WEAKLY HUMERUS NEWS 06-05-10
AIMED AT YOUR FUNNY BONE
TOP QUOTES OF THE WEEK
The sports world is still buzzing about Jim Joyce's mistake at first base
last night. It might be the most famous blown call in history. Or at least
since when Bill Clinton was talking on the phone in the Oval Office while
being serviced by Monica. (Janice Hough)
A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit against Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen
that accused their bodyguards of shooting at some photographers during their
nuptials. Hmm. I didn't know they had a shotgun wedding. (RJ Currie)
No need for a big investigation into the gulf oil leak. From what I've read,
the whole system is rigged. (Marc Ragovin)
Signaling the end of PM Gordon Brown's authoritarian rule, Britain's new
government canceled a proposed plan that would have required Brits to carry
an ID card. Critics condemned the plan as too close to totalitarian regimes
like Nazi Germany… Soviet Russia… Arizona... (Bob Mills)
French and Dutch speaking Belgians are considering splitting the country
over their differences. People who are neutral on the subject are called
Belgian wafflers. (Jim Barach)
Rapper Snoop Dogg says he likes to wear a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey because
the hockey team's logo reminds him of a marijuana leaf. And in a related story,
the Snooper just awarded himself the Lady Bong Trophy. (Dwight Perry)
Souvenir-crazed fans snapped up 3,000 unused tickets from Roy Halladay's
perfect game — at face value — within four hours of the Florida Marlins
putting them up for sale. "All in a day's work," said the Marlins' GM,
P.T. Barnum. (Dwight Perry)
L. A. Angels' first baseman Kendry Morales is out for the season after teammates
celebrating his walk-away, game-winning home run, rushed from the dugout to greet
him at home plate and broke his leg. A pro-athlete hasn't been injured that badly
at home since Tiger Woods. (Bob Mills)
John Wooden passed away tonight at the age of 99. Or as Larry King said
"So tragically young!" (Janice Hough)
Jose Canseco says that he could've been a professional bowler. I don't know about
that--he's always had trouble staying out of the gutter. (Bill Littlejohn)
THE OIL SPILL
Why is BP taking so long to mop up the gulf oil spill? They've sent
the same people who clean the restrooms. (Alan Ray)
The gulf oil spill, now officially the worst in U. S. history. In fact, they're
calling this the biggest environmental disaster since the State of New Jersey,
(Jay Leno)
So now they're dumping golf balls into the Gulf of Mexico to plug up BP's leak.
And to think that all this time I've been preventing oil spills at golf courses
across the country. (Terry Etter)
The saddest part is the spill. But close is BP's choice of public-relations
theme song: "Fuels Rush in Where Anglers Fear to Tread." (Barry Henderson)
Filmmaker James Cameron, who made "Titanic" and "Avatar, " has joined in the
effort to find a way to plug the leak in the Gulf. He has no idea how to fix
the leak, but he thinks Leonardo DiCaprio will cause the rig to blow up in
the movie. (Jerry Perisho)
The good news is BP is going to give Louisiana fisherman 100% compensation
for their lost wages based on their tax returns. The bad news is Louisiana
fishermen haven't paid their taxes since the Civil War. (Jake Novak)
Computer models are showing the the Gulf oil spill reaching the U. S. east coast
and eventually making it to Europe. British Petroleum has now taken the Sherwin
Williams motto "We cover the earth". (Jim Barach)
Employees at a California medical marijuana facility have joined a union.
And management thought those people were listless, unmotivated and
unproductive before. (Jim Barach)
In a new video that is light on his usual threats but heavy on admiration,
Osama bin Laden admits that he is "professionally envious" of oil giant BP's
massive oil spill, saying that it puts his efforts to create destruction
and chaos to shame. (Andy Borowitz)
The weirdest thing about the BP spill is hearing all the Republican cries
for government intervention. Hey Alice, how do we get out of this rabbit
hole? (Will Durst)
The Department of Commerce said the economic damage to the Gulf of Mexico
will not likely be cleaned up by the end of the year. Novelty toymakers
are ready. This Christmas the singing plastic fish Billy Bass will perform
selections from Grease. (Argus Hamilton)
AL & TIPPER GORE
Bad news for Al Gore. Tipper's divorce attorney called Google to find out
how much half of the Internet is worth. (Paul Seaburn)
Al and Tipper Gore have split up after 40 years of marriage. He’ll no doubt
notice the environmental natural of the divorce trial. In court she is
expected to ask for a lot of green. (Alan Ray)
Al and Tipper Gore are splitting up after 40 years of marriage. Mrs. Gore
said: "Oh, I was aware of those accusations that Al was a 'tree hugger.'
I saw the smirks on people's faces, and I heard the snickering behind my
back. For the longest time I refused to believe it, but eventually the
evidence became overwhelming: the bark burns on his chest, the sap on his
hands, the leaves and twigs in his hair. I knew it was more than 'just
bringing in some firewood." (Bill Mihalic)
Al and Tipper Gore are separating after 40 years of marriage. Maybe they'll
work it out. Otherwise, Al, you'll have to polish your Nobel Prize yourself.
-- Assuming you get custody of it. -- It just won't seem right. Big Al Gore
without his faithful companion, Tipper. -- "Look! Up in the woods! It's a
moose... it's a bear... No, it's the Lone Tree Hugger!" (Joe Hickman)
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Today, President Obama flew to Louisiana to see the gulf cleanup effort
firsthand. And it was just like President Bush's trip to Louisiana, except
Obama actually landed. (Jimmy Fallon)
President Barack Obama enjoyed a long Memorial Day holiday weekend a the
family home in Chicago. It was the First Family's first sleepover at their
red-brick home in more than a year. That's all we know about it since
Republicans were not able to get Michelle to wear a wire. (Joe Hickman)
CONGRESS
House Minority Leader John Boehner wants Paul McCartney to apologize for his
comment upon receiving a Library of Congress award – "After the last eight
years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is. " And to
be fair, I am sure Laura has told W. what a library is, he just hasn't been
in one. (Janice Hough)
THE COURTS
The Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 decision on Monday that criminal suspects
must tell police if they're invoking the right to remain silent. You can no
longer invoke your right to remain silent by remaining silent; you have to
talk to the police to protect your right to silence. Isn't that a little
like celebrating your right to be a vegetarian by eating a steak?
(Frank King)
THE STATES & LOCAL NEWS
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich began his corruption trial in Chicago.
Several of the jurors, all registered voters, were actually still living.
(Jerry Perisho)
The Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution calling for the city to
boycott Arizona. They also ordered Universal Studios to destroy all prints
of "Raising Arizona" and "Flight of the Phoenix." Not to be outdone, the
Honolulu City Council will vote on whether to blow up the USS Arizona.
(Bob Mills)
An Ohio woman was surprised when she discovered a groundhog that had been making
noise under the hood of her car. When mechanics pulled it out, the groundhog saw
its shadow; that means 6 more weeks of accelerator pedal problems. (Jerry Perisho)
U.S. POLITICIANS
Sarah Palin has earned 12 million dollars in book and appearance fees since
quitting as governor of Alaska. She’s got her audience in the palm of her
hand. No, wait a minute, that’s her speech. (Alan Ray)
Sarah Palin built a 14-foot high wooden fence around her Alaska home because
an author who is writing a book about her moved in next door. But, rest easy,
because the wood had a knothole and she can still keep an eye on the Russians.
(Jerry Perisho)
The George W. book "Deciderisions" is now in correctorations. The book starts
when he's really drunk and ends when he'd really like to be. (Michael Feldman)
Hey, all you ladies out there who like to hang your laundry on the line,
Al Gore's available. (Bill Williams)
BUSINESS & LABOR
The Brooklyn Bridge is about to undergo a $500 million renovation.
Well, that should make it easier to sell. (Bill Mihalic)
General Motors announced Monday it is developing a much longer-running Chevy Volt.
The competition is fierce in clean-car technology. Ford announced they just invented
the world's first water-powered car, but it only runs on water from the Gulf of
Mexico. (Argus Hamilton)
A food investment firm has purchased Pabst Blue Ribbon beer for $250 million.
It would have only cost $150 million. But the new owners bought it at an AM/PM.
(Alan Ray)
BP says if "top kill" fails, they'll try something called the "junk shot."
Hey, worked last night for the Lakers. (Jay Leno)
A 36-year-old woman is suing United Airlines for leaving her asleep in her seat
for over three hours. I'm not sure why she's so upset; it doesn't seem to bother
Toronto Maple Leafs fans. (RJ Currie)
Plans are now underway to construct a 270-mile express line to ferry high-rollers
between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The high-speed party train will feature a
special open-air "tanning car" that will cater to passengers making the return
trip without a shirt. (Bob Mills)
GREAT BRITAIN
Dogs in Britain are being trained to sniff out diabetes when their owners'
blood sugar drops. They're great at it, but only when diabetes is in your
crotch. (Jimmy Fallon)
EUROPE
An American adventurist strapped himself to a bunch of helium balloons and
floated from England to France. Immediately afterward, people in Mexico asked,
"Exactly how many balloons?" (Jimmy Fallon)
SCIENCE
A 60-year-old woman in China just gave birth to twins. She says she's going to
use cloth diapers because she finds the disposable ones a little uncomfortable.
(Jimmy Fallon)
SPORTS
The Los Angeles Lakers won the right on Saturday to play the Boston Celtics in
the NBA Finals. What a dream match-up. It's one of the great rivalries, like
the Yankees vs. Dodgers, Oklahoma vs. Texas and the State of Louisiana vs.
British Petroleum. (Argus Hamilton)
The offensively-challenged San Francisco Giants scored one run tonight in
11 innings, while the Philadelphia Phillies have been shut out five times
in the last ten games. What do they think this is, the World Cup? - The Giants
and Phillies have also actually both won 1-0 games in the past week. If these
two teams played each other, it might have to be decided by penalty kicks.
(Janice Hough)
On the possibility of freezing temperatures when the Meadowlands, N.J.,
hosts the 2014 Super Bowl: The halftime show will be performed by
Vanilla Ice. (Bill Littlejohn)
The Dodgers won a weird one at Chavez Ravine on Monday night when the
winning run scored in the bottom of the ninth — on a balk committed by
Arizona pitcher Esmerling Vasquez. The Diamondbacks didn't dispute the
call, thus saving second-base ump Tim Tschida the ignominy of being
labeled a balk-off homer. (Dwight Perry)
Three things I would go with if I had my choice as a tennis player:
3. Roger Federer's backhand;
2. Rafa Nadal's forehand; and
1. Maria Sharapova.
(RJ Currie)
It's only been 49 years since the Blackhawks last hoisted the NHL trophy.
It just seems longer. When my team last won the Stanley Cup, players didn't
wear helmets, goalies didn't wear masks. I think the puck was still made out
of wood." (Chicago native David Jacobson, the U. S. ambassador to Canada)
New York Knicks forward Wilson Chandler was in possession of a bag of
marijuana when cops stopped his car in New York. Chandler explained he
has a chronic problem that requires medical marijuana; he plays for
the Knicks. (Alex Kaseberg)
Germany, in case you missed it, staged its first national strip-poker
tournament in Hamburg last month. Flummoxed competitors couldn't decide
whether to go all-in or all-off. (Dwight Perry)
Diego Maradona's vowed to run nude through the streets of Buenos Aires
if Argentina wins the World Cup. If coaches are going to start running
naked, it's just as well Stan Van Gundy didn't get an NBA title.
(Brad Dickson)
Argentine soccer legend and coach Diego Maradonna reportedly ran over
a reporters leg with his car. Apparently he blamed it on the handbrake
of God. (RJ Currie)
ATHLETES
Kendry Morales of the Angels broke his leg at home plate celebrating
his game-winning grand slam against Seattle. Is that still considered
a walk-off home run? (RJ Currie)
The MVPs who have reigned the last two seasons in the National League,
NFL, NBA and NHL — Albert Pujols, Peyton Manning, LeBron James and
Alex Ovechkin — have one other thing in common, No championships won
in that time. (Jerry Crowe)
No offense to LeBron James, but isn't Simon Cowell the free agent
most in demand right now? (Bob Molinaro)
The Phillies’ Roy Halladay threw a perfect game against the Marlins.
Florida’s performance was like a date with Lady Gaga. No men reached
first base. (Alan Ray)
Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay pitched a perfect game against the
Florida Marlins. His next goal is to throw one against a Major
League team. (Jim Barach)
Perception is everything. Jason Heyward, with nine home runs and 35 RBI,
is having an amazing rookie season in Atlanta. Albert Pujols, with nine
home runs and 34 RBI, is having a horrible season in St. Louis.
(Steve Simmons)
Jose Canseco says that he could've been a professional bowler. I don't
know about that–he's always had trouble staying out of the gutter.
(Bill Littlejohn)
Giants pitcher Barry Zito was enjoying a drink at an upscale bar last week,
when a long-haired young man in scruffy attire approached and a restaurant
staffer interceded, telling the suspected interloper, "I'm sorry, please
don't bother Mr. Zito. No autographs tonight." Tim Lincecum must have
been floored. (Jerry Crowe)
Reliever George Sherrill says he injured his back — earning himself a spot
on the 15-day disabled list — while awkwardly climbing into bed so as to
avoid disturbing his wife. And he calls himself a Dodger? (Dwight Perry)
That faux see-through corset Venus Williams wore during her French Open
opener? Just think of it as a teddy bare. (Dwight Perry)
Some news sources called Flyer Chris Pronger a thief and even a burglar
for taking the puck after games one and two in Chicago. Personally,
I'd call him a puckpocket. (RJ Currie)
Lebron James told Larry King he is leaning toward Cleveland.
Most experts are inclined to disagree. (RJ Currie)
Umpire Jim Joyce blew a call and took away a perfect game from
Armando Galarraga. Oh well, nobody's prefect. (RJ Currie)
There was plenty of kerfuffle over umpire Joe West tossing White Soxs'
pitcher Mark Buehrle for arguing a balk. In the end, it was just a lot
hurler Buehrle hurly-burly. (RJ Currie)
New York Yankee Nick Swisher told reporters he is engaged to Gossip Girl
star Joanna Garcia. You'd have to score that a fielder's choice!
(RJ Currie)
ENTERTAINMENT
“Twilight Saga: Eclipse” premieres this month. High school senior Bella
must choose between a vampire and a werewolf. It used to be so simple
when it was just jocks and geeks. (Alan Ray)
ENTERTAINERS
Singer-actress Jennifer Hudson dieted her way from a size 16 to a 6,
the most amazing loss of useless flab since the Raiders cut JaMarcus
Russell. (Janice Hough)
Sir Paul McCartney played at the White House last night. He dedicated
the Beatles song "Michelle" to the First Lady. Isn't that lovely? And
then for Joe Biden, he played "Fool on the Hill." (Craig Ferguson)
Charlie Sheen will spend 30 days in jail on domestic assault charges.
He'll find life in the slammer is different from Hollywood. Someone's
big break usually involves bloodhounds. (Alan Ray)
Sarah Ferguson told "Inside Edition" she would love to appear on
"Dancing With the Stars. " And she said, if the price is right,
Prince Andrew can come along. (Jay Leno)
Reality TV star Heidi Montag said she had to split from her husband Spencer
Pratt just to have a chance to "get away from the lies". Heidi is absolutely
distraught; she sobbed so hard her forehead nearly moved. (Jerry Perisho)
OTHER CELEBRITIES
Lindsay Lohan was ordered to quit drinking by Judge Marsha Revel Tuesday.
Talk about a Hollywood ending. Lindsay's going to Texas to play a porn star
and make a fortune while the judge is going to lose her pension because
California is bankrupt. (Argus Hamilton)
Lindsay Lohan is concerned that the alcohol-monitoring bracelet on her
ankle can ruin the filming of her upcoming movie. Especially considering
she'll be playing a porn star and she's worried that the ankle bracelet
will keep getting caught on her earrings. (Pedro Bartes)
Maybe it's just me, but I don't remember asking Jesse James to come forward
and tell me his side of the story. That said, turns out he cheated on his
beautiful, Oscar winning, movie star wife, because he was abused as a kid.
And suffered brain damage? (Frank King)
THE MEDIA
Rush Limbaugh is getting married for the fourth time. This is shocking.
There are four women in American stupid enough to consider marrying Limbaugh?
- And with this fourth wife, it now means Limbaugh has had more wives than
our last three Democratic presidents COMBINED. (Janice Hough)
May brought lower ratings for Larry King at CNN. Apparently that 9:00 show time
is just way too late for his audience. (Jim Barach)
CNN news-thrush Campbell Brown, whose ratings this season have plummeted
40% from a year ago, has requested a release from her contract. Network
insiders say she was pushed over the edge when the CNN Promo Department
came up with a new theme for her that went "Um-um good, um-um good,
that's what Campbell Brown is... " (Bob Mills)
RELIGION
We have as a guest tonight, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I'm going to ask the
question that's on everyone's mind: "As a bishop, do you always have to
move diagonally?" (Craig Ferguson)
HISTORY
Archaeologists have found the tomb of a 3300 year old mayor of Memphis, Egypt.
Campaign signage reveals the political ideology of the times. "Right to Bear
Spears. " (Alan Ray)
CULTURE & SEXUAL MORES
A growing number of teenage girls say they are using the rhythm method for
birth control. That's why there is also a growing number of teenage mothers.
(Jim Barach)
A Reader's Digest survey in Germany found that only 5% of Germans would choose
having sex over watching a German World Cup final game. Germans take soccer
over sex, food, laughter and every other human pleasure with the exception
of invading France. (Jerry Perisho)
Miss Ellie, a bug-eyed Chinese Crested Hairless dog whose pimples and
lolling tongue helped her win the 2009 World's Ugliest Dog title, has
died at age 17. The only thing uglier in the news this week was the
Blue Jays bullpen. (RJ Currie)
POLLS & SURVEYS
A study says that 40% of all teenagers have had sex at least once.
The other 60% just say they have. (Jim Barach)
According to the latest census survey, the number of people without
health insurance has dropped by two million. Duh, they're dead because
they didn't have health insurance. (Jay Leno)
Compiled by Stan Kegel
skegel@socal.rr.com
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Credit cards reward the smartest users - Pay your bill monthly and gain more than a free loan
Credit cards reward the smartest users - Pay your bill monthly and gain more than a free loan
By Jim Gallagher, McClatchy
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
June 6, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sc-cons-money-0603-credit-card-20100603-15,0,1012730.story
A few months back, I got airline tickets for $50. Here's how I did it.
Several banks and airlines were offering airline credit cards with a $50 annual fee. Sign up, spend $700 on the card, and they would give you 30,000 frequent-flier miles. That's more than enough for a one-way ticket anywhere in the United States, and a round trip if you plan far enough ahead.
I'll use my free flights, then I'll cancel the card before the next annual fee comes due.
Credit cards remain the best way to rob a bank, if you pay the bill in full every month. Do that, and the bank gives you an interest-free loan until the due date. To top that, many cards will throw in extra goodies or cold cash. They will pay you for the privilege of lending you money for free.
There are hundreds of rewards credit cards on the market. They're a fine deal, so long as you pay the bill in full every month.
If you carry a balance month to month, the freebies are much less important than landing a card with a low interest rate. The average card now charges 14 percent interest.
"The rewards you get will be eaten up by the APR (annual percentage rate)," said Bill Hardekopf of LowCards.com, a Web site that tracks credit card offers.
Cash-back cards
Some cards are generous, others aren't. The simplest way to sort it out is to opt for cold cash.
A decent cash-back card has no annual fee. It will rebate at least 1 percent of what you spend, plus more for specified purchases. The Chase Freedom card, for instance, gives 1 percent on all purchases, plus 5 percent on a list of other items that rotate by season.
"Anytime you can get 5 percent back, it's nothing to sneeze at," said Hardekopf.
If you have a Fidelity investment account, the no-annual-fee Fidelity American Express Card will add $100 to your account for every $5,000 you spend on the card, a pretty good offer.
Less generous cards use a tiered system for rebates. The Discover More card, for instance, pays only 0.25 percent until you've spent $1,500, then 0.5 percent until you hit $3,000 and 1 percent after that.
Non-cash rewards
Things get more complicated when you opt for a card with goodies other than cash.
Look at the payout ratio, said Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, which tracks both bank lending and deposit rates. How many points do you get for a $1 purchase, and how many will you need for that official NASCAR Jeff Gordon jacket? (13,700 points on the NASCAR Racepoints Web site.)
Look at your spending pattern, said McBride. If you're driving a gas guzzler on a 50-mile daily commute, a gasoline credit card might look sweet. The no-annual-fee Exxon Mobil MasterCard, for instance, gives you a 15-cent-per-gallon rebate at Exxon and Mobil stations, plus between 0.5 and 2 percent on other eligible purchases.
Credit score impact
My tactic of taking the airline miles, then canceling the card? Hardekopf and McBride note that I might do some damage to my credit score.
When I cancel the card, I'll be lowering my available credit. Credit scores are based, in part, on the percent of available credit I'm using. Less credit can mean a lower score. Scores also count the amount of time I've held my accounts, and canceling a card counts against me.
Don't do it if you plan to borrow money in the next six to 12 months, said McBride. I don't, so I'm happy to be flying cheap.
By Jim Gallagher, McClatchy
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
June 6, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sc-cons-money-0603-credit-card-20100603-15,0,1012730.story
A few months back, I got airline tickets for $50. Here's how I did it.
Several banks and airlines were offering airline credit cards with a $50 annual fee. Sign up, spend $700 on the card, and they would give you 30,000 frequent-flier miles. That's more than enough for a one-way ticket anywhere in the United States, and a round trip if you plan far enough ahead.
I'll use my free flights, then I'll cancel the card before the next annual fee comes due.
Credit cards remain the best way to rob a bank, if you pay the bill in full every month. Do that, and the bank gives you an interest-free loan until the due date. To top that, many cards will throw in extra goodies or cold cash. They will pay you for the privilege of lending you money for free.
There are hundreds of rewards credit cards on the market. They're a fine deal, so long as you pay the bill in full every month.
If you carry a balance month to month, the freebies are much less important than landing a card with a low interest rate. The average card now charges 14 percent interest.
"The rewards you get will be eaten up by the APR (annual percentage rate)," said Bill Hardekopf of LowCards.com, a Web site that tracks credit card offers.
Cash-back cards
Some cards are generous, others aren't. The simplest way to sort it out is to opt for cold cash.
A decent cash-back card has no annual fee. It will rebate at least 1 percent of what you spend, plus more for specified purchases. The Chase Freedom card, for instance, gives 1 percent on all purchases, plus 5 percent on a list of other items that rotate by season.
"Anytime you can get 5 percent back, it's nothing to sneeze at," said Hardekopf.
If you have a Fidelity investment account, the no-annual-fee Fidelity American Express Card will add $100 to your account for every $5,000 you spend on the card, a pretty good offer.
Less generous cards use a tiered system for rebates. The Discover More card, for instance, pays only 0.25 percent until you've spent $1,500, then 0.5 percent until you hit $3,000 and 1 percent after that.
Non-cash rewards
Things get more complicated when you opt for a card with goodies other than cash.
Look at the payout ratio, said Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, which tracks both bank lending and deposit rates. How many points do you get for a $1 purchase, and how many will you need for that official NASCAR Jeff Gordon jacket? (13,700 points on the NASCAR Racepoints Web site.)
Look at your spending pattern, said McBride. If you're driving a gas guzzler on a 50-mile daily commute, a gasoline credit card might look sweet. The no-annual-fee Exxon Mobil MasterCard, for instance, gives you a 15-cent-per-gallon rebate at Exxon and Mobil stations, plus between 0.5 and 2 percent on other eligible purchases.
Credit score impact
My tactic of taking the airline miles, then canceling the card? Hardekopf and McBride note that I might do some damage to my credit score.
When I cancel the card, I'll be lowering my available credit. Credit scores are based, in part, on the percent of available credit I'm using. Less credit can mean a lower score. Scores also count the amount of time I've held my accounts, and canceling a card counts against me.
Don't do it if you plan to borrow money in the next six to 12 months, said McBride. I don't, so I'm happy to be flying cheap.
German businesses could steer the country out of the eurozone
German businesses could steer the country out of the eurozone
By Howard Schneider
Copyright by The Washington Post
Saturday, June 5, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060404815.html?hpid=topnews
FRANKFURT -- Must Mattheus Schneider's ice cream shop bear responsibility for the future of Greece?
With the euro fighting a crisis that continues to push its value lower, that question about the willingness of German taxpayers and businesses to stand behind economically weaker nations with which they share the euro as a currency could determine whether the continent's decade-old monetary union survives its recent shock or begins to tatter.
Germany's political leadership has pledged the country's credit to back a bailout of Greece as well as a separate nearly trillion-dollar fund to help other countries, but the larger issue of shared responsibility within the eurozone remains to be joined -- and will be central to the future of an area considered one of the pillars of the global economy.
Sharing a currency with Greece is one thing. But sharing a future is another, and Germany's expanding commitment to the eurozone has many here wondering how their own financial plans -- Schneider hopes to turn his Dulce store into a franchised chain -- could be damaged if Europe's problems become too draining and drag down the local economy.
"Even if they ruin [the euro], Germany runs a stable country," said the young German entrepreneur, who said Germany has benefited from the euro so far but should be ready to pull out and reinstate the Deutschmark. "We'll always be able to get loans."
Approval of the bailout programs, coordinated with the International Monetary Fund, has given Greece breathing room to restructure its economy, but the euro had already dropped sharply over concerns that several eurozone governments had accumulated unsustainable levels of debt. Despite the rescue programs, the euro on Friday fell below 1.20 for the first time in four years amid continued concern about government debt and mistrust that eurozone countries will address the region's problems.
The currency union
A more foundational debate lies ahead over the structure of the currency union -- the degree to which the countries are responsible for one another, and the power that central institutions like the European Commission have to enforce common rules. The crisis over the euro began when Greece revealed that it had accumulated debts far beyond the level eurozone countries agree to meet when joining the currency group, a fact that prompted Germany in particular to argue that any bailout needed to be followed by more rigorous rules and better enforcement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, heads of the two largest and most influential eurozone nations, are set to meet next week to continue talks that could see eurozone countries asked to cede some powers, face investigative oversight by a central statistics agency, and encounter financial and political sanctions if they fail to meet spending and budget limits.
Angelos Pangratis, acting head of the European Union's delegation to the United States, said in a recent presentation that it was "naive" to think that countries like Greece and Germany could not co-exist in a common currency area and that there is broad confidence in the currency zone's survival. But he acknowledged that over the euro's first decade there had not been the "convergence of competitiveness" that eurozone architects thought would even out wages, growth rates and other key variables across the countries involved and help prevent problems like the one that occurred in Greece.
"When we created the euro, we knew there were two conditions," Pangratis said. "You need fiscal responsibility . . . and we must have a convergence of competitiveness."
Instead, the first years of the euro were marked by divergence. Some countries, particularly in the south of Europe, enjoyed lowered interest rates that fueled an economic boom, pushed up wages and contributed to asset and price bubbles that are now being painfully corrected. Some governments borrowed well beyond their means.
It was a risk identified early on.
"The euro is a currency without a foundation in a state," then-IMF managing director and future German president Horst Kohler said in 2001, two years after the euro's inception. That, he said, left a "question mark" over the future of the currency unless it could be "underpinned by greater political cohesion among member states."
Short of 'optimal'
On some fronts, the euro remains short of what economists would regard as an "optimal currency zone." In the United States for example, wide differences in wage and growth rates among states would prompt people to migrate from less prosperous areas, a fluid movement of labor aided by a common language and culture. The movement of labor is not as dynamic among the nations of the eurozone. Where the United States' large federal budget and common federal regulations can help even out economic differences among the states -- areas with large numbers of children from poor families, for example, would receive more in federal school lunch subsidies -- the European Union's central budget is tiny by comparison and not used in the same way.
It has taken a decade, but the implications of that design weakness are now on full display, from the budget cuts and possibility for social turbulence in Athens and Madrid, to the skepticism often encountered among Germans.
There is still a conviction here, for example, in a nation preoccupied with the dangers of inflation, that the original conversion from the Deutschmark to the euro led to a rise in price, a point that economic studies have refuted but that remains a point of anecdotal faith for people quick to recount how a candy bar that cost one and a half marks suddenly cost the equivalent of two marks after the euro was introduced.
In Athens, the focus is on outside powers -- a hazy cabal of the IMF, international bankers and the government in Berlin -- clamping down on the Greek government for what are perceived to be their own purposes. In Madrid, powerful labor groups have threatened a showdown over recent public wage cuts.
Few think the currency union will break up over such tensions. But it does mean that some long-standing issues may finally have to be addressed.
"Everybody knew the situation. Everybody participated. Everybody made money," Vassilis D. Kaskarelis, Greek ambassador to the United States, said in a recent talk to the Greater Washington Board of Trade. "Now it is time to pay the bills."
By Howard Schneider
Copyright by The Washington Post
Saturday, June 5, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060404815.html?hpid=topnews
FRANKFURT -- Must Mattheus Schneider's ice cream shop bear responsibility for the future of Greece?
With the euro fighting a crisis that continues to push its value lower, that question about the willingness of German taxpayers and businesses to stand behind economically weaker nations with which they share the euro as a currency could determine whether the continent's decade-old monetary union survives its recent shock or begins to tatter.
Germany's political leadership has pledged the country's credit to back a bailout of Greece as well as a separate nearly trillion-dollar fund to help other countries, but the larger issue of shared responsibility within the eurozone remains to be joined -- and will be central to the future of an area considered one of the pillars of the global economy.
Sharing a currency with Greece is one thing. But sharing a future is another, and Germany's expanding commitment to the eurozone has many here wondering how their own financial plans -- Schneider hopes to turn his Dulce store into a franchised chain -- could be damaged if Europe's problems become too draining and drag down the local economy.
"Even if they ruin [the euro], Germany runs a stable country," said the young German entrepreneur, who said Germany has benefited from the euro so far but should be ready to pull out and reinstate the Deutschmark. "We'll always be able to get loans."
Approval of the bailout programs, coordinated with the International Monetary Fund, has given Greece breathing room to restructure its economy, but the euro had already dropped sharply over concerns that several eurozone governments had accumulated unsustainable levels of debt. Despite the rescue programs, the euro on Friday fell below 1.20 for the first time in four years amid continued concern about government debt and mistrust that eurozone countries will address the region's problems.
The currency union
A more foundational debate lies ahead over the structure of the currency union -- the degree to which the countries are responsible for one another, and the power that central institutions like the European Commission have to enforce common rules. The crisis over the euro began when Greece revealed that it had accumulated debts far beyond the level eurozone countries agree to meet when joining the currency group, a fact that prompted Germany in particular to argue that any bailout needed to be followed by more rigorous rules and better enforcement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, heads of the two largest and most influential eurozone nations, are set to meet next week to continue talks that could see eurozone countries asked to cede some powers, face investigative oversight by a central statistics agency, and encounter financial and political sanctions if they fail to meet spending and budget limits.
Angelos Pangratis, acting head of the European Union's delegation to the United States, said in a recent presentation that it was "naive" to think that countries like Greece and Germany could not co-exist in a common currency area and that there is broad confidence in the currency zone's survival. But he acknowledged that over the euro's first decade there had not been the "convergence of competitiveness" that eurozone architects thought would even out wages, growth rates and other key variables across the countries involved and help prevent problems like the one that occurred in Greece.
"When we created the euro, we knew there were two conditions," Pangratis said. "You need fiscal responsibility . . . and we must have a convergence of competitiveness."
Instead, the first years of the euro were marked by divergence. Some countries, particularly in the south of Europe, enjoyed lowered interest rates that fueled an economic boom, pushed up wages and contributed to asset and price bubbles that are now being painfully corrected. Some governments borrowed well beyond their means.
It was a risk identified early on.
"The euro is a currency without a foundation in a state," then-IMF managing director and future German president Horst Kohler said in 2001, two years after the euro's inception. That, he said, left a "question mark" over the future of the currency unless it could be "underpinned by greater political cohesion among member states."
Short of 'optimal'
On some fronts, the euro remains short of what economists would regard as an "optimal currency zone." In the United States for example, wide differences in wage and growth rates among states would prompt people to migrate from less prosperous areas, a fluid movement of labor aided by a common language and culture. The movement of labor is not as dynamic among the nations of the eurozone. Where the United States' large federal budget and common federal regulations can help even out economic differences among the states -- areas with large numbers of children from poor families, for example, would receive more in federal school lunch subsidies -- the European Union's central budget is tiny by comparison and not used in the same way.
It has taken a decade, but the implications of that design weakness are now on full display, from the budget cuts and possibility for social turbulence in Athens and Madrid, to the skepticism often encountered among Germans.
There is still a conviction here, for example, in a nation preoccupied with the dangers of inflation, that the original conversion from the Deutschmark to the euro led to a rise in price, a point that economic studies have refuted but that remains a point of anecdotal faith for people quick to recount how a candy bar that cost one and a half marks suddenly cost the equivalent of two marks after the euro was introduced.
In Athens, the focus is on outside powers -- a hazy cabal of the IMF, international bankers and the government in Berlin -- clamping down on the Greek government for what are perceived to be their own purposes. In Madrid, powerful labor groups have threatened a showdown over recent public wage cuts.
Few think the currency union will break up over such tensions. But it does mean that some long-standing issues may finally have to be addressed.
"Everybody knew the situation. Everybody participated. Everybody made money," Vassilis D. Kaskarelis, Greek ambassador to the United States, said in a recent talk to the Greater Washington Board of Trade. "Now it is time to pay the bills."
G20 drops support for fiscal stimulus
G20 drops support for fiscal stimulus
By Chris Giles and Christian Oliver in Busan
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 5 2010 11:54 | Last updated: June 5 2010 11:54
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/786776b4-708f-11df-96ab-00144feabdc0.html
Finance ministers from the world’s leading economies ripped up their support for fiscal stimulus on Saturday, recognising that financial market concerns over sovereign debt had forced a much greater focus on deficit reduction.
The meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Busan, South Korea, also dropped proposals for a global banking levy, instead giving countries leeway to do what they thought best for their domestic circumstances.
The communiqué of the meeting made it clear that the G20 no longer thought that expansionary fiscal policy was sustainable or effective in fostering an economic recovery because investors were no longer confident about some countries’ public finances. “The recent events highlight the importance of sustainable public finances and the need for our countries to put in place credible, growth-friendly measures, to deliver fiscal sustainability,” the communiqué stated.
“Those countries with serious fiscal challenges need to accelerate the pace of consolidation,” it added. “We welcome the recent announcements by some countries to reduce their deficits in 2010 and strengthen their fiscal frameworks and institutions”.
These words were in marked contrast to the G20’s previous communiqué from late April, which called for fiscal support to “be maintained until the recovery is firmly driven by the private sector and becomes more entrenched”.
After the meeting, finance ministers acknowledged that the landscape had changed. George Osborne, British chancellor, claimed credit for the change. The new words were a “significant success in getting endorsement from the G20 for … a significant change in tone in the language on fiscal sustainability”.
Many other finance ministers accepted market realities had changed the G20’s policy, Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, said: “There’s a large majority for whom redressing the public finances is priority number one. For a minority, it’s supporting growth”.
Even Dominique Strauss Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund who championed fiscal stimulus since January 2008, recognised the world was suddenly different. Asked whether he felt comfortable with the change in tone from the G20, he replied: “Totally comfortable. I am not the champion of fiscal stimulus, but the champion of right fiscal policy”.
But there were concerns around the G20 that the rush to reduce budget deficits, necessary though officials now thought it was, would undermine the recovery in the near term.
In a letter to the rest of the G20, Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, argued: “Concerns about growth as Europe makes needed policy adjustments threaten to undercut the momentum of the recovery”.
Ministers from many countries stressed the need for structural reforms to boost the potential for private sector growth
In private, G20 officials said that the US had been the country most concerned about the new austerity drive and feared for the momentum for global growth. In the meetings it had been frank in the meeting in calling for China to revalue the renminbi and for Germany to boost domestic demand, officials said.
Mr Geithner, himself, was open about his fears in his letter to the G20. “Concerns about growth as Europe makes needed policy adjustments threaten to undercut the momentum of the recovery,” he wrote, adding that fiscal tightening won’t “succeed unless we are able to strengthen confidence in the global recovery.”
When discussing reforms to the financial system, the G20 found there was no consensus for a global levy on banks. The decision to allow countries to pursue their own domestic agendas on new taxes on banks was particularly pleasing for Canada, which has long opposed the idea.
Jim Flaherty, Canadian finance minister, said: “The debate on … bank levies has been a distraction form the core issues and it has been apparent again from out meetings that most of the G20 members do not support the concept of a universal levy”.
Instead, the G20 “recognis[ed] there is a range of policy approaches” and that countries could develop their own thinking, “taking into account individual country’s circumstances and options”.
For countries such as the US and UK still wanting to go ahead with unilateral banking levies, the G20 agreed that they should be devised within a set of principles to minimise the opportunities for banks to pick and choose between different jurisdictions depending on the levies introduced.
By Chris Giles and Christian Oliver in Busan
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: June 5 2010 11:54 | Last updated: June 5 2010 11:54
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/786776b4-708f-11df-96ab-00144feabdc0.html
Finance ministers from the world’s leading economies ripped up their support for fiscal stimulus on Saturday, recognising that financial market concerns over sovereign debt had forced a much greater focus on deficit reduction.
The meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Busan, South Korea, also dropped proposals for a global banking levy, instead giving countries leeway to do what they thought best for their domestic circumstances.
The communiqué of the meeting made it clear that the G20 no longer thought that expansionary fiscal policy was sustainable or effective in fostering an economic recovery because investors were no longer confident about some countries’ public finances. “The recent events highlight the importance of sustainable public finances and the need for our countries to put in place credible, growth-friendly measures, to deliver fiscal sustainability,” the communiqué stated.
“Those countries with serious fiscal challenges need to accelerate the pace of consolidation,” it added. “We welcome the recent announcements by some countries to reduce their deficits in 2010 and strengthen their fiscal frameworks and institutions”.
These words were in marked contrast to the G20’s previous communiqué from late April, which called for fiscal support to “be maintained until the recovery is firmly driven by the private sector and becomes more entrenched”.
After the meeting, finance ministers acknowledged that the landscape had changed. George Osborne, British chancellor, claimed credit for the change. The new words were a “significant success in getting endorsement from the G20 for … a significant change in tone in the language on fiscal sustainability”.
Many other finance ministers accepted market realities had changed the G20’s policy, Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, said: “There’s a large majority for whom redressing the public finances is priority number one. For a minority, it’s supporting growth”.
Even Dominique Strauss Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund who championed fiscal stimulus since January 2008, recognised the world was suddenly different. Asked whether he felt comfortable with the change in tone from the G20, he replied: “Totally comfortable. I am not the champion of fiscal stimulus, but the champion of right fiscal policy”.
But there were concerns around the G20 that the rush to reduce budget deficits, necessary though officials now thought it was, would undermine the recovery in the near term.
In a letter to the rest of the G20, Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, argued: “Concerns about growth as Europe makes needed policy adjustments threaten to undercut the momentum of the recovery”.
Ministers from many countries stressed the need for structural reforms to boost the potential for private sector growth
In private, G20 officials said that the US had been the country most concerned about the new austerity drive and feared for the momentum for global growth. In the meetings it had been frank in the meeting in calling for China to revalue the renminbi and for Germany to boost domestic demand, officials said.
Mr Geithner, himself, was open about his fears in his letter to the G20. “Concerns about growth as Europe makes needed policy adjustments threaten to undercut the momentum of the recovery,” he wrote, adding that fiscal tightening won’t “succeed unless we are able to strengthen confidence in the global recovery.”
When discussing reforms to the financial system, the G20 found there was no consensus for a global levy on banks. The decision to allow countries to pursue their own domestic agendas on new taxes on banks was particularly pleasing for Canada, which has long opposed the idea.
Jim Flaherty, Canadian finance minister, said: “The debate on … bank levies has been a distraction form the core issues and it has been apparent again from out meetings that most of the G20 members do not support the concept of a universal levy”.
Instead, the G20 “recognis[ed] there is a range of policy approaches” and that countries could develop their own thinking, “taking into account individual country’s circumstances and options”.
For countries such as the US and UK still wanting to go ahead with unilateral banking levies, the G20 agreed that they should be devised within a set of principles to minimise the opportunities for banks to pick and choose between different jurisdictions depending on the levies introduced.
Why I should be the Next President of the USA
Why I should be the Next President of the USA
By Carlos T Mock, MD
May 30, 2010
The Tea Party movement things that Sarah Palin should succeed president Obama as the 45th President of the United States. In my opinion my qualifications are superior to hers.
I know that Africa is a continent, not a country.
I read every morning, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
I know the difference between North and South Korea. The Korean War (1950–53) was the first major proxy war in the Cold War (1945–91), the prototype of the following sphere-of-influence wars such as the Vietnam War (1959–75). The Korean War established proxy war as one way that the nuclear superpowers indirectly conducted their rivalry in third-party countries. The NSC-68 Containment Policy extended the cold war from occupied Europe to the rest of the world. Fighting ended at the 38th parallel and the DMZ, a strip of land 248x4 km (155x2.5 mi), now divides the two countries—but neither of the Koreas officially ended the war.
I know that Africa is a continent, not a country.
I know that the Boston Tea Party was a revolt of Americans against the British Empire for taxation without representation—and had nothing to do with the size of our government.
I’ve actually been to Russia, which is better than seeing it from afar.
Ms Palin was elected to office—namely Governor of Alaska—but she abandoned her post as soon as she realized she could become a millionaire. She placed money over her constituency, and that is something I would never do.
There is one big area I can’t compete against her—for at 54, I don’t think I qualify as “hot.” If beauty is a qualification for the presidency of the United State, then I nominate Beyoncé; not only she is much more younger and beautiful than Ms. Palin—she can also sing and act. Besides, Beyoncé was born in Houston, Texas—and you can’t get more American than that.
Finally, I don’t exploit my family for political purposes—and I would NEVER allow my daughter to get pregnant before being married by a priest or minister.
There might be one problem, I was born in Puerto Rico—and in the midst of one of the most precipitous political crashes in the Mountain West, Sarah Palin made a mad dash into Boise on Friday, urging the election of a man who had plagiarized his campaign speech from Barack Obama, had been rebuked by the military for misusing the Marine uniform and had called the American territory of Puerto Rico a separate country.
Dr. Carlos T Mock is a native Puerto Rican who resides in Chicago, IL and Three Oaks, MI. He has published four books and is the GLBT Editor for Floricanto Press in Berkley, CA. He contributes columns regularly to Windy City Times in Chicago, Ambiente Magazine in Miami, Camp Newspaper in Kansas City. He's had several OP-Ed published at the Chicago Tribune. He can be reached at http://www.carlostmock.com/
By Carlos T Mock, MD
May 30, 2010
The Tea Party movement things that Sarah Palin should succeed president Obama as the 45th President of the United States. In my opinion my qualifications are superior to hers.
I know that Africa is a continent, not a country.
I read every morning, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
I know the difference between North and South Korea. The Korean War (1950–53) was the first major proxy war in the Cold War (1945–91), the prototype of the following sphere-of-influence wars such as the Vietnam War (1959–75). The Korean War established proxy war as one way that the nuclear superpowers indirectly conducted their rivalry in third-party countries. The NSC-68 Containment Policy extended the cold war from occupied Europe to the rest of the world. Fighting ended at the 38th parallel and the DMZ, a strip of land 248x4 km (155x2.5 mi), now divides the two countries—but neither of the Koreas officially ended the war.
I know that Africa is a continent, not a country.
I know that the Boston Tea Party was a revolt of Americans against the British Empire for taxation without representation—and had nothing to do with the size of our government.
I’ve actually been to Russia, which is better than seeing it from afar.
Ms Palin was elected to office—namely Governor of Alaska—but she abandoned her post as soon as she realized she could become a millionaire. She placed money over her constituency, and that is something I would never do.
There is one big area I can’t compete against her—for at 54, I don’t think I qualify as “hot.” If beauty is a qualification for the presidency of the United State, then I nominate Beyoncé; not only she is much more younger and beautiful than Ms. Palin—she can also sing and act. Besides, Beyoncé was born in Houston, Texas—and you can’t get more American than that.
Finally, I don’t exploit my family for political purposes—and I would NEVER allow my daughter to get pregnant before being married by a priest or minister.
There might be one problem, I was born in Puerto Rico—and in the midst of one of the most precipitous political crashes in the Mountain West, Sarah Palin made a mad dash into Boise on Friday, urging the election of a man who had plagiarized his campaign speech from Barack Obama, had been rebuked by the military for misusing the Marine uniform and had called the American territory of Puerto Rico a separate country.
Dr. Carlos T Mock is a native Puerto Rican who resides in Chicago, IL and Three Oaks, MI. He has published four books and is the GLBT Editor for Floricanto Press in Berkley, CA. He contributes columns regularly to Windy City Times in Chicago, Ambiente Magazine in Miami, Camp Newspaper in Kansas City. He's had several OP-Ed published at the Chicago Tribune. He can be reached at http://www.carlostmock.com/
Israel and the USA, A similar situation like Korea and China
Israel and the USA, A similar situation like Korea and China
By Carlos T Mock, MD
June 2, 2010
The USA is demonstrating to its neighbors, and the world, that being the only superpower is not necessarily to be welcomed. Though it has become undeniable that its ally and client, Israel, raided naval vessels that killed nine people, many of them Turks, on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza, no direct condemnation by US Official has come forth.
When the U.N. Security Council Condemned ‘Acts’ in the Israeli Raid, the wording (influenced heavily by the US) seemed designed to dilute demands for condemnation of Israel, which argues that its soldiers acted in self-defense in response to violent resistance from passengers on board the vessels they intercepted. After the raid, Israel seized hundreds of activists as well as their ships.
Einat Wilf, a Labor Party member of Parliament who sits on the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that she had warned Mr. Barak and others well in advance that the flotilla was a public relations issue and should not be dealt with by military means. “This had nothing to do with security,” she said in an interview. “The armaments for Hamas were not coming from this flotilla.” It is well documented that the arms that are the supposed cause for the blockade are actually flowing freely through tunnels under the Egyptian border.
Israel’s deadly commando raid on Monday complicated President Obama’s efforts to move ahead on Middle East peace negotiations and introduced a new strain into an already tense relationship between the United States and Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel canceled plans to travel to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Mr. Obama. The two men spoke by phone within hours of the raid, and the White House later released an account of the conversation, saying Mr. Obama had expressed “deep regret” at the loss of life and recognized “the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” as soon as possible.
In the short term Israel’s behavior has damaged the United States. Watching the US defend the indefensible probably helped provoke the multiple worldwide demonstrations against the US and Israel.
An end to the crisis in the Middle East will require a more responsible approach by Mr. Obama. Abstaining from a Security Council resolution is not enough; the US must act decisively to restrain Israel from further provocations. The events of the past week are a sign that the US cannot continue to be seen as propping up a criminal client state and also be regarded as benign in its growing power. Sooner rather than later, it will have a choice to make.
Dr. Carlos T Mock is a native Puerto Rican who resides in Chicago, IL and Three Oaks, MI. He has published four books and is the GLBT Editor for Floricanto Press in Berkley, CA. He contributes columns regularly to Windy City Times in Chicago, Ambiente Magazine in Miami, Camp Newspaper in Kansas City. He can be reached at http://www.carlostmock.com/
By Carlos T Mock, MD
June 2, 2010
The USA is demonstrating to its neighbors, and the world, that being the only superpower is not necessarily to be welcomed. Though it has become undeniable that its ally and client, Israel, raided naval vessels that killed nine people, many of them Turks, on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza, no direct condemnation by US Official has come forth.
When the U.N. Security Council Condemned ‘Acts’ in the Israeli Raid, the wording (influenced heavily by the US) seemed designed to dilute demands for condemnation of Israel, which argues that its soldiers acted in self-defense in response to violent resistance from passengers on board the vessels they intercepted. After the raid, Israel seized hundreds of activists as well as their ships.
Einat Wilf, a Labor Party member of Parliament who sits on the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that she had warned Mr. Barak and others well in advance that the flotilla was a public relations issue and should not be dealt with by military means. “This had nothing to do with security,” she said in an interview. “The armaments for Hamas were not coming from this flotilla.” It is well documented that the arms that are the supposed cause for the blockade are actually flowing freely through tunnels under the Egyptian border.
Israel’s deadly commando raid on Monday complicated President Obama’s efforts to move ahead on Middle East peace negotiations and introduced a new strain into an already tense relationship between the United States and Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel canceled plans to travel to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Mr. Obama. The two men spoke by phone within hours of the raid, and the White House later released an account of the conversation, saying Mr. Obama had expressed “deep regret” at the loss of life and recognized “the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” as soon as possible.
In the short term Israel’s behavior has damaged the United States. Watching the US defend the indefensible probably helped provoke the multiple worldwide demonstrations against the US and Israel.
An end to the crisis in the Middle East will require a more responsible approach by Mr. Obama. Abstaining from a Security Council resolution is not enough; the US must act decisively to restrain Israel from further provocations. The events of the past week are a sign that the US cannot continue to be seen as propping up a criminal client state and also be regarded as benign in its growing power. Sooner rather than later, it will have a choice to make.
Dr. Carlos T Mock is a native Puerto Rican who resides in Chicago, IL and Three Oaks, MI. He has published four books and is the GLBT Editor for Floricanto Press in Berkley, CA. He contributes columns regularly to Windy City Times in Chicago, Ambiente Magazine in Miami, Camp Newspaper in Kansas City. He can be reached at http://www.carlostmock.com/
Israeli Military Boards Gaza-Bound Aid Ship
Israeli Military Boards Gaza-Bound Aid Ship
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/world/middleeast/06flotilla.html?hpw
JERUSALEM — Days after a deadly confrontation at sea when Israeli commandos raided a flotilla trying to challenge the naval blockade of Gaza, an Irish-owned vessel carrying humanitarian supplies and a small group of pro-Palestinian activists was seized by Israeli forces off the coast of Gaza early Saturday, Israeli officials said.
The military said that Israeli forces pulled alongside the ship, the Rachel Corrie, just after noon and then boarded it from the sea. There were no resistance or injuries, and the military said the ship’s crew and passengers fully complied with the boarding.
On Friday, the Israeli and Irish governments reached an agreement to unload the vessel’s cargo at the port in Ashdod, in southern Israel, and transport it to Gaza — essentially the same deal Israel offered to the activists in the aid convoy that was attacked on Monday.
But Greta Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza Movement, the principal organizer of the earlier flotilla, said that those on board had rejected that approach. “The whole point is to try to break the blockade,” Ms. Berlin said, speaking by telephone from Cyprus.
The rejection left open the possibility of another confrontation, though with only 11 passengers on board, 4 of them over 60 years old, and a crew of 8, there seemed to be less potential for violence. The passengers have said that any resistance will be peaceful.
“If they do come on board, we’ll be nice,” said Faizal Azumu, a passenger who answered a satellite telephone on board the ship on Friday. “We don’t want any problems.”
The director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Yossi Gal, struck a conciliatory tone as well, saying in a statement: “We have no desire for a confrontation. We have no desire to board the ship. If the ship decides to sail to the port of Ashdod, then we will ensure its safe arrival and will not board it.”
The White House issued a statement late on Friday, urging that the ship sail to Ashdod “to ensure the safety of all involved.”
However, Israel’s ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, vowed in a television interview that the ship, the Rachel Corrie, named for a young American protester who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, would not be allowed to dock in Gaza. “We will stop the ship, and also any other ship that will try to harm Israeli sovereignty,” he told Channel 1. “There is no chance the Rachel Corrie will reach the coast of Gaza.”
Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheal Martin, said he had hoped the deal worked out with Israel would stand as “a useful precedent for future humanitarian shipments, pending the complete lifting of the blockade.”
But he added that he fully respected the passengers’ right to refuse the agreement “and to continue their protest action by seeking to sail to Gaza.”
The resumption of the ship’s voyage followed days of conflicting reports about the ship’s whereabouts and plans.
But organizers said on Friday evening that the 1,200-ton cargo ship was about 110 miles away from Gaza in international waters and was planning on turning toward the coast at dawn on Saturday.
Israel has led a land and sea blockade of the Palestinian enclave since Hamas, the Islamic militant group that Israel, the United States and the European Union view as a terrorist organization, seized full control of the territory three years ago. Under intense pressure on Thursday, the Israeli government said that it would explore new ways of facilitating the entry of civilian goods into Gaza.
Mr. Martin, the Irish foreign minister, said those on board the Rachel Corrie had indicated that they would accept inspection of their cargo at sea, prior to docking in Gaza, but that the Israelis rejected that proposal.
The Rachel Corrie was supposed to make up part of the last flotilla; it fell behind because of mechanical problems before it set out from Ireland. It is said to be loaded with construction materials, tons of paper and other supplies that are hard to come by in Gaza.
Among the passengers are Mairead Maguire, an Irish Nobel Peace laureate; Denis Halliday, a former United Nations assistant secretary general from Ireland; and Mohd Nizar bin Zakaria, a member of the Malaysian Parliament.
Israeli officials have strongly criticized the Free Gaza Movement, a group founded primarily by Palestinian advocates from California. “These people masquerade as human rights activists but they are nothing of the sort,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman.
He said that they not only ignored Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, “but even more conspicuously, they are silent about the Hamas regime’s appalling human rights record.” Last time a Free Gaza boat arrived in Gaza, he said, the activists “received medals from the Hamas government.”
In Gaza, too, there are mixed feelings about such aid missions. “I think they are wasting their time and ours,” said a Palestinian woman who asked not to be identified, fearing retribution from the Hamas authorities. “It won’t make a change in Israeli policy, only in our government’s policy.”
Ms. Berlin of Free Gaza said, “Hamas was democratically elected, whether we like it or not,” referring to the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006, in which Hamas defeated its main rival, Fatah.
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/world/middleeast/06flotilla.html?hpw
JERUSALEM — Days after a deadly confrontation at sea when Israeli commandos raided a flotilla trying to challenge the naval blockade of Gaza, an Irish-owned vessel carrying humanitarian supplies and a small group of pro-Palestinian activists was seized by Israeli forces off the coast of Gaza early Saturday, Israeli officials said.
The military said that Israeli forces pulled alongside the ship, the Rachel Corrie, just after noon and then boarded it from the sea. There were no resistance or injuries, and the military said the ship’s crew and passengers fully complied with the boarding.
On Friday, the Israeli and Irish governments reached an agreement to unload the vessel’s cargo at the port in Ashdod, in southern Israel, and transport it to Gaza — essentially the same deal Israel offered to the activists in the aid convoy that was attacked on Monday.
But Greta Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza Movement, the principal organizer of the earlier flotilla, said that those on board had rejected that approach. “The whole point is to try to break the blockade,” Ms. Berlin said, speaking by telephone from Cyprus.
The rejection left open the possibility of another confrontation, though with only 11 passengers on board, 4 of them over 60 years old, and a crew of 8, there seemed to be less potential for violence. The passengers have said that any resistance will be peaceful.
“If they do come on board, we’ll be nice,” said Faizal Azumu, a passenger who answered a satellite telephone on board the ship on Friday. “We don’t want any problems.”
The director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Yossi Gal, struck a conciliatory tone as well, saying in a statement: “We have no desire for a confrontation. We have no desire to board the ship. If the ship decides to sail to the port of Ashdod, then we will ensure its safe arrival and will not board it.”
The White House issued a statement late on Friday, urging that the ship sail to Ashdod “to ensure the safety of all involved.”
However, Israel’s ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, vowed in a television interview that the ship, the Rachel Corrie, named for a young American protester who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, would not be allowed to dock in Gaza. “We will stop the ship, and also any other ship that will try to harm Israeli sovereignty,” he told Channel 1. “There is no chance the Rachel Corrie will reach the coast of Gaza.”
Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheal Martin, said he had hoped the deal worked out with Israel would stand as “a useful precedent for future humanitarian shipments, pending the complete lifting of the blockade.”
But he added that he fully respected the passengers’ right to refuse the agreement “and to continue their protest action by seeking to sail to Gaza.”
The resumption of the ship’s voyage followed days of conflicting reports about the ship’s whereabouts and plans.
But organizers said on Friday evening that the 1,200-ton cargo ship was about 110 miles away from Gaza in international waters and was planning on turning toward the coast at dawn on Saturday.
Israel has led a land and sea blockade of the Palestinian enclave since Hamas, the Islamic militant group that Israel, the United States and the European Union view as a terrorist organization, seized full control of the territory three years ago. Under intense pressure on Thursday, the Israeli government said that it would explore new ways of facilitating the entry of civilian goods into Gaza.
Mr. Martin, the Irish foreign minister, said those on board the Rachel Corrie had indicated that they would accept inspection of their cargo at sea, prior to docking in Gaza, but that the Israelis rejected that proposal.
The Rachel Corrie was supposed to make up part of the last flotilla; it fell behind because of mechanical problems before it set out from Ireland. It is said to be loaded with construction materials, tons of paper and other supplies that are hard to come by in Gaza.
Among the passengers are Mairead Maguire, an Irish Nobel Peace laureate; Denis Halliday, a former United Nations assistant secretary general from Ireland; and Mohd Nizar bin Zakaria, a member of the Malaysian Parliament.
Israeli officials have strongly criticized the Free Gaza Movement, a group founded primarily by Palestinian advocates from California. “These people masquerade as human rights activists but they are nothing of the sort,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman.
He said that they not only ignored Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, “but even more conspicuously, they are silent about the Hamas regime’s appalling human rights record.” Last time a Free Gaza boat arrived in Gaza, he said, the activists “received medals from the Hamas government.”
In Gaza, too, there are mixed feelings about such aid missions. “I think they are wasting their time and ours,” said a Palestinian woman who asked not to be identified, fearing retribution from the Hamas authorities. “It won’t make a change in Israeli policy, only in our government’s policy.”
Ms. Berlin of Free Gaza said, “Hamas was democratically elected, whether we like it or not,” referring to the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006, in which Hamas defeated its main rival, Fatah.
Pelicans, Back From Brink of Extinction, Face Oil Threat
Pelicans, Back From Brink of Extinction, Face Oil Threat
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF and LESLIE KAUFMAN
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05pelican.html?hp
FORT JACKSON, La. — For more than a decade, the hundreds of brown pelicans that nested among the mangrove shrubs on Queen Bess Island west of here were living proof that a species brought to the edge of extinction could come back and thrive.
The island was one of three sites in Louisiana where the large, long-billed birds were reintroduced after pesticides wiped them out in the state in the 1960s.
But on Thursday, 29 of the birds, their feathers so coated in thick brown sludge that their natural white and gray markings were totally obscured, were airlifted to a bird rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson, the latest victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Another dozen were taken to other rescue centers.
Six more pelicans were brought here on Friday, and as visitors to the center looked on, the birds huddled together in makeshift plywood cages and, in their unnatural stillness, looked as if the gooey muck had frozen them solid. The 29 pelicans brought in Thursday were being treated in hot rooms by workers in protective clothing.
“The pelicans are in dire trouble,” said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, who worried that the oil spill could put an end to the bird’s recovery in Louisiana.
The images of oil-covered birds — pelicans, northern gannets, laughing gulls and others — are eerily reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez disaster 21 years ago, and have in recent days have become the most vivid symbol of the damage wrought by the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil that have poured into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20. Since the spill, 612 damaged birds had been cataloged as of Friday, most dead but some alive and drenched in oil, federal officials said.
Yet the brown pelican, because of its history of robust recovery in the face of extreme peril, has a special significance for the public.
The birds were once so common on the coastline here that they grace the state flag. They were frequent companions for fishermen, who shared their waters and admired their skill at spotting fish from afar and diving from great heights to scoop them up in their bills.
At the turn of the 20th century, observers estimated the brown pelican population in Louisiana at close to 50,000. But by 1961, no nesting pair could be spotted along the state’s entire coast, according to LaCoast, a Coast Guard Web site. Like another subspecies of the brown pelican found in California, the local birds had been hard hit by DDT and other pesticides, which acted to thin the shells of their eggs. The eggs were crushed when the adults sat on them. (DDT was banned in the United States in 1972.)
In 1968, Louisiana took birds from a surviving Florida colony and reintroduced them along the state’s southern coast in three spots. One was Queen Bess Island, which had been the site of one of the last breeding pairs before extinction, said Kerry St. Pé, program director of the nearby Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.
Still, the birds struggled, threatened this time by the loss of their habitat. The local wetlands, hurt by levees in the Mississippi that blocked sediment from flowing downstream and by canals cut by oil companies looking to lay pipe, were sinking into the gulf at an astonishing rate. Queen Bess was going under as well until 1990, when a coastal restoration project financed a rock barrier around the island, which stabilized it. The pelican colony began to flourish and the birds’ offspring helped repopulate the coastline, Mr. St. Pé said.
Last year, the birds were officially taken off the endangered species list. But the oil spill, experts said, could change that. Like all birds, pelicans are very sensitive to oil, said Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society’s Louisiana Coastal Initiative. It prevents them from regulating their body temperature when it gets on their feathers, she said, and in Louisiana the pelicans are subject to overheating. The oil can also poison the fish the pelicans feed on and seep through the shells of pelican eggs, killing the embryos.
The potential for damage was frighteningly apparent at the rescue center set up here by the International Bird Rescue Research Center with BP and federal and state officials. All day Thursday, oiled birds, including the 29 brown pelicans, arrived at the makeshift veterinary emergency room built in a hangar on a former military base. They were carried from Coast Guard helicopters in dog kennels and cardboard boxes with air holes punched in them.
Most of the birds were so thoroughly coated in crude that they could not stand up. Some were stuck to the floor of their cages. Workers wiped off thick globs of oil with towels, then gave them fluids and fed them a fish slurry.
The pelicans were placed in plywood pens covered with blankets. The next morning, workers began to clean them using hot water and Dawn, a mild dish detergent.
So far, even the most heavily oiled pelicans have survived. Had they not been treated immediately, however, they would have almost certainly drowned or died of starvation or exposure, according to a veterinarian with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
The birds at the rehabilitation center, said Sharon Taylor, a veterinarian here, represent a lucky few — far more are certain to die in the wild.
“A lot of them will just disappear into the environment,” she said. “We will probably only find a very, very small percentage of what’s been impacted out there.”
Still, she worried that because there are so many large rookeries nearby, far more pelicans would soon be headed to the center.
“Tomorrow or tonight we could get a hundred pelicans, we could get a thousand pelicans,” Ms. Taylor said.
John Collins Rudolf reported from Fort Jackson, La., and Leslie Kaufman from New York.
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF and LESLIE KAUFMAN
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05pelican.html?hp
FORT JACKSON, La. — For more than a decade, the hundreds of brown pelicans that nested among the mangrove shrubs on Queen Bess Island west of here were living proof that a species brought to the edge of extinction could come back and thrive.
The island was one of three sites in Louisiana where the large, long-billed birds were reintroduced after pesticides wiped them out in the state in the 1960s.
But on Thursday, 29 of the birds, their feathers so coated in thick brown sludge that their natural white and gray markings were totally obscured, were airlifted to a bird rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson, the latest victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Another dozen were taken to other rescue centers.
Six more pelicans were brought here on Friday, and as visitors to the center looked on, the birds huddled together in makeshift plywood cages and, in their unnatural stillness, looked as if the gooey muck had frozen them solid. The 29 pelicans brought in Thursday were being treated in hot rooms by workers in protective clothing.
“The pelicans are in dire trouble,” said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, who worried that the oil spill could put an end to the bird’s recovery in Louisiana.
The images of oil-covered birds — pelicans, northern gannets, laughing gulls and others — are eerily reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez disaster 21 years ago, and have in recent days have become the most vivid symbol of the damage wrought by the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil that have poured into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20. Since the spill, 612 damaged birds had been cataloged as of Friday, most dead but some alive and drenched in oil, federal officials said.
Yet the brown pelican, because of its history of robust recovery in the face of extreme peril, has a special significance for the public.
The birds were once so common on the coastline here that they grace the state flag. They were frequent companions for fishermen, who shared their waters and admired their skill at spotting fish from afar and diving from great heights to scoop them up in their bills.
At the turn of the 20th century, observers estimated the brown pelican population in Louisiana at close to 50,000. But by 1961, no nesting pair could be spotted along the state’s entire coast, according to LaCoast, a Coast Guard Web site. Like another subspecies of the brown pelican found in California, the local birds had been hard hit by DDT and other pesticides, which acted to thin the shells of their eggs. The eggs were crushed when the adults sat on them. (DDT was banned in the United States in 1972.)
In 1968, Louisiana took birds from a surviving Florida colony and reintroduced them along the state’s southern coast in three spots. One was Queen Bess Island, which had been the site of one of the last breeding pairs before extinction, said Kerry St. Pé, program director of the nearby Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.
Still, the birds struggled, threatened this time by the loss of their habitat. The local wetlands, hurt by levees in the Mississippi that blocked sediment from flowing downstream and by canals cut by oil companies looking to lay pipe, were sinking into the gulf at an astonishing rate. Queen Bess was going under as well until 1990, when a coastal restoration project financed a rock barrier around the island, which stabilized it. The pelican colony began to flourish and the birds’ offspring helped repopulate the coastline, Mr. St. Pé said.
Last year, the birds were officially taken off the endangered species list. But the oil spill, experts said, could change that. Like all birds, pelicans are very sensitive to oil, said Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society’s Louisiana Coastal Initiative. It prevents them from regulating their body temperature when it gets on their feathers, she said, and in Louisiana the pelicans are subject to overheating. The oil can also poison the fish the pelicans feed on and seep through the shells of pelican eggs, killing the embryos.
The potential for damage was frighteningly apparent at the rescue center set up here by the International Bird Rescue Research Center with BP and federal and state officials. All day Thursday, oiled birds, including the 29 brown pelicans, arrived at the makeshift veterinary emergency room built in a hangar on a former military base. They were carried from Coast Guard helicopters in dog kennels and cardboard boxes with air holes punched in them.
Most of the birds were so thoroughly coated in crude that they could not stand up. Some were stuck to the floor of their cages. Workers wiped off thick globs of oil with towels, then gave them fluids and fed them a fish slurry.
The pelicans were placed in plywood pens covered with blankets. The next morning, workers began to clean them using hot water and Dawn, a mild dish detergent.
So far, even the most heavily oiled pelicans have survived. Had they not been treated immediately, however, they would have almost certainly drowned or died of starvation or exposure, according to a veterinarian with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
The birds at the rehabilitation center, said Sharon Taylor, a veterinarian here, represent a lucky few — far more are certain to die in the wild.
“A lot of them will just disappear into the environment,” she said. “We will probably only find a very, very small percentage of what’s been impacted out there.”
Still, she worried that because there are so many large rookeries nearby, far more pelicans would soon be headed to the center.
“Tomorrow or tonight we could get a hundred pelicans, we could get a thousand pelicans,” Ms. Taylor said.
John Collins Rudolf reported from Fort Jackson, La., and Leslie Kaufman from New York.
Gay? Whatever, Dude
Gay? Whatever, Dude
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05blow.html?th&emc=th
Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:
1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.)
2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.
3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men’s perceptions also have eclipsed older women’s. While women’s views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.
I warned you: stunning.
There is no way to know for sure what’s driving such a radical change in men’s views on this issue because Gallup didn’t ask, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speculate. To help me do so, I called Dr. Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author or editor of more than 20 books on men and masculinity, and Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, the chairman of human development at Cornell University and the author of seven books, most of which deal with adolescent development and same-sex attraction.
Here are three theories:
1. The contact hypothesis. As more men openly acknowledge that they are gay, it becomes harder for men who are not gay to discriminate against them. And as that group of openly gay men becomes more varied — including athletes, celebrities and soldiers — many of the old, derisive stereotypes lose their purchase. To that point, a Gallup poll released last May found that people who said they personally knew someone who was gay or lesbian were more likely to be accepting of gay men and lesbians in general and more supportive of their issues.
2. Men may be becoming more egalitarian in general. As Dr. Kimmel put it: “Men have gotten increasingly comfortable with the presence of, and relative equality of, ‘the other,’ and we’re becoming more accustomed to it. And most men are finding that it has not been a disaster.” The expanding sense of acceptance likely began with the feminist and civil rights movements and is now being extended to the gay rights movement. Dr. Kimmel continued, “The dire predictions for diversity have not only not come true, but, in fact, they’ve been proved the other way.”
3. Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality. Think Ted Haggard, the once fervent antigay preacher and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and his male prostitute. (This week, Haggard announced that he was starting a new “inclusive” church open to “gay, straight, bi, tall, short,” but no same-sex marriages. Not “God’s ideal.” Sorry.) Or George Rekers, the founding member of the Family Research Council, and his rent boy/luggage handler. Last week, the council claimed that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would lead to an explosion of “homosexual assaults” in which sleeping soldiers would be the victims of fondling and fellatio by gay predators. In fact, there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it. It’s like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.
These sound plausible, but why aren’t women seeing the same enlightening effects as men? Professor Savin-Williams suggests that there may be a “ceiling effect,” that men are simply catching up to women, and there may be a level at which views top out. Interesting.
All of this is great news, but it doesn’t mean that all measures relating to acceptance of gay men and lesbians have changed to the same degree. People’s comfort with the “gay and lesbian” part of the equation is still greater than their comfort with the “relations” part — the idea versus the act — particularly when it comes to pairings of men.
As Professor Savin-Williams told me, there is still a higher aversive reaction to same-sex sexuality among men than among women.
For instance, in a February New York Times/CBS News poll, half of the respondents were asked if they favored letting “gay men and lesbians” serve in the military (which is still more than 85 percent male), and the other half were asked if they favored letting “homosexuals” serve. Those who got the “homosexual” question favored it at a rate that was 11 percentage points lower than those who got the “gay men and lesbians” question.
Part of the difference may be that “homosexual” is a bigger, more clinical word freighted with a lot of historical baggage. But just as likely is that the inclusion of the root word “sex” still raises an aversive response to the idea of, how shall I say, the architectural issues between two men. It is the point at which support for basic human rights cleaves from endorsement of behavior.
As for the aversion among men, it may be softening a bit. Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.” They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but ... the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.
All together now: stunning.
(I now return you to Day 46 of the oil spill where they finally may be making some progress.)
•
I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05blow.html?th&emc=th
Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:
1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.)
2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.
3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men’s perceptions also have eclipsed older women’s. While women’s views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.
I warned you: stunning.
There is no way to know for sure what’s driving such a radical change in men’s views on this issue because Gallup didn’t ask, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speculate. To help me do so, I called Dr. Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author or editor of more than 20 books on men and masculinity, and Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, the chairman of human development at Cornell University and the author of seven books, most of which deal with adolescent development and same-sex attraction.
Here are three theories:
1. The contact hypothesis. As more men openly acknowledge that they are gay, it becomes harder for men who are not gay to discriminate against them. And as that group of openly gay men becomes more varied — including athletes, celebrities and soldiers — many of the old, derisive stereotypes lose their purchase. To that point, a Gallup poll released last May found that people who said they personally knew someone who was gay or lesbian were more likely to be accepting of gay men and lesbians in general and more supportive of their issues.
2. Men may be becoming more egalitarian in general. As Dr. Kimmel put it: “Men have gotten increasingly comfortable with the presence of, and relative equality of, ‘the other,’ and we’re becoming more accustomed to it. And most men are finding that it has not been a disaster.” The expanding sense of acceptance likely began with the feminist and civil rights movements and is now being extended to the gay rights movement. Dr. Kimmel continued, “The dire predictions for diversity have not only not come true, but, in fact, they’ve been proved the other way.”
3. Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality. Think Ted Haggard, the once fervent antigay preacher and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and his male prostitute. (This week, Haggard announced that he was starting a new “inclusive” church open to “gay, straight, bi, tall, short,” but no same-sex marriages. Not “God’s ideal.” Sorry.) Or George Rekers, the founding member of the Family Research Council, and his rent boy/luggage handler. Last week, the council claimed that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would lead to an explosion of “homosexual assaults” in which sleeping soldiers would be the victims of fondling and fellatio by gay predators. In fact, there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it. It’s like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.
These sound plausible, but why aren’t women seeing the same enlightening effects as men? Professor Savin-Williams suggests that there may be a “ceiling effect,” that men are simply catching up to women, and there may be a level at which views top out. Interesting.
All of this is great news, but it doesn’t mean that all measures relating to acceptance of gay men and lesbians have changed to the same degree. People’s comfort with the “gay and lesbian” part of the equation is still greater than their comfort with the “relations” part — the idea versus the act — particularly when it comes to pairings of men.
As Professor Savin-Williams told me, there is still a higher aversive reaction to same-sex sexuality among men than among women.
For instance, in a February New York Times/CBS News poll, half of the respondents were asked if they favored letting “gay men and lesbians” serve in the military (which is still more than 85 percent male), and the other half were asked if they favored letting “homosexuals” serve. Those who got the “homosexual” question favored it at a rate that was 11 percentage points lower than those who got the “gay men and lesbians” question.
Part of the difference may be that “homosexual” is a bigger, more clinical word freighted with a lot of historical baggage. But just as likely is that the inclusion of the root word “sex” still raises an aversive response to the idea of, how shall I say, the architectural issues between two men. It is the point at which support for basic human rights cleaves from endorsement of behavior.
As for the aversion among men, it may be softening a bit. Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.” They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but ... the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.
All together now: stunning.
(I now return you to Day 46 of the oil spill where they finally may be making some progress.)
•
I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.
New York Times Editorial: The Spill and Energy Bill
New York Times Editorial: The Spill and Energy Bill
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05sat1.html?th&emc=th
The nation’s political leaders have had a lot to say in recent years about America’s addiction to fossil fuels and the need to find cleaner, more climate-friendly alternatives. In recent weeks, they have had a lot to say about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. On Wednesday, President Obama put them together.
In a speech at Carnegie Mellon University, he invoked the spill to pound on Congress about its duty to pass a comprehensive energy bill that addresses oil dependency and global warming. The House has passed such a bill, but a companion measure in the Senate languishes, hostage to solid Republican opposition, exaggerated fears about its costs and timidity on the part of the Democratic leadership. “I will work with anyone from either party to get this done,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s task is to follow up that vow with action. We are not optimistic that his implacable Republican opposition will work with him on anything. But perhaps the spreading nightmare on the waters of the gulf will get a few to break with the party line.
The Senate bill is far from perfect. It coddles the coal companies, and its provisions for off-shore drilling will now have to be revised or at least tightened up with multiple safeguards. But for the first time, the bill would set a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, which are now dumped without penalty into the atmosphere. This is an essential prerequisite for shifting private and public investment to cleaner energy sources.
The oil savings would be substantial. According to a new study by the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, the bill’s mandates for alternative fuels and more efficient vehicles would reduce oil imports one-third by 2035.
But instead of embracing this positive bill, the Senate is expected to vote soon on a measure that would move the country in exactly the wrong direction — a resolution sponsored by Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, that would undercut the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and reduce the anticipated oil savings from the tough new fuel economy standards the White House announced last April.
As this page has noted before, persuading the Senate to act is not only a matter of leadership, but a matter of international obligation. At the Copenhagen climate conference in December, Mr. Obama committed the United States to a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 — the minimum that scientists believe necessary to begin steering the world away from the worst impacts of a warming planet.
Delivering on that pledge is even more urgent now than it was then. As he demonstrated at Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Obama knows how to hit all the right notes rhetorically. Passing a comprehensive bill would be good for the economy, by creating new jobs; good for the environment, by reducing emissions; and good for national security, by reducing our dependence on unstable oil-producing countries. The president’s task now is to convert that rhetorical fervor into actual, filibuster-proof votes.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05sat1.html?th&emc=th
The nation’s political leaders have had a lot to say in recent years about America’s addiction to fossil fuels and the need to find cleaner, more climate-friendly alternatives. In recent weeks, they have had a lot to say about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. On Wednesday, President Obama put them together.
In a speech at Carnegie Mellon University, he invoked the spill to pound on Congress about its duty to pass a comprehensive energy bill that addresses oil dependency and global warming. The House has passed such a bill, but a companion measure in the Senate languishes, hostage to solid Republican opposition, exaggerated fears about its costs and timidity on the part of the Democratic leadership. “I will work with anyone from either party to get this done,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s task is to follow up that vow with action. We are not optimistic that his implacable Republican opposition will work with him on anything. But perhaps the spreading nightmare on the waters of the gulf will get a few to break with the party line.
The Senate bill is far from perfect. It coddles the coal companies, and its provisions for off-shore drilling will now have to be revised or at least tightened up with multiple safeguards. But for the first time, the bill would set a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, which are now dumped without penalty into the atmosphere. This is an essential prerequisite for shifting private and public investment to cleaner energy sources.
The oil savings would be substantial. According to a new study by the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, the bill’s mandates for alternative fuels and more efficient vehicles would reduce oil imports one-third by 2035.
But instead of embracing this positive bill, the Senate is expected to vote soon on a measure that would move the country in exactly the wrong direction — a resolution sponsored by Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, that would undercut the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and reduce the anticipated oil savings from the tough new fuel economy standards the White House announced last April.
As this page has noted before, persuading the Senate to act is not only a matter of leadership, but a matter of international obligation. At the Copenhagen climate conference in December, Mr. Obama committed the United States to a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 — the minimum that scientists believe necessary to begin steering the world away from the worst impacts of a warming planet.
Delivering on that pledge is even more urgent now than it was then. As he demonstrated at Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Obama knows how to hit all the right notes rhetorically. Passing a comprehensive bill would be good for the economy, by creating new jobs; good for the environment, by reducing emissions; and good for national security, by reducing our dependence on unstable oil-producing countries. The president’s task now is to convert that rhetorical fervor into actual, filibuster-proof votes.
Tempting Area for Exaggeration Meets Tools of the YouTube Era
Tempting Area for Exaggeration Meets Tools of the YouTube Era
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05campaign.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — It happened again. Another candidate for office is struggling to reconcile misleading statements he made about his record in the military. This time, it is Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois running for the Senate, apologizing for misleading statements he made about, among other things, serving in the first Iraq war and in Kosovo.
“I simply misremembered it wrong,” he said, a remark that was blared across the front page of The Chicago Sun-Times on Friday. A few weeks ago, it was Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general and Democratic candidate for Senate, trying to explain misstatements suggesting he had served in Vietnam.
This type of political behavior is hardly new. Over the years, a parade of politicians from both parties — John Kerry, Al Gore, Tom Harkin, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and David Duke, to name a few — have had to account for what opponents portrayed as exaggerations or worse about their military service (or their attempts to avoid service altogether). Some of those candidates and many others have been called out for less-than-fully-truthful statements on countless other topics as well.
But the intensity of these latest skirmishes offers an insight into how the American political scene has changed. A common characteristic of politicians in search of votes — a propensity to puffery — has run head on into an aggressive new culture that subjects them to 24-hour flyspecking by opponents, bloggers, the mainstream media and regular citizens.
What is more, the rules of what is acceptable have grown murky since the days when Bruce F. Caputo, a Republican candidate for Senate from New York challenging Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was forced out after it was revealed that he had falsely claimed to have been drafted for Vietnam. (That information was leaked by a senior political operative for Senator Moynihan, Tim Russert.)
The most pressing question for Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Kirk is how much water they are taking on. As both are learning, analysts said, the issue in many cases is not so much whether they served in battle in Vietnam or Iraq, but the credibility and character of the candidate.
Mr. Kirk has admitted to a number of errors and discrepancies related to his military service. In the last week, Mr. Kirk acknowledged that his official House Web site incorrectly stated in 2005 that he served “in Operation Iraqi Freedom” when he was actually serving stateside. The problem was found that year and corrected to say that he had served “during” the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Kirk has often said he served in Iraq — which his campaign clarified that he did for two months in 2000 in Operation Northern Watch, which enforced the no-fly zone above Iraq. He also served twice in Afghanistan.
“Over the last generation, you’ve gone from people who were branded or identified with a party to races being much more about their character: Do voters trust them?” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who advised Mr. Gore when he dealt with of questions about exaggerating his service when he ran for president in 2000. “That’s one of the reasons that exaggerations have become a major part of a campaign. It is a way of telling whether you can trust something. It’s something that opposition researchers, opponents, journalists can grab on to raise questions about.
“You have far more scrutiny than in the past, no matter what anyone says about newspapers being on the demise,” Mr. Lehane said.
Polls suggest Mr. Blumenthal has not been dragged down since the questions were first raised in an article in The New York Times. But Mr. Kirk has been forced this week to go on an apology tour to deal with challenges about the credibility of what he has claimed about his military record. Officials in both parties said the continuing questions could damage the prospects of Mr. Kirk, a five-term congressman and intelligence officer in the Naval Reserve, in his challenge against Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who had seemed vulnerable because of ties to the banking industry.
Candidates are prone to embellishing things in their past (from academic records to marital history) but war service has always been a particularly tempting area for exaggeration. Having a distinguished military career is a powerful drawing card, going back to George Washington.
“More than half our presidential candidates have had military service of some kind,” said Jeremy M. Teigen, a professor of political science at Ramapo College in New Jersey, who is writing a book on military credentials and political campaigns. “And a not-so-small number of them have strategically emphasized that.”
If the intensive media scrutiny of today is a warning to candidates to watch what claims they are making, it also leaves them vulnerable to the unearthing of any past dissembling, given how much easier it is now to hunt down old appearances and records and make them public. Nuances — like as the definition of the word “serve” — can be problematic, as Mr. Blumenthal has discovered.
“The degree of difficulty of political exaggeration of any kind is directly correlated with the ease of research and the proliferation of sources,” said Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and former senator from Nebraska who ran for president in 1992. “It’s so much easier to find something I once said when I was trying to convince people I was taller than Bill Clinton than it would be today.”
“In the old days — meaning the last time I campaigned in ’94 — if I had something hot on my opponent, if I had something that was really juicy, I would have go the bars where the journalists were and try to get them to print it,” Mr. Kerrey said. “Not any more. I’d just have to post it on YouTube. It’s quicker. And it’s better for my liver.”
Mr. Lehane, who is known for his talents at directing operations to gather unfavorable information about an opponent from their campaign appearances — in the vernacular, it is known as tracking — said chronicling what a candidates says and does is much easier now.
“In 1992, when you wanted to track the candidate you had to send people out there with tape recorders, and try to get something you could use,” he said. “It was hard to get people close enough. It does seem that you used to get away with a lot more puffery than you can get away with now.”
Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05campaign.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — It happened again. Another candidate for office is struggling to reconcile misleading statements he made about his record in the military. This time, it is Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois running for the Senate, apologizing for misleading statements he made about, among other things, serving in the first Iraq war and in Kosovo.
“I simply misremembered it wrong,” he said, a remark that was blared across the front page of The Chicago Sun-Times on Friday. A few weeks ago, it was Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general and Democratic candidate for Senate, trying to explain misstatements suggesting he had served in Vietnam.
This type of political behavior is hardly new. Over the years, a parade of politicians from both parties — John Kerry, Al Gore, Tom Harkin, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and David Duke, to name a few — have had to account for what opponents portrayed as exaggerations or worse about their military service (or their attempts to avoid service altogether). Some of those candidates and many others have been called out for less-than-fully-truthful statements on countless other topics as well.
But the intensity of these latest skirmishes offers an insight into how the American political scene has changed. A common characteristic of politicians in search of votes — a propensity to puffery — has run head on into an aggressive new culture that subjects them to 24-hour flyspecking by opponents, bloggers, the mainstream media and regular citizens.
What is more, the rules of what is acceptable have grown murky since the days when Bruce F. Caputo, a Republican candidate for Senate from New York challenging Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was forced out after it was revealed that he had falsely claimed to have been drafted for Vietnam. (That information was leaked by a senior political operative for Senator Moynihan, Tim Russert.)
The most pressing question for Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Kirk is how much water they are taking on. As both are learning, analysts said, the issue in many cases is not so much whether they served in battle in Vietnam or Iraq, but the credibility and character of the candidate.
Mr. Kirk has admitted to a number of errors and discrepancies related to his military service. In the last week, Mr. Kirk acknowledged that his official House Web site incorrectly stated in 2005 that he served “in Operation Iraqi Freedom” when he was actually serving stateside. The problem was found that year and corrected to say that he had served “during” the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Kirk has often said he served in Iraq — which his campaign clarified that he did for two months in 2000 in Operation Northern Watch, which enforced the no-fly zone above Iraq. He also served twice in Afghanistan.
“Over the last generation, you’ve gone from people who were branded or identified with a party to races being much more about their character: Do voters trust them?” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who advised Mr. Gore when he dealt with of questions about exaggerating his service when he ran for president in 2000. “That’s one of the reasons that exaggerations have become a major part of a campaign. It is a way of telling whether you can trust something. It’s something that opposition researchers, opponents, journalists can grab on to raise questions about.
“You have far more scrutiny than in the past, no matter what anyone says about newspapers being on the demise,” Mr. Lehane said.
Polls suggest Mr. Blumenthal has not been dragged down since the questions were first raised in an article in The New York Times. But Mr. Kirk has been forced this week to go on an apology tour to deal with challenges about the credibility of what he has claimed about his military record. Officials in both parties said the continuing questions could damage the prospects of Mr. Kirk, a five-term congressman and intelligence officer in the Naval Reserve, in his challenge against Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who had seemed vulnerable because of ties to the banking industry.
Candidates are prone to embellishing things in their past (from academic records to marital history) but war service has always been a particularly tempting area for exaggeration. Having a distinguished military career is a powerful drawing card, going back to George Washington.
“More than half our presidential candidates have had military service of some kind,” said Jeremy M. Teigen, a professor of political science at Ramapo College in New Jersey, who is writing a book on military credentials and political campaigns. “And a not-so-small number of them have strategically emphasized that.”
If the intensive media scrutiny of today is a warning to candidates to watch what claims they are making, it also leaves them vulnerable to the unearthing of any past dissembling, given how much easier it is now to hunt down old appearances and records and make them public. Nuances — like as the definition of the word “serve” — can be problematic, as Mr. Blumenthal has discovered.
“The degree of difficulty of political exaggeration of any kind is directly correlated with the ease of research and the proliferation of sources,” said Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and former senator from Nebraska who ran for president in 1992. “It’s so much easier to find something I once said when I was trying to convince people I was taller than Bill Clinton than it would be today.”
“In the old days — meaning the last time I campaigned in ’94 — if I had something hot on my opponent, if I had something that was really juicy, I would have go the bars where the journalists were and try to get them to print it,” Mr. Kerrey said. “Not any more. I’d just have to post it on YouTube. It’s quicker. And it’s better for my liver.”
Mr. Lehane, who is known for his talents at directing operations to gather unfavorable information about an opponent from their campaign appearances — in the vernacular, it is known as tracking — said chronicling what a candidates says and does is much easier now.
“In 1992, when you wanted to track the candidate you had to send people out there with tape recorders, and try to get something you could use,” he said. “It was hard to get people close enough. It does seem that you used to get away with a lot more puffery than you can get away with now.”
Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
Immigration Debate Defines Race in California
Immigration Debate Defines Race in California
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05calif.html?th&emc=th
IRVINE, Calif. — Meg Whitman was almost at the end of a 30-minute town hall-style meeting here, responding to questions about taxes and spending, schools and unemployment. But one topic had not come up, so Ms. Whitman, a Republican candidate for governor, raised it herself, serving up a stern attack against illegal immigration and a promise that she would protect California’s borders.
“I am 100 percent against amnesty,” Ms. Whitman proclaimed. “My Republican opponent says I’m for amnesty. That is absolutely not true.”
For almost a year, Ms. Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, has campaigned on three issues: jobs, education and government spending. But as her contest for the Republican nomination for governor against Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, enters its final days, she has found herself drawn into a loud and caustic argument over immigration policy. “It is the only issue,” said Stuart Stevens, Mr. Poizner’s chief campaign consultant.
The primary here on Tuesday will be the highest-stakes electoral contest since Arizona approved a tough immigration law, and that has allowed Mr. Poizner to reshape the campaign, focusing a series of stark attacks on Ms. Whitman. The extent to which immigration has, in the view of many Republicans, hijacked this contest has stirred worry that the nominee chosen next week will be weakened in the general election against Jerry Brown, a Democrat and former governor.
“There’s a difference between talking about a problem and trying to exploit the problem as a wedge issue to try to get scared white voters,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican analyst here. “I’m not speaking as a lone wolf on this in the Republican Party. It’s concerning a lot of us.”
Hispanics are becoming increasingly influential in California politics. One in six voters this November is expected to be Hispanic — a proportion that is likely to grow in coming years — and Southern California has been at the forefront of efforts to boycott Arizona for enacting tough anti-immigrant legislation in late April.
In many ways, California’s primary race offers a worrisome preview of what many Republicans say are the political perils for the party nationally in being identified with tough immigration policies. Mr. Poizner has enthusiastically endorsed such policies in his campaign. His series of stark television advertisements portraying Ms. Whitman as an advocate of permissive immigration began three weeks ago.
The emphasis on immigration is striking in a state that is reeling from the economic downturn and saddled with what officials in both parties view as a dysfunctional government. At 12.5 percent, the unemployment rate here is far above the national average. The state has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, its public education system is a shambles, and disapproval of the Legislature and of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican barred by term limits from seeking re-election, are at near-record highs. The election is playing out against the backdrop of the latest battle in Sacramento over proposed cuts in spending to balance the budget.
One strain on the state’s finances is providing social services to a large population of illegal immigrants, which is one reason the issue has political resonance. Still, it is hardly clear that the tough-on-immigrants stance has universal appeal among Republican voters; in the Central Valley, for instance, many farmers use undocumented farm workers.
A Los Angeles Times/U.S.C. poll published on Sunday showed Ms. Whitman leading Mr. Poizner by 53 percent to 29 percent; other polls taken last month, after Mr. Poizner began his advertising assault against Ms. Whitman, showed that he had significantly tightened the race, until she started pushing back.
In an interview, Ms. Whitman — who has been running advertisements promising to be “tough as nails” on illegal immigration — said that she thought voters were concerned about other things besides immigration, and that she was raising the issue only in response to what she asserted were Mr. Poizner’s distortions of her record. She said Mr. Poizner had hurt himself as a general election candidate because of the tenor of his attacks.
“I think he’s damaged in the general because he’s only talked about one issue,” Ms. Whitman said. “And I think that’s a big mistake.”
Mr. Poizner said that illegal immigration was “part and parcel of our message from the get-go” and that he always viewed it as the No. 1 issue for Republican primary voters, and a point of contrast with Ms. Whitman.
“It’s huge: everywhere I go, people burst out into applause when I start talking about it,” Mr. Poizner said after appearing at a town hall-style meeting in El Segundo flanked by bright red screens with white lettering proclaiming, “No Amnesty: Stop Illegal Immigration.”
“Our positions are just different,” he continued. “Meg Whitman opposes Arizona. I fully support it. In fact, I don’t see how you can be a Republican running for high office in the United States and be taken seriously if you oppose what’s going on in Arizona.”
Both candidates are independently wealthy and together have spent more than $100 million — about $80 million for Ms. Whitman, and $25 million for Mr. Poizner — which has guaranteed a wide audience for the back-and-forth volley of television advertisements, radio spots and mailers. The demonstrated willingness of Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner to tap their own political fortunes to win the governorship is one of the key reasons Republicans are hopeful about defeating Mr. Brown.
Even without immigration, candidates this primary season face a politically daunting task in trying to navigate an increasingly conservative Republican base and emerge as a viable candidate in the general election. Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute of California, a policy study and polling group, said that 75 percent of Republicans statewide disapproved of President Obama in a poll earlier last month, compared with 39 percent of all registered voters in California.
“The Republican primary voters are not representative of the overall mood of Californians,” Mr. Baldassare said. “This is really a unique slice of the electorate.”
One sign of this is the extent to which both Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner are critical of Mr. Schwarzenegger. Mr. Poizner said he would not want the governor to campaign with him should he win the nomination. “I think it would be better if he just stays out of the primary and the general election,” he said.
Ron Nehring, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said the severity of the economic problems facing California would overshadow the immigration stances taken by the Republican candidate during the primaries. “The Democrats are always trying to paint Republicans as anti-immigrant,” he said. “But the first, second, third and fourth issue in the race for governor is jobs and the economy.”
Ms. Whitman’s advisers said that if she won the nomination, she would move away from immigration to broaden her appeal. But Mr. Poizner said he would not change his campaign a bit.
“This is important for everyone to know: What you see is what you get,” he said. “The campaign I’m waging now in the primary is exactly the same campaign I’ll be waging in the general against Jerry Brown. I think it’s a myth that independents, Democrats, these groups that supposedly would object to my strong positions on illegal immigration — uh-uh.”
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05calif.html?th&emc=th
IRVINE, Calif. — Meg Whitman was almost at the end of a 30-minute town hall-style meeting here, responding to questions about taxes and spending, schools and unemployment. But one topic had not come up, so Ms. Whitman, a Republican candidate for governor, raised it herself, serving up a stern attack against illegal immigration and a promise that she would protect California’s borders.
“I am 100 percent against amnesty,” Ms. Whitman proclaimed. “My Republican opponent says I’m for amnesty. That is absolutely not true.”
For almost a year, Ms. Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, has campaigned on three issues: jobs, education and government spending. But as her contest for the Republican nomination for governor against Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, enters its final days, she has found herself drawn into a loud and caustic argument over immigration policy. “It is the only issue,” said Stuart Stevens, Mr. Poizner’s chief campaign consultant.
The primary here on Tuesday will be the highest-stakes electoral contest since Arizona approved a tough immigration law, and that has allowed Mr. Poizner to reshape the campaign, focusing a series of stark attacks on Ms. Whitman. The extent to which immigration has, in the view of many Republicans, hijacked this contest has stirred worry that the nominee chosen next week will be weakened in the general election against Jerry Brown, a Democrat and former governor.
“There’s a difference between talking about a problem and trying to exploit the problem as a wedge issue to try to get scared white voters,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican analyst here. “I’m not speaking as a lone wolf on this in the Republican Party. It’s concerning a lot of us.”
Hispanics are becoming increasingly influential in California politics. One in six voters this November is expected to be Hispanic — a proportion that is likely to grow in coming years — and Southern California has been at the forefront of efforts to boycott Arizona for enacting tough anti-immigrant legislation in late April.
In many ways, California’s primary race offers a worrisome preview of what many Republicans say are the political perils for the party nationally in being identified with tough immigration policies. Mr. Poizner has enthusiastically endorsed such policies in his campaign. His series of stark television advertisements portraying Ms. Whitman as an advocate of permissive immigration began three weeks ago.
The emphasis on immigration is striking in a state that is reeling from the economic downturn and saddled with what officials in both parties view as a dysfunctional government. At 12.5 percent, the unemployment rate here is far above the national average. The state has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, its public education system is a shambles, and disapproval of the Legislature and of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican barred by term limits from seeking re-election, are at near-record highs. The election is playing out against the backdrop of the latest battle in Sacramento over proposed cuts in spending to balance the budget.
One strain on the state’s finances is providing social services to a large population of illegal immigrants, which is one reason the issue has political resonance. Still, it is hardly clear that the tough-on-immigrants stance has universal appeal among Republican voters; in the Central Valley, for instance, many farmers use undocumented farm workers.
A Los Angeles Times/U.S.C. poll published on Sunday showed Ms. Whitman leading Mr. Poizner by 53 percent to 29 percent; other polls taken last month, after Mr. Poizner began his advertising assault against Ms. Whitman, showed that he had significantly tightened the race, until she started pushing back.
In an interview, Ms. Whitman — who has been running advertisements promising to be “tough as nails” on illegal immigration — said that she thought voters were concerned about other things besides immigration, and that she was raising the issue only in response to what she asserted were Mr. Poizner’s distortions of her record. She said Mr. Poizner had hurt himself as a general election candidate because of the tenor of his attacks.
“I think he’s damaged in the general because he’s only talked about one issue,” Ms. Whitman said. “And I think that’s a big mistake.”
Mr. Poizner said that illegal immigration was “part and parcel of our message from the get-go” and that he always viewed it as the No. 1 issue for Republican primary voters, and a point of contrast with Ms. Whitman.
“It’s huge: everywhere I go, people burst out into applause when I start talking about it,” Mr. Poizner said after appearing at a town hall-style meeting in El Segundo flanked by bright red screens with white lettering proclaiming, “No Amnesty: Stop Illegal Immigration.”
“Our positions are just different,” he continued. “Meg Whitman opposes Arizona. I fully support it. In fact, I don’t see how you can be a Republican running for high office in the United States and be taken seriously if you oppose what’s going on in Arizona.”
Both candidates are independently wealthy and together have spent more than $100 million — about $80 million for Ms. Whitman, and $25 million for Mr. Poizner — which has guaranteed a wide audience for the back-and-forth volley of television advertisements, radio spots and mailers. The demonstrated willingness of Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner to tap their own political fortunes to win the governorship is one of the key reasons Republicans are hopeful about defeating Mr. Brown.
Even without immigration, candidates this primary season face a politically daunting task in trying to navigate an increasingly conservative Republican base and emerge as a viable candidate in the general election. Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute of California, a policy study and polling group, said that 75 percent of Republicans statewide disapproved of President Obama in a poll earlier last month, compared with 39 percent of all registered voters in California.
“The Republican primary voters are not representative of the overall mood of Californians,” Mr. Baldassare said. “This is really a unique slice of the electorate.”
One sign of this is the extent to which both Ms. Whitman and Mr. Poizner are critical of Mr. Schwarzenegger. Mr. Poizner said he would not want the governor to campaign with him should he win the nomination. “I think it would be better if he just stays out of the primary and the general election,” he said.
Ron Nehring, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said the severity of the economic problems facing California would overshadow the immigration stances taken by the Republican candidate during the primaries. “The Democrats are always trying to paint Republicans as anti-immigrant,” he said. “But the first, second, third and fourth issue in the race for governor is jobs and the economy.”
Ms. Whitman’s advisers said that if she won the nomination, she would move away from immigration to broaden her appeal. But Mr. Poizner said he would not change his campaign a bit.
“This is important for everyone to know: What you see is what you get,” he said. “The campaign I’m waging now in the primary is exactly the same campaign I’ll be waging in the general against Jerry Brown. I think it’s a myth that independents, Democrats, these groups that supposedly would object to my strong positions on illegal immigration — uh-uh.”
Obama to Name Retired General to Top Spy Post
Obama to Name Retired General to Top Spy Post
By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05intel.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — President Obama has picked Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. as director of national intelligence, tapping a retired officer with decades of experience to improve coordination of the nation’s sprawling spy apparatus amid increasing threats at home and escalating operations abroad.
Mr. Obama plans to announce his choice in the Rose Garden on Saturday, two weeks after forcing Adm. Dennis C. Blair out of the spymaster job, according to administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to disclose the decision before the formal ceremony.
The selection amounts to pushing the reset button for the president as he tries to recalibrate an intelligence structure that has undergone continued revamping since the debacle leading up to the Iraq war, yet by most accounts still lacks the cohesion necessary in an evolving war with terrorists. Even as intelligence agencies expand their role overseas with drone strikes in Pakistan and increased focus on Yemen and Somalia, they have faced a spate of attempted attacks in the United States.
General Clapper, 69, who retired in 1995 after 32 years in the Air Force, rose from a signals intelligence officer to undersecretary of defense for intelligence, overseeing all military spy operations. In picking him, the president found an intelligence veteran who clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and was pushed out of office as a result, only to return to the Pentagon as a top lieutenant to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
If confirmed by the Senate, General Clapper will be the fourth official since 2005 to oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, a job created in the aftermath of the Iraq intelligence failures. Some intelligence officials have portrayed the job as a bureaucratic nightmare. Essentially, it involves coordinating some very powerful intelligence chiefs, including the C.I.A. director, who have bigger budgets, their own power bases and access to administration officials and members of Congress.
But Mr. Obama concluded that General Clapper’s experience would enable him to fix a dysfunctional situation. “He has a mandate to work it better and that will require some changes,” said a senior administration official.
“He knows the inside of the business better than anybody I know,” said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary and now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But General Clapper will have to figure out how to refashion the job created by Congress to be more effective. “You can’t administratively fix birth defects in legislation,” Mr. Hamre said.
General Clapper may face a fight to get confirmed. The choice generated consternation in the Senate, where some Democrats and Republicans complained that he is too closely aligned to the military, has resisted strengthening the office he has been selected for, and has not cultivated close ties on Capitol Hill.
“He has served honorably and with distinction for a long time, but he’s focused too much on Defense Department issues,” Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “And I don’t believe that he’s been forthcoming and open with the Intelligence Committee.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, was traveling on Friday and unavailable for comment, her office said. But Ms. Feinstein also expressed reservations when General Clapper emerged as an early front-runner to succeed Mr. Blair last month, saying it would be better to appoint a civilian to the job. However, several leading candidates — including Mr. Hamre; Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director; and former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — all made clear they were not interested.
Other senators said that General Clapper lacked a forceful enough personality and management style to assert control over the sprawling American intelligence apparatus.
“There are problems within the intelligence community that must be addressed in a very strong and direct way,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican on the committee, said through a spokeswoman. “I have real reservations about General Clapper being that person.”
But General Clapper has an independent streak and has not been afraid to challenge bosses in the past. When Congress was debating the creation of the director of national intelligence job, General Clapper was director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the little-known part of the nation’s spy infrastructure that analyzes maps and secret satellite imagery. He told Congress that he would support transferring his agency from the Pentagon to the control of the new intelligence director.
That position contradicted the views of Mr. Rumsfeld, who eventually forced out General Clapper in 2006. But Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out by President George W. Bush later that year and was replaced by Mr. Gates, who rehired the retired general for the Pentagon’s top intelligence job in 2007.
In 2008, General Clapper oversaw the dismantling of a controversial military intelligence office that lawmakers and civil liberties groups said was part of a Pentagon effort to expand into domestic spying. Mr. Rumsfeld created the unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity Office, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups in the United States and abroad.
But the secretive office came under sharp criticism in 2005 after it was revealed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls. General Clapper ordered an end to the database, called Talon, and most of the office’s operations were merged into the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which General Clapper led from 1991 to 1995.
The director of national intelligence is supposed to oversee the nation’s separate spy agencies and serve as the president’s primary adviser on matters of intelligence. But in practice, the director’s authority has been murky, particularly since the vast majority of America’s annual intelligence budget of nearly $50 billion is out of his direct control because it goes to spy satellites and high-tech listening devices operated by the Pentagon.
It has also been unclear how much control the director has over the C.I.A., which has grown in power as it has taken on an expanded role in secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
In fact, General Clapper’s predecessor was seen as being on the losing end of internal battles with Mr. Panetta. over who would appoint station chiefs around the world. Mr. Blair had little chemistry with Mr. Obama, officials said, and the president criticized the coordination of intelligence sharing after the botched effort to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet last Christmas.
The president decided to make a change and sat down with General Clapper in the Oval Office on May 5, when he asked the retired general for his views of the future of intelligence operations and the director’s job specifically, according to an administration official briefed on the session. General Clapper followed up with a letter about his vision that impressed the president, the official said. Mr. Blair resigned under pressure on May 20.
Those who know him say that General Clapper is expected to work smoothly with Mr. Panetta and John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief.
“Jim is a true intelligence professional,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director.
By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05intel.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — President Obama has picked Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. as director of national intelligence, tapping a retired officer with decades of experience to improve coordination of the nation’s sprawling spy apparatus amid increasing threats at home and escalating operations abroad.
Mr. Obama plans to announce his choice in the Rose Garden on Saturday, two weeks after forcing Adm. Dennis C. Blair out of the spymaster job, according to administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to disclose the decision before the formal ceremony.
The selection amounts to pushing the reset button for the president as he tries to recalibrate an intelligence structure that has undergone continued revamping since the debacle leading up to the Iraq war, yet by most accounts still lacks the cohesion necessary in an evolving war with terrorists. Even as intelligence agencies expand their role overseas with drone strikes in Pakistan and increased focus on Yemen and Somalia, they have faced a spate of attempted attacks in the United States.
General Clapper, 69, who retired in 1995 after 32 years in the Air Force, rose from a signals intelligence officer to undersecretary of defense for intelligence, overseeing all military spy operations. In picking him, the president found an intelligence veteran who clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and was pushed out of office as a result, only to return to the Pentagon as a top lieutenant to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
If confirmed by the Senate, General Clapper will be the fourth official since 2005 to oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, a job created in the aftermath of the Iraq intelligence failures. Some intelligence officials have portrayed the job as a bureaucratic nightmare. Essentially, it involves coordinating some very powerful intelligence chiefs, including the C.I.A. director, who have bigger budgets, their own power bases and access to administration officials and members of Congress.
But Mr. Obama concluded that General Clapper’s experience would enable him to fix a dysfunctional situation. “He has a mandate to work it better and that will require some changes,” said a senior administration official.
“He knows the inside of the business better than anybody I know,” said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary and now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But General Clapper will have to figure out how to refashion the job created by Congress to be more effective. “You can’t administratively fix birth defects in legislation,” Mr. Hamre said.
General Clapper may face a fight to get confirmed. The choice generated consternation in the Senate, where some Democrats and Republicans complained that he is too closely aligned to the military, has resisted strengthening the office he has been selected for, and has not cultivated close ties on Capitol Hill.
“He has served honorably and with distinction for a long time, but he’s focused too much on Defense Department issues,” Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “And I don’t believe that he’s been forthcoming and open with the Intelligence Committee.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, was traveling on Friday and unavailable for comment, her office said. But Ms. Feinstein also expressed reservations when General Clapper emerged as an early front-runner to succeed Mr. Blair last month, saying it would be better to appoint a civilian to the job. However, several leading candidates — including Mr. Hamre; Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director; and former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — all made clear they were not interested.
Other senators said that General Clapper lacked a forceful enough personality and management style to assert control over the sprawling American intelligence apparatus.
“There are problems within the intelligence community that must be addressed in a very strong and direct way,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican on the committee, said through a spokeswoman. “I have real reservations about General Clapper being that person.”
But General Clapper has an independent streak and has not been afraid to challenge bosses in the past. When Congress was debating the creation of the director of national intelligence job, General Clapper was director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the little-known part of the nation’s spy infrastructure that analyzes maps and secret satellite imagery. He told Congress that he would support transferring his agency from the Pentagon to the control of the new intelligence director.
That position contradicted the views of Mr. Rumsfeld, who eventually forced out General Clapper in 2006. But Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out by President George W. Bush later that year and was replaced by Mr. Gates, who rehired the retired general for the Pentagon’s top intelligence job in 2007.
In 2008, General Clapper oversaw the dismantling of a controversial military intelligence office that lawmakers and civil liberties groups said was part of a Pentagon effort to expand into domestic spying. Mr. Rumsfeld created the unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity Office, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups in the United States and abroad.
But the secretive office came under sharp criticism in 2005 after it was revealed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls. General Clapper ordered an end to the database, called Talon, and most of the office’s operations were merged into the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which General Clapper led from 1991 to 1995.
The director of national intelligence is supposed to oversee the nation’s separate spy agencies and serve as the president’s primary adviser on matters of intelligence. But in practice, the director’s authority has been murky, particularly since the vast majority of America’s annual intelligence budget of nearly $50 billion is out of his direct control because it goes to spy satellites and high-tech listening devices operated by the Pentagon.
It has also been unclear how much control the director has over the C.I.A., which has grown in power as it has taken on an expanded role in secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
In fact, General Clapper’s predecessor was seen as being on the losing end of internal battles with Mr. Panetta. over who would appoint station chiefs around the world. Mr. Blair had little chemistry with Mr. Obama, officials said, and the president criticized the coordination of intelligence sharing after the botched effort to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet last Christmas.
The president decided to make a change and sat down with General Clapper in the Oval Office on May 5, when he asked the retired general for his views of the future of intelligence operations and the director’s job specifically, according to an administration official briefed on the session. General Clapper followed up with a letter about his vision that impressed the president, the official said. Mr. Blair resigned under pressure on May 20.
Those who know him say that General Clapper is expected to work smoothly with Mr. Panetta and John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief.
“Jim is a true intelligence professional,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Offshore Corporate Tax Havens: Why Are They Still Allowed?
Offshore Corporate Tax Havens: Why Are They Still Allowed?
By Arianna Huffington
Copyright by The Huffington Post
Posted: June 1, 2010 06:34 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/offshore-corporate-tax-ha_b_596753.html?ref=email_share
The bracing reality that America has two sets of rules -- one for the corporate class and another for the middle class -- has never been more indisputable.
The middle class, by and large, plays by the rules, then watches as its jobs disappear -- and the Senate takes a break instead of extending unemployment benefits. The corporate class games the system -- making sure its license to break the rules is built into the rules themselves.
One of the most glaring examples of this continues to be the ability of corporations to cheat the public out of tens of billions of dollars a year by using offshore tax havens. Indeed, it's estimated that companies and wealthy individuals funneling money through offshore tax havens are evading around $100 billion a year in taxes -- leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab. And with cash-strapped states all across the country cutting vital services to the bone, it's not like we don't need the money.
You want Exhibit A of two sets of rules? According to the White House, in 2004, the last year data on this was compiled, U.S. multinational corporations paid roughly $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign active earnings -- putting their tax rate at around 2.3 percent. Know many middle class Americans getting off that easy at tax time?
In December 2008, the Government Accounting Office reported that 83 of the 100 largest publicly-traded companies in the country -- including AT&T, Chevron, IBM, American Express, GE, Boeing, Dow, and AIG -- had subsidiaries in tax havens -- or, as the corporate class comically calls them, "financial privacy jurisdictions."
Even more egregiously, of those 83 companies, 74 received government contracts in 2007. GM, for instance, got more than $517 million from the government -- i.e. the taxpayers -- that year, while shielding profits in tax-friendly places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. And Boeing, which received over $23 billion in federal contracts that year, had 38 subsidiaries in tax havens, including six in Bermuda.
And while it's as easy as opening up an island P.O. Box, not every big company uses the dodge. For instance, Boeing's competitor Lockheed Martin had no offshore subsidiaries. But far too many do -- another GAO study found that over 18,000 companies are registered at a single address in the Cayman Islands, a country with no corporate or capital gains taxes.
America's big banks -- including those that pocketed billions from the taxpayers in bailout dollars -- seem particularly fond of the Cayman Islands. At the time of the GAO report, Morgan Stanley had 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, 158 of them in the Cayman Islands. Citigroup had 427, with 90 in the Caymans. Bank of America had 115, with 59 in the Caymans. Goldman Sachs had 29 offshore havens, including 15 in the Caymans. JPMorgan had 50, with seven in the Caymans. And Wells Fargo had 18, with nine in the Caymans.
Perhaps no company exemplifies the corporate class/middle class double standard more than KBR/Halliburton. The company got billions from U.S. taxpayers, then turned around and used a Cayman Island tax dodge to pump up its bottom line. As the Boston Globe's Farah Stockman reported, KBR, until 2007 a unit of Halliburton, "has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven."
In 2008, the company listed 10,500 Americans as being officially employed by two companies that, as Stockman wrote, "exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean." Aside from the tax advantages, Stockman points out another benefit of this dodge: Americans who officially work for a company whose headquarters is a computer file in the Caymans are not eligible for unemployment insurance or other benefits when they get laid off -- something many of them found out the hard way.
This kind of sun-kissed thievery is nothing new. Indeed, back in 2002, to call attention to the outrage of the sleazy accounting trick, I wrote a column announcing I was thinking of moving my syndicated newspaper column to Bermuda:
I'll still live in America, earn my living here, and enjoy the protection, technology, infrastructure, and all the other myriad benefits of the land of the free and the home of the brave. I'm just changing my business address. Because if I do that, I won't have to pay for those benefits -- I'll get them for free!
Washington has been trying to address the issue for close to 50 years -- JFK gave it a go in 1961. But time and again Corporate America's game fixers -- aka lobbyists -- and water carriers in Congress have managed to keep the loopholes open.
The battle is once again afoot. On Friday, the House passed the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. The bill, in addition to extending unemployment benefits, clamps down on some of they ways corporations hide their income offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Even though practically every House Republican voted against it, the bill passed 215 to 204.
The bill's passage in the Senate, however, remains in doubt, with lobbyists gearing up for a furious fight to make sure America's corporate class can continue to profitably enjoy the largess of government services and contracts without the responsibility of paying its fair share.
The bill is far from perfect -- it leaves open a number of loopholes and would only recoup a very small fraction of the $100 billion corporations and wealthy individuals are siphoning off from the U.S. Treasury. And it wouldn't ban companies using offshore tax havens from receiving government contracts, which is stunning given the hard times we are in and the populist groundswell at the way average Americans are getting the short end of the stick.
But the bill would end one of the more egregious examples of the double standard between the corporate class and the middle class, finally forcing hedge fund managers to pay taxes at the same rate as everybody else. As the law stands now, their income is considered "carried interest," and is accordingly taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent.
The issue was famously brought up in 2007 by Warren Buffett when he noted that his receptionist paid 30 percent of her income in taxes, while he paid only 17.7 percent on his taxable income of $46 million dollars.
As Robert Reich points out, the 25 most successful hedge fund managers earned $1 billion each. The top earner clocked in at $4 billion. And all of them paid taxes at about half the rate of Buffett's receptionist.
Closing this outrageous loophole would bring in close to $20 billion dollars in revenue -- money desperately needed at a time when teachers and nurses and firemen are being laid off all around the country.
Hedge fund lobbyists are currently hacking away at the Senate's resolve with, not surprisingly, some success. And it's not just Republicans who are willing to do their bidding, but a number of Democrats as well. Indeed, it was a Democrat -- Chuck Schumer -- who led the fight against closing the loophole in 2007.
"I don't know how members of Congress can return home and look an office manager, a nurse, a court clerk in the eye and say 'I chose hedge fund managers instead of you and your family'," said Lori Lodes of the SEIU.
Nicole Tichon, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, framed the debate in similar terms:
It's hard to imagine anyone campaigning on protecting hedge fund managers, Wall Street banks and companies that ship jobs and profits overseas. It's hard to imagine telling constituents that somehow they should continue to subsidize these industries. We're anxious to see whose side the Senate is on and what story they want to tell the American people.
Up until now, the story has been a familiar narrative of Two Americas, with one set of rules for those who can afford to hire a fleet of K Street lobbyists and a different set for everybody else. It's time to give this infuriating tale a different -- and far more just and satisfying -- ending.
By Arianna Huffington
Copyright by The Huffington Post
Posted: June 1, 2010 06:34 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/offshore-corporate-tax-ha_b_596753.html?ref=email_share
The bracing reality that America has two sets of rules -- one for the corporate class and another for the middle class -- has never been more indisputable.
The middle class, by and large, plays by the rules, then watches as its jobs disappear -- and the Senate takes a break instead of extending unemployment benefits. The corporate class games the system -- making sure its license to break the rules is built into the rules themselves.
One of the most glaring examples of this continues to be the ability of corporations to cheat the public out of tens of billions of dollars a year by using offshore tax havens. Indeed, it's estimated that companies and wealthy individuals funneling money through offshore tax havens are evading around $100 billion a year in taxes -- leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab. And with cash-strapped states all across the country cutting vital services to the bone, it's not like we don't need the money.
You want Exhibit A of two sets of rules? According to the White House, in 2004, the last year data on this was compiled, U.S. multinational corporations paid roughly $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign active earnings -- putting their tax rate at around 2.3 percent. Know many middle class Americans getting off that easy at tax time?
In December 2008, the Government Accounting Office reported that 83 of the 100 largest publicly-traded companies in the country -- including AT&T, Chevron, IBM, American Express, GE, Boeing, Dow, and AIG -- had subsidiaries in tax havens -- or, as the corporate class comically calls them, "financial privacy jurisdictions."
Even more egregiously, of those 83 companies, 74 received government contracts in 2007. GM, for instance, got more than $517 million from the government -- i.e. the taxpayers -- that year, while shielding profits in tax-friendly places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. And Boeing, which received over $23 billion in federal contracts that year, had 38 subsidiaries in tax havens, including six in Bermuda.
And while it's as easy as opening up an island P.O. Box, not every big company uses the dodge. For instance, Boeing's competitor Lockheed Martin had no offshore subsidiaries. But far too many do -- another GAO study found that over 18,000 companies are registered at a single address in the Cayman Islands, a country with no corporate or capital gains taxes.
America's big banks -- including those that pocketed billions from the taxpayers in bailout dollars -- seem particularly fond of the Cayman Islands. At the time of the GAO report, Morgan Stanley had 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, 158 of them in the Cayman Islands. Citigroup had 427, with 90 in the Caymans. Bank of America had 115, with 59 in the Caymans. Goldman Sachs had 29 offshore havens, including 15 in the Caymans. JPMorgan had 50, with seven in the Caymans. And Wells Fargo had 18, with nine in the Caymans.
Perhaps no company exemplifies the corporate class/middle class double standard more than KBR/Halliburton. The company got billions from U.S. taxpayers, then turned around and used a Cayman Island tax dodge to pump up its bottom line. As the Boston Globe's Farah Stockman reported, KBR, until 2007 a unit of Halliburton, "has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven."
In 2008, the company listed 10,500 Americans as being officially employed by two companies that, as Stockman wrote, "exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean." Aside from the tax advantages, Stockman points out another benefit of this dodge: Americans who officially work for a company whose headquarters is a computer file in the Caymans are not eligible for unemployment insurance or other benefits when they get laid off -- something many of them found out the hard way.
This kind of sun-kissed thievery is nothing new. Indeed, back in 2002, to call attention to the outrage of the sleazy accounting trick, I wrote a column announcing I was thinking of moving my syndicated newspaper column to Bermuda:
I'll still live in America, earn my living here, and enjoy the protection, technology, infrastructure, and all the other myriad benefits of the land of the free and the home of the brave. I'm just changing my business address. Because if I do that, I won't have to pay for those benefits -- I'll get them for free!
Washington has been trying to address the issue for close to 50 years -- JFK gave it a go in 1961. But time and again Corporate America's game fixers -- aka lobbyists -- and water carriers in Congress have managed to keep the loopholes open.
The battle is once again afoot. On Friday, the House passed the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. The bill, in addition to extending unemployment benefits, clamps down on some of they ways corporations hide their income offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Even though practically every House Republican voted against it, the bill passed 215 to 204.
The bill's passage in the Senate, however, remains in doubt, with lobbyists gearing up for a furious fight to make sure America's corporate class can continue to profitably enjoy the largess of government services and contracts without the responsibility of paying its fair share.
The bill is far from perfect -- it leaves open a number of loopholes and would only recoup a very small fraction of the $100 billion corporations and wealthy individuals are siphoning off from the U.S. Treasury. And it wouldn't ban companies using offshore tax havens from receiving government contracts, which is stunning given the hard times we are in and the populist groundswell at the way average Americans are getting the short end of the stick.
But the bill would end one of the more egregious examples of the double standard between the corporate class and the middle class, finally forcing hedge fund managers to pay taxes at the same rate as everybody else. As the law stands now, their income is considered "carried interest," and is accordingly taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent.
The issue was famously brought up in 2007 by Warren Buffett when he noted that his receptionist paid 30 percent of her income in taxes, while he paid only 17.7 percent on his taxable income of $46 million dollars.
As Robert Reich points out, the 25 most successful hedge fund managers earned $1 billion each. The top earner clocked in at $4 billion. And all of them paid taxes at about half the rate of Buffett's receptionist.
Closing this outrageous loophole would bring in close to $20 billion dollars in revenue -- money desperately needed at a time when teachers and nurses and firemen are being laid off all around the country.
Hedge fund lobbyists are currently hacking away at the Senate's resolve with, not surprisingly, some success. And it's not just Republicans who are willing to do their bidding, but a number of Democrats as well. Indeed, it was a Democrat -- Chuck Schumer -- who led the fight against closing the loophole in 2007.
"I don't know how members of Congress can return home and look an office manager, a nurse, a court clerk in the eye and say 'I chose hedge fund managers instead of you and your family'," said Lori Lodes of the SEIU.
Nicole Tichon, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, framed the debate in similar terms:
It's hard to imagine anyone campaigning on protecting hedge fund managers, Wall Street banks and companies that ship jobs and profits overseas. It's hard to imagine telling constituents that somehow they should continue to subsidize these industries. We're anxious to see whose side the Senate is on and what story they want to tell the American people.
Up until now, the story has been a familiar narrative of Two Americas, with one set of rules for those who can afford to hire a fleet of K Street lobbyists and a different set for everybody else. It's time to give this infuriating tale a different -- and far more just and satisfying -- ending.
AT&T's New iPhone Data Plans: Pros and Cons
AT&T's New iPhone Data Plans: Pros and Cons
By Ian Paul
Copyright by PC World
Jun 4, 2010 11:02 am
http://www.pcworld.com/article/197992/atandts_new_iphone_data_plans_pros_and_cons.html
The discussion continues around AT&T's new tiered data plans for the iPhone, and whether AT&T's decision will significantly impact how new iPhone owners use their device.
If you haven't heard, AT&T will offer new iPhone users a choice of data plans starting Monday, June 7. New users will have to decide between a 200MB plan for $15/month or 2GB for $25. Any data usage above those limits will incur overage charges that have the potential to double your monthly data fees for the iPhone. Current iPhone user can keep their current unlimited plan or switch to a cheaper tiered data plan.
Here are four issues with AT&T's new plans, and a few pros and cons for each.
AT&T's New Data Plan Will Save You Money
Pro: Most users would probably save money under AT&T's new data plan. As AT&T pointed out recently, 200MB of data gives you the capability to send and receive 1000 e-mail messages (no attachments) and 150 e-mails with attachments, view 400 Web pages, post 50 photos on social media sites, and watch 20 minutes of streaming video.
If you also use a Wi-Fi connection for your device when you're at home, work or in range of an AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot (free access for AT&T customers), it gets even easier to survive on 200MB.
The New York Times' David Pogue says that he and his wife typically use 150MB of data per month combined on their iPhones. So AT&T's new data plans could mean big savings for Pogue. "Here I am, a power-using geek, and I could put both phones on the DataPlus plan and save $360 a year," Pogue writes.
Con: But as I pointed out recently, I use on average of 484MB of data a month, meaning I'd need AT&T's 2GB monthly plan. I'd still capitalize on savings, but I could save even more money if AT&T had a middle ground data plan between 200MB and 2GB, say a 500MB offering for $20. But why is there such a big gap between data plans?
To put this in perspective, AT&T's two data plans offer a choice between 200MB or 2048MB (2GB) per month. So for an extra $10 you get more than ten times the data under AT&T's new data scheme. Why such a huge disparity of data levels between the two plans? Is AT&T trying to keep its annual revenue high while simultaneously lowering customer service? Something just doesn't add up.
Most Plans Don't Offer Unlimited Data Anyway
Pro: AT&T is the only network to offer a truly unlimited data plan for the iPhone as most carriers cap their so-called unlimited plans at 5GB of data per month. In fact, AT&T imposes a 5GB cap on its other data plans including its Laptop Connect and Blackberry tethering plans.
The reality is that most users don't need unlimited data. AT&T's new data plans will allow most users to pay less, and bring their monthly billing in line with the amount of 3G data they actually use.
Con: If you're an avid iPhone user who is constantly downloading, tweeting, e-mailing, and streaming video and audio, then 200MB is probably not enough while 2GB is too much. So a good portion of people are saving only $5 per month on their plans, and may still have to keep tabs on how much data they are using.
The beauty of AT&T's unlimited plan was that most users would never have to worry about overage charges even on high usage months. That's not the case under AT&T's new tiered data plans.
AT&T Will Offer Tethering for the iPhone
Pro: AT&T is finally offering tethering a year after the rest of the developed world was offering it.
Con: AT&T's tethering scheme will be difficult to swallow for most users who want to add tethering to their service.
First of all, to get tethering when it launches this summer you have to abandon your unlimited plan on your current device and switch to a tiered data plan. Then, you'll have to pay AT&T's $20 monthly tethering fee, which doesn't even come with any extra data. You are literally paying for the right to tether and nothing more. In other words, AT&T's tethering fee is simply a convenience charge.
Usage Limits Will Kill Innovation
Pro: Some third-party application developers worry that monthly usage limits may make consumers wary of downloading and using applications, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, told the Journal that AT&T's data plan "could dampen people's appetite for downloading apps and engaging with them over the cellular network."
If people stop freely using applications like they are today, this could force developers to reconsider creating useful and yet data-intensive apps.
Con: There are many ways to download applications including via a Wi-Fi application or your computer at home. It's not like 3G is your only download option. Even if you downloaded the occasional app over your 3G connection, you likely wouldn't have to worry about overage charges on a 2GB plan anyway.
As for interacting with the applications, the biggest concern would be for users of GPS and video streaming apps, and even then 2GB should be enough data for most people. Besides, as that same Journal article points out, restricting data usage could push developers to create apps that use data connectivity more efficiently.
So there you have it four points of view about AT&T's new data plans. What's your take iPhone users? Would AT&T's new data plans force you to rethink your data usage if you gave up your unlimited plan?
By Ian Paul
Copyright by PC World
Jun 4, 2010 11:02 am
http://www.pcworld.com/article/197992/atandts_new_iphone_data_plans_pros_and_cons.html
The discussion continues around AT&T's new tiered data plans for the iPhone, and whether AT&T's decision will significantly impact how new iPhone owners use their device.
If you haven't heard, AT&T will offer new iPhone users a choice of data plans starting Monday, June 7. New users will have to decide between a 200MB plan for $15/month or 2GB for $25. Any data usage above those limits will incur overage charges that have the potential to double your monthly data fees for the iPhone. Current iPhone user can keep their current unlimited plan or switch to a cheaper tiered data plan.
Here are four issues with AT&T's new plans, and a few pros and cons for each.
AT&T's New Data Plan Will Save You Money
Pro: Most users would probably save money under AT&T's new data plan. As AT&T pointed out recently, 200MB of data gives you the capability to send and receive 1000 e-mail messages (no attachments) and 150 e-mails with attachments, view 400 Web pages, post 50 photos on social media sites, and watch 20 minutes of streaming video.
If you also use a Wi-Fi connection for your device when you're at home, work or in range of an AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot (free access for AT&T customers), it gets even easier to survive on 200MB.
The New York Times' David Pogue says that he and his wife typically use 150MB of data per month combined on their iPhones. So AT&T's new data plans could mean big savings for Pogue. "Here I am, a power-using geek, and I could put both phones on the DataPlus plan and save $360 a year," Pogue writes.
Con: But as I pointed out recently, I use on average of 484MB of data a month, meaning I'd need AT&T's 2GB monthly plan. I'd still capitalize on savings, but I could save even more money if AT&T had a middle ground data plan between 200MB and 2GB, say a 500MB offering for $20. But why is there such a big gap between data plans?
To put this in perspective, AT&T's two data plans offer a choice between 200MB or 2048MB (2GB) per month. So for an extra $10 you get more than ten times the data under AT&T's new data scheme. Why such a huge disparity of data levels between the two plans? Is AT&T trying to keep its annual revenue high while simultaneously lowering customer service? Something just doesn't add up.
Most Plans Don't Offer Unlimited Data Anyway
Pro: AT&T is the only network to offer a truly unlimited data plan for the iPhone as most carriers cap their so-called unlimited plans at 5GB of data per month. In fact, AT&T imposes a 5GB cap on its other data plans including its Laptop Connect and Blackberry tethering plans.
The reality is that most users don't need unlimited data. AT&T's new data plans will allow most users to pay less, and bring their monthly billing in line with the amount of 3G data they actually use.
Con: If you're an avid iPhone user who is constantly downloading, tweeting, e-mailing, and streaming video and audio, then 200MB is probably not enough while 2GB is too much. So a good portion of people are saving only $5 per month on their plans, and may still have to keep tabs on how much data they are using.
The beauty of AT&T's unlimited plan was that most users would never have to worry about overage charges even on high usage months. That's not the case under AT&T's new tiered data plans.
AT&T Will Offer Tethering for the iPhone
Pro: AT&T is finally offering tethering a year after the rest of the developed world was offering it.
Con: AT&T's tethering scheme will be difficult to swallow for most users who want to add tethering to their service.
First of all, to get tethering when it launches this summer you have to abandon your unlimited plan on your current device and switch to a tiered data plan. Then, you'll have to pay AT&T's $20 monthly tethering fee, which doesn't even come with any extra data. You are literally paying for the right to tether and nothing more. In other words, AT&T's tethering fee is simply a convenience charge.
Usage Limits Will Kill Innovation
Pro: Some third-party application developers worry that monthly usage limits may make consumers wary of downloading and using applications, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, told the Journal that AT&T's data plan "could dampen people's appetite for downloading apps and engaging with them over the cellular network."
If people stop freely using applications like they are today, this could force developers to reconsider creating useful and yet data-intensive apps.
Con: There are many ways to download applications including via a Wi-Fi application or your computer at home. It's not like 3G is your only download option. Even if you downloaded the occasional app over your 3G connection, you likely wouldn't have to worry about overage charges on a 2GB plan anyway.
As for interacting with the applications, the biggest concern would be for users of GPS and video streaming apps, and even then 2GB should be enough data for most people. Besides, as that same Journal article points out, restricting data usage could push developers to create apps that use data connectivity more efficiently.
So there you have it four points of view about AT&T's new data plans. What's your take iPhone users? Would AT&T's new data plans force you to rethink your data usage if you gave up your unlimited plan?
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