
Executors are also responsible for making investment decisions and if they are wrong they can be sued for their errors. Executors have been sued for everything from speculating estate money in risky securities to allowing funds to remain idle in a non-interest bearing checking account. Executors can also be held personally responsible for late tax returns, over distributing assets or distributing assets before reserving for taxes.
Finally, because of the enormous time involved in caring for someone who is dying you should be aware of the law titled the “Statutory Custodial Claim” which states that any spouse, parent, brother or sister of a disabled person who dedicates himself or herself to the care of a disabled person for at least three years shall be entitled to a claim against the estate upon the death of the disabled person.
The court will take into account the claimant’s lost employment opportunities, lost lifestyle opportunities and emotional distress experienced as a result of personally caring for the disabled person. The claim must be based upon the nature and extent of the person’s disability and, at a minimum but subject to the extent of the assets available, shall be in the following amounts:
1. 100 percent Disability, $100,000
2. 75 percent Disability, $75,000
3. 50 percent Disability, $50,000
4. 25 percent Disability, $25,000
This means that if your brother was 100 percent disabled and that you devoted at least three years caring for him, giving up employment and lifestyle opportunities and experienced emotional distress you will have a claim against your brother’s estate assets for your lost time and income opportunities.
by Roger V. McCaffrey-Boss
Copyright by Gay Chicago Magazine and Roger V. McCaffrey-Boss
April 30-May 5, 2009
http://www.gaychicagomagazine.com/advice/legallyspeaking.shtml
Q: My brother recently died due to liver cancer. No one in the family would take care of him except me. Now that he has passed away, what are my rights and responsibilities?
A: First, you need to determine what bills and debts your brother left that need to be paid. You then need to determine what property your brother owned in his name alone and what property your brother owned in joint tenancy with others. Also, did he have life insurance benefits, IRA and KEOGH accounts with named beneficiaries?
If your brother owned his house and his bank accounts in joint tenancy, that property would go to the surviving co-owner without deduction for payment of any of your brother’s bills. Creditors of a decedent may only go after property in a decedent’s estate, that means property your brother owned in his name alone, which does not include joint tenancy property.
Also benefits paid under a life insurance policy, IRA or KEOGH account with a named beneficiary are not considered part of someone’s estate and are not subject to claims of creditors. Accordingly, the life insurance, IRA and KEOGH funds with named beneficiaries would go to those named beneficiaries and would not have to be used to pay creditors or hospital bills.
Second, if there is any property in your brother’s name alone (no joint owner or named beneficiary) you may have to probate the will to transfer the estate’s assets. This means presenting it to the probate court, which declares it valid, appoints you as executor and declares the Heirship of the testator (a formal order stating who the testator’s heirs at law are).
Once appointed as executor you are authorized to administer the estate, which includes paying the debts, taxes and other expenses and distributing the estate according to the terms of the will. Your legal obligation as executor is to go out and marshal the assets of the estate.
Once you have found all the assets, including pension benefits and other employer related benefits, you may have to value the estate assets that don’t have a value. For example, you may need appraisals for a house and other real property and for valuable tangible property like art and jewelry.
Executors are also responsible for making investment decisions and if they are wrong they can be sued for their errors. Executors have been sued for everything from speculating estate money in risky securities to allowing funds to remain idle in a non-interest bearing checking account. Executors can also be held personally responsible for late tax returns, over distributing assets or distributing assets before reserving for taxes.
Finally, because of the enormous time involved in caring for someone who is dying you should be aware of the law titled the “Statutory Custodial Claim” which states that any spouse, parent, brother or sister of a disabled person who dedicates himself or herself to the care of a disabled person for at least three years shall be entitled to a claim against the estate upon the death of the disabled person.
The court will take into account the claimant’s lost employment opportunities, lost lifestyle opportunities and emotional distress experienced as a result of personally caring for the disabled person. The claim must be based upon the nature and extent of the person’s disability and, at a minimum but subject to the extent of the assets available, shall be in the following amounts:
1. 100 percent Disability, $100,000
2. 75 percent Disability, $75,000
3. 50 percent Disability, $50,000
4. 25 percent Disability, $25,000
This means that if your brother was 100 percent disabled and that you devoted at least three years caring for him, giving up employment and lifestyle opportunities and experienced emotional distress you will have a claim against your brother’s estate assets for your lost time and income opportunities.
Specter's Departure a Wake Up Call for GOP
Specter's Departure a Wake Up Call for GOP
By Dan Balz
Copyright by The Washington Post
April 28, 2009
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/04/28/specters_departure_a_wake_up_c.html?hpid=topnews
How much more can the Republicans take? Demoralized, shrinking and seemingly lacking an agenda beyond the word "no," Republicans today saw their ranks further thinned with the stunning news that Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is switching parties and will run for reelection in 2010 as a Democrat.
Specter is worried about his own survival -- and particularly a primary challenge from the right. Many in the GOP might say good riddance. After supporting President Obama's stimulus package, Specter was persona non grata in his own party. So it may be easy for some Republicans to conclude that they are better off without people like Arlen Specter.
But his defection is a reminder that the Republican Party continues to contract, especially outside the South, and that it appears increasingly less welcome to politicians and voters who do not consider themselves solidly conservative. Northeast Republicans have gone from an endangered species to a nearly extinct species. Republicans lost ground in the Rocky Mountains and the Midwest in the last two elections. That's no way to build a national party.
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows the depth of the party's problems. Just 21 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Republicans. That's the lowest since the fall of 1983, when just 19 percent identified themselves as Republicans. Party identification does fluctuate with events. But as a snapshot indicator, the latest figures highlight the impact of Obama's opening months on the Republican Party. From a high-water mark of 35 percent in the fall of 2003, Republicans have slid steadily to their present state of affairs. It's just not as cool to be a Republican as it once was.
The Republicans have many demographic challenges as they plot their comeback. Obama has attracted strong support from young voters and Latinos -- two keys to the future for both parties and once part of the GOP's calculation for sustaining themselves in power. Suburban voters have moved toward the Democrats. Specter can see that problem acutely in the suburbs around his home in Philadelphia home. Obama is also holding a solid advantage among independents, the proxy measure for the center or swing portion of the electorate.
Reihan Salam, co-author of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save America," said this week that the danger for Republicans is to believe they now represent a vast, silent majority that is waiting to reassert itself. A louder voice from a smaller cadre of supporters is not the answer, he warned. That will just prevent Republicans from reassessing their old agenda, developing new ideas and once again learning to reach out broadly.
The Post-ABC News poll points to the progress Republicans have not made since Obama was sworn in last January. The approval rating for congressional Republicans has slipped from 38 percent in February to 30 percent today. Congressional Democrats have seen their support drop too, but still remain 15 points higher than the Republicans.
More discouraging for a party trying to pick itself up after two bad elections is the wide gulf in public trust between the president and congressional Republicans. Sixty percent of the country trusts Obama to make the right decisions for the country's future -- but just 21 percent trust Republicans in Congress.
Despite their solid opposition to the president's economic and budgetary policies, Republicans in Congress have seen this trust quotient decline eight points since January. A CBS News-New York Times poll found that 70 percent of Americans believe Republicans have opposed those policies for political reasons, rather than because GOP lawmakers genuinely believe the policies are bad for the economy.
In the first 99 days of the Obama administration, it has sometimes felt like the Republicans have had a different "leader" each day. Last week the leader of the party was Dick Cheney, attacking Obama for his decision to end the harsh interrogation techniques on some terrorist suspects and to release Justice Department memos outlining those procedures.
Earlier, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour have taken the spotlight. Rush Limbaugh? He too led the Republicans for a week last winter. Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman? He was pretty visible for a time earlier this year, wasn't he? The list goes on. Don't forget Newt Gingrich or the two elected "leaders" in Congress: House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY).
That tells you something. At this moment when the journalistic world is awash with assessments of President Obama's opening months in office, it's useful to reflect on one reason for his strong start: he has been blessed with weak opposition. The Republicans may be united, but they have yet to find a leader who resonates beyond their conservative base or an agenda that attracts real support.
The way back will require both strategic thinking and some luck. Obama has put so much in motion that, say some savvy conservatives, it's almost inevitable that some initiatives will fail. Daniel Casse, a conservative strategist, believes by this time next year, Republicans may have any number of opportunities for taking on Obama that will look more attractive to the voters. But he hardly underestimates Obama's formidable skills as a politician.
For Republicans, the gubernatorial races in 2010 will showcase some of the party's beyond-the-Beltway up and comers. That group includes Jindal, despite his poor performance delivering the Republican response to Obama's speech to Congress earlier this year and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who has caught the eye of some prominent Democratic strategists.
Those 2010 races will also give some shrewd Republican policy entrepreneurs the chance to incubate some new ideas for the party -- ideas that can reach beyond the conservative base and offer a way forward. If there are people ready to seize the opportunity.
Republicans have been on a downward slide for the past four years, a decline that began not long after the reelection of former president George W. Bush in 2004. Many Republicans have blamed most of the party's problems on Bush's leadership. But the problems go deeper than any one person. Specter's shocking departure may provide a wakeup call to Republicans that a broad reassessment is now urgently needed.
By Dan Balz
Copyright by The Washington Post
April 28, 2009
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/04/28/specters_departure_a_wake_up_c.html?hpid=topnews
How much more can the Republicans take? Demoralized, shrinking and seemingly lacking an agenda beyond the word "no," Republicans today saw their ranks further thinned with the stunning news that Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is switching parties and will run for reelection in 2010 as a Democrat.
Specter is worried about his own survival -- and particularly a primary challenge from the right. Many in the GOP might say good riddance. After supporting President Obama's stimulus package, Specter was persona non grata in his own party. So it may be easy for some Republicans to conclude that they are better off without people like Arlen Specter.
But his defection is a reminder that the Republican Party continues to contract, especially outside the South, and that it appears increasingly less welcome to politicians and voters who do not consider themselves solidly conservative. Northeast Republicans have gone from an endangered species to a nearly extinct species. Republicans lost ground in the Rocky Mountains and the Midwest in the last two elections. That's no way to build a national party.
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows the depth of the party's problems. Just 21 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Republicans. That's the lowest since the fall of 1983, when just 19 percent identified themselves as Republicans. Party identification does fluctuate with events. But as a snapshot indicator, the latest figures highlight the impact of Obama's opening months on the Republican Party. From a high-water mark of 35 percent in the fall of 2003, Republicans have slid steadily to their present state of affairs. It's just not as cool to be a Republican as it once was.
The Republicans have many demographic challenges as they plot their comeback. Obama has attracted strong support from young voters and Latinos -- two keys to the future for both parties and once part of the GOP's calculation for sustaining themselves in power. Suburban voters have moved toward the Democrats. Specter can see that problem acutely in the suburbs around his home in Philadelphia home. Obama is also holding a solid advantage among independents, the proxy measure for the center or swing portion of the electorate.
Reihan Salam, co-author of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save America," said this week that the danger for Republicans is to believe they now represent a vast, silent majority that is waiting to reassert itself. A louder voice from a smaller cadre of supporters is not the answer, he warned. That will just prevent Republicans from reassessing their old agenda, developing new ideas and once again learning to reach out broadly.
The Post-ABC News poll points to the progress Republicans have not made since Obama was sworn in last January. The approval rating for congressional Republicans has slipped from 38 percent in February to 30 percent today. Congressional Democrats have seen their support drop too, but still remain 15 points higher than the Republicans.
More discouraging for a party trying to pick itself up after two bad elections is the wide gulf in public trust between the president and congressional Republicans. Sixty percent of the country trusts Obama to make the right decisions for the country's future -- but just 21 percent trust Republicans in Congress.
Despite their solid opposition to the president's economic and budgetary policies, Republicans in Congress have seen this trust quotient decline eight points since January. A CBS News-New York Times poll found that 70 percent of Americans believe Republicans have opposed those policies for political reasons, rather than because GOP lawmakers genuinely believe the policies are bad for the economy.
In the first 99 days of the Obama administration, it has sometimes felt like the Republicans have had a different "leader" each day. Last week the leader of the party was Dick Cheney, attacking Obama for his decision to end the harsh interrogation techniques on some terrorist suspects and to release Justice Department memos outlining those procedures.
Earlier, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour have taken the spotlight. Rush Limbaugh? He too led the Republicans for a week last winter. Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman? He was pretty visible for a time earlier this year, wasn't he? The list goes on. Don't forget Newt Gingrich or the two elected "leaders" in Congress: House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY).
That tells you something. At this moment when the journalistic world is awash with assessments of President Obama's opening months in office, it's useful to reflect on one reason for his strong start: he has been blessed with weak opposition. The Republicans may be united, but they have yet to find a leader who resonates beyond their conservative base or an agenda that attracts real support.
The way back will require both strategic thinking and some luck. Obama has put so much in motion that, say some savvy conservatives, it's almost inevitable that some initiatives will fail. Daniel Casse, a conservative strategist, believes by this time next year, Republicans may have any number of opportunities for taking on Obama that will look more attractive to the voters. But he hardly underestimates Obama's formidable skills as a politician.
For Republicans, the gubernatorial races in 2010 will showcase some of the party's beyond-the-Beltway up and comers. That group includes Jindal, despite his poor performance delivering the Republican response to Obama's speech to Congress earlier this year and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who has caught the eye of some prominent Democratic strategists.
Those 2010 races will also give some shrewd Republican policy entrepreneurs the chance to incubate some new ideas for the party -- ideas that can reach beyond the conservative base and offer a way forward. If there are people ready to seize the opportunity.
Republicans have been on a downward slide for the past four years, a decline that began not long after the reelection of former president George W. Bush in 2004. Many Republicans have blamed most of the party's problems on Bush's leadership. But the problems go deeper than any one person. Specter's shocking departure may provide a wakeup call to Republicans that a broad reassessment is now urgently needed.
Pakistan Sends Troops Into District Taken by Taliban
Pakistan Sends Troops Into District Taken by Taliban
By CARLOTTA GALL
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/world/asia/29pstan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is sending in troops against hundreds of militants who overran the district of Buner last week, the government announced Tuesday afternoon, saying that the Taliban would not be allowed to expand their territory.
A military spokesman announced that troops had completed a two-day operation against militants in Dir and started a new operation on Tuesday afternoon in the district of Buner at the request of the government.
Paramilitary forces of the Frontier Corps, backed by army helicopters and fighter jets, were involved in the operation, he said. The fighter jets were being used to clock the entrances to the valley, he said. He estimated there were 450 to 500 militants in the district of Buner and said the Taliban had staged a show withdrawal at the weekend and were in fact trying to expand the space they control beyond the valley of Swat.
“In Buner people are living under coercion and in fear,” he said. “There was no reason to intimidate people in Buner and the militants started intimidating people and forcibly recruiting young people to take them back to Swat for military training,” he said.
“The government acted with patience but eventually there was no other way except to launch an operation,” he said.
By CARLOTTA GALL
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: April 28, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/world/asia/29pstan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is sending in troops against hundreds of militants who overran the district of Buner last week, the government announced Tuesday afternoon, saying that the Taliban would not be allowed to expand their territory.
A military spokesman announced that troops had completed a two-day operation against militants in Dir and started a new operation on Tuesday afternoon in the district of Buner at the request of the government.
Paramilitary forces of the Frontier Corps, backed by army helicopters and fighter jets, were involved in the operation, he said. The fighter jets were being used to clock the entrances to the valley, he said. He estimated there were 450 to 500 militants in the district of Buner and said the Taliban had staged a show withdrawal at the weekend and were in fact trying to expand the space they control beyond the valley of Swat.
“In Buner people are living under coercion and in fear,” he said. “There was no reason to intimidate people in Buner and the militants started intimidating people and forcibly recruiting young people to take them back to Swat for military training,” he said.
“The government acted with patience but eventually there was no other way except to launch an operation,” he said.
Democrats Announce Agreement on Budget Pact
Democrats Announce Agreement on Budget Pact
Copyright By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/27/us/AP-US-Congress-Budget.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional Democrats sealed an agreement Monday night on a budget plan that would help President Barack Obama overhaul the health care system but allows his signature tax cut for most workers to expire after next year.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., announced the agreement and key details in a statement.
Most importantly, the congressional budget plan would prevent Senate Republicans from delaying or blocking Obama's plan to vastly expand government-subsidized health care when it advances this fall.
The $3.5 trillion plan for the budget year starting Oct. 1 embraces several of Obama's key goals besides health care reform, including funds for domestic programs and clean energy, and a tax increase for individuals making more than $200,000 a year or couples making more than $250,000.
But the plan would allow Obama's signature $400 tax cut for most workers and $800 for couples to expire at the end of next year. Even after squeezing the defense and war budgets to levels that are probably unrealistic, the plan would cause a deficit of $523 billion in five years.
"I think this is a good budget," Conrad said. But, he added, "much more will have to be done to get us on a more sustainable course," including slowing the growth of benefit programs like Medicare and overhauling the tax code.
Conrad forced cuts of $10 billion from Obama's $50 billion boost for non-defense programs funded by Congress each year -- not much in the grand scheme but strongly resisted by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis. Future increases for non-defense operating budgets would be far less generous than Obama's budget, averaging 2.9 percent, though history would suggest that Congress won't follow through on the long-term promises.
While endorsing Obama initiatives, Democrats focused a lot of attention to preserving President George W. Bush's tax cuts for middle-class workers, investors and families with children.
The budget plan would patch the alternative minimum tax for three years to prevent more than 20 million taxpayers from getting socked with increases averaging $2,000 or so. The estate tax would be kept at current levels and allow for estates up to $7 million to be exempt from the tax with a 45 percent rate applying to inheritances above that.
Under Capitol Hill's arcane rules, the annual congressional budget produces an outline for follow-up tax and spending legislation. Most importantly, the measure would allow Obama's health plan to pass the Senate by a simple majority instead of the 60 votes that are needed for plenty of other legislation.
Democrats and independent allies control 58 Senate seats.
Democrats hope the House will adopt the budget on Tuesday and the Senate on Wednesday, which marks Obama's 100 days in office.
Obama and his Democratic allies say they still want support from Republicans for health care legislation but need the option of expedited action in case the debate becomes overly partisan.
"For this bipartisan process to take root, Republicans must demonstrate a sincere interest in legislating," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote in a letter Monday to GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "Rather than just saying no, you must be willing to offer concrete and constructive proposals."
The fast-track rules also would apply to Obama's plan to eliminate lender subsidies on banks and other lenders presently participating in the federal student loan program. Direct lending by the government would replace the program, with the savings dedicated to boosting Pell Grants for lower-income college students.
While handing Obama a victory, there is still an extraordinary amount of work before Obama's vision of health care reform becomes a reality, including raising taxes and cutting spending to generate $1 trillion or more over the next decade to fund the health care initiative.
The budget plan also anticipates the expiration of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts on wealthier people's income and investments at the end of next year. But it ignores Obama's calls for raising taxes to help pay for his health care initiative by reducing the benefits wealthier people take on itemized deductions like charitable gifts and mortgage interest.
Moderate Democrats successfully pressed for Obama to endorse their call for a pay-as-you-go law that would require taxes and new spending on benefit programs to be offset with tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.
The obstacle for the pay-go extension is the Senate, but the moderate gang of "Blue Dog" Democrats won a promise from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that she would exert leverage over the Senate aimed at winning enactment of a pay-go statute. The existing pay-as-you-go provision is simply a rule that has been waived on key occasions.
Copyright By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/27/us/AP-US-Congress-Budget.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional Democrats sealed an agreement Monday night on a budget plan that would help President Barack Obama overhaul the health care system but allows his signature tax cut for most workers to expire after next year.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., announced the agreement and key details in a statement.
Most importantly, the congressional budget plan would prevent Senate Republicans from delaying or blocking Obama's plan to vastly expand government-subsidized health care when it advances this fall.
The $3.5 trillion plan for the budget year starting Oct. 1 embraces several of Obama's key goals besides health care reform, including funds for domestic programs and clean energy, and a tax increase for individuals making more than $200,000 a year or couples making more than $250,000.
But the plan would allow Obama's signature $400 tax cut for most workers and $800 for couples to expire at the end of next year. Even after squeezing the defense and war budgets to levels that are probably unrealistic, the plan would cause a deficit of $523 billion in five years.
"I think this is a good budget," Conrad said. But, he added, "much more will have to be done to get us on a more sustainable course," including slowing the growth of benefit programs like Medicare and overhauling the tax code.
Conrad forced cuts of $10 billion from Obama's $50 billion boost for non-defense programs funded by Congress each year -- not much in the grand scheme but strongly resisted by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis. Future increases for non-defense operating budgets would be far less generous than Obama's budget, averaging 2.9 percent, though history would suggest that Congress won't follow through on the long-term promises.
While endorsing Obama initiatives, Democrats focused a lot of attention to preserving President George W. Bush's tax cuts for middle-class workers, investors and families with children.
The budget plan would patch the alternative minimum tax for three years to prevent more than 20 million taxpayers from getting socked with increases averaging $2,000 or so. The estate tax would be kept at current levels and allow for estates up to $7 million to be exempt from the tax with a 45 percent rate applying to inheritances above that.
Under Capitol Hill's arcane rules, the annual congressional budget produces an outline for follow-up tax and spending legislation. Most importantly, the measure would allow Obama's health plan to pass the Senate by a simple majority instead of the 60 votes that are needed for plenty of other legislation.
Democrats and independent allies control 58 Senate seats.
Democrats hope the House will adopt the budget on Tuesday and the Senate on Wednesday, which marks Obama's 100 days in office.
Obama and his Democratic allies say they still want support from Republicans for health care legislation but need the option of expedited action in case the debate becomes overly partisan.
"For this bipartisan process to take root, Republicans must demonstrate a sincere interest in legislating," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote in a letter Monday to GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "Rather than just saying no, you must be willing to offer concrete and constructive proposals."
The fast-track rules also would apply to Obama's plan to eliminate lender subsidies on banks and other lenders presently participating in the federal student loan program. Direct lending by the government would replace the program, with the savings dedicated to boosting Pell Grants for lower-income college students.
While handing Obama a victory, there is still an extraordinary amount of work before Obama's vision of health care reform becomes a reality, including raising taxes and cutting spending to generate $1 trillion or more over the next decade to fund the health care initiative.
The budget plan also anticipates the expiration of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts on wealthier people's income and investments at the end of next year. But it ignores Obama's calls for raising taxes to help pay for his health care initiative by reducing the benefits wealthier people take on itemized deductions like charitable gifts and mortgage interest.
Moderate Democrats successfully pressed for Obama to endorse their call for a pay-as-you-go law that would require taxes and new spending on benefit programs to be offset with tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.
The obstacle for the pay-go extension is the Senate, but the moderate gang of "Blue Dog" Democrats won a promise from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that she would exert leverage over the Senate aimed at winning enactment of a pay-go statute. The existing pay-as-you-go provision is simply a rule that has been waived on key occasions.
A Quiet Day in Iowa as Same-Sex Couples Line Up to Marry
A Quiet Day in Iowa as Same-Sex Couples Line Up to Marry
By MONICA DAVEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/28marriage.html?th&emc=th
DES MOINES — In a way, life looked unexpectedly ordinary here on Monday as Iowa began allowing same-sex couples to marry.
Rebecca Bird, 41, left, and Sandra Quandt, 48, waiting for a marriage license in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday with Ms. Bird’s sister, Jamie Lee, 28, and niece, Shelbie Stevens, 3.
The large, angry protests some had imagined never materialized in this city, the state’s most populous. Neither did the crowds of couples from all over the nation that some feared might create a carnival-like atmosphere captured in earlier images from other places.
By noon, no protesters could be found outside the marriage license office. Extra sheriff’s deputies assigned to keep order milled around the Polk County recorder’s office, looking bored. And an early-morning line of dozens of same-sex couples waiting to apply for licenses had dwindled into a few people discussing recent rainfall patterns.
Given polls showing that most Iowans object to same-sex marriage, Shawn Regenold and Steve Kearney of West Des Moines had feared a tense, perhaps overwhelming scene. Thus they decided not to bring their children — ages 2, 3 and 4 — as they sought their license. Instead, they found a quiet building where, every so often, couples receiving licenses burst into rounds of applause and where, on the front steps, a local pastor married a few smiling couples as television cameras rolled.
“People in Iowa tend to get real hot about things,” said Maggie Grace, a neighbor of the West Des Moines couple who had come to fulfill the witness requirement for their license. “And then they go on about their way.”
Officials in some of the state’s 98 other counties described similarly low-key scenes on the day Iowa became the latest state to permit same-sex marriage and the first in the Midwest to do so. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled this month that a decade-old law prohibiting same-sex marriage violated the State Constitution.
In Davenport, talk of a morning protest came and went. In Iowa City, an opponent of same-sex marriage delivered a petition signed by eight people urging the local county recorder there not to grant licenses. Similar petitions, some with many more signatures, were delivered across the state, though the Iowa attorney general has said recorders must abide by the court’s decision and provide the marriage licenses.
Protests were more pronounced in some rural areas. About 50 people waited outside the Wayne County Courthouse urging the recorder there, Angela Horton, not to allow the marriages.
“Speaking for myself personally, it has put me in a difficult position,” Ms. Horton said. “But I am going to uphold the law.” She noted that by midafternoon no same-sex couples had sought licenses at her office.
Chuck Hurley, the leader of the Iowa Family Policy Center, which opposes such marriages, said he and others were distressed that state lawmakers had adjourned for the year on Sunday without agreeing to begin the process of amending the State Constitution to stop the unions. Mr. Hurley, who delivered a petition with thousands of signatures to the recorder here early Monday, told reporters that more people had not turned out to object because they were busy “raising children and going to work.”
“People I associate with are very much law-abiding people,” he said. “They’re not going to chain themselves to their recorders’ offices.”
Iowa joins Connecticut and Massachusetts in allowing same-sex marriage, and Vermont will follow in September. California also allowed them for about six months until voters there rejected the idea in November.
The Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling on April 3, which surprised many here, spurred a new set of technical, philosophical and legal questions, which public officials and others have been racing to sort through over the past three weeks.
State officials were rushing to change the wording on marriage license applications and other official documents to reflect the change. The forms now refer to “Party A” and “Party B” and give applicants an option to describe themselves as “bride,” “groom” or “spouse.”
Though the court’s ruling had no direct effect on religious leaders, many must decide whether to marry same-sex couples. Members of some denominations are divided on the matter.
By the end of Monday, more than 200 couples had applied and paid $35 for marriage licenses in Iowa. (No statewide count was available.) Some came from neighboring states like Illinois and Nebraska, officials said. Iowa requires a three-day waiting period for applicants to marry, though some couples received waivers from judges and were married by Monday afternoon.
Melisa Keeton, 31, and Shelley Wolfe Keeton, 38, let out a cheer when a clerk here offered congratulations and their certificate of marriage. The couple had raced among the recorder’s office, a judge’s chamber for a waiver and the front of the government building where the Rev. Peg Esperanza of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Des Moines offered them the “short” vows she carried with her.
Ms. Keeton said the couple did not wish to wait even three days because she was in the final trimester of a difficult pregnancy. The couple had parked in a lot away from the recorder’s office, they said, in case there were crowds or protesters or “hoopla.”
“Who would have known we didn’t need to?” Ms. Wolfe Keeton said.
By MONICA DAVEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/28marriage.html?th&emc=th
DES MOINES — In a way, life looked unexpectedly ordinary here on Monday as Iowa began allowing same-sex couples to marry.
Rebecca Bird, 41, left, and Sandra Quandt, 48, waiting for a marriage license in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday with Ms. Bird’s sister, Jamie Lee, 28, and niece, Shelbie Stevens, 3.
The large, angry protests some had imagined never materialized in this city, the state’s most populous. Neither did the crowds of couples from all over the nation that some feared might create a carnival-like atmosphere captured in earlier images from other places.
By noon, no protesters could be found outside the marriage license office. Extra sheriff’s deputies assigned to keep order milled around the Polk County recorder’s office, looking bored. And an early-morning line of dozens of same-sex couples waiting to apply for licenses had dwindled into a few people discussing recent rainfall patterns.
Given polls showing that most Iowans object to same-sex marriage, Shawn Regenold and Steve Kearney of West Des Moines had feared a tense, perhaps overwhelming scene. Thus they decided not to bring their children — ages 2, 3 and 4 — as they sought their license. Instead, they found a quiet building where, every so often, couples receiving licenses burst into rounds of applause and where, on the front steps, a local pastor married a few smiling couples as television cameras rolled.
“People in Iowa tend to get real hot about things,” said Maggie Grace, a neighbor of the West Des Moines couple who had come to fulfill the witness requirement for their license. “And then they go on about their way.”
Officials in some of the state’s 98 other counties described similarly low-key scenes on the day Iowa became the latest state to permit same-sex marriage and the first in the Midwest to do so. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled this month that a decade-old law prohibiting same-sex marriage violated the State Constitution.
In Davenport, talk of a morning protest came and went. In Iowa City, an opponent of same-sex marriage delivered a petition signed by eight people urging the local county recorder there not to grant licenses. Similar petitions, some with many more signatures, were delivered across the state, though the Iowa attorney general has said recorders must abide by the court’s decision and provide the marriage licenses.
Protests were more pronounced in some rural areas. About 50 people waited outside the Wayne County Courthouse urging the recorder there, Angela Horton, not to allow the marriages.
“Speaking for myself personally, it has put me in a difficult position,” Ms. Horton said. “But I am going to uphold the law.” She noted that by midafternoon no same-sex couples had sought licenses at her office.
Chuck Hurley, the leader of the Iowa Family Policy Center, which opposes such marriages, said he and others were distressed that state lawmakers had adjourned for the year on Sunday without agreeing to begin the process of amending the State Constitution to stop the unions. Mr. Hurley, who delivered a petition with thousands of signatures to the recorder here early Monday, told reporters that more people had not turned out to object because they were busy “raising children and going to work.”
“People I associate with are very much law-abiding people,” he said. “They’re not going to chain themselves to their recorders’ offices.”
Iowa joins Connecticut and Massachusetts in allowing same-sex marriage, and Vermont will follow in September. California also allowed them for about six months until voters there rejected the idea in November.
The Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling on April 3, which surprised many here, spurred a new set of technical, philosophical and legal questions, which public officials and others have been racing to sort through over the past three weeks.
State officials were rushing to change the wording on marriage license applications and other official documents to reflect the change. The forms now refer to “Party A” and “Party B” and give applicants an option to describe themselves as “bride,” “groom” or “spouse.”
Though the court’s ruling had no direct effect on religious leaders, many must decide whether to marry same-sex couples. Members of some denominations are divided on the matter.
By the end of Monday, more than 200 couples had applied and paid $35 for marriage licenses in Iowa. (No statewide count was available.) Some came from neighboring states like Illinois and Nebraska, officials said. Iowa requires a three-day waiting period for applicants to marry, though some couples received waivers from judges and were married by Monday afternoon.
Melisa Keeton, 31, and Shelley Wolfe Keeton, 38, let out a cheer when a clerk here offered congratulations and their certificate of marriage. The couple had raced among the recorder’s office, a judge’s chamber for a waiver and the front of the government building where the Rev. Peg Esperanza of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Des Moines offered them the “short” vows she carried with her.
Ms. Keeton said the couple did not wish to wait even three days because she was in the final trimester of a difficult pregnancy. The couple had parked in a lot away from the recorder’s office, they said, in case there were crowds or protesters or “hoopla.”
“Who would have known we didn’t need to?” Ms. Wolfe Keeton said.
U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defensesy
U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defensesy
By DAVID E. SANGER, JOHN MARKOFF and THOM SHANKER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/28cyber.html?th&emc=th
This article was reported by David E. Sanger, John Markoff and Thom Shanker and written by Mr. Sanger.
When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights.
When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an experimental covert program — its results still unclear — to bore into their computers and undermine the project.
And the Pentagon has commissioned military contractors to develop a highly classified replica of the Internet of the future. The goal is to simulate what it would take for adversaries to shut down the country’s power stations, telecommunications and aviation systems, or freeze the financial markets — in an effort to build better defenses against such attacks, as well as a new generation of online weapons.
Just as the invention of the atomic bomb changed warfare and deterrence 64 years ago, a new international race has begun to develop cyberweapons and systems to protect against them.
Thousands of daily attacks on federal and private computer systems in the United States — many from China and Russia, some malicious and some testing chinks in the patchwork of American firewalls — have prompted the Obama administration to review American strategy.
President Obama is expected to propose a far larger defensive effort in coming days, including an expansion of the $17 billion, five-year program that Congress approved last year, the appointment of a White House official to coordinate the effort, and an end to a running bureaucratic battle over who is responsible for defending against cyberattacks.
But Mr. Obama is expected to say little or nothing about the nation’s offensive capabilities, on which the military and the nation’s intelligence agencies have been spending billions. In interviews over the past several months, a range of military and intelligence officials, as well as outside experts, have described a huge increase in the sophistication of American cyberwarfare capabilities.
Because so many aspects of the American effort to develop cyberweapons and define their proper use remain classified, many of those officials declined to speak on the record. The White House declined several requests for interviews or to say whether Mr. Obama as a matter of policy supports or opposes the use of American cyberweapons.
The most exotic innovations under consideration would enable a Pentagon programmer to surreptitiously enter a computer server in Russia or China, for example, and destroy a “botnet” — a potentially destructive program that commandeers infected machines into a vast network that can be clandestinely controlled — before it could be unleashed in the United States.
Or American intelligence agencies could activate malicious code that is secretly embedded on computer chips when they are manufactured, enabling the United States to take command of an enemy’s computers by remote control over the Internet. That, of course, is exactly the kind of attack officials fear could be launched on American targets, often through Chinese-made chips or computer servers.
So far, however, there are no broad authorizations for American forces to engage in cyberwar. The invasion of the Qaeda computer in Iraq several years ago and the covert activity in Iran were each individually authorized by Mr. Bush. When he issued a set of classified presidential orders in January 2008 to organize and improve America’s online defenses, the administration could not agree on how to write the authorization.
A principal architect of that order said the issue had been passed on to the next president, in part because of the complexities of cyberwar operations that, by necessity, would most likely be conducted on both domestic and foreign Internet sites. After the controversy surrounding domestic spying, Mr. Bush’s aides concluded, the Bush White House did not have the credibility or the political capital to deal with the subject.
Cyberwar would not be as lethal as atomic war, of course, nor as visibly dramatic. But when Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, briefed Mr. Bush on the threat in May 2007, he argued that if a single large American bank were successfully attacked “it would have an order-of-magnitude greater impact on the global economy” than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. McConnell, who left office three months ago, warned last year that “the ability to threaten the U.S. money supply is the equivalent of today’s nuclear weapon.”
The scenarios developed last year for the incoming president by Mr. McConnell and his coordinator for cybersecurity, Melissa Hathaway, went further. They described vulnerabilities including an attack on Wall Street and one intended to bring down the nation’s electric power grid. Most were extrapolations of attacks already tried.
Today, Ms. Hathaway is the primary author of White House cyberstrategy and has been traveling the country talking in vague terms about recent, increasingly bold attacks on the computer networks that keep the country running. Government officials will not discuss the details of a recent attack on the air transportation network, other than to say the attack never directly affected air traffic control systems.
Still, the specter of an attack that could blind air traffic controllers and, perhaps, the military’s aerospace defense networks haunts military and intelligence officials. (The saving grace of the air traffic control system, officials say, is that it is so old that it is not directly connected to the Internet.)
Studies, with code names like Dark Angel, have focused on whether cellphone towers, emergency-service communications and hospital systems could be brought down, to sow chaos.
But the theoretical has, at times, become real.
“We have seen Chinese network operations inside certain of our electricity grids,” said Joel F. Brenner, who oversees counterintelligence operations for Dennis Blair, Mr. McConnell’s successor as national intelligence director, speaking at the University of Texas at Austin this month. “Do I worry about those grids, and about air traffic control systems, water supply systems, and so on? You bet I do.”
But the broader question — one the administration so far declines to discuss — is whether the best defense against cyberattack is the development of a robust capability to wage cyberwar.
As Mr. Obama’s team quickly discovered, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies both concluded in Mr. Bush’s last years in office that it would not be enough to simply build higher firewalls and better virus detectors or to restrict access to the federal government’s own computers.
“The fortress model simply will not work for cyber,” said one senior military officer who has been deeply engaged in the debate for several years. “Someone will always get in.”
That thinking has led to a debate over whether lessons learned in the nuclear age — from the days of “mutually assured destruction” — apply to cyberwar.
But in cyberwar, it is hard to know where to strike back, or even who the attacker might be. Others have argued for borrowing a page from Mr. Bush’s pre-emption doctrine by going into foreign computers to destroy malicious software before it is unleashed into the world’s digital bloodstream. But that could amount to an act of war, and many argue it is a losing game, because the United States is more dependent on a constantly running Internet system than many of its potential adversaries, and therefore could suffer more damage in a counterattack.
In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the National Research Council will argue that although an offensive cybercapability is an important asset for the United States, the nation is lacking a clear strategy, and secrecy surrounding preparations has hindered national debate, according to several people familiar with the report.
The advent of Internet attacks — especially those suspected of being directed by nations, not hackers — has given rise to a new term inside the Pentagon and the National Security Agency: “hybrid warfare.”
It describes a conflict in which attacks through the Internet can be launched as a warning shot — or to pave the way for a traditional attack.
Early hints of this new kind of warfare emerged in the confrontation between Russia and Estonia in April 2007. Clandestine groups — it was never determined if they had links to the Russian government — commandeered computers around the globe and directed a fire hose of data at Estonia’s banking system and its government Web sites.
The computer screens of Estonians trying to do business with the government online were frozen, if they got anything at all. It was annoying, but by the standards of cyberwar, it was child’s play.
In August 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, the cyberattacks grew more widespread. Georgians were denied online access to news, cash and air tickets. The Georgian government had to move its Internet activity to servers in Ukraine when its own servers locked up, but the attacks did no permanent damage.
Every few months, it seems, some agency, research group or military contractor runs a war game to assess the United States’ vulnerability. Senior intelligence officials were shocked to discover how easy it was to permanently disable a large power generator. That prompted further studies to determine if attackers could take down a series of generators, bringing whole parts of the country to a halt.
Another war game that the Department of Homeland Security sponsored in March 2008, called Cyber Storm II, envisioned a far larger, coordinated attack against the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It studied a disruption of chemical plants, rail lines, oil and gas pipelines and private computer networks. That study and others like it concluded that when attacks go global, the potential economic repercussions increase exponentially.
To prove the point, Mr. McConnell, then the director of national intelligence, spent much of last summer urging senior government officials to examine the Treasury Department’s scramble to contain the effects of the collapse of Bear Stearns. Markets froze, he said, because “what backs up that money is confidence — an accounting system that is reconcilable.” He began studies of what would happen if the system that clears market trades froze.
“We were halfway through the study,” one senior intelligence official said last month, “and the markets froze of their own accord. And we looked at each other and said, ‘Our market collapse has just given every cyberwarrior out there a playbook.’ ”
Just before Mr. Obama was elected, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy research group in Washington, warned in a report that “America’s failure to protect cyberspace is one of the most urgent national security problems facing the new administration.”
What alarmed the panel was not the capabilities of individual hackers but of nations — China and Russia among them — that experts believe are putting huge resources into the development of cyberweapons. A research company called Team Cymru recently examined “scans” that came across the Internet seeking ways to get inside industrial control systems, and discovered more than 90 percent of them came from computers in China.
Scanning alone does no damage, but it could be the prelude to an attack that scrambles databases or seeks to control computers. But Team Cymru ran into a brick wall as soon as it tried to trace who, exactly, was probing these industrial systems. It could not determine whether military organizations, intelligence agencies, terrorist groups, criminals or inventive teenagers were behind the efforts.
The good news, some government officials argue, is that the Chinese are deterred from doing real damage: Because they hold more than a trillion dollars in United States government debt, they have little interest in freezing up a system they depend on for their own investments.
Then again, some of the scans seemed to originate from 14 other countries, including Taiwan, Russia and, of course, the United States.
Bikini Atoll for an Online Age
Because “cyberwar” contains the word “war,” the Pentagon has argued that it should be the locus of American defensive and offensive strategy — and it is creating the kind of infrastructure that was built around nuclear weapons in the 1940s and ’50s.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is considering proposals to create a Cyber Command — initially as a new headquarters within the Strategic Command, which controls the American nuclear arsenal and assets in space. Right now, the responsibility for computer network security is part of Strategic Command, and military officials there estimate that over the past six months, the government has spent $100 million responding to probes and attacks on military systems. Air Force officials confirm that a large network of computers at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama was temporarily taken off-line within the past eight months when it was put at risk of widespread infection from computer viruses.
But Mr. Gates has concluded that the military’s cyberwarfare effort requires a sharper focus — and thus a specific command. It would build the defenses for military computers and communications systems and — the part the Pentagon is reluctant to discuss — develop and deploy cyberweapons.
In fact, that effort is already under way — it is part of what the National Cyber Range is all about. The range is a replica of the Internet of the future, and it is being built to be attacked. Competing teams of contractors — including BAE Systems, the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University and Sparta Inc. — are vying to build the Pentagon a system it can use to simulate attacks. The National Security Agency already has a smaller version of a similar system, in Millersville, Md.
In short, the Cyber Range is to the digital age what the Bikini Atoll — the islands the Army vaporized in the 1950s to measure the power of the hydrogen bomb — was to the nuclear age. But once the tests at Bikini Atoll demonstrated to the world the awesome destructive power of the bomb, it became evident to the United States and the Soviet Union — and other nuclear powers — that the risks of a nuclear exchange were simply too high. In the case of cyberattacks, where the results can vary from the annoying to the devastating, there are no such rules.
The Deterrence Conundrum
During the cold war, if a strategic missile had been fired at the United States, screens deep in a mountain in Colorado would have lighted up and American commanders would have some time to decide whether to launch a counterattack. Today, when Pentagon computers are subjected to a barrage, the origin is often a mystery. Absent certainty about the source, it is almost impossible to mount a counterattack.
In the rare case where the preparations for an attack are detected in a foreign computer system, there is continuing debate about whether to embrace the concept of pre-emption, with all of its Bush-era connotations. The questions range from whether an online attack should be mounted on that system to, in an extreme case, blowing those computers up.
Some officials argue that if the United States engaged in such pre-emption — and demonstrated that it was watching the development of hostile cyberweapons — it could begin to deter some attacks. Others believe it will only justify pre-emptive attacks on the United States. “Russia and China have lots of nationalistic hackers,” one senior military officer said. “They seem very, very willing to take action on their own.”
Senior Pentagon and military officials also express deep concern that the laws and understanding of armed conflict have not kept current with the challenges of offensive cyberwarfare.
Over the decades, a number of limits on action have been accepted — if not always practiced. One is the prohibition against assassinating government leaders. Another is avoiding attacks aimed at civilians. Yet in the cyberworld, where the most vulnerable targets are civilian, there are no such rules or understandings. If a military base is attacked, would it be a proportional, legitimate response to bring down the attacker’s power grid if that would also shut down its hospital systems, its air traffic control system or its banking system?
“We don’t have that for cyber yet,” one senior Defense Department official said, “and that’s a little bit dangerous.”
By DAVID E. SANGER, JOHN MARKOFF and THOM SHANKER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/28cyber.html?th&emc=th
This article was reported by David E. Sanger, John Markoff and Thom Shanker and written by Mr. Sanger.
When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights.
When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an experimental covert program — its results still unclear — to bore into their computers and undermine the project.
And the Pentagon has commissioned military contractors to develop a highly classified replica of the Internet of the future. The goal is to simulate what it would take for adversaries to shut down the country’s power stations, telecommunications and aviation systems, or freeze the financial markets — in an effort to build better defenses against such attacks, as well as a new generation of online weapons.
Just as the invention of the atomic bomb changed warfare and deterrence 64 years ago, a new international race has begun to develop cyberweapons and systems to protect against them.
Thousands of daily attacks on federal and private computer systems in the United States — many from China and Russia, some malicious and some testing chinks in the patchwork of American firewalls — have prompted the Obama administration to review American strategy.
President Obama is expected to propose a far larger defensive effort in coming days, including an expansion of the $17 billion, five-year program that Congress approved last year, the appointment of a White House official to coordinate the effort, and an end to a running bureaucratic battle over who is responsible for defending against cyberattacks.
But Mr. Obama is expected to say little or nothing about the nation’s offensive capabilities, on which the military and the nation’s intelligence agencies have been spending billions. In interviews over the past several months, a range of military and intelligence officials, as well as outside experts, have described a huge increase in the sophistication of American cyberwarfare capabilities.
Because so many aspects of the American effort to develop cyberweapons and define their proper use remain classified, many of those officials declined to speak on the record. The White House declined several requests for interviews or to say whether Mr. Obama as a matter of policy supports or opposes the use of American cyberweapons.
The most exotic innovations under consideration would enable a Pentagon programmer to surreptitiously enter a computer server in Russia or China, for example, and destroy a “botnet” — a potentially destructive program that commandeers infected machines into a vast network that can be clandestinely controlled — before it could be unleashed in the United States.
Or American intelligence agencies could activate malicious code that is secretly embedded on computer chips when they are manufactured, enabling the United States to take command of an enemy’s computers by remote control over the Internet. That, of course, is exactly the kind of attack officials fear could be launched on American targets, often through Chinese-made chips or computer servers.
So far, however, there are no broad authorizations for American forces to engage in cyberwar. The invasion of the Qaeda computer in Iraq several years ago and the covert activity in Iran were each individually authorized by Mr. Bush. When he issued a set of classified presidential orders in January 2008 to organize and improve America’s online defenses, the administration could not agree on how to write the authorization.
A principal architect of that order said the issue had been passed on to the next president, in part because of the complexities of cyberwar operations that, by necessity, would most likely be conducted on both domestic and foreign Internet sites. After the controversy surrounding domestic spying, Mr. Bush’s aides concluded, the Bush White House did not have the credibility or the political capital to deal with the subject.
Cyberwar would not be as lethal as atomic war, of course, nor as visibly dramatic. But when Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, briefed Mr. Bush on the threat in May 2007, he argued that if a single large American bank were successfully attacked “it would have an order-of-magnitude greater impact on the global economy” than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. McConnell, who left office three months ago, warned last year that “the ability to threaten the U.S. money supply is the equivalent of today’s nuclear weapon.”
The scenarios developed last year for the incoming president by Mr. McConnell and his coordinator for cybersecurity, Melissa Hathaway, went further. They described vulnerabilities including an attack on Wall Street and one intended to bring down the nation’s electric power grid. Most were extrapolations of attacks already tried.
Today, Ms. Hathaway is the primary author of White House cyberstrategy and has been traveling the country talking in vague terms about recent, increasingly bold attacks on the computer networks that keep the country running. Government officials will not discuss the details of a recent attack on the air transportation network, other than to say the attack never directly affected air traffic control systems.
Still, the specter of an attack that could blind air traffic controllers and, perhaps, the military’s aerospace defense networks haunts military and intelligence officials. (The saving grace of the air traffic control system, officials say, is that it is so old that it is not directly connected to the Internet.)
Studies, with code names like Dark Angel, have focused on whether cellphone towers, emergency-service communications and hospital systems could be brought down, to sow chaos.
But the theoretical has, at times, become real.
“We have seen Chinese network operations inside certain of our electricity grids,” said Joel F. Brenner, who oversees counterintelligence operations for Dennis Blair, Mr. McConnell’s successor as national intelligence director, speaking at the University of Texas at Austin this month. “Do I worry about those grids, and about air traffic control systems, water supply systems, and so on? You bet I do.”
But the broader question — one the administration so far declines to discuss — is whether the best defense against cyberattack is the development of a robust capability to wage cyberwar.
As Mr. Obama’s team quickly discovered, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies both concluded in Mr. Bush’s last years in office that it would not be enough to simply build higher firewalls and better virus detectors or to restrict access to the federal government’s own computers.
“The fortress model simply will not work for cyber,” said one senior military officer who has been deeply engaged in the debate for several years. “Someone will always get in.”
That thinking has led to a debate over whether lessons learned in the nuclear age — from the days of “mutually assured destruction” — apply to cyberwar.
But in cyberwar, it is hard to know where to strike back, or even who the attacker might be. Others have argued for borrowing a page from Mr. Bush’s pre-emption doctrine by going into foreign computers to destroy malicious software before it is unleashed into the world’s digital bloodstream. But that could amount to an act of war, and many argue it is a losing game, because the United States is more dependent on a constantly running Internet system than many of its potential adversaries, and therefore could suffer more damage in a counterattack.
In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the National Research Council will argue that although an offensive cybercapability is an important asset for the United States, the nation is lacking a clear strategy, and secrecy surrounding preparations has hindered national debate, according to several people familiar with the report.
The advent of Internet attacks — especially those suspected of being directed by nations, not hackers — has given rise to a new term inside the Pentagon and the National Security Agency: “hybrid warfare.”
It describes a conflict in which attacks through the Internet can be launched as a warning shot — or to pave the way for a traditional attack.
Early hints of this new kind of warfare emerged in the confrontation between Russia and Estonia in April 2007. Clandestine groups — it was never determined if they had links to the Russian government — commandeered computers around the globe and directed a fire hose of data at Estonia’s banking system and its government Web sites.
The computer screens of Estonians trying to do business with the government online were frozen, if they got anything at all. It was annoying, but by the standards of cyberwar, it was child’s play.
In August 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, the cyberattacks grew more widespread. Georgians were denied online access to news, cash and air tickets. The Georgian government had to move its Internet activity to servers in Ukraine when its own servers locked up, but the attacks did no permanent damage.
Every few months, it seems, some agency, research group or military contractor runs a war game to assess the United States’ vulnerability. Senior intelligence officials were shocked to discover how easy it was to permanently disable a large power generator. That prompted further studies to determine if attackers could take down a series of generators, bringing whole parts of the country to a halt.
Another war game that the Department of Homeland Security sponsored in March 2008, called Cyber Storm II, envisioned a far larger, coordinated attack against the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It studied a disruption of chemical plants, rail lines, oil and gas pipelines and private computer networks. That study and others like it concluded that when attacks go global, the potential economic repercussions increase exponentially.
To prove the point, Mr. McConnell, then the director of national intelligence, spent much of last summer urging senior government officials to examine the Treasury Department’s scramble to contain the effects of the collapse of Bear Stearns. Markets froze, he said, because “what backs up that money is confidence — an accounting system that is reconcilable.” He began studies of what would happen if the system that clears market trades froze.
“We were halfway through the study,” one senior intelligence official said last month, “and the markets froze of their own accord. And we looked at each other and said, ‘Our market collapse has just given every cyberwarrior out there a playbook.’ ”
Just before Mr. Obama was elected, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy research group in Washington, warned in a report that “America’s failure to protect cyberspace is one of the most urgent national security problems facing the new administration.”
What alarmed the panel was not the capabilities of individual hackers but of nations — China and Russia among them — that experts believe are putting huge resources into the development of cyberweapons. A research company called Team Cymru recently examined “scans” that came across the Internet seeking ways to get inside industrial control systems, and discovered more than 90 percent of them came from computers in China.
Scanning alone does no damage, but it could be the prelude to an attack that scrambles databases or seeks to control computers. But Team Cymru ran into a brick wall as soon as it tried to trace who, exactly, was probing these industrial systems. It could not determine whether military organizations, intelligence agencies, terrorist groups, criminals or inventive teenagers were behind the efforts.
The good news, some government officials argue, is that the Chinese are deterred from doing real damage: Because they hold more than a trillion dollars in United States government debt, they have little interest in freezing up a system they depend on for their own investments.
Then again, some of the scans seemed to originate from 14 other countries, including Taiwan, Russia and, of course, the United States.
Bikini Atoll for an Online Age
Because “cyberwar” contains the word “war,” the Pentagon has argued that it should be the locus of American defensive and offensive strategy — and it is creating the kind of infrastructure that was built around nuclear weapons in the 1940s and ’50s.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is considering proposals to create a Cyber Command — initially as a new headquarters within the Strategic Command, which controls the American nuclear arsenal and assets in space. Right now, the responsibility for computer network security is part of Strategic Command, and military officials there estimate that over the past six months, the government has spent $100 million responding to probes and attacks on military systems. Air Force officials confirm that a large network of computers at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama was temporarily taken off-line within the past eight months when it was put at risk of widespread infection from computer viruses.
But Mr. Gates has concluded that the military’s cyberwarfare effort requires a sharper focus — and thus a specific command. It would build the defenses for military computers and communications systems and — the part the Pentagon is reluctant to discuss — develop and deploy cyberweapons.
In fact, that effort is already under way — it is part of what the National Cyber Range is all about. The range is a replica of the Internet of the future, and it is being built to be attacked. Competing teams of contractors — including BAE Systems, the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University and Sparta Inc. — are vying to build the Pentagon a system it can use to simulate attacks. The National Security Agency already has a smaller version of a similar system, in Millersville, Md.
In short, the Cyber Range is to the digital age what the Bikini Atoll — the islands the Army vaporized in the 1950s to measure the power of the hydrogen bomb — was to the nuclear age. But once the tests at Bikini Atoll demonstrated to the world the awesome destructive power of the bomb, it became evident to the United States and the Soviet Union — and other nuclear powers — that the risks of a nuclear exchange were simply too high. In the case of cyberattacks, where the results can vary from the annoying to the devastating, there are no such rules.
The Deterrence Conundrum
During the cold war, if a strategic missile had been fired at the United States, screens deep in a mountain in Colorado would have lighted up and American commanders would have some time to decide whether to launch a counterattack. Today, when Pentagon computers are subjected to a barrage, the origin is often a mystery. Absent certainty about the source, it is almost impossible to mount a counterattack.
In the rare case where the preparations for an attack are detected in a foreign computer system, there is continuing debate about whether to embrace the concept of pre-emption, with all of its Bush-era connotations. The questions range from whether an online attack should be mounted on that system to, in an extreme case, blowing those computers up.
Some officials argue that if the United States engaged in such pre-emption — and demonstrated that it was watching the development of hostile cyberweapons — it could begin to deter some attacks. Others believe it will only justify pre-emptive attacks on the United States. “Russia and China have lots of nationalistic hackers,” one senior military officer said. “They seem very, very willing to take action on their own.”
Senior Pentagon and military officials also express deep concern that the laws and understanding of armed conflict have not kept current with the challenges of offensive cyberwarfare.
Over the decades, a number of limits on action have been accepted — if not always practiced. One is the prohibition against assassinating government leaders. Another is avoiding attacks aimed at civilians. Yet in the cyberworld, where the most vulnerable targets are civilian, there are no such rules or understandings. If a military base is attacked, would it be a proportional, legitimate response to bring down the attacker’s power grid if that would also shut down its hospital systems, its air traffic control system or its banking system?
“We don’t have that for cyber yet,” one senior Defense Department official said, “and that’s a little bit dangerous.”
Obama Is Nudging Views on Race, a Survey Finds
Obama Is Nudging Views on Race, a Survey Finds
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARJORIE CONNELLY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/politics/28poll.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Barack Obama’s presidency seems to be altering the public perception of race relations in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good, and the percentage of blacks who say so has doubled since last July, according to the latest New York Times/ CBS News poll.
Despite that, half of blacks still say whites have a better chance of getting ahead in American society, the poll found. Black Americans remain among the president’s staunchest supporters; 70 percent of black respondents now say the country is headed in the right direction, compared with 34 percent of whites.
The poll found broad support for Mr. Obama’s approach on a variety of issues, including one of the most contentious: whether Congress should investigate the harsh interrogation tactics authorized by George W. Bush. Sixty-two percent of Americans share Mr. Obama’s view that hearings are unnecessary.
Americans seem to have high hopes for the president; 72 percent said they were optimistic about the next four years. By and large, Americans expect him to make significant progress in health care, energy and immigration policy, issues central to his ambitious domestic agenda.
But the optimism is tempered by a feeling of resignation about two of the most difficult challenges he faces: reviving the economy and ending United States military involvement in Iraq. Most Americans say Mr. Obama has begun to make progress on both fronts, but many do not expect either the recession or the war to be over by the end of his term.
It is not unusual for new presidents to enjoy substantial public support at this point in their tenure. But Mr. Obama’s 68 percent job approval rating is higher than that of any recent president at the 100-day mark. Mr. Bush had the approval of 56 percent of the public at this juncture.
But while Americans clearly have faith in Mr. Obama, the poll revealed something of a disconnect between what the public thinks the president has already accomplished and what it expects him to achieve.
Fewer than half of those surveyed, 48 percent, said Mr. Obama had begun to make progress on one of his major campaign promises, changing the way business is conducted in Washington. And just 39 percent said he had begun to make progress on another major promise, cutting taxes for middle-class Americans, even though the stimulus bill he signed into law does include a middle class tax cut.
Mr. Obama will mark his 100th day in office on Wednesday with a trip to St. Louis and a prime time news conference, where aides say he will make the case that he has made “a down payment” on fixing the nation’s biggest problems. The poll found that Americans seem to share that view, suggesting the White House has been effective at casting Mr. Obama as an agent of change, while persuading the public that change will take time.
“With all Obama wants to do and all he’s got going, it’s going to take more than four years,” said Larry Gibbons, 58, a retired restaurant manager and a Republican in Phoenix who voted for Mr. Obama’s opponent, John McCain. Speaking in a follow-up interview to the poll, he said, “Obama is attacking everything at once and I do approve of that.”
Throughout Mr. Obama’s candidacy and his young presidency, race has been a subtle thread woven through his message of change. Yet the president shies away from talking about it. In response to a question at his last news conference, Mr. Obama conceded that his election had created ‘’justifiable pride on the part of the country,” then quickly shifted gears, adding, “That lasted about a day.”
But Americans do feel differently about race and race relations with Mr. Obama in the White House, according to poll respondents who spoke in follow-up interviews. Some, like Jacqueline Luster, 60, a retired bank employee in Macedonia, Ohio, say that the times are changing, and that Mr. Obama seems to be speeding that change.
“With him as president, people seem to be working together toward the same goals, and that has helped race relations,” said Ms. Luster, who is black and a Democrat. “Before there was more of a separation, blacks working for black goals and whites for white goals. Obama has helped change the perception of blacks in a positive way, but it’s also the times.”
Another Democrat, Lisa Fleming, 49, who is white, said that even in the small Illinois town, Potomac, where she lived, she noticed “people of different races being kinder to each other” since Mr. Obama’s election. In Kansas City, a white Republican homemaker, Mary Robertson, 78, said Mr. Obama’s ‘’openness and acceptance have helped others be more open and accepting.”
The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday with 973 adults. For purposes of analysis, blacks were oversampled in this poll, for a total of 212, and then weighted back to their proper proportion in the poll, based on the census. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all people, and plus or minus seven points for blacks.
After nearly 100 days of watching Mr. Obama conduct the affairs of state, more than two-thirds of Americans say he is not a typical politician, though most say he is set apart more by his style and his personal qualities than his policies.
For instance, the poll found that the public appears divided over whether the Obama administration has broken with the Bush administration in its overall foreign policy. Forty-three percent of respondents said there had been some change in foreign policy since Mr. Obama took office, the poll found, while 44 percent said there had been no change. Thirteen percent did not have an opinion.
Yet the public does give Mr. Obama credit for improving the image of the United States with the rest of the world. And it found support for Mr. Obama’s overtures to Iran and Cuba; a majority, 53 percent, said they favored establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, while two-thirds favored Mr. Obama’s plans to thaw relations with Cuba.
Megan Thee-Brenan, Marina Stefan and Dalia Sussman contributed reporting.
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARJORIE CONNELLY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/politics/28poll.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Barack Obama’s presidency seems to be altering the public perception of race relations in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good, and the percentage of blacks who say so has doubled since last July, according to the latest New York Times/ CBS News poll.
Despite that, half of blacks still say whites have a better chance of getting ahead in American society, the poll found. Black Americans remain among the president’s staunchest supporters; 70 percent of black respondents now say the country is headed in the right direction, compared with 34 percent of whites.
The poll found broad support for Mr. Obama’s approach on a variety of issues, including one of the most contentious: whether Congress should investigate the harsh interrogation tactics authorized by George W. Bush. Sixty-two percent of Americans share Mr. Obama’s view that hearings are unnecessary.
Americans seem to have high hopes for the president; 72 percent said they were optimistic about the next four years. By and large, Americans expect him to make significant progress in health care, energy and immigration policy, issues central to his ambitious domestic agenda.
But the optimism is tempered by a feeling of resignation about two of the most difficult challenges he faces: reviving the economy and ending United States military involvement in Iraq. Most Americans say Mr. Obama has begun to make progress on both fronts, but many do not expect either the recession or the war to be over by the end of his term.
It is not unusual for new presidents to enjoy substantial public support at this point in their tenure. But Mr. Obama’s 68 percent job approval rating is higher than that of any recent president at the 100-day mark. Mr. Bush had the approval of 56 percent of the public at this juncture.
But while Americans clearly have faith in Mr. Obama, the poll revealed something of a disconnect between what the public thinks the president has already accomplished and what it expects him to achieve.
Fewer than half of those surveyed, 48 percent, said Mr. Obama had begun to make progress on one of his major campaign promises, changing the way business is conducted in Washington. And just 39 percent said he had begun to make progress on another major promise, cutting taxes for middle-class Americans, even though the stimulus bill he signed into law does include a middle class tax cut.
Mr. Obama will mark his 100th day in office on Wednesday with a trip to St. Louis and a prime time news conference, where aides say he will make the case that he has made “a down payment” on fixing the nation’s biggest problems. The poll found that Americans seem to share that view, suggesting the White House has been effective at casting Mr. Obama as an agent of change, while persuading the public that change will take time.
“With all Obama wants to do and all he’s got going, it’s going to take more than four years,” said Larry Gibbons, 58, a retired restaurant manager and a Republican in Phoenix who voted for Mr. Obama’s opponent, John McCain. Speaking in a follow-up interview to the poll, he said, “Obama is attacking everything at once and I do approve of that.”
Throughout Mr. Obama’s candidacy and his young presidency, race has been a subtle thread woven through his message of change. Yet the president shies away from talking about it. In response to a question at his last news conference, Mr. Obama conceded that his election had created ‘’justifiable pride on the part of the country,” then quickly shifted gears, adding, “That lasted about a day.”
But Americans do feel differently about race and race relations with Mr. Obama in the White House, according to poll respondents who spoke in follow-up interviews. Some, like Jacqueline Luster, 60, a retired bank employee in Macedonia, Ohio, say that the times are changing, and that Mr. Obama seems to be speeding that change.
“With him as president, people seem to be working together toward the same goals, and that has helped race relations,” said Ms. Luster, who is black and a Democrat. “Before there was more of a separation, blacks working for black goals and whites for white goals. Obama has helped change the perception of blacks in a positive way, but it’s also the times.”
Another Democrat, Lisa Fleming, 49, who is white, said that even in the small Illinois town, Potomac, where she lived, she noticed “people of different races being kinder to each other” since Mr. Obama’s election. In Kansas City, a white Republican homemaker, Mary Robertson, 78, said Mr. Obama’s ‘’openness and acceptance have helped others be more open and accepting.”
The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday with 973 adults. For purposes of analysis, blacks were oversampled in this poll, for a total of 212, and then weighted back to their proper proportion in the poll, based on the census. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all people, and plus or minus seven points for blacks.
After nearly 100 days of watching Mr. Obama conduct the affairs of state, more than two-thirds of Americans say he is not a typical politician, though most say he is set apart more by his style and his personal qualities than his policies.
For instance, the poll found that the public appears divided over whether the Obama administration has broken with the Bush administration in its overall foreign policy. Forty-three percent of respondents said there had been some change in foreign policy since Mr. Obama took office, the poll found, while 44 percent said there had been no change. Thirteen percent did not have an opinion.
Yet the public does give Mr. Obama credit for improving the image of the United States with the rest of the world. And it found support for Mr. Obama’s overtures to Iran and Cuba; a majority, 53 percent, said they favored establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, while two-thirds favored Mr. Obama’s plans to thaw relations with Cuba.
Megan Thee-Brenan, Marina Stefan and Dalia Sussman contributed reporting.
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Prosecuting torture
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Prosecuting torture
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 20:28 | Last updated: April 27 2009 20:28
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8a2aa08-3360-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
Hard though it is to believe, Barack Obama may be facing an issue with bigger consequences for the US than any already on his desk: whether officials from the previous administration – perhaps up to and including George W. Bush – should be prosecuted for violating domestic and international laws on torture.
This debate began in earnest when Mr Obama agreed to release “torture memos” written by Bush administration officials. Mr Obama had hoped to draw a line under the issue. The effect was the opposite. In the fight that has broken out the stakes are huge.
One point is clear and must be underlined. Brutal methods of interrogation such as waterboarding are, in the ordinary meaning of the word, torture. No civilised country should deem their use lawful.
The view that torture might save lives in “ticking bomb” situations cannot be dismissed, but this benefit – such as it is, since torture yields more false information than true actionable intelligence – is far outweighed by the costs. For every captive tortured by the US, thousands of new terrorists come forward and millions of people are strengthened in their hatred of the US and its aims. Even so, the question of legal action against members of the former administration is hard. Prosecutions would affirm the rule of law and the country’s determination that such lapses from wisdom and morality should never recur. Put that way, it seems open and shut. But US law on waterboarding is not as clear as it should be. Congress could have banned the method explicitly but did not. Successful prosecutions are possible but by no means guaranteed.
Let the law take its course, many argue, and see what happens. But bear in mind that US reverence for the law can sometimes be a trap. The country looks reflexively to the courts to settle its bitterest disputes. When the law is mixed with vicious partisan politics, as in this case, the results can be terrible. The law took its course in the Monica Lewinsky scandal during the Clinton administration. That set the country at war with itself, and in the end regard for the law was the principal victim.
Worse could happen this time. Many Americans would see prosecutions as partisan; their loudest advocates do seem driven more by loathing of the Bush administration than zeal for justice. Rather than building a consensus against torture, which is the real prize, prosecutions might militate against it. Mr Obama may now be unable to halt the process. Before choosing not to try, he should think hard about where it might lead.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 20:28 | Last updated: April 27 2009 20:28
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8a2aa08-3360-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
Hard though it is to believe, Barack Obama may be facing an issue with bigger consequences for the US than any already on his desk: whether officials from the previous administration – perhaps up to and including George W. Bush – should be prosecuted for violating domestic and international laws on torture.
This debate began in earnest when Mr Obama agreed to release “torture memos” written by Bush administration officials. Mr Obama had hoped to draw a line under the issue. The effect was the opposite. In the fight that has broken out the stakes are huge.
One point is clear and must be underlined. Brutal methods of interrogation such as waterboarding are, in the ordinary meaning of the word, torture. No civilised country should deem their use lawful.
The view that torture might save lives in “ticking bomb” situations cannot be dismissed, but this benefit – such as it is, since torture yields more false information than true actionable intelligence – is far outweighed by the costs. For every captive tortured by the US, thousands of new terrorists come forward and millions of people are strengthened in their hatred of the US and its aims. Even so, the question of legal action against members of the former administration is hard. Prosecutions would affirm the rule of law and the country’s determination that such lapses from wisdom and morality should never recur. Put that way, it seems open and shut. But US law on waterboarding is not as clear as it should be. Congress could have banned the method explicitly but did not. Successful prosecutions are possible but by no means guaranteed.
Let the law take its course, many argue, and see what happens. But bear in mind that US reverence for the law can sometimes be a trap. The country looks reflexively to the courts to settle its bitterest disputes. When the law is mixed with vicious partisan politics, as in this case, the results can be terrible. The law took its course in the Monica Lewinsky scandal during the Clinton administration. That set the country at war with itself, and in the end regard for the law was the principal victim.
Worse could happen this time. Many Americans would see prosecutions as partisan; their loudest advocates do seem driven more by loathing of the Bush administration than zeal for justice. Rather than building a consensus against torture, which is the real prize, prosecutions might militate against it. Mr Obama may now be unable to halt the process. Before choosing not to try, he should think hard about where it might lead.
Deutsche Bank back in black
Deutsche Bank back in black
By James Wilson in Frankfurt
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 07:51 | Last updated: April 28 2009 13:30
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a0a53386-33bf-11de-83af-00144feabdc0.html
Deutsche Bank on Tuesday said it had bounced back into profit in the first three months of the year, following many of its global investment banking rivals in taking advantage of a sharp upturn in conditions after a disastrous last quarter of 2008.
Better trading for many of Deutsche’s most important debt businesses helped it lift net income to €1.2bn ($1.5bn), which was above analysts’ expectations and compares with a net loss of €141m in the same period of 2008. In the prior quarter – when Deutsche’s trading positions went badly wrong in the wake of Lehman Brothers’ collapse – the bank lost €4.8bn.
Pre-tax return on equity was 25 per cent, the bank said – once again meeting its pre-crisis target.
Josef Ackermann, chief executive, said there were still “challenges, but also opportunities, in our business environment” and said Deutsche had the “strategic autonomy to act”. Deutsche is one of the few banks that has not had direct government help during the financial crisis.
The results were announced hours after Germany’s largest bank said Mr Ackermann would stay on as chief executive for a further three years, until 2013.
“This was a key quarter for Deutsche Bank,” said Mr Ackermann. “Once again we demonstrated our strength, as we have consistently throughout this crisis. But in this quarter, we also proved our earnings power.”
Deutsche’s corporate and investment bank division – source of most of its profits during banking’s boom years – saw net revenues rise to €4.9bn compared with €1.5bn in the first quarter of 2008. However, revenues fell from €2.5bn to €1.9bn for Deutsche’s private client and asset management businesses
As expected, the overall better performance was helped by foreign exchange, money market and interest rate trading, although equity trading revenues fell. Origination revenues rose because of the non-recurrence of leveraged loan writedowns and the buoyant first quarter market for investment grade debt issuance.
Deutsche still announced writedowns of €1bn for the quarter, most of it in provisions related to monoline insurers. The first quarter of last year produced €1.4bn of writedowns. Revenues after the writedowns were €7.2bn. This figure also excludes a €500m impairment that recognises Deutsche’s investment in the Cosmopolitan, a Las Vegas resort and casino scheme that went into foreclosure last year.
Provisions for credit losses were €526m compared with €114m in the first quarter of 2008.
Shares in Deutsche Bank were €2.91 or 6.7 per cent lower at €40.35 in afternoon Frankfurt trading.
Mr Ackermann said Deutsche would “seize opportunities to strengthen our platform... in the first quarter we made substantial progress in implementing these strategies.” The bank has been aggressive in hiring staff from other banks.
Deutsche’s tier 1 capital ratio, a key measure of balance sheet, improved slightly to 10.2 per cent and therefore remained above its 10 per cent target. Excluding so-called “hybrid” capital, the ratio is 7.1 per cent.
By James Wilson in Frankfurt
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 07:51 | Last updated: April 28 2009 13:30
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a0a53386-33bf-11de-83af-00144feabdc0.html
Deutsche Bank on Tuesday said it had bounced back into profit in the first three months of the year, following many of its global investment banking rivals in taking advantage of a sharp upturn in conditions after a disastrous last quarter of 2008.
Better trading for many of Deutsche’s most important debt businesses helped it lift net income to €1.2bn ($1.5bn), which was above analysts’ expectations and compares with a net loss of €141m in the same period of 2008. In the prior quarter – when Deutsche’s trading positions went badly wrong in the wake of Lehman Brothers’ collapse – the bank lost €4.8bn.
Pre-tax return on equity was 25 per cent, the bank said – once again meeting its pre-crisis target.
Josef Ackermann, chief executive, said there were still “challenges, but also opportunities, in our business environment” and said Deutsche had the “strategic autonomy to act”. Deutsche is one of the few banks that has not had direct government help during the financial crisis.
The results were announced hours after Germany’s largest bank said Mr Ackermann would stay on as chief executive for a further three years, until 2013.
“This was a key quarter for Deutsche Bank,” said Mr Ackermann. “Once again we demonstrated our strength, as we have consistently throughout this crisis. But in this quarter, we also proved our earnings power.”
Deutsche’s corporate and investment bank division – source of most of its profits during banking’s boom years – saw net revenues rise to €4.9bn compared with €1.5bn in the first quarter of 2008. However, revenues fell from €2.5bn to €1.9bn for Deutsche’s private client and asset management businesses
As expected, the overall better performance was helped by foreign exchange, money market and interest rate trading, although equity trading revenues fell. Origination revenues rose because of the non-recurrence of leveraged loan writedowns and the buoyant first quarter market for investment grade debt issuance.
Deutsche still announced writedowns of €1bn for the quarter, most of it in provisions related to monoline insurers. The first quarter of last year produced €1.4bn of writedowns. Revenues after the writedowns were €7.2bn. This figure also excludes a €500m impairment that recognises Deutsche’s investment in the Cosmopolitan, a Las Vegas resort and casino scheme that went into foreclosure last year.
Provisions for credit losses were €526m compared with €114m in the first quarter of 2008.
Shares in Deutsche Bank were €2.91 or 6.7 per cent lower at €40.35 in afternoon Frankfurt trading.
Mr Ackermann said Deutsche would “seize opportunities to strengthen our platform... in the first quarter we made substantial progress in implementing these strategies.” The bank has been aggressive in hiring staff from other banks.
Deutsche’s tier 1 capital ratio, a key measure of balance sheet, improved slightly to 10.2 per cent and therefore remained above its 10 per cent target. Excluding so-called “hybrid” capital, the ratio is 7.1 per cent.
Money market rates continue to fall
Money market rates continue to fall
By David Oakley, Capital Markets Correspondent
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 15:14 | Last updated: April 28 2009 17:05
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af0243c8-33fc-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
Money market rates have fallen sharply since the start of April, amid increasing signs that banks are starting to lend to each other.
Three-month sterling interbank rates fell for a 44th consecutive day on Tuesday, while US dollar rates fell for the 22nd day in a row and euro rates dropped for a fifth successive day.
The sharp improvement in confidence comes as part of a broader rebound in the market place as risk appetite makes a tentative return, with equities up around 20 per cent since their lows of early March.
London interbank offered rates (Libor) rates have been helped lower by the Bank of England and European Central Bank cutting base rates to historic lows in the past two months.
The fall is important as Libor rates are used as a reference to price billions of dollars of mortgages, loans and corporate bonds.
Significantly, the three-month euro and dollar Libor spreads over market overnight interest rates – considered a pure measure of credit risk – have fallen to their lowest levels since Lehman Brothers collapsed in September.
Don Smith, economist at inter-dealer broker Icap, said: “Conditions are improving with some signs of confidence coming back to the market.
“As Libor rates have ground steadily lower, more banks have shown a willingness to lend, particularly the European banks.
“The increase in activity has been since the start of the month after a very grim late February and March, when things looked pretty dire,” he said
John Ewan, director at the British Bankers’ Association, which sets Libor rates by calculating the average cost of funding from leading banks, said: “The continued easing of the rates demonstrates that liquidity is returning to the wholesale markets.”
However, Mr Smith cautioned against becoming too optimistic.
“We have to remember, we are still nowhere near back to the strength of activity we saw before the credit crisis. It is still a desert for unsecured lending beyond three months.”
Meyrick Chapman, fixed income strategist at UBS, added: ”Falling Libor rates are a good thing as they are used as a reference rate for loans and other products, but I don’t think it tells us much about the cost of funds for banks beyond three months.”
As there is so little lending beyond three months, Libor rates for six months and one-year are considered “meaningless” by some bankers.
One strategist said: “There is no point looking at Libor rates further out as there is hardly any activity. It means the banks just make up Libor rates at six months or a year.”
Sterling Libor for three-month money fixed at 1.465 per cent on Tuesday, at 1.039 per cent for the dollar and 1.378 per cent for the euro. On April 1 the respective figures were 1.625 per cent, 1.176 per cent and 1.498 per cent
The BBA sets rates for sterling, dollar and the euro by calculating an average rate from daily quotes passed on to them by 16 leading banks.
By David Oakley, Capital Markets Correspondent
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 15:14 | Last updated: April 28 2009 17:05
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af0243c8-33fc-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
Money market rates have fallen sharply since the start of April, amid increasing signs that banks are starting to lend to each other.
Three-month sterling interbank rates fell for a 44th consecutive day on Tuesday, while US dollar rates fell for the 22nd day in a row and euro rates dropped for a fifth successive day.
The sharp improvement in confidence comes as part of a broader rebound in the market place as risk appetite makes a tentative return, with equities up around 20 per cent since their lows of early March.
London interbank offered rates (Libor) rates have been helped lower by the Bank of England and European Central Bank cutting base rates to historic lows in the past two months.
The fall is important as Libor rates are used as a reference to price billions of dollars of mortgages, loans and corporate bonds.
Significantly, the three-month euro and dollar Libor spreads over market overnight interest rates – considered a pure measure of credit risk – have fallen to their lowest levels since Lehman Brothers collapsed in September.
Don Smith, economist at inter-dealer broker Icap, said: “Conditions are improving with some signs of confidence coming back to the market.
“As Libor rates have ground steadily lower, more banks have shown a willingness to lend, particularly the European banks.
“The increase in activity has been since the start of the month after a very grim late February and March, when things looked pretty dire,” he said
John Ewan, director at the British Bankers’ Association, which sets Libor rates by calculating the average cost of funding from leading banks, said: “The continued easing of the rates demonstrates that liquidity is returning to the wholesale markets.”
However, Mr Smith cautioned against becoming too optimistic.
“We have to remember, we are still nowhere near back to the strength of activity we saw before the credit crisis. It is still a desert for unsecured lending beyond three months.”
Meyrick Chapman, fixed income strategist at UBS, added: ”Falling Libor rates are a good thing as they are used as a reference rate for loans and other products, but I don’t think it tells us much about the cost of funds for banks beyond three months.”
As there is so little lending beyond three months, Libor rates for six months and one-year are considered “meaningless” by some bankers.
One strategist said: “There is no point looking at Libor rates further out as there is hardly any activity. It means the banks just make up Libor rates at six months or a year.”
Sterling Libor for three-month money fixed at 1.465 per cent on Tuesday, at 1.039 per cent for the dollar and 1.378 per cent for the euro. On April 1 the respective figures were 1.625 per cent, 1.176 per cent and 1.498 per cent
The BBA sets rates for sterling, dollar and the euro by calculating an average rate from daily quotes passed on to them by 16 leading banks.
Chrysler’s lenders agree to debt swap/Union poised to own 55% of Chrysler
Chrysler’s lenders agree to debt swap
By Tom Braithwaite in Washington and John Reed in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 16:26 | Last updated: April 28 2009 17:57
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8f8b2730-3406-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
Chrysler, the failing US carmaker, moved towards viability on Tuesday after the Obama administration’s auto task force extracted deep concessions from holders of its $6.9bn debt.
The four principal lenders, holders of about 70 per cent of the debt, agreed that it should be swapped for $2bn in cash, paving the way for a new Chrysler, with much reduced debt and costs and part-owned by Fiat, the Italian carmaker.
Two Fiat executives told the Financial Times on Tuesday that they expected the Italian carmaker to sign a partnership with Chrysler on April 30, the US government’s deadline to agree on a restructuring deal with the union and creditors and agree an alliance with Fiat. A separate person familiar with the talks said he was “cautiously optimistic” that a deal would be agreed with Fiat.
But bankruptcy remains an option for the company, with the aim of forcing agreement from any smaller banks and hedge funds resistant to the debt alleviation, which was agreed with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Bankruptcy could also be used to shed other liabilities, such as cutting dealer networks.
”The agreement from Chrysler’s principal banks is an exceptional accomplishment in line with the president’s firm commitment that all stakeholders sacrifice to make this deal succeed,” said an administration official.
A majority equity stake in Chrysler will be held by the United Auto Workers union and a separate employee healthcare trust. Fiat will own up to 35 per cent of the company, with the US government potentially owning a minority stake, according to a union document sent to workers.
People familiar with the talks said there were implications from the Chrysler deal for talks with General Motors and its debtholders and workers, although they said there was little chance of a better offer to bondholders than this week’s offer of 10 per cent of the new company’s equity in return for cancelling $27bn in debt.
One person familiar with the talks said there was “no tilt or slant to any one stakeholder” but said: “Banks are an important part of this company but they are not going to be ongoing participants or stakeholders.”
“We need workers to come to work every day and if we try to impose a set of arrangements on the UAW or any other group of workers at any company in a reorganisation that the workers view as unacceptable or unsatisfactory they have a very clear alternative which is to say ‘we’re not coming to work anymore’.”
The GM talks will soon step up a gear when Chrysler’s fate is decided this week. GM has a later May 30 deadline to reach a deal.
Union poised to own 55% of Chrysler
By John Reed in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 18:27 | Last updated: April 28 2009 18:27
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/be80a37c-3419-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
The United Auto Workers’ union will own 55 per cent of Chrysler and Italy’s Fiat will eventually own 35 per cent of the carmaker after a balance sheet restructuring, with remaining stock split between Chrysler’s secured lenders and the US federal government, according to a UAW document sent to members on Tuesday.
This came amid some signs that the ailing US carmaker, Fiat, the unions, and Chrysler’s creditors were inching toward agreements that would allow the US’s smallest domestic carmaker to avoid a bankruptcy filing ahead of a Thursday deadline.
The UAW document, which outlines modifications to the union’s 2007 labour contract with Chrysler and an addendum to its healthcare agreement, said Fiat’s investment in the carmaker’s operations and new US jobs would exceed $8bn.
Two Fiat executives told the Financial Times on Tuesday that they expected the Italian carmaker to sign a partnership with Chrysler on April 30, the US government’s deadline to agree on a restructuring deal with the union and creditors and agree an alliance with Fiat.
The Italian group has said that it will invest know-how and equipment, but no cash into its partnership with Chrysler. Bob Nardelli, the US carmaker’s chief executive, said in a video presentation last month that the technology to be provided by Fiat was worth $8bn to $10bn.
The UAW agreement was approved by the union’s leadership on Monday and sent for ratification on Tuesday to the union’s local representatives, where it must secure majority approval.
Under the agreement, Chrysler would cut by half its contribution to the employee healthcare fund to contributing a note with a principal amount of $4.587bn.
The UAW’s healthcare fund would have the right to name a member of Chrysler’s board and receive 55 per cent of shares in the transformed company.
A US Treasury-led task force overseeing the restructuring of Chrysler and General Motors is still working to close differences with holders of Chrysler’s $6.9bn first-lien debt, led by JP Morgan, to swap most of their loans for equity in Chrysler.
On Monday evening Germany’s Daimler, Chrysler and private equity group Cerberus – the carmaker’s majority owners – announced a deal that would see Daimler dispose of its 19.9 per cent shareholding and pay $600m into Chrysler’s pension plans over the next three years.
Daimler also agreed to forgive repayment of previous loans extended to Chrysler, and said the payments – to be made in 2009 to 2011, would have a $700m impact on its second-quarter earnings.
Referring to the agreement with the German group in an email to Chrysler employees sent on Tuesday morning, Mr Nardelli said: “This agreement facilitates our proposed alliance with Fiat and represents another step on our road to meeting US government requirements by the April 30 deadline.”
By Tom Braithwaite in Washington and John Reed in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 16:26 | Last updated: April 28 2009 17:57
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8f8b2730-3406-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
Chrysler, the failing US carmaker, moved towards viability on Tuesday after the Obama administration’s auto task force extracted deep concessions from holders of its $6.9bn debt.
The four principal lenders, holders of about 70 per cent of the debt, agreed that it should be swapped for $2bn in cash, paving the way for a new Chrysler, with much reduced debt and costs and part-owned by Fiat, the Italian carmaker.
Two Fiat executives told the Financial Times on Tuesday that they expected the Italian carmaker to sign a partnership with Chrysler on April 30, the US government’s deadline to agree on a restructuring deal with the union and creditors and agree an alliance with Fiat. A separate person familiar with the talks said he was “cautiously optimistic” that a deal would be agreed with Fiat.
But bankruptcy remains an option for the company, with the aim of forcing agreement from any smaller banks and hedge funds resistant to the debt alleviation, which was agreed with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Bankruptcy could also be used to shed other liabilities, such as cutting dealer networks.
”The agreement from Chrysler’s principal banks is an exceptional accomplishment in line with the president’s firm commitment that all stakeholders sacrifice to make this deal succeed,” said an administration official.
A majority equity stake in Chrysler will be held by the United Auto Workers union and a separate employee healthcare trust. Fiat will own up to 35 per cent of the company, with the US government potentially owning a minority stake, according to a union document sent to workers.
People familiar with the talks said there were implications from the Chrysler deal for talks with General Motors and its debtholders and workers, although they said there was little chance of a better offer to bondholders than this week’s offer of 10 per cent of the new company’s equity in return for cancelling $27bn in debt.
One person familiar with the talks said there was “no tilt or slant to any one stakeholder” but said: “Banks are an important part of this company but they are not going to be ongoing participants or stakeholders.”
“We need workers to come to work every day and if we try to impose a set of arrangements on the UAW or any other group of workers at any company in a reorganisation that the workers view as unacceptable or unsatisfactory they have a very clear alternative which is to say ‘we’re not coming to work anymore’.”
The GM talks will soon step up a gear when Chrysler’s fate is decided this week. GM has a later May 30 deadline to reach a deal.
Union poised to own 55% of Chrysler
By John Reed in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 18:27 | Last updated: April 28 2009 18:27
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/be80a37c-3419-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
The United Auto Workers’ union will own 55 per cent of Chrysler and Italy’s Fiat will eventually own 35 per cent of the carmaker after a balance sheet restructuring, with remaining stock split between Chrysler’s secured lenders and the US federal government, according to a UAW document sent to members on Tuesday.
This came amid some signs that the ailing US carmaker, Fiat, the unions, and Chrysler’s creditors were inching toward agreements that would allow the US’s smallest domestic carmaker to avoid a bankruptcy filing ahead of a Thursday deadline.
The UAW document, which outlines modifications to the union’s 2007 labour contract with Chrysler and an addendum to its healthcare agreement, said Fiat’s investment in the carmaker’s operations and new US jobs would exceed $8bn.
Two Fiat executives told the Financial Times on Tuesday that they expected the Italian carmaker to sign a partnership with Chrysler on April 30, the US government’s deadline to agree on a restructuring deal with the union and creditors and agree an alliance with Fiat.
The Italian group has said that it will invest know-how and equipment, but no cash into its partnership with Chrysler. Bob Nardelli, the US carmaker’s chief executive, said in a video presentation last month that the technology to be provided by Fiat was worth $8bn to $10bn.
The UAW agreement was approved by the union’s leadership on Monday and sent for ratification on Tuesday to the union’s local representatives, where it must secure majority approval.
Under the agreement, Chrysler would cut by half its contribution to the employee healthcare fund to contributing a note with a principal amount of $4.587bn.
The UAW’s healthcare fund would have the right to name a member of Chrysler’s board and receive 55 per cent of shares in the transformed company.
A US Treasury-led task force overseeing the restructuring of Chrysler and General Motors is still working to close differences with holders of Chrysler’s $6.9bn first-lien debt, led by JP Morgan, to swap most of their loans for equity in Chrysler.
On Monday evening Germany’s Daimler, Chrysler and private equity group Cerberus – the carmaker’s majority owners – announced a deal that would see Daimler dispose of its 19.9 per cent shareholding and pay $600m into Chrysler’s pension plans over the next three years.
Daimler also agreed to forgive repayment of previous loans extended to Chrysler, and said the payments – to be made in 2009 to 2011, would have a $700m impact on its second-quarter earnings.
Referring to the agreement with the German group in an email to Chrysler employees sent on Tuesday morning, Mr Nardelli said: “This agreement facilitates our proposed alliance with Fiat and represents another step on our road to meeting US government requirements by the April 30 deadline.”
Consumer confidence surges in April
Consumer confidence surges in April
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 14:38 | Last updated: April 28 2009 15:57
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/07b8662e-33ed-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
US consumer confidence jumped the most more than three years in April, as the recent stock market rally dispelled gloom about the economy, but house prices in the largest US cities tumbled further in February.
However, for the first time in 16 months house prices’ rate of decline eased from the prior month offering a glimmer of hope that the stricken property market could be beginning to bottom out. The 18.6 per cent drop in house prices followed a 19 per cent year-on-year decline in January, a record, as prices fell steeply in a wide array of cities including Cleveland, Charlotte, New York and Washington, according to the closely watched Case-Shiller index, released on Tuesday.
Separately on Tuesday US consumer confidence jumped the most since 2005 this month, as the recent stock market rally lifted spirits. Combined the results add to the case that the US economy could be digging itself out of the worst recession since the Great Depression
The cities facing the sharpest February home price declines were Phoenix, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
February was the 30th consecutive month that the index, published by Standard and Poor’s, declined. However it was the first time since October 2007 that the index of the 20 biggest US cities did not report record annual price drops. Although prices in all the cities continued to fall, Dallas, Denver and Boston performed relatively well.
“While the declines in residential real estate continued into February, we witnessed some deceleration in the rate of decline in some of the markets,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of Standard and Poor’s index committee. “We will certainly need a few more months of data before we can determine if home prices are finally turning around.”
Tuesday’s figures were slightly better than economists expected, but analysts warn that home prices in the US remain severely depressed.
According to Case-Shiller, prices in the 10 largest and 20 largest US cities have plunged by 31.6 per and 30.7 per cent, respectively, from their peak in 2006. Economists at High Frequency Economics note that housing wealth in February fell by $340bn, an annual decline of 18.4 per cent.
“If it is a green shoot, it is one growing out of the floor board of a home, where prices have collapsed by so much and at such pace, that prices surely could not keep up the sheer speed of descent,” said Alan Ruskin, strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital.
Consumer confidence, however, reversed its recent descent in April. The Conference Board said on Tuesday that consumers are starting to feel better about the economy, with its index exceeding the most optimistic predictions and rising to 39.2 from 26.9 the prior month. The rise was fuelled by a dramatically improved short-term outlook and less pessimism about unemployment.
“Confidence is presumably being supported by the recent 20 per cent rise in the stockmarket and signs that conditions have stabilised from the chaos of the end of last year,” said Paul Dales, US economist at Capital Economics.
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 28 2009 14:38 | Last updated: April 28 2009 15:57
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/07b8662e-33ed-11de-9eea-00144feabdc0.html
US consumer confidence jumped the most more than three years in April, as the recent stock market rally dispelled gloom about the economy, but house prices in the largest US cities tumbled further in February.
However, for the first time in 16 months house prices’ rate of decline eased from the prior month offering a glimmer of hope that the stricken property market could be beginning to bottom out. The 18.6 per cent drop in house prices followed a 19 per cent year-on-year decline in January, a record, as prices fell steeply in a wide array of cities including Cleveland, Charlotte, New York and Washington, according to the closely watched Case-Shiller index, released on Tuesday.
Separately on Tuesday US consumer confidence jumped the most since 2005 this month, as the recent stock market rally lifted spirits. Combined the results add to the case that the US economy could be digging itself out of the worst recession since the Great Depression
The cities facing the sharpest February home price declines were Phoenix, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
February was the 30th consecutive month that the index, published by Standard and Poor’s, declined. However it was the first time since October 2007 that the index of the 20 biggest US cities did not report record annual price drops. Although prices in all the cities continued to fall, Dallas, Denver and Boston performed relatively well.
“While the declines in residential real estate continued into February, we witnessed some deceleration in the rate of decline in some of the markets,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of Standard and Poor’s index committee. “We will certainly need a few more months of data before we can determine if home prices are finally turning around.”
Tuesday’s figures were slightly better than economists expected, but analysts warn that home prices in the US remain severely depressed.
According to Case-Shiller, prices in the 10 largest and 20 largest US cities have plunged by 31.6 per and 30.7 per cent, respectively, from their peak in 2006. Economists at High Frequency Economics note that housing wealth in February fell by $340bn, an annual decline of 18.4 per cent.
“If it is a green shoot, it is one growing out of the floor board of a home, where prices have collapsed by so much and at such pace, that prices surely could not keep up the sheer speed of descent,” said Alan Ruskin, strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital.
Consumer confidence, however, reversed its recent descent in April. The Conference Board said on Tuesday that consumers are starting to feel better about the economy, with its index exceeding the most optimistic predictions and rising to 39.2 from 26.9 the prior month. The rise was fuelled by a dramatically improved short-term outlook and less pessimism about unemployment.
“Confidence is presumably being supported by the recent 20 per cent rise in the stockmarket and signs that conditions have stabilised from the chaos of the end of last year,” said Paul Dales, US economist at Capital Economics.
Specter To Switch Parties
Specter To Switch Parties
By Carl Hulse
Copyright by The New York Times
April 28, 2009, 12:13 pm
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/specter-will-run-as-a-democrat-in-2010/?hp
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said on Tuesday he would switch to the Democratic party, presenting Democrats with a possible 60th vote and the power to break Senate filibusters as they try to advance the Obama administration’s new agenda.
In a statement issued about noon as the Capitol was digesting the stunning turn of events, Mr. Specter said he had concluded that his party had moved too far to the right, a fact demonstrated by the migration of 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans to the Democratic Party.
“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Mr. Specter said, acknowledging that his decision was certain to disappoint colleagues and supporters.
If Al Franken prevails in his ongoing court case in Minnesota and Mr. Specter begins caucusing with Democrats, Democrats would have 60 votes and the ability to deny Republicans the chance to stall legislation. Mr. Specter was one of only three Republicans to support President Obama’s economic recovery legislation.
The news shocked Senate Republicans, who had been hanging on to their ability to block legislation by a thread. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, called an emergency meeting of party leaders who had no forewarning of Mr. Specter’s plans.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Specter arrived for a vote shortly after noon with his wife, and said he would be lunching in the private Senate dining room rather than joining either of the weekly party policy lunches that were being held.
Democrats were jubilant about the development.
President Obama was handed a note from an aide at 10:25 a.m. on Tuesday during his daily economic briefing. The note, according to a senior administration official, said: “Specter is announcing he is changing parties.”
Seven minutes later, Mr. Obama reached Mr. Specter by telephone. In a brief conversation, the president said: “You have my full support,” according to the official who heard the phone call. The president added that we are, “thrilled to have you.”
“We will welcome him with open arms,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan.
Mr. Specter faced a primary challenge from former Republican Congressman Pat Toomey and polls showed him trailing Mr. Toomey. But he had previously resisted overtures to join the Democrats.
“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to
become Democrats,” Mr. Specter said in a statement released in the early afternoon. “I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”
He said he has experienced a change of heart since the response to his vote for the stimulus legislation.
“Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion,” his statement said. “It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”
Mr. Specter, who has a history of finding his own way in the Senate, said he would not be a guaranteed vote for Democratic initiatives and he declared that he would remain opposed to a top labor priority – legislation that would make it easier to unionize American workplaces.
“Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that sometimes party asks too much,” Mr. Specter said. “When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.”
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and a man with his own history of breaking with his party, expressed regret and said he had no indication that Mr. Specter would change parties. But Mr. McCain said he understood the reason for Mr. Specter’s shift: “It’s pretty obvious the polls show him well behind his primary opponent.”
Michael Steel, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, did not mince words about the senator, saying Mr. Specter “didn’t leave the G.O.P. based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record. Republicans look forward to beating Senator Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don’t do it first.”
But Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who also supported the Obama administration’s economic stimulus legislation, said Mr. Specter’s decision reflected the increasingly inhospitable climate in the Republican party for moderates.
“On the national level of the Republican Party, we haven’t certainly heard warm, encouraging words about how they view moderates, either you are with us or against us,” Ms. Snowe said. She said national Republican leaders were not grasping that “political diversity makes a party stronger and ultimately we are heading to having the smallest political tent in history for any political party the way things are unfolding.”
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, called the decision “a real problem.”
Mr. Specter, who has had serious health problems in recent years, remains active on a variety of major issues and has been a leading advocate for increased funding for health care research.
Democrats called the decision a game-changer. “It helps on everything,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. “This is a substantial change.”
Democrats said they made no promises to Mr. Specter about committee positions or other incentives to switch, but the party can provide significant campaign support and deter other Democratic candidates from running against him in the primary next year.
The turnabout was reminiscent of the decision in 2001 by Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont to leave the Republican party and become an independent, handing control of the Senate back to Democrats just as President George W. Bush’s first term was beginning. The Jeffords switch flipped party control but some Democrats said Mr. Specter’s move could be just as consequential given the Senate’s recent struggles with filibusters.
“Specter’s decision could be more consequential because it came just as the Senate was beginning work on health care reform,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “Specter’s decision is a big impact decision.”
Mr. Specter’s move to the Democratic column is likely to have a chilling effect on other potential Democratic candidates for the Senate. So far, Joseph Torsella, former head of the National Constitution Center and a former deputy mayor of Philadelphia, is the only Democrat to have declared his candidacy.
Others with higher name recognition seem to have been holding back to see how the field would shape up. Even before Mr. Specter announced his switch today, Representative Allyson Schwartz, a Democrat representing parts of Philadelphia and the nearby suburbs, had told The New York Times she was unlikely to make the run. Other possibilities, including Representatives Patrick Murphy and Joe Sestak, had also stayed mum.
Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, and Vice President Joseph Biden, both of them long-time friends of Mr. Specter, had urged him to switch parties several weeks ago but Mr. Specter declined. Mr. Rendell said in a recent interview that he had promised Mr. Specter that if he became a Democrat, he would help him raise money; Mr. Specter joked that if he became a Democrat, he wouldn’t need Mr. Rendell’s help on that front.
There had been speculation in Pennsylvania political circles that something was afoot because Mr. Torsella, a close colleague of Mr. Rendell, said little about Mr. Specter when he announced his candidacy.
But Mr. Specter put the kibosh on talk that he might leave the Republican Party and become either a Democrat or an independent, insisting, though without much evidence, that there was room in the Republican Party for moderates.
The move brings Mr. Specter full circle with his earlier political leanings. He was a registered Democrat when he first ran for district attorney of Philadelphia in the mid-1960s, though he ran on the Republican line.
By Carl Hulse
Copyright by The New York Times
April 28, 2009, 12:13 pm
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/specter-will-run-as-a-democrat-in-2010/?hp
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said on Tuesday he would switch to the Democratic party, presenting Democrats with a possible 60th vote and the power to break Senate filibusters as they try to advance the Obama administration’s new agenda.
In a statement issued about noon as the Capitol was digesting the stunning turn of events, Mr. Specter said he had concluded that his party had moved too far to the right, a fact demonstrated by the migration of 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans to the Democratic Party.
“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Mr. Specter said, acknowledging that his decision was certain to disappoint colleagues and supporters.
If Al Franken prevails in his ongoing court case in Minnesota and Mr. Specter begins caucusing with Democrats, Democrats would have 60 votes and the ability to deny Republicans the chance to stall legislation. Mr. Specter was one of only three Republicans to support President Obama’s economic recovery legislation.
The news shocked Senate Republicans, who had been hanging on to their ability to block legislation by a thread. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, called an emergency meeting of party leaders who had no forewarning of Mr. Specter’s plans.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Specter arrived for a vote shortly after noon with his wife, and said he would be lunching in the private Senate dining room rather than joining either of the weekly party policy lunches that were being held.
Democrats were jubilant about the development.
President Obama was handed a note from an aide at 10:25 a.m. on Tuesday during his daily economic briefing. The note, according to a senior administration official, said: “Specter is announcing he is changing parties.”
Seven minutes later, Mr. Obama reached Mr. Specter by telephone. In a brief conversation, the president said: “You have my full support,” according to the official who heard the phone call. The president added that we are, “thrilled to have you.”
“We will welcome him with open arms,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan.
Mr. Specter faced a primary challenge from former Republican Congressman Pat Toomey and polls showed him trailing Mr. Toomey. But he had previously resisted overtures to join the Democrats.
“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to
become Democrats,” Mr. Specter said in a statement released in the early afternoon. “I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”
He said he has experienced a change of heart since the response to his vote for the stimulus legislation.
“Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion,” his statement said. “It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”
Mr. Specter, who has a history of finding his own way in the Senate, said he would not be a guaranteed vote for Democratic initiatives and he declared that he would remain opposed to a top labor priority – legislation that would make it easier to unionize American workplaces.
“Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that sometimes party asks too much,” Mr. Specter said. “When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.”
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and a man with his own history of breaking with his party, expressed regret and said he had no indication that Mr. Specter would change parties. But Mr. McCain said he understood the reason for Mr. Specter’s shift: “It’s pretty obvious the polls show him well behind his primary opponent.”
Michael Steel, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, did not mince words about the senator, saying Mr. Specter “didn’t leave the G.O.P. based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record. Republicans look forward to beating Senator Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don’t do it first.”
But Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who also supported the Obama administration’s economic stimulus legislation, said Mr. Specter’s decision reflected the increasingly inhospitable climate in the Republican party for moderates.
“On the national level of the Republican Party, we haven’t certainly heard warm, encouraging words about how they view moderates, either you are with us or against us,” Ms. Snowe said. She said national Republican leaders were not grasping that “political diversity makes a party stronger and ultimately we are heading to having the smallest political tent in history for any political party the way things are unfolding.”
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, called the decision “a real problem.”
Mr. Specter, who has had serious health problems in recent years, remains active on a variety of major issues and has been a leading advocate for increased funding for health care research.
Democrats called the decision a game-changer. “It helps on everything,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. “This is a substantial change.”
Democrats said they made no promises to Mr. Specter about committee positions or other incentives to switch, but the party can provide significant campaign support and deter other Democratic candidates from running against him in the primary next year.
The turnabout was reminiscent of the decision in 2001 by Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont to leave the Republican party and become an independent, handing control of the Senate back to Democrats just as President George W. Bush’s first term was beginning. The Jeffords switch flipped party control but some Democrats said Mr. Specter’s move could be just as consequential given the Senate’s recent struggles with filibusters.
“Specter’s decision could be more consequential because it came just as the Senate was beginning work on health care reform,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “Specter’s decision is a big impact decision.”
Mr. Specter’s move to the Democratic column is likely to have a chilling effect on other potential Democratic candidates for the Senate. So far, Joseph Torsella, former head of the National Constitution Center and a former deputy mayor of Philadelphia, is the only Democrat to have declared his candidacy.
Others with higher name recognition seem to have been holding back to see how the field would shape up. Even before Mr. Specter announced his switch today, Representative Allyson Schwartz, a Democrat representing parts of Philadelphia and the nearby suburbs, had told The New York Times she was unlikely to make the run. Other possibilities, including Representatives Patrick Murphy and Joe Sestak, had also stayed mum.
Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, and Vice President Joseph Biden, both of them long-time friends of Mr. Specter, had urged him to switch parties several weeks ago but Mr. Specter declined. Mr. Rendell said in a recent interview that he had promised Mr. Specter that if he became a Democrat, he would help him raise money; Mr. Specter joked that if he became a Democrat, he wouldn’t need Mr. Rendell’s help on that front.
There had been speculation in Pennsylvania political circles that something was afoot because Mr. Torsella, a close colleague of Mr. Rendell, said little about Mr. Specter when he announced his candidacy.
But Mr. Specter put the kibosh on talk that he might leave the Republican Party and become either a Democrat or an independent, insisting, though without much evidence, that there was room in the Republican Party for moderates.
The move brings Mr. Specter full circle with his earlier political leanings. He was a registered Democrat when he first ran for district attorney of Philadelphia in the mid-1960s, though he ran on the Republican line.
CIA official: No proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks on America
CIA official: No proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks on America
Mark Seibel and Warren P. Strobel
Copyright by McClatchy Newspapers
April 27, 2009
WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.
The risks and effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced techniques are at the center of an increasingly heated debate over how thoroughly to investigate the CIA's secret detention and interrogation programs.
"It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.
"As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, 'there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness'," Bradbury wrote, quoting the IG report.
Nevertheless, Bradbury concluded in his May 2005 memos that the program had been effective; that conclusion relied largely on memos written after the still secrert report by Inspector General John Helgerson.
Helgerson also concluded that waterboarding was riskier than officials claimed and reported that the CIA's Office of Medical Services thought that the risk to the health of some prisoners outweighed any potential intelligence benefit, according to the memos.
The IG's report is among several indications that the Bush administration's use of abusive interrogation methods was less productive than some former administration officials have claimed.
Even some of those in the military who developed the techniques warned that the information they produced was "less reliable" than that gained by traditional psychological measures, and that using them would produce an "intolerable public and political backlash when discovered," according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released on Tuesday.
President Bush told a September 2006 news conference that one plot, to attack a Los Angeles office tower, was "derailed" in early 2002 — before the harsh CIA interrogation measures were approved, contrary to those who claim that waterboarding revealed it.
Last December, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine that he didn't believe that intelligence gleaned from abusive interrogation techniques had disrupted any attacks on America.
The New York Times first reported the existence of Helgerson's report in November 2005, quoting unnamed officials as saying it had warned that use of the techniques might constitute torture. But details of its contents and its other conclusions have remained secret. A version of the report that the CIA turned over to the ACLU in May 2008 in response to a lawsuit consisted primarily of heavy black lines and notations of sections that had been redacted.
A CIA spokesman said Friday that he knew of no plans to release a more complete version.
Jameel Jaffer, the director of the ACLU's National Security Project, called the report a "crucial document" and said its declassification is the subject of a court case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"We hope that we'll be able to negotiate a less redacted version of that report," Jaffer said, adding that the release of the Justice Department memos has increased pressure for more revelations.
"It's a crucial document," he said. "It will shed light on what kind of measures the CIA was using before August 2002" and whether they exceeded limits imposed by the Justice Department lawyers.
Two of the memos declassified last week — a May 10, 2005, assessment of individual enhanced techniques and a May 30, 2005, assessment of U.S. obligations under an international anti-torture agreement — cite the IG report at least 34 times, often quoting it verbatim. Those citations provide the first glimpse of the spy agency's inspector general's analysis of the interrogation program.
The Bradbury memos that cite the inspector general's report reveal that officials at CIA headquarters insisted on the repeated waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner to undergo the technique, even after the interrogators on the scene sought to discontinue the technique.
"According to the IG Report, the CIA, at least initially, could not always distinguish detainees who had information but were successfully resisting interrogation from those who did not actually have information," Bradbury wrote in his May 30, 2005, memo. "On at least one occasion, this may have resulted in what might be deemed in retrospect to have been the unnecessary use of enhanced techniques.
"On that occasion," Bradbury continued, "although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant, elements within CIA Headquarters still believed he was withholding information . . . . At the direction of CIA headquarters, interrogators therefore used the waterboard one more time on Zubaydah."
Bradbury wrote that CIA headquarters dispatched officials to observe that waterboarding session. After that session, "these officials reported that enhanced techniques were no longer needed," Bradbury wrote, citing the IG report.
Bradbury's May 2005 memos authorized both waterboarding and a technique called "walling," in which a prisoner is pushed against a plywood wall, but stressed that the Justice Department was doing so only so long as interrogators stuck to the procedures the CIA had outlined to the Justice Department. "Our analysis assumes adherence to these descriptions and limitations," Bradbury noted in the May 10, 2005, memo.
The memos, however, also suggest that interrogators went beyond what the Justice Department initially authorized in an Aug. 1, 2002, memo by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee.
Quoting IG Helgerson's report, then-deputy assistant attorney general Bradbury noted that in addition to waterboarding Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times, some prisoners had been subjected to walling "20 to 30 times consecutively."
"We previously concluded that the use of the waterboard did not constitute torture," Bradbury wrote in a May 10, 2005 memo. "We must reexamine the issue, however, because the technique, as it would be used, could involve more applications in longer sessions (and possibly using different methods) than we earlier considered."
As for walling, Bradbury wrote in the same May 10 memo that the Justice Department's initial 2002 authorization of walling "did not describe the walling technique as involving the number of repetitions that we understand may be applied."
Despite the information from the IG's report, Bradbury subsequently concluded that the techniques weren't torture.
Among the other details in the IG's report revealed in the Justice Department memos:
Contrary to Bush administration's insistence that waterboarding carried few risks and that medical concerns were a priority, the CIA didn't initially seek the help of medical professionals in setting up or carrying out the procedure.
"OMS (the CIA's Office of Medical Services) was neither consulted nor involved in the initial analysis of the risk and benefits of (enhanced interrogation techniques)," Bradbury wrote in his May 10, 2005, memo, quoting from the IG's report.
The Bush administration erred by depending on a military training program, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, (SERE) to assess the risks that a suspected terrorist might face when being waterboarded.
"Individuals undergoing SERE training are obviously in a very different situation from detainees undergoing interrogation; SERE trainees know it is part of a training program," Bradbury wrote, borrowing from the IG report's conclusion.
Waterboarding terrorist suspects also differed substantially from its limited use in the SERE program.
Quoting from the IG report, Bradbury wrote, "The waterboard technique . . . was different from the technique described in the DOJ opinion and used in the SERE training . . . At the SERE school . . . the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency interrogator . . . applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose."
Bradbury said the inspector general reported: "OMS contends that the expertise of the SERE psychologist/interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant."
After the medical services office became involved in the possible use of waterboarding — a step that didn't occur until after the inspector general's report was issued, according to the memos — the technique wasn't used again.
Waterboarding was rejected in the case of a prisoner who was believed to be a courier between Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist in Iraq, because the suspected courier was obese and complained of chest pressure, even though the CIA thought he might have critical information about plans to disrupt the 2004 U.S. presidential election, according to the memos.
The OMS issued guidelines in December 2004 setting out that "the use of the waterboard required the presence of a physician," Bradbury wrote. Those guidelines, however, were issued more than a year and a half after the last known CIA use of waterboarding.
Mark Seibel and Warren P. Strobel
Copyright by McClatchy Newspapers
April 27, 2009
WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.
The risks and effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced techniques are at the center of an increasingly heated debate over how thoroughly to investigate the CIA's secret detention and interrogation programs.
"It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.
"As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, 'there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness'," Bradbury wrote, quoting the IG report.
Nevertheless, Bradbury concluded in his May 2005 memos that the program had been effective; that conclusion relied largely on memos written after the still secrert report by Inspector General John Helgerson.
Helgerson also concluded that waterboarding was riskier than officials claimed and reported that the CIA's Office of Medical Services thought that the risk to the health of some prisoners outweighed any potential intelligence benefit, according to the memos.
The IG's report is among several indications that the Bush administration's use of abusive interrogation methods was less productive than some former administration officials have claimed.
Even some of those in the military who developed the techniques warned that the information they produced was "less reliable" than that gained by traditional psychological measures, and that using them would produce an "intolerable public and political backlash when discovered," according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released on Tuesday.
President Bush told a September 2006 news conference that one plot, to attack a Los Angeles office tower, was "derailed" in early 2002 — before the harsh CIA interrogation measures were approved, contrary to those who claim that waterboarding revealed it.
Last December, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine that he didn't believe that intelligence gleaned from abusive interrogation techniques had disrupted any attacks on America.
The New York Times first reported the existence of Helgerson's report in November 2005, quoting unnamed officials as saying it had warned that use of the techniques might constitute torture. But details of its contents and its other conclusions have remained secret. A version of the report that the CIA turned over to the ACLU in May 2008 in response to a lawsuit consisted primarily of heavy black lines and notations of sections that had been redacted.
A CIA spokesman said Friday that he knew of no plans to release a more complete version.
Jameel Jaffer, the director of the ACLU's National Security Project, called the report a "crucial document" and said its declassification is the subject of a court case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"We hope that we'll be able to negotiate a less redacted version of that report," Jaffer said, adding that the release of the Justice Department memos has increased pressure for more revelations.
"It's a crucial document," he said. "It will shed light on what kind of measures the CIA was using before August 2002" and whether they exceeded limits imposed by the Justice Department lawyers.
Two of the memos declassified last week — a May 10, 2005, assessment of individual enhanced techniques and a May 30, 2005, assessment of U.S. obligations under an international anti-torture agreement — cite the IG report at least 34 times, often quoting it verbatim. Those citations provide the first glimpse of the spy agency's inspector general's analysis of the interrogation program.
The Bradbury memos that cite the inspector general's report reveal that officials at CIA headquarters insisted on the repeated waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner to undergo the technique, even after the interrogators on the scene sought to discontinue the technique.
"According to the IG Report, the CIA, at least initially, could not always distinguish detainees who had information but were successfully resisting interrogation from those who did not actually have information," Bradbury wrote in his May 30, 2005, memo. "On at least one occasion, this may have resulted in what might be deemed in retrospect to have been the unnecessary use of enhanced techniques.
"On that occasion," Bradbury continued, "although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant, elements within CIA Headquarters still believed he was withholding information . . . . At the direction of CIA headquarters, interrogators therefore used the waterboard one more time on Zubaydah."
Bradbury wrote that CIA headquarters dispatched officials to observe that waterboarding session. After that session, "these officials reported that enhanced techniques were no longer needed," Bradbury wrote, citing the IG report.
Bradbury's May 2005 memos authorized both waterboarding and a technique called "walling," in which a prisoner is pushed against a plywood wall, but stressed that the Justice Department was doing so only so long as interrogators stuck to the procedures the CIA had outlined to the Justice Department. "Our analysis assumes adherence to these descriptions and limitations," Bradbury noted in the May 10, 2005, memo.
The memos, however, also suggest that interrogators went beyond what the Justice Department initially authorized in an Aug. 1, 2002, memo by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee.
Quoting IG Helgerson's report, then-deputy assistant attorney general Bradbury noted that in addition to waterboarding Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times, some prisoners had been subjected to walling "20 to 30 times consecutively."
"We previously concluded that the use of the waterboard did not constitute torture," Bradbury wrote in a May 10, 2005 memo. "We must reexamine the issue, however, because the technique, as it would be used, could involve more applications in longer sessions (and possibly using different methods) than we earlier considered."
As for walling, Bradbury wrote in the same May 10 memo that the Justice Department's initial 2002 authorization of walling "did not describe the walling technique as involving the number of repetitions that we understand may be applied."
Despite the information from the IG's report, Bradbury subsequently concluded that the techniques weren't torture.
Among the other details in the IG's report revealed in the Justice Department memos:
Contrary to Bush administration's insistence that waterboarding carried few risks and that medical concerns were a priority, the CIA didn't initially seek the help of medical professionals in setting up or carrying out the procedure.
"OMS (the CIA's Office of Medical Services) was neither consulted nor involved in the initial analysis of the risk and benefits of (enhanced interrogation techniques)," Bradbury wrote in his May 10, 2005, memo, quoting from the IG's report.
The Bush administration erred by depending on a military training program, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, (SERE) to assess the risks that a suspected terrorist might face when being waterboarded.
"Individuals undergoing SERE training are obviously in a very different situation from detainees undergoing interrogation; SERE trainees know it is part of a training program," Bradbury wrote, borrowing from the IG report's conclusion.
Waterboarding terrorist suspects also differed substantially from its limited use in the SERE program.
Quoting from the IG report, Bradbury wrote, "The waterboard technique . . . was different from the technique described in the DOJ opinion and used in the SERE training . . . At the SERE school . . . the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency interrogator . . . applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose."
Bradbury said the inspector general reported: "OMS contends that the expertise of the SERE psychologist/interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant."
After the medical services office became involved in the possible use of waterboarding — a step that didn't occur until after the inspector general's report was issued, according to the memos — the technique wasn't used again.
Waterboarding was rejected in the case of a prisoner who was believed to be a courier between Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist in Iraq, because the suspected courier was obese and complained of chest pressure, even though the CIA thought he might have critical information about plans to disrupt the 2004 U.S. presidential election, according to the memos.
The OMS issued guidelines in December 2004 setting out that "the use of the waterboard required the presence of a physician," Bradbury wrote. Those guidelines, however, were issued more than a year and a half after the last known CIA use of waterboarding.
Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?
Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?
By Maia Szalavitz
Copyright by Time Magazine
Sunday, Apr. 26, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.
The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.
The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.
"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."
Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.
Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.
"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.
But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.
At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.
"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.
Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.
The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."
By Maia Szalavitz
Copyright by Time Magazine
Sunday, Apr. 26, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.
The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.
The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.
"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."
Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.
Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.
"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.
But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.
At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.
"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.
Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.
The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."
SWINE FLU - key facts
SWINE FLU - key facts
Population at risk: Swine flu seems particularly dangerous to politicians, members of the media and government and senior
members of the health establishment.
Aetiology/pathophysiology: the body is subjected to a stream of information, advice, counter-advice, emails and printed matter. The immune system is able to cope initially, but in the face of a prolonged onslaught, the Common Sense Receptor Sites (CSRS) are swamped. Hot Air Shock Proteins are activated which initiates an inflammatory cascade and switches on the PAN1(C) gene on the q22 locus. This results in production of Protein ZZZ, a neural down-regulator and powerful sleep mediator.
Patients progress rapidly through three phases:
Phase one, the excitatory phase, normally lasts 24-48 hours and is characterized by tachycardia and an increased preload.
Phase 2, a habituation phase, follows shortly after. This is sometimes known as the dormant phase, as patients may appear
superficially normal during the characteristic 2-3 days it lasts. It is, however deceptive. Transient catecholamine surges, and
an occult accumulation of emails, combined with Meeting Stress Fatigue (MSF) result in;
Phase 3, the 'Blast Crisis' which takes its name from the urge to shout "BLAST" whilst jumping up and down, throwing large
documents out of the window whilst simultaneously deleting thousands of unread emails, all about the same subject and
all saying the same thing. Downloading travel brochures is a sentinel marker of the moribund patient.
Swine flu is a serious illness and job fatality rates are over 30% in the first 3 weeks. Mortality amongst politicians is particularly high. The overall cost to the health system has been estimated at 100 times the GDP of Iceland.
Hope that's useful.
Population at risk: Swine flu seems particularly dangerous to politicians, members of the media and government and senior
members of the health establishment.
Aetiology/pathophysiology: the body is subjected to a stream of information, advice, counter-advice, emails and printed matter. The immune system is able to cope initially, but in the face of a prolonged onslaught, the Common Sense Receptor Sites (CSRS) are swamped. Hot Air Shock Proteins are activated which initiates an inflammatory cascade and switches on the PAN1(C) gene on the q22 locus. This results in production of Protein ZZZ, a neural down-regulator and powerful sleep mediator.
Patients progress rapidly through three phases:
Phase one, the excitatory phase, normally lasts 24-48 hours and is characterized by tachycardia and an increased preload.
Phase 2, a habituation phase, follows shortly after. This is sometimes known as the dormant phase, as patients may appear
superficially normal during the characteristic 2-3 days it lasts. It is, however deceptive. Transient catecholamine surges, and
an occult accumulation of emails, combined with Meeting Stress Fatigue (MSF) result in;
Phase 3, the 'Blast Crisis' which takes its name from the urge to shout "BLAST" whilst jumping up and down, throwing large
documents out of the window whilst simultaneously deleting thousands of unread emails, all about the same subject and
all saying the same thing. Downloading travel brochures is a sentinel marker of the moribund patient.
Swine flu is a serious illness and job fatality rates are over 30% in the first 3 weeks. Mortality amongst politicians is particularly high. The overall cost to the health system has been estimated at 100 times the GDP of Iceland.
Hope that's useful.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Torture by any other description/The real reason for torture
Torture by any other description
by Kathleen Parker
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0427parker_mdapr27,0,7262237.column
WASHINGTON -- Several years ago, I asked a veteran journalist for advice.
"I'm trying to figure out if I have an ethical conflict," I began.
"If you have to ask, you do," he said.
Simple as that. In posing a question, we often reveal the answer.
Apply the same construct to torture. If we have to ask, it probably is.
Yet, as we've learned with the recent release of Justice Department memos related to interrogation techniques, Bush administration lawyers tortured the English language trying to justify the unjustifiable.
"Enhanced interrogation" wasn't really torture, they decided, as long as the pain administered didn't result in "death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions."
By that definition, waterboarding -- the simulated drowning technique favored by Inquisitors ferreting out heretics -- wasn't torture. People might feel like they were going to die, but they weren't really, so ...
In other now-familiar mutations, those held in custody weren't really prisoners, but "detainees" or "alien combatants," and therefore not entitled to humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions.
Granted, it is easy now to sit back and judge these definitions and memos as morally repugnant. It is less easy to place ourselves in the mind-set that dominated the nation immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, and that guided the Bush administration in trying to prevent attacks.
But we are also reminded that those who objected most strenuously to relaxed definitions of torture and the scrapping of due process even for alien combatants were among those most familiar with war and interrogation, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. While lawyers sought loopholes, our most admired warriors argued for protection of the laws of war.
Few have put it more clearly than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is also an Air Force colonel and senior instructor at the Air Force JAG School and has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a 2006 Newsweek interview, Graham said: "Either we're going to use torture or we're not. And when you say, we won't use torture, unless we think we really, really need it [then] we're not a rule-of-law nation."
It comes down to that. We're either a rule-of-law nation -- or we're not. We can't invent definitions of torture for one type of person that wouldn't be acceptable for another, no matter how much we may despise or distrust him. As Graham put it: "I don't love the terrorists, I just love what Americans stand for."
Meanwhile, how trustworthy are the confessions of the tortured? Not very, according to those who know.
Most important, we can hardly present ourselves as arbiters and protectors of human rights when we selectively abuse those in our custody, no matter how compelling our cause. When we parse definitions of "mental pain" and "suffering," we begin to slip down the slope of moral ambiguity where deceit finds company among the dead.
The lawyers who wrote these now-public opinions clearly were looking for ways out of a moral quandary -- how to square the means with the end. And doubtless many Americans agree that protecting the U.S. against terrorist attacks justified nearly any method.
Almost daily I receive a recycled 2002 quote by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who argued in a "60 Minutes" interview that most people would justify torture under certain circumstances:
"Is there anybody who wouldn't use torture to save the life of his child? And if you would, isn't it a bit selfish to say, 'It's OK to save my child's life, but it's not OK to save the life of 1,000 strangers?' That's the way people will think about it."
In his book "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age," Dershowitz proposes that since torture is a given under those certain circumstances, then "torture warrants" should be issued by a judge.
He is right that most of us would do whatever necessary to save our child, possibly even torture a kidnapper. Likewise, if we stumbled upon someone trying to harm a loved one, we would kill the attacker if necessary to stop him.
But those are both darkly impassioned environments. It is by the cool light of day that we devise our laws. And it is by that same light that we judge our actions.
When we ask if something is torture, the answer is another question: What kind of people should we be?
Washington Post Writers Group
The real reason for torture
By Steve Chapman
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
Originally posted: April 27, 2009 9:11 AM
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman/2009/04/the-real-reason-for-torture.html
The debate over the use of torture to interrogate suspected terrorists raises some difficult moral questions. Having written many times in opposition to it, though, I find little evidence that its supporters care about those issues. A sensible, humane person could say: "Torture is tragically necessary in some instances to save innocent lives, but it is a terrible thing for a government to engage in; it must be subject to strict safeguards, and it must be used only when the information needed is vital to avert disaster, time is of the essence or other methods have been exhausted." But its defenders, many of whom I have heard from, never sound like that.
In fact, they show no regrets or reservations. They make several arguments: saving innocent American lives is far more important than respecting the rights of suspected terrorists; these methods work; al Qaeda engages in far worse; and so on. Far from recognizing the need for safeguards and limits on such techniques, they would give the government a free hand to do whatever it chooses.
There is ample doubt whether deliberate infliction of pain actually yields useful information. But ultimately, judging from my reader mail, that's irrelevant. The support stems mainly not from desire to get answers but the urge to inflict pain on people we find vile. Its advocates make it obvious that this cruelty is not an unfortunate byproduct but a positive attribute.
That's why so many people endorse inhumane methods while disregarding any evidence that suggests it is ineffective. Their hatred of our enemies has made them indifferent to civilized norms. They want to see our enemies suffer hideously regardless of whether that enhances or degrades our security.
The point of torture is torture. It is not a means to an end. It is the end itself.
by Kathleen Parker
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0427parker_mdapr27,0,7262237.column
WASHINGTON -- Several years ago, I asked a veteran journalist for advice.
"I'm trying to figure out if I have an ethical conflict," I began.
"If you have to ask, you do," he said.
Simple as that. In posing a question, we often reveal the answer.
Apply the same construct to torture. If we have to ask, it probably is.
Yet, as we've learned with the recent release of Justice Department memos related to interrogation techniques, Bush administration lawyers tortured the English language trying to justify the unjustifiable.
"Enhanced interrogation" wasn't really torture, they decided, as long as the pain administered didn't result in "death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions."
By that definition, waterboarding -- the simulated drowning technique favored by Inquisitors ferreting out heretics -- wasn't torture. People might feel like they were going to die, but they weren't really, so ...
In other now-familiar mutations, those held in custody weren't really prisoners, but "detainees" or "alien combatants," and therefore not entitled to humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions.
Granted, it is easy now to sit back and judge these definitions and memos as morally repugnant. It is less easy to place ourselves in the mind-set that dominated the nation immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, and that guided the Bush administration in trying to prevent attacks.
But we are also reminded that those who objected most strenuously to relaxed definitions of torture and the scrapping of due process even for alien combatants were among those most familiar with war and interrogation, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. While lawyers sought loopholes, our most admired warriors argued for protection of the laws of war.
Few have put it more clearly than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is also an Air Force colonel and senior instructor at the Air Force JAG School and has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a 2006 Newsweek interview, Graham said: "Either we're going to use torture or we're not. And when you say, we won't use torture, unless we think we really, really need it [then] we're not a rule-of-law nation."
It comes down to that. We're either a rule-of-law nation -- or we're not. We can't invent definitions of torture for one type of person that wouldn't be acceptable for another, no matter how much we may despise or distrust him. As Graham put it: "I don't love the terrorists, I just love what Americans stand for."
Meanwhile, how trustworthy are the confessions of the tortured? Not very, according to those who know.
Most important, we can hardly present ourselves as arbiters and protectors of human rights when we selectively abuse those in our custody, no matter how compelling our cause. When we parse definitions of "mental pain" and "suffering," we begin to slip down the slope of moral ambiguity where deceit finds company among the dead.
The lawyers who wrote these now-public opinions clearly were looking for ways out of a moral quandary -- how to square the means with the end. And doubtless many Americans agree that protecting the U.S. against terrorist attacks justified nearly any method.
Almost daily I receive a recycled 2002 quote by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who argued in a "60 Minutes" interview that most people would justify torture under certain circumstances:
"Is there anybody who wouldn't use torture to save the life of his child? And if you would, isn't it a bit selfish to say, 'It's OK to save my child's life, but it's not OK to save the life of 1,000 strangers?' That's the way people will think about it."
In his book "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age," Dershowitz proposes that since torture is a given under those certain circumstances, then "torture warrants" should be issued by a judge.
He is right that most of us would do whatever necessary to save our child, possibly even torture a kidnapper. Likewise, if we stumbled upon someone trying to harm a loved one, we would kill the attacker if necessary to stop him.
But those are both darkly impassioned environments. It is by the cool light of day that we devise our laws. And it is by that same light that we judge our actions.
When we ask if something is torture, the answer is another question: What kind of people should we be?
Washington Post Writers Group
The real reason for torture
By Steve Chapman
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
Originally posted: April 27, 2009 9:11 AM
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman/2009/04/the-real-reason-for-torture.html
The debate over the use of torture to interrogate suspected terrorists raises some difficult moral questions. Having written many times in opposition to it, though, I find little evidence that its supporters care about those issues. A sensible, humane person could say: "Torture is tragically necessary in some instances to save innocent lives, but it is a terrible thing for a government to engage in; it must be subject to strict safeguards, and it must be used only when the information needed is vital to avert disaster, time is of the essence or other methods have been exhausted." But its defenders, many of whom I have heard from, never sound like that.
In fact, they show no regrets or reservations. They make several arguments: saving innocent American lives is far more important than respecting the rights of suspected terrorists; these methods work; al Qaeda engages in far worse; and so on. Far from recognizing the need for safeguards and limits on such techniques, they would give the government a free hand to do whatever it chooses.
There is ample doubt whether deliberate infliction of pain actually yields useful information. But ultimately, judging from my reader mail, that's irrelevant. The support stems mainly not from desire to get answers but the urge to inflict pain on people we find vile. Its advocates make it obvious that this cruelty is not an unfortunate byproduct but a positive attribute.
That's why so many people endorse inhumane methods while disregarding any evidence that suggests it is ineffective. Their hatred of our enemies has made them indifferent to civilized norms. They want to see our enemies suffer hideously regardless of whether that enhances or degrades our security.
The point of torture is torture. It is not a means to an end. It is the end itself.
Chicago Tribune Editorial - Legalize civil unions
Chicago Tribune Editorial - Legalize civil unions
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0427edit1apr27,0,3301225.story
The idea of letting gays and lesbians marry hasn't lost its power to polarize. Some 350 people rallied this month at the Iowa statehouse in Des Moines to protest the state Supreme Court's decision mandating recognition of gay marriage. Californians are still at odds after voters approved a November ballot initiative amending the constitution to ban it. Vermont legislators this month barely overrode the governor's veto of a bill legalizing gay marriage.
Unnoticed in the uproar is that most Americans favor extending the benefits and obligations of marriage to same-sex couples -- just as long as it goes by a different name. Call it marriage, and most people bridle. Call it a civil union, and some 55 percent of citizens are in favor.
It's safe to say public opinion in Illinois runs pretty much the same. Yet state lawmakers haven't gotten around to doing something that is both popular and valuable: providing state recognition of civil unions.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), which appears to have a reasonable chance of passage, would change that. It would grant adult couples, gay or straight, the right to enter into civil unions that, under state law, would be equivalent to marriage in everything but name.
If it's enacted, gay couples will gain the right to do things that heterosexuals take for granted: make emergency medical decisions and funeral arrangements for a partner, visit each other in the hospital and share a nursing home room. More important, perhaps, it will protect kids by placing same-sex couples that split up under the same rules that govern divorce, while assuring access to survivor benefits when a de facto parent dies.
By this compromise, the state would promote long-term commitments and the well-being of children. But it would avoid the intense emotions that surge around anything altering the traditional definition of marriage, which for many people has deep religious meaning. Harris' bill stipulates that no religious entity may be forced to bless such unions.
This option won't satisfy fierce advocates on either side of the gay marriage debate. But it would bring Illinois law into line with the feelings of the public, which doesn't want to punish gays or their kids but also doesn't want to pronounce on matters of faith.
Legalizing civil unions won't end the battle over same-sex marriage. But it will offer protections that gay couples now don't have.
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0427edit1apr27,0,3301225.story
The idea of letting gays and lesbians marry hasn't lost its power to polarize. Some 350 people rallied this month at the Iowa statehouse in Des Moines to protest the state Supreme Court's decision mandating recognition of gay marriage. Californians are still at odds after voters approved a November ballot initiative amending the constitution to ban it. Vermont legislators this month barely overrode the governor's veto of a bill legalizing gay marriage.
Unnoticed in the uproar is that most Americans favor extending the benefits and obligations of marriage to same-sex couples -- just as long as it goes by a different name. Call it marriage, and most people bridle. Call it a civil union, and some 55 percent of citizens are in favor.
It's safe to say public opinion in Illinois runs pretty much the same. Yet state lawmakers haven't gotten around to doing something that is both popular and valuable: providing state recognition of civil unions.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), which appears to have a reasonable chance of passage, would change that. It would grant adult couples, gay or straight, the right to enter into civil unions that, under state law, would be equivalent to marriage in everything but name.
If it's enacted, gay couples will gain the right to do things that heterosexuals take for granted: make emergency medical decisions and funeral arrangements for a partner, visit each other in the hospital and share a nursing home room. More important, perhaps, it will protect kids by placing same-sex couples that split up under the same rules that govern divorce, while assuring access to survivor benefits when a de facto parent dies.
By this compromise, the state would promote long-term commitments and the well-being of children. But it would avoid the intense emotions that surge around anything altering the traditional definition of marriage, which for many people has deep religious meaning. Harris' bill stipulates that no religious entity may be forced to bless such unions.
This option won't satisfy fierce advocates on either side of the gay marriage debate. But it would bring Illinois law into line with the feelings of the public, which doesn't want to punish gays or their kids but also doesn't want to pronounce on matters of faith.
Legalizing civil unions won't end the battle over same-sex marriage. But it will offer protections that gay couples now don't have.
Update: 260+ same-sex couples apply for marriage licenses; most in Polk Co.
Update: 260+ same-sex couples apply for marriage licenses; most in Polk Co.
BY TONY LEYS, REID FORGRAVE AND GRANT SCHULTE • TLEYS@DMREG.COM
Copyright by The Des Moines Register
APRIL 27, 2009
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090427/NEWS/90427003
At least 261 same-sex couples have applied for marriage licenses in Iowa so far today, with the heaviest concentrations in Linn, Polk, Scott and Johnson counties, according to information collected by The Des Moines Register. The tally so far includes 20 out-of-state couples, according to a survey of county recorders. The Register is still gathering its data, but afternoon figures show that the greatest number of applications so far is in Polk County, which has logged 82. Johnson County has seen 40 applications so far, Scott County has seen 23, and 22 couples have applied for marriage licenses in Linn County. Today was the first day same-sex couples could since the April 3 Iowa Supreme Court opinion that struck down a state law that said marriage was only between a man and a woman.
Shelley Wolfe, 38, and Melisa Keeton, 31, were the first gay couple in Polk County to marry under the new ruling.
They applied for their marriage license this morning then immediately got a judge to waive the standard three-day waiting period. They wanted to get married quickly, because Keeton is 25 weeks pregnant. They’ve been together nearly three years.
“For us, while I’m only 25 weeks pregnant, already into the third trimester, I’ve had a lot of medical issues,” said Keeton, who was waiting in line to have their marriage license notarized. “To me it’ll be a lot less stressful because we’ll have legal rights. Really, today is about making it legal.”
They have one son, Baxter, who’ll turn 3 in June. The women had a religious ceremony in 2007, but it lacked legal standing.
On the steps just south of the Polk County building, their pastor, Rev. Peg Esperanza of the Church of the Holy Spirit, stood between the two women. A half-moon of 20 news cameras surrounded them. It was just past 10 a.m.
The pastor cleared her throat. “We are gathered here in the presence of witnesses for the purposes of uniting in matrimony Shelley and Melisa,” she began, as camera shutters fired. “Your lives, girls, have already been entwined as a loving unit. The contract of marriage is most solemn and is not to be entered into lightly but thoughtfully and seriously with a deep realization of its obligations and its responsibility. No other human ties are more tender and no other vows more important than those that you are about to make today.
“Many couples give up on their marriages because they do not understand how to stand against the enemies of marriage, of which pride and selfish self-centeredness are two of the worst enemies.”
Wolfe and Keeton grabbed each other’s hands.
“Melisa, repeat after me,” Esperanza said.
“I take you, Shelley, to be my lawfully wedded eternal companion,” Keeton said, following the pastor’s lead. “I promise to love and comfort you, honor and keep you, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, and to be faithful to you as long as we both shall live.”
They exchanged rings. They smiled and laughed. Esperanza made the sign of the cross.
“By the power vested in me by God and the state of Iowa, I now pronounce that you are legally married. What God has joined together, let no one come between. Congratulations!”
They kissed. Wolfe’s twin brother signed the marriage license. The whole ceremony took less than five minutes.
Gay couples also applied for licenses in several other counties, including Dubuque, Pottawattamie, Harrison, Mills, Fremont and Woodbury.
In Council Bluffs, a lesbian couple from Nebraska were married this morning by Magistrate Stephen Rosman. Toni Heard and Michelle McBride received a waiver because of medical issues. The two were married at 10:45 a.m.
Gay couples also applied for marriage licenses in numerous other counties. Opponents around the state delivered petitions urging county recorders not to issue licenses to gay couples, “until such conflict between the Supreme Court’s opinion and the law is addressed by a vote of the people of Iowa.” Such a vote probably wouldn’t take place until at least 2012, under rules on how the constitution can be amended. There were no reports of recorders refusing to issue licenses.
Protesters speak out
The state’s most prominent anti-gay-marriage activist, Chuck Hurley, said at least one county recorder has threatened to resign over the issue, but he wouldn’t say who.
“I told them we would defend them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If they exercise their right of conscience and if the attorney general and or others in Iowa, county attorneys or others, have a heavy hand and they try to force a county recorder to do something against their right of conscience, that is an offense against the U.S. Constitution and that will put this matter into federal court. We are not telling county recorders what to do, we are giving them their constitutional options.”
Hurley spoke to reporters at the Polk County building this morning. Hurley, a former legislator who is head of the Iowa Family Policy Center, said his group planned no dramatic protests. “People I associate with are very much law-abiding people. They’re not going to chain themselves to their recorders’ offices,” he said. He added: “But there may be some of that.”
Hurley turned in a stack of petitions to Polk County Recorder Julie Haggerty, and he said similar documents were being presented around the state.
The reason more Iowans who oppose gay marriage aren’t making a more visible stand this morning is because they’re “probably raising children, going to work,” Hurley told reporters at the Polk County administration building.
Hurley offered bottled water to gay couples (three accepted), spoke to reporters about his deep sadness, then intended to head home. He promised his wife, Chris, that after this morning he’d be home more with her and their 10 children.
To the disappointment of traditional-marriage advocates, the Iowa Legislature adjourned Sunday morning without taking steps to allow a vote of the people on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
“They ran right out of town,” said Bryan English, a spokesman for the Iowa Family Policy Center.
Polk County Sheriff Bill McCarthy said he had no reports of problems. He said about eight sheriff’s deputies were assigned to the Polk County administration building this morning. “Just to keep order,” he said. “And everything looks orderly.”
A more strident anti-gay activist, Fred Phelps of Kansas, alerted the Polk County sheriff that his group was canceling a planned protest today, McCarthy said.
“Typically they are very cooperative because they are so vile in their remarks and comments and protests that they use law enforcement to protect themselves, not the other way around,” the sheriff said.
Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church intended to protest at Polk County public buildings, as well as Des Moines’ Lincoln High School, today, according to their Web site. McCarthy said he expects them in Iowa later in the week.
Click here to view the petitions for traditional marriage.
Couples show up early for licenses
Dozens of gay couples showed up first thing this morning at recorders’ offices in Polk County and elsewhere around the state, looking to sign up for marriage licenses.
In Des Moines, Lori Blachford was among the people applying for marriage licenses. As television cameras surrounded the dozens of couples in line, she talked about how life with her partner of 25 years, Karen Utke, is going to change.
“We’re living the married life, same as our parents did, painfully and traditionally boring,” said Blachford, who is 45.
But even though they’ve been together so long, the concept of marriage didn’t seem to have fully set in. Blachford first introduced her partner as “my friend,” then stuttered and settled on “my Karen.” They have two sons, age 13 and 17, conceived with an anonymous sperm donor.
“They’re grown up with us just acting like a married couple and in a normal family,” Blachford said. “But they understand the legal issues. They realize the inequity. They don’t understand why we should be treated any different.”
The couple plan to get married in the summer. “It’s a little anti-climactic to us,” Blachford said. “Twenty-five years of married life, it kind of seems silly to organize a ceremony. But we’re thrilled to be able to do it.”
Denny Schrock and Patrick Phillips-Schrock wore tuxedos to the recorder’s office. They’ve been together five years, and had a commitment ceremony three years ago at the Unitarian Universalist church in Des Moines.
“I didn’t think this would happen in my lifetime,” the 58-year-old Phillips-Schrock, a retired high school French teacher who is originally from Jefferson but now lives in Urbandale, said. “It’s incredible. In Iowa, of all places!”
In general, county recorders reported a calm morning.
Emmet County Recorder Sue Snyder said no marriage licenses had been issued this morning. There was one protestor of the marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a friend of Snyder’s, who brought in a petition for Snyder to have, Snyder said.
“They’re asking that we refuse to issue these licenses,” Snyder said. “My response is that I’m governed by the state of Iowa to follow the laws and serve the people and that’s what I will do. We just agreed that it would not cause any friction between our friendship, then we left it at that.”
No one – gay or straight – has applied for marriage licenses this morning in southeastern Iowa’s Muscatine County. “We haven’t had anything,” said Recorder Cindy Gray. Unlike many other recorders, she hadn’t received any opponents’ petitions.
Gray said she received a phone call on Friday from a minister wishing her luck and giving her his blessing to refuse to grant marriage applications to gay couples. “I just said, 'Thank you,’” Gray said. She intends to follow the law and grant licenses to same-sex couples. “I have no problem with the law.”
In Orange City, a dozen opponents of gay marriage stood shivering on the steps of the Sioux County Courthouse.
“We just feel this type of judicial decision not only doesn’t reflect what most Iowans believe, but it’s also harmful to our state and to our country,” said Kurt Korver, 42, an ear, nose and throat doctor in Orange City. “If a neighborhood is filled with homosexual couples, you wouldn’t want to have kids in that neighborhood. The purpose of government is to restrain bad behavior for the good of society.”
Gary Vander Hart, 71, of Sioux Center agreed. “I hope that those of the homosexual agenda at least have the logic to see that the maker of a car has the knowledge to tell you how to run that car,” he said. “So God has the right to tell us how to run the creation he made.”
National gay-rights advocates hailed the day as a benchmark for Iowa and the country.
“We are thrilled to extend our congratulations and warmest wishes to the couples and their families, who can celebrate today and in the future because their relationships will now be honored and treated equally under the law,” Kevin Cathcart, executive director of the gay and lesbian rights group Lambda Legal, said in a statement.
Lambda Legal helped file and argue the Polk County case that led to the ruling. “When the Iowa Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision in Lambda Legal’s marriage equality case, history was made not only for Iowans, but for the entire nation,” Cathcart wrote. “Within days, the Vermont legislature enacted a marriage equality bill and proposed bills are now pending in other states. Equality is taking root and growing strong from coast to coast and in the heart of our country.”
BY TONY LEYS, REID FORGRAVE AND GRANT SCHULTE • TLEYS@DMREG.COM
Copyright by The Des Moines Register
APRIL 27, 2009
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090427/NEWS/90427003
At least 261 same-sex couples have applied for marriage licenses in Iowa so far today, with the heaviest concentrations in Linn, Polk, Scott and Johnson counties, according to information collected by The Des Moines Register. The tally so far includes 20 out-of-state couples, according to a survey of county recorders. The Register is still gathering its data, but afternoon figures show that the greatest number of applications so far is in Polk County, which has logged 82. Johnson County has seen 40 applications so far, Scott County has seen 23, and 22 couples have applied for marriage licenses in Linn County. Today was the first day same-sex couples could since the April 3 Iowa Supreme Court opinion that struck down a state law that said marriage was only between a man and a woman.
Shelley Wolfe, 38, and Melisa Keeton, 31, were the first gay couple in Polk County to marry under the new ruling.
They applied for their marriage license this morning then immediately got a judge to waive the standard three-day waiting period. They wanted to get married quickly, because Keeton is 25 weeks pregnant. They’ve been together nearly three years.
“For us, while I’m only 25 weeks pregnant, already into the third trimester, I’ve had a lot of medical issues,” said Keeton, who was waiting in line to have their marriage license notarized. “To me it’ll be a lot less stressful because we’ll have legal rights. Really, today is about making it legal.”
They have one son, Baxter, who’ll turn 3 in June. The women had a religious ceremony in 2007, but it lacked legal standing.
On the steps just south of the Polk County building, their pastor, Rev. Peg Esperanza of the Church of the Holy Spirit, stood between the two women. A half-moon of 20 news cameras surrounded them. It was just past 10 a.m.
The pastor cleared her throat. “We are gathered here in the presence of witnesses for the purposes of uniting in matrimony Shelley and Melisa,” she began, as camera shutters fired. “Your lives, girls, have already been entwined as a loving unit. The contract of marriage is most solemn and is not to be entered into lightly but thoughtfully and seriously with a deep realization of its obligations and its responsibility. No other human ties are more tender and no other vows more important than those that you are about to make today.
“Many couples give up on their marriages because they do not understand how to stand against the enemies of marriage, of which pride and selfish self-centeredness are two of the worst enemies.”
Wolfe and Keeton grabbed each other’s hands.
“Melisa, repeat after me,” Esperanza said.
“I take you, Shelley, to be my lawfully wedded eternal companion,” Keeton said, following the pastor’s lead. “I promise to love and comfort you, honor and keep you, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, and to be faithful to you as long as we both shall live.”
They exchanged rings. They smiled and laughed. Esperanza made the sign of the cross.
“By the power vested in me by God and the state of Iowa, I now pronounce that you are legally married. What God has joined together, let no one come between. Congratulations!”
They kissed. Wolfe’s twin brother signed the marriage license. The whole ceremony took less than five minutes.
Gay couples also applied for licenses in several other counties, including Dubuque, Pottawattamie, Harrison, Mills, Fremont and Woodbury.
In Council Bluffs, a lesbian couple from Nebraska were married this morning by Magistrate Stephen Rosman. Toni Heard and Michelle McBride received a waiver because of medical issues. The two were married at 10:45 a.m.
Gay couples also applied for marriage licenses in numerous other counties. Opponents around the state delivered petitions urging county recorders not to issue licenses to gay couples, “until such conflict between the Supreme Court’s opinion and the law is addressed by a vote of the people of Iowa.” Such a vote probably wouldn’t take place until at least 2012, under rules on how the constitution can be amended. There were no reports of recorders refusing to issue licenses.
Protesters speak out
The state’s most prominent anti-gay-marriage activist, Chuck Hurley, said at least one county recorder has threatened to resign over the issue, but he wouldn’t say who.
“I told them we would defend them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If they exercise their right of conscience and if the attorney general and or others in Iowa, county attorneys or others, have a heavy hand and they try to force a county recorder to do something against their right of conscience, that is an offense against the U.S. Constitution and that will put this matter into federal court. We are not telling county recorders what to do, we are giving them their constitutional options.”
Hurley spoke to reporters at the Polk County building this morning. Hurley, a former legislator who is head of the Iowa Family Policy Center, said his group planned no dramatic protests. “People I associate with are very much law-abiding people. They’re not going to chain themselves to their recorders’ offices,” he said. He added: “But there may be some of that.”
Hurley turned in a stack of petitions to Polk County Recorder Julie Haggerty, and he said similar documents were being presented around the state.
The reason more Iowans who oppose gay marriage aren’t making a more visible stand this morning is because they’re “probably raising children, going to work,” Hurley told reporters at the Polk County administration building.
Hurley offered bottled water to gay couples (three accepted), spoke to reporters about his deep sadness, then intended to head home. He promised his wife, Chris, that after this morning he’d be home more with her and their 10 children.
To the disappointment of traditional-marriage advocates, the Iowa Legislature adjourned Sunday morning without taking steps to allow a vote of the people on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
“They ran right out of town,” said Bryan English, a spokesman for the Iowa Family Policy Center.
Polk County Sheriff Bill McCarthy said he had no reports of problems. He said about eight sheriff’s deputies were assigned to the Polk County administration building this morning. “Just to keep order,” he said. “And everything looks orderly.”
A more strident anti-gay activist, Fred Phelps of Kansas, alerted the Polk County sheriff that his group was canceling a planned protest today, McCarthy said.
“Typically they are very cooperative because they are so vile in their remarks and comments and protests that they use law enforcement to protect themselves, not the other way around,” the sheriff said.
Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church intended to protest at Polk County public buildings, as well as Des Moines’ Lincoln High School, today, according to their Web site. McCarthy said he expects them in Iowa later in the week.
Click here to view the petitions for traditional marriage.
Couples show up early for licenses
Dozens of gay couples showed up first thing this morning at recorders’ offices in Polk County and elsewhere around the state, looking to sign up for marriage licenses.
In Des Moines, Lori Blachford was among the people applying for marriage licenses. As television cameras surrounded the dozens of couples in line, she talked about how life with her partner of 25 years, Karen Utke, is going to change.
“We’re living the married life, same as our parents did, painfully and traditionally boring,” said Blachford, who is 45.
But even though they’ve been together so long, the concept of marriage didn’t seem to have fully set in. Blachford first introduced her partner as “my friend,” then stuttered and settled on “my Karen.” They have two sons, age 13 and 17, conceived with an anonymous sperm donor.
“They’re grown up with us just acting like a married couple and in a normal family,” Blachford said. “But they understand the legal issues. They realize the inequity. They don’t understand why we should be treated any different.”
The couple plan to get married in the summer. “It’s a little anti-climactic to us,” Blachford said. “Twenty-five years of married life, it kind of seems silly to organize a ceremony. But we’re thrilled to be able to do it.”
Denny Schrock and Patrick Phillips-Schrock wore tuxedos to the recorder’s office. They’ve been together five years, and had a commitment ceremony three years ago at the Unitarian Universalist church in Des Moines.
“I didn’t think this would happen in my lifetime,” the 58-year-old Phillips-Schrock, a retired high school French teacher who is originally from Jefferson but now lives in Urbandale, said. “It’s incredible. In Iowa, of all places!”
In general, county recorders reported a calm morning.
Emmet County Recorder Sue Snyder said no marriage licenses had been issued this morning. There was one protestor of the marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a friend of Snyder’s, who brought in a petition for Snyder to have, Snyder said.
“They’re asking that we refuse to issue these licenses,” Snyder said. “My response is that I’m governed by the state of Iowa to follow the laws and serve the people and that’s what I will do. We just agreed that it would not cause any friction between our friendship, then we left it at that.”
No one – gay or straight – has applied for marriage licenses this morning in southeastern Iowa’s Muscatine County. “We haven’t had anything,” said Recorder Cindy Gray. Unlike many other recorders, she hadn’t received any opponents’ petitions.
Gray said she received a phone call on Friday from a minister wishing her luck and giving her his blessing to refuse to grant marriage applications to gay couples. “I just said, 'Thank you,’” Gray said. She intends to follow the law and grant licenses to same-sex couples. “I have no problem with the law.”
In Orange City, a dozen opponents of gay marriage stood shivering on the steps of the Sioux County Courthouse.
“We just feel this type of judicial decision not only doesn’t reflect what most Iowans believe, but it’s also harmful to our state and to our country,” said Kurt Korver, 42, an ear, nose and throat doctor in Orange City. “If a neighborhood is filled with homosexual couples, you wouldn’t want to have kids in that neighborhood. The purpose of government is to restrain bad behavior for the good of society.”
Gary Vander Hart, 71, of Sioux Center agreed. “I hope that those of the homosexual agenda at least have the logic to see that the maker of a car has the knowledge to tell you how to run that car,” he said. “So God has the right to tell us how to run the creation he made.”
National gay-rights advocates hailed the day as a benchmark for Iowa and the country.
“We are thrilled to extend our congratulations and warmest wishes to the couples and their families, who can celebrate today and in the future because their relationships will now be honored and treated equally under the law,” Kevin Cathcart, executive director of the gay and lesbian rights group Lambda Legal, said in a statement.
Lambda Legal helped file and argue the Polk County case that led to the ruling. “When the Iowa Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision in Lambda Legal’s marriage equality case, history was made not only for Iowans, but for the entire nation,” Cathcart wrote. “Within days, the Vermont legislature enacted a marriage equality bill and proposed bills are now pending in other states. Equality is taking root and growing strong from coast to coast and in the heart of our country.”
Strong quake sways tall buildings, adds to swine flu anxiety in already-tense Mexico City
Strong quake sways tall buildings, adds to swine flu anxiety in already-tense Mexico City
PAUL HAVEN |
Copyright 2009 Associated Press
3:46 PM CDT, April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-mexico-earthquake,0,5205443.story
People are evacuated from their buildings wearing surgical masks after an earthquake in Mexico City, Monday, April 27, 2009. Mexico's government is ordering closed schools nationwide as the suspected death toll from swine flu climbed to 149. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) (Gregory Bull, AP / April 27, 2009)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A strong earthquake struck central Mexico on Monday, swaying tall buildings in the capital and sending office workers into the streets. The quake rattled nerves in a city already tense from a swine flu outbreak suspected of killing as many as 149 people nationwide.
"I'm scared," said Sarai Luna Pajas, a 22-year-old social services worker standing outside her office building moments after it hit. "We Mexicans are not used to living with so much fear, but all that is happening — the economic crisis, the illnesses and now this — it feels like the Apocalypse."
Co-worker Harold Gutierrez, 21, said the country was taking comfort from its religious faith, but he too was gripped by the sensation that the world might be coming to an end.
"If it is, it is God's plan," Gutierrez said, speaking over a green mask he wore to ward off swine flu.
The Interior Ministry said there were no reports of damages anywhere in the country.
The quake had a magnitude of 5.6 and was centered near Chilpancingo, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) southwest of Mexico City or 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the resort of Acapulco, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
USGS earthquake analyst Don Blakeman said the quake was felt strongly in Mexico City because the epicenter was relatively shallow and the ground under the capital — which is built on a former lake bed — tends to intensify shock waves.
"Distant quakes are often felt" strongly in the city, he said.
The USGS revised the quake's magnitude down from its preliminary estimate of 6.0, and said its depth was 30 miles (50 kilometers).
Tourists also streamed out of hotels in Acapulco and congregated on sidewalks and medians for several minutes. Local Civil Protection officer Silvia Rodriguez said there were no injuries.
Associated Press writers Natalia Parra in Acapulco, Mexico, and Dan Elliott in Denver contributed to this report.
PAUL HAVEN |
Copyright 2009 Associated Press
3:46 PM CDT, April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-mexico-earthquake,0,5205443.story
People are evacuated from their buildings wearing surgical masks after an earthquake in Mexico City, Monday, April 27, 2009. Mexico's government is ordering closed schools nationwide as the suspected death toll from swine flu climbed to 149. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) (Gregory Bull, AP / April 27, 2009)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A strong earthquake struck central Mexico on Monday, swaying tall buildings in the capital and sending office workers into the streets. The quake rattled nerves in a city already tense from a swine flu outbreak suspected of killing as many as 149 people nationwide.
"I'm scared," said Sarai Luna Pajas, a 22-year-old social services worker standing outside her office building moments after it hit. "We Mexicans are not used to living with so much fear, but all that is happening — the economic crisis, the illnesses and now this — it feels like the Apocalypse."
Co-worker Harold Gutierrez, 21, said the country was taking comfort from its religious faith, but he too was gripped by the sensation that the world might be coming to an end.
"If it is, it is God's plan," Gutierrez said, speaking over a green mask he wore to ward off swine flu.
The Interior Ministry said there were no reports of damages anywhere in the country.
The quake had a magnitude of 5.6 and was centered near Chilpancingo, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) southwest of Mexico City or 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the resort of Acapulco, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
USGS earthquake analyst Don Blakeman said the quake was felt strongly in Mexico City because the epicenter was relatively shallow and the ground under the capital — which is built on a former lake bed — tends to intensify shock waves.
"Distant quakes are often felt" strongly in the city, he said.
The USGS revised the quake's magnitude down from its preliminary estimate of 6.0, and said its depth was 30 miles (50 kilometers).
Tourists also streamed out of hotels in Acapulco and congregated on sidewalks and medians for several minutes. Local Civil Protection officer Silvia Rodriguez said there were no injuries.
Associated Press writers Natalia Parra in Acapulco, Mexico, and Dan Elliott in Denver contributed to this report.
Art Institute's new wing a modern test of the times -= Museum confident in success of $283 million new wing despite economy, admission fee increase
Art Institute's new wing a modern test of the times -= Museum confident in success of $283 million new wing despite economy, admission fee increase
By Mark Caro
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0427-artinstituteapr27,0,3713961.story
Plans for a "rather modest" 75,000-square-foot addition began in 1999, but later developed into the museum's largest addition at 264,000 square feet. (Tribune photo by Michael Tercha / January 2, 2009)
Picasso, Hockney and Lichtenstein are already here, and every day someone new arrives, such as Joseph Cornell's beautiful collage boxes or Cy Twombly's whisper-thin sculpture, the sole artwork in a dramatic double-height atrium.
But the most important arrivals will begin May 16, when the Art Institute of Chicago's new Modern Wing opens to the public. The anticipation is great for the most significant, expensive addition to Chicago's cultural landscape since Millennium Park bowed five years ago.
Millennium Park, however, is free, while the debut of the $283 million, 264,000-square-foot Modern Wing comes just a week before the Art Institute raises its general admission price from $12 to $18 -- all while the country is mired in a deep recession, and museums nationwide are retrenching.
So the new Modern Wing -- and, really, the new Art Institute, because everything is being reinstalled -- presents a test case. Is this lavish offering, to be unveiled at a May 9 gala, a misreading of the times and people's willingness to pay a premium to view great art in a stunning new building?
Or is the world-renowned art museum making a statement: that temporary economic conditions can't thwart Chicago's ambition and commitment to its cultural life?
"It's an indication that Chicago can still do things," Art Institute director James Cuno said. "It can dream ambitiously and deliver on that dream."
The project began in March 1999, when the museum, then led by current Getty Trust president James Wood, hired Pritzker Prize-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano to design a "rather modest" 75,000-square-foot addition to bridge the railroad tracks on the building's south side. But with Millennium Park emerging to the north and the Goodman Theatre vacating its space in the museum's northeast corner in 2000, Wood relocated the project and upped its scale.
After Cuno became director in September 2004, the plans continued to expand, with a bridge added to stretch from Millennium Park, over Monroe Street to the new building's third floor, where visitors can enjoy the open-air sculpture garden and dine in the restaurant without paying admission.
The Modern Wing became the museum's largest addition, supported by its largest capital campaign, $400 million. It weathered two national economic crises, the first triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "It's good news that we got it done when we did," Cuno said.
"I don't think you're going to see museums starting any big capital projects during this economic downturn," Bell said. "The donors simply aren't there right now."
But not everyone is so thrilled with the timing of the price increase, which the Art Institute planned almost a year ago and the Park District approved last month.
"I'm a member, but I think it's too much," said Deann Schuler, an 83-year-old Chicagoan visiting the Art Institute. "Who's going to be able to go to it?"
But Lara Pierson, visiting from Bushnell, Ill., with her 16-year-old son Duncan, said she'd tour the Art Institute even if the price increase already had taken effect. "This is such a once-in-a-lifetime experience," she said. "We're absolutely starry-eyed."
"I think it should be cheaper, because all people should be able to see it," Duncan chimed in.
"He doesn't make the money," his mother said, "and I'm more pragmatic and understand that funds have to come from somewhere."
Ald. Ed Burke (14th) has been pushing a City Council resolution to urge the Chicago Park District to reverse the price hike, though he didn't call for a vote Wednesday despite giving a long speech.
Art Institute officials defend the increase, the first since 2004, as overdue and appropriate. "Eighteen dollars is half a cab ride to O'Hare," Cuno said. "It's not very much to pay for the extraordinary experience of these great collections of art and the museum education programs that we offer."
Cuno noted that the $18 fee is all-inclusive, with free entry for kids younger than 12. A visitor now might pay $12 admission plus $8 for a special exhibition (such as the just-closed Edvard Munch show) plus $2 to check a coat and bag for a total of $22. As of May 23, the museum won't charge extra for special exhibitions or coat checking.
Museum officials also stress the increased commitment to free public space. Aside from the bridge, restaurant and sculpture garden, visitors who don't pay will be able to use the Ryan Education Center, which has double the space of the museum's current basement education center (which does require museum admission). Meanwhile, the Art Institute will continue to offer 401 free hours per year, including Thursday evenings, Friday summer evenings and all of February.
The museum is so confident of a favorable response that it has not adjusted its attendance projections despite the economy. It expects annual attendance to jump from the recent 1.4 million average to 1.9 million over the next fiscal year and 1.7 million the following year.
Museum figures indicate that attendance was not adversely affected by previous price increases and has risen during troubled economic times. Janet Landay, executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors, said most museums are reporting a slight uptick in admission during the current recession.
But endowments have been hit hard, most down 30 percent to 40 percent, said Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums in Washington, D.C. Institutions such as The Getty in Los Angeles, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City have been enacting significant cutbacks.
Cuno said the Art Institute is somewhat insulated because the endowment, which is down 23.7 percent, covers just 23 percent of its revenue stream. Gifts make up 25 percent, admissions 12 percent, membership 8 percent, the Park District 6 percent and shops and special events 23 percent. So although the museum is projecting increased ticket revenue to help cover operating costs, it also is counting on gift-giving to continue at a high level despite many people's financial struggles.
How the museum fares should send a signal to the county's other cultural institutions. "We'll really see the quantification of a fabulous new building even during a down economic time, even with an $18 admission price," Bell said.
Even as the Art Institute dominates attention, its perceived competitors are offering public support.
"The more spaces that we have in Chicago featuring contemporary art, the greater and better our public's engagement and understanding of the art of our time," Museum of Contemporary Art director Madeleine Grynsztejn said. "Art has a very long view, and to the Art Institute's credit, it is creating a wing for the public of Chicago to enjoy forever, in good times and bad."
mcaro@tribune.com
By Mark Caro
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 27, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0427-artinstituteapr27,0,3713961.story
Plans for a "rather modest" 75,000-square-foot addition began in 1999, but later developed into the museum's largest addition at 264,000 square feet. (Tribune photo by Michael Tercha / January 2, 2009)
Picasso, Hockney and Lichtenstein are already here, and every day someone new arrives, such as Joseph Cornell's beautiful collage boxes or Cy Twombly's whisper-thin sculpture, the sole artwork in a dramatic double-height atrium.
But the most important arrivals will begin May 16, when the Art Institute of Chicago's new Modern Wing opens to the public. The anticipation is great for the most significant, expensive addition to Chicago's cultural landscape since Millennium Park bowed five years ago.
Millennium Park, however, is free, while the debut of the $283 million, 264,000-square-foot Modern Wing comes just a week before the Art Institute raises its general admission price from $12 to $18 -- all while the country is mired in a deep recession, and museums nationwide are retrenching.
So the new Modern Wing -- and, really, the new Art Institute, because everything is being reinstalled -- presents a test case. Is this lavish offering, to be unveiled at a May 9 gala, a misreading of the times and people's willingness to pay a premium to view great art in a stunning new building?
Or is the world-renowned art museum making a statement: that temporary economic conditions can't thwart Chicago's ambition and commitment to its cultural life?
"It's an indication that Chicago can still do things," Art Institute director James Cuno said. "It can dream ambitiously and deliver on that dream."
The project began in March 1999, when the museum, then led by current Getty Trust president James Wood, hired Pritzker Prize-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano to design a "rather modest" 75,000-square-foot addition to bridge the railroad tracks on the building's south side. But with Millennium Park emerging to the north and the Goodman Theatre vacating its space in the museum's northeast corner in 2000, Wood relocated the project and upped its scale.
After Cuno became director in September 2004, the plans continued to expand, with a bridge added to stretch from Millennium Park, over Monroe Street to the new building's third floor, where visitors can enjoy the open-air sculpture garden and dine in the restaurant without paying admission.
The Modern Wing became the museum's largest addition, supported by its largest capital campaign, $400 million. It weathered two national economic crises, the first triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "It's good news that we got it done when we did," Cuno said.
"I don't think you're going to see museums starting any big capital projects during this economic downturn," Bell said. "The donors simply aren't there right now."
But not everyone is so thrilled with the timing of the price increase, which the Art Institute planned almost a year ago and the Park District approved last month.
"I'm a member, but I think it's too much," said Deann Schuler, an 83-year-old Chicagoan visiting the Art Institute. "Who's going to be able to go to it?"
But Lara Pierson, visiting from Bushnell, Ill., with her 16-year-old son Duncan, said she'd tour the Art Institute even if the price increase already had taken effect. "This is such a once-in-a-lifetime experience," she said. "We're absolutely starry-eyed."
"I think it should be cheaper, because all people should be able to see it," Duncan chimed in.
"He doesn't make the money," his mother said, "and I'm more pragmatic and understand that funds have to come from somewhere."
Ald. Ed Burke (14th) has been pushing a City Council resolution to urge the Chicago Park District to reverse the price hike, though he didn't call for a vote Wednesday despite giving a long speech.
Art Institute officials defend the increase, the first since 2004, as overdue and appropriate. "Eighteen dollars is half a cab ride to O'Hare," Cuno said. "It's not very much to pay for the extraordinary experience of these great collections of art and the museum education programs that we offer."
Cuno noted that the $18 fee is all-inclusive, with free entry for kids younger than 12. A visitor now might pay $12 admission plus $8 for a special exhibition (such as the just-closed Edvard Munch show) plus $2 to check a coat and bag for a total of $22. As of May 23, the museum won't charge extra for special exhibitions or coat checking.
Museum officials also stress the increased commitment to free public space. Aside from the bridge, restaurant and sculpture garden, visitors who don't pay will be able to use the Ryan Education Center, which has double the space of the museum's current basement education center (which does require museum admission). Meanwhile, the Art Institute will continue to offer 401 free hours per year, including Thursday evenings, Friday summer evenings and all of February.
The museum is so confident of a favorable response that it has not adjusted its attendance projections despite the economy. It expects annual attendance to jump from the recent 1.4 million average to 1.9 million over the next fiscal year and 1.7 million the following year.
Museum figures indicate that attendance was not adversely affected by previous price increases and has risen during troubled economic times. Janet Landay, executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors, said most museums are reporting a slight uptick in admission during the current recession.
But endowments have been hit hard, most down 30 percent to 40 percent, said Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums in Washington, D.C. Institutions such as The Getty in Los Angeles, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City have been enacting significant cutbacks.
Cuno said the Art Institute is somewhat insulated because the endowment, which is down 23.7 percent, covers just 23 percent of its revenue stream. Gifts make up 25 percent, admissions 12 percent, membership 8 percent, the Park District 6 percent and shops and special events 23 percent. So although the museum is projecting increased ticket revenue to help cover operating costs, it also is counting on gift-giving to continue at a high level despite many people's financial struggles.
How the museum fares should send a signal to the county's other cultural institutions. "We'll really see the quantification of a fabulous new building even during a down economic time, even with an $18 admission price," Bell said.
Even as the Art Institute dominates attention, its perceived competitors are offering public support.
"The more spaces that we have in Chicago featuring contemporary art, the greater and better our public's engagement and understanding of the art of our time," Museum of Contemporary Art director Madeleine Grynsztejn said. "Art has a very long view, and to the Art Institute's credit, it is creating a wing for the public of Chicago to enjoy forever, in good times and bad."
mcaro@tribune.com
End the University as We Know It
End the University as We Know It
By MARK C. TAYLOR
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?th&emc=th
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”
Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations.
The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.
The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance, governed by peer review. While trustees and administrations theoretically have some oversight responsibility, in practice, departments operate independently. To complicate matters further, once a faculty member has been granted tenure he is functionally autonomous. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments.
If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured. The long process to make higher learning more agile, adaptive and imaginative can begin with six major steps:
1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
Just a few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society. Given the state of the world today, this is a significant oversight. There can be no adequate understanding of the most important issues we face when disciplines are cloistered from one another and operate on their own premises.
It would be far more effective to bring together people working on questions of religion, politics, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, literature, art, religion and philosophy to engage in comparative analysis of common problems. As the curriculum is restructured, fields of inquiry and methods of investigation will be transformed.
2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After all, beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs.
A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.
3. Increase collaboration among institutions. All institutions do not need to do all things and technology makes it possible for schools to form partnerships to share students and faculty. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff. With these tools, I have already team-taught semester-long seminars in real time at the Universities of Helsinki and Melbourne.
4. Transform the traditional dissertation. In the arts and humanities, where looming cutbacks will be most devastating, there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text. As financial pressures on university presses continue to mount, publication of dissertations, and with it scholarly certification, is almost impossible. (The average university press print run of a dissertation that has been converted into a book is less than 500, and sales are usually considerably lower.) For many years, I have taught undergraduate courses in which students do not write traditional papers but develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce “theses” in alternative formats.
5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students. Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education. The exposure to new approaches and different cultures and the consideration of real-life issues will prepare students for jobs at businesses and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the knowledge and skills they will cultivate in the new universities will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world.
6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change. After all, once tenure has been granted, there is no leverage to encourage a professor to continue to develop professionally or to require him or her to assume responsibilities like administration and student advising. Tenure should be replaced with seven-year contracts, which, like the programs in which faculty teach, can be terminated or renewed. This policy would enable colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.
For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency and will open academia to a future we cannot conceive.
By MARK C. TAYLOR
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?th&emc=th
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”
Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations.
The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.
The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance, governed by peer review. While trustees and administrations theoretically have some oversight responsibility, in practice, departments operate independently. To complicate matters further, once a faculty member has been granted tenure he is functionally autonomous. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments.
If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured. The long process to make higher learning more agile, adaptive and imaginative can begin with six major steps:
1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
Just a few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society. Given the state of the world today, this is a significant oversight. There can be no adequate understanding of the most important issues we face when disciplines are cloistered from one another and operate on their own premises.
It would be far more effective to bring together people working on questions of religion, politics, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, literature, art, religion and philosophy to engage in comparative analysis of common problems. As the curriculum is restructured, fields of inquiry and methods of investigation will be transformed.
2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After all, beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs.
A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.
3. Increase collaboration among institutions. All institutions do not need to do all things and technology makes it possible for schools to form partnerships to share students and faculty. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff. With these tools, I have already team-taught semester-long seminars in real time at the Universities of Helsinki and Melbourne.
4. Transform the traditional dissertation. In the arts and humanities, where looming cutbacks will be most devastating, there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text. As financial pressures on university presses continue to mount, publication of dissertations, and with it scholarly certification, is almost impossible. (The average university press print run of a dissertation that has been converted into a book is less than 500, and sales are usually considerably lower.) For many years, I have taught undergraduate courses in which students do not write traditional papers but develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce “theses” in alternative formats.
5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students. Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education. The exposure to new approaches and different cultures and the consideration of real-life issues will prepare students for jobs at businesses and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the knowledge and skills they will cultivate in the new universities will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world.
6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change. After all, once tenure has been granted, there is no leverage to encourage a professor to continue to develop professionally or to require him or her to assume responsibilities like administration and student advising. Tenure should be replaced with seven-year contracts, which, like the programs in which faculty teach, can be terminated or renewed. This policy would enable colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.
For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency and will open academia to a future we cannot conceive.
Marriage Bill Poses a Test of Loyalties: Church vs. State
Marriage Bill Poses a Test of Loyalties: Church vs. State
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/nyregion/27smith.html?th&emc=th
It was just three days after Gov. David A. Paterson introduced a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry, and the Rev. Floyd H. Flake had some thoughts for any lawmaker who wanted to change New York’s definition of marriage.
Malcolm A. Smith, the Senate majority leader, favors a same-sex marriage bill.
The Rev. Floyd H. Flake, Mr. Smith's mentor, does not favor a same-sex marriage bill.
“I don’t care what the politicians think,” Mr. Flake, a former Democratic congressman and one of the city’s most influential religious leaders, thundered last week during a Sunday service at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Queens. “Ain’t nothing perfect about laying down and signing a license with somebody who got the same body parts you got.”
Mr. Flake went on for about two minutes, much to the delight of many in the pews, who cheered and applauded as the church organist punctuated the reverend’s words with notes from “I’ve Got a Woman,” by Ray Charles.
The sentiment, shared in many churches, would normally warrant little notice. Mr. Flake is the pastor of a predominantly black congregation in a community with a socially conservative tilt — hardly an unlikely spokesman for those opposed to same-sex marriage.
But Mr. Flake is also a mentor to the Senate majority leader, Malcolm A. Smith, who is among a handful of political leaders in Albany who will be responsible for the fate of same-sex marriage in New York.
Looking on as Mr. Flake preached that morning were Mr. Smith’s wife, Michele, and one of his senior aides, Mortimer Lawrence. Mr. Smith was not in church that day, though he is a regular.
Mr. Smith’s close relationship with Mr. Flake and the Allen A.M.E. church encapsulates the pressure the senator is experiencing from two distinct worlds — the political and the spiritual — as he strives to persuade his colleagues that they should vote to legalize same-sex marriage.
“He is both a servant of God and a servant of the state,” Mr. Flake said in a telephone interview. “It’s clearly a dichotomy one does not like to be in, but it’s clearly before him now.”
Mr. Smith, who went to work for Mr. Flake in 1986 as a Congressional aide, said the minister’s views on the subject have not weakened his own resolve to see same-sex marriage legalized. Though they speak nearly every day, the two men said they have not broached the topic recently.
“He knows what my position is. I know what his position is,” Mr. Smith said. “He looks at it as a religious matter, and I look at it as a legal matter.”
Mr. Smith said he arrived at his decision to support same-sex marriage two years ago when he began considering it a matter of equal rights.
“People being together, you know, has no implication on most other people’s lives,” he said. “I think people deserve to be with who they want to be with. Who am I to dictate?”
It has not been an easy stance for him to take. His advocacy on the issue nearly prevented him from becoming majority leader, which he holds by a mere one-vote margin. And now he is at odds with some same-sex marriage supporters, most notably Mr. Paterson, over how quickly to bring the bill to the floor.
Mr. Paterson would like to see a vote regardless of whether the measure has enough support, while Mr. Smith has said he prefers to wait until he can be certain it will pass.
Holding a vote soon would likely create a confrontation with Senator Rubén DÃaz, a Pentecostal minister and a Democrat from the Bronx, who strongly opposes giving gays the right to marry and who fills a key position in Mr. Smith’s narrow majority.
It was Mr. DÃaz who said he could not support a Senate leader who would permit a vote on a same-sex marriage bill. Mr. DÃaz initially withheld his vote for Mr. Smith, along with two other Democratic senators who were reluctant to lend him their support for different reasons.
In January, before Mr. Smith was elected leader, the two men spoke and reached a truce, according to several people who knew about their conversations but did not want to be identified because the discussions were meant to be private. Mr. Smith explained to Mr. DÃaz that there were not enough senators who supported same-sex marriage and that the issue was not likely to come up for a vote. That was apparently enough to satisfy Mr. DÃaz, who ended up supporting Mr. Smith as leader.
But the issue has gained momentum now that Vermont and Iowa have moved to legalize same-sex marriage, and calls are growing louder for a vote in Albany. Mr. DÃaz has made no secret of his displeasure and has vowed to block any move to make same-sex unions legal. “There will be no same-sex marriage,” Mr. DÃaz told people gathered at his church, Christian Community Neighborhood Church in the Bronx, on the same morning that Mr. Paterson said he was introducing the marriage bill.
Among Mr. Smith’s constituents, there is clearly some unhappiness about his position.
“I’m not into gay marriage — no, no sir,” said Urcelna Henry, 73, who was at Williams Laundromat, which is next to Mr. Smith’s district office in St. Albans, Queens. Then, referring to Mr. Smith, she added, “If he was a man who followed the Bible, he wouldn’t be for it.”
Mr. Smith said such opposition does not diminish his determination to legalize same-sex marriage, though he is not sure he can secure enough votes before the Legislature ends its session in June.
“I’m a strong supporter,” he said. “I have been and will be.”
His approach in trying to persuade colleagues wary of voting to legalize gay marriage will be gentle, he said, because he believes that is the best way to sway opinions. “I don’t try to shove anything down people’s throats,” he said. “I just try to move them to a point where they understand that it’s the right thing to do.”
And in discussing his differences on the issue with Mr. Flake, Mr. Smith likened his support of gay rights to former Gov. Mario Cuomo’s support for abortion rights even though Mr. Cuomo is Catholic and the Vatican opposes the practice. “I’m in office to do what I think is right,” he said.
Ultimately, Mr. Flake said, the decision to support same-sex marriage and the consequences that decision may produce belong to Mr. Smith. “I told him he has to live with his conscience,” Mr. Flake said.
Angela Macropoulos and Mathew R. Warren contributed reporting.
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/nyregion/27smith.html?th&emc=th
It was just three days after Gov. David A. Paterson introduced a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry, and the Rev. Floyd H. Flake had some thoughts for any lawmaker who wanted to change New York’s definition of marriage.
Malcolm A. Smith, the Senate majority leader, favors a same-sex marriage bill.
The Rev. Floyd H. Flake, Mr. Smith's mentor, does not favor a same-sex marriage bill.
“I don’t care what the politicians think,” Mr. Flake, a former Democratic congressman and one of the city’s most influential religious leaders, thundered last week during a Sunday service at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in Queens. “Ain’t nothing perfect about laying down and signing a license with somebody who got the same body parts you got.”
Mr. Flake went on for about two minutes, much to the delight of many in the pews, who cheered and applauded as the church organist punctuated the reverend’s words with notes from “I’ve Got a Woman,” by Ray Charles.
The sentiment, shared in many churches, would normally warrant little notice. Mr. Flake is the pastor of a predominantly black congregation in a community with a socially conservative tilt — hardly an unlikely spokesman for those opposed to same-sex marriage.
But Mr. Flake is also a mentor to the Senate majority leader, Malcolm A. Smith, who is among a handful of political leaders in Albany who will be responsible for the fate of same-sex marriage in New York.
Looking on as Mr. Flake preached that morning were Mr. Smith’s wife, Michele, and one of his senior aides, Mortimer Lawrence. Mr. Smith was not in church that day, though he is a regular.
Mr. Smith’s close relationship with Mr. Flake and the Allen A.M.E. church encapsulates the pressure the senator is experiencing from two distinct worlds — the political and the spiritual — as he strives to persuade his colleagues that they should vote to legalize same-sex marriage.
“He is both a servant of God and a servant of the state,” Mr. Flake said in a telephone interview. “It’s clearly a dichotomy one does not like to be in, but it’s clearly before him now.”
Mr. Smith, who went to work for Mr. Flake in 1986 as a Congressional aide, said the minister’s views on the subject have not weakened his own resolve to see same-sex marriage legalized. Though they speak nearly every day, the two men said they have not broached the topic recently.
“He knows what my position is. I know what his position is,” Mr. Smith said. “He looks at it as a religious matter, and I look at it as a legal matter.”
Mr. Smith said he arrived at his decision to support same-sex marriage two years ago when he began considering it a matter of equal rights.
“People being together, you know, has no implication on most other people’s lives,” he said. “I think people deserve to be with who they want to be with. Who am I to dictate?”
It has not been an easy stance for him to take. His advocacy on the issue nearly prevented him from becoming majority leader, which he holds by a mere one-vote margin. And now he is at odds with some same-sex marriage supporters, most notably Mr. Paterson, over how quickly to bring the bill to the floor.
Mr. Paterson would like to see a vote regardless of whether the measure has enough support, while Mr. Smith has said he prefers to wait until he can be certain it will pass.
Holding a vote soon would likely create a confrontation with Senator Rubén DÃaz, a Pentecostal minister and a Democrat from the Bronx, who strongly opposes giving gays the right to marry and who fills a key position in Mr. Smith’s narrow majority.
It was Mr. DÃaz who said he could not support a Senate leader who would permit a vote on a same-sex marriage bill. Mr. DÃaz initially withheld his vote for Mr. Smith, along with two other Democratic senators who were reluctant to lend him their support for different reasons.
In January, before Mr. Smith was elected leader, the two men spoke and reached a truce, according to several people who knew about their conversations but did not want to be identified because the discussions were meant to be private. Mr. Smith explained to Mr. DÃaz that there were not enough senators who supported same-sex marriage and that the issue was not likely to come up for a vote. That was apparently enough to satisfy Mr. DÃaz, who ended up supporting Mr. Smith as leader.
But the issue has gained momentum now that Vermont and Iowa have moved to legalize same-sex marriage, and calls are growing louder for a vote in Albany. Mr. DÃaz has made no secret of his displeasure and has vowed to block any move to make same-sex unions legal. “There will be no same-sex marriage,” Mr. DÃaz told people gathered at his church, Christian Community Neighborhood Church in the Bronx, on the same morning that Mr. Paterson said he was introducing the marriage bill.
Among Mr. Smith’s constituents, there is clearly some unhappiness about his position.
“I’m not into gay marriage — no, no sir,” said Urcelna Henry, 73, who was at Williams Laundromat, which is next to Mr. Smith’s district office in St. Albans, Queens. Then, referring to Mr. Smith, she added, “If he was a man who followed the Bible, he wouldn’t be for it.”
Mr. Smith said such opposition does not diminish his determination to legalize same-sex marriage, though he is not sure he can secure enough votes before the Legislature ends its session in June.
“I’m a strong supporter,” he said. “I have been and will be.”
His approach in trying to persuade colleagues wary of voting to legalize gay marriage will be gentle, he said, because he believes that is the best way to sway opinions. “I don’t try to shove anything down people’s throats,” he said. “I just try to move them to a point where they understand that it’s the right thing to do.”
And in discussing his differences on the issue with Mr. Flake, Mr. Smith likened his support of gay rights to former Gov. Mario Cuomo’s support for abortion rights even though Mr. Cuomo is Catholic and the Vatican opposes the practice. “I’m in office to do what I think is right,” he said.
Ultimately, Mr. Flake said, the decision to support same-sex marriage and the consequences that decision may produce belong to Mr. Smith. “I told him he has to live with his conscience,” Mr. Flake said.
Angela Macropoulos and Mathew R. Warren contributed reporting.
More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops/Study Shows Americans Leave Religion Due to Drift, Not Rupture
More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?th&emc=th
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.
Loretta Haskell, a board member of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, is also a church musician. “I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing,” she said.
The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.
And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.
“Is everyone in favor of sponsoring a picnic for humanists with families?” asked the board president, Jonathan Lamb, a 27-year-old meteorologist, eliciting a chorus of “ayes.”
More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out — even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words “I Believe” (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).
They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.
They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.
“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”
Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.
Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.
Local and national atheist organizations have flourished in recent years, fed by outrage over the Bush administration’s embrace of the religious right. A spate of best-selling books on atheism also popularized the notion that nonbelief is not just an argument but a cause, like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy.
Ten national organizations that variously identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God have recently united to form the Secular Coalition for America, of which Mr. Silverman is president. These groups, once rivals, are now pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state.
A wave of donations, some in the millions of dollars, has enabled the hiring of more paid professional organizers, said Fred Edwords, a longtime atheist leader who just started his own umbrella group, the United Coalition of Reason, which plans to spawn 20 local groups around the country in the next year.
Despite changing attitudes, polls continue to show that atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or religious group when Americans are asked whether they would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member of that group.
Over lunch with some new atheist joiners at a downtown Charleston restaurant serving shrimp and grits, one young mother said that her husband was afraid to allow her to go public as an atheist because employers would refuse to hire him.
But another member, Beverly Long, a retired school administrator who now teaches education at the Citadel, said that when she first moved to Charleston from Toronto in 2001, “the first question people asked me was, What church do you belong to?” Ms. Long attended Wednesday dinners at a Methodist church, for the social interaction, but never felt at home. Since her youth, she had doubted the existence of God but did not discuss her views with others.
Ms. Long found the secular humanists through a newspaper advertisement and attended a meeting. Now, she is ready to go public, she said, especially after doing some genealogical research recently. “I had ancestors who fought in the American Revolution so I could speak my mind,” she said.
Until recent years, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry were local pariahs. Mr. Silverman — whose specialty license plate, one of many offered by the state, says “In Reason We Trust” — was invited to give the invocation at the Charleston City Council once, but half the council members walked out. The local chapter of Habitat for Humanity would not let the Secular Humanists volunteer to build houses wearing T-shirts that said “Non Prophet Organization,” he said.
When their billboard went up in January, with their Web site address displayed prominently, they expected hate mail.
“But most of the e-mails were grateful,” said Laura Kasman, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina.
The board members meeting in the Kasmans’ living room were an unlikely mix that included a gift store owner, a builder, a grandmother, a retired nursing professor, a retired Navy officer, an administrator at a primate sanctuary and a church musician. They are also diverse in their attitudes toward religion.
Loretta Haskell, the church musician, said: “I did struggle at one point as to whether or not I should be making music in churches, given my position on things. But at the same time I like using my music to move people, to give them comfort. And what I’ve found is, I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing.”
The group has had mixed reactions to President Obama, who acknowledged nonbelievers in his inauguration speech. “I sent him a thank-you note,” Ms. Kasman said. But Sharon Fratepietro, who is married to Mr. Silverman, said, “It seemed like one long religious ceremony, with a moment of lip service.”
Part of what is giving the movement momentum is the proliferation of groups on college campuses. The Secular Student Alliance now has 146 chapters, up from 42 in 2003.
At the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, 19 students showed up for a recent evening meeting of the “Pastafarians,” named for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — a popular spoof on religion dreamed up by an opponent of intelligent design, the idea that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them.
Andrew Cederdahl, the group’s co-founder, asked for volunteers for the local food bank and for a coming debate with a nearby Christian college. Then Mr. Cederdahl opened the floor to members to tell their “coming out stories.”
Andrew Morency, who attended a Christian high school, said that when he got to college and studied evolutionary biology he decided that “creationists lie.”
Josh Streetman, who once attended the very Christian college that the Pastafarians were about to debate, said he knew the Bible too well to be sure that Scripture is true. Like Mr. Streetman, many of the other students at the meeting were highly literate in the Bible and religious history.
In keeping with the new generation of atheist evangelists, the Pastafarian leaders say that their goal is not confrontation, or even winning converts, but changing the public’s stereotype of atheists. A favorite Pastafarian activity is to gather at a busy crossroads on campus with a sign offering “Free Hugs” from “Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist.”
Study Shows Americans Leave Religion Due to Drift, Not Rupture
By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Copyright by The Washington Post
Monday, April 27, 2009; 12:11 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042701460.html?hpid=topnews
More Americans have given up their faith or changed religions because of a gradual spiritual drift than switched because of a disillusionment over their churches' policies, according to a new study released today which illustrates how personal spiritual attitudes are taking precedence over denominational traditions.
The survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is the first large-scale study of the reasons behind Americans switching their religious faith and found that more than half of people have done so at least once during their lifetime.
Almost three-quarters of Catholics and Protestants who are now unaffiliated with a religion said they had "just gradually drifted away" from their faith. And more than three-quarters of Catholics and half of Protestants currently not associated with a faith said that, over time, they stopped believing in their religion's teachings.
Pew Forum senior fellow John Green said that result surprised researchers, who had expected policy disputes or disillusionment over internal scandals -- such as the clergy sex abuse controversy in the Catholic Church -- to play more of a role in people's decision to leave a faith. Among former Catholics who became Protestants, one in five cited the sex abuse scandal as one of several reasons why they had left the faith. But only a small percentage -- 2 percent to 3 percent -- cited it as the lone reason.
"It suggests that what leads people to leave their faith is that, somehow for some reason, it isn't meeting their needs," Green said. "Religion becomes less plausible to the person."
The study is a follow-up to a Pew report on religious identity released last year that was one of the largest polls of its kind. Researchers recontacted 2,800 of the 35,000 adults they previously interviewed for that study for in-depth interviews on how many times, and why, they had changed religious affiliations.
Researchers interviewed non-Christians, but focused their analysis on Christians, among whom they had large enough groups to permit close scrutiny, said Pew research fellow Gregory Smith.
Researchers discovered that the "churn" among the faithful and formerly faithful was higher than first estimated. In this second round of interviews, they found that some people who currently belong to the same religion in which they were raised actually had tried a different faith at some point, causing researchers to raise their estimate of the people who have changed faith at some point in their lives from 44 percent to 56 percent.
They also found that up to one-third of people who have left their childhood faith have jumped around among three or more other faiths.
The results are a "big indictment" of organized religion, said Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and author of a book on evangelical leaders. "There is a huge, wide-open back door at most churches. Churches around the country may be able to attract people, but they can't keep them."
At the same time, the large and growing number of people who report having no religious affiliation are actually surprisingly open to religion, researchers said. Contrary to the popular perception that many have embraced secularism, a significant percentage appeared simply to have put their religiosity on pause. Having worshiped in at least one faith already, about three in 10 said they had just not yet found the right religion.
"We tend to think that when people leave [religion] they leave," said Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University. "But a lot of these unaffiliated are unaffiliated for now. . . . It's not a one way street. It's not like after you've left a religious affiliation, you can't get back in."
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?th&emc=th
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.
Loretta Haskell, a board member of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, is also a church musician. “I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing,” she said.
The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.
And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.
“Is everyone in favor of sponsoring a picnic for humanists with families?” asked the board president, Jonathan Lamb, a 27-year-old meteorologist, eliciting a chorus of “ayes.”
More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out — even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words “I Believe” (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).
They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.
They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.
“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”
Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.
Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.
Local and national atheist organizations have flourished in recent years, fed by outrage over the Bush administration’s embrace of the religious right. A spate of best-selling books on atheism also popularized the notion that nonbelief is not just an argument but a cause, like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy.
Ten national organizations that variously identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God have recently united to form the Secular Coalition for America, of which Mr. Silverman is president. These groups, once rivals, are now pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state.
A wave of donations, some in the millions of dollars, has enabled the hiring of more paid professional organizers, said Fred Edwords, a longtime atheist leader who just started his own umbrella group, the United Coalition of Reason, which plans to spawn 20 local groups around the country in the next year.
Despite changing attitudes, polls continue to show that atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or religious group when Americans are asked whether they would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member of that group.
Over lunch with some new atheist joiners at a downtown Charleston restaurant serving shrimp and grits, one young mother said that her husband was afraid to allow her to go public as an atheist because employers would refuse to hire him.
But another member, Beverly Long, a retired school administrator who now teaches education at the Citadel, said that when she first moved to Charleston from Toronto in 2001, “the first question people asked me was, What church do you belong to?” Ms. Long attended Wednesday dinners at a Methodist church, for the social interaction, but never felt at home. Since her youth, she had doubted the existence of God but did not discuss her views with others.
Ms. Long found the secular humanists through a newspaper advertisement and attended a meeting. Now, she is ready to go public, she said, especially after doing some genealogical research recently. “I had ancestors who fought in the American Revolution so I could speak my mind,” she said.
Until recent years, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry were local pariahs. Mr. Silverman — whose specialty license plate, one of many offered by the state, says “In Reason We Trust” — was invited to give the invocation at the Charleston City Council once, but half the council members walked out. The local chapter of Habitat for Humanity would not let the Secular Humanists volunteer to build houses wearing T-shirts that said “Non Prophet Organization,” he said.
When their billboard went up in January, with their Web site address displayed prominently, they expected hate mail.
“But most of the e-mails were grateful,” said Laura Kasman, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina.
The board members meeting in the Kasmans’ living room were an unlikely mix that included a gift store owner, a builder, a grandmother, a retired nursing professor, a retired Navy officer, an administrator at a primate sanctuary and a church musician. They are also diverse in their attitudes toward religion.
Loretta Haskell, the church musician, said: “I did struggle at one point as to whether or not I should be making music in churches, given my position on things. But at the same time I like using my music to move people, to give them comfort. And what I’ve found is, I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing.”
The group has had mixed reactions to President Obama, who acknowledged nonbelievers in his inauguration speech. “I sent him a thank-you note,” Ms. Kasman said. But Sharon Fratepietro, who is married to Mr. Silverman, said, “It seemed like one long religious ceremony, with a moment of lip service.”
Part of what is giving the movement momentum is the proliferation of groups on college campuses. The Secular Student Alliance now has 146 chapters, up from 42 in 2003.
At the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, 19 students showed up for a recent evening meeting of the “Pastafarians,” named for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — a popular spoof on religion dreamed up by an opponent of intelligent design, the idea that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them.
Andrew Cederdahl, the group’s co-founder, asked for volunteers for the local food bank and for a coming debate with a nearby Christian college. Then Mr. Cederdahl opened the floor to members to tell their “coming out stories.”
Andrew Morency, who attended a Christian high school, said that when he got to college and studied evolutionary biology he decided that “creationists lie.”
Josh Streetman, who once attended the very Christian college that the Pastafarians were about to debate, said he knew the Bible too well to be sure that Scripture is true. Like Mr. Streetman, many of the other students at the meeting were highly literate in the Bible and religious history.
In keeping with the new generation of atheist evangelists, the Pastafarian leaders say that their goal is not confrontation, or even winning converts, but changing the public’s stereotype of atheists. A favorite Pastafarian activity is to gather at a busy crossroads on campus with a sign offering “Free Hugs” from “Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist.”
Study Shows Americans Leave Religion Due to Drift, Not Rupture
By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Copyright by The Washington Post
Monday, April 27, 2009; 12:11 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042701460.html?hpid=topnews
More Americans have given up their faith or changed religions because of a gradual spiritual drift than switched because of a disillusionment over their churches' policies, according to a new study released today which illustrates how personal spiritual attitudes are taking precedence over denominational traditions.
The survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is the first large-scale study of the reasons behind Americans switching their religious faith and found that more than half of people have done so at least once during their lifetime.
Almost three-quarters of Catholics and Protestants who are now unaffiliated with a religion said they had "just gradually drifted away" from their faith. And more than three-quarters of Catholics and half of Protestants currently not associated with a faith said that, over time, they stopped believing in their religion's teachings.
Pew Forum senior fellow John Green said that result surprised researchers, who had expected policy disputes or disillusionment over internal scandals -- such as the clergy sex abuse controversy in the Catholic Church -- to play more of a role in people's decision to leave a faith. Among former Catholics who became Protestants, one in five cited the sex abuse scandal as one of several reasons why they had left the faith. But only a small percentage -- 2 percent to 3 percent -- cited it as the lone reason.
"It suggests that what leads people to leave their faith is that, somehow for some reason, it isn't meeting their needs," Green said. "Religion becomes less plausible to the person."
The study is a follow-up to a Pew report on religious identity released last year that was one of the largest polls of its kind. Researchers recontacted 2,800 of the 35,000 adults they previously interviewed for that study for in-depth interviews on how many times, and why, they had changed religious affiliations.
Researchers interviewed non-Christians, but focused their analysis on Christians, among whom they had large enough groups to permit close scrutiny, said Pew research fellow Gregory Smith.
Researchers discovered that the "churn" among the faithful and formerly faithful was higher than first estimated. In this second round of interviews, they found that some people who currently belong to the same religion in which they were raised actually had tried a different faith at some point, causing researchers to raise their estimate of the people who have changed faith at some point in their lives from 44 percent to 56 percent.
They also found that up to one-third of people who have left their childhood faith have jumped around among three or more other faiths.
The results are a "big indictment" of organized religion, said Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and author of a book on evangelical leaders. "There is a huge, wide-open back door at most churches. Churches around the country may be able to attract people, but they can't keep them."
At the same time, the large and growing number of people who report having no religious affiliation are actually surprisingly open to religion, researchers said. Contrary to the popular perception that many have embraced secularism, a significant percentage appeared simply to have put their religiosity on pause. Having worshiped in at least one faith already, about three in 10 said they had just not yet found the right religion.
"We tend to think that when people leave [religion] they leave," said Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University. "But a lot of these unaffiliated are unaffiliated for now. . . . It's not a one way street. It's not like after you've left a religious affiliation, you can't get back in."
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Plan for pandemic but avoid panic/New York Times Editorial: The New Swine Flu
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Plan for pandemic but avoid panic
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 20:16 | Last updated: April 27 2009 20:16
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d115adfe-335e-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
Authorities around the world have to perform a delicate balancing act in their response to the latest pandemic threat from the swine flu outbreak originating in Mexico. The flu virus is so unpredictable and scientific knowledge about the latest strain so scarce that no one can say yet with any confidence whether a pandemic is imminent – and if so how lethal it will be. A real sense of urgency is needed to prepare health systems for the worst; yet it is essential to avoid public panic and overreaction, which could do more harm than the disease itself.
Big falls in travel and leisure companies’ shares on Monday gave a glimpse of the potential economic damage that fear can inflict. The 2003 Sars outbreak, which never escalated into a pandemic, cost an estimated $50bn – at a time of worldwide growth. We are more vulnerable to the fear factor now, with economic morale much lower.
Some proposed responses to swine flu would be excessive. Screening travellers from infected regions and advising against non-essential travel may be sensible but outright bans on movement are not; epidemiologists say travel bans are ineffective in limiting the further spread of such a contagious virus once it has moved beyond its birthplace. Trade embargoes, such as stopping the import of Mexican meat, are pointless too.
The best responses at this stage combine intensive surveillance and research into the new flu virus with clear public information campaigns. It is essential, for example, that people with mild flu symptoms stay at home rather than spreading the virus and swamping health services by making unnecessary visits to their family doctors.
The threat has come from an unexpected direction, a porcine H1N1 virus from the Americas rather than the H5N1 bird flu in Asia on which the world had focused. But almost all the preparatory work carried out for H5N1 will come in useful now – we are far better prepared than we were five years ago to confront any pandemic.
In particular we have large stocks of two antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, which can be mobilised immediately. A crash programme to produce a vaccine against the new flu strain will probably take six months but is worth undertaking.
History suggests that, if there is a pandemic, the first wave this summer may be relatively mild – possibly leading to a false sense of relief. A more severe second wave may follow during the autumn and winter. By then an effective vaccine against the new strain would be really welcome.
New York Times Editorial: The New Swine Flu
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/opinion/28tue1.html?ref=global
Is the new swine flu virus that has killed many people in Mexico and has spread to the United States and other countries the start of a much feared pandemic? Or is this yet another false alarm — the latest in a long history of worrying that some day a hugely lethal flu strain might sweep through the world and kill tens of millions of people, much as it did in 1918-1919?
The answer at this point is that nobody knows for sure. There are some disquieting elements about the severity of the symptoms appearing in Mexico, offset by the apparently far milder behavior of the virus in the United States. Experts clearly need to learn more about the origins, transmissibility and lethality of the new virus in coming weeks.
President Obama hit the right note on Monday when he said there is reason for concern and for a heightened state of alert but no cause for alarm. Although the new strain of influenza is suspected of killing 149 people and sickening some 1,600 others in Mexico, the toll, so far, in this country appears slight. There have been 40 confirmed swine flu cases, the majority — 28 — associated with a single preparatory school in Queens, some of whose students visited Mexico recently.
Only four states other than New York have confirmed cases: seven in California and one or two in Texas, Ohio and Kansas. The illnesses have all been mild; only one patient was hospitalized and no one has died. Four or five days after seeing the first signs of swine flu in New York City, there is still no evidence that it has spread further.
This situation does call for careful surveillance and preparations for the worst. American health officials have taken reasonable steps. They have made preparations to distribute up to a quarter of the anti-flu medicines from the government’s strategic stockpile to states and localities should they be swamped with a wave of swine flu cases. They also have taken preliminary steps toward possible formulation of a vaccine to combat the new strain. Although it would take months to produce such a vaccine, it could be ready should another wave of swine flu emerge in the next influenza season.
Individuals who feel sick are advised to stay home so as not to infect others. They should cover their noses and mouths when sneezing. Healthy people are advised to avoid those who are sick, wash their hands often and thoroughly, and try to stay in good general health. Face masks are of unproven value.
Officials also have recommended that Americans forgo “nonessential travel” to Mexico while criticizing a similar warning from a European Union health official against travel to the United States. The American complaint is less self-serving than it might seem, given that the disease is more widespread and more severe in Mexico. The World Health Organization raised its alert level for the swine flu on Monday but recommended against closing borders or restricting international travel.
While health officials scramble to keep up with the fast-moving virus, it is deeply disquieting that the Obama administration has few of its top health officials in place. The Senate, delayed by Republican objections, is finally scheduled to debate the confirmation of Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday to be secretary of health and human services. And the White House has yet to announce a nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those are two of the most important positions for dealing with an infectious disease epidemic.
The acting official in charge of the C.D.C. insists that the absence of top leadership has not affected how the health agencies have responded, and he may well be right. But if the Obama administration is to be judged, as it should be, on how well it responds to this potential crisis, it would be best to have the full team in place.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 20:16 | Last updated: April 27 2009 20:16
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d115adfe-335e-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
Authorities around the world have to perform a delicate balancing act in their response to the latest pandemic threat from the swine flu outbreak originating in Mexico. The flu virus is so unpredictable and scientific knowledge about the latest strain so scarce that no one can say yet with any confidence whether a pandemic is imminent – and if so how lethal it will be. A real sense of urgency is needed to prepare health systems for the worst; yet it is essential to avoid public panic and overreaction, which could do more harm than the disease itself.
Big falls in travel and leisure companies’ shares on Monday gave a glimpse of the potential economic damage that fear can inflict. The 2003 Sars outbreak, which never escalated into a pandemic, cost an estimated $50bn – at a time of worldwide growth. We are more vulnerable to the fear factor now, with economic morale much lower.
Some proposed responses to swine flu would be excessive. Screening travellers from infected regions and advising against non-essential travel may be sensible but outright bans on movement are not; epidemiologists say travel bans are ineffective in limiting the further spread of such a contagious virus once it has moved beyond its birthplace. Trade embargoes, such as stopping the import of Mexican meat, are pointless too.
The best responses at this stage combine intensive surveillance and research into the new flu virus with clear public information campaigns. It is essential, for example, that people with mild flu symptoms stay at home rather than spreading the virus and swamping health services by making unnecessary visits to their family doctors.
The threat has come from an unexpected direction, a porcine H1N1 virus from the Americas rather than the H5N1 bird flu in Asia on which the world had focused. But almost all the preparatory work carried out for H5N1 will come in useful now – we are far better prepared than we were five years ago to confront any pandemic.
In particular we have large stocks of two antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, which can be mobilised immediately. A crash programme to produce a vaccine against the new flu strain will probably take six months but is worth undertaking.
History suggests that, if there is a pandemic, the first wave this summer may be relatively mild – possibly leading to a false sense of relief. A more severe second wave may follow during the autumn and winter. By then an effective vaccine against the new strain would be really welcome.
New York Times Editorial: The New Swine Flu
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/opinion/28tue1.html?ref=global
Is the new swine flu virus that has killed many people in Mexico and has spread to the United States and other countries the start of a much feared pandemic? Or is this yet another false alarm — the latest in a long history of worrying that some day a hugely lethal flu strain might sweep through the world and kill tens of millions of people, much as it did in 1918-1919?
The answer at this point is that nobody knows for sure. There are some disquieting elements about the severity of the symptoms appearing in Mexico, offset by the apparently far milder behavior of the virus in the United States. Experts clearly need to learn more about the origins, transmissibility and lethality of the new virus in coming weeks.
President Obama hit the right note on Monday when he said there is reason for concern and for a heightened state of alert but no cause for alarm. Although the new strain of influenza is suspected of killing 149 people and sickening some 1,600 others in Mexico, the toll, so far, in this country appears slight. There have been 40 confirmed swine flu cases, the majority — 28 — associated with a single preparatory school in Queens, some of whose students visited Mexico recently.
Only four states other than New York have confirmed cases: seven in California and one or two in Texas, Ohio and Kansas. The illnesses have all been mild; only one patient was hospitalized and no one has died. Four or five days after seeing the first signs of swine flu in New York City, there is still no evidence that it has spread further.
This situation does call for careful surveillance and preparations for the worst. American health officials have taken reasonable steps. They have made preparations to distribute up to a quarter of the anti-flu medicines from the government’s strategic stockpile to states and localities should they be swamped with a wave of swine flu cases. They also have taken preliminary steps toward possible formulation of a vaccine to combat the new strain. Although it would take months to produce such a vaccine, it could be ready should another wave of swine flu emerge in the next influenza season.
Individuals who feel sick are advised to stay home so as not to infect others. They should cover their noses and mouths when sneezing. Healthy people are advised to avoid those who are sick, wash their hands often and thoroughly, and try to stay in good general health. Face masks are of unproven value.
Officials also have recommended that Americans forgo “nonessential travel” to Mexico while criticizing a similar warning from a European Union health official against travel to the United States. The American complaint is less self-serving than it might seem, given that the disease is more widespread and more severe in Mexico. The World Health Organization raised its alert level for the swine flu on Monday but recommended against closing borders or restricting international travel.
While health officials scramble to keep up with the fast-moving virus, it is deeply disquieting that the Obama administration has few of its top health officials in place. The Senate, delayed by Republican objections, is finally scheduled to debate the confirmation of Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday to be secretary of health and human services. And the White House has yet to announce a nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those are two of the most important positions for dealing with an infectious disease epidemic.
The acting official in charge of the C.D.C. insists that the absence of top leadership has not affected how the health agencies have responded, and he may well be right. But if the Obama administration is to be judged, as it should be, on how well it responds to this potential crisis, it would be best to have the full team in place.
Fed study puts ideal US interest rate at -5%
Fed study puts ideal US interest rate at -5%
By Krishna Guha in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 03:06 | Last updated: April 27 2009 03:06
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/37877644-32c9-11de-8116-00144feabdc0.html
The ideal interest rate for the US economy in current conditions would be minus 5 per cent, according to internal analysis prepared for the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting.
The analysis was based on a so-called Taylor-rule approach that estimates an appropriate interest rate based on unemployment and inflation.
A central bank cannot cut interest rates below zero. However, the staff research suggests the Fed should maintain unconventional policies that provide stimulus roughly equivalent to an interest rate of minus 5 per cent.
Fed staff separately estimated what size and type of unconventional operations, including asset purchases, might provide this level of stimulus. They suggested that the Fed should expand its asset purchases by even more than the $1,150bn (€885bn, £788bn) increase policymakers authorised at the last meeting, which included $300bn of Treasury purchases.
The assessment that the US central bank needs to provide stimulus equivalent to a substantially negative interest rate is unlikely to have changed ahead of this week’s policy meeting.
The Fed is not likely to embark on any substantial new programmes at this meeting, in large part because it will not have downgraded its economic forecasts since the last meeting. Indeed, Fed officials may see the risks to the economy as a little more balanced than they were in March, though policymakers probably still see these risks as overall weighted to the downside.
This could set the stage for a more detailed discussion of the framework that will ultimately govern the Fed’s exit strategy.
There is, though, a small but intriguing possibility that the Fed could follow the Bank of Canada in setting out an explicit timeframe over which it expects to keep short-term rates at virtually zero.
While this novel strategy is likely to at least provoke debate within the US central bank, which has shown itself willing to adopt measures first deployed elsewhere, many policymakers would probably be wary of adopting the Canadian approach, following their own unsatisfactory experience in providing guidance on interest rates after the dotcom bubble burst.
Others may feel the Canadian approach would be ineffective as it may not be seen as credibly binding the central bank’s future decisions.
Still, many Fed officials expect they may well keep rates near zero for another 18 months to two years and some might see value in making this more explicit.
Ben Bernanke, chairman, sees the massive expansion of bank reserves caused by the Fed’s unconventional operations as already providing a way to assure the market that the Fed will not be in a position to raise rates for quite some time to come.
The last meeting saw the Fed buy long-term treasuries for the first time in decades. The large initial impact of the move on markets is no longer visible, but officials think the policy was reasonably successful.
Previous staff analysis suggested the $300bn purchase would reduce the yield on 10-year treasuries by 25-35 basis points, and officials think the rate today is about this much lower than it would have been if they had not started buying.
Further purchases are possible, particularly if the Fed again downgrades its economic forecasts. The staff analysis comparing unconventional operations to interest rate cuts suggests more might be needed anyway.
However, policymakers are likely to watch how financial conditions respond to the already-authorised interventions before deciding whether to step up much further.
By Krishna Guha in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 03:06 | Last updated: April 27 2009 03:06
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/37877644-32c9-11de-8116-00144feabdc0.html
The ideal interest rate for the US economy in current conditions would be minus 5 per cent, according to internal analysis prepared for the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting.
The analysis was based on a so-called Taylor-rule approach that estimates an appropriate interest rate based on unemployment and inflation.
A central bank cannot cut interest rates below zero. However, the staff research suggests the Fed should maintain unconventional policies that provide stimulus roughly equivalent to an interest rate of minus 5 per cent.
Fed staff separately estimated what size and type of unconventional operations, including asset purchases, might provide this level of stimulus. They suggested that the Fed should expand its asset purchases by even more than the $1,150bn (€885bn, £788bn) increase policymakers authorised at the last meeting, which included $300bn of Treasury purchases.
The assessment that the US central bank needs to provide stimulus equivalent to a substantially negative interest rate is unlikely to have changed ahead of this week’s policy meeting.
The Fed is not likely to embark on any substantial new programmes at this meeting, in large part because it will not have downgraded its economic forecasts since the last meeting. Indeed, Fed officials may see the risks to the economy as a little more balanced than they were in March, though policymakers probably still see these risks as overall weighted to the downside.
This could set the stage for a more detailed discussion of the framework that will ultimately govern the Fed’s exit strategy.
There is, though, a small but intriguing possibility that the Fed could follow the Bank of Canada in setting out an explicit timeframe over which it expects to keep short-term rates at virtually zero.
While this novel strategy is likely to at least provoke debate within the US central bank, which has shown itself willing to adopt measures first deployed elsewhere, many policymakers would probably be wary of adopting the Canadian approach, following their own unsatisfactory experience in providing guidance on interest rates after the dotcom bubble burst.
Others may feel the Canadian approach would be ineffective as it may not be seen as credibly binding the central bank’s future decisions.
Still, many Fed officials expect they may well keep rates near zero for another 18 months to two years and some might see value in making this more explicit.
Ben Bernanke, chairman, sees the massive expansion of bank reserves caused by the Fed’s unconventional operations as already providing a way to assure the market that the Fed will not be in a position to raise rates for quite some time to come.
The last meeting saw the Fed buy long-term treasuries for the first time in decades. The large initial impact of the move on markets is no longer visible, but officials think the policy was reasonably successful.
Previous staff analysis suggested the $300bn purchase would reduce the yield on 10-year treasuries by 25-35 basis points, and officials think the rate today is about this much lower than it would have been if they had not started buying.
Further purchases are possible, particularly if the Fed again downgrades its economic forecasts. The staff analysis comparing unconventional operations to interest rate cuts suggests more might be needed anyway.
However, policymakers are likely to watch how financial conditions respond to the already-authorised interventions before deciding whether to step up much further.
Japan predicts record fall in output
Japan predicts record fall in output
By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 05:30 | Last updated: April 27 2009 19:24
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4342f9c-32e2-11de-8116-00144feabdc0.html
Japan’s government yesterday tore up its latest growth forecasts and instead predicted a record drop in output this year as it sought backing from the Diet for a fresh fiscal stimulus to revive the battered economy.
Tokyo said it expected gross domestic product to fall 3.3 per cent in the fiscal year that began on April 1 and warned that the economic picture was worsening. The government in December forecast flat growth for the current fiscal year.
“The Japanese economy is continuing to deteriorate rapidly,” Kaoru Yosano, finance and economics minister, told parliament. “Our country is clearly in a situation that can be described as an economic crisis.”
The downgrade in the government’s 2009-10 forecast came in spite of a new fiscal stimulus package, which the cabinet office projects will raise output by 1.9 per cent. The package forms the largest part of the Y14,700bn ($152bn) supplementary budget.
The government, which estimated that the economy contracted by 3.1 per cent in the year that ended March 31, yesterday submitted bills that included tax breaks to encourage housing investment and a Y50,000bn emergency scheme to invest public money in the stock market.
In spite of the worsening plight of the world’s second largest economy, the government’s efforts have boosted the popularity of Taro Aso, prime minister. Mr Aso’s approval rating fell to single digits earlier this year but a poll by the Nikkei business daily, published yesterday, found his rating had risen 7 percentage points from March to 32 per cent.
Setting out its revised GDP forecast, the government said it expected exports to fall 27.6 per cent this year and industrial production to decline 23.4 per cent. It had earlier predicted declines of 3.2 per cent and 4.8 per cent in exports and production, respectively.
Some independent economists are gloomier than the government. Tetsufumi Yamakawa, chief economist at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, predicted a 5.3 per cent contraction in output this year.
The Bank of Japan was likely to downgrade its forecast for the next two years when it published its semi-annual outlook report for the economy on Thursday, analysts said. The central bank previously forecast a contraction of 2 per cent for this year, but Richard Jerram, chief economist at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo, said he expected the bank to revise that to a 4 per cent fall in output.
However, economists also voiced tentative optimism that the pace of the economy’s decline might have eased from the last quarter, when output was likely to have suffered a double-digit decline, suggesting Japan could be past the worst.
“It’s reasonably clear that the January to March quarter was the trough of the cycle and the question is not the direction of the economy but the speed of recovery,” Mr Jerram said.
Japan is set to benefit from the fiscal stimulus measures being implemented not just at home but in China and other key export markets.
Julian Jessop at Capital Economics said: “The recent stabilisation in the monthly economic data . . . bodes well for the prospects of an early recovery.
“Even the smallest bounce in exports from here [say, 5 per cent] would be enough to see net trade make a positive contribution to growth,” he said.
By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 05:30 | Last updated: April 27 2009 19:24
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4342f9c-32e2-11de-8116-00144feabdc0.html
Japan’s government yesterday tore up its latest growth forecasts and instead predicted a record drop in output this year as it sought backing from the Diet for a fresh fiscal stimulus to revive the battered economy.
Tokyo said it expected gross domestic product to fall 3.3 per cent in the fiscal year that began on April 1 and warned that the economic picture was worsening. The government in December forecast flat growth for the current fiscal year.
“The Japanese economy is continuing to deteriorate rapidly,” Kaoru Yosano, finance and economics minister, told parliament. “Our country is clearly in a situation that can be described as an economic crisis.”
The downgrade in the government’s 2009-10 forecast came in spite of a new fiscal stimulus package, which the cabinet office projects will raise output by 1.9 per cent. The package forms the largest part of the Y14,700bn ($152bn) supplementary budget.
The government, which estimated that the economy contracted by 3.1 per cent in the year that ended March 31, yesterday submitted bills that included tax breaks to encourage housing investment and a Y50,000bn emergency scheme to invest public money in the stock market.
In spite of the worsening plight of the world’s second largest economy, the government’s efforts have boosted the popularity of Taro Aso, prime minister. Mr Aso’s approval rating fell to single digits earlier this year but a poll by the Nikkei business daily, published yesterday, found his rating had risen 7 percentage points from March to 32 per cent.
Setting out its revised GDP forecast, the government said it expected exports to fall 27.6 per cent this year and industrial production to decline 23.4 per cent. It had earlier predicted declines of 3.2 per cent and 4.8 per cent in exports and production, respectively.
Some independent economists are gloomier than the government. Tetsufumi Yamakawa, chief economist at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, predicted a 5.3 per cent contraction in output this year.
The Bank of Japan was likely to downgrade its forecast for the next two years when it published its semi-annual outlook report for the economy on Thursday, analysts said. The central bank previously forecast a contraction of 2 per cent for this year, but Richard Jerram, chief economist at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo, said he expected the bank to revise that to a 4 per cent fall in output.
However, economists also voiced tentative optimism that the pace of the economy’s decline might have eased from the last quarter, when output was likely to have suffered a double-digit decline, suggesting Japan could be past the worst.
“It’s reasonably clear that the January to March quarter was the trough of the cycle and the question is not the direction of the economy but the speed of recovery,” Mr Jerram said.
Japan is set to benefit from the fiscal stimulus measures being implemented not just at home but in China and other key export markets.
Julian Jessop at Capital Economics said: “The recent stabilisation in the monthly economic data . . . bodes well for the prospects of an early recovery.
“Even the smallest bounce in exports from here [say, 5 per cent] would be enough to see net trade make a positive contribution to growth,” he said.
Chinese face rising cost of dying
Chinese face rising cost of dying
By Jamil Anderlini in Shanghai
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 18:37 | Last updated: April 27 2009 18:37
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cbc29a3c-3350-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
When Lin Yuanjing’s husband died of liver cancer in February she was prepared with the wads of cash she knew would be needed to navigate the bureaucracy of death.
The first people she paid were the hospital nurses and orderlies so they would clean her husband’s body and treat it with respect when they moved it to a freezer cupboard in the morgue. Then she paid an orderly to help her register the death with the public security bureau and Shanghai government and contact the state-owned funeral parlour.
At the parlour, the grieving widow was confronted by a baffling menu of goods and services intended to smooth her husband’s departure – from jade urns costing Rmb40,000 ($6,000, £4,000, €4,500) to paper money to be burnt for her husband’s use in the afterlife.
With a couple of devastating comments about piety clearly intended to shame Ms Lin into coughing up more for her husband’s cremation, the funeral parlour official ran through the long list of options – would she like her husband to be transported in a minivan or a Mercedes-Benz hearse? Would she like him to wait in a VIP room before cremation? Wouldn’t that jade urn make the perfect final resting place?
While basic prices for transporting, storing and cremating bodies in China are supposed to be set and regulated by the state, “extras” including coffins, urns, wreaths, funeral processions and graves are all set by “the market”.
The funeral industry around the world has long stood accused of exploiting vulnerable customers, but in China the price shock that confronts grieving relatives has an added dimension. In practice, the business of bereavement is monopolised by the Chinese government and state companies owned by local divisions of the ministry of civil affairs, which oversees the industry, and prices are inflated to extortionate levels to provide huge profits.
Public outrage erupted this month in China over profiteering in the funeral industry, and the outcry even spilled into the state-controlled press on the traditional tomb-sweeping festival, when Chinese honour the dead.
According to official state media reports, China’s funeral sector would be a business worth Rmb16bn a year, based on an average of 8m deaths a year. But if sales of graves are counted the industry is worth more than Rmb200bn a year.
The mark-up on “extras” such as shrouds, funerary clothes, wooden coffins, wreaths and urns can be up to 1,000 per cent, while graveyard space – even for the tiny cremation plots usually required by the government – can be up to 1,000 times more expensive per square metre than the average Chinese apartment.
“When one is alive he can’t afford to buy a house to live in and when he is dead he can’t afford a tiny box to rest in,” says one outraged Chinese person in an internet posting.
According to the China Funeral Association 80 per cent of funeral homes in China and 50 per cent of graveyards are state-owned.
But because civil affairs authorities are majority owners and chief regulators of the business, operators of private graveyards are often closely related to civil affairs officials, and corruption is rife.
“It’s like someone is both the athlete and the referee,” says Zhang Mingliang, director of the social affairs department at the ministry of civil affairs, in an interview with the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist party. “The local funeral management departments are right there in the funeral homes, sharing staff with and getting salary from those funeral homes. How are they supposed to conduct efficient supervision?”
Before he died Ms Lin’s husband insisted that his wife save money and bury his ashes at sea in a modest service subsidised by the government.
On a rainy day recently she gathered at dawn with hundreds of other grieving families on a dock on the outskirts of Shanghai.
While a brass band played a repetitive dirge the throng of strangers carrying paper bags of remains pushed and shoved their way onto the boat, jostling for prime position so they could be first to dump their loved one’s remains into the East China Sea.
By avoiding a fancy funeral and most of the trappings, Ms Lin managed to keep total costs down to just Rmb7,000, an amount partly covered by a newly introduced Rmb5,000 government subsidy.
In a country where the deceased are supposed to be respected just as much as the living, it is getting harder for most to afford the luxury of dying.
By Jamil Anderlini in Shanghai
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 18:37 | Last updated: April 27 2009 18:37
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cbc29a3c-3350-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
When Lin Yuanjing’s husband died of liver cancer in February she was prepared with the wads of cash she knew would be needed to navigate the bureaucracy of death.
The first people she paid were the hospital nurses and orderlies so they would clean her husband’s body and treat it with respect when they moved it to a freezer cupboard in the morgue. Then she paid an orderly to help her register the death with the public security bureau and Shanghai government and contact the state-owned funeral parlour.
At the parlour, the grieving widow was confronted by a baffling menu of goods and services intended to smooth her husband’s departure – from jade urns costing Rmb40,000 ($6,000, £4,000, €4,500) to paper money to be burnt for her husband’s use in the afterlife.
With a couple of devastating comments about piety clearly intended to shame Ms Lin into coughing up more for her husband’s cremation, the funeral parlour official ran through the long list of options – would she like her husband to be transported in a minivan or a Mercedes-Benz hearse? Would she like him to wait in a VIP room before cremation? Wouldn’t that jade urn make the perfect final resting place?
While basic prices for transporting, storing and cremating bodies in China are supposed to be set and regulated by the state, “extras” including coffins, urns, wreaths, funeral processions and graves are all set by “the market”.
The funeral industry around the world has long stood accused of exploiting vulnerable customers, but in China the price shock that confronts grieving relatives has an added dimension. In practice, the business of bereavement is monopolised by the Chinese government and state companies owned by local divisions of the ministry of civil affairs, which oversees the industry, and prices are inflated to extortionate levels to provide huge profits.
Public outrage erupted this month in China over profiteering in the funeral industry, and the outcry even spilled into the state-controlled press on the traditional tomb-sweeping festival, when Chinese honour the dead.
According to official state media reports, China’s funeral sector would be a business worth Rmb16bn a year, based on an average of 8m deaths a year. But if sales of graves are counted the industry is worth more than Rmb200bn a year.
The mark-up on “extras” such as shrouds, funerary clothes, wooden coffins, wreaths and urns can be up to 1,000 per cent, while graveyard space – even for the tiny cremation plots usually required by the government – can be up to 1,000 times more expensive per square metre than the average Chinese apartment.
“When one is alive he can’t afford to buy a house to live in and when he is dead he can’t afford a tiny box to rest in,” says one outraged Chinese person in an internet posting.
According to the China Funeral Association 80 per cent of funeral homes in China and 50 per cent of graveyards are state-owned.
But because civil affairs authorities are majority owners and chief regulators of the business, operators of private graveyards are often closely related to civil affairs officials, and corruption is rife.
“It’s like someone is both the athlete and the referee,” says Zhang Mingliang, director of the social affairs department at the ministry of civil affairs, in an interview with the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist party. “The local funeral management departments are right there in the funeral homes, sharing staff with and getting salary from those funeral homes. How are they supposed to conduct efficient supervision?”
Before he died Ms Lin’s husband insisted that his wife save money and bury his ashes at sea in a modest service subsidised by the government.
On a rainy day recently she gathered at dawn with hundreds of other grieving families on a dock on the outskirts of Shanghai.
While a brass band played a repetitive dirge the throng of strangers carrying paper bags of remains pushed and shoved their way onto the boat, jostling for prime position so they could be first to dump their loved one’s remains into the East China Sea.
By avoiding a fancy funeral and most of the trappings, Ms Lin managed to keep total costs down to just Rmb7,000, an amount partly covered by a newly introduced Rmb5,000 government subsidy.
In a country where the deceased are supposed to be respected just as much as the living, it is getting harder for most to afford the luxury of dying.
High-yield bonds feel thaw
High-yield bonds feel thaw
By Aline van Duyn and Nicole Bullock
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 19:24 | Last updated: April 27 2009 19:24
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a86f45e4-3355-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
The US high-yield market is finally starting to show signs of thawing.
Even as default rates soars to historic highs, investors have increased the amount of money invested in the market for risky corporate bonds, and yields in the high-yield or junk bond market have fallen sharply. It is a further sign of improving sentiment in credit markets and follows an earlier surge in issuance in the investment grade market.
Investments most easily tracked are those by mutual fund investors. Since December 2008 more than $8bn has been invested in the high-yield market by US retail investors, according to Goldman Sachs research.
Goldman Sachs analysts said: “On the one hand, the high yield cash market has outperformed to such a degree that it is one of the few asset classes to post a positive return year-to-date.
“On the other hand, the default rate has surged to an annualised rate of 14 per cent year-to-date, and March was among the worst months for default in the past 20 years. What gives?”
Analysts and investors say that, in spite of the overall reductions in yields in the junk bond market to levels last seen since October, there remain clear differences in the availability of credit. Specifically, the riskiest companies – those with ratings in the triple C range – continue to have trouble raising new money or completing debt exchanges.
Greg Hopper, portfolio manager at Artio Global Investors says: “The high-yield market was very cheaply priced at the end of last year, even if one assumed that we were going to have an Armageddon-like default rate.
“A lot of investors recognised that through the first few months of the year.”
Initially investors targeted beaten down bonds in the secondary market, but over the last month, there has been enough liquidity for bankers to start testing the appetite for new issuance, albeit for the strongest companies. HCA and Crown Castle have both sold more than $1bn in new debt.
Mr Hopper says: “Where there had been concern about companies being able to refinance, that concern is starting to fall away, beginning with the best quality companies.”
But investors should beware of buying junk indiscriminately, especially since the market has rallied. Like many other credit markets, high-yield is a picker’s market now. Martin Fridson, head of Fridson Investment Advisors, says many institutions have been wary of plunging into the high-yield market, even as retail investors have been buying into it, because of the risks that the rally might run out of steam.
Specifically, he says investors are still concerned about the potential for a renewed crisis among financial institutions, even though such risks are much reduced following government interventions at banks.
He says: “It is possible that the worst is over, but as long as the economy is still not improving, there remains a risk of a severe relapse of the financial system”.
Whether the rally is sustainable remains up for debate given the tightness of lending in general throughout the world and expectations of potentially the highest rate of corporate defaults.
Mr Hopper highlights three concerns: the health of the banking system, the threat that new issuance returns too strongly and floods the market or a disorganised bankruptcy of General Motors, which is the process of trying to restructure $27bn in unsecured junk debt.
He says: “If GM comes through this without having to go through Chapter 11 or if it goes through some sort of more orderly Chapter 11 that would provide further positive impetus to the high-yield market.
“If, on the other hand, the efforts to reorganise the auto industry unravel that could be a risk to the market. But it is more of a risk to the auto sector in particular than the whole high-yield universe.”
Even though issuance of high-yield bonds in April – at $7bn so far – looks set to be the highest since July of last year, credit is not yet available for the riskiest companies. Moreover European high yield markets have seen only one issue since June 2007.
Greg Peters, head of global fixed income research at Morgan Stanley, says: “We caution investors who correlate a thawing high yield new-issue market with the end of this credit crunch, as the financing markets are still fragile for levered corporates.”
By Aline van Duyn and Nicole Bullock
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 19:24 | Last updated: April 27 2009 19:24
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a86f45e4-3355-11de-8f1b-00144feabdc0.html
The US high-yield market is finally starting to show signs of thawing.
Even as default rates soars to historic highs, investors have increased the amount of money invested in the market for risky corporate bonds, and yields in the high-yield or junk bond market have fallen sharply. It is a further sign of improving sentiment in credit markets and follows an earlier surge in issuance in the investment grade market.
Investments most easily tracked are those by mutual fund investors. Since December 2008 more than $8bn has been invested in the high-yield market by US retail investors, according to Goldman Sachs research.
Goldman Sachs analysts said: “On the one hand, the high yield cash market has outperformed to such a degree that it is one of the few asset classes to post a positive return year-to-date.
“On the other hand, the default rate has surged to an annualised rate of 14 per cent year-to-date, and March was among the worst months for default in the past 20 years. What gives?”
Analysts and investors say that, in spite of the overall reductions in yields in the junk bond market to levels last seen since October, there remain clear differences in the availability of credit. Specifically, the riskiest companies – those with ratings in the triple C range – continue to have trouble raising new money or completing debt exchanges.
Greg Hopper, portfolio manager at Artio Global Investors says: “The high-yield market was very cheaply priced at the end of last year, even if one assumed that we were going to have an Armageddon-like default rate.
“A lot of investors recognised that through the first few months of the year.”
Initially investors targeted beaten down bonds in the secondary market, but over the last month, there has been enough liquidity for bankers to start testing the appetite for new issuance, albeit for the strongest companies. HCA and Crown Castle have both sold more than $1bn in new debt.
Mr Hopper says: “Where there had been concern about companies being able to refinance, that concern is starting to fall away, beginning with the best quality companies.”
But investors should beware of buying junk indiscriminately, especially since the market has rallied. Like many other credit markets, high-yield is a picker’s market now. Martin Fridson, head of Fridson Investment Advisors, says many institutions have been wary of plunging into the high-yield market, even as retail investors have been buying into it, because of the risks that the rally might run out of steam.
Specifically, he says investors are still concerned about the potential for a renewed crisis among financial institutions, even though such risks are much reduced following government interventions at banks.
He says: “It is possible that the worst is over, but as long as the economy is still not improving, there remains a risk of a severe relapse of the financial system”.
Whether the rally is sustainable remains up for debate given the tightness of lending in general throughout the world and expectations of potentially the highest rate of corporate defaults.
Mr Hopper highlights three concerns: the health of the banking system, the threat that new issuance returns too strongly and floods the market or a disorganised bankruptcy of General Motors, which is the process of trying to restructure $27bn in unsecured junk debt.
He says: “If GM comes through this without having to go through Chapter 11 or if it goes through some sort of more orderly Chapter 11 that would provide further positive impetus to the high-yield market.
“If, on the other hand, the efforts to reorganise the auto industry unravel that could be a risk to the market. But it is more of a risk to the auto sector in particular than the whole high-yield universe.”
Even though issuance of high-yield bonds in April – at $7bn so far – looks set to be the highest since July of last year, credit is not yet available for the riskiest companies. Moreover European high yield markets have seen only one issue since June 2007.
Greg Peters, head of global fixed income research at Morgan Stanley, says: “We caution investors who correlate a thawing high yield new-issue market with the end of this credit crunch, as the financing markets are still fragile for levered corporates.”
US to take majority GM stake
US to take majority GM stake
By John Reed in London and Bernard Simon in Toronto
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 14:12 | Last updated: April 27 2009 19:11
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a5326d50-332a-11de-9316-00144feabdc0.html
The US government is to take majority control of General Motors in a sweeping restructuring plan that involves more plant closures and job losses and an aggressive debt-for-equity swap.
Under the accelerated restructuring, GM will shut 13 of 47 plants by the end of next year, involving 7,000 job losses. The carmaker is also to close its 83-year-old Pontiac brand and cut its dealership network from 6,200 to 3,600 by the end of 2010.
Fritz Henderson, chief executive, said: “The objective here is not to survive. The objective is to develop an operating plan that allows us to win.”
The balance-sheet restructuring would lower GM’s debt by $44bn to an estimated $23bn, leaving the government and a healthcare trust managed by the United Auto Workers union with 89 per cent of the equity.
The rest would be mainly in the hands of holders of $27bn of unsecured bonds, who are being asked to swap their holdings for shares and accrued interest. Existing shareholders would be left with a minuscule stake.
The Obama administration’s auto industry task force, which has pushed for more aggressive action, said the revised plan reflected GM’s work over the past month in charting “a new path to financial viability”.
The administration has set a June 1 deadline for GM to produce a viable turnround plan in exchange for further government aid, or face bankruptcy. The carmaker has received $15.4bn in emergency loans, and expects the total to rise to about $20bn by the end of next month.
Chrysler, GM’s Detroit-based rival, has until April 30 to come up with a similar plan, whose conditions include completing an alliance with Italy’s Fiat.
Under GM’s latest proposal, Washington would swap half of its loans for equity. The task force said it had yet to decide on the future status of its investment. Mr Henderson left open the idea of government representation on the board. He said Kent Kresa, interim chairman, was working on a board structure.
He added: “The Treasury has not demonstrated any interest in actually running the company. They want to make sure the company runs well for the shareholders and various constituencies”.
He reiterated that GM’s preferred option was to stay out of bankruptcy court. GM has set a May 26 deadline for bondholders to respond to the offer.
By John Reed in London and Bernard Simon in Toronto
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 14:12 | Last updated: April 27 2009 19:11
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a5326d50-332a-11de-9316-00144feabdc0.html
The US government is to take majority control of General Motors in a sweeping restructuring plan that involves more plant closures and job losses and an aggressive debt-for-equity swap.
Under the accelerated restructuring, GM will shut 13 of 47 plants by the end of next year, involving 7,000 job losses. The carmaker is also to close its 83-year-old Pontiac brand and cut its dealership network from 6,200 to 3,600 by the end of 2010.
Fritz Henderson, chief executive, said: “The objective here is not to survive. The objective is to develop an operating plan that allows us to win.”
The balance-sheet restructuring would lower GM’s debt by $44bn to an estimated $23bn, leaving the government and a healthcare trust managed by the United Auto Workers union with 89 per cent of the equity.
The rest would be mainly in the hands of holders of $27bn of unsecured bonds, who are being asked to swap their holdings for shares and accrued interest. Existing shareholders would be left with a minuscule stake.
The Obama administration’s auto industry task force, which has pushed for more aggressive action, said the revised plan reflected GM’s work over the past month in charting “a new path to financial viability”.
The administration has set a June 1 deadline for GM to produce a viable turnround plan in exchange for further government aid, or face bankruptcy. The carmaker has received $15.4bn in emergency loans, and expects the total to rise to about $20bn by the end of next month.
Chrysler, GM’s Detroit-based rival, has until April 30 to come up with a similar plan, whose conditions include completing an alliance with Italy’s Fiat.
Under GM’s latest proposal, Washington would swap half of its loans for equity. The task force said it had yet to decide on the future status of its investment. Mr Henderson left open the idea of government representation on the board. He said Kent Kresa, interim chairman, was working on a board structure.
He added: “The Treasury has not demonstrated any interest in actually running the company. They want to make sure the company runs well for the shareholders and various constituencies”.
He reiterated that GM’s preferred option was to stay out of bankruptcy court. GM has set a May 26 deadline for bondholders to respond to the offer.
Swine flu worries dent stock markets
U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/world/27flu.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.
Other nations imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers as confirmed cases also appeared in Mexico and Canada and suspect cases emerged elsewhere.
Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.
“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”
Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.
As a news conference in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”
“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”
American investigators said they expected more cases here, but noted that virtually all so far had been mild and urged Americans not to panic.
The speed and the scope of the world’s response showed the value of preparations made because of the avian flu and SARS scares, public health experts said.
The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children. One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.
Border patrols and airport security officers are to begin asking travelers if they have had the flu or a fever; those who appear ill will be stopped, taken aside and given masks while they arrange for medical care.
“This is moving fast and we expect to see more cases,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the news conference with Ms. Napolitano. “But we view this as a marathon.”
He advised Americans to wash their hands frequently, to cover coughs and sneezes and to stay home if they felt ill; but he stopped short of advice now given in Mexico to wear masks and not kiss or touch anyone. He praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.
Besides the eight New York cases, officials said they had confirmed seven in California, two in Kansas, two in Texas and one in Ohio. The virus looked identical to the one in Mexico believed to have killed 103 people — including 22 people whose deaths were confirmed to be from swine flu — and sickened about 1,600. As of Sunday night, there were no swine flu deaths in the United States, and one hospitalization.
Other governments tried to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases including in New Zealand and Spain.
Dr. Fukuda of the W.H.O. said his agency would decide Tuesday whether to raise the pandemic alert level to 4. Such a move would prompt more travel bans, and the agency has been reluctant historically to take actions that hurt member nations.
Canada confirmed six cases, at opposite ends of the country: four in Nova Scotia and two in British Columbia. Canadian health officials said the victims had only mild symptoms and had either recently traveled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who had.
Other governments issued advisories urging citizens not to visit Mexico. China, Japan, Hong Kong and others set up quarantines for anyone possibly infected. Russia and other countries banned pork imports from Mexico, though people cannot get the flu from eating pork.
In the United States, the C.D.C. confirmed that eight students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, had been infected with the new swine flu. At a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that all those cases had been mild and that city hospitals had not seen a surge in severe lung infections.
On the streets of New York, people seemed relatively unconcerned, in sharp contrast to Mexico City, where soldiers handed out masks.
Hong Kong, shaped by lasting scars as an epicenter of the SARS outbreak, announced very tough measures. Officials there urged travelers to avoid Mexico and ordered the immediate detention of anyone arriving with a fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit after traveling through any city with a confirmed case, which would include New York.
Everyone stopped will be sent to a hospital for a flu test and held until it is negative. Since Hong Kong has Asia’s busiest airport hub, the policy could severely disrupt international travel.
The central question is how many mild cases Mexico has had, Dr. Martin S. Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview.
“We may just be looking at the tip of the iceberg, which would give you a skewed initial estimate of the case fatality rate,” he said, meaning that there might have been tens of thousands of mild infections around the 1,300 cases of serious disease and 80 or more deaths. If that is true, as the flu spreads, it would not be surprising if most cases were mild.
Even in 1918, according to the C.D.C., the virus infected at least 500 million of the world’s 1.5 billion people to kill 50 million. Many would have been saved if antiflu drugs, antibiotics and mechanical ventilators had existed.
Another hypothesis, Dr. Cetron said, is that some other factor in Mexico increased lethality, like co-infection with another microbe or an unwittingly dangerous treatment.
Flu experts would also like to know whether current flu shots give any protection because it will be months before a new vaccine can be made.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year’s shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. But flus pick up many mutations, and there will be no proof of protection until the C.D.C. can test stored blood serum containing flu shot antibodies against the new virus. Those tests are under way, said an expert who sent the C.D.C. his blood samples.
Reporting was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington, Jack Healy from New York, Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Ian Austen from Ottawa.
Swine flu worries dent stock markets
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 08:51 | Last updated: April 27 2009 20:49
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a999d364-32fe-11de-9316-00144feabdc0.html
Images from a thermal imaging scanner are pictured on a computer screen as airline passengers are screened upon arrival at Bali’s international airport for high temperatures as a possible sign of swine flu
Fears that a swine flu outbreak could turn into a global pandemic intensified on Monday, as governments across the globe stepped up their response and tensions rose between Europe and the US following a warning by a senior EU health official against all but non-essential travel to America.
Financial markets gyrated on the first day of trading after warnings that the flu outbreak in Mexico could become a pandemic and damage any prospect of a fragile economic recovery.
As the World Health Organisation held an emergency meeting of specialists on Monday evening to consider whether to raise its pandemic alert level, there were confirmed reports that the H1N1 “swine” flu had spread from Mexico, where 149 people are reported to have died, to the US, Canada, Spain, New Zealand and the UK.
The cases outside of Mexico have been relatively mild. US has confirmed 40 people infected with the virus across five states, including 28 in the New York City borough of Queens; Canada has six confirmed cases; New Zealand about a dozen and a young man in Spain was the first person in the European Union to be diagnosed with the virus. Two cases have been confirmed in the UK.
But officials warn that health concerns should be taken seriously. “No one should lull themselves into thinking that everything is just fine because it’s a relatively mild disease,” David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, told a press conference. ”It doesn’t mean we won’t see either more severe illness or more potential deaths.”
Countries moved quickly to slow the spread of the disease. In Asian, which has been recently scarred by the bird flu and Sars epidemics, governments responded aggressively by screening arriving air passengers for high temperatures. Russia announced similar moves. Ukraine banned pork imports from the US, Mexico, New Zealand and Canada. India warned against travel to the affected areas and US officials said that the federal government was expected to issue a travel advisory against travelling to Mexico.
In the absence of fresh data or official guidance from the international health agency and national governments, trans-Atlantic tensions and disagreements opened up between officials after “personal” advice from the EU’s health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou against travel to the US.
In comments which her staff stressed were not official policy, Ms Vassiliou advised against travel to areas affected by the disease except if “very urgent”, explicitly citing first Mexico and then the US.
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/world/27flu.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.
Other nations imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers as confirmed cases also appeared in Mexico and Canada and suspect cases emerged elsewhere.
Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.
“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”
Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.
As a news conference in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”
“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”
American investigators said they expected more cases here, but noted that virtually all so far had been mild and urged Americans not to panic.
The speed and the scope of the world’s response showed the value of preparations made because of the avian flu and SARS scares, public health experts said.
The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children. One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.
Border patrols and airport security officers are to begin asking travelers if they have had the flu or a fever; those who appear ill will be stopped, taken aside and given masks while they arrange for medical care.
“This is moving fast and we expect to see more cases,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the news conference with Ms. Napolitano. “But we view this as a marathon.”
He advised Americans to wash their hands frequently, to cover coughs and sneezes and to stay home if they felt ill; but he stopped short of advice now given in Mexico to wear masks and not kiss or touch anyone. He praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.
Besides the eight New York cases, officials said they had confirmed seven in California, two in Kansas, two in Texas and one in Ohio. The virus looked identical to the one in Mexico believed to have killed 103 people — including 22 people whose deaths were confirmed to be from swine flu — and sickened about 1,600. As of Sunday night, there were no swine flu deaths in the United States, and one hospitalization.
Other governments tried to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases including in New Zealand and Spain.
Dr. Fukuda of the W.H.O. said his agency would decide Tuesday whether to raise the pandemic alert level to 4. Such a move would prompt more travel bans, and the agency has been reluctant historically to take actions that hurt member nations.
Canada confirmed six cases, at opposite ends of the country: four in Nova Scotia and two in British Columbia. Canadian health officials said the victims had only mild symptoms and had either recently traveled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who had.
Other governments issued advisories urging citizens not to visit Mexico. China, Japan, Hong Kong and others set up quarantines for anyone possibly infected. Russia and other countries banned pork imports from Mexico, though people cannot get the flu from eating pork.
In the United States, the C.D.C. confirmed that eight students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, had been infected with the new swine flu. At a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that all those cases had been mild and that city hospitals had not seen a surge in severe lung infections.
On the streets of New York, people seemed relatively unconcerned, in sharp contrast to Mexico City, where soldiers handed out masks.
Hong Kong, shaped by lasting scars as an epicenter of the SARS outbreak, announced very tough measures. Officials there urged travelers to avoid Mexico and ordered the immediate detention of anyone arriving with a fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit after traveling through any city with a confirmed case, which would include New York.
Everyone stopped will be sent to a hospital for a flu test and held until it is negative. Since Hong Kong has Asia’s busiest airport hub, the policy could severely disrupt international travel.
The central question is how many mild cases Mexico has had, Dr. Martin S. Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview.
“We may just be looking at the tip of the iceberg, which would give you a skewed initial estimate of the case fatality rate,” he said, meaning that there might have been tens of thousands of mild infections around the 1,300 cases of serious disease and 80 or more deaths. If that is true, as the flu spreads, it would not be surprising if most cases were mild.
Even in 1918, according to the C.D.C., the virus infected at least 500 million of the world’s 1.5 billion people to kill 50 million. Many would have been saved if antiflu drugs, antibiotics and mechanical ventilators had existed.
Another hypothesis, Dr. Cetron said, is that some other factor in Mexico increased lethality, like co-infection with another microbe or an unwittingly dangerous treatment.
Flu experts would also like to know whether current flu shots give any protection because it will be months before a new vaccine can be made.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year’s shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. But flus pick up many mutations, and there will be no proof of protection until the C.D.C. can test stored blood serum containing flu shot antibodies against the new virus. Those tests are under way, said an expert who sent the C.D.C. his blood samples.
Reporting was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington, Jack Healy from New York, Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Ian Austen from Ottawa.
Swine flu worries dent stock markets
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 27 2009 08:51 | Last updated: April 27 2009 20:49
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a999d364-32fe-11de-9316-00144feabdc0.html
Images from a thermal imaging scanner are pictured on a computer screen as airline passengers are screened upon arrival at Bali’s international airport for high temperatures as a possible sign of swine flu
Fears that a swine flu outbreak could turn into a global pandemic intensified on Monday, as governments across the globe stepped up their response and tensions rose between Europe and the US following a warning by a senior EU health official against all but non-essential travel to America.
Financial markets gyrated on the first day of trading after warnings that the flu outbreak in Mexico could become a pandemic and damage any prospect of a fragile economic recovery.
As the World Health Organisation held an emergency meeting of specialists on Monday evening to consider whether to raise its pandemic alert level, there were confirmed reports that the H1N1 “swine” flu had spread from Mexico, where 149 people are reported to have died, to the US, Canada, Spain, New Zealand and the UK.
The cases outside of Mexico have been relatively mild. US has confirmed 40 people infected with the virus across five states, including 28 in the New York City borough of Queens; Canada has six confirmed cases; New Zealand about a dozen and a young man in Spain was the first person in the European Union to be diagnosed with the virus. Two cases have been confirmed in the UK.
But officials warn that health concerns should be taken seriously. “No one should lull themselves into thinking that everything is just fine because it’s a relatively mild disease,” David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, told a press conference. ”It doesn’t mean we won’t see either more severe illness or more potential deaths.”
Countries moved quickly to slow the spread of the disease. In Asian, which has been recently scarred by the bird flu and Sars epidemics, governments responded aggressively by screening arriving air passengers for high temperatures. Russia announced similar moves. Ukraine banned pork imports from the US, Mexico, New Zealand and Canada. India warned against travel to the affected areas and US officials said that the federal government was expected to issue a travel advisory against travelling to Mexico.
In the absence of fresh data or official guidance from the international health agency and national governments, trans-Atlantic tensions and disagreements opened up between officials after “personal” advice from the EU’s health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou against travel to the US.
In comments which her staff stressed were not official policy, Ms Vassiliou advised against travel to areas affected by the disease except if “very urgent”, explicitly citing first Mexico and then the US.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Stacking the deck on gay marriage
Stacking the deck on gay marriage
By Steve Chapman
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 26, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0426chapman_mdapr26,0,3675007.column
The country used to be unanimous in rejecting gay marriage. But that consensus, like the polar ice sheets, is showing some cracks. Vermont recently became the fourth state to allow gays to wed, and New York may be next. Elsewhere, marriage remains as Miss California prefers -- solely between a man and a woman.
It's at moments like this that the framers of the Constitution begin to look even wiser than usual. Somehow they anticipated that people in Massachusetts would not want to live under exactly the same laws as people in Mississippi. So they set up a system known as federalism, which allows different states to choose different policies. Thus we simultaneously uphold majority rule and minority rights.
This, at least, is how federalism is supposed to operate -- letting subsets of the national population get their way in their own locales. There's only one hitch: In this case, it doesn't quite work that way.
Why not? Because of a huge imbalance created by that longtime nemesis of state sovereignty -- the federal government. Under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, Virginia has complete authority to deny the privileges and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex partners. But Iowa doesn't have the complete authority to grant them.
Oh, Iowa can provide recognition to gay marriages under all its laws and policies. But that's a surprisingly small part of what marriage encompasses. Under federal law, there are more than 1,100 rights and privileges that go with being a husband or wife. And none of them is available to married same-sex couples.
Under federal law, a person may transfer property to a spouse tax-free. Married couples may file their income taxes jointly. Someone whose spouse dies is assured Social Security survivor's benefits. A married person has the authority to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner.
Or say you're an American citizen living in this country who marries a foreigner. Normally, you would be entitled to bring your beloved to this country to live permanently and become a citizen.
But if you're both of the same sex, you can forget all of the above. Even though Iowa might like to put heterosexual and homosexual married couples on the same footing, it can't, because the federal statute blocks the way.
"In determining the meaning of any act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States," says DOMA, "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."
That decree may sound reasonable: Since most Americans and most states reject same-sex marriage, federal policy should as well. But it conflicts with how the nation has handled marriage up till now, which is to leave it up to individual states to decide who may wed -- and then honor those diverse choices.
Some states, for instance, allow marriages between first cousins; others forbid it. Some states allow 15-year-olds to marry with parental consent, while most set the minimum age higher.
And the feds? They have consistently observed a policy of staying the hell out. Washington doesn't tell Colorado and New York which marriages it will acknowledge. Colorado and New York tell it.
Not so with same-sex unions. Under DOMA, the federal government insists that some marriages are not marriages.
That's particularly hard to justify because the other major provision of the law bends over backward to protect state authority over matters marital. It says no state is obligated to recognize a same-sex marriage that took place somewhere else. Gays married in Vermont magically become single when they venture into New Hampshire.
This part of the law goes beyond the norm to accommodate different preferences. Usually, states are obligated to enforce contracts made in other states. Back in the segregationist years, Southern states often honored interracial marriages transacted beyond their borders even though they regarded them as "so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them."
Given the strong feelings about gay marriage, the local option is the best option. States that abhor the idea should be free to implement policies reflecting that sentiment. But the other side should have exactly the same prerogative: giving both heterosexual and homosexual couples access to marriage in full.
Our system, unlike Mao's China, is supposed to let a hundred flowers bloom. But for the best growth, the federal sun has to shine on all of them.
chicagotribune.com/chapman
schapman@tribune.com
By Steve Chapman
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 26, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0426chapman_mdapr26,0,3675007.column
The country used to be unanimous in rejecting gay marriage. But that consensus, like the polar ice sheets, is showing some cracks. Vermont recently became the fourth state to allow gays to wed, and New York may be next. Elsewhere, marriage remains as Miss California prefers -- solely between a man and a woman.
It's at moments like this that the framers of the Constitution begin to look even wiser than usual. Somehow they anticipated that people in Massachusetts would not want to live under exactly the same laws as people in Mississippi. So they set up a system known as federalism, which allows different states to choose different policies. Thus we simultaneously uphold majority rule and minority rights.
This, at least, is how federalism is supposed to operate -- letting subsets of the national population get their way in their own locales. There's only one hitch: In this case, it doesn't quite work that way.
Why not? Because of a huge imbalance created by that longtime nemesis of state sovereignty -- the federal government. Under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, Virginia has complete authority to deny the privileges and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex partners. But Iowa doesn't have the complete authority to grant them.
Oh, Iowa can provide recognition to gay marriages under all its laws and policies. But that's a surprisingly small part of what marriage encompasses. Under federal law, there are more than 1,100 rights and privileges that go with being a husband or wife. And none of them is available to married same-sex couples.
Under federal law, a person may transfer property to a spouse tax-free. Married couples may file their income taxes jointly. Someone whose spouse dies is assured Social Security survivor's benefits. A married person has the authority to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner.
Or say you're an American citizen living in this country who marries a foreigner. Normally, you would be entitled to bring your beloved to this country to live permanently and become a citizen.
But if you're both of the same sex, you can forget all of the above. Even though Iowa might like to put heterosexual and homosexual married couples on the same footing, it can't, because the federal statute blocks the way.
"In determining the meaning of any act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States," says DOMA, "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."
That decree may sound reasonable: Since most Americans and most states reject same-sex marriage, federal policy should as well. But it conflicts with how the nation has handled marriage up till now, which is to leave it up to individual states to decide who may wed -- and then honor those diverse choices.
Some states, for instance, allow marriages between first cousins; others forbid it. Some states allow 15-year-olds to marry with parental consent, while most set the minimum age higher.
And the feds? They have consistently observed a policy of staying the hell out. Washington doesn't tell Colorado and New York which marriages it will acknowledge. Colorado and New York tell it.
Not so with same-sex unions. Under DOMA, the federal government insists that some marriages are not marriages.
That's particularly hard to justify because the other major provision of the law bends over backward to protect state authority over matters marital. It says no state is obligated to recognize a same-sex marriage that took place somewhere else. Gays married in Vermont magically become single when they venture into New Hampshire.
This part of the law goes beyond the norm to accommodate different preferences. Usually, states are obligated to enforce contracts made in other states. Back in the segregationist years, Southern states often honored interracial marriages transacted beyond their borders even though they regarded them as "so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them."
Given the strong feelings about gay marriage, the local option is the best option. States that abhor the idea should be free to implement policies reflecting that sentiment. But the other side should have exactly the same prerogative: giving both heterosexual and homosexual couples access to marriage in full.
Our system, unlike Mao's China, is supposed to let a hundred flowers bloom. But for the best growth, the federal sun has to shine on all of them.
chicagotribune.com/chapman
schapman@tribune.com
Whose liberty? A law that makes sense for altar-bound adults
Whose liberty? A law that makes sense for altar-bound adults
By Geoffrey R. Stone
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 26, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0426stoneapr26,0,7595570.story
The Illinois legislature will soon act on the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, which would legally recognize civil unions in our state. The legislation provides that "persons entering into a civil union" will have "the same obligations, responsibilities, protections and benefits" as married persons. Civil unions would be available to adults "of either the same or opposite sex." Traditional "marriage," however, would remain available only to persons of the opposite sex.
Such legislation is currently supported by the vast majority of Americans. Recent polls show that Americans favor the legal recognition of civil unions by an extraordinary ratio of 60 percent to 34 percent.
There has been a transformation in our thinking on this issue over the past half-century. What would once have been regarded as nothing short of weird now seems perfectly sensible. This is the American story. It is, in part, what makes us great. Over time, we have gradually recognized the common humanity of blacks, women, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Catholics and gays, all of whom have been the victims of cruel discrimination.
The legal recognition of civil unions represents an important step forward in the continuing moral progress of the United States. It is, of course, a compromise, but it is a reasonable compromise at this time in our history.
The most vocal opponents of this bill argue that their religious freedom would be impaired by the recognition of civil unions. It is important to consider this concern carefully and respectfully, for it is no doubt heartfelt and sincere. So, the question is: How does the legal recognition of civil unions threaten the religious liberty of those who oppose the legislation?
The most obvious tension arises out of the fact that some religious people believe same-sex relationships are inherently sinful and immoral. They therefore insist that the state should not legitimate such relationships. The problem, though, is that in a society that values the separation of church and state, religious doctrine cannot be the source of our secular law. The framers of our Constitution certainly embraced this principle, and as the Supreme Court recognized almost 50 years ago, the state cannot constitutionally use its "power to aid religion." It is not a violation of religious liberty for the state not to impose one group's religious beliefs on other citizens who do not share them.
There is, however, a more modest version of the religious liberty objection: that people with sincerely held religious beliefs should not be compelled by the state to act in violation of those beliefs. This is a reasonable position. And it is why the pending Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act expressly provides that nothing in the legislation "shall interfere with or regulate the religious practice of any religious body" and that any religious body "is free to choose whether or not to solemnize or officiate a civil union."
This provision accords very broad protection to religious liberty and to the interests of religious institutions whose beliefs and practices are incompatible with the recognition of civil unions. Indeed, this protection goes far beyond what the Supreme Court has held is required by the 1st Amendment. This is a respectful and very substantial acknowledgment of legitimate religious liberty interests, without running roughshod over the fundamental interests in fairness, decency and common humanity that motivate the legislation.
As a compromise for our times, the proposed civil-union bill strikes a thoughtful balance between the compelling interests of those who seek to share the joys and responsibilities that come with permanent and stable personal relationships and those who are sincerely concerned about the preservation of religious liberty. It is a wonderful example of groups in a self-governing society finding common ground, where each side acknowledges and respects the interests of the other. It should be enacted quickly and enthusiastically, for it reflects the American spirit at its very best. As President Barack Obama has said, "this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect."
Geoffrey R. Stone is a professor of law at the University of Chicago.
By Geoffrey R. Stone
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 26, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0426stoneapr26,0,7595570.story
The Illinois legislature will soon act on the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, which would legally recognize civil unions in our state. The legislation provides that "persons entering into a civil union" will have "the same obligations, responsibilities, protections and benefits" as married persons. Civil unions would be available to adults "of either the same or opposite sex." Traditional "marriage," however, would remain available only to persons of the opposite sex.
Such legislation is currently supported by the vast majority of Americans. Recent polls show that Americans favor the legal recognition of civil unions by an extraordinary ratio of 60 percent to 34 percent.
There has been a transformation in our thinking on this issue over the past half-century. What would once have been regarded as nothing short of weird now seems perfectly sensible. This is the American story. It is, in part, what makes us great. Over time, we have gradually recognized the common humanity of blacks, women, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Catholics and gays, all of whom have been the victims of cruel discrimination.
The legal recognition of civil unions represents an important step forward in the continuing moral progress of the United States. It is, of course, a compromise, but it is a reasonable compromise at this time in our history.
The most vocal opponents of this bill argue that their religious freedom would be impaired by the recognition of civil unions. It is important to consider this concern carefully and respectfully, for it is no doubt heartfelt and sincere. So, the question is: How does the legal recognition of civil unions threaten the religious liberty of those who oppose the legislation?
The most obvious tension arises out of the fact that some religious people believe same-sex relationships are inherently sinful and immoral. They therefore insist that the state should not legitimate such relationships. The problem, though, is that in a society that values the separation of church and state, religious doctrine cannot be the source of our secular law. The framers of our Constitution certainly embraced this principle, and as the Supreme Court recognized almost 50 years ago, the state cannot constitutionally use its "power to aid religion." It is not a violation of religious liberty for the state not to impose one group's religious beliefs on other citizens who do not share them.
There is, however, a more modest version of the religious liberty objection: that people with sincerely held religious beliefs should not be compelled by the state to act in violation of those beliefs. This is a reasonable position. And it is why the pending Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act expressly provides that nothing in the legislation "shall interfere with or regulate the religious practice of any religious body" and that any religious body "is free to choose whether or not to solemnize or officiate a civil union."
This provision accords very broad protection to religious liberty and to the interests of religious institutions whose beliefs and practices are incompatible with the recognition of civil unions. Indeed, this protection goes far beyond what the Supreme Court has held is required by the 1st Amendment. This is a respectful and very substantial acknowledgment of legitimate religious liberty interests, without running roughshod over the fundamental interests in fairness, decency and common humanity that motivate the legislation.
As a compromise for our times, the proposed civil-union bill strikes a thoughtful balance between the compelling interests of those who seek to share the joys and responsibilities that come with permanent and stable personal relationships and those who are sincerely concerned about the preservation of religious liberty. It is a wonderful example of groups in a self-governing society finding common ground, where each side acknowledges and respects the interests of the other. It should be enacted quickly and enthusiastically, for it reflects the American spirit at its very best. As President Barack Obama has said, "this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect."
Geoffrey R. Stone is a professor of law at the University of Chicago.
Home sales in Chicago area start to show more signs of life - Optimism grows as sales increase slightly, median price up from previous month
Home sales in Chicago area start to show more signs of life - Optimism grows as sales increase slightly, median price up from previous month
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 26, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun-housing-optimism-0426-apr26,0,3752998.story
Area real estate agents are making space in their cars for clients again and they get almost bubbly when they talk about the uptick in activity.
"I'm so thankful," said Mark Zipperer, a Re/Max Edge agent in Chicago, as he ticked off his busy schedule of appointments last week. "It's like after a drought, it's raining. Not only did I have a lot of people sitting in my car [last weekend] but one of my oldest listings sold."
In the past few weeks, agents say an undeniable scent of sales is in the air, and data released Thursday gave credibility to their talk.
March sales of previously owned single-family homes and condominiums in Illinois posted their second consecutive month-over-month gain, and for the first time since June, the statewide median price for a home rose from the prior month.
Suburban counties seeing among the largest month-over-month sales increases were Lake County, 65 percent; Kendall County, 51 percent; and Cook County, 38 percent.
Realty agents are taking pains to not get too giddy. After all, that 38 percent one-month gain in sales in Cook County translated to 2,409 properties sold. In March 2008, 3,432 homes sold in Cook County.
"We're starting up from a very low base," said Pat Callan, a Wheaton real estate agent and president of the Illinois Association of Realtors. "We're starting to baby step off of that and it's good. It gives me confidence we're heading in the right direction."
Consumers, it seems, are starting to act on a number of factors working in their favor. There's the $8,000 non-repayable federal tax credit for first-time buyers for principal residences bought before Dec. 1. There are interest rates on 30-year, fixed-rate conventional mortgages, which were 4.9 percent on Friday, according to Bankrate.com. There are home prices, which have gotten much more realistic and reasonable in many areas.
And finally, there's the fact that life goes on. "I think people are realizing they have to move on with their lives and that's what they're doing," said Vickie Linajs of Ryan Hill Realty in Naperville. "Things have really picked up and it's not just me. A couple months ago, I was very scared."
Linajs recently fielded dual offers on a $999,900 home within 13 days of its listing. "If it's priced right in this market, it's selling," she said.
First-time buyers continue to fuel the sales engine, accounting nationally for 53 percent of March transactions, which largely included sales before the tax credit's introduction.
An $8,000 tax break made the decision easier for Naperville renters Chad and Michelle Gargrave. After saving for five years, the couple began looking for their first home in early March, shortly after the tax credit was announced. They zeroed in on a 2,400-square-foot Woodridge house that went on the market a few weeks before at $337,500.
After negotiating, the seller accepted their $320,000 offer and they closed on the purchase Thursday, having locked in a 4.75 percent interest rate on a 30-year mortgage. Chad, a telecom industry lawyer, and Michelle, a 4th-grade teacher, had reservations about taking such a big step, but friends and family pushed them forward.
"Everyone we talked to was like, yeah, this is the time," Chad said. "Housing prices are low, mortgage rates are low and with the tax credit, it was almost too good to pass up."
Hinsdale renter Alan Reck, 24, said his father's advice was similar, and he began shopping for a one-bedroom condo in Lakeview or Lincoln Park. With a maximum budget of $250,000, he's found "there's just tons to look at."
What's selling and for how much depends on whether the house is a traditional home sale or a distressed property, meaning it's in foreclosure or a short sale. In a short sale, a homeowner tries to salvage his credit rating and avoid a foreclosure action by selling the home for less than the amount owed to the lender. Such deals need to be approved by the lender, a process that can take months.
Within Chicago, of the 125 detached single-family homes that sold during the week of April 11-17, 78 of them, or 62 percent, were distressed properties. Of the 148 townhouses and condos sold that week, only 22 percent were distressed sales.
More glaring is the price differential: The median sales price on a traditionally sold house was $287,750 that week, compared with $50,000 on distressed sales.
Agents say some buyers think they want a foreclosed property until they see its condition. Others, committed to the idea, are driving prices above the listing price.
Saretta Joyner, a Baird & Warner agent, recently was involved with a foreclosed Stickney property that drew four offers. At another foreclosure listing, a client decided to pass when he learned there were four other offers.
Distressed properties continue to affect pricing in the traditional market. During the first quarter, one in every 106 homes in the Chicago area received a foreclosure notice, a 69 percent increase over last year's first quarter.
At North Shore Buyer Brokers, a new home originally priced at $4.55 million by the builder was dropped to $2.99 million to better compete with nearby high-end foreclosures and short sales.
Agent Joel Epstein advised the client to offer $2.6 million and figures it'll sell for close to that price. "There aren't enough buyers for the 2, 3, 4 million-dollar houses, and that's why the prices are getting cut in half," Epstein said.
Last Sunday during a driving rain, Joyner was posted inside an attractive French manor home in Chicago's Galewood neighborhood, waiting for visitors to the home's first open house since it went back on the market at $499,900; last fall it was listed at $610,000.
"It was nothing breaking records by any means, but at least people showed up," Joyner said.
With the market stirring, agents are telling serious sellers to offer their homes at prices lower than they would have sold for at least two years ago. Advice for buyers? "I'm telling them the seller doesn't have to be bleeding on the floor for them to get a good deal," said Todd Szwajkowski, an agent at Keller Williams Realty.
mepodmolik@tribune.com
By Mary Ellen Podmolik
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 26, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun-housing-optimism-0426-apr26,0,3752998.story
Area real estate agents are making space in their cars for clients again and they get almost bubbly when they talk about the uptick in activity.
"I'm so thankful," said Mark Zipperer, a Re/Max Edge agent in Chicago, as he ticked off his busy schedule of appointments last week. "It's like after a drought, it's raining. Not only did I have a lot of people sitting in my car [last weekend] but one of my oldest listings sold."
In the past few weeks, agents say an undeniable scent of sales is in the air, and data released Thursday gave credibility to their talk.
March sales of previously owned single-family homes and condominiums in Illinois posted their second consecutive month-over-month gain, and for the first time since June, the statewide median price for a home rose from the prior month.
Suburban counties seeing among the largest month-over-month sales increases were Lake County, 65 percent; Kendall County, 51 percent; and Cook County, 38 percent.
Realty agents are taking pains to not get too giddy. After all, that 38 percent one-month gain in sales in Cook County translated to 2,409 properties sold. In March 2008, 3,432 homes sold in Cook County.
"We're starting up from a very low base," said Pat Callan, a Wheaton real estate agent and president of the Illinois Association of Realtors. "We're starting to baby step off of that and it's good. It gives me confidence we're heading in the right direction."
Consumers, it seems, are starting to act on a number of factors working in their favor. There's the $8,000 non-repayable federal tax credit for first-time buyers for principal residences bought before Dec. 1. There are interest rates on 30-year, fixed-rate conventional mortgages, which were 4.9 percent on Friday, according to Bankrate.com. There are home prices, which have gotten much more realistic and reasonable in many areas.
And finally, there's the fact that life goes on. "I think people are realizing they have to move on with their lives and that's what they're doing," said Vickie Linajs of Ryan Hill Realty in Naperville. "Things have really picked up and it's not just me. A couple months ago, I was very scared."
Linajs recently fielded dual offers on a $999,900 home within 13 days of its listing. "If it's priced right in this market, it's selling," she said.
First-time buyers continue to fuel the sales engine, accounting nationally for 53 percent of March transactions, which largely included sales before the tax credit's introduction.
An $8,000 tax break made the decision easier for Naperville renters Chad and Michelle Gargrave. After saving for five years, the couple began looking for their first home in early March, shortly after the tax credit was announced. They zeroed in on a 2,400-square-foot Woodridge house that went on the market a few weeks before at $337,500.
After negotiating, the seller accepted their $320,000 offer and they closed on the purchase Thursday, having locked in a 4.75 percent interest rate on a 30-year mortgage. Chad, a telecom industry lawyer, and Michelle, a 4th-grade teacher, had reservations about taking such a big step, but friends and family pushed them forward.
"Everyone we talked to was like, yeah, this is the time," Chad said. "Housing prices are low, mortgage rates are low and with the tax credit, it was almost too good to pass up."
Hinsdale renter Alan Reck, 24, said his father's advice was similar, and he began shopping for a one-bedroom condo in Lakeview or Lincoln Park. With a maximum budget of $250,000, he's found "there's just tons to look at."
What's selling and for how much depends on whether the house is a traditional home sale or a distressed property, meaning it's in foreclosure or a short sale. In a short sale, a homeowner tries to salvage his credit rating and avoid a foreclosure action by selling the home for less than the amount owed to the lender. Such deals need to be approved by the lender, a process that can take months.
Within Chicago, of the 125 detached single-family homes that sold during the week of April 11-17, 78 of them, or 62 percent, were distressed properties. Of the 148 townhouses and condos sold that week, only 22 percent were distressed sales.
More glaring is the price differential: The median sales price on a traditionally sold house was $287,750 that week, compared with $50,000 on distressed sales.
Agents say some buyers think they want a foreclosed property until they see its condition. Others, committed to the idea, are driving prices above the listing price.
Saretta Joyner, a Baird & Warner agent, recently was involved with a foreclosed Stickney property that drew four offers. At another foreclosure listing, a client decided to pass when he learned there were four other offers.
Distressed properties continue to affect pricing in the traditional market. During the first quarter, one in every 106 homes in the Chicago area received a foreclosure notice, a 69 percent increase over last year's first quarter.
At North Shore Buyer Brokers, a new home originally priced at $4.55 million by the builder was dropped to $2.99 million to better compete with nearby high-end foreclosures and short sales.
Agent Joel Epstein advised the client to offer $2.6 million and figures it'll sell for close to that price. "There aren't enough buyers for the 2, 3, 4 million-dollar houses, and that's why the prices are getting cut in half," Epstein said.
Last Sunday during a driving rain, Joyner was posted inside an attractive French manor home in Chicago's Galewood neighborhood, waiting for visitors to the home's first open house since it went back on the market at $499,900; last fall it was listed at $610,000.
"It was nothing breaking records by any means, but at least people showed up," Joyner said.
With the market stirring, agents are telling serious sellers to offer their homes at prices lower than they would have sold for at least two years ago. Advice for buyers? "I'm telling them the seller doesn't have to be bleeding on the floor for them to get a good deal," said Todd Szwajkowski, an agent at Keller Williams Realty.
mepodmolik@tribune.com
Bea Arthur, TV Battle-Ax, Dies at 86
Bea Arthur, TV Battle-Ax, Dies at 86
By BRUCE WEBER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/arts/television/26arthur.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=bea%20arthur&st=cse
Bea Arthur, who used her husky voice, commanding stature and flair for the comic jab to create two of the most endearing battle-axes in television history, Maude Findlay in the groundbreaking situation comedy “Maude” and Dorothy Zbornak in “The Golden Girls,” died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was coy about her age, and sources give various dates for her birth, but a family spokesman, Dan Watt, said in an e-mail message she was 86.
The cause was cancer, Mr. Watt said.
Ms. Arthur received 11 Emmy Award nominations, winning twice — in 1977 for “Maude” and in 1988 for “The Golden Girls.”
She was a seasoned and accomplished theater actress and singer before she became a television star and a celebrity in midcareer, and she won a Tony Award in 1966 for playing Angela Lansbury’s best friend, the drunken actress Vera Charles, in “Mame.”
But while she was successful on stage, on television she made history. “Maude,” which was created by Norman Lear as a spinoff from “All in the Family,” was broadcast on CBS during the most turbulent years of the women’s movement, from 1972-78, and in the person of its central character, it offered feminism less as a cause than as an entertainment.
Maude Findlay was a woman in her 40s living in the suburbs with her fourth husband, Walter (played by Bill Macy), her divorced daughter, Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), and a grandson. An unabashed liberal, a bit of a loudmouth and a tough broad with a soft heart, she was, in the parlance of the time, a liberated woman, who sometimes got herself into trouble with boilerplate biases just the way her cultural opposite number, Archie Bunker, did. She was given a formidable physicality by Ms. Arthur, who was 5 feet 9 ½ inches and spoke in a distinctively brassy contralto.
The show was considered a sitcom, but like “All in the Family,” it used comedy to take on serious personal issues and thorny social ones — alcoholism, drugs, infidelity.
“We tackled everything except hemorrhoids,” Ms. Arthur said, sounding much like Maude, in a 2001 interview with the Archive of American Television, a collection of video oral histories compiled by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
In the show’s first season, Maude, at the age of 47, learned she was pregnant; her distress was evident.
“Mother, what’s wrong? You’ve got to share this with me,” Carol says. Maude’s response is typical, with barbs aimed both inward and outward, delivered by Ms. Arthur with a flash of simultaneous anger, despair and humor: “Honey, I’d give anything to share it with you.”
The two-part episode was broadcast in November 1972, two months before Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortion legal nationwide, was decided. By the episode’s conclusion, Maude, who lived in Westchester County in New York, where abortion was already permitted, had chosen to end the pregnancy. Two CBS affiliates refused to broadcast the program, and Ms. Arthur received a shower of angry mail.
“The reaction really knocked me for a loop,” she recalled in a 1978 interview in The New York Times. “I really hadn’t thought about the abortion issue one way or the other. The only thing we concerned ourselves with was: Was the show good? We thought we did it brilliantly; we were so very proud of not copping out with it.”
“The Golden Girls,” an immensely popular show that was broadcast on NBC from 1985-92 and can still be seen daily in reruns, broke ground in another way. Created by Susan Harris (who wrote the “Maude” abortion episode), it focused on four previously married women sharing a house in Miami, and with its emphasis on decidedly older characters, it ran counter to the conventional wisdom that youthful sex appeal was the key to ratings success.
Which is not to say “The Golden Girls” wasn’t sexy. Like “Maude,” it was a comedy that dealt with serious issues, especially those involved with aging, but also matters like gun control, gay rights and domestic violence. And like “Maude,” it could be bawdy. The women were all active daters and, to different degrees, openly randy. As Dorothy, Ms. Arthur was coiffed and clothed in a softer, more emphatically feminine manner than she had been in “Maude,” but she was no less sharp-tongued, and she and the show’s other stars — Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty (who, though younger than Ms. Arthur, played Dorothy’s mother) — were frequently praised for portraying the lives of older women as lively, uncertain, dramatic and passion-filled as those of college sorority sisters.
Familiarly known as Bea, Ms. Arthur was billed in the theater and on television as Beatrice, but the name was one she made up. She was born Bernice Frankel in New York City on May 13, 1922, according to Mr. Watt. But she preferred to be called B — “I changed the Bernice almost as soon as I heard it,” she said — and later expanded it to Beatrice because, she said, she imagined it would look lovely on a theater marquee. The name Arthur is a modified version of the name of her first husband, the screenwriter and producer Robert Alan Aurthur.
When she was a child, her family moved to Cambridge, Md., on the Eastern Shore, where her parents ran a small women’s clothing store, and she dreamed of being a chanteuse and an actress, and entertained her friends with imitations of Mae West. She attended Blackstone College, a two-year school in Virginia, and later studied to be a medical technician, then eventually moved to New York to study acting with Erwin Piscator at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research. Among her classmates were Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau and the actor and director Gene Saks, whom she married in 1950. (He directed her in “Mame.”) They divorced in 1978; their two sons, Matthew and Daniel, survive her. She had two granddaughters.
Ms. Arthur worked regularly Off Broadway and in summer stock, appearing as Lucy Brown in Marc Blitzstein’s adaptation of “The Threepenny Opera” at the Theater de Lys in 1954. And in 1955, in a well-received musical tidbit, “Shoestring Revue,” she was seen for the first time by the man who would become a lifelong friend and professional benefactor, Norman Lear.
She also sang in nightclubs and worked occasionally on television, appearing on “Kraft Television Theater” and other shows featuring live drama. On Broadway, in 1964, she played Yente, the matchmaker in “Fiddler on the Roof.” In the movies, she appeared in the comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers” (1970), and in a reprise of her stage performance as Vera Charles, she appeared in “Mame” (1974), again directed by her husband, this time alongside Lucille Ball.
In 1971, she was living in New York but visiting her husband, who was directing a movie, “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” in Los Angeles, when Mr. Lear persuaded her to do a guest spot on “All in the Family.” The role he created for her, Maude Findlay, was a cousin of Edith Bunker, Archie’s wife (Jean Stapleton), who arrives to care for the family when everyone gets sick. Her tart sparring with Archie (Carroll O’Connor, with whom she had worked on stage, in a play called “Ulysses in Nighttown”) was a hit with viewers. Almost immediately CBS ordered up a new series from Mr. Lear, with Ms. Arthur’s Maude at the center of it. It changed her life.
“I think we made television a little more adult,” Ms. Arthur said. “I really do.”
By BRUCE WEBER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/arts/television/26arthur.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=bea%20arthur&st=cse
Bea Arthur, who used her husky voice, commanding stature and flair for the comic jab to create two of the most endearing battle-axes in television history, Maude Findlay in the groundbreaking situation comedy “Maude” and Dorothy Zbornak in “The Golden Girls,” died Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was coy about her age, and sources give various dates for her birth, but a family spokesman, Dan Watt, said in an e-mail message she was 86.
The cause was cancer, Mr. Watt said.
Ms. Arthur received 11 Emmy Award nominations, winning twice — in 1977 for “Maude” and in 1988 for “The Golden Girls.”
She was a seasoned and accomplished theater actress and singer before she became a television star and a celebrity in midcareer, and she won a Tony Award in 1966 for playing Angela Lansbury’s best friend, the drunken actress Vera Charles, in “Mame.”
But while she was successful on stage, on television she made history. “Maude,” which was created by Norman Lear as a spinoff from “All in the Family,” was broadcast on CBS during the most turbulent years of the women’s movement, from 1972-78, and in the person of its central character, it offered feminism less as a cause than as an entertainment.
Maude Findlay was a woman in her 40s living in the suburbs with her fourth husband, Walter (played by Bill Macy), her divorced daughter, Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), and a grandson. An unabashed liberal, a bit of a loudmouth and a tough broad with a soft heart, she was, in the parlance of the time, a liberated woman, who sometimes got herself into trouble with boilerplate biases just the way her cultural opposite number, Archie Bunker, did. She was given a formidable physicality by Ms. Arthur, who was 5 feet 9 ½ inches and spoke in a distinctively brassy contralto.
The show was considered a sitcom, but like “All in the Family,” it used comedy to take on serious personal issues and thorny social ones — alcoholism, drugs, infidelity.
“We tackled everything except hemorrhoids,” Ms. Arthur said, sounding much like Maude, in a 2001 interview with the Archive of American Television, a collection of video oral histories compiled by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
In the show’s first season, Maude, at the age of 47, learned she was pregnant; her distress was evident.
“Mother, what’s wrong? You’ve got to share this with me,” Carol says. Maude’s response is typical, with barbs aimed both inward and outward, delivered by Ms. Arthur with a flash of simultaneous anger, despair and humor: “Honey, I’d give anything to share it with you.”
The two-part episode was broadcast in November 1972, two months before Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortion legal nationwide, was decided. By the episode’s conclusion, Maude, who lived in Westchester County in New York, where abortion was already permitted, had chosen to end the pregnancy. Two CBS affiliates refused to broadcast the program, and Ms. Arthur received a shower of angry mail.
“The reaction really knocked me for a loop,” she recalled in a 1978 interview in The New York Times. “I really hadn’t thought about the abortion issue one way or the other. The only thing we concerned ourselves with was: Was the show good? We thought we did it brilliantly; we were so very proud of not copping out with it.”
“The Golden Girls,” an immensely popular show that was broadcast on NBC from 1985-92 and can still be seen daily in reruns, broke ground in another way. Created by Susan Harris (who wrote the “Maude” abortion episode), it focused on four previously married women sharing a house in Miami, and with its emphasis on decidedly older characters, it ran counter to the conventional wisdom that youthful sex appeal was the key to ratings success.
Which is not to say “The Golden Girls” wasn’t sexy. Like “Maude,” it was a comedy that dealt with serious issues, especially those involved with aging, but also matters like gun control, gay rights and domestic violence. And like “Maude,” it could be bawdy. The women were all active daters and, to different degrees, openly randy. As Dorothy, Ms. Arthur was coiffed and clothed in a softer, more emphatically feminine manner than she had been in “Maude,” but she was no less sharp-tongued, and she and the show’s other stars — Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty (who, though younger than Ms. Arthur, played Dorothy’s mother) — were frequently praised for portraying the lives of older women as lively, uncertain, dramatic and passion-filled as those of college sorority sisters.
Familiarly known as Bea, Ms. Arthur was billed in the theater and on television as Beatrice, but the name was one she made up. She was born Bernice Frankel in New York City on May 13, 1922, according to Mr. Watt. But she preferred to be called B — “I changed the Bernice almost as soon as I heard it,” she said — and later expanded it to Beatrice because, she said, she imagined it would look lovely on a theater marquee. The name Arthur is a modified version of the name of her first husband, the screenwriter and producer Robert Alan Aurthur.
When she was a child, her family moved to Cambridge, Md., on the Eastern Shore, where her parents ran a small women’s clothing store, and she dreamed of being a chanteuse and an actress, and entertained her friends with imitations of Mae West. She attended Blackstone College, a two-year school in Virginia, and later studied to be a medical technician, then eventually moved to New York to study acting with Erwin Piscator at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research. Among her classmates were Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau and the actor and director Gene Saks, whom she married in 1950. (He directed her in “Mame.”) They divorced in 1978; their two sons, Matthew and Daniel, survive her. She had two granddaughters.
Ms. Arthur worked regularly Off Broadway and in summer stock, appearing as Lucy Brown in Marc Blitzstein’s adaptation of “The Threepenny Opera” at the Theater de Lys in 1954. And in 1955, in a well-received musical tidbit, “Shoestring Revue,” she was seen for the first time by the man who would become a lifelong friend and professional benefactor, Norman Lear.
She also sang in nightclubs and worked occasionally on television, appearing on “Kraft Television Theater” and other shows featuring live drama. On Broadway, in 1964, she played Yente, the matchmaker in “Fiddler on the Roof.” In the movies, she appeared in the comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers” (1970), and in a reprise of her stage performance as Vera Charles, she appeared in “Mame” (1974), again directed by her husband, this time alongside Lucille Ball.
In 1971, she was living in New York but visiting her husband, who was directing a movie, “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” in Los Angeles, when Mr. Lear persuaded her to do a guest spot on “All in the Family.” The role he created for her, Maude Findlay, was a cousin of Edith Bunker, Archie’s wife (Jean Stapleton), who arrives to care for the family when everyone gets sick. Her tart sparring with Archie (Carroll O’Connor, with whom she had worked on stage, in a play called “Ulysses in Nighttown”) was a hit with viewers. Almost immediately CBS ordered up a new series from Mr. Lear, with Ms. Arthur’s Maude at the center of it. It changed her life.
“I think we made television a little more adult,” Ms. Arthur said. “I really do.”
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Wildfires Hit Myrtle Beach Area
Wildfires Hit Myrtle Beach Area
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/24blaze.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=myrtle%20beach%20fires&st=cse
Wildfires swept through a coastal region of South Carolina on Thursday and threatened North Myrtle Beach, destroying about 70 homes and forcing more than 2,500 people to evacuate, state officials said.
Gov. Mark Sanford declared a state of emergency in Horry County, which includes the Myrtle Beach area, and officials of North Myrtle Beach scrambled to get residents to pack up and flee.
No injuries have been reported since the fire began on Wednesday, but the blaze jumped a state highway and headed rapidly toward a heavily concentrated residential and tourist area, prompting the evacuations and the closing of schools and businesses in North Myrtle Beach. It also tore through a 10,000-acre nature preserve that is home to bald eagles, woodpeckers and many rare species of plants.
The blaze began along the coast just west of Myrtle Beach around noon on Wednesday and quickly spread, fueled by winds of 25 miles per hour and low humidity. The fire rapidly expanded overnight, but by early Thursday evening firefighters said they had managed to hold it at bay with the help of Blackhawk helicopters that dropped water and small bulldozers that created fire breaks along the perimeter.
But residents were still being urged to evacuate.
“Our public safety department went door to door and we asked everyone to leave,” Mayor Marilyn Hatley of North Myrtle Beach said at a news conference Thursday. “We tried our best to remove everyone as soon as possible.”
Although the blaze moved quickly along the coast, it stopped just short of the Intracoastal Waterway separating the mainland from the coastal area, which firefighters were hoping would act as a natural barrier. The cause of the fire was being investigated, and officials said it could take two or three days more to contain it fully.
“We realized right away that it had huge potential, that it was a very dangerous fire,” said Russell Hubright, a spokesman for the South Carolina Forestry Commission. “The other serious part is that there’s quite a lot of homes in that immediate area there.”
Todd Cartner, a spokesman for the Horry County Fire Rescue, told The Associated Press that the blaze was the worst to hit the area since 1976, when 30,000 acres, or 47 square miles, burned.
Typically, wildfires claim about 35 homes a year in South Carolina, Mr. Hubright said, adding that the wildfire that began on Wednesday destroyed about 70 homes and damaged 100 others in barely 24 hours.
Mr. Hubright said that fire and forestry officials responded quickly to the blaze, and contained about 25 percent of it by late Wednesday, but that the fire burned vigorously overnight, and by Thursday morning containment was below 10 percent.
By early Thursday evening, officials said, the blaze had engulfed about 15,000 acres.
Many tourists who had been vacationing in the area, known for its golf courses and beaches and which generates about $16 billion a year in business, were forced to flee.
Firefighters said they were concerned that the low humidity and strong winds would allow the fire to “spot,” or send out embers as far as a quarter mile away, causing the blaze to spread more quickly.
“When you’re out there trying to contain a fire and you’ve got fire jumping ahead of you, that makes it even more dangerous,” Mr. Hubright said.
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/24blaze.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=myrtle%20beach%20fires&st=cse
Wildfires swept through a coastal region of South Carolina on Thursday and threatened North Myrtle Beach, destroying about 70 homes and forcing more than 2,500 people to evacuate, state officials said.
Gov. Mark Sanford declared a state of emergency in Horry County, which includes the Myrtle Beach area, and officials of North Myrtle Beach scrambled to get residents to pack up and flee.
No injuries have been reported since the fire began on Wednesday, but the blaze jumped a state highway and headed rapidly toward a heavily concentrated residential and tourist area, prompting the evacuations and the closing of schools and businesses in North Myrtle Beach. It also tore through a 10,000-acre nature preserve that is home to bald eagles, woodpeckers and many rare species of plants.
The blaze began along the coast just west of Myrtle Beach around noon on Wednesday and quickly spread, fueled by winds of 25 miles per hour and low humidity. The fire rapidly expanded overnight, but by early Thursday evening firefighters said they had managed to hold it at bay with the help of Blackhawk helicopters that dropped water and small bulldozers that created fire breaks along the perimeter.
But residents were still being urged to evacuate.
“Our public safety department went door to door and we asked everyone to leave,” Mayor Marilyn Hatley of North Myrtle Beach said at a news conference Thursday. “We tried our best to remove everyone as soon as possible.”
Although the blaze moved quickly along the coast, it stopped just short of the Intracoastal Waterway separating the mainland from the coastal area, which firefighters were hoping would act as a natural barrier. The cause of the fire was being investigated, and officials said it could take two or three days more to contain it fully.
“We realized right away that it had huge potential, that it was a very dangerous fire,” said Russell Hubright, a spokesman for the South Carolina Forestry Commission. “The other serious part is that there’s quite a lot of homes in that immediate area there.”
Todd Cartner, a spokesman for the Horry County Fire Rescue, told The Associated Press that the blaze was the worst to hit the area since 1976, when 30,000 acres, or 47 square miles, burned.
Typically, wildfires claim about 35 homes a year in South Carolina, Mr. Hubright said, adding that the wildfire that began on Wednesday destroyed about 70 homes and damaged 100 others in barely 24 hours.
Mr. Hubright said that fire and forestry officials responded quickly to the blaze, and contained about 25 percent of it by late Wednesday, but that the fire burned vigorously overnight, and by Thursday morning containment was below 10 percent.
By early Thursday evening, officials said, the blaze had engulfed about 15,000 acres.
Many tourists who had been vacationing in the area, known for its golf courses and beaches and which generates about $16 billion a year in business, were forced to flee.
Firefighters said they were concerned that the low humidity and strong winds would allow the fire to “spot,” or send out embers as far as a quarter mile away, causing the blaze to spread more quickly.
“When you’re out there trying to contain a fire and you’ve got fire jumping ahead of you, that makes it even more dangerous,” Mr. Hubright said.
Dear Todd: A few words to the unwise
Dear Todd: A few words to the unwise
CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
April 25, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1543804,CST-EDT-Carol26.article
"Speak to me as to thy thinkings."
William Shakespeare, "Othello"
The crazy events in Cook County government last week coincided neatly with the celebration of Shakespeare's birthday. And in brushing up on my admittedly rusty remembrance of the great bard's words, every quote I came across seemed to have our beleaguered County Board president, Todd Stroger, written all over it.
Last Monday on WTTW's "Chicago Tonight" program, I asked Stroger to "speak to me as to thy thinkings."
What was he thinking when he made that odd 1:30 a.m. call nine days ago to the Chicago Tribune saying he had just accepted the resignation of his cousin, Donna Dunnings, the county's $175,000-a-year chief financial officer?
"As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts the worst of words." "Othello"
Stroger needed to set aside more rumination time before responding to questions Monday night. He claimed that Dunnings resigned because certain white Cook County commissioners, "hounds" in his words, would drag Dunnings through the mud after learning what Sun-Times reporter Mark Konkol had dug up. In short, that Dunnings had twice personally put up bail for a former steakhouse busboy whom Todd Stroger had hired six months earlier for a coveted $48,000-a-year county job, raised quickly to $58,000, and then again, five days after his second arrest, to $61,000.
The lucky hire's name is Anthony Cole. A former University of Georgia basketball player with a daunting arrest record, Cole appears to have a few anger-management issues, among other things. He lacks a college degree. But apparently he still played -- until his recent firing and current incarceration -- a great game of hoops with Stroger.
"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go."
"Hamlet"
The problem with that Monday interview is that Stroger, who maintained this is much ado about nothing, made things a hundred times worse by not having his facts straight about Cole's recent arrests ("Maybe I have the dates wrong") or not having the facts at all when it came to Cole's background check. He claimed that Illinois State Police didn't provide a full report until just this month. Not true. The FBI and State Police had reported his rap sheet to the county months ago.
We also now know Dunnings didn't resign. She was dumped by her cousin. "I was shocked," Dunnings told Konkol. A single mother of two, one of whom has special needs, Dunnings has multiple sclerosis and needs her job and her insurance.
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." "Hamlet"
At first, Stroger insisted his cousin had to go because Cole was about to make explosive allegations about her. Then he said her alleged resignation had nothing to do with Cole. Which is it?
For taxpayers, the most important part of this story is that in a crushing economy, when just about everyone is feeling strapped, we still have the willful hiring of unqualified patronage workers at excellent wages on the whim of a politician who can't be straight with us. Cole is hardly the only example of the Stroger "Friends and Family" employment plan. Remember Ronald Burleson, working at the East Bank Club, where the president plays basketball, who got a $99,000 health department job until the Trib reported it? Stroger was forced to demote him, but on "Chicago Tonight" he improbably added: "That doesn't mean he wasn't qualified."
President Stroger would do well to consider the words of Cassius in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar":
The fault, dear Todd, is not in our stars but in ourselves.
CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
April 25, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1543804,CST-EDT-Carol26.article
"Speak to me as to thy thinkings."
William Shakespeare, "Othello"
The crazy events in Cook County government last week coincided neatly with the celebration of Shakespeare's birthday. And in brushing up on my admittedly rusty remembrance of the great bard's words, every quote I came across seemed to have our beleaguered County Board president, Todd Stroger, written all over it.
Last Monday on WTTW's "Chicago Tonight" program, I asked Stroger to "speak to me as to thy thinkings."
What was he thinking when he made that odd 1:30 a.m. call nine days ago to the Chicago Tribune saying he had just accepted the resignation of his cousin, Donna Dunnings, the county's $175,000-a-year chief financial officer?
"As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts the worst of words." "Othello"
Stroger needed to set aside more rumination time before responding to questions Monday night. He claimed that Dunnings resigned because certain white Cook County commissioners, "hounds" in his words, would drag Dunnings through the mud after learning what Sun-Times reporter Mark Konkol had dug up. In short, that Dunnings had twice personally put up bail for a former steakhouse busboy whom Todd Stroger had hired six months earlier for a coveted $48,000-a-year county job, raised quickly to $58,000, and then again, five days after his second arrest, to $61,000.
The lucky hire's name is Anthony Cole. A former University of Georgia basketball player with a daunting arrest record, Cole appears to have a few anger-management issues, among other things. He lacks a college degree. But apparently he still played -- until his recent firing and current incarceration -- a great game of hoops with Stroger.
"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go."
"Hamlet"
The problem with that Monday interview is that Stroger, who maintained this is much ado about nothing, made things a hundred times worse by not having his facts straight about Cole's recent arrests ("Maybe I have the dates wrong") or not having the facts at all when it came to Cole's background check. He claimed that Illinois State Police didn't provide a full report until just this month. Not true. The FBI and State Police had reported his rap sheet to the county months ago.
We also now know Dunnings didn't resign. She was dumped by her cousin. "I was shocked," Dunnings told Konkol. A single mother of two, one of whom has special needs, Dunnings has multiple sclerosis and needs her job and her insurance.
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." "Hamlet"
At first, Stroger insisted his cousin had to go because Cole was about to make explosive allegations about her. Then he said her alleged resignation had nothing to do with Cole. Which is it?
For taxpayers, the most important part of this story is that in a crushing economy, when just about everyone is feeling strapped, we still have the willful hiring of unqualified patronage workers at excellent wages on the whim of a politician who can't be straight with us. Cole is hardly the only example of the Stroger "Friends and Family" employment plan. Remember Ronald Burleson, working at the East Bank Club, where the president plays basketball, who got a $99,000 health department job until the Trib reported it? Stroger was forced to demote him, but on "Chicago Tonight" he improbably added: "That doesn't mean he wasn't qualified."
President Stroger would do well to consider the words of Cassius in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar":
The fault, dear Todd, is not in our stars but in ourselves.
In 2002, Military Agency Warned Against 'Torture' - Extreme Duress Could Yield Unreliable Information, It Said
In 2002, Military Agency Warned Against 'Torture' - Extreme Duress Could Yield Unreliable Information, It Said
By Peter Finn and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403171.html?hpid=topnews
The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."
"The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.
It remains unclear whether the attachment reached high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. But the document offers the clearest evidence that has come to light so far that technical advisers on the harsh interrogation methods voiced early concerns about the effectiveness of applying severe physical or psychological pressure.
The document was included among July 2002 memorandums that described severe techniques used against Americans in past conflicts and the psychological effects of such treatment. JPRA ran the military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which trains pilots and others to resist hostile questioning.
The cautionary attachment was forwarded to the Pentagon's Office of the General Counsel as the administration finalized the legal underpinnings of a CIA interrogation program that would sanction the use of 10 forms of coercion, including waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. The JPRA material was sent from the Pentagon to the CIA's acting general counsel, John A. Rizzo, and on to the Justice Department, according to testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
A memo dated Aug. 1, 2002, from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of the 10 methods against Abu Zubaida, the nom de guerre of an al-Qaeda associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Former intelligence officials have recently contended that Abu Zubaida provided little useful information about the organization's plans.
Senate investigators were unable to determine whether William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel in 2002, passed the cautionary memo to Rizzo or to other Bush administration officials reviewing the CIA's proposed program.
Haynes declined to comment, as did Rizzo and the CIA. Jay S. Bybee, who as an assistant attorney general signed the Aug. 1 memo, did not respond to a request for comment.
Daniel Baumgartner, who was the JPRA's chief of staff in 2002 and transmitted the memos and attachments, said the agency "sent a lot of cautionary notes" regarding harsh techniques. "There is a difference between what we do in training and what the administration wanted the information for," he said a telephone interview yesterday. "What the administration decided to do or not to do was up to the guys dealing with offensive prisoner operations. . . . We train our own people for the worst possible outcome . . . and obviously the United States government does not torture its own people."
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he thinks the attachment was deliberately ignored and perhaps suppressed. Excerpts from the document appeared in a report on the treatment of detainees released this month by Levin's committee. The report says the attachment echoes JPRA warnings issued in late 2001.
"It's part of a pattern of squelching dissent," said Levin, who added that there were other instances in which internal reviews of detainee treatment were halted or undercut. "They didn't want to hear the downside."
A former administration official said the National Security Council, which was briefed repeatedly that summer on the CIA's planned interrogation program by George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, and agency lawyers, did not discuss the issues raised in the attachment. Tenet, through a spokesman, declined to comment.
"That information was not brought to the attention of the principals," said the official, who was involved in deliberations on interrogation policy and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "That would have been relevant. The CIA did not present with pros and cons, or points of concern. They said this was safe and effective, and there was no alternative."
The Aug. 1 memo on the interrogation of Abu Zubaida draws from the JPRA's memo on psychological effects to conclude that while waterboarding constituted "a threat of imminent death," it did not cause "prolonged mental harm." Therefore, the Aug. 1 memo concluded, waterboarding "would not constitute torture within the meaning of the statute."
But the JPRA's two-page attachment, titled "Operational Issues Pertaining to the Use of Physical/Psychological Coercion in Interrogation," questioned the effectiveness of employing extreme duress to gain intelligence.
"The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible -- in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life -- has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture," the document said. "In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate information. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption."
There was no consideration within the National Security Council that the planned techniques stemmed from Chinese communist practices and had been deemed torture when employed against American personnel, the former administration official said. The U.S. military prosecuted its own troops for using waterboarding in the Philippines and tried Japanese officers on war crimes charges for its use against Americans and other allied nationals during World War II.
The reasoning in the JPRA document contrasted sharply with arguments being pressed at the time by current and former military psychologists in the SERE program, including James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who later formed a company that became a CIA contractor advising on interrogations. Both men declined to comment on their role in formulating interrogation policy.
The JPRA attachment said the key deficiency of physical or psychological duress is the reliability and accuracy of the information gained. "A subject in pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," it said.
In conclusion, the document said, "the application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress (torture) has some serious operational deficits, most notably the potential to result in unreliable information." The word "extreme" is underlined.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
By Peter Finn and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403171.html?hpid=topnews
The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."
"The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.
It remains unclear whether the attachment reached high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. But the document offers the clearest evidence that has come to light so far that technical advisers on the harsh interrogation methods voiced early concerns about the effectiveness of applying severe physical or psychological pressure.
The document was included among July 2002 memorandums that described severe techniques used against Americans in past conflicts and the psychological effects of such treatment. JPRA ran the military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which trains pilots and others to resist hostile questioning.
The cautionary attachment was forwarded to the Pentagon's Office of the General Counsel as the administration finalized the legal underpinnings of a CIA interrogation program that would sanction the use of 10 forms of coercion, including waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. The JPRA material was sent from the Pentagon to the CIA's acting general counsel, John A. Rizzo, and on to the Justice Department, according to testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
A memo dated Aug. 1, 2002, from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of the 10 methods against Abu Zubaida, the nom de guerre of an al-Qaeda associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Former intelligence officials have recently contended that Abu Zubaida provided little useful information about the organization's plans.
Senate investigators were unable to determine whether William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel in 2002, passed the cautionary memo to Rizzo or to other Bush administration officials reviewing the CIA's proposed program.
Haynes declined to comment, as did Rizzo and the CIA. Jay S. Bybee, who as an assistant attorney general signed the Aug. 1 memo, did not respond to a request for comment.
Daniel Baumgartner, who was the JPRA's chief of staff in 2002 and transmitted the memos and attachments, said the agency "sent a lot of cautionary notes" regarding harsh techniques. "There is a difference between what we do in training and what the administration wanted the information for," he said a telephone interview yesterday. "What the administration decided to do or not to do was up to the guys dealing with offensive prisoner operations. . . . We train our own people for the worst possible outcome . . . and obviously the United States government does not torture its own people."
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he thinks the attachment was deliberately ignored and perhaps suppressed. Excerpts from the document appeared in a report on the treatment of detainees released this month by Levin's committee. The report says the attachment echoes JPRA warnings issued in late 2001.
"It's part of a pattern of squelching dissent," said Levin, who added that there were other instances in which internal reviews of detainee treatment were halted or undercut. "They didn't want to hear the downside."
A former administration official said the National Security Council, which was briefed repeatedly that summer on the CIA's planned interrogation program by George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, and agency lawyers, did not discuss the issues raised in the attachment. Tenet, through a spokesman, declined to comment.
"That information was not brought to the attention of the principals," said the official, who was involved in deliberations on interrogation policy and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "That would have been relevant. The CIA did not present with pros and cons, or points of concern. They said this was safe and effective, and there was no alternative."
The Aug. 1 memo on the interrogation of Abu Zubaida draws from the JPRA's memo on psychological effects to conclude that while waterboarding constituted "a threat of imminent death," it did not cause "prolonged mental harm." Therefore, the Aug. 1 memo concluded, waterboarding "would not constitute torture within the meaning of the statute."
But the JPRA's two-page attachment, titled "Operational Issues Pertaining to the Use of Physical/Psychological Coercion in Interrogation," questioned the effectiveness of employing extreme duress to gain intelligence.
"The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible -- in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life -- has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture," the document said. "In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate information. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption."
There was no consideration within the National Security Council that the planned techniques stemmed from Chinese communist practices and had been deemed torture when employed against American personnel, the former administration official said. The U.S. military prosecuted its own troops for using waterboarding in the Philippines and tried Japanese officers on war crimes charges for its use against Americans and other allied nationals during World War II.
The reasoning in the JPRA document contrasted sharply with arguments being pressed at the time by current and former military psychologists in the SERE program, including James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who later formed a company that became a CIA contractor advising on interrogations. Both men declined to comment on their role in formulating interrogation policy.
The JPRA attachment said the key deficiency of physical or psychological duress is the reliability and accuracy of the information gained. "A subject in pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," it said.
In conclusion, the document said, "the application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress (torture) has some serious operational deficits, most notably the potential to result in unreliable information." The word "extreme" is underlined.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Amid Outcry on Memo, Signer's Private Regret - Friends Say Judge Wasn't Proud of Outcome
Amid Outcry on Memo, Signer's Private Regret - Friends Say Judge Wasn't Proud of Outcome
By Karl Vick
Copyright by The Washington Post
Saturday, April 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403888.html?hpid=topnews
LAS VEGAS -- On a Saturday night in May last year, Jay S. Bybee hosted dinner for 35 at a Las Vegas restaurant. The young people seated around him had served as his law clerks in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the post Bybee had assumed after two turbulent years at the Justice Department, where as head of the Office of Legal Counsel he signed the legal justifications for harsh interrogations that have become known as the "torture memos."
Five years along in his new life as a federal judge, Bybee gathered the lawyers and their dates for a reunion, telling them he was proud of the legal work they had together produced.
And then, according to two of his guests, Bybee added that he wished he could say the same about his previous position.
It was, in the private room of a public restaurant, the kind of joyless judgment that some friends and associates say the jurist arrived at well before the public release of four additional memos last week and the resulting uproar that has engulfed Washington. One of the documents, dated Aug. 1, 2002, offered a helpfully narrow definition of torture to the CIA and soon became known as the "Bybee memo," because it bore his signature.
"I've heard him express regret at the contents of the memo," said a fellow legal scholar and longtime friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while offering remarks that might appear as "piling on." "I've heard him express regret that the memo was misused. I've heard him express regret at the lack of context -- of the enormous pressure and the enormous time pressure that he was under. And anyone would have regrets simply because of the notoriety."
That notoriety worsened this week as the documents -- detailing the acceptable application of waterboarding, "walling," sleep deprivation and other procedures the Bush administration called "enhanced interrogation methods" -- prompted calls from human rights advocates and other critics for criminal investigations of the government lawyers who generated them.
Of the three former Justice Department lawyers associated with the memos, the public's attention has focused particularly harshly on Bybee because of his position as a sitting federal judge; John C. Yoo, who largely wrote the Bybee memo, returned to academic life, and Steven G. Bradbury, who signed three memos, resumed private practice at the end of the Bush administration.
Democratic lawmakers, human rights groups and others have called for Congress to impeach Bybee, complaining that his 2003 Senate confirmation came more than a year before his role in the memos was known. "If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), adding that "the decent and honorable thing for him to do would be to resign."
Democrats blocked the nomination of former Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II to the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit because of his role in supporting aggressive interrogations of military detainees. Haynes withdrew his nomination in 2007.
The Justice Department withdrew the memos in the closing days of the Bush administration, and as its Office of Professional Responsibility investigates their origin -- and Congress, the American Bar Association and the United Nations mull inquiries -- Bybee is represented by Maureen E. Mahoney, a star litigator at Latham & Watkins.
The aura of regret described by Bybee's friends and associates stands in contrast to the demeanor of Yoo, who served under Bybee and has maintained both a public profile and the fearless confidence that informed the memos. "Al-Qaeda in the months after 9/11 was going to carry out follow-on attacks on our country and its citizens," Yoo said Tuesday at a conference at Chapman University, the Orange, Calif., campus where he is teaching this spring.
Bybee left the issue behind in 2003, returning to the gated suburban Las Vegas subdivision where he lives with his wife and children. He has said nothing publicly about the documents, a silence associates attributed to the restrictions on a sitting appellate judge, the possible advice of counsel and his own manner.
"Judge Bybee tends to be a very private person, even when he's not in the newspapers," said Ann S. Jarrell, law librarian in the downtown U.S. courthouse where he keeps his chambers. Neither Bybee nor Mahoney would comment for this article.
Still, in the years since the original Bybee memo was made public, his misgivings appeared evident to some in his immediate circle.
"On the primary memo, that legitimated and defined torture, he just felt it got away from him," said the fellow scholar. "What I understand that to mean is, any lawyer, when he or she is writing about something very complicated, very layered, sometimes you can get it all out there and if you're not careful, you end up in a place you never intended to go. I think for someone like Jay, who's a formalist and a textualist, that's a particular danger."
Tuan Samahon, a former clerk who recalled Bybee's remarks at the reunion dinner, said in an e-mail that the judge defended the legal reasoning behind the memos but not the policy decision. Bybee was disappointed by what was done to prisoners, saying that "the spirit of liberty has left the republic," Samahon said.
"Jay would be the sort of lawyer who would say, 'Look, I'll give you the legal advice, but it's up to someone else to make the policy decision whether you implement it,' " said Randall Guynn, who roomed with Bybee at Brigham Young University and remains close.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, which filed a freedom-of-information request regarding the latest memos, said any distinction Bybee may make between the logic of the memos and their application in secret prisons is theoretical at best.
"I don't think the August 2002 memos reflect serious attempts to grapple in good faith with the law," Jaffer said. "These are documents that are meant to justify predetermined ends. They're not objective legal memos at all."
Neither Guynn nor his brother, Steve, who also roomed with Bybee, recalled the judge distancing himself from the memos. But in the years since the first memo became public, Bybee left that sense with some.
"I got the impression that he was not pleased with that bit of scholarship," said an associate who asked not be identified sharing private conversations. "I don't know that he 'owned it.' . . . The way he put it was: He was head of the OLC, and it was written, and he was not pleased with it."
"But he signed it," said Chris Blakesley, a friend and fellow professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas Boyd School of Law who was outraged by the memo, which was leaked in May 2004.
"The very evening it came out, we were going to dinner, and I told him how awful it was and I hoped he got a chance to repudiate it," Blakesley said. "He didn't say very much, and it was kind of awkward because our families were there."
"Getting to the personal side of him, my sense is he would love to repudiate them all," Blakesley said. "Which gets to: Why'd you sign it?"
Bybee had worked in Washington before. During the 1980s he was in the civil and legal policy divisions at the Justice Department, then served as associate White House counsel under President George H.W. Bush.
During the Clinton years, he went from Louisiana State to UNLV, whose law school was so new it was located in an old elementary school across Tropicana Avenue. Through the thin walls of the annex, constitutional law specialist Tom McAffee would hear Bybee working the phones. But he struck none of his colleagues as an ideologue.
"I have colleagues with reputations as indoctrinators," said McAffee, who has known Bybee 30 years and co-authored a book with him on the Ninth and 10th amendments. "Bybee was the opposite end of the spectrum. He was more interested in getting people to think about things."
Students enjoyed Bybee, voting him professor of the year in 2000. "He was 'The Great Professor,' " said Briant S. Platt, who worked as his research assistant and later clerk. "He was quite self-deprecating: 'You get a root beer float in me and I'm a lot of fun.' "
Bybee still occasionally teaches a course at UNLV on separation of powers.
"The whole idea that the Constitution is based on a kind of wariness of mankind's tendency to grab power, that is an idea I got from Jay," McAffee said. "So the whole idea of uninhibited executive power, from him, does seem passing strange."
Bybee's friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel. The reason he went back to Washington, Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, "Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?" Guynn said.
Being unable to answer for what followed is "very frustrating," said Guynn, who spoke to Bybee before agreeing to be interviewed.
"If they end up having hearings," he said, "they're going to have a very difficult time trying to square him with their judgments about the memo."
Staff writer Ashley Surdin contributed to this report.
By Karl Vick
Copyright by The Washington Post
Saturday, April 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403888.html?hpid=topnews
LAS VEGAS -- On a Saturday night in May last year, Jay S. Bybee hosted dinner for 35 at a Las Vegas restaurant. The young people seated around him had served as his law clerks in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the post Bybee had assumed after two turbulent years at the Justice Department, where as head of the Office of Legal Counsel he signed the legal justifications for harsh interrogations that have become known as the "torture memos."
Five years along in his new life as a federal judge, Bybee gathered the lawyers and their dates for a reunion, telling them he was proud of the legal work they had together produced.
And then, according to two of his guests, Bybee added that he wished he could say the same about his previous position.
It was, in the private room of a public restaurant, the kind of joyless judgment that some friends and associates say the jurist arrived at well before the public release of four additional memos last week and the resulting uproar that has engulfed Washington. One of the documents, dated Aug. 1, 2002, offered a helpfully narrow definition of torture to the CIA and soon became known as the "Bybee memo," because it bore his signature.
"I've heard him express regret at the contents of the memo," said a fellow legal scholar and longtime friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while offering remarks that might appear as "piling on." "I've heard him express regret that the memo was misused. I've heard him express regret at the lack of context -- of the enormous pressure and the enormous time pressure that he was under. And anyone would have regrets simply because of the notoriety."
That notoriety worsened this week as the documents -- detailing the acceptable application of waterboarding, "walling," sleep deprivation and other procedures the Bush administration called "enhanced interrogation methods" -- prompted calls from human rights advocates and other critics for criminal investigations of the government lawyers who generated them.
Of the three former Justice Department lawyers associated with the memos, the public's attention has focused particularly harshly on Bybee because of his position as a sitting federal judge; John C. Yoo, who largely wrote the Bybee memo, returned to academic life, and Steven G. Bradbury, who signed three memos, resumed private practice at the end of the Bush administration.
Democratic lawmakers, human rights groups and others have called for Congress to impeach Bybee, complaining that his 2003 Senate confirmation came more than a year before his role in the memos was known. "If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), adding that "the decent and honorable thing for him to do would be to resign."
Democrats blocked the nomination of former Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II to the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit because of his role in supporting aggressive interrogations of military detainees. Haynes withdrew his nomination in 2007.
The Justice Department withdrew the memos in the closing days of the Bush administration, and as its Office of Professional Responsibility investigates their origin -- and Congress, the American Bar Association and the United Nations mull inquiries -- Bybee is represented by Maureen E. Mahoney, a star litigator at Latham & Watkins.
The aura of regret described by Bybee's friends and associates stands in contrast to the demeanor of Yoo, who served under Bybee and has maintained both a public profile and the fearless confidence that informed the memos. "Al-Qaeda in the months after 9/11 was going to carry out follow-on attacks on our country and its citizens," Yoo said Tuesday at a conference at Chapman University, the Orange, Calif., campus where he is teaching this spring.
Bybee left the issue behind in 2003, returning to the gated suburban Las Vegas subdivision where he lives with his wife and children. He has said nothing publicly about the documents, a silence associates attributed to the restrictions on a sitting appellate judge, the possible advice of counsel and his own manner.
"Judge Bybee tends to be a very private person, even when he's not in the newspapers," said Ann S. Jarrell, law librarian in the downtown U.S. courthouse where he keeps his chambers. Neither Bybee nor Mahoney would comment for this article.
Still, in the years since the original Bybee memo was made public, his misgivings appeared evident to some in his immediate circle.
"On the primary memo, that legitimated and defined torture, he just felt it got away from him," said the fellow scholar. "What I understand that to mean is, any lawyer, when he or she is writing about something very complicated, very layered, sometimes you can get it all out there and if you're not careful, you end up in a place you never intended to go. I think for someone like Jay, who's a formalist and a textualist, that's a particular danger."
Tuan Samahon, a former clerk who recalled Bybee's remarks at the reunion dinner, said in an e-mail that the judge defended the legal reasoning behind the memos but not the policy decision. Bybee was disappointed by what was done to prisoners, saying that "the spirit of liberty has left the republic," Samahon said.
"Jay would be the sort of lawyer who would say, 'Look, I'll give you the legal advice, but it's up to someone else to make the policy decision whether you implement it,' " said Randall Guynn, who roomed with Bybee at Brigham Young University and remains close.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, which filed a freedom-of-information request regarding the latest memos, said any distinction Bybee may make between the logic of the memos and their application in secret prisons is theoretical at best.
"I don't think the August 2002 memos reflect serious attempts to grapple in good faith with the law," Jaffer said. "These are documents that are meant to justify predetermined ends. They're not objective legal memos at all."
Neither Guynn nor his brother, Steve, who also roomed with Bybee, recalled the judge distancing himself from the memos. But in the years since the first memo became public, Bybee left that sense with some.
"I got the impression that he was not pleased with that bit of scholarship," said an associate who asked not be identified sharing private conversations. "I don't know that he 'owned it.' . . . The way he put it was: He was head of the OLC, and it was written, and he was not pleased with it."
"But he signed it," said Chris Blakesley, a friend and fellow professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas Boyd School of Law who was outraged by the memo, which was leaked in May 2004.
"The very evening it came out, we were going to dinner, and I told him how awful it was and I hoped he got a chance to repudiate it," Blakesley said. "He didn't say very much, and it was kind of awkward because our families were there."
"Getting to the personal side of him, my sense is he would love to repudiate them all," Blakesley said. "Which gets to: Why'd you sign it?"
Bybee had worked in Washington before. During the 1980s he was in the civil and legal policy divisions at the Justice Department, then served as associate White House counsel under President George H.W. Bush.
During the Clinton years, he went from Louisiana State to UNLV, whose law school was so new it was located in an old elementary school across Tropicana Avenue. Through the thin walls of the annex, constitutional law specialist Tom McAffee would hear Bybee working the phones. But he struck none of his colleagues as an ideologue.
"I have colleagues with reputations as indoctrinators," said McAffee, who has known Bybee 30 years and co-authored a book with him on the Ninth and 10th amendments. "Bybee was the opposite end of the spectrum. He was more interested in getting people to think about things."
Students enjoyed Bybee, voting him professor of the year in 2000. "He was 'The Great Professor,' " said Briant S. Platt, who worked as his research assistant and later clerk. "He was quite self-deprecating: 'You get a root beer float in me and I'm a lot of fun.' "
Bybee still occasionally teaches a course at UNLV on separation of powers.
"The whole idea that the Constitution is based on a kind of wariness of mankind's tendency to grab power, that is an idea I got from Jay," McAffee said. "So the whole idea of uninhibited executive power, from him, does seem passing strange."
Bybee's friends said he never sought the job at the Office of Legal Counsel. The reason he went back to Washington, Guynn said, was to interview with then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales for a slot that would be opening on the 9th Circuit when a judge retired. The opening was not yet there, however, so Gonzales asked, "Would you be willing to take a position at the OLC first?" Guynn said.
Being unable to answer for what followed is "very frustrating," said Guynn, who spoke to Bybee before agreeing to be interviewed.
"If they end up having hearings," he said, "they're going to have a very difficult time trying to square him with their judgments about the memo."
Staff writer Ashley Surdin contributed to this report.
Secretary of State Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq - Stresses President Obama's Commitment to Its Sovereignty, Stability
Secretary of State Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq - Stresses President Obama's Commitment to Its Sovereignty, Stability
Mary Beth Sheridan
Copyright by The Washington Post
Saturday, April 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/25/AR2009042500409.html?hpid=topnews
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Iraq on Saturday, stressing the Obama administration's commitment to the country as a series of horrific suicide bombings fanned fears about its precarious stability.
Clinton's visit -- including scheduled meetings with Iraqi leaders, citizens and the American military--was intended to show that the new U.S. government remains focused on Iraq even as it prepares to draw down its forces here.
"We want to display and reinforce our continuing commitment to the Iraqi people and to the stability, sovereignty and self-reliance of Iraq," Clinton told reporters on the eve of the trip, her first here as secretary of state.
Clinton flew into the Iraqi capital on an Air Force C-17 cargo jet for her unannounced visit. She arrived after two days of suicide bombings that left over 115 people dead in Baghdad and the northern province of Diyala.
While the attacks have alarmed Iraqis, Clinton said she saw "no sign" they could re-ignite the sectarian warfare that ravaged the country in recent years. She described the bombings as "a signal that the rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction."
Violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically since the worst days of the war, with about 27 attacks per day occurring in January, down from 180 in June 2007, according to the Government Accountability Office. That decline is attributed to the U.S. counter-insurgency campaign of the past two years, a cease-fire by many Shiite militants and the decision by many Sunni fighters to switch to the U.S. side.
But the death toll has spiked lately because of the unusually lethal bombings, which have shown insurgents still have the power to obtain explosives and outwit security forces.
Many attacks are believed to be carried out by Sunni insurgents, who recently announced a campaign of violence code-named "The Good Harvest." They appear to be trying to destroy the credibility of the Shiite-led government.
Clinton's visit comes at a critical time in the Iraqi conflict, which has claimed the lives of nearly 4,300 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
The Obama administration is preparing to begin phrased withdrawals of its approximately 140,000 troops this summer, with all but about 50,000 scheduled to leave by mid-2010.
They will leave a country whose police and army forces doubled in size from January 2007 to October 2008, to over 600,000 members, according to GAO. But the army is still relatively weak, and Iraq is still riven with sectarian tensions and unresolved disputes over oil revenues and land.
Mary Beth Sheridan
Copyright by The Washington Post
Saturday, April 25, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/25/AR2009042500409.html?hpid=topnews
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Iraq on Saturday, stressing the Obama administration's commitment to the country as a series of horrific suicide bombings fanned fears about its precarious stability.
Clinton's visit -- including scheduled meetings with Iraqi leaders, citizens and the American military--was intended to show that the new U.S. government remains focused on Iraq even as it prepares to draw down its forces here.
"We want to display and reinforce our continuing commitment to the Iraqi people and to the stability, sovereignty and self-reliance of Iraq," Clinton told reporters on the eve of the trip, her first here as secretary of state.
Clinton flew into the Iraqi capital on an Air Force C-17 cargo jet for her unannounced visit. She arrived after two days of suicide bombings that left over 115 people dead in Baghdad and the northern province of Diyala.
While the attacks have alarmed Iraqis, Clinton said she saw "no sign" they could re-ignite the sectarian warfare that ravaged the country in recent years. She described the bombings as "a signal that the rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction."
Violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically since the worst days of the war, with about 27 attacks per day occurring in January, down from 180 in June 2007, according to the Government Accountability Office. That decline is attributed to the U.S. counter-insurgency campaign of the past two years, a cease-fire by many Shiite militants and the decision by many Sunni fighters to switch to the U.S. side.
But the death toll has spiked lately because of the unusually lethal bombings, which have shown insurgents still have the power to obtain explosives and outwit security forces.
Many attacks are believed to be carried out by Sunni insurgents, who recently announced a campaign of violence code-named "The Good Harvest." They appear to be trying to destroy the credibility of the Shiite-led government.
Clinton's visit comes at a critical time in the Iraqi conflict, which has claimed the lives of nearly 4,300 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
The Obama administration is preparing to begin phrased withdrawals of its approximately 140,000 troops this summer, with all but about 50,000 scheduled to leave by mid-2010.
They will leave a country whose police and army forces doubled in size from January 2007 to October 2008, to over 600,000 members, according to GAO. But the army is still relatively weak, and Iraq is still riven with sectarian tensions and unresolved disputes over oil revenues and land.
Democrat Is Winner of a New York House Race
Democrat Is Winner of a New York House Race
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Copyright by the The New York Times
Published: April 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/nyregion/25murphy.html?th&emc=th
A 39-year-old Democrat in his first run for office emerged Friday as the winner of a hotly contested Congressional race in upstate New York, dashing Republican hopes for the start of a comeback after the party’s disastrous November losses.
The Democrat, Scott Murphy, a venture capitalist who echoed President Obama’s promises of bipartisanship, expanded health care and an economic turnaround, said his victory after a drawn-out vote count showed that voters had no patience for partisan bickering and wanted their leaders to work together like grown-ups.
“There was a lot of frustration with old-school politics,” Mr. Murphy said in a telephone interview on Friday, adding that voters in the special election were still excited about President Obama’s message of change and that they welcomed him as a newcomer to politics.
“We were 25 points down in the polls when we started, and we were able to get out the fact that I’m a problem solver who’s been working to create jobs,” Mr. Murphy said. “That resonated with the public. That’s the message that worked here, and that’s what we need to work on doing.”
The victory by Mr. Murphy, who will succeed Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in the House of Representatives, became official when the Republican candidate, State Assemblyman James N. Tedisco, conceded in a phone call to Mr. Murphy and in a statement released just before 4 p.m.
A day earlier, Mr. Tedisco’s lawyers told him that victory was out of reach, aides said. As of late Friday, Mr. Murphy was ahead in the 20th Congressional District, 80,420 to 80,021 — a margin of 399 votes, with several hundred paper ballots still in dispute. But most of the disputed ballots were challenged by Mr. Tedisco’s side.
Republicans downplayed the loss in the special election, held on March 31, as predictable given recent Democratic gains in the district, and more generally in the Northeast. But the party had invested heavily in Mr. Tedisco’s race, and with good reason: Republicans hold a 75,000-vote registration edge in the district, the party’s biggest advantage in New York. And Mr. Tedisco, 58, who was the Assembly minority leader, was a familiar and feisty party spokesman on Albany television, while Mr. Murphy was unknown.
But Mr. Murphy, a Missouri native who moved to Glens Falls from Manhattan a few years ago, surged from behind with a single-minded focus on the economy. He boasted of having created jobs upstate, and trumpeted the federal stimulus package in a contest that took shape, and drew national attention, as a referendum on the Obama administration’s economic recovery efforts.
Mr. Tedisco’s defeat came as an embarrassment for Michael Steele, the Republican national chairman, who publicly identified the race as a prime target and campaigned twice for Mr. Tedisco. (The Democratic National Committee quickly threw Mr. Steele’s statements back in his face on Friday, posting a YouTube video called “Broken Steele.”)
Mr. Steele did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but he acknowledged in a statement that Republicans “must be competitive in districts like NY-20 if we are going to regain our Congressional majorities.”
The stakes for Democrats in Washington were much lower. The party lent workers to Mr. Murphy’s campaign and helped him with fund-raising, but did not spend heavily on his behalf. President Obama invested little political capital in Mr. Murphy’s campaign, issuing an endorsement by e-mail but refraining from appearing in commercials or on the stump.
But Mr. Murphy’s victory delivered a modest but much-needed lift to New York’s embattled governor, David A. Paterson, who created the vacancy by appointing Ms. Gillibrand to the Senate over the objections of some ranking Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had poured resources into helping Ms. Gillibrand capture the historically conservative district in 2006.
For Mr. Tedisco, the concession capped a grueling few weeks. He was forced out of his State Assembly leadership post by fellow Republicans angered by his absence from Albany while Democrats were drafting a contentious state budget in secret. This week, he was battered by a report in the Times Union of Albany that he had authorized his closest staff member to pay $32,500 in personal legal bills with Assembly Republican campaign funds.
In his statement Friday, Mr. Tedisco thanked voters for their patience. “This was a closely contested election that perhaps lasted a little longer than anyone may have expected or wanted,” he said. “But it was important for our electoral process and for the hard-working people of upstate New York that it be resolved fairly and decisively.”
For his part, Mr. Murphy said he wanted to get to work harnessing some of the federal stimulus money for his district, a 10-county area encompassing the Albany suburbs, faded factory towns, dairy farms, and timberland from the Catskills to the Adirondacks.
“These people haven’t been represented in Congress for some time,” he said. “There’s some catch-up to do for sure.”
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Copyright by the The New York Times
Published: April 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/nyregion/25murphy.html?th&emc=th
A 39-year-old Democrat in his first run for office emerged Friday as the winner of a hotly contested Congressional race in upstate New York, dashing Republican hopes for the start of a comeback after the party’s disastrous November losses.
The Democrat, Scott Murphy, a venture capitalist who echoed President Obama’s promises of bipartisanship, expanded health care and an economic turnaround, said his victory after a drawn-out vote count showed that voters had no patience for partisan bickering and wanted their leaders to work together like grown-ups.
“There was a lot of frustration with old-school politics,” Mr. Murphy said in a telephone interview on Friday, adding that voters in the special election were still excited about President Obama’s message of change and that they welcomed him as a newcomer to politics.
“We were 25 points down in the polls when we started, and we were able to get out the fact that I’m a problem solver who’s been working to create jobs,” Mr. Murphy said. “That resonated with the public. That’s the message that worked here, and that’s what we need to work on doing.”
The victory by Mr. Murphy, who will succeed Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in the House of Representatives, became official when the Republican candidate, State Assemblyman James N. Tedisco, conceded in a phone call to Mr. Murphy and in a statement released just before 4 p.m.
A day earlier, Mr. Tedisco’s lawyers told him that victory was out of reach, aides said. As of late Friday, Mr. Murphy was ahead in the 20th Congressional District, 80,420 to 80,021 — a margin of 399 votes, with several hundred paper ballots still in dispute. But most of the disputed ballots were challenged by Mr. Tedisco’s side.
Republicans downplayed the loss in the special election, held on March 31, as predictable given recent Democratic gains in the district, and more generally in the Northeast. But the party had invested heavily in Mr. Tedisco’s race, and with good reason: Republicans hold a 75,000-vote registration edge in the district, the party’s biggest advantage in New York. And Mr. Tedisco, 58, who was the Assembly minority leader, was a familiar and feisty party spokesman on Albany television, while Mr. Murphy was unknown.
But Mr. Murphy, a Missouri native who moved to Glens Falls from Manhattan a few years ago, surged from behind with a single-minded focus on the economy. He boasted of having created jobs upstate, and trumpeted the federal stimulus package in a contest that took shape, and drew national attention, as a referendum on the Obama administration’s economic recovery efforts.
Mr. Tedisco’s defeat came as an embarrassment for Michael Steele, the Republican national chairman, who publicly identified the race as a prime target and campaigned twice for Mr. Tedisco. (The Democratic National Committee quickly threw Mr. Steele’s statements back in his face on Friday, posting a YouTube video called “Broken Steele.”)
Mr. Steele did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but he acknowledged in a statement that Republicans “must be competitive in districts like NY-20 if we are going to regain our Congressional majorities.”
The stakes for Democrats in Washington were much lower. The party lent workers to Mr. Murphy’s campaign and helped him with fund-raising, but did not spend heavily on his behalf. President Obama invested little political capital in Mr. Murphy’s campaign, issuing an endorsement by e-mail but refraining from appearing in commercials or on the stump.
But Mr. Murphy’s victory delivered a modest but much-needed lift to New York’s embattled governor, David A. Paterson, who created the vacancy by appointing Ms. Gillibrand to the Senate over the objections of some ranking Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had poured resources into helping Ms. Gillibrand capture the historically conservative district in 2006.
For Mr. Tedisco, the concession capped a grueling few weeks. He was forced out of his State Assembly leadership post by fellow Republicans angered by his absence from Albany while Democrats were drafting a contentious state budget in secret. This week, he was battered by a report in the Times Union of Albany that he had authorized his closest staff member to pay $32,500 in personal legal bills with Assembly Republican campaign funds.
In his statement Friday, Mr. Tedisco thanked voters for their patience. “This was a closely contested election that perhaps lasted a little longer than anyone may have expected or wanted,” he said. “But it was important for our electoral process and for the hard-working people of upstate New York that it be resolved fairly and decisively.”
For his part, Mr. Murphy said he wanted to get to work harnessing some of the federal stimulus money for his district, a 10-county area encompassing the Albany suburbs, faded factory towns, dairy farms, and timberland from the Catskills to the Adirondacks.
“These people haven’t been represented in Congress for some time,” he said. “There’s some catch-up to do for sure.”
Auctions for Troubled Property Loans Jump to the Web
Auctions for Troubled Property Loans Jump to the Web
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/business/economy/25debt.html?th&emc=th
It is not a game for novices or for anyone lacking courage. But for investors with the right expertise and a serious appetite for risk, the credit crisis is shaping up as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy troubled real estate assets on the cheap.
Kingsley Greenland, president of DebtX, the industry leader in online loan sales.
A brisk trade in some of these assets is already under way, with investors buying and selling billions of dollars in distressed bank loans backed by collateral like homes, land and commercial properties. Many of these problem loans trade on eBay-like auction Web sites, which have grown rapidly over the last year.
“All of a sudden, it’s in vogue to want to buy distressed assets,” said Kingsley Greenland, president of DebtX, the industry leader in online loan sales. “Pools of capital are forming all over.”
Offline, additional billions in troubled loans change hands in a loosely regulated market of transactions among bankers, brokers and investors.
Most of these loans trade for a fraction of their original value, a tantalizing target for investors. Yet with the economy mired in recession and real estate values still falling in many markets, aggressive bidders risk overpaying even for assets that appear cheap.
“The whole art to all this is figuring out which one is an opportunity and which one’s a trap,” said Chris Moench, who manages a distressed-debt investment fund in St. Petersburg, Fla. “If you don’t buy the thing right, you’re never going to make any money.”
Buying loans is a far different proposition from simply buying real estate. The new owner of a delinquent home mortgage, for instance, must essentially take over where the previous lender left off. That means working out a more affordable payment plan with the borrower or foreclosing on the property.
“It’s not a quick buck,” said John Martin, a real estate investor in Foster City, Calif. “Once you’ve acquired a note, the challenge is to manage it.”
Investing in troubled loans is also decidedly unglamorous, with buyers commonly referred to as bottom-feeders or vultures. “This is opportunistic investing, however you want to term it,” Mr. Moench said.
Nonetheless, the interest in distressed loans is surging. This February, nearly 2,700 investors registered to bid on DebtX’s auction Web site, more than 10 times the number of registrants from the same month last year. The company sold notes worth more than $1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, triple its sales from the same period in 2007.
DebtX, along with First Financial Network, a loan sale advisory firm in Oklahoma City, has a contract to sell loans from failed banks for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Additional firms are being enlisted in the agency’s loan sale effort, David Barr, an F.D.I.C. spokesman, said in an e-mail message.
The emergence of online auctions represents a major evolution for the loan sale market, which began in the aftermath of the savings and loan crisis in the early 1990s. Once that crisis ended, the secondary market for loans continued to expand, with bankers turning to note sales as an alternative to working out delinquent loans internally. The first online auctions for loans emerged early this decade.
“We didn’t have the resources or the contacts to go out and get a bunch of buyers from around the country,” said Kelly George, president of mBank, a community bank based in Manistique, Mich., who has sold loans using DebtX. “They provided an auction block for these troubled debts.”
Since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007, the volume of trade in distressed loans has ballooned, according to industry insiders and banking analysts. The F.D.I.C. has been a particularly active seller, auctioning off billions in loans seized from failed banks.
The precise volume is difficult to gauge, however. The market is largely unregulated, and while loans are increasingly being sold online, billions of dollars more in loans are traded in relative secrecy by banks and loan brokers. Most experts believe that, even with the recent increases, banks have sold only a fraction of the troubled loans on their books.
“You’re going to see
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/business/economy/25debt.html?th&emc=th
It is not a game for novices or for anyone lacking courage. But for investors with the right expertise and a serious appetite for risk, the credit crisis is shaping up as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy troubled real estate assets on the cheap.
Kingsley Greenland, president of DebtX, the industry leader in online loan sales.
A brisk trade in some of these assets is already under way, with investors buying and selling billions of dollars in distressed bank loans backed by collateral like homes, land and commercial properties. Many of these problem loans trade on eBay-like auction Web sites, which have grown rapidly over the last year.
“All of a sudden, it’s in vogue to want to buy distressed assets,” said Kingsley Greenland, president of DebtX, the industry leader in online loan sales. “Pools of capital are forming all over.”
Offline, additional billions in troubled loans change hands in a loosely regulated market of transactions among bankers, brokers and investors.
Most of these loans trade for a fraction of their original value, a tantalizing target for investors. Yet with the economy mired in recession and real estate values still falling in many markets, aggressive bidders risk overpaying even for assets that appear cheap.
“The whole art to all this is figuring out which one is an opportunity and which one’s a trap,” said Chris Moench, who manages a distressed-debt investment fund in St. Petersburg, Fla. “If you don’t buy the thing right, you’re never going to make any money.”
Buying loans is a far different proposition from simply buying real estate. The new owner of a delinquent home mortgage, for instance, must essentially take over where the previous lender left off. That means working out a more affordable payment plan with the borrower or foreclosing on the property.
“It’s not a quick buck,” said John Martin, a real estate investor in Foster City, Calif. “Once you’ve acquired a note, the challenge is to manage it.”
Investing in troubled loans is also decidedly unglamorous, with buyers commonly referred to as bottom-feeders or vultures. “This is opportunistic investing, however you want to term it,” Mr. Moench said.
Nonetheless, the interest in distressed loans is surging. This February, nearly 2,700 investors registered to bid on DebtX’s auction Web site, more than 10 times the number of registrants from the same month last year. The company sold notes worth more than $1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, triple its sales from the same period in 2007.
DebtX, along with First Financial Network, a loan sale advisory firm in Oklahoma City, has a contract to sell loans from failed banks for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Additional firms are being enlisted in the agency’s loan sale effort, David Barr, an F.D.I.C. spokesman, said in an e-mail message.
The emergence of online auctions represents a major evolution for the loan sale market, which began in the aftermath of the savings and loan crisis in the early 1990s. Once that crisis ended, the secondary market for loans continued to expand, with bankers turning to note sales as an alternative to working out delinquent loans internally. The first online auctions for loans emerged early this decade.
“We didn’t have the resources or the contacts to go out and get a bunch of buyers from around the country,” said Kelly George, president of mBank, a community bank based in Manistique, Mich., who has sold loans using DebtX. “They provided an auction block for these troubled debts.”
Since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007, the volume of trade in distressed loans has ballooned, according to industry insiders and banking analysts. The F.D.I.C. has been a particularly active seller, auctioning off billions in loans seized from failed banks.
The precise volume is difficult to gauge, however. The market is largely unregulated, and while loans are increasingly being sold online, billions of dollars more in loans are traded in relative secrecy by banks and loan brokers. Most experts believe that, even with the recent increases, banks have sold only a fraction of the troubled loans on their books.
“You’re going to see