Published on Saturday, September 3, 2005 by LeftTurn.org
By Jordan Flaherty
Friday, September 2 - I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.
In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge.
You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.
I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian TV to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told me "as someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don't want to be here at night."
There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.
To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New Orleans itself.
For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.
It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls together when someone is in need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state and federal governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.
It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that they don't need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.
There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months.
The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child's education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.
Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence.
Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods left most at risk, to the treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this disaster is shaped by race.
Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week our political leaders have defined a new level of incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged us to "Pray the hurricane down" to a level two. Trapped in a building two days after the hurricane, we tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and TV stations, hoping for vital news, and were told that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors and panic began to rule, they was no source of solid dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the water level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it worse.
While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.
No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.
Images of New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus on "welfare queens" and "super-predators" obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes.
City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week's events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city.
While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the city, the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders.
The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.
In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New Orleans. This money can either be spent to usher in a "New Deal" for the city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs, new schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be "rebuilt and revitalized" to a shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.
Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism, disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to repair.
Now that the money is flowing in, and the world's eyes are focused on Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Secure Borders, Open Doors
By William Fisher
As congress returns to Washington facing what promises to be a rancorous debate on how to protect U.S. borders, a leading immigration think-tank is charging that U.S. visa policies – a key tool in promoting national security – are in danger of compromising American economic competitiveness and foreign policy goals.
A new study by the Migration Policy Institute – “Secure Borders, Open Doors” – faults the government for lack of a strategic plan for the U.S. visa program, and “nebulous” coordination between the State Department (DOS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), leading to duplication and poor information sharing.
The report says one of the visa program’s “greatest challenges” will be “countering international perceptions that the United States has become more hostile to visitors. Losses to tourism and industry have been significant in recent years, with nonimmigrant visa applications dropping by 35 percent between 2001 and 2003, international enrollment in U.S. schools for 2003/2004 down for the first time in three decades, and the number of tourists visiting the United States plummeting by over 10 million people between 2000 and 2003. There are also reports of billions of dollars lost in foreign direct investment in the United States and contracts for U.S. exports”.
The report, written by Stephen Yale-Loehr, Demetrios Papademetriou and Betsy Cooper, also calls on Congress to require the establishment of a comprehensive interagency evaluation process to review incidents of admitting people who present security risks.
It says that while the DOS “is working to address delays caused by additional checks and mandatory interviews”, changes are still needed “to clarify the application process and make it more transparent; facilitate visa re-issuance from the United States; and waive interviews for travelers who have been issued visas recently.”
The report also recommends improving the quality of interviews through the use of a secondary-like inspection at consular posts to target possible security risks.
It asserts that a “major weakness” continues to be variable access to information through different agencies’ databases. “Improved intelligence-gathering, greater investments in staff expertise and training, and online access to all relevant information about applicants are essential.”
The report recommends, “An integrated national watch list that is constantly checked for quality together with a stronger communications system between agencies for security advisory opinions, are essential domestic security priorities.”
Since September 11, the report says, “the purpose of different visa classes and the process for getting a visa have remained the same, with the most frequent reason for denying a nonimmigrant application still being the person’s inability to prove that they do not intend to stay in the United States permanently”.
However, it adds, “Many administrative procedures have changed significantly, including a requirement for personal interviews with almost all visa applicants”. “The government has more closely scrutinized visa waiver countries, curtailed airline passengers’ ability to travel through the U.S. en route to other countries without visas, and established requirements for visa waiver countries to have machine-readable passports with biometric identifiers by October 1, 2005,” it says.
The authors find that the security check process has improved, but urge better use of biometrics. “The State Department, DHS and the FBI must agree on a truly compatible fingerprinting system and adopt standards that can be used both among U.S. agencies and in conjunction with the development of biometric passports from other countries.”
The impact of visa problems on higher education is a major concern. Ursula Oaks of the Department of Public Policy at the Association of International Educators (NAFSA), told IPS, “What we face today is not just a visa problem, it's an ‘access’ problem -- the myriad still-existing barriers to international students' ability to study here that, taken together, pose a serious challenge for our country.”
At a recent symposium to discuss the MPI report, similar concerns were also voiced by Dr. Debra W. Stewart, President of the Council of Graduate Schools. She called recent statistics on international student flows “a sobering reminder of the importance of US visa policy.”
Dr. Stewart said that last year international graduate applications declined 28% and another 5% this year. For the past three years, she said, first time international graduate student enrollment has declined. “With international enrollment in engineering approaching nearly half of the total and over 40% in the physical sciences, these declines raise serious questions about America’s potential to continue its position of thought leadership in these fields.”
She added her concern about the “unintended consequences of recent reform in the visa system,” noting that “inscrutable delays do occur in the system.”
In higher education, she said, “Global competition for talent is real….our competitors are not standing still.” Other countries, she suggested, are capitalizing on “the negative image of the US abroad by advertising their programs outside US embassies. Perhaps more significant are the major investments in graduate education being made worldwide”, particularly by the European Union, China and India.
U.S. consular staff, she said, “need more understanding of the American academic world that student applicants hope to enter”, adding, “There appears to be a lack of scientific expertise in the consular affairs offices.”
While noting recent improvements in the visa process, Dr. Stewart said, “Problems remain that are not likely to be solved by simply making the current system more efficient and seamless…It requires strategic thinking about the very purposes of visa policy -- its goals and desired outcomes.”
She added, “America’s national security, its intellectual security and its very capacity to compete, depend upon it.”
As congress returns to Washington facing what promises to be a rancorous debate on how to protect U.S. borders, a leading immigration think-tank is charging that U.S. visa policies – a key tool in promoting national security – are in danger of compromising American economic competitiveness and foreign policy goals.
A new study by the Migration Policy Institute – “Secure Borders, Open Doors” – faults the government for lack of a strategic plan for the U.S. visa program, and “nebulous” coordination between the State Department (DOS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), leading to duplication and poor information sharing.
The report says one of the visa program’s “greatest challenges” will be “countering international perceptions that the United States has become more hostile to visitors. Losses to tourism and industry have been significant in recent years, with nonimmigrant visa applications dropping by 35 percent between 2001 and 2003, international enrollment in U.S. schools for 2003/2004 down for the first time in three decades, and the number of tourists visiting the United States plummeting by over 10 million people between 2000 and 2003. There are also reports of billions of dollars lost in foreign direct investment in the United States and contracts for U.S. exports”.
The report, written by Stephen Yale-Loehr, Demetrios Papademetriou and Betsy Cooper, also calls on Congress to require the establishment of a comprehensive interagency evaluation process to review incidents of admitting people who present security risks.
It says that while the DOS “is working to address delays caused by additional checks and mandatory interviews”, changes are still needed “to clarify the application process and make it more transparent; facilitate visa re-issuance from the United States; and waive interviews for travelers who have been issued visas recently.”
The report also recommends improving the quality of interviews through the use of a secondary-like inspection at consular posts to target possible security risks.
It asserts that a “major weakness” continues to be variable access to information through different agencies’ databases. “Improved intelligence-gathering, greater investments in staff expertise and training, and online access to all relevant information about applicants are essential.”
The report recommends, “An integrated national watch list that is constantly checked for quality together with a stronger communications system between agencies for security advisory opinions, are essential domestic security priorities.”
Since September 11, the report says, “the purpose of different visa classes and the process for getting a visa have remained the same, with the most frequent reason for denying a nonimmigrant application still being the person’s inability to prove that they do not intend to stay in the United States permanently”.
However, it adds, “Many administrative procedures have changed significantly, including a requirement for personal interviews with almost all visa applicants”. “The government has more closely scrutinized visa waiver countries, curtailed airline passengers’ ability to travel through the U.S. en route to other countries without visas, and established requirements for visa waiver countries to have machine-readable passports with biometric identifiers by October 1, 2005,” it says.
The authors find that the security check process has improved, but urge better use of biometrics. “The State Department, DHS and the FBI must agree on a truly compatible fingerprinting system and adopt standards that can be used both among U.S. agencies and in conjunction with the development of biometric passports from other countries.”
The impact of visa problems on higher education is a major concern. Ursula Oaks of the Department of Public Policy at the Association of International Educators (NAFSA), told IPS, “What we face today is not just a visa problem, it's an ‘access’ problem -- the myriad still-existing barriers to international students' ability to study here that, taken together, pose a serious challenge for our country.”
At a recent symposium to discuss the MPI report, similar concerns were also voiced by Dr. Debra W. Stewart, President of the Council of Graduate Schools. She called recent statistics on international student flows “a sobering reminder of the importance of US visa policy.”
Dr. Stewart said that last year international graduate applications declined 28% and another 5% this year. For the past three years, she said, first time international graduate student enrollment has declined. “With international enrollment in engineering approaching nearly half of the total and over 40% in the physical sciences, these declines raise serious questions about America’s potential to continue its position of thought leadership in these fields.”
She added her concern about the “unintended consequences of recent reform in the visa system,” noting that “inscrutable delays do occur in the system.”
In higher education, she said, “Global competition for talent is real….our competitors are not standing still.” Other countries, she suggested, are capitalizing on “the negative image of the US abroad by advertising their programs outside US embassies. Perhaps more significant are the major investments in graduate education being made worldwide”, particularly by the European Union, China and India.
U.S. consular staff, she said, “need more understanding of the American academic world that student applicants hope to enter”, adding, “There appears to be a lack of scientific expertise in the consular affairs offices.”
While noting recent improvements in the visa process, Dr. Stewart said, “Problems remain that are not likely to be solved by simply making the current system more efficient and seamless…It requires strategic thinking about the very purposes of visa policy -- its goals and desired outcomes.”
She added, “America’s national security, its intellectual security and its very capacity to compete, depend upon it.”
Saturday, September 03, 2005
American Caesar
By Rosa Brooks
NERO FIDDLED while Rome burned.
President Bush, who's not big on the classics, probably wasn't thinking
about this when he mugged for the cameras Tuesday, playing a guitar
presented to him by country singer Mark Wills.
But with the photo now Exhibit A for many liberal bloggers, he may find
the comparison hard to shake.
True, while Bush enjoyed his vacation and strummed his new guitar, a great
city was being devastated by water rather than fire.
And unlike the Emperor Nero, who was accused by the historian Suetonius of
having deliberately started the fire that destroyed much of Rome in AD 64,
no one is accusing President Bush of planning Hurricane Katrina.
But the Bush administration deserves substantial blame for the scale of
the catastrophe in New Orleans.
An excellent article this week by Will Bunch in Editor & Publisher points
out that it was the cost of the Iraq war that led the Bush administration
to defund efforts to shore up the vulnerable city's levees.
After flooding in 1995 killed six people in New Orleans, the Army Corps of
Engineers started work on a massive civil engineering project designed to
strengthen the region's levees and improve the pumping system that
regulates water levels.
The work got off to a good start, but in 2003 federal funding started to
run dry, leaving many projects — including a planned effort to strengthen
the banks of Lake Pontchartrain — on the drawing board.
As early as 2004, the New Orleans Times-Picayune began to report that
local officials and Army Corps of Engineers representatives attributed the
funding cuts to the rising cost of the war in Iraq.
Facing record deficits, the Bush administration cut costs — and cut
corners — by including in its 2005 budget only about a sixth of the
flood-prevention funds requested by the Louisiana congressional
delegation.
The war in Iraq also has made recovery from Katrina slower and more
challenging. The Army National Guard units normally available for domestic
disaster relief found rapid emergency response unusually difficult since
so many of their personnel are deployed in Iraq. Although more units were
dispatched later in the week, the manpower shortage was painfully evident
during the crucial first hours.
The Iraq war is not the only reason for insisting that the Bush
administration deserves some blame for the magnitude of the
still-unfolding catastrophe.
After 9/11, the president promised that the nation would never again be so
unprepared in the face of disaster. The Department of Homeland Security
was created with a view to ensuring that every American city had adequate
emergency plans in place for the kind of large-scale crisis that could
accompany either a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
It was an empty promise.
Four years after 9/11, the fiasco in New Orleans underscores our nation's
ongoing inability to cope with serious threats.
Take public health, for example: Hurricane preparation plans — supposedly
prepared with the involvement and approval of Homeland Security officials
— were grossly inadequate for ensuring a continued supply of medication to
the sick and for the evacuation of the ill and disabled, for cleaning up,
ensuring safe drinking water or preventing the spread of disease.
With floodwaters, broken sewage pipes, damaged petrochemical pipelines and
floating corpses all over the city, no one seemed to have a clear plan.
If a terrorist's bomb, rather than a hurricane, had destroyed a levee
around Lake Pontchartrain, no one would hesitate to condemn the
administration for its lackluster emergency planning and response.
And federal officials had more than a week's warning that a hurricane was
on track for New Orleans — far more time than they'd likely have of a
terrorist attack on critical infrastructure.
Not everything can be blamed on the Bush administration, of course, but
for millions of Americans, the catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
is likely to stand as an indictment of Bush's false economies, empty
promises and foolish priorities.
Consider Louisiana's wetlands, to take just one example. Policies
associated with the administration exacerbated the geographical and
ecological conditions for severe flooding. Over the decades, oil and gas
company actions played a significant role in destroying the wetlands.
Other factors also contributed, including residential development and,
ironically, the overbuilding of some of the region's levees. But the
"man-made" aspects of the disaster highlight the folly of the policies of
unlimited development and environmental despoliation that the
administration has so consistently embraced.
Two thousand years after his death, Nero's famous fiddling remains an
allegory about feckless and selfcentered leadership in times of crisis.
Bush's guitar-playing antics in the face of the New Orleans devastation
may doom him to a similar fate.
NERO FIDDLED while Rome burned.
President Bush, who's not big on the classics, probably wasn't thinking
about this when he mugged for the cameras Tuesday, playing a guitar
presented to him by country singer Mark Wills.
But with the photo now Exhibit A for many liberal bloggers, he may find
the comparison hard to shake.
True, while Bush enjoyed his vacation and strummed his new guitar, a great
city was being devastated by water rather than fire.
And unlike the Emperor Nero, who was accused by the historian Suetonius of
having deliberately started the fire that destroyed much of Rome in AD 64,
no one is accusing President Bush of planning Hurricane Katrina.
But the Bush administration deserves substantial blame for the scale of
the catastrophe in New Orleans.
An excellent article this week by Will Bunch in Editor & Publisher points
out that it was the cost of the Iraq war that led the Bush administration
to defund efforts to shore up the vulnerable city's levees.
After flooding in 1995 killed six people in New Orleans, the Army Corps of
Engineers started work on a massive civil engineering project designed to
strengthen the region's levees and improve the pumping system that
regulates water levels.
The work got off to a good start, but in 2003 federal funding started to
run dry, leaving many projects — including a planned effort to strengthen
the banks of Lake Pontchartrain — on the drawing board.
As early as 2004, the New Orleans Times-Picayune began to report that
local officials and Army Corps of Engineers representatives attributed the
funding cuts to the rising cost of the war in Iraq.
Facing record deficits, the Bush administration cut costs — and cut
corners — by including in its 2005 budget only about a sixth of the
flood-prevention funds requested by the Louisiana congressional
delegation.
The war in Iraq also has made recovery from Katrina slower and more
challenging. The Army National Guard units normally available for domestic
disaster relief found rapid emergency response unusually difficult since
so many of their personnel are deployed in Iraq. Although more units were
dispatched later in the week, the manpower shortage was painfully evident
during the crucial first hours.
The Iraq war is not the only reason for insisting that the Bush
administration deserves some blame for the magnitude of the
still-unfolding catastrophe.
After 9/11, the president promised that the nation would never again be so
unprepared in the face of disaster. The Department of Homeland Security
was created with a view to ensuring that every American city had adequate
emergency plans in place for the kind of large-scale crisis that could
accompany either a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
It was an empty promise.
Four years after 9/11, the fiasco in New Orleans underscores our nation's
ongoing inability to cope with serious threats.
Take public health, for example: Hurricane preparation plans — supposedly
prepared with the involvement and approval of Homeland Security officials
— were grossly inadequate for ensuring a continued supply of medication to
the sick and for the evacuation of the ill and disabled, for cleaning up,
ensuring safe drinking water or preventing the spread of disease.
With floodwaters, broken sewage pipes, damaged petrochemical pipelines and
floating corpses all over the city, no one seemed to have a clear plan.
If a terrorist's bomb, rather than a hurricane, had destroyed a levee
around Lake Pontchartrain, no one would hesitate to condemn the
administration for its lackluster emergency planning and response.
And federal officials had more than a week's warning that a hurricane was
on track for New Orleans — far more time than they'd likely have of a
terrorist attack on critical infrastructure.
Not everything can be blamed on the Bush administration, of course, but
for millions of Americans, the catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
is likely to stand as an indictment of Bush's false economies, empty
promises and foolish priorities.
Consider Louisiana's wetlands, to take just one example. Policies
associated with the administration exacerbated the geographical and
ecological conditions for severe flooding. Over the decades, oil and gas
company actions played a significant role in destroying the wetlands.
Other factors also contributed, including residential development and,
ironically, the overbuilding of some of the region's levees. But the
"man-made" aspects of the disaster highlight the folly of the policies of
unlimited development and environmental despoliation that the
administration has so consistently embraced.
Two thousand years after his death, Nero's famous fiddling remains an
allegory about feckless and selfcentered leadership in times of crisis.
Bush's guitar-playing antics in the face of the New Orleans devastation
may doom him to a similar fate.
Why New Orleans is in Deep Water
By Molly Ivins
Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.
To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.
This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.
This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."
Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the National Rifle Association would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.
One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, "The Democrats did it," or, "It's all Reagan's fault." Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's delta.
But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies--ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.
Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.
Does this mean we should blame President Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Category 3 or Category 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging).
Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325.
Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."
The commander of the corps' New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and canceled the annual corps picnic.
Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.
In fact, there is now a governmentwide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans--it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.
Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.
The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)
This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.
The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."
This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.
Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.
To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.
This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.
This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."
Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the National Rifle Association would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.
One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, "The Democrats did it," or, "It's all Reagan's fault." Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's delta.
But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies--ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.
Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.
Does this mean we should blame President Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Category 3 or Category 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging).
Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325.
Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."
The commander of the corps' New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and canceled the annual corps picnic.
Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.
In fact, there is now a governmentwide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans--it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.
Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.
The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)
This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.
The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."
This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.
Friday, September 02, 2005
MORE WHISTLEBLOWER WOES
By William Fisher
Whistleblowers – those who go public with allegations of waste, fraud and abuse – continue to have a tough time, despite a law protecting them, and repeated assurances from the White House, many government agencies and congress that they maintain a policy of zero tolerance for retaliation.
The latest victim of apparent retaliation is Bunnatine H. “Bunny” Greenhouse,
the senior contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers, who objected – first, internally, then publicly – to a multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq.
Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Greenhouse she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews.
But Greenhouse's attorney, Michael D. Kohn, has appealed the decision in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying the performance review cited by Strock to justify his action "was conducted by the very subjects" of Greenhouse's allegations, including the general.”
Greenhouse went public with her concerns over the volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton by the Corps without competition. Previously, her complaints within the agency having been ignored, she started giving interviews to national publications, and testified before a Democrat-sponsored Capitol Hill event on contracting in Iraq.
"I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to (Halliburton subsidiary) KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years working on government contracts, Greenhouse said at the Democratic forum.
Greenhouse, the Army Corps' top procurement official since 1997, has developed a reputation among those in both government and industry as being a stickler for the rules.
That has led her critics to characterize her as a rule-bound bureaucrat. But those who support her see her as a defender of the public trust.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, KBR had been hired to design a program to extinguish the oil fires the Pentagon believed retreating Iraqi troops would set when the invasion took place.
The government’s request for proposals to implement the KBR plan stipulated
that contractors had to have knowledge of KBR's plan. Consequently, KBR was the only bidder deemed eligible. The company was then hired to implement the program in a five-year, no-bid contract. Government contacting rules generally forbid contractors hired to prepare plans and budget estimates from bidding for the work that grows out of these plans.
Government contractors who spoke on condition of anonymity said “contracts officers who insist on dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’ can drive you crazy and delay your start-date”. But all agreed that contracting regulations “are there for a purpose – to protect the taxpayers’ money – and. In the end, you just accept delays as a cost of doing business.”
Greenhouse is only the latest in a lengthening string of whistleblowers whose cases have been rejected by the government.
Most prominent is Sibel Edmonds, who is waiting for the Supreme Court to review her charges that the behavior of some of her fellow employees at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compromised national security. Lower courts turned down her case when the FBI claimed the ‘state secrets’ privilege, contending that disclosure of Edmonds’ evidence would reveal classified information.
Edmonds, a contract linguist for the bureau, was the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice inspector general, who found that her charges were the major reason for her dismissal.
She organized and now leads the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), which includes more than 50 former employees of national security agencies. The group has called on congress to permit whistleblowers to sue government retaliators in their personal and official capacities and to bring suit against agencies for failure to rectify misdeeds by employees or provide sufficient safeguards against whistleblower retaliation.
The government is increasingly using the ‘state secrets’ privilege to block whistleblowers’ suits. The State Secrets Privilege gives the federal government the ability to dismiss legal cases it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence or national security.
It was used in 2002 in the case of Notra Trulock, who launched a defamation suit against Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American computer scientist charged with stealing nuclear secrets for China from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
President George W. Bush said national security would be compromised if Trulock were allowed to seek damages from Lee. In a plea bargain with Lee -- who had been imprisoned for 278 days in solitary confinement -- Lee pled guilty to improper handling of classified data and was cleared of all charges relating to espionage.
The government again invoked the privilege when Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, sought to sue then Attorney General John Ashcroft for his role in taking Arar from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Syria against his will. He says he was first held incommunicado by U.S. immigration authorities, and eventually “rendered” to Syria, where he was imprisoned for close to a year and claims he was tortured. He was released without charges.
Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said in legal papers filed at the time that “Litigating [the] plaintiff's complaint would necessitate disclosure of classified information." The Arar case is currently being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barbara Olshansky, the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar, charged that government lawyers “think they can do anything they want in the name of the global war on terrorism.”
Again, in August 2005, a Federal Appeals Court affirmed the dismissal of a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) based on the state secrets privilege.
Jeffrey Sterling, a CIA Operations Officer, claimed he was told he was “too big and black” to receive certain CIA assignments, and that CIA management placed expectations on him “far above those required of non-African-American Operations Officers.” He also contended he was retaliated against for using the CIA’s internal equal employment opportunity process.
The court ruled that Sterling cold not prove employment discrimination without exposing classified details of his covert employment.
Jeff Ruch, executive director of the civil service support group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said, “The stark absence of whistleblower rights in security, intelligence and military agencies is a growing vacuum that requires dedicated efforts to address.''
Whistleblowers – those who go public with allegations of waste, fraud and abuse – continue to have a tough time, despite a law protecting them, and repeated assurances from the White House, many government agencies and congress that they maintain a policy of zero tolerance for retaliation.
The latest victim of apparent retaliation is Bunnatine H. “Bunny” Greenhouse,
the senior contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers, who objected – first, internally, then publicly – to a multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq.
Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Greenhouse she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews.
But Greenhouse's attorney, Michael D. Kohn, has appealed the decision in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying the performance review cited by Strock to justify his action "was conducted by the very subjects" of Greenhouse's allegations, including the general.”
Greenhouse went public with her concerns over the volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton by the Corps without competition. Previously, her complaints within the agency having been ignored, she started giving interviews to national publications, and testified before a Democrat-sponsored Capitol Hill event on contracting in Iraq.
"I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to (Halliburton subsidiary) KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years working on government contracts, Greenhouse said at the Democratic forum.
Greenhouse, the Army Corps' top procurement official since 1997, has developed a reputation among those in both government and industry as being a stickler for the rules.
That has led her critics to characterize her as a rule-bound bureaucrat. But those who support her see her as a defender of the public trust.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, KBR had been hired to design a program to extinguish the oil fires the Pentagon believed retreating Iraqi troops would set when the invasion took place.
The government’s request for proposals to implement the KBR plan stipulated
that contractors had to have knowledge of KBR's plan. Consequently, KBR was the only bidder deemed eligible. The company was then hired to implement the program in a five-year, no-bid contract. Government contacting rules generally forbid contractors hired to prepare plans and budget estimates from bidding for the work that grows out of these plans.
Government contractors who spoke on condition of anonymity said “contracts officers who insist on dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’ can drive you crazy and delay your start-date”. But all agreed that contracting regulations “are there for a purpose – to protect the taxpayers’ money – and. In the end, you just accept delays as a cost of doing business.”
Greenhouse is only the latest in a lengthening string of whistleblowers whose cases have been rejected by the government.
Most prominent is Sibel Edmonds, who is waiting for the Supreme Court to review her charges that the behavior of some of her fellow employees at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compromised national security. Lower courts turned down her case when the FBI claimed the ‘state secrets’ privilege, contending that disclosure of Edmonds’ evidence would reveal classified information.
Edmonds, a contract linguist for the bureau, was the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice inspector general, who found that her charges were the major reason for her dismissal.
She organized and now leads the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), which includes more than 50 former employees of national security agencies. The group has called on congress to permit whistleblowers to sue government retaliators in their personal and official capacities and to bring suit against agencies for failure to rectify misdeeds by employees or provide sufficient safeguards against whistleblower retaliation.
The government is increasingly using the ‘state secrets’ privilege to block whistleblowers’ suits. The State Secrets Privilege gives the federal government the ability to dismiss legal cases it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence or national security.
It was used in 2002 in the case of Notra Trulock, who launched a defamation suit against Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American computer scientist charged with stealing nuclear secrets for China from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
President George W. Bush said national security would be compromised if Trulock were allowed to seek damages from Lee. In a plea bargain with Lee -- who had been imprisoned for 278 days in solitary confinement -- Lee pled guilty to improper handling of classified data and was cleared of all charges relating to espionage.
The government again invoked the privilege when Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, sought to sue then Attorney General John Ashcroft for his role in taking Arar from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Syria against his will. He says he was first held incommunicado by U.S. immigration authorities, and eventually “rendered” to Syria, where he was imprisoned for close to a year and claims he was tortured. He was released without charges.
Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said in legal papers filed at the time that “Litigating [the] plaintiff's complaint would necessitate disclosure of classified information." The Arar case is currently being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barbara Olshansky, the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar, charged that government lawyers “think they can do anything they want in the name of the global war on terrorism.”
Again, in August 2005, a Federal Appeals Court affirmed the dismissal of a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) based on the state secrets privilege.
Jeffrey Sterling, a CIA Operations Officer, claimed he was told he was “too big and black” to receive certain CIA assignments, and that CIA management placed expectations on him “far above those required of non-African-American Operations Officers.” He also contended he was retaliated against for using the CIA’s internal equal employment opportunity process.
The court ruled that Sterling cold not prove employment discrimination without exposing classified details of his covert employment.
Jeff Ruch, executive director of the civil service support group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said, “The stark absence of whistleblower rights in security, intelligence and military agencies is a growing vacuum that requires dedicated efforts to address.''
THE POOR GET POORER
William Fisher
“The rich got richer and the poor got poorer” is a sentence most often used to describe the economic plight of underdeveloped countries.
But last week, it was being used to describe the economy of the world’s lone superpower: The USA.
The U.S. Census Bureau released new figures that many economists say reflects the negative impacts of President George W. Bush’s “Ownership Society”.
Four measurements tell the tale: Household incomes, the poverty rate, the rising percentage of total income received by the top 20, 5, and 2 percent of Americans, and the number of Americans without health insurance.
Last year, America’s poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population, the fourth consecutive annual increase. That means there were 37 million people living on incomes below $19,157 or less for a family of four, up 1.1 million in 2003.
This income inequality was near all-time highs in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households. Only the top five percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004. Incomes for the other 95 percent of households were flat or falling.
The poverty threshold differs by the size and makeup of a household. For example, a family of four with two children was considered living in poverty if its income was $19,157 or less. For a family of two with no children, it was $12,649. For a person 65 and over living alone, it was $9,060. These figures must also be viewed against the background of the cost of living in each state or location, which varies widely around the country.
Asians were the only ethnic group to show a decline in the proportion in poverty -- from 11.8 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year. The poverty rate among the elderly declined as well, from 10.2 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year.
The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold -- 11.3 percent of the population. Since then, the poverty rate has increased steadily from 11.7 percent in 2001, when the economy slipped into recession, to 12.5 percent in 2003.
The situation may in fact be worse, because it is unclear whether the Census Bureau counts alien immigrants. If so, the data would be skewed even more heavily toward greater poverty.
Median household income, meanwhile, stood at $44,389, unchanged from 2003 -- the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.
Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the lowest median average income and Asians the highest. Median income refers to the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less.
Regionally, the South had the lowest median incomes, with the, Northeast and the West the highest.
The increase in poverty came despite strong economic growth -- the economy grew a solid 3.8 percent -- which helped create 2.2 million jobs last year. But these new jobs were overwhelmingly in the services sector, where salaries are far lower than in manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs were disappearing, and the American workforce continued to lack the skills needed to fill the service sector jobs that did pay higher salaries.
A majority of Americans now must seek two jobs to replace the income lost from one.
Moreover, much of the growth in economic wealth over the last few years has been purely in financial assets going to the rich in the form of capital income -- interest, rents, and dividends, many economists say.
The official net percentage of people without health insurance grew by 800,000 -- up from 45 million to 45.8 million. But the Census Bureau said the percentage of uninsured remained relatively steady only because of an ''increase in government coverage, notably Medicaid and the state children's health insurance program, that offset a decline in employment-based coverage.''
But Medicaid and similar programs are experiencing punishing cuts because cash-poor states cannot afford to fund them. That will leave the poor with even fewer health resources.
The view of the economy from the White House and Capital Hill is obviously a very different picture than that seen from below the poverty line. During its last session, congress passed a law backed by the Administration and the credit card industry, making it far more difficult for average Americans to use bankruptcy to get out of debt. It also passed a so-called ‘tort reform’ law ensuring that the poor – and everyone else – who have a lot more trouble suing product manufacturers.
And the credit-card companies are encouraging borrowing to increase the likelihood of defaults – which are just as profitable because of the exorbitant interest and fees charged for debit balances.
When Congress returns next week, it will be pushing to repeal the estate tax (which affects only the wealthiest families), extending tax cuts for investment income (another gift to the richest Americans), and yet again resisting efforts to raise the minimum wage (which has been at $5.15 an hour since 1997 while inflation has risen at least by 3% a year).
Lawmakers will also be taking up proposals for deep budget cuts in programs intended to assist the poor --like Medicaid, food stamps and federal student loans.
At the same time, the White House and Congress remain paralyzed over the Social Security issue. The public has robustly rejected President Bush’s pitch that private investment accounts would increase retirement and disability income for the next generation of retirees. Republican congress members, with an eye on the 2006 elections, are increasingly distancing themselves from the president. Democrats have simply taken a ‘just say no’ position, putting forth no proposals of their own, and angering many rank-and-file Democrats in the process.
During the last few years, the U.S. economy has been driven far more by consumer spending than by investments from the wealthy recipients of the Bush tax cuts. But what happens to that engine of growth as the poor get poorer?
That, economists say, is a no-brainer. As their salaries dwindle, and their credit cards get maxed out, they will simply stop spending. And more and more of them will descend even further into a financial abyss – and become the government’s responsibility, at untold cost to all taxpayers.
Given the huge deficits posted by politicians who profess to be committed to fiscal responsibility, present and future taxpayers will be severely burdened to finance the debt piled up by the government.
At least half that debt is owned by foreigners who expect to receive interest incomes. This, in turn, puts additional pressure on the U.S. international balance of payments and depresses the value of the dollar, which in turn raises prices of many imports among the consumer baskets of the poor.
"All in all," says former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Dr. Jack Behrman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina business school, “America is failing in the key criterion of economic progress -- raising the standard of living of the poorest segment of society.”
The distinguished economist told IPS, “Current policies favor the wealthy and focus on financial success rather than production of real goods and services. These are a recipe for economic and social conflict rather than building a cohesive community".
“The rich got richer and the poor got poorer” is a sentence most often used to describe the economic plight of underdeveloped countries.
But last week, it was being used to describe the economy of the world’s lone superpower: The USA.
The U.S. Census Bureau released new figures that many economists say reflects the negative impacts of President George W. Bush’s “Ownership Society”.
Four measurements tell the tale: Household incomes, the poverty rate, the rising percentage of total income received by the top 20, 5, and 2 percent of Americans, and the number of Americans without health insurance.
Last year, America’s poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population, the fourth consecutive annual increase. That means there were 37 million people living on incomes below $19,157 or less for a family of four, up 1.1 million in 2003.
This income inequality was near all-time highs in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households. Only the top five percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004. Incomes for the other 95 percent of households were flat or falling.
The poverty threshold differs by the size and makeup of a household. For example, a family of four with two children was considered living in poverty if its income was $19,157 or less. For a family of two with no children, it was $12,649. For a person 65 and over living alone, it was $9,060. These figures must also be viewed against the background of the cost of living in each state or location, which varies widely around the country.
Asians were the only ethnic group to show a decline in the proportion in poverty -- from 11.8 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year. The poverty rate among the elderly declined as well, from 10.2 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year.
The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold -- 11.3 percent of the population. Since then, the poverty rate has increased steadily from 11.7 percent in 2001, when the economy slipped into recession, to 12.5 percent in 2003.
The situation may in fact be worse, because it is unclear whether the Census Bureau counts alien immigrants. If so, the data would be skewed even more heavily toward greater poverty.
Median household income, meanwhile, stood at $44,389, unchanged from 2003 -- the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.
Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the lowest median average income and Asians the highest. Median income refers to the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less.
Regionally, the South had the lowest median incomes, with the, Northeast and the West the highest.
The increase in poverty came despite strong economic growth -- the economy grew a solid 3.8 percent -- which helped create 2.2 million jobs last year. But these new jobs were overwhelmingly in the services sector, where salaries are far lower than in manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs were disappearing, and the American workforce continued to lack the skills needed to fill the service sector jobs that did pay higher salaries.
A majority of Americans now must seek two jobs to replace the income lost from one.
Moreover, much of the growth in economic wealth over the last few years has been purely in financial assets going to the rich in the form of capital income -- interest, rents, and dividends, many economists say.
The official net percentage of people without health insurance grew by 800,000 -- up from 45 million to 45.8 million. But the Census Bureau said the percentage of uninsured remained relatively steady only because of an ''increase in government coverage, notably Medicaid and the state children's health insurance program, that offset a decline in employment-based coverage.''
But Medicaid and similar programs are experiencing punishing cuts because cash-poor states cannot afford to fund them. That will leave the poor with even fewer health resources.
The view of the economy from the White House and Capital Hill is obviously a very different picture than that seen from below the poverty line. During its last session, congress passed a law backed by the Administration and the credit card industry, making it far more difficult for average Americans to use bankruptcy to get out of debt. It also passed a so-called ‘tort reform’ law ensuring that the poor – and everyone else – who have a lot more trouble suing product manufacturers.
And the credit-card companies are encouraging borrowing to increase the likelihood of defaults – which are just as profitable because of the exorbitant interest and fees charged for debit balances.
When Congress returns next week, it will be pushing to repeal the estate tax (which affects only the wealthiest families), extending tax cuts for investment income (another gift to the richest Americans), and yet again resisting efforts to raise the minimum wage (which has been at $5.15 an hour since 1997 while inflation has risen at least by 3% a year).
Lawmakers will also be taking up proposals for deep budget cuts in programs intended to assist the poor --like Medicaid, food stamps and federal student loans.
At the same time, the White House and Congress remain paralyzed over the Social Security issue. The public has robustly rejected President Bush’s pitch that private investment accounts would increase retirement and disability income for the next generation of retirees. Republican congress members, with an eye on the 2006 elections, are increasingly distancing themselves from the president. Democrats have simply taken a ‘just say no’ position, putting forth no proposals of their own, and angering many rank-and-file Democrats in the process.
During the last few years, the U.S. economy has been driven far more by consumer spending than by investments from the wealthy recipients of the Bush tax cuts. But what happens to that engine of growth as the poor get poorer?
That, economists say, is a no-brainer. As their salaries dwindle, and their credit cards get maxed out, they will simply stop spending. And more and more of them will descend even further into a financial abyss – and become the government’s responsibility, at untold cost to all taxpayers.
Given the huge deficits posted by politicians who profess to be committed to fiscal responsibility, present and future taxpayers will be severely burdened to finance the debt piled up by the government.
At least half that debt is owned by foreigners who expect to receive interest incomes. This, in turn, puts additional pressure on the U.S. international balance of payments and depresses the value of the dollar, which in turn raises prices of many imports among the consumer baskets of the poor.
"All in all," says former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Dr. Jack Behrman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina business school, “America is failing in the key criterion of economic progress -- raising the standard of living of the poorest segment of society.”
The distinguished economist told IPS, “Current policies favor the wealthy and focus on financial success rather than production of real goods and services. These are a recipe for economic and social conflict rather than building a cohesive community".
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Who's Paying for Our Patriotism?
The writer is James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton
University. This article appeared in the Washington Post.
By Uwe E. Reinhardt
President Bush assures us that the ongoing twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are worth the sacrifices they entail. Editorialists around the nation agree and say that a steadfast American public was willing to stay the course.
Should anyone be surprised by this national resolve, given that these wars visit
no sacrifice of any sort -- neither blood nor angst nor taxes -- on well over 95
percent of the American people?
At most, 500,000 American troops are at risk of being deployed to these war
theaters at some time. Assume that for each of them some 20 members of the wider family sweat with fear when they hear that a helicopter crashed in Afghanistan or that X number of soldiers or Marines were killed or seriously wounded in Iraq. It implies that no more than 10 million Americans have any real emotional connection to these wars.
The administration and Congress have gone to extraordinary lengths to insulate voters from the money cost of the wars -- to the point even of excluding outlays for them from the regular budget process. Furthermore, they have financed the wars not with taxes but by borrowing abroad.
The strategic shielding of most voters from any emotional or financial sacrifice
for these wars cannot but trigger the analogue of what is called "moral hazard"
in the context of health insurance, a field in which I've done a lot of scholarly work. There, moral hazard refers to the tendency of well-insured patients to use health care with complete indifference to the cost they visit on others. It has prompted President Bush to advocate health insurance with very high deductibles. But if all but a handful of Americans are completely insulated
against the emotional -- and financial -- cost of war, is it not natural to
suspect moral hazard will be at work in that context as well?
A policymaking elite whose families and purses are shielded from the sacrifices war entails may rush into it hastily and ill prepared, as surely was the case of the Iraq war. Moral hazard in this context can explain why a nation that once built a Liberty Ship every two weeks and thousands of newly designed airplanes in the span of a few years now takes years merely to properly arm and armor its troops with conventional equipment. Moral hazard can explain why, in wartime, the TV anchors on the morning and evening shows barely make time to report on the wars, lest the reports displace the silly banter with which they seek to humor their viewers. Do they ever wonder how military families with loved ones in the fray might feel after hearing ever so briefly of mayhem in Iraq or Afghanistan?
Moral hazard also can explain why the general public is so noticeably indifferent to the plight of our troops and their families. To be sure, we paste cheap magnetic ribbons on our cars to proclaim our support for the troops. But at the same time, we allow families of reservists and National Guard members to slide into deep financial distress as their loved ones stand tall for us on lethal battlefields and the family is deprived of these troops' typically higher civilian salaries. We offer a pittance in disability pay to seriously wounded soldiers who have not served the full 20 years that entitles them to a regular pension. And our legislative representatives make a disgraceful spectacle of themselves bickering over a mere $1 billion or so in added health care spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs -- in a nation with a $13 trillion economy!
Last year kind-hearted folks in New Jersey collected $12,000 at a pancake feed to help stock pantries for financially hard-pressed families of the National Guard. Food pantries for American military families? The state of Illinois now allows taxpayers to donate their tax refunds to such families. For the entire year 2004, slightly more than $400,000 was collected in this way, or 3 cents per capita. It is the equivalent of about 100,000 cups of Starbucks coffee. With a similar program Rhode Island collected about 1 cent per capita. Is this what we mean by "supporting our troops"?
When our son, then a recent Princeton graduate, decided to join the Marine Corps in 2001, I advised him thus: "Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded." The intervening years have not changed my views; they have reaffirmed them.
Unlike the editors of the nation's newspapers, I am not at all impressed by people who resolve to have others stay the course in Iraq and in Afghanistan. At zero sacrifice, who would not have that resolve?
University. This article appeared in the Washington Post.
By Uwe E. Reinhardt
President Bush assures us that the ongoing twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are worth the sacrifices they entail. Editorialists around the nation agree and say that a steadfast American public was willing to stay the course.
Should anyone be surprised by this national resolve, given that these wars visit
no sacrifice of any sort -- neither blood nor angst nor taxes -- on well over 95
percent of the American people?
At most, 500,000 American troops are at risk of being deployed to these war
theaters at some time. Assume that for each of them some 20 members of the wider family sweat with fear when they hear that a helicopter crashed in Afghanistan or that X number of soldiers or Marines were killed or seriously wounded in Iraq. It implies that no more than 10 million Americans have any real emotional connection to these wars.
The administration and Congress have gone to extraordinary lengths to insulate voters from the money cost of the wars -- to the point even of excluding outlays for them from the regular budget process. Furthermore, they have financed the wars not with taxes but by borrowing abroad.
The strategic shielding of most voters from any emotional or financial sacrifice
for these wars cannot but trigger the analogue of what is called "moral hazard"
in the context of health insurance, a field in which I've done a lot of scholarly work. There, moral hazard refers to the tendency of well-insured patients to use health care with complete indifference to the cost they visit on others. It has prompted President Bush to advocate health insurance with very high deductibles. But if all but a handful of Americans are completely insulated
against the emotional -- and financial -- cost of war, is it not natural to
suspect moral hazard will be at work in that context as well?
A policymaking elite whose families and purses are shielded from the sacrifices war entails may rush into it hastily and ill prepared, as surely was the case of the Iraq war. Moral hazard in this context can explain why a nation that once built a Liberty Ship every two weeks and thousands of newly designed airplanes in the span of a few years now takes years merely to properly arm and armor its troops with conventional equipment. Moral hazard can explain why, in wartime, the TV anchors on the morning and evening shows barely make time to report on the wars, lest the reports displace the silly banter with which they seek to humor their viewers. Do they ever wonder how military families with loved ones in the fray might feel after hearing ever so briefly of mayhem in Iraq or Afghanistan?
Moral hazard also can explain why the general public is so noticeably indifferent to the plight of our troops and their families. To be sure, we paste cheap magnetic ribbons on our cars to proclaim our support for the troops. But at the same time, we allow families of reservists and National Guard members to slide into deep financial distress as their loved ones stand tall for us on lethal battlefields and the family is deprived of these troops' typically higher civilian salaries. We offer a pittance in disability pay to seriously wounded soldiers who have not served the full 20 years that entitles them to a regular pension. And our legislative representatives make a disgraceful spectacle of themselves bickering over a mere $1 billion or so in added health care spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs -- in a nation with a $13 trillion economy!
Last year kind-hearted folks in New Jersey collected $12,000 at a pancake feed to help stock pantries for financially hard-pressed families of the National Guard. Food pantries for American military families? The state of Illinois now allows taxpayers to donate their tax refunds to such families. For the entire year 2004, slightly more than $400,000 was collected in this way, or 3 cents per capita. It is the equivalent of about 100,000 cups of Starbucks coffee. With a similar program Rhode Island collected about 1 cent per capita. Is this what we mean by "supporting our troops"?
When our son, then a recent Princeton graduate, decided to join the Marine Corps in 2001, I advised him thus: "Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded." The intervening years have not changed my views; they have reaffirmed them.
Unlike the editors of the nation's newspapers, I am not at all impressed by people who resolve to have others stay the course in Iraq and in Afghanistan. At zero sacrifice, who would not have that resolve?
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