posted on August 3, 2003 08:21:21 AM new
The great American dream by right wing murdering republican facists,IS FOR PROFIT and for a small handful of chosen elite in this country, and let's use this american population for our greedy desires, which is what is happening. If I recall, did we not fight the British for our Freedom not long ago, were they not a oppressing force on this great land,useing it for profit for a few greedy elite at the time, or was that just a joke also. Why are so many people so stupid as not to see what is going on, or is it the additives in the food that put so many to sleep as to see what the truth is. The truth will prevail, but sadly so many will die and a great nation will succumb to finacial economic diaster before finally some wise and couragerous person in the administration will say, enough is enough, bring back the troops home and put those responsible for our ruined nation, into prison.
August 2, 2003
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Bremer's Looking-Glass Fantasy
By ROBERT FISK
Paul Bremer's taste in clothes symbolises "the new Iraq" well. He wears a business suit and combat boots. As the pro-consul of Iraq, you might have thought he'd have more taste.
But he is a famous "antiterrorism" expert who is supposed to be rebuilding the country with a vast army of international companies--most of them American, of course--and creating the first democracy in the Arab world.
Since he seems to be a total failure at the "anti-terrorist" game--50 American soldiers killed in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared the war over is not exactly a blazing success--it is only fair to record that he is making a mess of the "reconstruction" bit as well.
In theory, the news is all great. Oil production is up to one million barrels a day; Baghdad airport is preparing to reopen; every university in Iraq is functioning again and the health services are recovering rapidly.
And an Iraqi Interim Council is up and hobbling.
But there's a kind of looking-glass fantasy to all these announcements from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the weasel-worded title with which the American-led occupation powers cloak their decidedly undemocratic and right-wing credentials.
Take the oil production figures. Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, even chose to use these statistics in his "great day for Iraq" press conference last week, the one in which he announced that 200 soldiers in Mosul had killed the sons of Saddam rather than take them prisoner. But Sanchez was talking rubbish.
Although oil production was indeed standing at 900,000 barrels per day in June (albeit 100,000bpd fewer than the Sanchez version), it fell last month to 750,000. The drop was caused by power cuts and export smuggling.
The result? Iraq, with the world's second-highest reserves of oil, is now importing fuel.
Then comes Baghdad airport. Sure, it's going to reopen. But it just happens that the airport, with its huge American military base and brutal US prison camp, comes under nightly grenade and mortar attack.
No major airline would dream of flying its aircraft into the facility in these circumstances.
The Iraqis are told, for example, that the first flights will be run by "Transcontinental Airlines" (a name oddly similar to the CIA's transport airline in Vietnam), which is reported to be a subsidiary of "US Airlines", and the only flight will be between Baghdad and--wait for it--the old East Berlin airport of Schonefeld.
Open universities are good news. And few would blame Bremer for summarily firing the 436 professors who were members of the Baath Party.
In the same vein, the CPA annulled the academic system whereby student party members would automatically receive higher grades. But then it turned out that there wouldn't be enough qualified professors to go round. Quite a number of the 436 were party men in name only and received their degrees at foreign universities.
So at Mustansiriyah University, for example, the very same purged professors were rehired after filling out forms routinely denouncing the Baath Party.
Bremer seems to have a habit of reversing his own decisions; having triumphantly announced that he'd sacked the entire Iraqi Army, he was humiliatingly forced to put them back on rations in case they all decided to attack US soldiers in Iraq.
Health services? Well, yes, the new Iraqi health service is being encouraged to rehabilitate the country's hospitals and clinics. But a mysterious American company called Abt Associates has turned up in Baghdad to give "Ministry of Health Technical Assistance" support to the US Agency for International Development and "rapid response grants to address health needs in-country".
It has decreed that all medical equipment must accord with US technical standards and modifications--which means that all new hospital equipment must come from America, not from Europe.
Of course, Iraqis protest at much of this. Much good does it do them.
When Iraqi ex-soldiers demonstrated outside Bremer's office at the former Presidential Palace, US troops shot two of them dead. When Falujah residents staged a protest as long ago as April, the American military shot 16 dead. Another 11 were later gunned down in Mosul.
During two demonstrations against the presence of US troops near the shrine of Imam Hussein at Karbala last weekend, US soldiers shot dead another three.
"What a wonderful thing it is to speak your own minds," Sanchez said of the demonstrations in Iraq last week.
All this might be incomprehensible if one forgot that the whole illegal Iraqi invasion had been hatched up by a bunch of right-wing and pro-Israeli ideologues in Washington, and that Bremer--though not a member of their group--fits squarely into the same bracket.
Hence Paul Wolfowitz, one of the prime instigators of this war--he was among the loudest to beat the drum over the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist--is now trying to deflect attention from his disastrous advice to the US Administration by attacking the media, in particular that pesky, uncontrollable channel, Al-Jazeera.
Its reports, he now meretriciously claims, amount to "incitement to violence"--knowing full well, of course, that Bremer has officially made "incitement to violence" an excuse to close down any newspaper or TV station he doesn't like.
Indeed, newspapers that have offended the Americans have been raided by US troops in the same way that the Americans have conducted raids on the offices of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leader, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Hakim, is a member of the famous Interim Council--not exactly a bright way to keep a prominent Shia cleric on board.
But the council itself is already the subject of much humour in Baghdad, not least because its first acts included the purchase of cars for all its members; a decision to work out of a former presidential palace; and--this the lunatic brainchild of the Pentagon-supported and convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi--the declaring of a national holiday every April 9 to honour Iraq's "liberation" from Saddam.
What could be more natural than celebrating the end of the Beast of Baghdad? But Iraqis, a proud people who have resisted centuries of invasions, realised their new public holiday would mark the first day of their country's foreign occupation.
And so there has begun to grow the faint but sinister shadow of a different kind of "democracy" for Iraq, one in which a new ruler will have to use a paternalistic rule--moderation mixed with autocracy, a la Ataturk--to govern Iraq and allow the Americans to go home.
Inevitably, it has been one of the American commentators from the same failed lunatic right as Wolfowitz--Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum think tank, which promotes American interests in the region--to express this in its most chilling form.
He now argues that "democratic-minded autocrats can guide [Iraq] to full democracy better than snap elections". What Iraq needs, he says, is "a democratically minded [sic] strongman who has real authority", who would be "politically moderate" but "operationally tough" (sic again).
Of course, it's difficult to resist a cynical smile at such double standards, although their meaning is frightening enough. What does "operationally tough" mean, other than secret policemen, interrogation rooms and torturers to keep the people in order--which is exactly what Saddam set up when he took power, supported as he was at the time by the US and Britain?
What does "strongman" mean other than a total reversal of the promise of "democracy" which Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair made to the Iraqi people?
Democracies are not led by autocrats, and autocrats are not led by anyone but themselves.
But today Bremer is the strongman, and under his rule US troops are losing hearts and minds by the bucketful with each new, blundering and often useless raid against the civilians of Iraq.
Still obsessed with capturing--or, rather, killing--Saddam, they are destroying any residual affection for them among the population. On a recent operation in the town of Dhuluaya, for example, two innocent men were killed and the Americans' Iraqi informer--originally paraded before those he was to betray in a hood to keep his identity secret--was executed by his own father.
The enterprising newspaper Iraq Today found that the "intelligence" officers of the 4th Infantry Division even left behind mug shots, aerial reconnaissance photographs and secret operational documents--complete with target houses and briefing notes--at the scene. The paper gleefully published the lot.
Anarchic violence is now being embedded in Iraqi society in a way it never was under the genocidal Saddam. Scarcely a day goes by when I do not encounter the evidence of this in my daily reporting work.
Visiting the Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad to seek the identity of civilians killed by American troops in Mansour this week, I came across four bodies lying out in the yard beside the building in the 50C heat. All had been shot.
Three days earlier, on a visit to a supermarket, I noticed that the woman cashier was wearing black. Yes, she said, because her brother had been murdered a week earlier. No one knew why.
Trying to contact an ex-prisoner illegally held by the Americans at his home in a slum suburb of Baghdad, I drove to the mukhtar's house to find the correct address. The mukhtar is the local mayor. But I was greeted by a group of long-faced relatives who told me that I could not speak to the mukhtar--because he had been assassinated the previous night.
So if this is my experience in just the past four days, how many murders and thefts are occurring across Baghdad--or, indeed, across Iraq?
Only a few days ago, I sat in the conference hall that the occupation authorities use for their daily press briefings, follies that are used to condemn "irresponsible reporting", but which record only a fraction of the violence of the previous 24 hours--violence which, of course, is well known to the authorities.
And there was a disturbing moment when Charles Heatley, the British spokesman from the Foreign Office, appointed by Blair at the behest of Alastair Campbell, talked about the reports of abduction and rape in Iraq. He acknowledged that there had been some cases, but then--I enjoyed the beautiful way in which he tried to destroy any journalistic interest in this terrible subject--talked about the number of "rumours" that turned out to be untrue when checked out.
But this is not the experience of the Independent, which in just one day recently discovered the identity of one young woman who had been kidnapped, raped and then freed--only to attempt suicide three times.
Why don't the occupation authorities realise that Iraq cannot be "spun"? This country is living a tragedy of epic proportions, and now--after its descent into hell under Saddam--we are doomed to suffer its contagion. By our hubris and by our lies and our fantasies we are descending into the pit.
For the people of Iraq, the next stage in their long suffering is under way. For us, a new colonial humiliation, the like of which may well end the careers of Bush and Blair, is coming. Of far more consequence is that it is likely to end many innocent lives as well.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism
posted on August 5, 2003 08:37:18 AM new
US Nobel Laureate Slams Bush Gov't as "Worst" in American History
By Matthias Streitz
Der Spiegel
Tuesday 29 July 2003
George A. Akerlof is a 2001 Nobel prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley.
BERLIN - American Nobel Prize laureate for Economics George A. Akerlof lashed out at the government of US President George W. Bush, calling it the "worst ever" in American history, the online site of the weekly Der Spiegel magazine reported Tuesday.
"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy," said the 2001 Nobel Prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley.
"This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for (American) people to engage in civil disobedience. I think it's time to protest - as much as possible," the 61-year-old scholar added.
Akerlof has been recognized for his research that borrows from sociology, psychology, anthropology and other fields to determine economic influences and outcomes. His areas of expertise include macro-economics, monetary policy and poverty.
"A FORM OF LOOTING"
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Professor Akerlof, according to recent official projections, the US federal deficit will reach $455 billion this fiscal year. That's the largest ever in dollar terms, but according to the President's budget director, it's still manageable. Do you agree?
AKERLOF: In the long term, a deficit of this magnitude is not manageable. We are moving into the period when, beginning around 2010, baby boomers are going to be retiring. That is going to put a severe strain on services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This is the time when we should be saving.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So it would be necessary to run a budget surplus instead?
AKERLOF: That would probably be impossible in the current situation. There's the expenditure for the war in Iraq, which I consider irresponsible. But there's also a recession and a desire to invigorate the economy through fiscal stimulus, which is quite legitimate. That's why we actually do need a deficit in the short term - but certainly not the type of deficit we have now.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Because it's not created by investment, but to a large extent by cutting taxes?
AKERLOF: A short-term tax benefit for the poor would actually be a reasonable stimulus. Then, the money would almost certainly be spent. But the current and future deficit is a lot less stimulatory than it could be. Our administration is just throwing the money away. First, we should have fiscal stimulus that is sharply aimed at the current downturn. But this deficit continues far into the future, as the bulk of the tax cuts can be expected to continue indefinitely. The Administration is giving us red ink as far as the eye can see, and these permanent aspects outweigh the short-term stimulatory effects.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: And secondly, you disagree with giving tax relief primarily to wealthier Americans. The GOP argues that those people deserve it for working hard.
AKERLOF: The rich don't need the money and are a lot less likely to spend it - they will primarily increase their savings. Remember that wealthier families have done extremely well in the US in the past twenty years, whereas poorer ones have done quite badly. So the redistributive effects of this administration's tax policy are going in the exactly wrong direction. The worst and most indefensible of those cuts are those in dividend taxation - this overwhelmingly helps very wealthy people.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The President claims that dividend tax reform supports the stock market - and helps the economy as a whole to grow.
AKERLOF: That's totally unrealistic. Standard formulas from growth models suggest that that effect will be extremely small. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has come to a similar conclusion. So, even a sympathetic treatment finds that this argument is simply not correct.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: When campaigning for an even-larger tax cut earlier this year, Mr. Bush promised that it would create 1.4 million jobs. Was that reasonable?
AKERLOF: The tax cut will have some positive impact on job creation, although, as I mentioned, there is very little bang for the buck. There are very negative long-term consequences. The administration, when speaking about the budget, has unrealistically failed to take into account a very large number of important items. As of March 2003, the CBO estimated that the surplus for the next decade would approximately reach one trillion dollars. But this projection assumes, among other questionable things, that spending until 2013 is going to be constant in real dollar terms. That has never been the case. And with the current tax cuts, a realistic estimate would be a deficit in excess of six trillion.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the government's just bad at doing the correct math?
AKERLOF: There is a systematic reason. The government is not really telling the truth to the American people. Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If so, why's the President still popular?
AKERLOF: For some reason the American people does not yet recognize the dire consequences of our government budgets. It's my hope that voters are going to see how irresponsible this policy is and are going to respond in 2004 and we're going to see a reversal.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What if that doesn't happen?
AKERLOF: Future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive public deficits and huge government debt. Then we have a choice. We can be like a very poor country with problems of threatening bankruptcy. Or we're going to have to cut back seriously on Medicare and Social Security. So the money that is going overwhelmingly to the wealthy is going to be paid by cutting services for the elderly. And people depend on those. It's only among the richest 40 percent that you begin to get households who have sizeable fractions of their own retirement income.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there a possibility that the government, because of the scope of current deficits, will be more reluctant to embark on a new war?
AKERLOF: They would certainly have to think about debt levels, and military expenditure is already high. But if they seriously want to lead a war this will not be a large deterrent. You begin the war and ask for the money later. A more likely effect of the deficits is this: If there's another recession, we won't be able to engage in stimulatory fiscal spending to maintain full employment. Until now, there's been a great deal of trust in the American government. Markets knew that, if there is a current deficit, it will be repaid. The government has wasted that resource.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which, in addition, might drive up interest rates quite significantly?
AKERLOF: The deficit is not going to have significant effects on short-term interest rates. Rates are pretty low, and the Fed will manage to keep them that way. In the mid term it could be a serious problem. When rates rise, the massive debt it's going to bite much more.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is it that the Bush family seems to specialize in running up deficits? The second-largest federal deficit in absolute terms, $290 billion, occurred in 1991, during the presidency of George W. Bush's father.
AKERLOF: That may be, but Bush's father committed a great act of courage by actually raising taxes. He wasn't always courageous, but this was his best public service. It was the first step to getting the deficit under control during the Clinton years. It was also a major factor in Bush's losing the election.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: It seems that the current administration has politicised you in an unprecedented way. During the course of this year, you have, with other academics, signed two public declarations of protest. One against the tax cuts, the other against waging unilateral preventive war on Iraq.
AKERLOF: I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of what kind?
AKERLOF: I don't know yet. But I think it's time to protest - as much as possible.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would you consider joining Democratic administration as an adviser, as your colleague Joseph Stiglitz did?
AKERLOF: As you know my wife was in the last administration, and she did very well. She is probably much better suited for public service. But anything I'll be asked to do by a new administration I'd be happy to do.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You've mentioned the term civil disobedience a minute ago. That term was made popular by the author Henry D. Thoreau, who actually advised people not to pay taxes as a means of resistance. You wouldn't call for that, would you?
AKERLOF: No. I think the one thing we should do is pay our taxes. Otherwise, it'll only make matters worse.
posted on August 6, 2003 08:14:50 AM new
Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
08.05.03 Printer-friendly version
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The excavation of deception
Some desk-cleanup days are more depressing than others
AUSTIN, Texas -- There are messy-desk people and there are clean-desk people. I'm a major messy. About every six months, I am seized by a desire to Get Organized, so I start doing archaeological excavations into the midden heap on my desk. The result this time was a sort of time-lapse photography of where the country is headed.
Going through stacks of old newspaper articles, speeches, reports, studies and press releases at a high rate of speed left one overwhelming impression: deception ... government by deception. I'd like pass along some of what I found without the usual journalistic standards of sourcing because I want to recreate the impression it all left -- rather like leafing through a book rapidly, catching a sentence here and there. Leaving aside the missing weapons of mass destruction (hey, we found the oil), I found so many little things that fit the same pattern.
Administration announces with great fanfare new regs to control listeria, a deadly bacteria that can contaminate certain foods. Great, they put in new regs, but first they eviscerated them so they have no real impact.
U.S. Agency for International Development chief Andrew Natsios blasts NGOs (that's the jargon for non-governmental organizations -- private groups engaged in humanitarian assistance) for not doing enough p.r. for the United States. They're supposed to be helping starving and sick people, not flacking for America. Either talk up the United States, Natsios threatened, or he would personally tear up their contracts. (Great, some little Ethiopian kid on the edge of starvation, eyes dull, belly swollen, has to listen to a lecture on U.S. beneficence before he gets some oatmeal.)
New study shows 8 million mostly low-income taxpayers will get no benefit from the latest round of tax cuts, despite repeated assurances that it would help everybody who pays income taxes.
Cost of photo-op with the president at a June fund-raiser: $20,000. Cost of a "leadership luncheon" with Karl Rove: must raise $50,000 for re-election.
"American officials are considering a plan to use Iraq's future oil and gas revenues as collateral to raise cash to rebuild the country. Several U.S. companies, including Halliburton and Bechtel, which are jostling for the lucrative reconstruction contracts, are reportedly pushing the scheme to expedite the commissioning process." That means there's no Marshall Plan, we're not going to rebuild Iraq, we're going to going to take their oil to pay our corporations to fix what we messed up.
President nominates Daniel Pipes to the board of the United States Institute of Peace. This is one of a series of cruel-joke appointments: Pipes is a Middle East expert whose vision of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no negotiation, no hope for compromise and no use for diplomacy. He wants the Palestinians defeated, period. Just the man for the Institute of Peace.
On Friday, April 11, three days after "coalition" forces entered Baghdad, the Interior Department announced a settlement with the state of Utah that effectively destroys the executive branch's key powers to protect wilderness, reversing three decades of environmental policy. Starting immediately, oil, gas and mineral companies are granted access to more than 200 million acres of public lands. Bet you saw a lot of headlines about that one.
Innumerable articles documenting the collapse of our dysfunctional health-care "system."
"And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." -- Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly on "Good Morning America," March 18.
"The White House today defended the decision of congressional negotiators to deny millions of minimum-wage families the increased child tax credit, saying the new tax law was intended to help people who pay taxes, not those who are too poor to pay."
The poorest people in this country pay exactly the same percentage of their income in payroll taxes as wealthy people do in total taxes.
"Ain't gonna happen," said House Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The only way DeLay would support tax cuts for the working poor would be if for every $1in tax cuts to the working poor, rich people got another $22 in tax cuts. Lends new meaning to phrase "without DeLay."
Two and half million jobs have disappeared since Bush took office. Real wages have stagnated or declined. Retirement savings have shrunk. People are losing health insurance, retirement benefits and overtime.
The "death tax," as the Republicans so cleverly misnamed the estate tax, which affects 2 percent of all Americans, has now been replaced by the Bush birth tax -- if you're born in this country, you're in debt -- you have to help pay back the money the Bushies took out of Social Security, plus the interest on the debts they're running up.
My thanks to all the people and publications whose research I have used without credit today. You have all contributed to this brief portrait of a country headed in the wrong direction. Read more in the Molly Ivins archive.
Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Molly Ivins Can't Say That Can She
posted on August 6, 2003 01:25:57 PM new
Factories Bleeding Jobs
August 6, 2003
By BARBARA NAGY, Courant Staff Writer
Manufacturing job losses appear to be gaining speed in Connecticut after moderating a bit earlier this year, with companies from auto-parts producers to makers of medical products announcing sizable cuts in the past few weeks.
Economists suspect many had been putting off layoffs on the expectation that business would improve and orders would pick up. That hasn't happened, leading many to finally resort to job cuts.
"They've been worn down," said Bruce Blakey, corporate economist for Northeast Utilities. The lackluster economy has been a disappointment.
Frank Johnson, head of the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut, said the new losses have been across a variety of companies and industries. Many are longtime Connecticut manufacturers - companies that tend to have a strong supplier base in the state, he said. As a result, Johnson said, the loss of work at those companies will be especially painful.
Recent announcements compiled by the state Department of Labor include:
The former Echlin auto-parts plants in Guilford and Branford are closing, with a loss of 355 jobs. Standard Motor Products Inc. of Long Island City, N.Y., recently bought the operations and is merging them with other units.
Kendro Laboratories is eliminating 320 medical-manufacturing jobs in Newtown and shifting production to North Carolina.
Madrigal Audio Labs of Middletown, which makes audio and video products, is shutting down and eliminating 100 jobs.
Larger companies like Kaman Corp., the Stanley Works and Pratt & Whitney are also each cutting hundreds of manufacturing jobs.
And on Monday, Timken Co. announced that it is exploring "strategic alternatives" for a Torrington plant that employs 277. Timken bought the plant, which manufactures aircraft components, from Ingersoll-Rand Co. as part of a larger acquisition earlier this year.
The losses far outweigh gains at companies such as Electric Boat and Sikorsky Aircraft, which are expanding because of increases in defense spending.
John Tirinzonie, an economist with the state Labor Department, said Connecticut's manufacturing decline mirrors a national drop in manufacturing employment. The losses are driven by the lackluster economy, global competition and consolidations resulting from mergers, he said.
"The economy is just not getting that boost of adrenaline that it needs," Tirinzonie said.
Connecticut has fared slightly better than the nation as a whole. Between July 2000 and June 2003, the state lost 33,600 manufacturing jobs, 14.2 percent of the total. Nationally, the decline was 15.2 percent. Connecticut has lost manufacturing jobs for decades to lower-cost states; now it seems those states are seeing steeper losses as work moves overseas.
Manufacturing jobs remain slightly more important to the Connecticut economy than the national economy. The industry accounted for 12.3 percent of Connecticut employment in June. For the United States as a whole it is11.3 percent.
The recent job losses will roll through the economy and show up in employment data over the next several months. But economists say business conditions appear to be slowly improving, and that eventually should translate into new orders for manufacturers, Tirinzonie said.
There already are signs of a pickup nationally, although Johnson said few businesses in the state are seeing signs of it. The Commerce Department said Monday that new orders for manufactured goods rose 1.7 percent in June. And the Institute for Supply Management said last week that manufacturing activity expanded in July - albeit modestly - for the first time since February.
Norbert Ore, chairman of the supply group's business survey committee, said in a conference call with reporters last week that the breadth of the increase means most types of companies should soon start to see some improvement.
It will take several months of gains before companies start hiring, Ore said. Businesses will want to be certain of a rebound before bringing workers back, he said. He doesn't expect to see employment increases this year.
Blakey said that in Connecticut, where costs are high and labor is in short supply, a manufacturing recovery will mean an end to job losses, but few if any gains. Even in good times, Connecticut companies for decades have expanded their manufacturing output by becoming more efficient, not by adding more workers.
"Everything in New England is expensive - everything from labor to land to taxes," Blakey said. "When you add all those things up it puts a lot of pressure on the manufacturers to look for cheaper venues for production."
posted on August 7, 2003 03:34:32 AM new
Comrade Helen,
This great nation has gone through many troubled times. Civil War, recessions, depressions and other adversities. We have come out of these a stronger Nation and People.
Socialism, communism or other leftist doctrine will never be the answer here.
Your notion that the rising interest rate is the end of the world is as mindless as your other posts.
posted on August 7, 2003 06:06:41 AM new
Rev, you may want to be careful about calling someone "comrade". The term is used to identify a *fellow* member of the communist party.
Don't you learn anything while you're riding on your big bike?
If you have nothing of interest to report about your biking adventures, at least try to play well with others, while you are here.
posted on August 7, 2003 08:47:21 AM new
Economy gets triple dose of good news Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- America's business productivity soared, new claims for unemployment benefits dropped to a six-month low and retailers reported strong sales, a triple dose of good news as the economy tries to get back to full throttle.
Productivity -- the amount that an employee produces per hour of work -- grew at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the April to June quarter, the best showing since the third quarter of 2002, the Labor Department reported today. That marked an improvement from the 2.1 percent growth rate in productivity posted in the first three months of this year.
In a second report from the department, new applications for jobless benefits fell by a seasonally adjusted 3,000 to a six-month low of 390,000 for the work week ending Aug. 2. It marked the third week in a row that claims were below 400,000, a level associated with a weak job market. This suggest the pace of layoffs is stabilizing. Claims hit a high this year of 459,000 during the work week that ended April 19.
A third report showed the nation's largest retailers finally got a break in July as warm weather and heavy discounting helped lift sales above expectations for many merchants, even the struggling department store sector.
All industry segments appeared to benefit from an improved selling environment. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the industry leader, boosted its profit outlook for the second quarter. J.C. Penney Co. Inc., Kohl's Corp. and Gap Inc. were among the retailers that reported sales that beat analysts' forecasts.
With scattered signs of an economic revival, economists expect the Federal Reserve to hold a key short-term interest rate at a 45-year low of 1 percent at its next meeting on Aug. 12.
Some economists are predicting a growth rate in the second half in the range of 3.5 percent to 4 percent or more, as near rock-bottom short-term interest rates and a fresh round of tax cuts take hold.
Both the productivity and jobless claims figures were better than economists were expecting. They were forecasting productivity to grow at a 4 percent pace in the second quarter and for jobless claims to rise.
For the economy's long-term health and rising living standards, solid productivity gains are crucial. They allow the economy to grow faster without triggering inflation. Companies can pay workers more without raising prices, which would eat up those wage gains. And, productivity gains also can bolster a company's profitability.
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress last month that it has been unusual for companies to achieve healthly gains in productivity when the performance of the overall economy has been so lackluster.
"To some extent, companies under pressure to cut costs in an environment of still-tepid sales growth and an uncertain economic outlook might be expected to search aggressively for ways to employ resources more efficiently," Greenspan said. "That they have succeeded, in general, over a number of quarters suggests that a prior accumulation of inefficiencies was available to be eliminated," he added.
One recent consequence of improving productivity, however, has been an ability of many businesses to pare existing workforces and still meet increases in demand, Greenspan said.
In the second quarter, businesses boosted output at a 3.4 percent rate, up from a 1.4 percent growth rate in the first quarter. But workers' hours were cut at a 2.2 percent rate in the second quarter, following a 0.7 percent rate of decline in the prior three months.
Still, people who kept their jobs made gains. Workers' real hourly compensation rose at a 2.9 percent rate in the second quarter, the biggest increase since the third quarter of 2000, and up from a 0.2 percent growth rate in the first quarter.
Companies' unit labor costs, meanwhile, fell at a rate of 2.1 percent in the second quarter, boding well for profit margins. That compared with a 2 percent rate of increase in the first quarter.
posted on August 7, 2003 09:02:01 AM new
Empire's don't last, no matter what the neo-cons think.
"As it happens, unfortunate wanderers often put to the test the halls of safety, bringing to light by their mere presence the values that have been cultivated in these, and revealing whether those who are prosperous have learned that the outcasts' misfortune commands their care. For he who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth should be the first to know its value..." --Homer
By Clifton Webb
08/06/03: Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, recently wrote an intriguing piece titled "Practice to Deceive: Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nightmare scenario--it’s their plan." He argues that the neo-conservatives have a vision for what they want to do in the Middle East and deception has always been part of their ideological make-up. In one telling paragraph he captures the argument when he wrote that the current crop of neo-conservative hawks have a vision for the world, a vision not "unlike," but "exactly like" a religious epiphany. Regarding the present plan for the entire Middle East, not just Iraq, he stated it this way:
"The hawks' [other] response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. ‘We need to be more assertive,’ argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, ‘and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia.’ Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States ‘occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region.’...What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics." (emphasis added, The Washington Monthly, 2003.)
If the term Empire bothers some change the definition, fine, words and their terms of usage change all the time as knowledge and reality sinks in and the truth can only be understood by the new terms and phrases of the day. But Empire, an American-led empire, a corporate empire, "is" what the current administration is all about. Not only in the Middle East do we make war, but the world over if necessary. As the tenacious John Pilger recently wrote while sitting in on a meeting of journalists and aid workers in Iraq,... "It was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its foreign master. Iraq is the ‘test case’, says the Bush regime, which every day sails closer to Mussolini’s definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing ‘incredible’ levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran, is ‘debated’ on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue." (Independent.com, 2003)
Corporazione was what Mussolini’s regime was called...Corporatism is its English phrase, fascism is the economic foundation (not Nazism as the progressive left has claimed for 50 years). President Bush seems to value this form of government over a free Republic based upon democratic principles; his actions and those of the men he has surrounded himself with are its proof not their rhetoric. But "the empire they build will not last" I am told by cynics and skeptics alike. And they are certainly correct. But I am afraid that it is the trying, trying to build this empire that we all shall suffer the loss. Loss of liberty, our prosperity, some our sons and daughters. For President Bush to continue trying he must institute the draft of all, or nearly all, the youth of America. Not just to fight empire's wars. But in the vain attempt to eliminate unemployment, find more tax revenues from these working legions to pay for the increasing number of older retired masses, the aging demographic that seems to live forever, and not the least to get the youth "off the streets." After all, thousands if not millions are illiterate as well. Selective Service has always been used for just such measures throughout history. I am, of course, much too old to be drafted, so I shouldn't care much at all, don't you agree?
posted on August 7, 2003 09:24:38 AM new
Better a Neo Con than a self defeating DEMO GOD.
Crude tumbles over news of growing reserves
NEW YORK -- Crude oil futures fell sharply Wednesday in reaction to government and industry reports that showed U.S. inventories of crude oil grew for the second straight week.
At the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude for September delivery fell 52 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $31.70 a barrel.
The decline, which was more than $1 from the intraday high of $32.80, came rapidly after the federal Energy Information Administration report. The American Petroleum Institute also reported inventory data Wednesday.
Analysts surveyed this week had expected to see crude oil inventories decline.
Instead, the EIA reported that oil inventories rose by 2.9 million barrels in the week ended Aug. 1, adding to a 1-million-barrel build the week before.
"The September crude oil futures are threatening to make a big outside down correction, with a break of Tuesday's $31.67 low all that's required," said Tim Evans, senior energy analyst at IFR Pegasus.
Heating oil for September delivery settled 1.23 cents lower at 83.40 cents a gallon.
Gasoline for September delivery settled 67 cents lower at 94.72 cents a gallon.
September natural gas gained 6.8 cents to settle at $4.745 per 1,000 cubic feet.
On London's International Petroleum Exchange, Brent crude oil for September delivery settled 45 cents lower at $29.48 a barrel.
posted on August 9, 2003 05:52:26 AM new
Ruth Rosen Friday, August 8, 2003
AN EXECUTIVE ORDER can be a surreptitious way of making policy. It often makes an end-run around Congress and frequently escapes the media's attention as well. It is, in short, a way of making policy by fiat.
President Bush has signed a slew of executive orders that have gone unreported for weeks or months -- most notably, changes to environmental regulations and restricted access to former presidential papers and Freedom of Information Act information.
Now, a potentially explosive executive order has just been discovered by SEEN, the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. Signed on May 22, it appears to give U.S. oil companies in Iraq blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution.
Here's what happened: On May 22, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1438, which provided gas and oil companies in Iraq with limited immunity until Dec. 21, 2007. Their reason? To protect the flow of oil revenues into the development fund that will be used to reconstruct Iraq. The U.N. resolution, however, did not provide immunity from human rights violations or environmental damage. Nor did it protect any employee or any company after the oil was produced and extracted in Iraq.
Notice what President Bush changed when, on the same day, he issued Executive Order 13303 -- called "Protecting the Development Fund and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest." Unlike the U.N. resolution, the president's order appears to place U.S. corporations above the law for any activities related to Iraq oil, either in that country or in the United States.
It also declared a national emergency as the justification for sweeping aside all federal statues, including the Alien Tort Claims Act, and appears to provide immunity against contractual disputes, discrimination suits, violations of labor practices, international treaties, environmental disasters and human rights violations. Even more, it doesn't limit immunity to the production of oil, but also protects individuals, companies and corporations involved in selling and marketing the oil as well.
Unlike the U.N. resolution, therefore, the order provides immunity for more of the industry's activities, as well as for a broader swath of individuals, companies and corporations.
These are the kind of legal protections that most corporations could only dream of enjoying. If, for example, a U.S. oil company engages in criminal behavior in California, and its assets can be traced back to Iraqi oil, it could be immune from any kind of prosecution.
Tellingly, the president's order provides no such legal immunity for companies who are helping to reconstruct Iraqi communications, computer or electrical infrastructure.
"In terms of legal liability," said Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington nonprofit group that defends whistle blowers, "the executive order cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law. It is a blank check for corporate anarchy, potentially robbing Iraqis of both their rights and their resources."
Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, told me that this is a "tortured and incorrect reading of the executive order and what it hopes to achieve: protecting the revenue that belongs to the Iraqi people." When asked why the order did not exempt human rights or environmental damage, he responded, "When the regulations are written, they will address these."
But Betsy Apple, managing director and an attorney with EarthRights International, a Washington, D.C., human rights organization, thinks this is disingenuous and described the executive order as "an outrage" in a telephone interview. "It is a green light for oil companies to do business in Iraq, without worrying about legal liability," she said.
For some critics, the executive order supports the suspicion that the invasion of Iraq was always about gaining control of that country's oil. Jim Vallette, senior researcher at the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, said, "This order reveals the true motivation for the present occupation: absolute power for U.S. corporate interest over Iraqi oil."
The Institute and the Government Accountability Project have now asked Congress to investigate -- and repeal -- this order. The president's order is an outrage and Congress should act immediately. In our democracy, no one is above the law.
posted on August 9, 2003 08:56:52 AM new "These posters aren't looking for any positive changes in our economy. They're the doom and gloom cheerleaders."
These posters are speaking the truth, Linda. Having over 9 million people unemployed is not a happy fact.
posted on August 9, 2003 11:01:36 AM new
It's not??? You're kidding.
NAFTA, Helen
9-11, Helen
Some corporate fraud, Helen
Unions, Helen
We've seen worse in this country and we've come through. We will again.
Try to be just a little thankful that we do have some, very small, signs that things may be headed if the opposite direction now. And spread the blame for what's happened around a little bit. You give Bush way too much power in blaming him for EVERYTHING that goes wrong in the ENTIRE world.
posted on August 9, 2003 11:34:26 AM new
NAFTA is not sending jobs to India or manufacturing to Taiwan. While some companies may be moving to Mexico, even more of the ones that have are scaling back or shutting down production all together because the failing US economy is not purchasing their products.
NAFTA makes a nice dart board but unless Asia has recently joined North America, I don't think that the jobs and production contracts that have moved there have anything to do with it.
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really Common Sense, why do so few people actually have it?
It's really hilarious Linda how you rush to defend this corrupt administration. Are they responsible for anything in your gullible opinion? Did Clinton advise the tax break for the wealthy? LOL!
posted on August 9, 2003 12:19:19 PM new
talk about nazis, this is just what the nazis did during the 30's before the war, identical behaviour, and now a great nation falls into the same mentality, how sad and how scary IMPEACH THIS PRESIDENT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE !!!!
Aug. 9, 2003. 12:48 PM
Americans pay price for speaking out
Dissenters face job loss, arrest, threats
But activists not stopped by backlash
KATHLEEN KENNA
STAFF REPORTER
He's a Vietnam War hero from a proud lineage of warriors who served the United States, so he never expected to be called a traitor.
After 39 years in the Marines, including commands in Somalia and Iraq, Gen. Anthony Zinni never imagined he would be tagged "turncoat."
The epithets are not from the uniforms but the suits — "senior officers at the Pentagon," the now-retired general says from his home in Williamsburg, Va.
"They want to question my patriotism?" he demands testily.
To question the Iraq war in the U.S. — and individuals from Main St. merchants to Hollywood stars do — is to be branded un-American.
Dissent, once an ideal cherished in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, now invites media attacks, hate Web sites, threats and job loss.
After Zinni challenged the administration's rationale for the Iraq war last fall, he lost his job as President George W. Bush's Middle East peace envoy after 18 months.
"I've been told I will never be used by the White House again."
Across the United States, hundreds of Americans have been arrested for protesting the war. The American Civil Liberties Union has documented more than 300 allegations of wrongful arrest and police brutality from demonstrators at anti-war rallies in Washington and New York.
Even the silent, peaceful vigils of Women in Black — held regularly in almost every state — have prompted threats of arrest by American police.
Actors and spouses Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon have publicly denounced the backlash against them for their anti-war activism.
Robbins said they were called "traitors" and "supporters of Saddam" and their public appearances at a United Way luncheon in Florida and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., this spring were cancelled in reaction to their anti-war stance.
Actor/comedian Janeane Garofalo was stalked and received death threats for opposing the war in high-profile media appearances.
MSNBC hosts asked viewers to urge MCI to fire actor and anti-war activist Danny Glover as a spokesperson — the long-distance telephone giant refused to fire him despite the ensuing hate-mail campaign — and one host, former politician Joe Scarborough, urged that anti-war protesters be arrested and charged with sedition.
"There's no official blacklisting," says Kate McArdle, executive director of Artists United, a new group of 120 actors devoted to progressive causes.
"This is Hollywood, so there are always rumours starting up. Mostly it was producers saying, `We know your position — do you have to be so vocal?'"
Internet chat rooms have spouted "tons and tons of vitriol aimed at us," says McArdle, a former network TV executive.
"Things like, `Tell me where Tim Robbins lives and I'll go bash out his brains,'" she says.
"Or, `If you don't like America, why don't you move to Iraq? Why don't you move to Canada?'
"The real backlash comes from the right wing, from America's talk radio guys — when their ratings are down — not from the industry," McArdle says. "We get the `You're either with us or agin' us.'"
Comes with the territory, she adds.
"We're a nation of dissenters."
The Dixie Chicks country pop group won worldwide attention for their anti-Bush comments, which were met with widespread radio station bans against playing their music. Their fans have responded by circulating petitions on the Internet objecting to the "chill" that has tried to silence free speech in the U.S.
And opposition to the war has spawned many new songs — some remixes of old Vietnam protest songs — and Web sites devoted to anti-war lyrics.
Dozens of fans walked out of a Pearl Jam concert in Denver, Colo., last spring when lead singer Eddie Vedder hoisted a Bush mask on a microphone stand and sang, "He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer."
But musician Carlos Santana was cheered in Australia — a key U.S. ally in the Iraq war and recent proponent of the "Bush doctrine" of intervention in smaller states' affairs — when he spoke against the war and American foreign policy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`I think it's important. . . for intellectuals to point out lies'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
West Coast bands are organizing a Bands Against Bush free concert and rally in Los Angeles this fall to publicize their discontent with American foreign policy in the Middle East.
Even country singer Merle Haggard, whose song "The Fightin' Side of Me" was a pro-war anthem in the Vietnam era, penned a protest against tame media in the wake of the Dixie Chicks controversy.
"That's The News" has bitter lines like:
Soldiers in the desert sand still clinging to a gun
No one is the winner and everyone must lose ...
Politicians do all the talking, soldiers pay the dues
Suddenly the war is over, that's the news.
Peace scholar Stephen Zunes — so-named for winning a Peace and Justice Studies Association award for leadership in promoting such scholarship — says he was recently "uninvited" to speak to the Arizona state bar association despite a six-month-old commitment.
"It's censorship" for his perceived anti-Israel views and outspoken opposition to a foreign policy that has made the U.S. a target of terrorists, says Zunes from his office at the University of San Francisco, where he teaches politics. "You'd think lawyers would be more concerned about civil liberties."
A recent tour for his new book, Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, drew "obscenity-filled e-mails ... calling me a traitor" and similar "outrage" on-air from TV commentators, he says.
"I've been called all sorts of names on national TV. It's been pretty ugly.
"There are a lot of Americans who don't want to believe their government is lying to them. It's becoming more and more clear that the American people have been lied to, so I think it's important ... particularly for intellectuals, to point out those lies."
Full-page ads in the New York Times — at $37,000 (U.S.) each — and other high-circulation dailies have been bought by American religious leaders, actors and a range of wealthy activists to spur anti-war dissent.
Harvard dean Stephen Walt, an international affairs professor, helped organize such an ad with 32 other security experts at universities from coast to coast. The wordy ad detailed reasons for fighting terrorism and not Iraq, unless under direct threat, and warned of increasing Middle East instability.
Expressions of support came from colleagues at home and overseas, Walt recalls. "We said you could be against this war without being against uses of necessary force" elsewhere. "The world is a nasty place, but this is just stupid."
The 32 signatories "transcended a lot of the traditional (anti-war) lines," says Walt, who admits to disappointment that the Democrat minority in Congress and Democratic presidential candidates, except Howard Dean, have been "very slow off the mark" in backing public dissent over the war.
Non-politicians may fill that gap. MoveOn.org, claiming a membership of more than a million Americans — and another 700,000 beyond their borders — is running full-page newspaper ads across the U.S. demanding an independent inquiry into the apparently exaggerated need for the Iraq invasion.
"It would be a tragedy if young men and women were sent to die for a lie," the ad states below a photo of Bush, tagged "MISleader."
The ad has drawn about half a million replies after its New York Times kickoff last month. MoveOn.org, founded in 1998 by California spouses Joan Blades and Wes Boyd (inventor of the flying toaster screen saver), already has logged more than 1 million e-mails and calls to Congress with protests against the war.
Another national ad campaign has been launched by billionaire George Soros, urging Americans to call Congress and demand a post-war investigation.
"When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth," the ad states. "American men and women risked and gave their lives for a war based on fighting an imminent threat to homeland security. The case for this war — made unequivocally by President Bush and members of his administration — rested on intelligence that has been exposed as exaggerated or even false."
Zinni says he has no regrets about challenging the administration, despite the disdain of "senior Pentagon officials.""I was very, very careful not to say anything once the troops were on the ground. I worried that I would be accused of not supporting them."
His father fought in World War I, his cousins in World War II, and his only brother in Korea. "I'm not anti-war."
But his speech last fall at the Middle East Institute in Washington outlined reservations about "the wrong war at the wrong time" against a tyrant "who could be contained."
Zinni argued the U.S. risked alienating allies and possibly creating more enemies if it attacked Iraq without multilateral backing and without new proof of weapons of mass destruction. Warning "war should always be a last resort," he appealed for more weapons inspections, United Nations support and better post-war planning.
"I wish I was wrong. I don't feel good about it. I would rather be wrong," Zinni says. Still, as evidence appears to mount against the White House, he adds, "Whatever you take to the people, you should be accurate. If there is no imminent threat, if it's not true, then someone should be held accountable."
"It's an obligation you have — in our history there have been too many times when generals didn't say what they thought," he says. "We all swear an oath to the Constitution. One of the things I thought I was defending was the right to dissent."
posted on August 9, 2003 02:09:12 PM new
Skylight - do hold opinions of your own and posses the ability to discuss actual topics or are you just our friendly neighborhood reprint sevice?
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really Common Sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on August 9, 2003 11:19:19 PM new
now the lawyers are getting into it, yep now it must be really scarcy, when lawyers start seeing the light
Bush's Combatant Policy Attacked at Legal Talks
Fri August 8, 2003 07:50 PM ET
By Gail Appleson, Law Correspondent
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Bush administration's anti-terror legal strategies, including dubbing U.S. citizens enemy combatants and holding them indefinitely without charges, came under attack on Friday at a meeting of the nation's largest legal group.
"The (U.S. Supreme Court) Justices will have to stand up straight and tell us what kind of country we have," James Brosnahan, a prominent criminal defense lawyer, said at the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco.
"Can you have a U.S. citizen ... declared an unlawful combatant ... and have no rights, no lawyers, no access and no charges?" said Brosnahan, who defended "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Lindh, pleaded guilty to two charges of aiding the Taliban, and is serving a 20-year prison term.
Brosnahan spoke at a meeting of the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, which supports legal research.
The ABA's policy-making body, the House of Delegates, in February denounced the Bush administration's refusal to give legal rights to U.S. citizens held as enemy combatants and voted to urge Congress to set standards for detentions.
Next week, the ABA's House is expected to vote on a proposal regarding conditions for civilian lawyers involved in military tribunals. The proposal, unveiled on Friday, urges the Defense Department to revise controversial provisions in an affidavit lawyers must sign before they can represent clients.
The ABA proposal objects to a requirement that lawyers acknowledge that their conversations with clients might be monitored by the government.
"There should not be overhearing or monitoring of attorney-client privileged and confidential conversations," Neal Sonnett, who chairs the ABA task force on enemy combatants, told a news conference.
On July 30, the ABA filed a brief with a federal appeals court in New York arguing that "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla, imprisoned incommunicado in a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, for more than a year, should have the opportunity to challenge the basis for his detention.
Padilla, a New Yorker, is being held for allegedly plotting with the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. He was arrested in Chicago in May last year as he arrived from Pakistan.
Padilla's lawyers have sued the government, arguing that a U.S. citizen cannot be held indefinitely without criminal charges. They also challenge the administration's policy on barring U.S. citizens held as enemy combatants from meeting with their defense lawyers.
posted on August 10, 2003 02:56:30 PM new
The US is starting a nuclear fight that will be hard to stop
The hawks are gunning for a showdown with North Korea and Iran
Simon Tisdall
Saturday August 9, 2003
The Guardian
John Bolton might be termed an old hand. The US under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, a Yale-educated lawyer, has held a string of senior posts in the state and justice departments. By any yardstick, he is an experienced if conservative-minded diplomat of some gravitas who, it must be assumed, knows what he is doing. But according to an official North Korean statement this week, Bolton is "human scum".
Even by Pyongyang's astringent rhetorical standards, this is strong stuff. It constituted a reply in kind to a stunningly splenetic tirade delivered by Bolton in Seoul three days earlier that amounted to a fierce, personal attack on Kim Jong-il.
North Korea's leader was a tyrannical despot and extortionist who "lives like royalty", Bolton said, while hundreds of thousands of his people were locked up and millions more endured a life of "hellish nightmare... scrounging the ground for food in abject poverty". For good measure, Bolton also attacked the UN for not facing up to its responsibilities - a familiar theme for students of the Iraq crisis.
The curious thing about this exchange is not so much its intensity as its timing. Bolton went nuclear, verbally speaking, only hours before North Korea finally acceded to longstanding US demands for multilateral talks on its nuclear arms ambitions. South Korean officials were relieved that the North had not used Bolton's broadside as an excuse for further prevarication. But like the rest of us, they were left wondering whether Bolton had launched a deliberate pre-emptive strike against the nascent diplomatic process.
This raises a key question, as America's twin confrontations with North Korea and Iran over nuclear arms accelerate towards a crunch in the next few weeks. In a nutshell, peaceful, internationally supportable, diplomatic solutions to both disputes are available. Their outlines may be clearly discerned; the mechanisms by which they can be achieved are more or less in place. But does the US actually want to cut a deal?
The ambiguities clouding US policy towards North Korea date back to the early days of the administration, when George Bush put a damper on former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine policy" of detente with the North. Since 9/11 and Bush's "axis of evil" speech, matters have just gone from bad to worse.
The planned talks in China, also involving South Korea, Japan and Russia, are viewed in the region and beyond as a crucial opportunity to arrest this apparently inexorable downward spiral. The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, and others have suggested that North Korea might initially freeze its nuclear arms programmes in return for a sort of US non-aggression pact.
But such compromises may not suit the likes of Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon, and other hardliners, including perhaps Bush himself - who has professed personal loathing for Pyongyang's communist leader. For them, it seems, nothing less than Kim's overthrow will ultimately suffice, although it may have to wait until a second Bush term.
A former US envoy, James Goodby, warns that Washington must beware of over-reaching itself. "Many in the Bush administration want regime change in North Korea and think that slow strangulation might do it," Goodby wrote in the New York Times. But security assurances and economic incentives were what was really needed. "Improving the lot of the North Korean people should be a fundamental aim."
Such common-sense advice risks being drowned out by the beat of Washington's ideological war drums. That discord will strain ties with US regional allies, encourage North Korean paranoia and miscalculation, and could yet shipwreck any talks on a reef of mutual distrust, bad faith and hidden agendas.
As usual, secretary of state Colin Powell takes a softer line, insisting for now at least that the US is not intent on regime change and rejecting Wolfowitz's claim that the North is teetering on the edge of economic collapse.
Such assurances may again strike students of the Iraq crisis as unhappily familiar. Powell is not yet a lame duck but he is definitely limping after the latest spate of speculation that he will quit at the 2004 election. Powell may be getting tired of trying to restrain neo-con knee-jerkers. He surely does not relish four more years of being stabbed in the back.
The strange, treacherous ways of American diplomacy are also complicating that other nuclear stand-off, with Iran. A September deadline now looms, by which time Tehran is told it must accept "challenge" inspections of its nuclear facilities. If not, the US may seek UN sanctions and step up unilateral pressure; military options are not entirely ruled out. Following Washington's line, and egged on by Israel, Tony Blair is turning the screw, too, threatening to block an EU trade deal and highlighting human rights issues.
Like North Korea, the Iranian government is fully aware that US tactics do not stem from worries about WMD proliferation alone. But nor does it totally dismiss western concerns. In fact, Tehran has developed a series of not inflexible negotiating positions. The question, once again, is whether the US is really interested in finding solutions.
On the nuclear issue, Iran might swallow the International Atomic Energy Agency's "additional protocol" if article four of the non-proliferation treaty, entitling it to acquire "equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy", were honoured. On the issue of al-Qaida, Iran is ready to surrender suspected members if the US will exchange the Mujahedeen terrorists it is harbouring in Iraq. Even on Palestine, there is just a hint of a future accommodation. Iran says it supports Iraq's new governing council and is not involved in attacks on US troops there (for which the US has indeed produced no evidence). As an earnest of its intentions, it has offered to supply much-needed electricity to Iraq - an offer made three weeks ago and to which it has had no response.
Although, like the Bush administration, Iran speaks with many voices, it knows it must improve relations with the west if it is to succeed in building its economy and if the aspirations of its younger generations are to be met without more trouble on the streets.
But this, of course, is exactly why some in Washington think that by hanging tough and raising the stakes, they can eventually have it all. By continuing and possibly escalating disputes, US hawks hope not merely to tame the mullahs but to topple them.
This is a potentially disastrous miscalculation, a recipe for intensifying internal and external strife. It has little to do with arms control or encouraging civil reform from within, and a lot to do with imposing the US world view from without. This is why Iran's heated debate over UN inspections has acquired a symbolic quality. This is why, as in North Korea, some in Iran oppose anything that smacks of concessions.
They call it a trap. But we should call it Bolton's first law of international power politics: keep the other guy guessing; wear him down. When he gives a little, demand a whole lot more. Then zap him anyway.
posted on August 11, 2003 04:58:55 PM new
You’re fired, now train the new guy
Tech workers asked to instruct their overseas replacements
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 10 — Scott Kirwin clung to his job at a large investment bank through several rounds of layoffs last year. Friends marveled at the computer programmer’s ability to dodge pink slips during the worst technology downturn in a decade. But it was tough for Kirwin, 36, to relish his final assignment: training a group of programmers from India who would replace him within a year
“THEY CALLED IT ‘knowledge acquisition,”’ the Wilmington, Del., resident said. “We got paid our normal salaries to train people to do our jobs. The market was so bad we couldn’t really do anything about it, so we taught our replacements.”
Finally laid off in April, Kirwin sent out 225 resumes before landing a temporary position without benefits at a smaller bank — and swallowing a 20 percent pay cut.
Kirwin is among what appears to be a growing number of American technology workers training their foreign replacements — a humiliating assignment many say they assume unwittingly or reluctantly, simply to stay on the job longer or secure a meager severance package.
Their plight can be seen as an unintended consequence of the nation’s non-immigrant visa program — particularly the L-1 classification. The L-1 allows companies to transfer workers from overseas offices to the United States for up to seven years — ostensibly to familiarize them with corporate culture or to import workers with “specialized knowledge.”
It also lets companies continue paying workers their home country wage. Indian workers receive roughly one-sixth the hourly wage of the average American programmer, who makes about $60 per hour in wages and benefits.
Large technology companies say the L-1 helps them staff offices in less-developed companies with workers who understand the needs of a global corporation. And some labor experts say out-of-work programmers should stop complaining, and focus on their own re-training, just like the Rust Belt assembly line workers whose factory jobs migrated to Mexico and Asia in the 1980s.
But unemployed tech workers contend that so many good jobs are going to places like Bombay, Bangalore and Beijing that honing their technical skills is futile. According to the research firm Gartner Inc., one out of 10 technology jobs in the United States will move overseas by the end of next year.
“Once I figured out what was going on, I was disgusted,” said Kevin Sherman, a 47-year-old programmer and technical author from Worthington, Ohio, who was working for Manifest Corp., an information systems consulting firm in Upper Arlington, Ohio.
Sherman held onto his $62,000-per-year contract job while he taught several dozen Indian workers how to build and maintain computer databases in 1999 and 2000. He quit rather than take on his next assignment: fixing the newly trained foreigners’ broken PCs. He’s been unemployed for two years.
Nancy Matijasich, Manifest president and CEO, said she no longer employs L-1 workers like those Sherman trained, because the Y2K threat has passed and the company has less need for programmers.
“There was a shortage of skills in the ’90s,” Matijasich said. “But we haven’t processed visas in a long time.”
The State Department issued 28,098 L-1 visas from October to March, the first half of fiscal 2003. That’s an increase of nearly 7 percent from the same period in 2002.
But the number of L-1 workers in the United States is likely much higher, said Charlie Oppenheim, the State Department’s chief of immigrant visa control. Each L-1 lets a worker enter the United States multiple times over several years.
L-1 LIMITS?
U.S. tech firms:
Should hire the best talent, wherever it happens to be
Should be made to keep jobs within the country
U.S. tech firms:
* 5907 responses
Should hire the best talent, wherever it happens to be
25%
Should be made to keep jobs within the country
75%
Survey results tallied every 60 seconds. Live Votes reflect respondents' views and are not scientifically valid surveys.
There is no limit on the number of L-1 workers companies may import each year. Legislation introduced last month by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., seeks an annual limit of 35,000 L-1 workers nationwide.
By contrast, tight controls govern the H-1B visa, which requires companies to pay workers the prevailing American wage. The H-1B cap is scheduled to be reduced from 195,000 workers to 65,000 per year on Oct. 1.
Tech bellwethers including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Oracle and Microsoft use L-1 workers but won’t disclose how many they import. Many bring in workers through consulting firms, usually Indian companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro Technologies.
Intel spokeswoman Gail Dundas acknowledged that the world’s largest chipmaker relies on Americans to train L-1 workers who staff the company’s offices in Russia, India, China and other high-growth markets. But she says the Intel training program does not result in American layoffs.
“If someone does something really well, we want the person who’s going to perform a similar function abroad to learn from the master. Then the person in the United States will continue to do their job just as before,” Dundas said.
Intel provides L-1 workers a cost-of-living adjustment if they work at the Santa Clara headquarters or elsewhere in the United States. Intel pays for housing, cars, return trips to the workers’ home countries and full medical benefits — a package that ends up costing significantly more than hiring an American, she said.
Dallas-based Texas Instruments also imports L-1 electrical engineers. With U.S. colleges graduating fewer U.S.-born engineers and the population of foreign-born science graduates mushrooming, TI has to look overseas for talent, spokesman Dan Larson said.
‘A DECLINING POOL’
‘You’re obliged to hire the best and brightest from wherever.’
— DAN LARSON
Texas Instruments spokesman “You have a declining pool from which to draw, and more of those people are foreign nationals,” Larson said. “If you’re a company looking to hire electrical engineers, you’re obliged to hire the best and brightest from wherever.”
Sunil Mehta, vice president of NASSCOM, a New Delhi-based trade association for Indian software companies, claims the L-1 program has created about 1.5 million jobs in the United States since it began in 1970.
Still, NASSCOM and a U.S. counterpart, the Information Technology Association of America, acknowledge that some companies exploit loopholes. ITAA published guidelines for members on July 29, suggesting that companies pay the prevailing U.S. wage and import only those foreigners who have skills lacking in America.
“Similar visas exist in 20 to 25 other countries, including India,” Mehta said. “I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bath water because of a few loopholes.”
Michael Emmons says he’s already become an L-1 casualty. The 41-year-old software developer moved from California to Florida in 2001 after Siemens, his contract employer, merged with another company. He was supposed to help migrate disparate software into a single system, but he and a dozen co-workers ended up training Indian replacements to connect systems using IBM software.
Emmons, who quit the Siemens job after being told his position would be terminated, is now lobbying politicians to abolish the L-1. He’s also considering a career in politics — running on an “American Workers First” campaign.
“I’m not saying offshoring can be stopped, but it does not have to be like this,” he said.
posted on August 12, 2003 12:30:45 PM new
Bush and his gang created this war just so his daddy and buddies can be more richer, that's what this war is about, gangsters looting a great nation, and using the young for cannon folder
Homelessness grows as more live check-to-check
By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY
Homelessness in major cities is escalating as more laid-off workers already living paycheck-to-paycheck wind up on the streets or in shelters.
William and Sue Kamstra and sons. Kamstra lost a $43,000-a-year job, forcing them to live at the mission.
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
As Americans file for bankruptcy in record numbers and credit card debt explodes, more workers are a paycheck away from losing their homes. Now the frail economy is pushing them over the edge. With 9 million unemployed workers in July, the face of homelessness is changing to include more families shaken by joblessness.
Former neighbors and co-workers are on the streets, live with relatives or stay in shelters. Unemployed managers are living with their elderly parents. Families who once owned their own homes now sleep on bunk beds in homeless shelters. Job seekers in suits and ties stop by soup kitchens heading out to afternoon interviews. With no place to live, some homeless are camping out in their cars until work comes along.
"There is still a mind-set that the homeless are substance abusers who have made bad life decisions," says Ralph Plumb, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. "But more and more, they are individuals responding to a catastrophic financial event. The homeless are us. They're regular folk."
Requests for emergency shelter assistance grew an average of 19% from 2001 to 2002, according to the 18 cities that reported an increase — the steepest rise in a decade. The findings are from a 2003 survey of 25 cities by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Among the trends:
• Families with children are among the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. The Conference of Mayors found that 41% of the homeless are families with children, up from 34% in 2000. The Urban Institute reports about 23% of the homeless are children.
• Cities and shelters are also seeing the shift. In New York, the number of homeless families jumped 40% from 1999 to 2002. In Boston, the number of homeless families increased 8.3% to 2,328 in 2002 compared with 2001.
• An estimated 3.5 million people are likely to experience homelessness in a given year, the Urban Institute reports. People remained homeless for an average of six months, according to the Conference of Mayors survey — a figure that increased from a year ago in all but four cities.
Homelessness also increased during past recessions, but advocates say several issues are making the current rise more disconcerting. Those factors include the five-year cap on welfare benefits, a surge in home prices adding to longer periods of homelessness, and the fact that this recovery has been a jobless one, providing little immediate hope.
In fact, the majority of cities polled by the Conference of Mayors expect homelessness to increase over the next year.
While the economy is driving some of the increase in demand for shelter and food assistance, other factors include mental illness, substance abuse and low-paying jobs, according to the Conference of Mayors survey.
Jobs hard to find
For many families already on the edge, homelessness is a catastrophic reality. Less than a year ago, Kimberly Brochu was expecting a baby and living with her husband and four children in an apartment in Winslow, Maine. Then her husband, Allen, was laid off from his painting job.
Eight months pregnant, Brochu wound up on the streets with her family. They spent their nights sleeping in bunk beds at a homeless shelter and during the day camped out in their car at a Burger King. Today, she and her husband rent a duplex and are both working again.
"People think we get homeless because we're irresponsible, but it's hard finding jobs," says Brochu, 29, who works as a housekeeper and a waitress; Allen is a farmer's helper. "But my kids, if they become successful, they won't look down on people who are poor."
A growing number of families are vulnerable to homelessness because of the dismal job climate. The unemployment rate reached 6.4% in June, the highest since April 1994 before edging back to 6.2% in July. Last month, there were nearly 2 million unemployed workers who had been looking for a job for 27 weeks or longer, an increase of 276,000 since January, according to the Department of Labor.
For the homeless, getting or keeping a job without a place to live is a challenge. About 20% of homeless are employed, according to the Conference of Mayors.
More of those workers losing their jobs aren't able to afford a stint of unemployment. Nearly a quarter of Americans would be late on mortgages, rent or other bills if a single paycheck were delayed, according to a 2003 poll by Automatic Data Processing.
The proportion of disposable personal income that Americans are putting into savings was about 8% in the 1970s but has tumbled to less than 4% today, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Layoff led to homelessness
All it took was a layoff to push Robert Garner over the edge. About a month ago, the 40-year-old was laid off from his job at a packing plant and could no longer afford the $475 rent for his mobile home in Lima, Ohio. So he packed a backpack with whatever he could carry — clothes, a razor and sleeping bag — and hitchhiked 122 miles to Cincinnati, where he wound up sleeping under a bridge. He sold his car because he couldn't keep up with the payments.
He went to soup kitchens for meals or worked odd jobs to pay for food. Drop-in homeless shelters provided a place for him to shower. In late July, he got a $9.50-an-hour job driving a forklift for the Ohio Valley Goodwill Industries Rehabilitation Center, which also provided him with housing.
"The economy has really taken a toll on manufacturing," Garner says. "It was hard. I don't like to take things from people. I like to help myself. In a way, you get a sense of hopelessness. But I tried to keep a nice, clean appearance."
Other factors putting more families and workers at risk:
•Soaring housing costs. The median price for existing homes is projected to rise 6% in 2003 to $167,800, according to the National Association of Realtors.
"The economy has been in a down phase before, but this time housing prices have really continued to skyrocket. It's been a huge factor in the explosion in homelessness among families," says Mitchell Netburn, director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which coordinates homeless programs in the city and county. The median home price in the Los Angeles area for the first quarter of 2003 was $307,900. That's up 16.2% from the first quarter of 2002.
As prices go up, it becomes harder for the poor to purchase a home or even afford rent.
Nearly 28 million households — one in four — reported spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the Millennial Housing Commission. That amount is more than the government deems affordable, the commission reports. Median monthly gross rent in the nation climbed to $602 in 2000 from $481 a month in 1980, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
•Mounting debt. Consumer debt is growing, and more homeowners are taking out loans to pay credit card debts. Foreclosures are up. Last year, there were 1.5 million bankruptcy filings by individuals — the highest on record — up from 289,000 non-business filings in 1980, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.
Though about 20% of the homeless live in the suburbs, the rise in homelessness is mostly manifesting itself in major urban areas.
In Boston, the number of homeless women increased by 10% in 2002 compared with 2001, according to a city census. In San Francisco, the city reports that the homeless population in 2002 was 8,640, an 18% rise over 2001.
•Lack of financial safety nets. The increase in homelessness and hunger is overwhelming some cities and shelters: An average of 30% of the requests for emergency shelter by homeless people — and 38% of the requests by homeless families — are estimated to have gone unmet in 2002, according to the Conference of Mayors.
In 60% of cities, shelters may have to turn away homeless families because of a lack of resources. Many cities have shelters that specifically accommodate families, but even then, husbands and wives often are separated.
In addition, more welfare recipients are reaching the five-year federal limit for receiving benefits. At the same time, philanthropic donations to homeless services are down along with overall charitable giving. That means there are fewer financial safety nets for workers who are already living on the financial precipice. And unemployment benefits aren't always a resource — in fact, less than half of laid-off workers qualify under varying state eligibility requirements.
David Smith, 46, worked in the stock room at Kmart until he was laid off earlier this year. He applied for public assistance but had already reached his lifetime cap for receiving federal benefits. Unable to pay his rent, Smith went to a homeless shelter. He is now living in housing provided by The Doe Fund, a New York-based organization that employs and supports the homeless in efforts to become self-sufficient through work.
"Without a job, I couldn't pay my rent," Smith says. "It's stressful when you go to the soup kitchen. I want to save money and get my life back on track."
Suit-and-tie homeless
Signs of the increase abound. Alfred Thompson, a job trainer at Goodwill Industries of Kentucky in Louisville, says one of his homeless clients lost his job and is living in his Mercedes, which is paid for, while he seeks employment.
At St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan, a mosaic-domed landmark near The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, more than 100 homeless men and women arrive on Monday and Wednesday mornings for a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast of beans-and-franks, corned beef hash or chicken stew.
"We see people dressed in suits and ties come in before they head out to look for work," says the Rev. John David Clarke, director of community ministries. "They can save a buck or two."
In Louisville, job seeker Reginald Cook, 53, dons his best interview clothes and shaves before heading out to try to land a steady job. At night, he calls the Salvation Army Center of Hope his home.
He arrives after 5 p.m. for a shower and reads a bit of a book before lying down on his dormitory-style bed to sleep. Before coming here, he'd lived with his parents in Birmingham, Ala., after being injured on the job. He left in hopes of finding better employment opportunities in Kentucky. Even though it's meant not having a home, he still believes the job opportunities are better in Louisville. "It's hard because quite a number of people are laid off, and you can't find the work,' " Cook says.
For William and Sue Kamstra, it took five months to lose everything. The couple and their three children were living in a three-bedroom home in Bellflower, Calif. They had a two-car garage and fruit trees in the backyard. He earned more than $40,000 a year working in customer service, providing operational support in the music division of Yamaha.
But then they were beset by personal financial problems, which caused them to miss house payments. Their home was foreclosed upon. They planned to rent an apartment, but then William lost his job, and they were unable to get back on their feet. An accident left their van totaled, so they had no way to get around. They stored their belongings and moved to a hotel until their money ran out in June. Now, they spend their nights at the Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles shelter.
During the day, William looks for work while Sue takes the children to the library. In 20 years of marriage, this is the first time the Kamstras have been homeless.
"If he hadn't gotten laid off, we'd have rented an apartment. We would have been OK," Sue says. The children expect to resume school in the area this fall.
"This is horrendous. You have a feeling of such alienation," says William, 43. His daughter is 14, and his sons are 12 and 11. "You have this view of homeless people, but I have one beer a year on my birthday, and I don't do drugs. But there are a lot of families here, a lot of children and babies in strollers."
posted on August 13, 2003 11:18:17 AM new
The Search Is Over
Thousands of Jobless Have Given Up Looking for a Job Altogether
By Catherine Valenti
Aug. 12— Julie Hasselberger, who lost her job as a human resources manager in October, has gotten frustrated with going to countless rounds of lengthy job interviews, only to be told at the last minute that she didn't get the job.
So now the 37-year-old mother of three from Sandy Hook, Conn., has simply stopped looking.
"I've just gotten really exasperated," she says. "I just don't have the energy and the stamina anymore to do the networking."
Hasselberger's story is becoming a familiar one as many Americans find themselves without work for lengthy periods of time. Almost 2 million workers, or 21 percent of the total jobless population, were out of a job for 27 weeks or more in July, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That is leading to a growing number of discouraged workers, or workers who have stopped looking for work altogether. In July, 470,000 people said they had stopped looking for a job because they were discouraged by the job market — 16 percent more than the 405,000 discouraged workers reported in July of last year.
"It's one of the worst job markets we've seen since the great depression in terms of the length and the breadth of the problems across industries and regions," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at economy.com, a West Chester, Pa.-based economic research firm.
Trying to Get By
Economists and job market observers say the growing number of discouraged workers could lead to more economic distress for individuals and for the nation. Many workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits have had to raid their savings or retirement funds or have had to borrow money to get by.
About six in 10 unemployed Americans said they had spent a significant amount of their savings, while almost half have borrowed money to pay their current expenses, and nearly a third had increased credit card debt, according to a recent survey by the National Employment Law Project, a New York-based nonprofit advocacy group for low-wage and unemployed workers.
Further, one in four unemployed surveyed said they had to move in with friends or family to get by, while one-third say they are no longer covered by health insurance.
"They're in a world of financial hurt," says Zandi. "The thing that makes it most difficult is the fact that the job market is weak across the board. You couldn't even pick up and move."
Joseph Madziarczyk, a 50-year-old program manager who lives in Escondido, Calif., has been out of work for a year and a half after getting laid off from a job at telecommunications company Titan Wireless. His unemployment benefits ran out a year ago and his health insurance through COBRA will run out in October. Having used up all of his savings, Madziarczyk is about to start taking loans out on the equity of his home.
"I feel like I'm starting completely over," he says.
Though his job search has become increasingly frustrating, Madziarczyk still hasn't given up and doesn't consider himself a discouraged worker — yet.
"I can't afford to be in that position," he says. "But there are times when you would like to throw up your hands and say, 'That's it.' "
Many Seek Alternatives
In lieu of looking for work, some discouraged workers have decided to strike out on their own, either starting their own businesses or doing freelance work under contract and calling themselves consultants.
"They seek interim positions or just projects and go out there and ask, 'Can you help me?' " says Niels Nielsen, president of Princeton Management Consultants, a Princeton, N.J.-based human resource consulting firm. "Others start their own businesses in other fields."
Hasselberger says she has passed an exam to qualify her to sell life insurance and may start to do that on a part-time basis. But with her children home for the summer, she doesn't expect to begin until the fall.
"I've been focusing on my children and what they need," she says.
"Some folks take training courses to improve their skills," says Andrew Stettner, policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project. "Others decide they're going to spend the summer with their family and somehow scrape by."
Repercussions for the Economy
Some economists, like Zandi, fear that this long-term joblessness could make itself felt in the economy. Although the nation's official arbiter of recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research, recently declared that the recession had ended in November 2001, after only eight months, the dire employment situation is making many Americans feel like it is still going on.
"I thoroughly believed by the end of 2002 that the economy was going to turn around and by 2003 things were going to be great," says Madziarczyk, who admits he is seeing some glimmers of hope, like more job postings and friends whose 401(k)s are showing positive returns.
Despite high levels of borrowing in recent years, consumers, who make up the engine of the U.S. economy, are already turning more cautious and trying to pay down debt to get ahead. Consumers trimmed their borrowing by a seasonally adjusted $400 million in June from May, pushing down the total consumer debt to $1.76 trillion, according to the latest figures from the Federal Reserve. Demand for revolving debt, such as credit cards, dropped by $1.3 billion, or 2.2 percent rate.
Meanwhile, the percentage of homeowners who fell behind on their mortgages dropped slightly in the first quarter, but the number of loans in foreclosure set a record, according to the latest figures from the Mortgage Bankers Association.
"It's beginning to show up in terms of defaulting and foreclosures, which aggravates the problem not only for the individual but for the economy," says Nielsen.
Don’t Give Up
While a lengthy and often fruitless job search can prove frustrating, experts caution unemployed workers not to give up their quest. Getting out of the house and having a routine is important, even if it's to pursue a hobby or social activity.
"It's essential to have a structured, active approach, instead of retreating from life," says Nielsen, who offers job seekers tips in the Princeton Management Consultants Guide to Your New Job.
Madziarczyk, for one, is heeding that advice. He's been volunteering on boards and taking dancing lessons. Though increasing his visibility hasn't led to any job contacts, he says that getting out and socializing has done wonders for his morale.
"From the standpoint of socializing and picking up your spirits, it's working," he says. "You don't want to go into an interview with low energy and low enthusiasm."
