I. Marrying for Money
"Median income for a single mother is about $25,000, compared with about $81,000 for two parents. The inequality trickles down to the children: if kids have married mothers, they will grow up to be fourteen percentiles higher in income than those with single mothers."
If single mothers get married, what happens to them? "A nationally representative study found that two-thirds of these mothers will end up divorced. That's worse for their finances than having stayed single in the first place. And sociologist Kristi Williams found no psychological or physical advantages for most teens whose single mothers ended up getting married."
How have programs to pay single mothers to get married worked out? "Since 2001, the US government has spent about $800 million on the Healthy Marriage Initiative, even as the national marriage rate continued to decline. In 2002, it spent $11,000 per couple in the Building Strong Families Project, which proved to have no effect on whether couples got married or even stayed together. And in 2003, it spent $9,100 per couple in the unsuccessful Supporting Healthy Marriage program." [1]
How does the U.S. compare with the Scandinavian countries on poverty rates for children in single-mother families? In terms of Before Social Safety Net Benefits, the Percent in Poverty are as follows: the U.S. about 65; Sweden - about 52; Norway - about 57; Finland - about 50. In terms of After Social Safety Net Benefits, the Percent in Poverty are as follows: the U.S. - about 55; Sweden - about 13; Norway - about 11; Finland - about 8. [2]
If we want to improve the prospects for children of single parents, what are some policy solutions?
Income Support - Welfare reaches less than a third of poor families with children and the benefits are less than in 1996
Paid Leave - The United States is just one of three countries in the world that do not guarantee paid paternity leave: only twelve percent of :American workers in the private sector have access to it. The United States should also guarantee paid sick leave days, like all of the other rich countries.
Universal Childcare - Childcare for most families costs more than rent or food. In thirty-one states, it costs more than tuition to a public college. [3]
II. Flee-Economics
So-called tax inversion is the practice of U.S. companies moving their headquarters overseas, avoiding the Internal Revenue Service while keeping their executives stateside, scoring government contracts, and taking full advantage of public benefits for employees. More than 100 companies have renounced their citizenship since 1982, most in the past decade. Where have these companies gone? Thirty have gone to Bermuda; seventeen to the Cayman Islands; thirteen to the Cayman Islands; ten to the Netherlands; and nine to Canada. There are at least seven other countries that have welcomed two or more U.S. companies. Between 2008 and 2013, American firms held more that $2.1 trillion in profits overseas -- that's as much as $500 billion in unpaid taxes. [4]
In 2014, Burger King obtained the Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons and announced plans to move its headquarters to Canada. Burger King stands to avoid $400 million to $1.2 billion in U.S. taxes over the next four years. Its major shareholders could avoid as much as $820 million in capital gains taxes. [5]
Few big companies actually pay the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Profits are up 21 percent since 2007, while corporate America's total tax bill has dropped 5 percent. From 2001 to 2012, corporate profits after tax have increased from about $700 billion to about $1,800 billion. Corporate taxes collected in that same period have increased from about $300 billion to about $400 billion. [6]
Footnotes
[1] Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert, "Marrying for Money," The Nation, December 1/8, 2014.
[2] Demos.org
[3] "Marrying..."
[4] Erika Eichelberger and Dave Gilson, "Flee-Economics," Mother Jones, March/April 2015.
[5] Ibid.; [6] Ibid.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Wealth and African Americans
Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert have a monthly page in The Nation magazine, in which they generally focus on a topic that has economic implications. In the February 2, 2015 issue of the magazine they draw on the Black Lives Matter movement and entitle their article "Black Wealth Matters."
The thesis of the article by Konczal and Covert is that the major force that sustains the racial wealth disparity in America is housing segregation. The New Deal's mortgage program, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration, used racial makeup to rate neighborhood property values across the country, giving areas where black people lived few 'A' ratings and coloring them in red. This practice led to rising property values in white neighborhoods, with the opposite impact on black ones. Black people were thus shut out of the legitimate market --"
"Racial segregation peaked around 1970, but even today the average white city resident lives in a 75 percent white neighborhood, while the average black person lives in one that is 35 percent white."
"Housing segregation deprives black families of the opportunity to build wealth through their homes. African Americans were twice as likely to be affected by the foreclosure crisis as white borrowers." Since black families didn't have access to traditional low-cost mortgages, they became easy prey to lenders pushing high-cost subprime mortgages.
In 2007, whites had four times the wealth of blacks; however, with the housing market's recovery, "the median net worth of white households today is thirteen times than that of black ones. Median wealth for black families fell 33.7 percent between 2010 and 2013, while white households saw theirs rise." "Among middle- and upper-class black people, half of all children are raised in impoverished neighborhoods, compared with just 1 percent of their white peers."
"Housing segregation also means the black students are often crowded into troubled public schools. The education system is segregated along racial lines and funded by property taxes, with white students attending schools that are about 73 percent white and black students attending schools that are nearly 50 percent black."
Even when it comes to punishment in school, black students are "three times as likely to get suspended or expelled and become fodder for the school-to-prison pipeline, all but negating any future economic opportunity."
Tiny Capitalists
Republicans have long castigated Democrats for offering African Americans free goodies to secure their support in elections. Republicans have been saying that they have a better approach to lift up those African Americans mired in poverty: they will make entrepreneurs out of them. This is a cynical hope to raise, as most Americans will have to work for someone else. Many start-up small businesses fail; and even the ones that succeed don't often make a profit in the first one or two years of operation, meaning that the business owner(s) must have sufficient savings or loans to tide them over.
In the August 18/25, 2015 issue of The Nation magazine Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert use a graph designed by the economists Seiz and Zucman to illustrate that the wealth controlled by the top tenth of the 1 percent has more than doubled over the past thirty years in the United States. Konczal and Covert blame both Democrats and Republicans for shifting financial risk from the state to the individual. The Republicans do it by promoting the "ownership society." in which social insurance is privatized and investor protections are removed. Democrats focus on education and on helping the poor build wealth through savings programs. Konczal and Covert say that: "Instead of just giving people more purchasing power, we should be taking basic needs off the market altogether." The two contend that "social wealth programs like Social Security combat inequality more powerfully than any privatized, individualized wealth building 'solution.' "
"Public programs like universal health-care and free education function the same way, providing social wealth directly instead of hoping to boost people's savings enough to allow them to afford either."
"Bringing wealth under democratic accountability -- rather than making everyone a tiny capitalist -- has to be an essential part of any equality agenda. America's biggest declines in poverty often follow from this approach (expanding Social Security and Medicare, for example)."
ADDENDUMS: (From Konczal and Covert in the August 18/25, 2015 The Nation)
* THE GLASS IS... HALF-FULL" - "Employment growth has picked up in 2014. The average number of jobs created per month has been 231,000, compared with 194,000 last year. Also, broader surveys of consumer confidence are approaching pre-crisis levels."
HALF-EMPTY - "This hasn't translated into real wage gains, with median incomes still 4 percent below pre-crisis levels and showing no signs of catching up. Ironically, the good employment numbers could also hurt working people by prompting the Federal Reserve to step on the brakes sooner and raise interest rates."
*Forty-six companies have court cases pending that challenge the Affordable Care Act's requirement that their health insurance policies cover contraception."
*The hourly rate that homecare workers in Illinois will make by the end of the year would have increased to $13 thanks to a union-brokered agreement. The Supreme Court ruling in Harris v. Quinn holds that such workers are no longer required to pay union dues, a decision likely to bankrupt their unions."
The thesis of the article by Konczal and Covert is that the major force that sustains the racial wealth disparity in America is housing segregation. The New Deal's mortgage program, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration, used racial makeup to rate neighborhood property values across the country, giving areas where black people lived few 'A' ratings and coloring them in red. This practice led to rising property values in white neighborhoods, with the opposite impact on black ones. Black people were thus shut out of the legitimate market --"
"Racial segregation peaked around 1970, but even today the average white city resident lives in a 75 percent white neighborhood, while the average black person lives in one that is 35 percent white."
"Housing segregation deprives black families of the opportunity to build wealth through their homes. African Americans were twice as likely to be affected by the foreclosure crisis as white borrowers." Since black families didn't have access to traditional low-cost mortgages, they became easy prey to lenders pushing high-cost subprime mortgages.
In 2007, whites had four times the wealth of blacks; however, with the housing market's recovery, "the median net worth of white households today is thirteen times than that of black ones. Median wealth for black families fell 33.7 percent between 2010 and 2013, while white households saw theirs rise." "Among middle- and upper-class black people, half of all children are raised in impoverished neighborhoods, compared with just 1 percent of their white peers."
"Housing segregation also means the black students are often crowded into troubled public schools. The education system is segregated along racial lines and funded by property taxes, with white students attending schools that are about 73 percent white and black students attending schools that are nearly 50 percent black."
Even when it comes to punishment in school, black students are "three times as likely to get suspended or expelled and become fodder for the school-to-prison pipeline, all but negating any future economic opportunity."
Tiny Capitalists
Republicans have long castigated Democrats for offering African Americans free goodies to secure their support in elections. Republicans have been saying that they have a better approach to lift up those African Americans mired in poverty: they will make entrepreneurs out of them. This is a cynical hope to raise, as most Americans will have to work for someone else. Many start-up small businesses fail; and even the ones that succeed don't often make a profit in the first one or two years of operation, meaning that the business owner(s) must have sufficient savings or loans to tide them over.
In the August 18/25, 2015 issue of The Nation magazine Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert use a graph designed by the economists Seiz and Zucman to illustrate that the wealth controlled by the top tenth of the 1 percent has more than doubled over the past thirty years in the United States. Konczal and Covert blame both Democrats and Republicans for shifting financial risk from the state to the individual. The Republicans do it by promoting the "ownership society." in which social insurance is privatized and investor protections are removed. Democrats focus on education and on helping the poor build wealth through savings programs. Konczal and Covert say that: "Instead of just giving people more purchasing power, we should be taking basic needs off the market altogether." The two contend that "social wealth programs like Social Security combat inequality more powerfully than any privatized, individualized wealth building 'solution.' "
"Public programs like universal health-care and free education function the same way, providing social wealth directly instead of hoping to boost people's savings enough to allow them to afford either."
"Bringing wealth under democratic accountability -- rather than making everyone a tiny capitalist -- has to be an essential part of any equality agenda. America's biggest declines in poverty often follow from this approach (expanding Social Security and Medicare, for example)."
ADDENDUMS: (From Konczal and Covert in the August 18/25, 2015 The Nation)
* THE GLASS IS... HALF-FULL" - "Employment growth has picked up in 2014. The average number of jobs created per month has been 231,000, compared with 194,000 last year. Also, broader surveys of consumer confidence are approaching pre-crisis levels."
HALF-EMPTY - "This hasn't translated into real wage gains, with median incomes still 4 percent below pre-crisis levels and showing no signs of catching up. Ironically, the good employment numbers could also hurt working people by prompting the Federal Reserve to step on the brakes sooner and raise interest rates."
*Forty-six companies have court cases pending that challenge the Affordable Care Act's requirement that their health insurance policies cover contraception."
*The hourly rate that homecare workers in Illinois will make by the end of the year would have increased to $13 thanks to a union-brokered agreement. The Supreme Court ruling in Harris v. Quinn holds that such workers are no longer required to pay union dues, a decision likely to bankrupt their unions."
Monday, October 26, 2015
By the Numbers, Percentages and Symbols
1; Lives Saved by Fetal Tissue Research - Based on pre-vaccine averages, it can be said that millions of lives have been saved:
Worldwide:
1.6 Million deaths prevented each year by the measles vaccine.
550,000 cases of permanent paralysis or death prevented each year by the polio vaccine.
In the United States:
400,000 deaths prevented each year by the hepatitis-B vaccine.
3.9 Million deaths prevented each year, on average, by the varicella (chicken pox and shingles) vaccine.
160,000 deaths prevented each year, on average, by the mumps vaccine.
48,000 deaths prevented each year, on average, by the rubella vaccine.
114,000 deaths prevented each year, on average, by the hepatitis-A vaccine.
Fetal tissue research has been legal since the 1930s. The three men who shared the Nobel Prize for their work on the polio virus that brought about the Salk and Sabin vaccines used fetal tissue. When Congress lifted President Reagan's ban on federal funding for fetal tissue research in 1993, a number of Republicans voted yes.
Nebraska and Wyoming ban the transfer of fetal tissue; New Jersey and California are considering laws that would limit suppliers' ability to recover costs; Arizona's governor Doug Ducey has issued a temporary order requiring abortion clinics to report the destination of fetal tissue to state health officials; and North Carolina recently passed a bill criminalizing the sale of tissue from aborted fetuses (already illegal under federal law.) The Wisconsin state legislature is debating not just banning the sale of fetal tissue but making research using tissue from any fetus aborted after January 1, 2015, a felony. (Source: The Nation, October 26, 2015.)
2. Rape in Areas of Armed Conflict
50,000 - Highest estimated number of women to have been raped during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s.
64,000 - Highest estimated number of internally displaced women in Sierra Leone who suffered sexual violence at the hands of armed combatants.
40 - Average number of women raped daily in South Kivu due to armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Source: The Nation, October 26, 2015.)
3. Steve Jobs's Jobs
$44,888.16 - Average yearly wage in the United States.
$5,155 - Average annual salary of a worker in Chins's private sector.
$3,200 - Yearly base wage of a Foxconn worker at the start of 2012.
$4,200 - Yearly base wage of a Foxconn worker at the end of 2012, following reports of labor practices.
64% - Percentage of Foxconn workers who say their pay doesn't meet their basic needs, as of 2012.
3,000 - Apple logos carved by a Foxconn iPad worker per shift.
14 - Foxconn employees who committed suicide in 2010.
9% - Wage increase for Foxconn workers after the wave of suicides at the company.
25% - Quota increase for Foxconn workers after the wave of suicides.
"In December 2014, the BBC documentary series Panomara secretly filmed inside a number of Chinese facilities where employees were assembling the newest Apple iPhones. As the documentary noted: 'The team found Apple's promises to protect workers were routinely broken. It found standards on workers' hours, ID cards, dormitories, work meetings and juvenile workers were being breached.' "
Apple's labor costs are a tiny fraction of its profits. In 2011 and 2012, the top nine members of Apple's executive team received compensation packages equal to that of fully 90,000 Chinese factory workers. (Source: The Nation, November 2, 2015.)
4.) Immigration By the Numbers
41.3M - Number of immigrants living in the United States.
13% - Percentage of the US population who are immigrants.
31% - Percentage of children living with poor families who have immigrant parents.
414K - People deported from the United States in fiscal year 2014.
4.7M - People who would be spared from deportation under an Obama executive order blocked by federal courts.
M stands for million and K stands for thousand.
5.) Some Solar Energy Factoids
*Enough sunlight strikes Earth every 104 minutes to power the entire world for a year.
* The United States has the space and sunlight to provide 100 times its annual power demand with solar.
*Rooftop solar panels alone could meet 1/5 of US electricity demand.
*Carbon savings from existing US solar panels offset the equivalent of 3.5 million cars.
*Since the mid-2000s, the power generated by new solar installations has grown, on average, 66% a year, far outpacing any other energy source.
*Venture capital funding for solar in the first quarter of 2013: $126 million. In the first quarter of 2014: $251 million.
*Average cost of solar panels in 1972: $75/watt.
*Average cost today: Less than $1/watt.
*Expected cost of Chinese panels in 2015: 42C/watt. C stands for cent.
( Source for above: Mother Jones, September/October 2014.)
New electricity generating capacity installed in the United States, first quarter of 2014: solar - 74%; wind - 20%; natural gas - 4%. (Source: Solar Energy Industries Association.)
Total installed photovoltaic capacity (in gigawatts): the USA - about 12; China - about 18; Germany - about 36. (Source: International Energy Agency.)
6.) Ex-Felon Right to Vote in Florida
3.35% - Proportion of voting-age African Americans who can't vote because they're ex-felons, nationally.
19.39% - Proportion of voting-age African Americans who can't vote because they're ex-felons, in Florida.
50% - Florida's share of America's disenfranchised ex-felons.
(Source for Above: The Sentencing Project.)
7.) Among the Petty Crimes That Can Cost Floridians Their Right to Vote
*Alter an odometer to reflect a lower mileage.
*Tamper with someone else's fishing gear.
*Forge a certificate to fish for spiny lobster.
*Possess excess trout, snook, or redfish during the community harvest.
*Kill, injure, or possess an alligator egg without the proper authority.
*Present a forged lottery ticket.
*Sell illegally hunted deer or turkey.
*Sell cigarettes marked "for export only."
*Let a student midwife practice without a supervisor.
*Disclose a confidential car crash report to an unauthorized person.
*Maliciously disseminate information about another person's sexually transmitted disease.
(Source for above: Mother Jones, November/December 2015.)
Worldwide:
1.6 Million deaths prevented each year by the measles vaccine.
550,000 cases of permanent paralysis or death prevented each year by the polio vaccine.
In the United States:
400,000 deaths prevented each year by the hepatitis-B vaccine.
3.9 Million deaths prevented each year, on average, by the varicella (chicken pox and shingles) vaccine.
160,000 deaths prevented each year, on average, by the mumps vaccine.
48,000 deaths prevented each year, on average, by the rubella vaccine.
114,000 deaths prevented each year, on average, by the hepatitis-A vaccine.
Fetal tissue research has been legal since the 1930s. The three men who shared the Nobel Prize for their work on the polio virus that brought about the Salk and Sabin vaccines used fetal tissue. When Congress lifted President Reagan's ban on federal funding for fetal tissue research in 1993, a number of Republicans voted yes.
Nebraska and Wyoming ban the transfer of fetal tissue; New Jersey and California are considering laws that would limit suppliers' ability to recover costs; Arizona's governor Doug Ducey has issued a temporary order requiring abortion clinics to report the destination of fetal tissue to state health officials; and North Carolina recently passed a bill criminalizing the sale of tissue from aborted fetuses (already illegal under federal law.) The Wisconsin state legislature is debating not just banning the sale of fetal tissue but making research using tissue from any fetus aborted after January 1, 2015, a felony. (Source: The Nation, October 26, 2015.)
2. Rape in Areas of Armed Conflict
50,000 - Highest estimated number of women to have been raped during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s.
64,000 - Highest estimated number of internally displaced women in Sierra Leone who suffered sexual violence at the hands of armed combatants.
40 - Average number of women raped daily in South Kivu due to armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Source: The Nation, October 26, 2015.)
3. Steve Jobs's Jobs
$44,888.16 - Average yearly wage in the United States.
$5,155 - Average annual salary of a worker in Chins's private sector.
$3,200 - Yearly base wage of a Foxconn worker at the start of 2012.
$4,200 - Yearly base wage of a Foxconn worker at the end of 2012, following reports of labor practices.
64% - Percentage of Foxconn workers who say their pay doesn't meet their basic needs, as of 2012.
3,000 - Apple logos carved by a Foxconn iPad worker per shift.
14 - Foxconn employees who committed suicide in 2010.
9% - Wage increase for Foxconn workers after the wave of suicides at the company.
25% - Quota increase for Foxconn workers after the wave of suicides.
"In December 2014, the BBC documentary series Panomara secretly filmed inside a number of Chinese facilities where employees were assembling the newest Apple iPhones. As the documentary noted: 'The team found Apple's promises to protect workers were routinely broken. It found standards on workers' hours, ID cards, dormitories, work meetings and juvenile workers were being breached.' "
Apple's labor costs are a tiny fraction of its profits. In 2011 and 2012, the top nine members of Apple's executive team received compensation packages equal to that of fully 90,000 Chinese factory workers. (Source: The Nation, November 2, 2015.)
4.) Immigration By the Numbers
41.3M - Number of immigrants living in the United States.
13% - Percentage of the US population who are immigrants.
31% - Percentage of children living with poor families who have immigrant parents.
414K - People deported from the United States in fiscal year 2014.
4.7M - People who would be spared from deportation under an Obama executive order blocked by federal courts.
M stands for million and K stands for thousand.
5.) Some Solar Energy Factoids
*Enough sunlight strikes Earth every 104 minutes to power the entire world for a year.
* The United States has the space and sunlight to provide 100 times its annual power demand with solar.
*Rooftop solar panels alone could meet 1/5 of US electricity demand.
*Carbon savings from existing US solar panels offset the equivalent of 3.5 million cars.
*Since the mid-2000s, the power generated by new solar installations has grown, on average, 66% a year, far outpacing any other energy source.
*Venture capital funding for solar in the first quarter of 2013: $126 million. In the first quarter of 2014: $251 million.
*Average cost of solar panels in 1972: $75/watt.
*Average cost today: Less than $1/watt.
*Expected cost of Chinese panels in 2015: 42C/watt. C stands for cent.
( Source for above: Mother Jones, September/October 2014.)
New electricity generating capacity installed in the United States, first quarter of 2014: solar - 74%; wind - 20%; natural gas - 4%. (Source: Solar Energy Industries Association.)
Total installed photovoltaic capacity (in gigawatts): the USA - about 12; China - about 18; Germany - about 36. (Source: International Energy Agency.)
6.) Ex-Felon Right to Vote in Florida
3.35% - Proportion of voting-age African Americans who can't vote because they're ex-felons, nationally.
19.39% - Proportion of voting-age African Americans who can't vote because they're ex-felons, in Florida.
50% - Florida's share of America's disenfranchised ex-felons.
(Source for Above: The Sentencing Project.)
7.) Among the Petty Crimes That Can Cost Floridians Their Right to Vote
*Alter an odometer to reflect a lower mileage.
*Tamper with someone else's fishing gear.
*Forge a certificate to fish for spiny lobster.
*Possess excess trout, snook, or redfish during the community harvest.
*Kill, injure, or possess an alligator egg without the proper authority.
*Present a forged lottery ticket.
*Sell illegally hunted deer or turkey.
*Sell cigarettes marked "for export only."
*Let a student midwife practice without a supervisor.
*Disclose a confidential car crash report to an unauthorized person.
*Maliciously disseminate information about another person's sexually transmitted disease.
(Source for above: Mother Jones, November/December 2015.)
Friday, October 23, 2015
Torture Modalities
A Compendium of Torture found in: Torture: a Human Rights Perspective (New York: The New Press, 2005)
Reed Brody, "The Road to Abu Ghraib: Torture and Impunity in U.S. Detention"
p. 146 - "First, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush Administration seemingly determined that winning the war on terror required that the United States government circumvent international law. " 'There was a before-9/11 and an after 9-11,' said Cofer Black, former director of the CIA's counter-terrorism unit, in testimony to Congress. 'After 9/11 the gloves came off.' Senior administration lawyers in a series of internal memos argued over the objectives of career military and State Department counsel that the new war against terrorism rendered 'obsolete long-standing legal restrictions on the treatment and interrogation of detainees. The Administration sought to rewrite the Geneva Conventions of 1949 to eviscerate many of their most important protections. These included the rights of all detainees in an armed conflict to be free from humiliating and degrading treatment, as well as from torture and other forms of coercive interrogation. The Pentagon and the Justice Department developed the breathtaking legal argument that the president, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was not bound by U.S. or international laws prohibiting torture when acting to protect national security, and such laws might even be unconstitutional if they hampered their war on terror. The United States began to create off-shore, off-limits, prisons as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, maintained other detainees in 'undisclosed locations,' and without any legal due process sent terrorism suspects to countries where information was beaten out of them."
James Ross, "A History of Torture"
p. 15 - "The human rights treaties can be viewed as the culmination of a historical process recognizing the inviolability of the person. Today, no justice system formally permits torture and no government openly considers it acceptable. Yet day in and day out, far too many people throughout the world suffer a torturer's hands."
p. 16 - "But as the history of torture demonstrates, once torture becomes acceptable it ensures an ever-widening circle of victims."
Eitan Felener, "Torture and Terrorism"
p. 29 - "The growing resemblance between America's and Israel's approach to interrogation of terrorist suspects is not just confined to the striking similarities of the methods used -- hooding, loud noises, sleep deprivation, exposure to intense heat and cold. What makes Israel's case so relevant to understanding the implications of American policies and practices is that for more than a decade Israel was the only country in the world that officially adopted the use of physical force in interrogation of suspected terrorists."
p. 33 - (Henry Shue) - "The distance between the situations which must be corrected in order to have a plausible case of morally permissible torture and the situations which actually occur is, if anything, further reason why the existing prohibitions should remain and should be strengthened by making torture an international crime."
P. 39 - The GSS (Israel's General Security Service) may have tortured thousands, if not tens of thousands of Palestinians."
Marie-Monique Robin, "Counterinsurgency and Torture"
p. 53 - "Lessons from Latin America's dirty wars nay not have been learned by the United States and the rest of the world."
Cherie Booth, "Sexual Violence, Torture, and International Justice"
p. 118 - "Rape has been used to trash the spirit of political prisoners, to recruit women into the internal spy network, and to break up families and communities."
Dinah Pokempner, "Command Responsibility for Torture"
"If we are willing to torture putative terrorists, we can no longer assert the universally of rights and instead must divide the world into those entitled to full protection and those deemed too dangerous for such a entitlement."
Jamie Fellner, "Torture in U.S. Prisons"
p. 182 - "If prisons were operated with a goal of rehabilitation -- and if prison officials were held accountable for their ability to contribute to that goal -- we would see far less mistreatment and abuse in prisons."
Kenneth Ross, "Justifying Torture"
p. 185 - "The Bush administration has never repudiated the claim that the president has the power to order torture, nor did it commit to abide by the parallel prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."
p. 195 - "Bush continues to 'disappear' detainees; continues 'rendering'; continues a vendetta against the ICC; and continues to abuse detainees."
p. 200 - "The Bush administration must reaffirm making human rights a guiding principle."
ADDENDUMS:
*Racism Polling - A Pew poll taken in August 2015 found fifty percent saying racism is a problem, whereas thirty-three percent saw it as a problem in 2010.
*Hear No Evil - In Wisconsin, the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands forbade workers in the agency (which oversees state forests) from 'engaging in global warming or climate change work' -- including responding to emails about it."
"Florida's anti-climate change fatwa was uncovered by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which interviewed numerous state workers who had been told not to use the words 'climate change' or 'global warming.' "
Reed Brody, "The Road to Abu Ghraib: Torture and Impunity in U.S. Detention"
p. 146 - "First, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush Administration seemingly determined that winning the war on terror required that the United States government circumvent international law. " 'There was a before-9/11 and an after 9-11,' said Cofer Black, former director of the CIA's counter-terrorism unit, in testimony to Congress. 'After 9/11 the gloves came off.' Senior administration lawyers in a series of internal memos argued over the objectives of career military and State Department counsel that the new war against terrorism rendered 'obsolete long-standing legal restrictions on the treatment and interrogation of detainees. The Administration sought to rewrite the Geneva Conventions of 1949 to eviscerate many of their most important protections. These included the rights of all detainees in an armed conflict to be free from humiliating and degrading treatment, as well as from torture and other forms of coercive interrogation. The Pentagon and the Justice Department developed the breathtaking legal argument that the president, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was not bound by U.S. or international laws prohibiting torture when acting to protect national security, and such laws might even be unconstitutional if they hampered their war on terror. The United States began to create off-shore, off-limits, prisons as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, maintained other detainees in 'undisclosed locations,' and without any legal due process sent terrorism suspects to countries where information was beaten out of them."
James Ross, "A History of Torture"
p. 15 - "The human rights treaties can be viewed as the culmination of a historical process recognizing the inviolability of the person. Today, no justice system formally permits torture and no government openly considers it acceptable. Yet day in and day out, far too many people throughout the world suffer a torturer's hands."
p. 16 - "But as the history of torture demonstrates, once torture becomes acceptable it ensures an ever-widening circle of victims."
Eitan Felener, "Torture and Terrorism"
p. 29 - "The growing resemblance between America's and Israel's approach to interrogation of terrorist suspects is not just confined to the striking similarities of the methods used -- hooding, loud noises, sleep deprivation, exposure to intense heat and cold. What makes Israel's case so relevant to understanding the implications of American policies and practices is that for more than a decade Israel was the only country in the world that officially adopted the use of physical force in interrogation of suspected terrorists."
p. 33 - (Henry Shue) - "The distance between the situations which must be corrected in order to have a plausible case of morally permissible torture and the situations which actually occur is, if anything, further reason why the existing prohibitions should remain and should be strengthened by making torture an international crime."
P. 39 - The GSS (Israel's General Security Service) may have tortured thousands, if not tens of thousands of Palestinians."
Marie-Monique Robin, "Counterinsurgency and Torture"
p. 53 - "Lessons from Latin America's dirty wars nay not have been learned by the United States and the rest of the world."
Cherie Booth, "Sexual Violence, Torture, and International Justice"
p. 118 - "Rape has been used to trash the spirit of political prisoners, to recruit women into the internal spy network, and to break up families and communities."
Dinah Pokempner, "Command Responsibility for Torture"
"If we are willing to torture putative terrorists, we can no longer assert the universally of rights and instead must divide the world into those entitled to full protection and those deemed too dangerous for such a entitlement."
Jamie Fellner, "Torture in U.S. Prisons"
p. 182 - "If prisons were operated with a goal of rehabilitation -- and if prison officials were held accountable for their ability to contribute to that goal -- we would see far less mistreatment and abuse in prisons."
Kenneth Ross, "Justifying Torture"
p. 185 - "The Bush administration has never repudiated the claim that the president has the power to order torture, nor did it commit to abide by the parallel prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."
p. 195 - "Bush continues to 'disappear' detainees; continues 'rendering'; continues a vendetta against the ICC; and continues to abuse detainees."
p. 200 - "The Bush administration must reaffirm making human rights a guiding principle."
ADDENDUMS:
*Racism Polling - A Pew poll taken in August 2015 found fifty percent saying racism is a problem, whereas thirty-three percent saw it as a problem in 2010.
*Hear No Evil - In Wisconsin, the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands forbade workers in the agency (which oversees state forests) from 'engaging in global warming or climate change work' -- including responding to emails about it."
"Florida's anti-climate change fatwa was uncovered by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, which interviewed numerous state workers who had been told not to use the words 'climate change' or 'global warming.' "
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Candidates' Tax Plans Escape Serious Examination
One of the least examined aspects of governance at the national level in the three major presidential debates that have been held thus far is the examination of the candidate's tax .plans. Economists have learned that the plans introduced thus far will either drive up the budgetary deficit in the future or there is insufficient detail to adequately evaluate the plans.
The main features of Donald Trump's tax plan is that there will be four tax rates: 0, 10, 20 and 25%; businesses and corporations will have a taxation rate of 15%; and there will be some unspecified elimination of tax breaks for the wealthy, focused especially on hedge fund managers. Individual taxpayers earning $25,000 or less will pay no federal income tax and taxpayers filing jointly and earning $50,000 or less will pay no federal income tax.
Trump would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, the marriage penalty, the "carried interest loophole", and the 40% tax on an inheritance over $5.4 million. He would retain the 20% rate for dividends and capital gains held over one year. Trump would retain two popular tax deductions: the home mortgage deduction and the deduction for charitable giving. These two deductions reduce federal revenue by about $120 billion a year.
The Tax Foundation, considered to have a pro-business orientation, has estimated that the Trump tax plan would increase the budgetary deficit by $10 trillion over the next decade. The caveat is that not enough is known about the current tax breaks that Trump might reduce or eliminate to be precise about the $10 trillion figure. In this connection, when the Tax Policy Center evaluated Mitt Romney's taxation plan in the 2012 presidential campaign, it concluded that even if all tax breaks were eliminated it would not nearly equal the tax reductions that Romney was proposing.
One of the main features of Jeb Bush's tax plan is that it would reduce the top marginal tax rate from 39.6% to 28%. The Bush plan has been estimated to increase the budgetary deficit by $2 trillion over ten years.
Ben Carson has proposed that taxpayers pay a Biblical tithe, whereby a businessman earning $10 million would pay $1 million in federal income tax and a secretary earning $50,000 would pay $5,000 in federal income tax. When appearing on Fox News Sunday in early May 2015, Chris Wallace told Carson that the economists he had consulted said that the tax rate would need to be 20% to equal the current revenue stream. Carson answered that the economists he consulted said the rate would not need to over 15% at the most; however, the Tax Policy Center says the tax rate would need to be a minimum of 25% to reach the same objective of tax neutrality.
I have calculated that a family unit earning $200,000 in 2014 would have paid $20,000 in taxes under a 10% Carson plan and $42,800 under the 2014 tax rate schedule. Taxpayers at higher earnings levels would receive even more generous tax savings.
Mike Huckabee wants a sales tax instead of an income tax. Considering that local jurisdictions have sales taxes -- there are Alabama counties that have a sales tax of at least 9% -- consider the mass public revolt if a federal sales tax was added to a local sales tax of, say, 7 or 8%. Rand Paul wants a 17% flat tax and he would eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest. Ted Cruz also wants a flat tax and he would eliminate the IRS.
The tax extremism of most of the Republican presidential contenders is perhaps illustrated most fulsomely by Governor Scott walker, while he was still a presidential contender.Walker had once proposed eliminating Wisconsin's income tax and when asked about eliminating the federal income tax, he replied: "Sounds pretty tempting right now."
Switching to the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has certainly made it abundantly clear that the wealthy must pay much more in income taxes; however, to my knowledge, except for proposing a financial transactions tax, Sanders has not proposed a new tax rate schedule with a much higher top marginal tax rate. Democrats, too often, I believe, talk about the wealthy paying their fair share without defining what a fair share is.
Hillary Clinton said in the first Democratic presidential debate that she wanted the wealthy to pay for providing free tuition for college and university students; however, she also has not proposed a more robust tax rate schedule.
One of the best ways to reduce income and wealth inequality in the nation is to have a progressive income tax rate schedule with a top marginal tax rate of 60 to 70%, so that the wealthy pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. It is noteworthy that from the Second World War to the Ronald Reagan presidency, the top marginal tax rate was never below 70%. Those years were a period of great economic prosperity; also, the gap in wealth and income inequality were much narrower than it is today.
The main features of Donald Trump's tax plan is that there will be four tax rates: 0, 10, 20 and 25%; businesses and corporations will have a taxation rate of 15%; and there will be some unspecified elimination of tax breaks for the wealthy, focused especially on hedge fund managers. Individual taxpayers earning $25,000 or less will pay no federal income tax and taxpayers filing jointly and earning $50,000 or less will pay no federal income tax.
Trump would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, the marriage penalty, the "carried interest loophole", and the 40% tax on an inheritance over $5.4 million. He would retain the 20% rate for dividends and capital gains held over one year. Trump would retain two popular tax deductions: the home mortgage deduction and the deduction for charitable giving. These two deductions reduce federal revenue by about $120 billion a year.
The Tax Foundation, considered to have a pro-business orientation, has estimated that the Trump tax plan would increase the budgetary deficit by $10 trillion over the next decade. The caveat is that not enough is known about the current tax breaks that Trump might reduce or eliminate to be precise about the $10 trillion figure. In this connection, when the Tax Policy Center evaluated Mitt Romney's taxation plan in the 2012 presidential campaign, it concluded that even if all tax breaks were eliminated it would not nearly equal the tax reductions that Romney was proposing.
One of the main features of Jeb Bush's tax plan is that it would reduce the top marginal tax rate from 39.6% to 28%. The Bush plan has been estimated to increase the budgetary deficit by $2 trillion over ten years.
Ben Carson has proposed that taxpayers pay a Biblical tithe, whereby a businessman earning $10 million would pay $1 million in federal income tax and a secretary earning $50,000 would pay $5,000 in federal income tax. When appearing on Fox News Sunday in early May 2015, Chris Wallace told Carson that the economists he had consulted said that the tax rate would need to be 20% to equal the current revenue stream. Carson answered that the economists he consulted said the rate would not need to over 15% at the most; however, the Tax Policy Center says the tax rate would need to be a minimum of 25% to reach the same objective of tax neutrality.
I have calculated that a family unit earning $200,000 in 2014 would have paid $20,000 in taxes under a 10% Carson plan and $42,800 under the 2014 tax rate schedule. Taxpayers at higher earnings levels would receive even more generous tax savings.
Mike Huckabee wants a sales tax instead of an income tax. Considering that local jurisdictions have sales taxes -- there are Alabama counties that have a sales tax of at least 9% -- consider the mass public revolt if a federal sales tax was added to a local sales tax of, say, 7 or 8%. Rand Paul wants a 17% flat tax and he would eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest. Ted Cruz also wants a flat tax and he would eliminate the IRS.
The tax extremism of most of the Republican presidential contenders is perhaps illustrated most fulsomely by Governor Scott walker, while he was still a presidential contender.Walker had once proposed eliminating Wisconsin's income tax and when asked about eliminating the federal income tax, he replied: "Sounds pretty tempting right now."
Switching to the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has certainly made it abundantly clear that the wealthy must pay much more in income taxes; however, to my knowledge, except for proposing a financial transactions tax, Sanders has not proposed a new tax rate schedule with a much higher top marginal tax rate. Democrats, too often, I believe, talk about the wealthy paying their fair share without defining what a fair share is.
Hillary Clinton said in the first Democratic presidential debate that she wanted the wealthy to pay for providing free tuition for college and university students; however, she also has not proposed a more robust tax rate schedule.
One of the best ways to reduce income and wealth inequality in the nation is to have a progressive income tax rate schedule with a top marginal tax rate of 60 to 70%, so that the wealthy pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. It is noteworthy that from the Second World War to the Ronald Reagan presidency, the top marginal tax rate was never below 70%. Those years were a period of great economic prosperity; also, the gap in wealth and income inequality were much narrower than it is today.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
A Jaded Inside Look at The U.S. Government
Selected Excerpts from: Neil Barofsky, Bailout ( New York: Free Press, 2012)
Neil Barofsky was the special inspector general (SIGTARP) of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP was designed to stabilize financial systems, restore economic growth and prevent foreclosures after the great financial meltdown beginning in late 2008. TARP was initially provided with $700 billion in bailout money, which was later reduced to $475 billion in the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act.
p. xv - "Either I started playing ball and would then get a plum appointment or a lucrative job on Wall Street, or I'd end up discredited and unemployed."
p. 7 - "In doing so, we were going to be stepping on the toes of the Justice Department, a preview of the hostility I would later have to deal with at Treasury."
p. 9 - "DOJ apparently viewed our success as proof of its own failure, and following the logic that is unique to Washington, it worked to kill our case."
p. 19 - "I had no idea that the U.S. government had been captured by the banks and that those running the bailout program I'd be charged with overseeing would come from the very same institutions that had helped [cause] the crisis and then become the beneficiaries of the generous terms of their bailout." And despite my experience with DOJ, I couldn't have imagined the ugliness of the Washington that I'd experience as someone who went against the grain by challenging powerful government officials and the Wall Street powerhouses."
p. 53 - "Finally, I learned that one of the most important things for IGs was performance statistics, the metrics on which IGs were judged by Congress and the White House."
p. 66 - " 'The number one goal of most agencies, is, frankly, to try and make the principal [Washington-speak for the head of the agency] look good, no matter what the actual facts are, even if it means lying to or misleading the press,' she explained." (Kris Belisle, hired as SIGTARP's press person).
p. 67 - (Kris) " 'In Washington, everyone is obsessed with the news cycle, twenty-four to forty-eight hours.' ".
P. 73 - "Treasury didn't require the banks to report on how they were using TARP funds,"
p. 78 - "I didn't realize that the type of transparency that we were pitching risked exposing CPP as the pure bailout it was, given to teetering 'too-big-to-fail' banks, none of which were on the brink of extinction."
p. 85 - "The mortgage-backed securities were a huge lesson for the banks. At every state of their creation and sale, the Wall Street institutions offering them raked in huge fees, and every firm that participated in the transaction (from origination through the final sale of the bonds) enjoyed huge profits."
p. 92 - "The economic models used by the banks and the rating agencies to evaluate loan-backed bonds failed miserably in the lead-up to the crisis because they failed to incorporate certain scenarios that had come to pass, such as house prices declining across the country simultaneously. Betting taxpayer money on similar models seemed unacceptably risky."
p. 127 - "Treasury, by rolling out a hurried and poorly thought out mortgage modification programs, had just helped give birth to the Tea Party."
p. 131 - "It became clear that Geithner and his team must have been so desperate to get toxic assets off the banks' balance sheets that they hadn't adequately considered the potential for massive taxpayer losses from fraud."
p. 132 - "We saw Geithner's Financial Stability Plan for what it was: an unprecedented trillion-dollar playground for fraud and self-dealing."
p. 138 - On March 4, 2009, the news broke that Treasury had authorized the insurance giant AIG to pay $168 million in 'extension bonuses' to employees in its Financial Products Division, the very unit whose reckless bets had brought down the company."
p. 149 - I was furious that Allison [Treasury official] had sent his officials to Congress to trash us behind our backs;"
p. 150 - Barofsky refers to the "duplicitous nature of the world I now inhabited..."
p. 153 - "The chaos of HAMP lured a host of criminal predators running fraudulent advertisements for 'guaranteed Obama modifications' from coast to coast."
p. 156 - "Helping the banks, not home owners, did in fact seem to be Treasury's biggest concern."
p. 157 - "The HAMP interest rate could rise by 23% after five years."
p. 159 - "Those managing TARP didn't seem to want the public to know about it because it was considered to be too complex."
p. 173 - "As we parried back and forth, Geithner repeatedly reached a pitch of anger, regaling me with detailed expletive-filled explanations that established my apparent idiocy."
p. 188 - "It was all part of the cloak-and-dagger routine in Washington. Hearings are cancelled at the last minute, but no one will tell you, leaving it to you to read the tea leaves and to infer from cryptic off-the-record comments what happened."
p. 197 - "Though some home owners might try to take advantage of the program by intentionally not making mortgage programs in order to qualify -- that risk paled in comparison to that created by Treasury by the way it had rescued the too-big-to-fail banks. Rather than requiring those executives to suffer the consequences of their failures, Treasury had handsomely rewarded those who had failed to do their jobs, saving their banks and making sure that almost all of them kept their jobs. and enormous bonuses that they had taken home before the crisis struck."
p. 217 - "This 'heads I win; tails the Government will bail me out' incentive system was still firmly in place. One of the best measures of moral hazard, though, was the metric that matters most to Wall Street executives, their pay. And rather than being scaled down in proportion to their epic failures in risk management, conpensation for the top twenty-five Wall Street firms in 2010 actually broke records at $135 billion."
p. 222 - "While Treasury and Wall Street were trumpeting that the big banks had all paid back their TRAP funds, the gaping deficits that became the focus of the fiscal debates are very much the result of the damage wrecked on the economy by the financial crisis. Even as the government spent more and more billions on stimulus and the bailouts, the recession sapped hundreds of billions in tax revenue out of its coffers. So those concerned with fiscal restraint should have been adamant about solving the too-big-to-fail problem and the fiscal horrors that would accompany the next fiscal crisis that it might cause."
p. 226 - Nearly 9 million jobs lost; 3.5 million homes underwater; and trillions in housing wealth lost. Under HAMP there were fewer than 800,000 ongoing permanent modifications as of March 31, 2012. -- a growth rate of 12,000 per month.
p. 229 - "The top banks are 23% larger than before the crisis." They have $8.5 trillion in assets; equivalent to 56 % of our county's annual output.
In his book, Neil Barofsky has painted a very bleak and dispiriting picture of what he found about how the national government works. He refers to the "ugliness of Washington" and the "duplicitous nature" of the world he inherited. He claims that careerism is rampant in the national government and that if you don't play ball you will find yourself discredited and unemployed. He depicts the Justice Department as trying to kill the case he is making as special inspector general monitoring TARP. He describes a Treasury official as trashing him before he, Barofsky, appears before a congressional committee. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is described as being in a "pitch of anger" and being generally unwilling to hear Barofsky's case.
Barofsky exposed deep flaws in the TARP and HAMP programs. Treasury didn't require banks to report on their use of TARP funds and its eagerness to get toxic assets off the books increased the potential for massive fraud. The public was not properly informed about the huge profits the big banks made through fast, loose and illegal operations. The HAMP program to help home owners was poorly promoted; produced a huge outpouring of fraudulent advertising that was not prosecuted; and was utilized by less than ten percent of underwater home owners. Readers of the excerpts published above will find further instances of how negatively Barofsky viewed his experience with TARP and the U.S. government.
ADDENDUM:
After Barack Obama was elected as president but before he was sworn in, he had an opportunity to provide major relief to underwater home owners. A $50 to $100 billion chunk of the $700 billion in TARP funds was initially designated to help underwater home owners, either directly through payments to them, or indirectly by easing the terms of their payment obligations. The outgoing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said he would not spend that chunk to aid home owners unless Obama agreed to support it. He didn't want to start it and then have Obama kill it after he became president. Former Rep. Barney Frank was intimately involved in the discussions and he described Obama as refusing his support, because he said the country couldn't have two presidents at one time. In other words, it was President George W. Bush's call.
Barack Obama's failure to support the bailout of home owners was a huge mistake, as ten or eleven million underwater home owners would have had substantial extra money to spend on the economy and the recovery from the financial crash in late 2008 would almost certainly have been much more robust.
Acronyms used: CCP - Capital Purchase Program --- HAMP - Home Affordable Modification Program was designed to aid underwater home owners. Underwater in this case means that home owners had insufficient income to pay their home costs. .
Neil Barofsky was the special inspector general (SIGTARP) of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP was designed to stabilize financial systems, restore economic growth and prevent foreclosures after the great financial meltdown beginning in late 2008. TARP was initially provided with $700 billion in bailout money, which was later reduced to $475 billion in the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act.
p. xv - "Either I started playing ball and would then get a plum appointment or a lucrative job on Wall Street, or I'd end up discredited and unemployed."
p. 7 - "In doing so, we were going to be stepping on the toes of the Justice Department, a preview of the hostility I would later have to deal with at Treasury."
p. 9 - "DOJ apparently viewed our success as proof of its own failure, and following the logic that is unique to Washington, it worked to kill our case."
p. 19 - "I had no idea that the U.S. government had been captured by the banks and that those running the bailout program I'd be charged with overseeing would come from the very same institutions that had helped [cause] the crisis and then become the beneficiaries of the generous terms of their bailout." And despite my experience with DOJ, I couldn't have imagined the ugliness of the Washington that I'd experience as someone who went against the grain by challenging powerful government officials and the Wall Street powerhouses."
p. 53 - "Finally, I learned that one of the most important things for IGs was performance statistics, the metrics on which IGs were judged by Congress and the White House."
p. 66 - " 'The number one goal of most agencies, is, frankly, to try and make the principal [Washington-speak for the head of the agency] look good, no matter what the actual facts are, even if it means lying to or misleading the press,' she explained." (Kris Belisle, hired as SIGTARP's press person).
p. 67 - (Kris) " 'In Washington, everyone is obsessed with the news cycle, twenty-four to forty-eight hours.' ".
P. 73 - "Treasury didn't require the banks to report on how they were using TARP funds,"
p. 78 - "I didn't realize that the type of transparency that we were pitching risked exposing CPP as the pure bailout it was, given to teetering 'too-big-to-fail' banks, none of which were on the brink of extinction."
p. 85 - "The mortgage-backed securities were a huge lesson for the banks. At every state of their creation and sale, the Wall Street institutions offering them raked in huge fees, and every firm that participated in the transaction (from origination through the final sale of the bonds) enjoyed huge profits."
p. 92 - "The economic models used by the banks and the rating agencies to evaluate loan-backed bonds failed miserably in the lead-up to the crisis because they failed to incorporate certain scenarios that had come to pass, such as house prices declining across the country simultaneously. Betting taxpayer money on similar models seemed unacceptably risky."
p. 127 - "Treasury, by rolling out a hurried and poorly thought out mortgage modification programs, had just helped give birth to the Tea Party."
p. 131 - "It became clear that Geithner and his team must have been so desperate to get toxic assets off the banks' balance sheets that they hadn't adequately considered the potential for massive taxpayer losses from fraud."
p. 132 - "We saw Geithner's Financial Stability Plan for what it was: an unprecedented trillion-dollar playground for fraud and self-dealing."
p. 138 - On March 4, 2009, the news broke that Treasury had authorized the insurance giant AIG to pay $168 million in 'extension bonuses' to employees in its Financial Products Division, the very unit whose reckless bets had brought down the company."
p. 149 - I was furious that Allison [Treasury official] had sent his officials to Congress to trash us behind our backs;"
p. 150 - Barofsky refers to the "duplicitous nature of the world I now inhabited..."
p. 153 - "The chaos of HAMP lured a host of criminal predators running fraudulent advertisements for 'guaranteed Obama modifications' from coast to coast."
p. 156 - "Helping the banks, not home owners, did in fact seem to be Treasury's biggest concern."
p. 157 - "The HAMP interest rate could rise by 23% after five years."
p. 159 - "Those managing TARP didn't seem to want the public to know about it because it was considered to be too complex."
p. 173 - "As we parried back and forth, Geithner repeatedly reached a pitch of anger, regaling me with detailed expletive-filled explanations that established my apparent idiocy."
p. 188 - "It was all part of the cloak-and-dagger routine in Washington. Hearings are cancelled at the last minute, but no one will tell you, leaving it to you to read the tea leaves and to infer from cryptic off-the-record comments what happened."
p. 197 - "Though some home owners might try to take advantage of the program by intentionally not making mortgage programs in order to qualify -- that risk paled in comparison to that created by Treasury by the way it had rescued the too-big-to-fail banks. Rather than requiring those executives to suffer the consequences of their failures, Treasury had handsomely rewarded those who had failed to do their jobs, saving their banks and making sure that almost all of them kept their jobs. and enormous bonuses that they had taken home before the crisis struck."
p. 217 - "This 'heads I win; tails the Government will bail me out' incentive system was still firmly in place. One of the best measures of moral hazard, though, was the metric that matters most to Wall Street executives, their pay. And rather than being scaled down in proportion to their epic failures in risk management, conpensation for the top twenty-five Wall Street firms in 2010 actually broke records at $135 billion."
p. 222 - "While Treasury and Wall Street were trumpeting that the big banks had all paid back their TRAP funds, the gaping deficits that became the focus of the fiscal debates are very much the result of the damage wrecked on the economy by the financial crisis. Even as the government spent more and more billions on stimulus and the bailouts, the recession sapped hundreds of billions in tax revenue out of its coffers. So those concerned with fiscal restraint should have been adamant about solving the too-big-to-fail problem and the fiscal horrors that would accompany the next fiscal crisis that it might cause."
p. 226 - Nearly 9 million jobs lost; 3.5 million homes underwater; and trillions in housing wealth lost. Under HAMP there were fewer than 800,000 ongoing permanent modifications as of March 31, 2012. -- a growth rate of 12,000 per month.
p. 229 - "The top banks are 23% larger than before the crisis." They have $8.5 trillion in assets; equivalent to 56 % of our county's annual output.
In his book, Neil Barofsky has painted a very bleak and dispiriting picture of what he found about how the national government works. He refers to the "ugliness of Washington" and the "duplicitous nature" of the world he inherited. He claims that careerism is rampant in the national government and that if you don't play ball you will find yourself discredited and unemployed. He depicts the Justice Department as trying to kill the case he is making as special inspector general monitoring TARP. He describes a Treasury official as trashing him before he, Barofsky, appears before a congressional committee. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is described as being in a "pitch of anger" and being generally unwilling to hear Barofsky's case.
Barofsky exposed deep flaws in the TARP and HAMP programs. Treasury didn't require banks to report on their use of TARP funds and its eagerness to get toxic assets off the books increased the potential for massive fraud. The public was not properly informed about the huge profits the big banks made through fast, loose and illegal operations. The HAMP program to help home owners was poorly promoted; produced a huge outpouring of fraudulent advertising that was not prosecuted; and was utilized by less than ten percent of underwater home owners. Readers of the excerpts published above will find further instances of how negatively Barofsky viewed his experience with TARP and the U.S. government.
ADDENDUM:
After Barack Obama was elected as president but before he was sworn in, he had an opportunity to provide major relief to underwater home owners. A $50 to $100 billion chunk of the $700 billion in TARP funds was initially designated to help underwater home owners, either directly through payments to them, or indirectly by easing the terms of their payment obligations. The outgoing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said he would not spend that chunk to aid home owners unless Obama agreed to support it. He didn't want to start it and then have Obama kill it after he became president. Former Rep. Barney Frank was intimately involved in the discussions and he described Obama as refusing his support, because he said the country couldn't have two presidents at one time. In other words, it was President George W. Bush's call.
Barack Obama's failure to support the bailout of home owners was a huge mistake, as ten or eleven million underwater home owners would have had substantial extra money to spend on the economy and the recovery from the financial crash in late 2008 would almost certainly have been much more robust.
Acronyms used: CCP - Capital Purchase Program --- HAMP - Home Affordable Modification Program was designed to aid underwater home owners. Underwater in this case means that home owners had insufficient income to pay their home costs. .
Monday, October 19, 2015
Anti-Choice Victories and Prominent Weirdos
Sliding Back to a Pre-Roe World
From 2010 to 2014, states enacted 231 new abortion restrictions. Abortion clinics have closed at a rate of 1.5 a week in the last two years. Planned Parenthood's latest count is that so far in 2015, thirty-five laws restricting access to abortion have been passed in state legislatures. The Guttmacher Institute has found that in 2010 there were five states that passed four to five major restrictions on abortion; in contrast, there were eighteen states in the same category in 2015. Also, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a total of twenty-four states either require or have litigation pending to require first-trimester abortion providers to meet ambulatory center rules. All but three of those states require it. A 2013 Texas law closed more than half of the state's abortion clinics. Texas had forty-one abortion clinics in 2012 but today the number is down to eighteen. If the law is fully enacted, the number could drop to ten. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
How far is a reasonable burden? Under Texas's HB 2 law, the distances that Texas women of childbearing age would need to travel to the nearest abortion clinic are as follows: more than fifty miles - 36%; more than 100 miles - 24%; and more than 200 miles - 14%. There would be no abortion providers in the 597 miles between San Antonio and Las Cruces, New Mexico; also, El Paso, with a population of 680,000, would be the nation's largest city without a single clinic. (Sources: Fund Texas Choice, Texas Policy Evaluation Project)
Medication abortion is well suited to rural states, because the doctor's role is fairly uncomplicated. Patients and doctors are linked in a video chat -- called "telemedicine" -- then with a remote control, the doctor can unlock a drawer that contains the abortion pills: Mifeprex and misoprostol. The great advantage of telemedicine is that it saves the pregnant woman what is usually a long round-trip. Because it eases access to abortion, especially to women of limited financial means, telemedicine has been banned in seventeen states since 2011. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
Anti-choice zealots have even legislated the dosage of medication a woman may take. Rather than stick with the dosages that doctors now typically prescribe, laws have been passed in five states to require the use of dosages in effect when RU-486 was first introduced. Those dosages were harder to tolerate and caused severe side effects in almost all women.One abortion provider, David Burkons of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who uses the old dosage rules, going back to the year 2000, says the procedure requires four trips to see him. In the first visit he is required to read a script describing the fetus. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
Some of the most egregious statements about abortion/birth control have come from four prominent politicians: a. ... "women are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido... without the help of government." (Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) --- b. "Women's voices are 'not appropriate or qualified' to participate in the debate over birth control." (Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) --- c. "That's not denying women's rights. If a woman then wants birth control, go work somewhere else." (Kansas Governor Sam Brownback) --- d. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down." (Former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin)
From 2010 to 2014, states enacted 231 new abortion restrictions. Abortion clinics have closed at a rate of 1.5 a week in the last two years. Planned Parenthood's latest count is that so far in 2015, thirty-five laws restricting access to abortion have been passed in state legislatures. The Guttmacher Institute has found that in 2010 there were five states that passed four to five major restrictions on abortion; in contrast, there were eighteen states in the same category in 2015. Also, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a total of twenty-four states either require or have litigation pending to require first-trimester abortion providers to meet ambulatory center rules. All but three of those states require it. A 2013 Texas law closed more than half of the state's abortion clinics. Texas had forty-one abortion clinics in 2012 but today the number is down to eighteen. If the law is fully enacted, the number could drop to ten. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
How far is a reasonable burden? Under Texas's HB 2 law, the distances that Texas women of childbearing age would need to travel to the nearest abortion clinic are as follows: more than fifty miles - 36%; more than 100 miles - 24%; and more than 200 miles - 14%. There would be no abortion providers in the 597 miles between San Antonio and Las Cruces, New Mexico; also, El Paso, with a population of 680,000, would be the nation's largest city without a single clinic. (Sources: Fund Texas Choice, Texas Policy Evaluation Project)
Medication abortion is well suited to rural states, because the doctor's role is fairly uncomplicated. Patients and doctors are linked in a video chat -- called "telemedicine" -- then with a remote control, the doctor can unlock a drawer that contains the abortion pills: Mifeprex and misoprostol. The great advantage of telemedicine is that it saves the pregnant woman what is usually a long round-trip. Because it eases access to abortion, especially to women of limited financial means, telemedicine has been banned in seventeen states since 2011. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
Anti-choice zealots have even legislated the dosage of medication a woman may take. Rather than stick with the dosages that doctors now typically prescribe, laws have been passed in five states to require the use of dosages in effect when RU-486 was first introduced. Those dosages were harder to tolerate and caused severe side effects in almost all women.One abortion provider, David Burkons of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who uses the old dosage rules, going back to the year 2000, says the procedure requires four trips to see him. In the first visit he is required to read a script describing the fetus. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
Some of the most egregious statements about abortion/birth control have come from four prominent politicians: a. ... "women are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido... without the help of government." (Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) --- b. "Women's voices are 'not appropriate or qualified' to participate in the debate over birth control." (Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) --- c. "That's not denying women's rights. If a woman then wants birth control, go work somewhere else." (Kansas Governor Sam Brownback) --- d. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down." (Former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin)
Sunday, October 18, 2015
The Cuba Agreement, Enforced Silence, Torture Inconveniencies and Torture Modalities
1. Pope Francis and the Cuba Agreement
President Barack Obama repudiated fifty-five years of U.S. efforts to roll back the Cuban revolution, declaring that peaceful existence made more sense than perpetual antagonism.
Prisoner exchange occupied a large part of the exchange. By September 2011, the Cubans had explicitly proposed swapping the Cuban Five for Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen being held for spying on Cuba. The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 in a federal court in Miami. They were accused of committing espionage conspiracy against the U.S. The Cuban Five contended that they were monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups to prevent them from attacking Cuba. It took months of negotiation for the U.S. to convince Cuban negotiators that the only exchange that the White House could abide would be trading spies for spies.
Pope Francis had proposed a addressing the status of certain prisoners and imploring the two sides to resolve issues of humanitarian concern in letters he wrote to President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro. It was at the Vatican that the final agreement on prisoner exchange and restoring diplomatic relations was hammered out.
2. Enforced Silence by Florida Governor Scott
In a letter to the editor in the July 14, 2015 issue of The New Yorker, W.E. Smith, professor of history at Hope University, points out that under the governorship of Rick Scott, doctors have been prohibited from asking patients whether they have firearms -- despite the well-documented health and safety risks associated with gun ownership. Scott has also tried to prohibit workers at county health clinics from discussing the Affordable Care Act with patients.
Twenty-one states have versions of laws making it illegal for workers at state-funded health centers to provide abortion services, or even counsel women about them.
3. Some Inconvenient Truths About Abortion
Despite a virtually total ban on abortions in Brazil, the abortion rate is higher than in the United States and more than 200,000 women end up in the hospital each year due to botched abortions, whether self-administered or not. In Northern Ireland, the "use of contraceptives is widespread, emergency contraception can be purchased without a prescription and an unknown but not trivial number of women obtain abortion pills through pro-choice networks." Katha Pollitt doubts that "in a decade or two from now, women [in Northern Ireland] will be risking 14 years in prison for taking a pill that is available online and legal about everywhere else in Europe." [1]
Pollitt asks if it is "a victory if women in states unfriendly to both conception and abortion have unplanned, unwanted babies? Is that the country we want?" According to the Guttmacher Institute, the two-thirds of women who use it (birth control) carefully and consistently account for only five percent of unintended pregnancies; also, seventy-five percent of women who seek abortions say they can't afford a baby now. "Moreover, [says Katha Pollitt] the political wing of the anti-choice movement has thrown in its lot with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has cut every social benefit it can."
4.) Torture Modalities
Torture Techniques Approved by the United States While Condemned in Other Countries
Type of Abuse U.S.Source
1;) Binding/Shackling of Limbs Rumsfeld memo of 2/12/02
2.) Striping/Forced Nudity Same as 1.)
3.) Solitary Confinement/Isolation Rumsfeld (Isolation for up to 30 days) and Gen.
Sanchez memo of 9/14/03
4.) Threats of Dog Attacks Rumsfeld, Sanchez and CJTF-7 memo of 10/9/03
5.) Excessive Heat/Cold Same as 4.)
6.) Sleep Deprivation Same as 4.) and 5.)
7.) Waterboarding CIA
8.) Blindfolding/Hooding Rumsfeld
9.) Denial of Food/Drink Rumsfeld, Sanchez, CJTF-7
On 6.), Rumsfeld approved twenty hours at a time; Sanchez and CJTF-7 approved up to seventy-two hours, with a minimum of four hours a day.
Countries That Practiced Such Torture Techniques With Corresponding Number
1.) China, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Libya, Pakistan; 2.) Egypt, North Korea, Syria, Turkey; 3.) China, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, North Korea, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey; 4,) None; 5.) Eritrea, Indonesia, North Korea, Turkey; 6.) Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey; 7.) Brazil, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia; 8.) Egypt, Iran, Israel, Turkey; 9.) Burma, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Zimbabwe. [2]
Footnotes
[1] Katha Pollitt, "Inconvenient Truths," The Nation, October 12, 2015.
[2] "Torture: a Human Rights Perspective" (New York: The New Press, 2005)
President Barack Obama repudiated fifty-five years of U.S. efforts to roll back the Cuban revolution, declaring that peaceful existence made more sense than perpetual antagonism.
Prisoner exchange occupied a large part of the exchange. By September 2011, the Cubans had explicitly proposed swapping the Cuban Five for Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen being held for spying on Cuba. The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 in a federal court in Miami. They were accused of committing espionage conspiracy against the U.S. The Cuban Five contended that they were monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups to prevent them from attacking Cuba. It took months of negotiation for the U.S. to convince Cuban negotiators that the only exchange that the White House could abide would be trading spies for spies.
Pope Francis had proposed a addressing the status of certain prisoners and imploring the two sides to resolve issues of humanitarian concern in letters he wrote to President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro. It was at the Vatican that the final agreement on prisoner exchange and restoring diplomatic relations was hammered out.
2. Enforced Silence by Florida Governor Scott
In a letter to the editor in the July 14, 2015 issue of The New Yorker, W.E. Smith, professor of history at Hope University, points out that under the governorship of Rick Scott, doctors have been prohibited from asking patients whether they have firearms -- despite the well-documented health and safety risks associated with gun ownership. Scott has also tried to prohibit workers at county health clinics from discussing the Affordable Care Act with patients.
Twenty-one states have versions of laws making it illegal for workers at state-funded health centers to provide abortion services, or even counsel women about them.
3. Some Inconvenient Truths About Abortion
Despite a virtually total ban on abortions in Brazil, the abortion rate is higher than in the United States and more than 200,000 women end up in the hospital each year due to botched abortions, whether self-administered or not. In Northern Ireland, the "use of contraceptives is widespread, emergency contraception can be purchased without a prescription and an unknown but not trivial number of women obtain abortion pills through pro-choice networks." Katha Pollitt doubts that "in a decade or two from now, women [in Northern Ireland] will be risking 14 years in prison for taking a pill that is available online and legal about everywhere else in Europe." [1]
Pollitt asks if it is "a victory if women in states unfriendly to both conception and abortion have unplanned, unwanted babies? Is that the country we want?" According to the Guttmacher Institute, the two-thirds of women who use it (birth control) carefully and consistently account for only five percent of unintended pregnancies; also, seventy-five percent of women who seek abortions say they can't afford a baby now. "Moreover, [says Katha Pollitt] the political wing of the anti-choice movement has thrown in its lot with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has cut every social benefit it can."
4.) Torture Modalities
Torture Techniques Approved by the United States While Condemned in Other Countries
Type of Abuse U.S.Source
1;) Binding/Shackling of Limbs Rumsfeld memo of 2/12/02
2.) Striping/Forced Nudity Same as 1.)
3.) Solitary Confinement/Isolation Rumsfeld (Isolation for up to 30 days) and Gen.
Sanchez memo of 9/14/03
4.) Threats of Dog Attacks Rumsfeld, Sanchez and CJTF-7 memo of 10/9/03
5.) Excessive Heat/Cold Same as 4.)
6.) Sleep Deprivation Same as 4.) and 5.)
7.) Waterboarding CIA
8.) Blindfolding/Hooding Rumsfeld
9.) Denial of Food/Drink Rumsfeld, Sanchez, CJTF-7
On 6.), Rumsfeld approved twenty hours at a time; Sanchez and CJTF-7 approved up to seventy-two hours, with a minimum of four hours a day.
Countries That Practiced Such Torture Techniques With Corresponding Number
1.) China, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Libya, Pakistan; 2.) Egypt, North Korea, Syria, Turkey; 3.) China, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, North Korea, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey; 4,) None; 5.) Eritrea, Indonesia, North Korea, Turkey; 6.) Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey; 7.) Brazil, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia; 8.) Egypt, Iran, Israel, Turkey; 9.) Burma, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Zimbabwe. [2]
Footnotes
[1] Katha Pollitt, "Inconvenient Truths," The Nation, October 12, 2015.
[2] "Torture: a Human Rights Perspective" (New York: The New Press, 2005)
Friday, October 16, 2015
Whitey Bulger and His F.B.I. White-Washers
In 1961, F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover stressed in a memo, the imperative to develop "live sources within the upper echelon of the organization hoodlum element." Joseph (the Animal) Barboja was one of those live sources. When authorities began looking into a 1965 murder that Barboja has participated in, his contacts in the F.B.I. engineered a scheme to protect him by implicating four other non-involved men in the murder.
"Tribalism is a recurring theme in the Bulger saga, but the film ["Black Mass"] suggests that the tribe allegiance of scrappy neighborhoods transcends any subsequent pledge they might make to a criminal gang, or to the feds." "Few activities were more reviled in this Irish-American milieu than snitching." "An effective inside man in a criminal organization is also, necessarily, a criminal in good standing -- and therefore a dangerous person with whom to be in business." [1]
"With Bulger, as with Barboja, the asset came to seem to be so valuable that the government did more than tolerate his bad behavior; it began to enable that behavior even to engage in criminal activity itself." "For security reasons, relationships with informants are often carried out in secret, with little oversight; the usual temptations become hard to resist." [2] When Whitey Bulger learned that Morris, the supervisor of his handler, F.B.I. agent Connollly, had a fondness for wine, he kept Morris plentifully supplied with wine.
After Whitey Bulger was discovered hiding out in California after being on the lam for many years, just as Bulger had been given a pass in his criminal career, when Bulger was put on trial for multiple serious crimes, the Justice Department gave a pass to the killers from Bulger's gang in the interest of prosecuting Bulger."The notion that Whitey Bulger's pact with the F.B.I. represented not a gross aberration, but something like business as usual is almost too bleak to contemplate." [3] There is no definitive information about how many confidential informants are working for the F.B.I. at any one time; however, in a 2008 budget request, the Bureau put the number at 15,000. After the official complicity in Bulger's crimes became known, the Department of Justice ordered the F.B.I. to track any crimes committed by its informants. In a 2013 letter, the Bureau disclosed that in the prior year it had authorized informants to break the law on 5,939 occasions.
Once law enforcement bends the rules for active criminals, it becomes bound to their sources. Once more, the culture rewarded agents who landed top informants. Shouldn't the government have some responsibility for the violent actions of those it promotes, shelters and protects?
"Tribalism is a recurring theme in the Bulger saga, but the film ["Black Mass"] suggests that the tribe allegiance of scrappy neighborhoods transcends any subsequent pledge they might make to a criminal gang, or to the feds." "Few activities were more reviled in this Irish-American milieu than snitching." "An effective inside man in a criminal organization is also, necessarily, a criminal in good standing -- and therefore a dangerous person with whom to be in business." [1]
"With Bulger, as with Barboja, the asset came to seem to be so valuable that the government did more than tolerate his bad behavior; it began to enable that behavior even to engage in criminal activity itself." "For security reasons, relationships with informants are often carried out in secret, with little oversight; the usual temptations become hard to resist." [2] When Whitey Bulger learned that Morris, the supervisor of his handler, F.B.I. agent Connollly, had a fondness for wine, he kept Morris plentifully supplied with wine.
After Whitey Bulger was discovered hiding out in California after being on the lam for many years, just as Bulger had been given a pass in his criminal career, when Bulger was put on trial for multiple serious crimes, the Justice Department gave a pass to the killers from Bulger's gang in the interest of prosecuting Bulger."The notion that Whitey Bulger's pact with the F.B.I. represented not a gross aberration, but something like business as usual is almost too bleak to contemplate." [3] There is no definitive information about how many confidential informants are working for the F.B.I. at any one time; however, in a 2008 budget request, the Bureau put the number at 15,000. After the official complicity in Bulger's crimes became known, the Department of Justice ordered the F.B.I. to track any crimes committed by its informants. In a 2013 letter, the Bureau disclosed that in the prior year it had authorized informants to break the law on 5,939 occasions.
Once law enforcement bends the rules for active criminals, it becomes bound to their sources. Once more, the culture rewarded agents who landed top informants. Shouldn't the government have some responsibility for the violent actions of those it promotes, shelters and protects?
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Syrian Wars of Proxy Are a Cautionary Tale for the U.S.
Dr. As'ad AbuKhalil is a professor of political science at the University of California. He describes the Syrian war as not only a proxy war but it has an internal dimension in Syria. He has identified eight conflicts in the Middle East in a piece circulated by Peace Action to its affiliates.
1.) The internal Wahhabi war. The internal Wahhabi war is pitting the various Wahhabi parties in the region against each other. The Saudi regime, Qatari regime, al-Qa'idah (Nusrah front) and ISIS: all four are Wahhabi and each is trying to dominate the field of the Wahhabi movement.
2.) The Iranian-Saudi war. The two sides are engaged in struggles in different parts of the region, from Yemen to Lebanon and Syria. The conflict is over political dominance and hegemony.
3.) The Sunni-Shia war: this is a rather contrived war that was instigated by the Saudi regime -- at the behest of of the U.S. and Israel -- to undermine the basic of Arab support for Hezbullah and Iran in the region.
4.) The Russian-American war: this war is reminiscent of the Cold War. The conflict between the Russian government and the American government has never reached this level since the demise of the Soviet Union. The conflict over Ukraine and Syria, among other places, has pushed both sides to resort to the tricks and methods of the Cold War, including proxy wars.
5.) Qatari and Saudi conflict. The Wahhabi regimes are fighting over many issues but they both wish to speak on behalf of political Islam. Qatar banks on the Muslim Brotherhood and some elements of Jihadi Islam, while the Saudi regime banks on the Salafis and some elements of Jihari Islam. This conflict may explain the conflict between the Nusrah Front and ISIS.
6.) The Hezbollah versus the Future Movement: both of those Lebanese movements have been fighting in Syria. The Future Movement is a broad and loose movement which comprises various strands, including Salafis.
7.) Clash of Islamist identities: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran are all hoping to leave their national imprint on the political Islamist movement in the region.
8.) The regional conflict between the global organization of the Muslim Brotherhood on one hand and the regional Salafis on the other.
Dr. AbuKhalil says that these proxy conflicts now determine the course of events in Syria and the Syrian people themselves have very little control over them
ADDENDUM: From time to time the Congressional Research Service publishes a report listing "notable deployments of military forces overseas." CRS updates this list "as circumstances warrant." The latest report covers deployments through August of 2014. It does not include the new bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq.
Dividing this data by "eras" we find:
Post Cold War (August 1990 - 14 August 2014): 146 deployments (averaging 6.3 per year: Clinton: 65, Bush: 39, and Obama: 33)
Cold War (24 June 1948 - August 1990): 47 deployments (averaging 1.5 per year)
Interwar and World War II (1918 - 1948): 34 deployments (averaging 1.1 per year)
Imperial Era and World War I (1866 - 1917): 69 deployments (averaging 1.4 per year)
Nation's Finding through Civil War (1798 to 1865): 65 deployments (averaging 1.0 per year)
1.) The internal Wahhabi war. The internal Wahhabi war is pitting the various Wahhabi parties in the region against each other. The Saudi regime, Qatari regime, al-Qa'idah (Nusrah front) and ISIS: all four are Wahhabi and each is trying to dominate the field of the Wahhabi movement.
2.) The Iranian-Saudi war. The two sides are engaged in struggles in different parts of the region, from Yemen to Lebanon and Syria. The conflict is over political dominance and hegemony.
3.) The Sunni-Shia war: this is a rather contrived war that was instigated by the Saudi regime -- at the behest of of the U.S. and Israel -- to undermine the basic of Arab support for Hezbullah and Iran in the region.
4.) The Russian-American war: this war is reminiscent of the Cold War. The conflict between the Russian government and the American government has never reached this level since the demise of the Soviet Union. The conflict over Ukraine and Syria, among other places, has pushed both sides to resort to the tricks and methods of the Cold War, including proxy wars.
5.) Qatari and Saudi conflict. The Wahhabi regimes are fighting over many issues but they both wish to speak on behalf of political Islam. Qatar banks on the Muslim Brotherhood and some elements of Jihadi Islam, while the Saudi regime banks on the Salafis and some elements of Jihari Islam. This conflict may explain the conflict between the Nusrah Front and ISIS.
6.) The Hezbollah versus the Future Movement: both of those Lebanese movements have been fighting in Syria. The Future Movement is a broad and loose movement which comprises various strands, including Salafis.
7.) Clash of Islamist identities: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran are all hoping to leave their national imprint on the political Islamist movement in the region.
8.) The regional conflict between the global organization of the Muslim Brotherhood on one hand and the regional Salafis on the other.
Dr. AbuKhalil says that these proxy conflicts now determine the course of events in Syria and the Syrian people themselves have very little control over them
ADDENDUM: From time to time the Congressional Research Service publishes a report listing "notable deployments of military forces overseas." CRS updates this list "as circumstances warrant." The latest report covers deployments through August of 2014. It does not include the new bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq.
Dividing this data by "eras" we find:
Post Cold War (August 1990 - 14 August 2014): 146 deployments (averaging 6.3 per year: Clinton: 65, Bush: 39, and Obama: 33)
Cold War (24 June 1948 - August 1990): 47 deployments (averaging 1.5 per year)
Interwar and World War II (1918 - 1948): 34 deployments (averaging 1.1 per year)
Imperial Era and World War I (1866 - 1917): 69 deployments (averaging 1.4 per year)
Nation's Finding through Civil War (1798 to 1865): 65 deployments (averaging 1.0 per year)
Monday, October 12, 2015
Perspectives on the World by Tony Judt (continued)
"The Way We Live Now"
p. 205 "If America is to depend on its 'New' European friends, then it had better lower its expectations. Among the pro-U.S. signatories singled out for praise by Mr. Rumsfeld, Denmark spends just 1.6 percent of GNP on defense; Italy 1.5 percent; Spain a mere 1.4 percent -- less than half the defense commitment of 'Old European' France." --- p. 215 "[Let] us stop venting our anxieties and insecurities in vituperative macho digs at Europe."
"Anti-Americans Abroad"
p. 221 "What upsets them (foreigners) is U.S. foreign policy; and they don't trust American's current president (George W, Bush)."
"The New World Order"
p. 242 "And yet this country is obsessed with war: rumors of war, images of war, 'preemptive' war, 'surgical' war, 'prophylactic' war, 'permanent' war." As President Bush explained at a news conference on April 13, 2004, 'This country must go on the offense and stray on the offense.' " --- p. 244 "The U.S.outsourced targeted suspects to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and Uzebekistan. At least 27 'suspects' have been killed in U.S. custody." --- p. 245 "The Amnesty report lists 60 alleged incarceration and interrogation practices." --- p. 249 "Hard as it may be to grasp, much of the world no longer sees the United States as a force for good." "For the United States isn't credible today: its reputation and standing are at the lowest point in history and will not soon recover."
"Is the UN Doomed?"
"Sadly, the greatest impediment of all is the United Nation's most powerful member state and major paymaster, the United States."
"The Wrecking Ball of Innovation"
p. 308 "The wealth gap in the United States is now at the widest since 1929, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent of earners." "The new market narrative -- the way we think of our world -- has abandoned the social for the economic." It presumes an 'integrated system of global capitalism,' economic growth and productivity rather than class struggles, revolutions and progress." --- p. 310 "One of the fundamental objectives of the twentieth-century welfare state was to make full citizens of everyone: not just voting citizens in Robert Reich's limited sense but rights-bearing citizens with an unconditional claim upon the attention and support of the collectivity. The outcome would be a more cohesive society, with no category of person excluded or less 'deserving.' But the new 'discretionary' approach makes an individual claim on the collectivity once again contingent on good conduct." "It reintroduces conditionality to social citizenships: only those with a job are full members of the community." --- p. 311 "The real impact of privatization, like welfare, deregulation, the technological revolution, and indeed globalization itself, has been to reduce the role of the state in the affairs of its citizens to get the states 'off our backs' and 'out of our lives' -- a common objective of economic 'reformers' everywhere -- and make public policy, in Robert Reich's approving words, 'business-friendly.' " --- p. 312 "The benign 'invisible hand' -- the unregulated free market -- may have been a favorable inaugural condition for commercial societies. But it cannot reproduce the noncommercial institutions ad relations -- of cohesion, trust, custom, restraint, obligation, morality, authority -- that it inherited and which the pursuits of individual economic self-interest tends to undermine rather than reinforce." --- p. 314 "We have become stridently insistent -- in our economic calculations, our political practices, our international strategies, even our educational priorities -- that the past has little of relevance to teach us." --- p. 315 "We may discover, as they did, that the universal provision of social services ad some restriction upon inequalities of income and wealth are important economic variables in themselves, furnishing the necessary public cohesion and political confidence for a sustained recovery -- and that only the state has the resources and the authority to provide those services and enforce those restrictions in our collective name."
"What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?"
p. 327 "Most of the things that governments have seen fit to pass into the private sector were operating at a loss: whether they were railway companies, coal mines, postal services or energy utilities, they cost more to provide and maintain then they could ever hope to attract in revenue." "The only reason that private investors are willing to purchase apparently inefficient public goods is because the state eliminates or reduces their exposure to risk." --- p. 329 "In the United States today, we have a discredited state and inadequate public resources." "We have diminished our allegiance to the state and lost something vital that we ought to share -- and in many cases used to share -- with our fellow citizens." --- p. 337 "The rise of the social-service state, the century-long construction of a public sector whose goods and services illustrate and promote our collective identity and common purposes, the institution of welfare as a matter of right and its provision as a social duty: these were no mean accomplishments."
"Generations In the Balance"
p. 356 [Amos Elon (1926-2009)] "As he (Elon) foresaw in 2003, Israeli insistence upon ruling over an Arab population that will eventually become a majority within the country's borders can only lead to a single authoritarian state encompassing two mutually hostile nations: one dominant, the other subservient." --- p. 357 "It (Zionism) has, for a growing number of Israelis, been corrupted into an uncompromising ethno-religious real estate pact, a pact that justifies any and all actions against real or imagined threats, critics, and enemies."
p. 205 "If America is to depend on its 'New' European friends, then it had better lower its expectations. Among the pro-U.S. signatories singled out for praise by Mr. Rumsfeld, Denmark spends just 1.6 percent of GNP on defense; Italy 1.5 percent; Spain a mere 1.4 percent -- less than half the defense commitment of 'Old European' France." --- p. 215 "[Let] us stop venting our anxieties and insecurities in vituperative macho digs at Europe."
"Anti-Americans Abroad"
p. 221 "What upsets them (foreigners) is U.S. foreign policy; and they don't trust American's current president (George W, Bush)."
"The New World Order"
p. 242 "And yet this country is obsessed with war: rumors of war, images of war, 'preemptive' war, 'surgical' war, 'prophylactic' war, 'permanent' war." As President Bush explained at a news conference on April 13, 2004, 'This country must go on the offense and stray on the offense.' " --- p. 244 "The U.S.outsourced targeted suspects to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and Uzebekistan. At least 27 'suspects' have been killed in U.S. custody." --- p. 245 "The Amnesty report lists 60 alleged incarceration and interrogation practices." --- p. 249 "Hard as it may be to grasp, much of the world no longer sees the United States as a force for good." "For the United States isn't credible today: its reputation and standing are at the lowest point in history and will not soon recover."
"Is the UN Doomed?"
"Sadly, the greatest impediment of all is the United Nation's most powerful member state and major paymaster, the United States."
"The Wrecking Ball of Innovation"
p. 308 "The wealth gap in the United States is now at the widest since 1929, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent of earners." "The new market narrative -- the way we think of our world -- has abandoned the social for the economic." It presumes an 'integrated system of global capitalism,' economic growth and productivity rather than class struggles, revolutions and progress." --- p. 310 "One of the fundamental objectives of the twentieth-century welfare state was to make full citizens of everyone: not just voting citizens in Robert Reich's limited sense but rights-bearing citizens with an unconditional claim upon the attention and support of the collectivity. The outcome would be a more cohesive society, with no category of person excluded or less 'deserving.' But the new 'discretionary' approach makes an individual claim on the collectivity once again contingent on good conduct." "It reintroduces conditionality to social citizenships: only those with a job are full members of the community." --- p. 311 "The real impact of privatization, like welfare, deregulation, the technological revolution, and indeed globalization itself, has been to reduce the role of the state in the affairs of its citizens to get the states 'off our backs' and 'out of our lives' -- a common objective of economic 'reformers' everywhere -- and make public policy, in Robert Reich's approving words, 'business-friendly.' " --- p. 312 "The benign 'invisible hand' -- the unregulated free market -- may have been a favorable inaugural condition for commercial societies. But it cannot reproduce the noncommercial institutions ad relations -- of cohesion, trust, custom, restraint, obligation, morality, authority -- that it inherited and which the pursuits of individual economic self-interest tends to undermine rather than reinforce." --- p. 314 "We have become stridently insistent -- in our economic calculations, our political practices, our international strategies, even our educational priorities -- that the past has little of relevance to teach us." --- p. 315 "We may discover, as they did, that the universal provision of social services ad some restriction upon inequalities of income and wealth are important economic variables in themselves, furnishing the necessary public cohesion and political confidence for a sustained recovery -- and that only the state has the resources and the authority to provide those services and enforce those restrictions in our collective name."
"What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?"
p. 327 "Most of the things that governments have seen fit to pass into the private sector were operating at a loss: whether they were railway companies, coal mines, postal services or energy utilities, they cost more to provide and maintain then they could ever hope to attract in revenue." "The only reason that private investors are willing to purchase apparently inefficient public goods is because the state eliminates or reduces their exposure to risk." --- p. 329 "In the United States today, we have a discredited state and inadequate public resources." "We have diminished our allegiance to the state and lost something vital that we ought to share -- and in many cases used to share -- with our fellow citizens." --- p. 337 "The rise of the social-service state, the century-long construction of a public sector whose goods and services illustrate and promote our collective identity and common purposes, the institution of welfare as a matter of right and its provision as a social duty: these were no mean accomplishments."
"Generations In the Balance"
p. 356 [Amos Elon (1926-2009)] "As he (Elon) foresaw in 2003, Israeli insistence upon ruling over an Arab population that will eventually become a majority within the country's borders can only lead to a single authoritarian state encompassing two mutually hostile nations: one dominant, the other subservient." --- p. 357 "It (Zionism) has, for a growing number of Israelis, been corrupted into an uncompromising ethno-religious real estate pact, a pact that justifies any and all actions against real or imagined threats, critics, and enemies."
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Perspectives on the World by Tony Judt
Selections from Tony Judt, When the Facts Change (New York: Penguin Press, 2015).
"Why the Cold War Worked"
p. 81 "By bringing America into Europe to provide security against further change, the West Europeans assured themselves of the stability and protection required for the reconstruction of their half of the continent." --- "The Soviet Union meanwhile was left to get on with the dictatorial governance of the half of the continent, with the promise of noninterference in return for its abstention from further adventures.--"
"Freedom and Freedonia"
p. 104 "The truly brutal European wars of our century (20th) have been confined to Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Nothing in modern American, British, French, Italian, or even Spanish experience can match the traumatic dislocation , the murderous violence, and the sheer sustained sadism of the civil wars in and between Balkan states before 1914, between 1941 and 1948, or since 1991."
"The Road to Nowhere"
p. 111 "We are mesmerized by the raw rhetoric of this 'war on terror': any politician who can convincingly label his domestic or foreign critics as 'terrorists' is guaranteed at least the ear of the American government, and usually something more."
"Israel: The Alternatives"
p. 117 "In this way Israel could remain both Jewish and at least formally democratic: but at the cost of becoming the first modern democracy to conduct full-scale ethnic cleansing as a state project, something which would condemn Israel to the status of an outlaw state, an international pariah.: "Washington's unconditional support fro Israel even in spite of (silent) misgivings is the main reason why most of the rest of the world no longer credits our good faith," "With American support, Jerusalem has consistently and blatantly flouted UN resolutions requiring it to withdraw from land seized and occupied in war. Israel is the only Middle Eastern state known to possess genuine and lethal weapons of mass destruction."
"A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy"
p. 127 "We shall see the Iraq war and its catastrophic consequences as not the end of an era that began in the wake of the 1967 war, a period during which American alignment with Israel was shaped by two imperatives: cold-war strategic calculation and a newfound domestic sensitivity to the memory of the Holocaust and the debt owed to its victims and survivors."
"The 'Problem of Evil' in Postwar Europe"
p. 135 "President George W. Bush's 'axis of evil,' a self-serving abuse of the term which has contributed greatly to the cynicism it now elicits." "We are losing the capacity to distinguish between the worst sins and follies of mankind: stupidity, prejudice, opportunism, demagogy, and fanaticism -- and genuine evil." --- p. 136 "The question is what other evils we shall neglect -- or create -- by focusing exclusively upon a single enemy and using it to justify a hundred lesser crimes of our own." --- p. 137 "Today, when Israel is exposed to international criticism for its mistreatment of Palestinians and its occupation of territory conquered in 1967, its defenders prefer to emphasize the memory of the Holocaust."
"Fictions on the Ground"
p. 146 "President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond." --- p. 149 "Israel's exclusive claims upon Jewish identity... reduces all non-Jewish citizens and residents to second-class status." --- p. 152 "Israel finds it difficult to conceive of other ways to respond, other than its habitual resort to force." --- p. 153 "Israel has missed many chances: a 40-year occupation; 3 catastrophic invasions of Lebanon; an invasion of and blockage of Gaza; and a botched attack in international waters."
"What Is to Be Done?"
p. 159 "Why would anyone suppose that the Israel of Mr. Netanyahu will find it in its heart the political will or prudential generosity to leave the Palestinians anything worth having in the far more contentious territories of 'Judea and Samaria?' " --- p. 167 "Thanks to the 'Jewish State's abusive treatment of the Palestinians, the Israel/Palestine imbroglio is the chief proximate cause of he resurgence of anti-semitism worldwide."
"Its Own Worst Enemy"
p. 184 "The United States is often a delinquent international citizen. It is reluctant to join international initiatives or agreements, whether on climate warming, biological warfare, criminal justice, or women's rights; the United States is one of the only two states (the other being Somalia) that have failed to ratify the 1989 Convention on Children's Rights. The present U.S. administration has unsigned the Rome Treaty establishing an International Criminal Court ad has declared itself no longer bound by the Vienna Convention on Law of Treaties, which sets up the obligations of states to abide by treaties they have yet to ratify. The American attitude toward the United Nations and agencies is cool, to say the least." --- p. 186 "Bush's account of America's global struggle against the forces of darkness didn't even mention America's allies." --- p. 190 "Fifty-five percent of the world's development aid and two-thirds of all grants-in-aid to the poor and vulnerable nations of the globe come from the European Union. Asa share of GNP, U.S. foreign aid is barely one-third the European average." --- 'Soft power is about influence, example, credibility and reputation." --- p. 192 "There are only 700 Americans currently serving overseas in UN peacekeeping missions (out of a total of 45,000 personnel." --- p. 195 "More than one in five Americans is poor, whereas the figures for continental Western Europe hover around 8 percent." :Fewer than one American in three supports significant redistribution of wealth -- 63 percent of Britons favor it and the figures are higher still on the European continent."
This treatment of of Tony Judt will be continued in a subsequent blog.
"Why the Cold War Worked"
p. 81 "By bringing America into Europe to provide security against further change, the West Europeans assured themselves of the stability and protection required for the reconstruction of their half of the continent." --- "The Soviet Union meanwhile was left to get on with the dictatorial governance of the half of the continent, with the promise of noninterference in return for its abstention from further adventures.--"
"Freedom and Freedonia"
p. 104 "The truly brutal European wars of our century (20th) have been confined to Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Nothing in modern American, British, French, Italian, or even Spanish experience can match the traumatic dislocation , the murderous violence, and the sheer sustained sadism of the civil wars in and between Balkan states before 1914, between 1941 and 1948, or since 1991."
"The Road to Nowhere"
p. 111 "We are mesmerized by the raw rhetoric of this 'war on terror': any politician who can convincingly label his domestic or foreign critics as 'terrorists' is guaranteed at least the ear of the American government, and usually something more."
"Israel: The Alternatives"
p. 117 "In this way Israel could remain both Jewish and at least formally democratic: but at the cost of becoming the first modern democracy to conduct full-scale ethnic cleansing as a state project, something which would condemn Israel to the status of an outlaw state, an international pariah.: "Washington's unconditional support fro Israel even in spite of (silent) misgivings is the main reason why most of the rest of the world no longer credits our good faith," "With American support, Jerusalem has consistently and blatantly flouted UN resolutions requiring it to withdraw from land seized and occupied in war. Israel is the only Middle Eastern state known to possess genuine and lethal weapons of mass destruction."
"A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy"
p. 127 "We shall see the Iraq war and its catastrophic consequences as not the end of an era that began in the wake of the 1967 war, a period during which American alignment with Israel was shaped by two imperatives: cold-war strategic calculation and a newfound domestic sensitivity to the memory of the Holocaust and the debt owed to its victims and survivors."
"The 'Problem of Evil' in Postwar Europe"
p. 135 "President George W. Bush's 'axis of evil,' a self-serving abuse of the term which has contributed greatly to the cynicism it now elicits." "We are losing the capacity to distinguish between the worst sins and follies of mankind: stupidity, prejudice, opportunism, demagogy, and fanaticism -- and genuine evil." --- p. 136 "The question is what other evils we shall neglect -- or create -- by focusing exclusively upon a single enemy and using it to justify a hundred lesser crimes of our own." --- p. 137 "Today, when Israel is exposed to international criticism for its mistreatment of Palestinians and its occupation of territory conquered in 1967, its defenders prefer to emphasize the memory of the Holocaust."
"Fictions on the Ground"
p. 146 "President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond." --- p. 149 "Israel's exclusive claims upon Jewish identity... reduces all non-Jewish citizens and residents to second-class status." --- p. 152 "Israel finds it difficult to conceive of other ways to respond, other than its habitual resort to force." --- p. 153 "Israel has missed many chances: a 40-year occupation; 3 catastrophic invasions of Lebanon; an invasion of and blockage of Gaza; and a botched attack in international waters."
"What Is to Be Done?"
p. 159 "Why would anyone suppose that the Israel of Mr. Netanyahu will find it in its heart the political will or prudential generosity to leave the Palestinians anything worth having in the far more contentious territories of 'Judea and Samaria?' " --- p. 167 "Thanks to the 'Jewish State's abusive treatment of the Palestinians, the Israel/Palestine imbroglio is the chief proximate cause of he resurgence of anti-semitism worldwide."
"Its Own Worst Enemy"
p. 184 "The United States is often a delinquent international citizen. It is reluctant to join international initiatives or agreements, whether on climate warming, biological warfare, criminal justice, or women's rights; the United States is one of the only two states (the other being Somalia) that have failed to ratify the 1989 Convention on Children's Rights. The present U.S. administration has unsigned the Rome Treaty establishing an International Criminal Court ad has declared itself no longer bound by the Vienna Convention on Law of Treaties, which sets up the obligations of states to abide by treaties they have yet to ratify. The American attitude toward the United Nations and agencies is cool, to say the least." --- p. 186 "Bush's account of America's global struggle against the forces of darkness didn't even mention America's allies." --- p. 190 "Fifty-five percent of the world's development aid and two-thirds of all grants-in-aid to the poor and vulnerable nations of the globe come from the European Union. Asa share of GNP, U.S. foreign aid is barely one-third the European average." --- 'Soft power is about influence, example, credibility and reputation." --- p. 192 "There are only 700 Americans currently serving overseas in UN peacekeeping missions (out of a total of 45,000 personnel." --- p. 195 "More than one in five Americans is poor, whereas the figures for continental Western Europe hover around 8 percent." :Fewer than one American in three supports significant redistribution of wealth -- 63 percent of Britons favor it and the figures are higher still on the European continent."
This treatment of of Tony Judt will be continued in a subsequent blog.
Friday, October 9, 2015
Sam Brownback's Devastated Kansas
Former U.S. Senator Sam Brownback ran for governor of Kansas in 2010 on a radical platform of eliminating the state income tax, reducing funding for public schools, creating judicial elections, and dismantling welfare. Brownback was successful in sharply reducing income tax rates and reducing public education funding. He drove Kansas into such a deep financial hole and angered so many people with his public education cuts, that at an early point in his campaign for re-election in 2014, he trailed his moderate Democratic opponent by ten percentage points in the polls. The dispatch of major Republican surrogates to Kansas and a large infusion of campaign money saved Brownback's bacon but has provided a lot less bacon for Kansas residents.
Early this year there was a report that Kansas was still in a deep financial hole and Kansas faced further reductions in the state income tax based on the original legislation. The share of children who qualify for subsidized school lunches has grown to more than fifty percent for the first time in Kansas's history. [1]
RaDonna Kuekelhan lives in Montgomery County, Kansas, where one in five people live in poverty; also, twenty-two percent of people in Montgomery County are uninsured. RaDonna is in a Catch-22 situation, because as a childless adult she can't quality for state assistance no matter how little she earns. In Kansas, there are an estimated 78,000 people like RaDonna who are caught in a coverage gap: they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid -- fully privatized in Kansas -- under the old rules, but not enough to qualify for private-insurance tax credits. [2]
It is a Brownback bragging point that he has cut the number of people receiving state assistance by more than half. He doesn't, of course, dwell on on how much the quality of life has been reduced for those who have lost state assistance.
ADDENDUMS:
*More on Ben Carson's Views on Firearms - I have previously blogged on how Ben Carson has claimed that if he was in a group of people confronted by a gunman, he would urge everyone to join him in a charge toward the gunman. More recently, Carson has revealed that he once had a man stick a gun against his neck in a convenience store. Carson said he told the gunman that: "I think you want to talk to the man behind the counter." When questioned about this seemingly non-heroic reaction by Wolf Blitzer on his "Situation Room" program, Carson tried to distinguish between the two situations by saying that the convenience store encounter didn't involve a mass shooting, although he couldn't be sure that the man with the gun might be intent on shooting everyone in the store.
Ben Carson has a preventive remedy for mass school shootings: he would arm school teachers -- for some reason he has focused on kindergarten teachers. I believe it was on "The View" that he was asked if all teachers would be given a firearm. He answered that only teachers trained to properly use a firearm would be armed and the firearm would not be left on the desk. Given that these mass shootings in schools have become very frequent and they can occur in any classroom in K-12 schools or in any college or university, it would seem that every teacher and maybe every administrator would need to be armed. Who would foot the bill for this enormous expenditure?
In order to prevent an inquisitive student from finding the firearm and doing harm with it, the weapon would need to be locked in a desk drawer or behind a closet door. While the teacher was fumbling for the key when a gunman burst into the classroom, she/he would likely be the first person shot. The possibility that a teacher might engage in a mass shooting can't be entirely ruled out.
*Jews on Abortion - Ninety-three percent of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, including ninety-five percent of Jewish Democrats and seventy-seven percent of Jewish Republicans. The Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee prevented Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee from holding a fundraiser there. The Center was apparently pressured by Catholic members from nearby major Catholic institutions.
Footnotes
[1] Kai Wright, "Life and Death in Red America," The Nation, June 22/29, 2015. [2] Ibid.
Early this year there was a report that Kansas was still in a deep financial hole and Kansas faced further reductions in the state income tax based on the original legislation. The share of children who qualify for subsidized school lunches has grown to more than fifty percent for the first time in Kansas's history. [1]
RaDonna Kuekelhan lives in Montgomery County, Kansas, where one in five people live in poverty; also, twenty-two percent of people in Montgomery County are uninsured. RaDonna is in a Catch-22 situation, because as a childless adult she can't quality for state assistance no matter how little she earns. In Kansas, there are an estimated 78,000 people like RaDonna who are caught in a coverage gap: they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid -- fully privatized in Kansas -- under the old rules, but not enough to qualify for private-insurance tax credits. [2]
It is a Brownback bragging point that he has cut the number of people receiving state assistance by more than half. He doesn't, of course, dwell on on how much the quality of life has been reduced for those who have lost state assistance.
ADDENDUMS:
*More on Ben Carson's Views on Firearms - I have previously blogged on how Ben Carson has claimed that if he was in a group of people confronted by a gunman, he would urge everyone to join him in a charge toward the gunman. More recently, Carson has revealed that he once had a man stick a gun against his neck in a convenience store. Carson said he told the gunman that: "I think you want to talk to the man behind the counter." When questioned about this seemingly non-heroic reaction by Wolf Blitzer on his "Situation Room" program, Carson tried to distinguish between the two situations by saying that the convenience store encounter didn't involve a mass shooting, although he couldn't be sure that the man with the gun might be intent on shooting everyone in the store.
Ben Carson has a preventive remedy for mass school shootings: he would arm school teachers -- for some reason he has focused on kindergarten teachers. I believe it was on "The View" that he was asked if all teachers would be given a firearm. He answered that only teachers trained to properly use a firearm would be armed and the firearm would not be left on the desk. Given that these mass shootings in schools have become very frequent and they can occur in any classroom in K-12 schools or in any college or university, it would seem that every teacher and maybe every administrator would need to be armed. Who would foot the bill for this enormous expenditure?
In order to prevent an inquisitive student from finding the firearm and doing harm with it, the weapon would need to be locked in a desk drawer or behind a closet door. While the teacher was fumbling for the key when a gunman burst into the classroom, she/he would likely be the first person shot. The possibility that a teacher might engage in a mass shooting can't be entirely ruled out.
*Jews on Abortion - Ninety-three percent of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, including ninety-five percent of Jewish Democrats and seventy-seven percent of Jewish Republicans. The Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee prevented Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee from holding a fundraiser there. The Center was apparently pressured by Catholic members from nearby major Catholic institutions.
Footnotes
[1] Kai Wright, "Life and Death in Red America," The Nation, June 22/29, 2015. [2] Ibid.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Reforms That Might Actually Save Police Officer's Lives
Thee have been a number of reforms proposed to bridge the deep and dangerous chasm between law enforcement and the nation's minonties, especially African-Americans. These suggested changes in current practice include: a much wider use of lapel cameras; a greater emphasis on sensitivity and deescalation training; and an expanded use of community policing. Lapel cameras involve a high storage cost for the videos and raise privacy concerns; sensitivity training is often treated as a joke; and community policing has long been advocated but only sporadically employed. What then would I recommend that would help bridge the divide between the police and the citizens they serve, and in the process, save many lives? My recommendations follow:
1.) Institutionalize the Mentally Ill
It was a great mistake when the decision was made to close mental care institutions and let the mentally ill try to survive on the streets or depend on the care of their families. Thus, institutionalizing the mentally ill and providing the resources to properly care for and treat them should be a priority for the U.S. nation. Many of those fatally shot by the police were found to have a mental illness -- a study in Maine found that fifty-nine percent of those fatally shot by police had a mental illness.
2.) Use a Trained Professional on Domestic Dispute Calls
It is either Milwaukee or Madison, Wisconsin that has a ride-along program in which a trained professional rides along on domestic violence police calls. The major drawback in that program is that it doesn't occur during the hours that domestic disputes are most likely to occur. A trained professional is better equipped than are the police to deescalate the dispute before it erupts into fatal violence.
3.) Do a Better Job of Evaluating Recruits
When the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) did its investigation of the Albuquerque Police Department (APD), sparked mostly by the many instances of use of excessive force by the Albuquerque police, the DoJ said a much better job was needed to be done in evaluating the psychological fitness of recruits. In an effort to beef up the numbers of police officers, the APD was hiring officers from other police departments without adequate evaluation of their fitness.
4.) Hire More Women as Police Officers
It is a phenomenon noted in Albuquerque and generally across the nation, that use of excessive force is limited almost solely to males, especially younger officers. Criminologists have noted that if a male hasn't committed a violent act before the age of 35, that person will probably never commit an act of violence; therefore, along with hiring many more female officers, hiring male officers who have experienced more of life might reduce the level of use of excessive force by police
5.) Follow the Constitution
The 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Tennessee v. Garner prohibits shooting in the back a fleeing suspect if the lives of others are not in jeopardy. The Missouri attorney general has admitted that Missouri state law does not follow constitutional law. New York state law makes it a crime to resist a police officer. Thus, Eric Garner would have been committing a crime if he had resisted being choked to death.
6.) Enact Meaningful Gun Control
When gun control is discussed today, it is done in the context of "common-sense" control, including, mostly, background checks and, at the outside, bans on assault rifles and large-size ammunition clips. What is needed, instead, is a ban on the manufacture and importation of handguns and handgun parts. This same ban should be extended to military-style assault rifles and semi-automatic long guns. In order to reduce the inventory of the most dangerous firearms, as described above, there would be a five-year period in which these described weapons could be turned in. A premium of twenty-five percent over the retail price of the firearm would be paid by the national government in the first year and the premium would decrease by five percent each year, resulting in a five percent premium in the fifth year. After the five-year period is over, anyone discovered to possess one of the prohibited firearms should be subject to a stiff fine, say $3,000.
As for ammunition clips, I see no good reason why they should not be limited to a maximum of three bullets.
7.) All Police Officers Don't Routinely Need Firearms
Only 200+ of the 6,000+ officers in the Manchester [England] Police Department are issued firearms. U.S. police officers who have clerical, administrative or communications positions don't routinely need to be issued firearms.
8.) Drastically Change Training Hours Allocations
Generally speaking, police departments assign a lot more training hours to use of firearms than they do to the training on how to deescalate a tense situation. One police department that I have read about but don't remember the name, provided over fifty hours to firearms training and eight to deescalation training. This disparity does not occur only in the training of recruits, but firearms proficiency must be maintained throughout the career of a police officer.
1.) Institutionalize the Mentally Ill
It was a great mistake when the decision was made to close mental care institutions and let the mentally ill try to survive on the streets or depend on the care of their families. Thus, institutionalizing the mentally ill and providing the resources to properly care for and treat them should be a priority for the U.S. nation. Many of those fatally shot by the police were found to have a mental illness -- a study in Maine found that fifty-nine percent of those fatally shot by police had a mental illness.
2.) Use a Trained Professional on Domestic Dispute Calls
It is either Milwaukee or Madison, Wisconsin that has a ride-along program in which a trained professional rides along on domestic violence police calls. The major drawback in that program is that it doesn't occur during the hours that domestic disputes are most likely to occur. A trained professional is better equipped than are the police to deescalate the dispute before it erupts into fatal violence.
3.) Do a Better Job of Evaluating Recruits
When the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) did its investigation of the Albuquerque Police Department (APD), sparked mostly by the many instances of use of excessive force by the Albuquerque police, the DoJ said a much better job was needed to be done in evaluating the psychological fitness of recruits. In an effort to beef up the numbers of police officers, the APD was hiring officers from other police departments without adequate evaluation of their fitness.
4.) Hire More Women as Police Officers
It is a phenomenon noted in Albuquerque and generally across the nation, that use of excessive force is limited almost solely to males, especially younger officers. Criminologists have noted that if a male hasn't committed a violent act before the age of 35, that person will probably never commit an act of violence; therefore, along with hiring many more female officers, hiring male officers who have experienced more of life might reduce the level of use of excessive force by police
5.) Follow the Constitution
The 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Tennessee v. Garner prohibits shooting in the back a fleeing suspect if the lives of others are not in jeopardy. The Missouri attorney general has admitted that Missouri state law does not follow constitutional law. New York state law makes it a crime to resist a police officer. Thus, Eric Garner would have been committing a crime if he had resisted being choked to death.
6.) Enact Meaningful Gun Control
When gun control is discussed today, it is done in the context of "common-sense" control, including, mostly, background checks and, at the outside, bans on assault rifles and large-size ammunition clips. What is needed, instead, is a ban on the manufacture and importation of handguns and handgun parts. This same ban should be extended to military-style assault rifles and semi-automatic long guns. In order to reduce the inventory of the most dangerous firearms, as described above, there would be a five-year period in which these described weapons could be turned in. A premium of twenty-five percent over the retail price of the firearm would be paid by the national government in the first year and the premium would decrease by five percent each year, resulting in a five percent premium in the fifth year. After the five-year period is over, anyone discovered to possess one of the prohibited firearms should be subject to a stiff fine, say $3,000.
As for ammunition clips, I see no good reason why they should not be limited to a maximum of three bullets.
7.) All Police Officers Don't Routinely Need Firearms
Only 200+ of the 6,000+ officers in the Manchester [England] Police Department are issued firearms. U.S. police officers who have clerical, administrative or communications positions don't routinely need to be issued firearms.
8.) Drastically Change Training Hours Allocations
Generally speaking, police departments assign a lot more training hours to use of firearms than they do to the training on how to deescalate a tense situation. One police department that I have read about but don't remember the name, provided over fifty hours to firearms training and eight to deescalation training. This disparity does not occur only in the training of recruits, but firearms proficiency must be maintained throughout the career of a police officer.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Ben Carson Unhinged and a Diminished Scott Walker
I. Ben Carson With His Whole Leg in His Mouth
In his most recent book, "Ave America," Ben Carson writes that agents working against this country's greatness include the political correct police, who use "faux hypersensitivity" to take power away from the majority of Americans. In the book, he writes: "Obama is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery." He also writes: "We live in a Gestapo age." Carson has also publicly wondered if Obama might cancel the the election for his second term. Famously or infamously, Ben Carson has unequivocally said he would not vote for a Muslim for president, although, in political parlance, Carson and his staff have tried to "walk back" the statement.
In the wake of the mass killing in an Oregon community college this past week, Carson has said that had he been there he wouldn't have just stood there: he would have told those among him to charge toward the shooter. It is unlikely that those around him and maybe Carson, himself, would have charged toward a gunman's fire, as it would have made them primary targets and increased the chance that they would be killed or seriously injured. An unarmed former U.S. serviceman did charge a shooter and was shot five times.
Carson has used the inane slogan that: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Without the trigger being pulled, guns, themselves, would not kill anyone. Carson has also criticized President Obama for politicizing gun massacres and made the curious statement that he wouldn't go to the site of the Oregon community college shooting, because he is too busy, but might go to the site of a future firearms massacre. Carson entered the realm of the bizarre when he referred to treating a bullet-mangled body as the body itself not being as important as the defense of the Second Amendment.
II. The Diminished Scott Walker
The Marquette University Law School has periodically polled the favorability rating of Governor Scott Walker. About the same time that Walker declared himself as a candidate for President of the United States, Walker had a favorability rating in Wisconsin of 41 percent. Walker is now rated favorably by just 37 percent of polled Wisconsin residents. Given that a Republican governor in Wisconsin would likely have the support of 20 percent from a hard-core Republican base no matter what he/she did as governor, Walker would now have an approval rating from only 17 percent of the remaining 80 percent.
Some of Governor Walker's main achievements are not viewed favorably by polled Wisconsin residents. His cuts in traditional public education and his expansion of voucher schools were opposed by over 70 percent of those polled in the early spring of 2015. Walker not only expanded the number of voucher students in Racine and other parts of the state, but he raised the cap on income to a little over $78,000 to be eligible for a voucher to a private school. The voucher program was originally intended to be a social mobility ladder for low-income minorities. Even Walker's success in making Wisconsin a right-to-work state was supported by only 46 percent of those respondents in the poll cited above. This right-to-work result is somewhat surprising, because when people are polled on whether a person beginning work at a unionized workplace should be required to pay union dues, a majority of respondents customarily oppose such a requirement.
Media commentary on why Walker ended his presidential bid has usually focused on Walker running out of money -- he has been described as burning through a million dollars a month; however, given that Walker entered the campaign with a huge war chest and he could count on the Koch brothers to lavishly fund him if he remained viable, it seems to me to be more accurate that it was his frequent changes of positions on policy issues and/or his refusal to provide a position when questioned about a controversial issue were much more instrumental in forcing him to abandon the race. Although Walker apparently bamboozled a sufficient number of Wisconsin residents to survive three elections for governor, his national performance may have exposed Walker's glaring deficiencies to a significant number of Wisconsin residents.
ADDENDUM:
*Jews on Abortion - According to a recent poll, 93 percent of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, including 95 percent of Jewish Democrats and 77 percent of Jewish Republicans.
The Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee prevented Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee from holding a fundraiser there. The Center was apparently pressured by Catholic members from nearby major Catholic institutions to block Planned Parenthood.
In his most recent book, "Ave America," Ben Carson writes that agents working against this country's greatness include the political correct police, who use "faux hypersensitivity" to take power away from the majority of Americans. In the book, he writes: "Obama is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery." He also writes: "We live in a Gestapo age." Carson has also publicly wondered if Obama might cancel the the election for his second term. Famously or infamously, Ben Carson has unequivocally said he would not vote for a Muslim for president, although, in political parlance, Carson and his staff have tried to "walk back" the statement.
In the wake of the mass killing in an Oregon community college this past week, Carson has said that had he been there he wouldn't have just stood there: he would have told those among him to charge toward the shooter. It is unlikely that those around him and maybe Carson, himself, would have charged toward a gunman's fire, as it would have made them primary targets and increased the chance that they would be killed or seriously injured. An unarmed former U.S. serviceman did charge a shooter and was shot five times.
Carson has used the inane slogan that: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Without the trigger being pulled, guns, themselves, would not kill anyone. Carson has also criticized President Obama for politicizing gun massacres and made the curious statement that he wouldn't go to the site of the Oregon community college shooting, because he is too busy, but might go to the site of a future firearms massacre. Carson entered the realm of the bizarre when he referred to treating a bullet-mangled body as the body itself not being as important as the defense of the Second Amendment.
II. The Diminished Scott Walker
The Marquette University Law School has periodically polled the favorability rating of Governor Scott Walker. About the same time that Walker declared himself as a candidate for President of the United States, Walker had a favorability rating in Wisconsin of 41 percent. Walker is now rated favorably by just 37 percent of polled Wisconsin residents. Given that a Republican governor in Wisconsin would likely have the support of 20 percent from a hard-core Republican base no matter what he/she did as governor, Walker would now have an approval rating from only 17 percent of the remaining 80 percent.
Some of Governor Walker's main achievements are not viewed favorably by polled Wisconsin residents. His cuts in traditional public education and his expansion of voucher schools were opposed by over 70 percent of those polled in the early spring of 2015. Walker not only expanded the number of voucher students in Racine and other parts of the state, but he raised the cap on income to a little over $78,000 to be eligible for a voucher to a private school. The voucher program was originally intended to be a social mobility ladder for low-income minorities. Even Walker's success in making Wisconsin a right-to-work state was supported by only 46 percent of those respondents in the poll cited above. This right-to-work result is somewhat surprising, because when people are polled on whether a person beginning work at a unionized workplace should be required to pay union dues, a majority of respondents customarily oppose such a requirement.
Media commentary on why Walker ended his presidential bid has usually focused on Walker running out of money -- he has been described as burning through a million dollars a month; however, given that Walker entered the campaign with a huge war chest and he could count on the Koch brothers to lavishly fund him if he remained viable, it seems to me to be more accurate that it was his frequent changes of positions on policy issues and/or his refusal to provide a position when questioned about a controversial issue were much more instrumental in forcing him to abandon the race. Although Walker apparently bamboozled a sufficient number of Wisconsin residents to survive three elections for governor, his national performance may have exposed Walker's glaring deficiencies to a significant number of Wisconsin residents.
ADDENDUM:
*Jews on Abortion - According to a recent poll, 93 percent of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, including 95 percent of Jewish Democrats and 77 percent of Jewish Republicans.
The Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee prevented Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee from holding a fundraiser there. The Center was apparently pressured by Catholic members from nearby major Catholic institutions to block Planned Parenthood.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Donald Trump's Tax Plan
I. Basics of the Trump Tax Plan
*Tax rates would be 0, 10, 20 and 25 percent.
*The alternative minimum tax eliminated.
*Th marriage penalty eliminated.
*"Carried interest loophole" eliminated.
*40 percent tax on an inheritance over $5.4 million eliminated.
*Businesses and corporations would get a tax rate of 15 percent.
*20 percent tax rate for dividends and capital gains held over a year retained.
*Individuals with incomes of $25,000 or less and families with incomes of $50,000 or less would pay no federal income tax.
*Home mortgage interest and charitable giving deductions are retained but what other deductions and loopholes Trump plans to eliminate are not specified.
II. Revenue Loss
The pro-business Tax Foundation has concluded that the Trump plan would cut taxes by nearly $12 trillion over a decade on a so-called "static" basis, meaning not taking into effect how the tax cuts would increase incentives to work and invest. Conservatively, the Tax Foundation estimates that the Trump plan would cut tax revenue by $10 trillion over ten years. Steve Gill, a tax and accounting professor at San Diego University, says that those earning more than $200,000 a year would pay $400 to $500 billion less in taxes annually.
Donald Trump contends that robust economic growth will make up for the revenue lost through his tax cuts. Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform answers that even the most optimistic estimates of economic growth won't make up the revenue loss from the tax cuts.
When Mitt Romney ran for president in 2010, he also contended that economic growth and elimination of tax breaks would make up for the revenue loss from his proposed tax cuts. The Tax Policy Center (TPC) then responded that even if Romney eliminated all tax breaks for the wealthy, it would not eliminate the revenue loss from his tax cuts. The TPC said the alternative would necessitate the imposition of much higher taxes on the middle class.
III. Other Effects of the Trump Tax Cuts
Nearly 75 million tax filers would pay no federal income tax under the Trump plan, compared to the 67.3 million tax filers (41.4 percent of all tax filers) that the TPC found paid no federal income tax in 2014. The problem with this approach is that it negates the "we're all in this together" spirit and builds resentment in those who do pay federal income tax. Those who would have otherwise paid income taxes would gain an average income increase of $!,000, hardly sufficient to make a significant difference in the standard of living.
The Tax Foundation has illustrated how the Trump tax cuts would increase after-tax income based on economic deciles: a 3% increase for those in the 30 to 40% decile; 8.9% for those in the 80 to 90 % decile; and 14.6% increase for those in the top decile.
As far as the estate inheritance is concerned, easing of the inheritance tax beginning with the two major tax George W. Bush tax cuts resulted in fewer than 5,000 estate tax returns being filed in 2013, compared to 177,000 such filings in 1977. I remember when I was part of a group opposed to a proposal to raise the threshold monetary level of those subject to the estate tax. We couldn't find a single Illinois family farm that would be subject to the tax if the proposal was enacted.
What should be kept firmly in mind in evaluating the Trump tax cut proposal is that, at best, he is only talking in terms of no decrease in revenue to the national government. Given that there is a strong consensus among economists that unless there are huge cuts in national government spending, which are highly unlikely to occur, there will a major run-up in the deficit in the next decade and beyond. Economic growth and further elimination of tax breaks to the wealthy will not be sufficient to balance out the revenue loss already measured in Trump's taxation plan. The retention of the home mortgage and charitable giving deductions, alone, will mean an annual loss of $120 billion in revenue.
*Tax rates would be 0, 10, 20 and 25 percent.
*The alternative minimum tax eliminated.
*Th marriage penalty eliminated.
*"Carried interest loophole" eliminated.
*40 percent tax on an inheritance over $5.4 million eliminated.
*Businesses and corporations would get a tax rate of 15 percent.
*20 percent tax rate for dividends and capital gains held over a year retained.
*Individuals with incomes of $25,000 or less and families with incomes of $50,000 or less would pay no federal income tax.
*Home mortgage interest and charitable giving deductions are retained but what other deductions and loopholes Trump plans to eliminate are not specified.
II. Revenue Loss
The pro-business Tax Foundation has concluded that the Trump plan would cut taxes by nearly $12 trillion over a decade on a so-called "static" basis, meaning not taking into effect how the tax cuts would increase incentives to work and invest. Conservatively, the Tax Foundation estimates that the Trump plan would cut tax revenue by $10 trillion over ten years. Steve Gill, a tax and accounting professor at San Diego University, says that those earning more than $200,000 a year would pay $400 to $500 billion less in taxes annually.
Donald Trump contends that robust economic growth will make up for the revenue lost through his tax cuts. Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform answers that even the most optimistic estimates of economic growth won't make up the revenue loss from the tax cuts.
When Mitt Romney ran for president in 2010, he also contended that economic growth and elimination of tax breaks would make up for the revenue loss from his proposed tax cuts. The Tax Policy Center (TPC) then responded that even if Romney eliminated all tax breaks for the wealthy, it would not eliminate the revenue loss from his tax cuts. The TPC said the alternative would necessitate the imposition of much higher taxes on the middle class.
III. Other Effects of the Trump Tax Cuts
Nearly 75 million tax filers would pay no federal income tax under the Trump plan, compared to the 67.3 million tax filers (41.4 percent of all tax filers) that the TPC found paid no federal income tax in 2014. The problem with this approach is that it negates the "we're all in this together" spirit and builds resentment in those who do pay federal income tax. Those who would have otherwise paid income taxes would gain an average income increase of $!,000, hardly sufficient to make a significant difference in the standard of living.
The Tax Foundation has illustrated how the Trump tax cuts would increase after-tax income based on economic deciles: a 3% increase for those in the 30 to 40% decile; 8.9% for those in the 80 to 90 % decile; and 14.6% increase for those in the top decile.
As far as the estate inheritance is concerned, easing of the inheritance tax beginning with the two major tax George W. Bush tax cuts resulted in fewer than 5,000 estate tax returns being filed in 2013, compared to 177,000 such filings in 1977. I remember when I was part of a group opposed to a proposal to raise the threshold monetary level of those subject to the estate tax. We couldn't find a single Illinois family farm that would be subject to the tax if the proposal was enacted.
What should be kept firmly in mind in evaluating the Trump tax cut proposal is that, at best, he is only talking in terms of no decrease in revenue to the national government. Given that there is a strong consensus among economists that unless there are huge cuts in national government spending, which are highly unlikely to occur, there will a major run-up in the deficit in the next decade and beyond. Economic growth and further elimination of tax breaks to the wealthy will not be sufficient to balance out the revenue loss already measured in Trump's taxation plan. The retention of the home mortgage and charitable giving deductions, alone, will mean an annual loss of $120 billion in revenue.
Friday, October 2, 2015
African-Americans' Changing Attitudes Toward Crime
Kelefa Sauneh's article entitled "Body Count," in the September 14, 2015 issue of The New Yorker is based mostly on a review of what Nelrisi Coates, a writer for The Atlantic magazine, had to say about the changing attitudes of African-Americans toward crime and the response to it. Coates's article, in turn, is focused largely on what Michael Javen Fortner, a professor of urban studies and the author of "Back Select Majority," has to say about African-Americans and crime. Fortner's focus is on New York City in the nineteen-sixties and the early seventies, when crime rates shot up, creating a demand in African-American communities for more police officers, more arrests, more convictions and longer prison sentences.
In 1962, a coalition of civic leaders asked President Kennedy to "mobilize all law-enforcement officers to unleash their collective fangs on dope pushers and smugglers." A 1973 New York Times poll found that about three-quarters of New York City blacks and Puerto Ricans "thought that life without parole was the proper sentence for convicted drug dealers."
The drug laws proposed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and passed by the New York state legislature sharply increased the penalties for various drug crimes: Possession of four ounces of heroin, for instance, would result in a minimum sentence of fifteen years to life. Contrary to what was happening in various African-American communities, where the call was for tougher sentences for convicted criminals, most, if not all African-American legislators did not cast an affirmative vote for the Rockefeller drug laws. As of recent times, the push has been on to significantly lessen the penalties for drug use and possession, because long prison sentences are creating a severe financial strain on New York financial resources.
Professor Fortner wants us to see African-Americans not merely as victims of politics but as active participants in it, too. Although Fortner makes a strong case that African-Americans were once in favor of tough enforcement of laws and stiffer punishment of offenders, the Atlantic writer Nehrisi Coates supplies a corrective. Coates says the term "black-on-black crime" ignores the fact that most violent crime in intraracial, and also obscures the government policies that gave rise to segregated African-American neighborhoods and their higher crime rates.
Coming down to current reality, the Web site calledbypolice.net has been tracking media reports of police shootings since 2013; it finds that blacks are three and a half times as likely as whites to be killed by police.
ADDENDUM: Capital Punishment Errors - The administration of capital punishment is notoriously prone to error. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a hundred and fifty-five death row inmates have been exonerated and it stands to reason that innocent people still face executions.
In 1962, a coalition of civic leaders asked President Kennedy to "mobilize all law-enforcement officers to unleash their collective fangs on dope pushers and smugglers." A 1973 New York Times poll found that about three-quarters of New York City blacks and Puerto Ricans "thought that life without parole was the proper sentence for convicted drug dealers."
The drug laws proposed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and passed by the New York state legislature sharply increased the penalties for various drug crimes: Possession of four ounces of heroin, for instance, would result in a minimum sentence of fifteen years to life. Contrary to what was happening in various African-American communities, where the call was for tougher sentences for convicted criminals, most, if not all African-American legislators did not cast an affirmative vote for the Rockefeller drug laws. As of recent times, the push has been on to significantly lessen the penalties for drug use and possession, because long prison sentences are creating a severe financial strain on New York financial resources.
Professor Fortner wants us to see African-Americans not merely as victims of politics but as active participants in it, too. Although Fortner makes a strong case that African-Americans were once in favor of tough enforcement of laws and stiffer punishment of offenders, the Atlantic writer Nehrisi Coates supplies a corrective. Coates says the term "black-on-black crime" ignores the fact that most violent crime in intraracial, and also obscures the government policies that gave rise to segregated African-American neighborhoods and their higher crime rates.
Coming down to current reality, the Web site calledbypolice.net has been tracking media reports of police shootings since 2013; it finds that blacks are three and a half times as likely as whites to be killed by police.
ADDENDUM: Capital Punishment Errors - The administration of capital punishment is notoriously prone to error. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a hundred and fifty-five death row inmates have been exonerated and it stands to reason that innocent people still face executions.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
High-Stakes Testing Has Gotten Out of Hand
In New Mexico, the state in which I now live, during the end of the school year this past spring, student walkouts were a common thing, because many students did not want to take the state's standardized test. In New Jersey, fifteen percent of high school students chose not to take state tests in the 2014-15 school year; also, in New York state only a few districts reported meeting the ninety-five percent participation rate, the minimum required by federal rules, according to the New York Times. [1]
"Students in American public schools today take more standardized tests than their peers in any other industrialized country. American student performance compared to other nations -- on tests that measure skills and knowledge more broadly defined -- remained flat or declined between 2000 and 2012." Once more, the gap between students from poor and affluent families has widened into a chasm, growing by 40 percent between 1985 and 2001. "Some 40 percent of black and Latino students now are in schools in which 90 to 100 percent of the student body are kids of color." [2] Surveys have consistently shown that the family situation is a better predictor of how well a child will do in school than is any other factor.
The per student funding gap between rich and poor schools doesn't help matters, as it grew forty-four percent in the last decade -- even as the number of needy students has grown. [3]
Cheating by teachers and administrators has become a big problem. Cheating emerged as an explosive national problem with the revelations that both teachers and administrators in the Atlanta .public schools were accused of changing answers on standardized tests and earlier this year, a number of them were given prison time. For the 2011-12 school year, the Government Accountability Office reported that officials in thirty-three states confirmed at least one instance of school staff flat-out cheating. .
Math teacher Joshua Katz told reporter Kristina Rizga that every nine weeks he has to stop whatever his students are doing and make time for the district's benchmark tests measuring student progress toward the big Common Core exam in the spring. A teacher interviewed by Rizga said that collaboration with fellow professionals and mutual accountability is more effective than even test scores and financial bonuses in helping students to grow. Yet today, thirty-five states require teacher evaluations to include test scores as a factor -- and many others have introduced new tests just for that purpose. "By 2009, President Barack Obama used his Race to the Top initiative to .promote using test scores to hire, fire and compensate teachers.
No country has ever turned around its educational achievement by increasing standardized testing, according to research conducted by the Center for Global Development.
Footnotes
;
[1] Kristina Rizga, "Sorry, I'm Not Taking This Test," Mother Jones, September/October 2015.
[2] Ibid.; [3] Ibid.
"Students in American public schools today take more standardized tests than their peers in any other industrialized country. American student performance compared to other nations -- on tests that measure skills and knowledge more broadly defined -- remained flat or declined between 2000 and 2012." Once more, the gap between students from poor and affluent families has widened into a chasm, growing by 40 percent between 1985 and 2001. "Some 40 percent of black and Latino students now are in schools in which 90 to 100 percent of the student body are kids of color." [2] Surveys have consistently shown that the family situation is a better predictor of how well a child will do in school than is any other factor.
The per student funding gap between rich and poor schools doesn't help matters, as it grew forty-four percent in the last decade -- even as the number of needy students has grown. [3]
Cheating by teachers and administrators has become a big problem. Cheating emerged as an explosive national problem with the revelations that both teachers and administrators in the Atlanta .public schools were accused of changing answers on standardized tests and earlier this year, a number of them were given prison time. For the 2011-12 school year, the Government Accountability Office reported that officials in thirty-three states confirmed at least one instance of school staff flat-out cheating. .
Math teacher Joshua Katz told reporter Kristina Rizga that every nine weeks he has to stop whatever his students are doing and make time for the district's benchmark tests measuring student progress toward the big Common Core exam in the spring. A teacher interviewed by Rizga said that collaboration with fellow professionals and mutual accountability is more effective than even test scores and financial bonuses in helping students to grow. Yet today, thirty-five states require teacher evaluations to include test scores as a factor -- and many others have introduced new tests just for that purpose. "By 2009, President Barack Obama used his Race to the Top initiative to .promote using test scores to hire, fire and compensate teachers.
No country has ever turned around its educational achievement by increasing standardized testing, according to research conducted by the Center for Global Development.
Footnotes
;
[1] Kristina Rizga, "Sorry, I'm Not Taking This Test," Mother Jones, September/October 2015.
[2] Ibid.; [3] Ibid.
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