It's not just a gradually rising ocean and changing temperature and precipitation patterns, it's a wholesale unhinging of the climate as we know it...
"During the last million years or so, glacial periods and interglacials have alternated as a result of variations in the Earth’s orbital parameters. Based on Antarctic ice cores, more detailed information is available now about the four full glacial cycles during the last 500,000 years. In recent years it was discovered that during the last glacial period large and very rapid temperature variations took place over large parts of the globe, in particular in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. These abrupt events saw temperature changes of many degrees within a human lifetime. In contrast, the last 10,000 years appear to have been relatively more stable... "
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/042.htm
The risk of reaching an heretofore unknown tipping point in the climate is quite real and very dangerous. You've been warned.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Karl Rove's America:How the Dream Ends
It ends not with a bang but with a prolonged sigh ...
"John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.
What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.
I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.
But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.
Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.
Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.
A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.
But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.
Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.
And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.
But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.
Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.
Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?"
--P Krugman, The New York Times, 7.15.05
"John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.
What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.
I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.
But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.
Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.
Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.
A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.
But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.
Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.
And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.
But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.
Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.
Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?"
--P Krugman, The New York Times, 7.15.05
Friday, July 22, 2005
Krugman: real unemployment rate is 1-3 pts higher
The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "Economists who argue that there's something wrong with the unemployment numbers are buzzing about a new study by Katharine Bradbury, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which suggests that millions of Americans who should be in the labor force aren't. 'The addition of these hypothetical participants,' she writes, 'would raise the unemployment rate by one to three-plus percentage points.'
Some background: the unemployment rate is only one of several numbers economists use to assess the jobs picture. When the economy is generating an abundance of jobs, economists expect to see strong growth in the payrolls reported by employers and in the number of people who say they have jobs, together with a rise in the length of the average workweek. They also expect to see wage gains well in excess of inflation, as employers compete to attract workers.
In fact, we see none of these things. As Berkeley's J. Bradford DeLong writes on his influential economics blog, 'We have four of five indicators telling us that the state of the job market is not that good and only one - the unemployment rate - reading green.'
In particular, even the most favorable measures show that employment growth has lagged well behind population growth over the past four years. Yet the measured unemployment rate isn't much higher than it was in early 2001. How is that possible?
The answer, according to the survey used to estimate the unemployment rate, is a decline in labor force participation. Nonworking Americans aren't considered unemployed unless they are actively looking for work, and hence counted as part of the labor force. And a large number of people have, for some reason, dropped out of the official labor force.
Those with a downbeat view of the jobs picture argue that the low reported unemployment rate is a statistical illusion, tha"
Some background: the unemployment rate is only one of several numbers economists use to assess the jobs picture. When the economy is generating an abundance of jobs, economists expect to see strong growth in the payrolls reported by employers and in the number of people who say they have jobs, together with a rise in the length of the average workweek. They also expect to see wage gains well in excess of inflation, as employers compete to attract workers.
In fact, we see none of these things. As Berkeley's J. Bradford DeLong writes on his influential economics blog, 'We have four of five indicators telling us that the state of the job market is not that good and only one - the unemployment rate - reading green.'
In particular, even the most favorable measures show that employment growth has lagged well behind population growth over the past four years. Yet the measured unemployment rate isn't much higher than it was in early 2001. How is that possible?
The answer, according to the survey used to estimate the unemployment rate, is a decline in labor force participation. Nonworking Americans aren't considered unemployed unless they are actively looking for work, and hence counted as part of the labor force. And a large number of people have, for some reason, dropped out of the official labor force.
Those with a downbeat view of the jobs picture argue that the low reported unemployment rate is a statistical illusion, tha"
Krugman: Chinese will stop buying T-bills, then kiss that bubble buh-bye
The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "By keeping the yuan down, China is feeding a trade surplus that is creating a growing political backlash in America and Europe. And China, which is still a poor country, is devoting a lot of resources to the accumulation of a basically useless pile of dollars instead of to higher living standards.
The question is what happens to us if the Chinese finally decide to stop acting so strangely.
An end to China's dollar-buying spree would lead to a sharp rise in the value of the yuan. It would probably also lead to a sharp fall in the value of the dollar relative to other major currencies, like the yen and the euro, which the Chinese haven't been buying on the same scale. This would help U.S. manufacturers by raising their competitors' costs.
But if the Chinese stopped buying all those U.S. bonds, interest rates would rise. This would be bad news for housing - maybe very bad news, if the interest rate rise burst the bubble.
In the long run, the economic effects of an end to China's dollar buying would even out. America would have more industrial workers and fewer real estate agents, more jobs in Michigan and fewer in Florida, leaving the overall level of employment pretty much unaffected. But as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, in the long run we are all dead.
In the short run, some people would win, but others would lose. And I suspect that the losers would greatly outnumber the winners.
And what about the strategic effects? Right now America is a superpower living on credit - something I don't think has happened since Philip II ruled Spain. What will happen to our stature if and when China takes away our credit card?
This story is still in its early days. On the first day of the new policy, the yuan rose only 2 percent, not enough to make any noticeable difference. But one of these days Chinese dollar purchases will trail of"
The question is what happens to us if the Chinese finally decide to stop acting so strangely.
An end to China's dollar-buying spree would lead to a sharp rise in the value of the yuan. It would probably also lead to a sharp fall in the value of the dollar relative to other major currencies, like the yen and the euro, which the Chinese haven't been buying on the same scale. This would help U.S. manufacturers by raising their competitors' costs.
But if the Chinese stopped buying all those U.S. bonds, interest rates would rise. This would be bad news for housing - maybe very bad news, if the interest rate rise burst the bubble.
In the long run, the economic effects of an end to China's dollar buying would even out. America would have more industrial workers and fewer real estate agents, more jobs in Michigan and fewer in Florida, leaving the overall level of employment pretty much unaffected. But as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, in the long run we are all dead.
In the short run, some people would win, but others would lose. And I suspect that the losers would greatly outnumber the winners.
And what about the strategic effects? Right now America is a superpower living on credit - something I don't think has happened since Philip II ruled Spain. What will happen to our stature if and when China takes away our credit card?
This story is still in its early days. On the first day of the new policy, the yuan rose only 2 percent, not enough to make any noticeable difference. But one of these days Chinese dollar purchases will trail of"
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Batting .500 isnt bad if death isn't on the line
The likelihood that the innocent are being executed was enough to compel Illinois Governor George Ryan, a onetime supporter of the death penalty to suspend executions two years ago. Simple arithmetic convinced him the system was broken: of 25 people put on death row in Illinois since 1987, 12 were executed, 13 were falsely accused and eventually freed, including Anthony Porter, a retarded man who came within a few days of execution for a murder he didn't commit.
... What is your state's average?
http://www.insideout.org/documentaries/dna/thelaw.asp
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
US wakes up, finds itself in bed with WHAT!?
"A record 57 percent also now say the administration intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
...
Fifty-three percent of Americans say the war was not worth fighting...
Fifty-one percent said they want to see a timetable for withdrawing troops. For the first time, a plurality of Americans, by 50%-47%, sees the war in Iraq as a separate action from the war on terrorism.
...
By 46%-43%, a plurality says the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism.
...
By 53%-46%, Americans say the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq. That's the highest level of discontent since the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison scandals last summer.
In addition,
By a record 61%-37%, those surveyed say the president doesn't have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq. Bush's job-approval rating has suffered, too. His approval rating is 45%, equaling the lowest of his presidency. At 53%, his disapproval rating has reached a new high."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
... now where's that damn morning after pill!?
...
Fifty-three percent of Americans say the war was not worth fighting...
Fifty-one percent said they want to see a timetable for withdrawing troops. For the first time, a plurality of Americans, by 50%-47%, sees the war in Iraq as a separate action from the war on terrorism.
...
By 46%-43%, a plurality says the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism.
...
By 53%-46%, Americans say the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq. That's the highest level of discontent since the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison scandals last summer.
In addition,
By a record 61%-37%, those surveyed say the president doesn't have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq. Bush's job-approval rating has suffered, too. His approval rating is 45%, equaling the lowest of his presidency. At 53%, his disapproval rating has reached a new high."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
... now where's that damn morning after pill!?
Monday, June 13, 2005
The overlooked $2,300 billion deficit upper
And you thought half a trillion was bad...
"... Blessed by historical habits that have no relationship to what our government does today, our legacy of cash accounting now serves to mislead and confuse. The April issue of Economic Indicators, a publication prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers, for instance, projects a unified budget deficit -- the one that lumps the Social Security surplus in with the rest of government -- of $427 billion. (New reports this week that we may be on track for a smaller deficit don't change the fact that the accounting methods are misleading. We'll stick with the $427 billion figure until they make the new estimate official in midsummer.)
The $427 billion deficit, however, is a massive understatement of our true deficit. The real deficit is $2.3 trillion larger. That's more than five times the publicly discussed $427 billion figure -- but it never enters public discussion.
If the executive branch of government were held to the standards of Sarbanes-Oxley, it would be on a fast track to a criminal trial. We would forget about Ken Lay because the crimes at Enron are mere rounding errors compared to what our government does.
A bipartisan problem
Some readers will expect a diatribe against President George W. Bush to follow.
It won't.
This is a bipartisan problem. Both the Democrats and the Republicans, in or out of office, have been using accounting methods that are, at best, quaint and, at worst, criminal. And they have been doing it for decades.
You can understand what's going on by comparing our government to a large corporation like General Motors.
When General Motors (GM, news, msgs) files its annual report, it must report on the condition of its pension fund and other obligations to current and retired workers as well as its profit or loss. If the pension liabilities -- the retirement benefits it has promised workers -- exceed pension-plan assets by more than a certain amount, General Motors must make contributions to the pension fund, reducing its profits. The two, profits and pensions, are deeply linked. General Motors also has substantial health-care obligations to its retired workers.
Sound familiar?
Our government is in a similar position -- but with a lot more zeros on the numbers it uses. It reports its annual profit and loss as a surplus or a deficit. Separately, it reports on its long-term pension, disability and health-care obligations. Unlike General Motors, however, the government doesn't include these figures in the annual statements of surplus or deficit.
The buried details
You can find them only in the trustees' reports for Social Security and Medicare.
The 2005 reports (each over 200 pages) show the programs to be underfunded by a total of $33.7 trillion (in today's dollars) over the next 75 years. That's four times the $8 trillion in formal debt shown in regular government accounting.
You learn still more when you compare the 2005 reports with the reports from 2004. In 2004, the combined unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare were $31.4 trillion.
That's an increase of $2.3 trillion in a single year. The trustees' examination of the plans over a longer time period, termed the infinite horizon, shows an even larger change, $7.2 trillion (see table below).
But let's not look so far in the future. Let's stay with the traditional (if inadequate) 75-year measure, that $2.3 trillion. It isn't mentioned in other government documents. It is missing from Economic Indicators. Indeed, it is absent from virtually all discussion of the federal budget -- the one currently estimating a piddling deficit of $427 billion for fiscal 2005.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P120624.asp
"... Blessed by historical habits that have no relationship to what our government does today, our legacy of cash accounting now serves to mislead and confuse. The April issue of Economic Indicators, a publication prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers, for instance, projects a unified budget deficit -- the one that lumps the Social Security surplus in with the rest of government -- of $427 billion. (New reports this week that we may be on track for a smaller deficit don't change the fact that the accounting methods are misleading. We'll stick with the $427 billion figure until they make the new estimate official in midsummer.)
The $427 billion deficit, however, is a massive understatement of our true deficit. The real deficit is $2.3 trillion larger. That's more than five times the publicly discussed $427 billion figure -- but it never enters public discussion.
If the executive branch of government were held to the standards of Sarbanes-Oxley, it would be on a fast track to a criminal trial. We would forget about Ken Lay because the crimes at Enron are mere rounding errors compared to what our government does.
A bipartisan problem
Some readers will expect a diatribe against President George W. Bush to follow.
It won't.
This is a bipartisan problem. Both the Democrats and the Republicans, in or out of office, have been using accounting methods that are, at best, quaint and, at worst, criminal. And they have been doing it for decades.
You can understand what's going on by comparing our government to a large corporation like General Motors.
When General Motors (GM, news, msgs) files its annual report, it must report on the condition of its pension fund and other obligations to current and retired workers as well as its profit or loss. If the pension liabilities -- the retirement benefits it has promised workers -- exceed pension-plan assets by more than a certain amount, General Motors must make contributions to the pension fund, reducing its profits. The two, profits and pensions, are deeply linked. General Motors also has substantial health-care obligations to its retired workers.
Sound familiar?
Our government is in a similar position -- but with a lot more zeros on the numbers it uses. It reports its annual profit and loss as a surplus or a deficit. Separately, it reports on its long-term pension, disability and health-care obligations. Unlike General Motors, however, the government doesn't include these figures in the annual statements of surplus or deficit.
The buried details
You can find them only in the trustees' reports for Social Security and Medicare.
The 2005 reports (each over 200 pages) show the programs to be underfunded by a total of $33.7 trillion (in today's dollars) over the next 75 years. That's four times the $8 trillion in formal debt shown in regular government accounting.
You learn still more when you compare the 2005 reports with the reports from 2004. In 2004, the combined unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare were $31.4 trillion.
That's an increase of $2.3 trillion in a single year. The trustees' examination of the plans over a longer time period, termed the infinite horizon, shows an even larger change, $7.2 trillion (see table below).
But let's not look so far in the future. Let's stay with the traditional (if inadequate) 75-year measure, that $2.3 trillion. It isn't mentioned in other government documents. It is missing from Economic Indicators. Indeed, it is absent from virtually all discussion of the federal budget -- the one currently estimating a piddling deficit of $427 billion for fiscal 2005.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P120624.asp
Friday, June 10, 2005
Onward, Christian Soldier!
Connecting the Dots 101
The legal battle over the life of Terri Schiavo may have ended, but a thick, fervent crowd remains in the makeshift encampment outside the Woodside Hospice House here . . .
No, we're not going to go home," said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. "Terri is not dead until she's dead" . . .
Mr. Tierney, a former military intelligence officer in Iraq who works as a translator and investigator for private companies, cried as he talked about watching the Schiavo spectacle on television and feeling the utter need to be at the hospice.
New York Times
Protesters With Hearts on Sleeves and Anger on Signs
March 28, 2005
Bill Tierney . . . had just returned from eight months working as an interrogator for US forces in Baghdad, and had come to talk, on the record, about torture.
''The Brits came up with an expression – wog,'' Tierney said. ''That stands for Wily Oriental Gentleman. There's a lot of wiliness in that part of the world.''. . .
After explaining his various psychological tactics to the audience, interrogator Bill Tierney (a private contractor working with the Army) said, ''I tried to be nuanced and culturally aware. But the suspects didn't break.''
Suddenly Tierney's temper rose. ''They did not break!'' he shouted. ''I'm here to win. I'm here so our civilization beats theirs! Now what are you willing to do to win?'' he asked, pointing to a woman in the front row. ''You are the interrogators, you are the ones who have to get the information from the Iraqis. What do you do? That word 'torture'. You immediately think, 'That's not me.' But are we litigating this war or fighting it?'' . . .
Asked about Abu Ghraib, Tierney said that for an interrogator, ''sadism is always right over the hill. You have to admit it. Don't fool yourself – there is a part of you that will say, 'This is fun.' ''
Boston Globe
Spy world
February 13, 2005
... what a piece of work is man. Well, this man anyway.
The legal battle over the life of Terri Schiavo may have ended, but a thick, fervent crowd remains in the makeshift encampment outside the Woodside Hospice House here . . .
No, we're not going to go home," said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. "Terri is not dead until she's dead" . . .
Mr. Tierney, a former military intelligence officer in Iraq who works as a translator and investigator for private companies, cried as he talked about watching the Schiavo spectacle on television and feeling the utter need to be at the hospice.
New York Times
Protesters With Hearts on Sleeves and Anger on Signs
March 28, 2005
Bill Tierney . . . had just returned from eight months working as an interrogator for US forces in Baghdad, and had come to talk, on the record, about torture.
''The Brits came up with an expression – wog,'' Tierney said. ''That stands for Wily Oriental Gentleman. There's a lot of wiliness in that part of the world.''. . .
After explaining his various psychological tactics to the audience, interrogator Bill Tierney (a private contractor working with the Army) said, ''I tried to be nuanced and culturally aware. But the suspects didn't break.''
Suddenly Tierney's temper rose. ''They did not break!'' he shouted. ''I'm here to win. I'm here so our civilization beats theirs! Now what are you willing to do to win?'' he asked, pointing to a woman in the front row. ''You are the interrogators, you are the ones who have to get the information from the Iraqis. What do you do? That word 'torture'. You immediately think, 'That's not me.' But are we litigating this war or fighting it?'' . . .
Asked about Abu Ghraib, Tierney said that for an interrogator, ''sadism is always right over the hill. You have to admit it. Don't fool yourself – there is a part of you that will say, 'This is fun.' ''
Boston Globe
Spy world
February 13, 2005
... what a piece of work is man. Well, this man anyway.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Where would you like the deck chairs today, sir?
"Let’s just say we were old friends, and you have money and I am broke. I need to borrow from you to just pay my expenses. That’s fine with you so you are lending me money. In the meantime, I’m taking that money and I’m just spending lavishly. I’ve bought a mansion on the beach and I’m having parties every night, traveling first class, buying designer clothes, and just spending like mad...But as time goes on, let’s say a few years later, for every $10,000 your lending me, I’m paying back only $7,000. After a while, you’re going to say, ‘Look, this isn’t working out too well.’
"Unfortunately, this is the situation that the US is in today. We’re definitely not gloom-and-doomers by any means. But if we just look at the facts of what is happening, you have to ask how this is happening. It actually started in the late 1990s. As you know, the stock market bubble burst. The NASDAQ then plunged 78%, at which point deflation forces intensified. To avoid deflation, interest rates were dropped hard and fast to 45-year lows. Monetary stimulation exploded, and to make matters worse, 9-11 added fuel to the fire. As the war on terrorism kicked in, the US budget surplus quickly went from a surplus to the biggest debt and deficits that the world has ever known.
"The end result was the biggest credit explosion in US history. Meanwhile, deficit spending and monetary stimulation also resulted in inflation. And even though inflation is still relatively low, it is the highest it has been in 14 years. This is all very similar to what happened in the 1970s. Like now, money was loose, deficits were huge, inflation soared, and budget deficits were large. ...
"Yes, dollar reserves are still huge. But what’s important to note is that the US is using up 80% of the world’s available savings, and it is borrowing $2 billion a day from overseas to cover its debt. Now this means we are very dependent on foreign money. These huge imbalances simply cannot continue. Economists continually debate this situation and no one knows what will happen. Paul Volcker, for example, recently said, ‘Circumstances seem to be as dangerous as any I can remember--and I can remember a lot. What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness to do anything about it.’
http://www.moneyshowdigest.com/digest/article.asp?aid=20050527-2461&iid=20050527&scode=002879&spn=tri
"Unfortunately, this is the situation that the US is in today. We’re definitely not gloom-and-doomers by any means. But if we just look at the facts of what is happening, you have to ask how this is happening. It actually started in the late 1990s. As you know, the stock market bubble burst. The NASDAQ then plunged 78%, at which point deflation forces intensified. To avoid deflation, interest rates were dropped hard and fast to 45-year lows. Monetary stimulation exploded, and to make matters worse, 9-11 added fuel to the fire. As the war on terrorism kicked in, the US budget surplus quickly went from a surplus to the biggest debt and deficits that the world has ever known.
"The end result was the biggest credit explosion in US history. Meanwhile, deficit spending and monetary stimulation also resulted in inflation. And even though inflation is still relatively low, it is the highest it has been in 14 years. This is all very similar to what happened in the 1970s. Like now, money was loose, deficits were huge, inflation soared, and budget deficits were large. ...
"Yes, dollar reserves are still huge. But what’s important to note is that the US is using up 80% of the world’s available savings, and it is borrowing $2 billion a day from overseas to cover its debt. Now this means we are very dependent on foreign money. These huge imbalances simply cannot continue. Economists continually debate this situation and no one knows what will happen. Paul Volcker, for example, recently said, ‘Circumstances seem to be as dangerous as any I can remember--and I can remember a lot. What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness to do anything about it.’
http://www.moneyshowdigest.com/digest/article.asp?aid=20050527-2461&iid=20050527&scode=002879&spn=tri
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
US Economy is getting teed up for a long drive
Here's what one major brokerage advisor had to say about housing and the economy last week:
"On a year-over-year basis, median existing home prices jumped 11.4%, with the strongest increases in the highly speculative condo market (15.9%) and in the already red-hot West (18.9%). What started out as a reasonable response to a low interest rate environment has become a bubble in one-third to one-half of the market."
and...
"We expect a long adjustment ahead, with a significant decline in the dollar against a wide range of currencies. The length and magnitude of the adjustment means accidents are likely along the way. Among the warning signs are:
1) protectionist measures in the U.S. and Europe that invite retaliation from Asia;
2) a game of hot potato, whereby investors try to shift out of dollar assets before the dollar falls further, putting more of the buying burden onto the remaining supporters of the dollar;
3) reorientation of currency pegging toward baskets of currencies rather than the dollar;
4) events in Asia that encourage selling foreign exchange assets to deal with local difficulties; and
5) a sharp shift away from export-oriented growth policy toward domestic demand-driven growth policy, reducing the need to buy dollar assets. "
... Fore!
"On a year-over-year basis, median existing home prices jumped 11.4%, with the strongest increases in the highly speculative condo market (15.9%) and in the already red-hot West (18.9%). What started out as a reasonable response to a low interest rate environment has become a bubble in one-third to one-half of the market."
and...
"We expect a long adjustment ahead, with a significant decline in the dollar against a wide range of currencies. The length and magnitude of the adjustment means accidents are likely along the way. Among the warning signs are:
1) protectionist measures in the U.S. and Europe that invite retaliation from Asia;
2) a game of hot potato, whereby investors try to shift out of dollar assets before the dollar falls further, putting more of the buying burden onto the remaining supporters of the dollar;
3) reorientation of currency pegging toward baskets of currencies rather than the dollar;
4) events in Asia that encourage selling foreign exchange assets to deal with local difficulties; and
5) a sharp shift away from export-oriented growth policy toward domestic demand-driven growth policy, reducing the need to buy dollar assets. "
... Fore!
Thursday, April 28, 2005
What is a moderate to do?
The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?
One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.
But there's also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970's, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the 'party of ideas.' Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the 'party of theocracy.'
Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on 'leftists' struggling against 'mainstream society,' professors who act as 'dictators' and turn the classroom into a 'totalitarian niche.' His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.
In its April Fools' Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it's 'the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time,' saying that 'as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains "
One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.
But there's also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970's, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the 'party of ideas.' Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the 'party of theocracy.'
Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on 'leftists' struggling against 'mainstream society,' professors who act as 'dictators' and turn the classroom into a 'totalitarian niche.' His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.
In its April Fools' Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it's 'the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time,' saying that 'as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains "
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Caught in a Devil's Bargain
"A 2003 study published in Health Affairs ... comparing a number of measures of health services across the advanced world. What the authors found was that the United States scores high on high-tech services - we have lots of M.R.I.'s - but on more prosaic measures, like the number of doctors' visits and number of days spent in hospitals, America is only average, or even below average. There's also direct evidence that identical procedures cost far more in the U.S. than in other advanced countries.
The authors concluded that Americans spend far more on health care than their counterparts abroad - but they don't actually receive more care. The title of their article? "It's the Prices, Stupid."
Why is the price of U.S. health care so high? One answer is doctors' salaries: although average wages in France and the United States are similar, American doctors are paid much more than their French counterparts. Another answer is that America's health care system drives a poor bargain with the pharmaceutical industry.
Above all, a large part of America's health care spending goes into paperwork. A 2003 study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that administrative costs took 31 cents out of every dollar the United States spent on health care, compared with only 17 cents in Canada."
" The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it?
An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.
According to the World Health Organization, in the United States administrative expenses eat up about 15 percent of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies, but only 4 percent of the budgets of public insurance programs, which consist mainly of Medicare and Medicaid. The numbers for both public and private insurance are similar in other countries - but because we rely much more heavily than anyone else on private insurance, our total administrative costs are much higher.
According to the health organization, the higher costs of private insurers are "mainly due to the extensive bureaucracy required to assess risk, rate premiums, design benefit packages and review, pay or refuse claims." Public insurance plans have far less bureaucracy because they don't try to screen out high-risk clients or charge them higher fees.
And the costs directly incurred by insurers are only half the story. Doctors "must hire office personnel just to deal with the insurance companies," Dr. Atul Gawande, a practicing physician, wrote in The New Yorker. "A well-run office can get the insurer's rejection rate down from 30 percent to, say, 15 percent. That's how a doctor makes money. ... It's a war with insurance, every step of the way."
--Paul Krugman http://www.pkarchive.org/
...Universal health insurance, anyone?
The authors concluded that Americans spend far more on health care than their counterparts abroad - but they don't actually receive more care. The title of their article? "It's the Prices, Stupid."
Why is the price of U.S. health care so high? One answer is doctors' salaries: although average wages in France and the United States are similar, American doctors are paid much more than their French counterparts. Another answer is that America's health care system drives a poor bargain with the pharmaceutical industry.
Above all, a large part of America's health care spending goes into paperwork. A 2003 study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that administrative costs took 31 cents out of every dollar the United States spent on health care, compared with only 17 cents in Canada."
" The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it?
An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.
According to the World Health Organization, in the United States administrative expenses eat up about 15 percent of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies, but only 4 percent of the budgets of public insurance programs, which consist mainly of Medicare and Medicaid. The numbers for both public and private insurance are similar in other countries - but because we rely much more heavily than anyone else on private insurance, our total administrative costs are much higher.
According to the health organization, the higher costs of private insurers are "mainly due to the extensive bureaucracy required to assess risk, rate premiums, design benefit packages and review, pay or refuse claims." Public insurance plans have far less bureaucracy because they don't try to screen out high-risk clients or charge them higher fees.
And the costs directly incurred by insurers are only half the story. Doctors "must hire office personnel just to deal with the insurance companies," Dr. Atul Gawande, a practicing physician, wrote in The New Yorker. "A well-run office can get the insurer's rejection rate down from 30 percent to, say, 15 percent. That's how a doctor makes money. ... It's a war with insurance, every step of the way."
--Paul Krugman http://www.pkarchive.org/
...Universal health insurance, anyone?
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Unbefu*kinglieveable Dept
This has gotta get the conspiracy nuts spun right thru the ceiling ...
"Bless the Beasts and the Children
Photographer for White House child sex ring arrested after Thompson suicide
Tom Flocco | March 13, 2005
The Justice Department, acting through the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Omaha, emerges from the record of the Franklin investigations not so much as a party to the cover-up, but as its coordinator. Rigging grand juries, harassment of witnesses, incitement to perjury and tampering with evidence--federal personnel were seen to apply all of those techniques in the Franklin case. (John W. DeCamp, Esq., The Franklin Cover-up , Second Edition, January 2005)
WASHINGTON -- Photographer Russell E. "Rusty" Nelson was recently arrested two days after journalist Hunter Thompson reportedly committed suicide four weeks ago on February 10, according to two phone interviews with attorney John DeCamp last week.
Nelson was allegedly employed by a former Republican Party activist to take pictures of current or retired U.S. House-Senate members and other prominent government officials engaging in sexual criminality by receiving or committing sodomy and other sex acts on children during the Reagan-Bush 41 administrations.
Hunter Thompson’s death and the news blackout of Rusty Nelson’s simultaneous arrest raise questions that someone may be attempting to limit Nelson’s freedom or threaten him, since according to testimony, both men had allegedly witnessed homosexual prostitution and pedophile criminal acts in a suppressed but far-reaching child sex-ring probe closely linked to Senate and House members--but also former President George H. W. Bush.
[In U.S. District Court testimony, Rusty Nelson told Judge Warren Urbom he took 20,000 to 30,000 pictures, 2-5-1999, p.52]
Pedophile victim Paul Bonacci--kidnapped and forced into sex slavery between the ages of 6 and 17--told U.S. District Court Judge Warren Urbom in sworn testimony [pp.105, 124-126] on February 5, 1999: "Where were the parties?...down in Washington, DC...and that was for sex...There was sex between adult men and other adult men but most of it had to do with young boys and young girls with the older folks...specifically for sex with minors...Also in Washington, DC, there were parties after a party...there were a lot of parties where there would be senators and congressmen who had nothing to do with the sexual stuff. But there were some senators and congressmen who stayed for the [pedophile sex] parties afterwards...on a lot of the trips he took us on he had us, I mean, I met some people that I don't feel comfortable telling their name because I don't want to --- ...Q: Are you scared?...Yes..."
DeCamp, a former Nebraska state senator and decorated Vietnam War vet, told TomFlocco.com "there are tons of pictures still left; law enforcement is currently looking for them," adding, "you can also assume there are senators and congressmen implicated; otherwise this would not be such a big issue." But no federal official has stepped forward to protect Rusty Nelson's life, as Congress would be reluctant to hold hearings or force a federal prosecutor to probe its own members for sex acts with children--still punishable by law.
Sex with minors?
In his testimony before Judge Urbom, Bonacci specifically named Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) as having participated in the parties--also telling the judge he had "relationships with him" in Washington, DC and was flown to Massachusetts for sex in the basement of Frank's Boston home. [2-5-1999, p. 126]
However, Urbom did not subpoena all the photos and did not ask Bonacci to identify photos of specific senators and congressmen, or reveal their names in court transcripts and depositions we examined; nor did Judge Urbom explain why investigations have never commenced regarding which members of congress had sex with children.
The evidence DeCamp presented was so credible and substantial that Urbom awarded Paul Bonacci $1 million for child abuse on February 19, 1999 regarding his lawsuit involving Larry King. This, despite a Nebraska jury having already indicted Bonacci for perjury in 1990, ultimately sending an intentionally damaged, spiritually and physically abused young man to prison for five years--and despite his treatment by King, described in court testimony:
"They put guns up to my head. Had guns put in my mouth...Larry King sent out boys, men, to jump me...he had them pretty well beat the tar out of me from the waist down so nobody would see the marks...I had my fingers broken...I can remember them burning me with hot instruments...placing stuff inside me...almost what I call a cattle prod...But it would be put inside then they'd shock me inside my -- ...Judge Urbom: Anus?...Yes... And they would -- ...Judge: You mean electrically heated?...They would put it in and then push a button and it would shock me...Judge Urbom:..done by Larry King at his direction?...At his direction..."
"I threatened to go to the police in California, thought maybe they would listen whereas in Omaha they were in his pocketbook...he had me hung out of an airplane with a rope by my ankles... If they wanted to get something passed through the legislature, he would put some people that were against it in a compromising position. By using us boys and girls ...Judge Urbom: Was this by your being the sexual partner of that person?...Yes...Judge Urbom: ...Any estimates of how often you participated as the sexual partner of one of these persons that he wanted to get some kind of control over?...There were times when it would be four or five in a night...on probably a couple thousand times...sometimes dozens of times with the same person..." [U.S. District Court testimony, 2-5-1999, pp. 146-151]
Curiously, Paul Bonacci told investigators that the sex ring was based out of Offutt U.S. Air Force Base near Omaha, having been taken there to be abused since he was three years old in 1970. At Offutt, Paul said he was "trained" by tortures, heavy drugging and sexual degradation. [Offutt AFB played a major role immediately following the 9/11 attacks as George W. Bush made the base his post-attack headquarters for a short period.]
So intent upon his physical harm, the government "moved Bonacci to different facilities--despite agreements worked out by DeCamp, purposefully given food to which he was allergic while his weight dropped, and denied a blanket for months...beaten several times in jail and placed with potentially violent people associated with Larry King," according to Decamp.
John DeCamp told us last week that "Larry King was released from prison on April 11, 2001 after serving about five years," adding "he's back in Washington, DC and now involved in this story again." [DeCamp's book also said "King went to prison for embezzlement, conspiracy and making false financial record entries...there was no trial on any other charges, and the evidence of child prostitution and abuse perpetrated by King was never presented in any court." Franklin Cover-up , p. 224]
John DeCamp just released an updated 2005 edition of his original book about the secret White House-linked national child sex-ring entitled The Franklin Cover-up [$12.95 + $4.00 shipping: contact decamplegal@inebraska.com for 2005 edition]. The carefully researched and graphic expose involves convicted [and recently released from prison] GOP operative Lawrence E. "Larry" King Jr. who allegedly hired photographers to capture legislators and high officials in compromising sexual positions with children while he managed the Franklin Federal Credit Union--according to court testimony on 2-5-1999. [Franklin was raided by federal agencies and shut down two days before George H. W. Bush was elected president in 1988.]
Past mysterious deaths, clandestine arrests, court testimony, and credible evidence of FBI and CIA participation in their cover-up also raise questions as to why elderly pedophile priests are removed from their pulpits, prosecuted and imprisoned for sex acts committed 40 years ago and why famous music entertainers are prosecuted for pedophilia; yet elderly pedophile federal legislators may still remain in the U.S. House and Senate--drawing a free pass for past criminal child-sex acts.
Regarding his role in taking blackmail photos of government officials, Rusty Nelson confirmed Bonacci’s testimony to Judge Urbom: "Q: Children on the airplane?...yes. Q: How young?...There was one situation went back to Washington, DC...he had probably 10, 12 years old...Q: Boys, girls?...Both...Q: Who attended the parties?...Prominent business people, very prominent high-ranking officials, politicians. The younger people. What would transpire was they would have a party and then a party after the party...after the party was more of a sex-type deal...That’s what Larry [King] would -- -- Q: These old politicians were having sex with each other?...Or people Larry would bring...some younger people...Did you take pictures of the parties?...I took pictures at some of the parties, yes..." [U.S. District Court testimony, 2-5-1999, pp. 89-91]
After the Secret Service allowed Paul Bonacci to have access to the White House on July 3, 1988, one of DeCamp’s investigators said the young pedophile victim was able to draw a floor-plan of the presidential inside living quarters of the White House--an area not available to the public--lending stong credence to a June 29, 1989 Washington Times front page story, "Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush," when reporters Paul Rodriguez and George Archibald said "Call-boys took midnight tour of White House."
Presidential indiscretions--or criminal acts?
According to a Nebraska state police report, Nebraska Foster Care Review Board letter to the Attorney General, Nebraska Senate’s Franklin committee investigative report, and a 50-page report by Omaha’s Boys Town welfare case officer Mrs. Julie Walters, pedophile victims Nelly and Kimberly Webb detailed a massive child sex, homosexual and pornography operation run out of Nebraska by Larry King--but with close ties directly to the White House.
Mrs. Walter’s Nebraska Dept. of Social Services report (3-25-86) revealed: "[14 year-old] Nelly said at these trip parties hosted by Larry King, she sat naked ‘looking pretty and innocent’ and guests could engage in any sexual activity they wanted, but penetration was not allowed...Nellysaid she first met V. P. George Bush at the Republican Convention where King sang the national anthem, and saw Bush again at a Washington, DC party Larry hosted...Last year [1985] she met V.P. Bush and saw him at one of the parties Larry gave while on a Washington, DC trip. At some of the parties there are just men (as was the case at the party George Bush attended)...Nelly said she has seen sodomy committed at those parties."
The Walters report continued: "On December 19, 1988, Nelly was contacted and voluntarily came to the FBI offices on December 30, 1988. She was interviewed by [FBI agents] Brady, Tucker and Phillips...in September or October, 1984 when Lisa was 14 she went to Chicago with Larry King and 15-20 boys from Omaha...She indicates she attended a party in Chicago with King and the male youths. She indicated George Bush was present...she sat at a table at the party wearing nothing but a negligee. She stated George Bush saw her on the table. She stated she saw George Bush pay King money and Bush left the party with a nineteen year old black boy named Brent. Lisa said the party Bush attended was in Chicago in September or October 1984. The Chicago Tribune of October 31, 1984 said Bush was in Illinois campaigning for congressional candidates at the end of October."
Bush 41 surfaced again in Lowe's May, 1989 review of reports by Thomas Vlahoulis from the state attorney general's office: "Sorenson told Vlahoulis that both Kimberly and Nelly [Webb] brought up the name of George Bush and indicated that they had both met him..."
In spite of four polygraph tests administered by a Nebraska state trooper who said he was convinced Nelly was telling the truth, a Washington country, Nebraska judge in December, 1990 ignored Julie Walter’s 50-page report, numerous debriefings of the girls by foster care officials and youth workers stating the sisters told the truth--specifically about George Bush Sr., and dismissed all charges against their foster parents Jarrett and Barbara Webb, who Nelly and Kimberly said had allowed them to be abused.
Regarding his role in taking blackmail photos of government officials, recently re-arrested Rusty Nelson confirmed Bonacci’s testimony to Judge Urbom: "Q: Children on the airplane?...yes. Q: How young?...There was one situation went back to Washington, DC he had probably 10, 12 years old...Q: Boys, girls?...Both...Q: Who attended the parties?...Prominent business people, very prominent high-ranking officials, politicians. The younger people. What would transpire was they would have a party and then a party after the party...after the party was more of a sex-type deal...That’s what Larry [King] would -- -- Q: These old politicians were having sex with each other?...Or people Larry would bring...some younger people...Did you take pictures of the parties?...I took pictures at some of the parties, yes..." [U.S. District Court testimony, 2-5-1999, pp. 89-91]
Gosch to Guckert to Gannon?
Cable television news reports have recently linked an alleged male prostitute to the present White House since George W. Bush permitted James Guckert to use an unprecedented Secret Service-approved alias (Jeff Gannon) while having access to the White House for two years as a pool reporter serving the younger Bush--before which Gannon had advertised himself on internet pornography sites as a male "escort" charging $200 an hour. [Gannon is the subject of independent news reports which have referred to him as the former kidnapped Des Moines, Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch--forced into child sex-slavery.] John DeCamp told this writer "I believe Johnny Gosch and Jeff Gannon are one and the same person--but I am not in a position to know positively."
During a recent phone interview, Noreen Gosch told TomFlocco.com that she is still not sure whether her missing son Johnny is in fact James Gannon, because she has "not seen enough evidence." But having been abducted in 1982, Johnny Gosch would now be about 35-36 years old. Gannon claims to be 47 but his "male4male" website escorts profile lists him as 31 in 2000, which would also make him 35-36 years old today.
George W. Bush has not explained how Guckert/Gannon--who had advertised himself as a male escort--could apparently operate in the White House as a reporter for two years using a Secret Service-approved alias and regularly be called upon by George W. Bush and press secretary Scott McClellan during nationally televised presidential press conferences.
Questions can be raised as to whether Gannon also had access to the White House living quarters as Paul Bonacci and other call-boys did during his father’s administration--as the Washington Times reported. Photos of George W. Bush and Jeff Gannon together indicate that they have a cordial personal relationship.
Noreen Gosch said her son Johnny is living under an assumed name after being abducted on September 5, 1982 while serving his Sunday morning paper route. During a clandestine visit from her son when he was 27 or 28, Mrs. Gosch said Johnny told her he was taken by a highly organized, very corporate global pedophile/pornography ring--linked to the Washington, DC congressional call-boy scandal during the 1980's.
Hunter Thompson directed child murder-sex film?
A controversial author, Hunter Thompson was allegedly linked to Larry King as implicated in Paul Bonacci's testimony in which the pedophile victim revealed that Thompson directed a graphic ‘snuff’ film [Franklin Cover-up, pp.102-105 & 327] made near Sacramento, California at a location called " Bohemian Grove ."
Bonacci--flown numerous times across state lines for sexual exploitation to Washington, DC and other cities--testified on videotape [5-14-1990] for Nebraska State Police investigator Gary Caradori. Bonacci said that while on a trip to Sacramento, he was forced at gun-point to commit homosexual acts on another boy before he watched other men do the same--after which the boy was shot in the head.
In separate testimony, Decamp said Bonacci told him "Larry King was smiling and laughing the whole time the film was being shown...as the men watched, they passed Nicholas [another victim] and me around as if we were toys, and sexually abused us." [U.S. District Court, 2-5-1999, pp.115-129]
Bonacci’s testimony has been evaluated as credible and well-informed by leading child abuse experts, psychiatrists, psychologists and polygraph tests; and he has also testified that he was forced to lure Johnny Gosch into being kidnapped--considered by many to be the most notorious U.S. child sex-slavery case.
Protecting legislators at the expense of children
John Decamp told TomFlocco.com that Franklin child-abuse witness "Alisha Owen was convicted of lying that as a minor, she had sex with Omaha Chief of Police Robert Wadman. She was placed in solitary confinement for years--the most brutal treatment of a female inmate in Nebraska history for a first-time offense," to which Decamp added, "it was done to keep her silent and away from other inmates, but also as a warning to the other children."
21 year-old Alisha Jahn Owen was sentenced on August 8, 1991 to serve nine to twenty-seven years in prison for telling a grand jury that she was sexually abused as a juvenile by a Nebraska District Court judge, by Omaha's Chief of Police, by the manager of the Franklin Credit Union, and others.
DeCamp said "Alisha witnessed abuse of other children and functioned as an illegal drug courier traveling nationwide for some of Nebraska's wealthiest, most powerful and prominent businessmen." But a local and a federal grand jury indicted the victim-witnesses for perjury--throwing the key young people in prison to cover up child-sex and illegal drugs.
The Nebraska State Senate’s primary Franklin Committee investigator Gary Caradori's March 14, 1990 notes revealed that on the day of the federal agents' raid on Franklin Credit Union, "a large amount of pornographic material was taken out of the credit union, including videos and photographs depicting sexual acts. I was told that if Friedrichs or any of the other people working for the CPA firm contacted by the government [audit] would say anything, they would automatically lose their jobs."
That evidence was never made available to the Nebraska Senate's Franklin Committee, nor was its existence publicly acknowledged by the FBI; and all raid warrants were sealed by United States Magistrate Richard Kopf--the same court official who ordered to have Larry King taken by federal agents to a federal psychiatric facility for "tests," on February 7, 1990 as President George H. W. Bush was coming to Omaha for a fundraising event.
Alisha Owen testified to the Franklin Committee on June 11, 1990 that the FBI attempted to influence federal witness testimony--that her former lawyer Pam Vuchetich had come to see her in the spring: "giving a proposal from the FBI that if I recanted my story then nothing would happen to me; I could get out of prison and no charges would ever be brought against me...they would write letters to the judge asking for my sentence reduction..."
Her parents, Donna and Alvin Owen told the committee about the incident on June 21, 1990: "Q: You testified that your husband was there?...sitting in the living room, I remember...Q: Did she tell you who in the FBI made that deal, made that offer to her?...Mickey Mott...He works closely with Rick Culver and John Pankonon...
Curiously, state policeman Gary Caradori, died July 11, 1990 in a small-plane explosion, one month after FBI officials attempted to coerce a key child witness to recant her testimony--and even though a deputy sheriff first at the crash site said there was child pornography scattered all over the farmer’s field and the farmer said he witnessed the plane exploding in mid-air before crashing to the ground
Johnny Gosch’s mother, Noreen, said "undisclosed sources told her the FBI immediately arrived with three flatbed trucks [modus operandi of FBI and Gov. Jeb Bush confiscating 9/11 hijacker documents at Venice, Florida’s Huffman flight school?], grabbed the evidence from the sheriff’s hands, cordoned off the field, walked the field, picked up every piece of evidence, took the plane and all its parts and put it on the flatbed trucks, and told the peace officer, ‘This is confidential information and don’t ever speak of it again.’ The evidence has never surfaced again in Nebraska’s Franklin investigation or any other investigation." [ Ted Gunderson Report , June 28, 2000]
DeCamp's book reveals more clear evidence of witness tampering and possible accessory to murder: On the evening of July 11, 1990, the day her husband crashed to his death, Sandie Caradori received several phone calls from [key Franklin child-abuse witness] Troy Boner. She wrote in her notes: "I am familiar with his voice and can be 100% assured that I did in fact receive telephone calls from him...Troy: Gary wasn't lying. He didn't tell me what to say. What I told him was the truth. (He spoke rapidly, fighting back tears) They made me take it back. They threatened me...You don't understand, they threatened me. They made me take it back. I was so scared..." [pp. 186-187]
In 1990, according to DeCamp, "Troy Boner was going to provide the information in open court, under oath, that would blow the lid off the Franklin case and force a new trial for Alisha Owen...As Troy came into the courthouse, he was immediately ushered into a private room by county judicial authorities...the hearing was delayed for one hour...Troy was in the room with a "Special Attorney" and with other officials from the prosecutor's office-- the very same prosecutorial team Troy was about to testify against."
"... Troy leaned over and whispered to me, "Oh God, forgive me. They guaranteed if I talk here today, they will put me away for twenty years...told me I would be charged with perjury for my original testimony if I opened my mouth today in court...Look what they did to Alisha...Look what they did to my brother." [found dead after playing "Russian Roulette"]
DeCamp's 2005 edition incredibly reveals, " In late 2003 [just before the 2004 election campaign started to heat up], Troy Boner [key abused child witness to national sex-ring] walked into a hospital in New Mexico screaming "they're after me, they're after me because of this book." The book Boner was waving was The Franklin Cover-up . Boner was '... mildly sedated and calmed down...and put in a private room for observation .' "
"When nurses came back to check on him early next morning, Boner was sitting in a chair, bleeding from the mouth and quite dead. Former FBI Los Angeles Bureau Chief Ted Gunderson tried to get autopsy and other information and details that were promised him on Boner's death, but Gunderson and apparently every other entity, were totally shut out of all information. No news stories were published on Boner's death despite his "notoriety" in the Franklin case." (John DeCamp, The Franklin Cover-up ) Another witness was gone.
DeCamp added that the FBI had also confiscated Larry King’s flight manifests from various airline charter companies, thus helping to cover up proof of sexual exploitation of children and interstate transportation of minors across state lines for sexual purposes.
Washington, DC: child sodomy hotbed?
Rusty Nelson’s quick arrest following on the heels of Hunter Thompson’s ‘suicide’ and alleged assertions that Jeff Gannon could be Johnny Gosch may all have serious criminal implications, as Thompson and Nelson were said to be closely linked to child sexual criminality at the highest levels of government--acts still punishable by law and easily meriting cover-up attempts by powerful forces.
Paul Bonacci, forced to help kidnap Johnny Gosch into sex-slavery, also told Franklin Committee investigators he toured the White House at midnight on July 3, 1988 with Craig Spence--a lobbyist and political operative who arranged male prostitute visits to the White House but who turned up dead himself just three months after the 6-29-89 Washington Times call-boy headline. The police were quick to call a suicide.
Spence had "hinted the tours were arranged by ‘top-level’ persons, including Donald Gregg, national security advisor to Vice-President Bush," according to the Washington Times [8-9-89], adding, "Spence, according to friends, was also carrying out homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA."
Spence and Gregg were reportedly close friends, as Spence had sponsored a dinner in Gregg’s honor in the spring of 1989 at Washington posh Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown just before the White House prostitution scandal broke at the beginning of the Bush 41 tenure. [ George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography , Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter 21--Omaha]
A June 30, 1989 Washington Times report said "Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat and a self-proclaimed homosexual who several weeks ago threatened to reveal a list of Republican homosexuals in Congress, said he was ‘not surprised’ by the revelations."
The Times also said [8-25-1989], "A male prostitute convicted of drug trafficking and sex offenses against a minor used the Chevy Chase Elementary School in late 1987 to run his prostitution operation after the school's principal began buying sex from him."
"The call-boy was allowed to sleep and use phones in the school even after the principal left at 5 p.m., while teachers and the children were still involved in after-school activities such as chorus," said the principal, Gabriel A. Massaro, who also revealed "he had a four-year relationship with the prostitute and provided him with a guidance counselor's office and telephone at the model ‘magnet school’ even while children were in classes elsewhere in the building."
Also according to the Times, "Massaro acknowledged that he attended a meeting between Davis and his Alexandria probation officer at the Capitol Hill home of Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, another client whose home the call-boy used to perform sexual services." The paper did not reveal the age or name of the call-boy or whether he serviced Congressman Frank.
A clearly unethical and likely illegal presidential appointment was also linked to the White House child sex-ring: "In August, 1990, Bush appointed Ronald Roskens of Nebraska to head the Agency for International Development (AID). Roskens had been fired the previous year as chancellor of the University of Nebraska, where Larry King was a member of his advisory committee.
[State Police "Franklin" investigator] Gary Caradori’s daily notes for February 19, 1989 record: ‘I was informed that Roskens was terminated by the state because of sexual activities reported to the Regents and verified by them. Mr. Roskens was reported to have had young men at his residence for sexual encounters." [ Franklin Cover-up , p.177]
DeCamp added that AID assignments have been used as a "cover" by CIA agents; and in spite of Roskens’ sexual background and termination by Nebraska educators and his clear potential for being blackmailed, President Bush appointed him anyway.
Karl: ‘Rove’ing DC, approving 'special' WH press passes?
The extent to which White House Senior Domestic Policy Advisor Karl Rove played a part in approving the Gucket/Gannon White House press passes is not known.
However, CBS News spoke of a Rove-Gannon connection , saying "Gannon's aggressively partisan work and the ease with which he got day passes for the White House press room the past two years make it hard to believe that he wasn't at least implicitly sanctioned by the "boy genius."
Following on the heels of Guckert-Gannon, Walter Storch, editor of the Barnes Review News reported a three weeks ago that "Karl Rove was seen by one of my people entering a private homosexual orgy at a five-star Washington hotel over the Mid-Atlantic Leather (MAL) weekend last year." [2004]
A Barnes reporter told Storch that "Karl greatly enjoyed the supervision of a certain hairy 350-lb. Leather Dominator who had won the Miss Virginia Daddy Bear title at the MAL festivities."
Storch wrote, "Karl used to hang out a JR’s, which is on 17th between P & S streets, before he became so well-known. This is a respectable gay bar for discreet people...," adding, "there is an expensive apartment...over near Dupont Circle that certain powerful senators take turns visiting with their pickups."
"Bush, via Karl Rove, was projected as a moral man who would return a hedonistic America to the simpler virtues of a bygone era. A large part of the American public, unhappy with what they saw as debilitating liberalism, abortion on demand, gay marriage and other forms of moral decay, put Bush back in office," said the Barnes editor.
"Now they have to deal with rampant male whores prancing around the White House in consort with a small army of closet queens, all of whom very obviously have the ear, and the confidence, (and hopefully, that’s all they have) of their ‘moral’ choice for President," said Storch.
Interestingly, TBRNews.org also counts "one Supreme Court Justice, several governors (all Republican) and at least one very prominent televangelist" among those high officials who are saying one thing and doing another with respect to Storch's closet queen issue.
While American citizens watch, unanswered questions remain as Democrats and Republicans ignore young witnesses with clear and credible evidence--refusing to hold each other's legislators criminally accountable for their unspeakable crimes against children.
"Bless the Beasts and the Children
Photographer for White House child sex ring arrested after Thompson suicide
Tom Flocco | March 13, 2005
The Justice Department, acting through the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Omaha, emerges from the record of the Franklin investigations not so much as a party to the cover-up, but as its coordinator. Rigging grand juries, harassment of witnesses, incitement to perjury and tampering with evidence--federal personnel were seen to apply all of those techniques in the Franklin case. (John W. DeCamp, Esq., The Franklin Cover-up , Second Edition, January 2005)
WASHINGTON -- Photographer Russell E. "Rusty" Nelson was recently arrested two days after journalist Hunter Thompson reportedly committed suicide four weeks ago on February 10, according to two phone interviews with attorney John DeCamp last week.
Nelson was allegedly employed by a former Republican Party activist to take pictures of current or retired U.S. House-Senate members and other prominent government officials engaging in sexual criminality by receiving or committing sodomy and other sex acts on children during the Reagan-Bush 41 administrations.
Hunter Thompson’s death and the news blackout of Rusty Nelson’s simultaneous arrest raise questions that someone may be attempting to limit Nelson’s freedom or threaten him, since according to testimony, both men had allegedly witnessed homosexual prostitution and pedophile criminal acts in a suppressed but far-reaching child sex-ring probe closely linked to Senate and House members--but also former President George H. W. Bush.
[In U.S. District Court testimony, Rusty Nelson told Judge Warren Urbom he took 20,000 to 30,000 pictures, 2-5-1999, p.52]
Pedophile victim Paul Bonacci--kidnapped and forced into sex slavery between the ages of 6 and 17--told U.S. District Court Judge Warren Urbom in sworn testimony [pp.105, 124-126] on February 5, 1999: "Where were the parties?...down in Washington, DC...and that was for sex...There was sex between adult men and other adult men but most of it had to do with young boys and young girls with the older folks...specifically for sex with minors...Also in Washington, DC, there were parties after a party...there were a lot of parties where there would be senators and congressmen who had nothing to do with the sexual stuff. But there were some senators and congressmen who stayed for the [pedophile sex] parties afterwards...on a lot of the trips he took us on he had us, I mean, I met some people that I don't feel comfortable telling their name because I don't want to --- ...Q: Are you scared?...Yes..."
DeCamp, a former Nebraska state senator and decorated Vietnam War vet, told TomFlocco.com "there are tons of pictures still left; law enforcement is currently looking for them," adding, "you can also assume there are senators and congressmen implicated; otherwise this would not be such a big issue." But no federal official has stepped forward to protect Rusty Nelson's life, as Congress would be reluctant to hold hearings or force a federal prosecutor to probe its own members for sex acts with children--still punishable by law.
Sex with minors?
In his testimony before Judge Urbom, Bonacci specifically named Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) as having participated in the parties--also telling the judge he had "relationships with him" in Washington, DC and was flown to Massachusetts for sex in the basement of Frank's Boston home. [2-5-1999, p. 126]
However, Urbom did not subpoena all the photos and did not ask Bonacci to identify photos of specific senators and congressmen, or reveal their names in court transcripts and depositions we examined; nor did Judge Urbom explain why investigations have never commenced regarding which members of congress had sex with children.
The evidence DeCamp presented was so credible and substantial that Urbom awarded Paul Bonacci $1 million for child abuse on February 19, 1999 regarding his lawsuit involving Larry King. This, despite a Nebraska jury having already indicted Bonacci for perjury in 1990, ultimately sending an intentionally damaged, spiritually and physically abused young man to prison for five years--and despite his treatment by King, described in court testimony:
"They put guns up to my head. Had guns put in my mouth...Larry King sent out boys, men, to jump me...he had them pretty well beat the tar out of me from the waist down so nobody would see the marks...I had my fingers broken...I can remember them burning me with hot instruments...placing stuff inside me...almost what I call a cattle prod...But it would be put inside then they'd shock me inside my -- ...Judge Urbom: Anus?...Yes... And they would -- ...Judge: You mean electrically heated?...They would put it in and then push a button and it would shock me...Judge Urbom:..done by Larry King at his direction?...At his direction..."
"I threatened to go to the police in California, thought maybe they would listen whereas in Omaha they were in his pocketbook...he had me hung out of an airplane with a rope by my ankles... If they wanted to get something passed through the legislature, he would put some people that were against it in a compromising position. By using us boys and girls ...Judge Urbom: Was this by your being the sexual partner of that person?...Yes...Judge Urbom: ...Any estimates of how often you participated as the sexual partner of one of these persons that he wanted to get some kind of control over?...There were times when it would be four or five in a night...on probably a couple thousand times...sometimes dozens of times with the same person..." [U.S. District Court testimony, 2-5-1999, pp. 146-151]
Curiously, Paul Bonacci told investigators that the sex ring was based out of Offutt U.S. Air Force Base near Omaha, having been taken there to be abused since he was three years old in 1970. At Offutt, Paul said he was "trained" by tortures, heavy drugging and sexual degradation. [Offutt AFB played a major role immediately following the 9/11 attacks as George W. Bush made the base his post-attack headquarters for a short period.]
So intent upon his physical harm, the government "moved Bonacci to different facilities--despite agreements worked out by DeCamp, purposefully given food to which he was allergic while his weight dropped, and denied a blanket for months...beaten several times in jail and placed with potentially violent people associated with Larry King," according to Decamp.
John DeCamp told us last week that "Larry King was released from prison on April 11, 2001 after serving about five years," adding "he's back in Washington, DC and now involved in this story again." [DeCamp's book also said "King went to prison for embezzlement, conspiracy and making false financial record entries...there was no trial on any other charges, and the evidence of child prostitution and abuse perpetrated by King was never presented in any court." Franklin Cover-up , p. 224]
John DeCamp just released an updated 2005 edition of his original book about the secret White House-linked national child sex-ring entitled The Franklin Cover-up [$12.95 + $4.00 shipping: contact decamplegal@inebraska.com for 2005 edition]. The carefully researched and graphic expose involves convicted [and recently released from prison] GOP operative Lawrence E. "Larry" King Jr. who allegedly hired photographers to capture legislators and high officials in compromising sexual positions with children while he managed the Franklin Federal Credit Union--according to court testimony on 2-5-1999. [Franklin was raided by federal agencies and shut down two days before George H. W. Bush was elected president in 1988.]
Past mysterious deaths, clandestine arrests, court testimony, and credible evidence of FBI and CIA participation in their cover-up also raise questions as to why elderly pedophile priests are removed from their pulpits, prosecuted and imprisoned for sex acts committed 40 years ago and why famous music entertainers are prosecuted for pedophilia; yet elderly pedophile federal legislators may still remain in the U.S. House and Senate--drawing a free pass for past criminal child-sex acts.
Regarding his role in taking blackmail photos of government officials, Rusty Nelson confirmed Bonacci’s testimony to Judge Urbom: "Q: Children on the airplane?...yes. Q: How young?...There was one situation went back to Washington, DC...he had probably 10, 12 years old...Q: Boys, girls?...Both...Q: Who attended the parties?...Prominent business people, very prominent high-ranking officials, politicians. The younger people. What would transpire was they would have a party and then a party after the party...after the party was more of a sex-type deal...That’s what Larry [King] would -- -- Q: These old politicians were having sex with each other?...Or people Larry would bring...some younger people...Did you take pictures of the parties?...I took pictures at some of the parties, yes..." [U.S. District Court testimony, 2-5-1999, pp. 89-91]
After the Secret Service allowed Paul Bonacci to have access to the White House on July 3, 1988, one of DeCamp’s investigators said the young pedophile victim was able to draw a floor-plan of the presidential inside living quarters of the White House--an area not available to the public--lending stong credence to a June 29, 1989 Washington Times front page story, "Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush," when reporters Paul Rodriguez and George Archibald said "Call-boys took midnight tour of White House."
Presidential indiscretions--or criminal acts?
According to a Nebraska state police report, Nebraska Foster Care Review Board letter to the Attorney General, Nebraska Senate’s Franklin committee investigative report, and a 50-page report by Omaha’s Boys Town welfare case officer Mrs. Julie Walters, pedophile victims Nelly and Kimberly Webb detailed a massive child sex, homosexual and pornography operation run out of Nebraska by Larry King--but with close ties directly to the White House.
Mrs. Walter’s Nebraska Dept. of Social Services report (3-25-86) revealed: "[14 year-old] Nelly said at these trip parties hosted by Larry King, she sat naked ‘looking pretty and innocent’ and guests could engage in any sexual activity they wanted, but penetration was not allowed...Nellysaid she first met V. P. George Bush at the Republican Convention where King sang the national anthem, and saw Bush again at a Washington, DC party Larry hosted...Last year [1985] she met V.P. Bush and saw him at one of the parties Larry gave while on a Washington, DC trip. At some of the parties there are just men (as was the case at the party George Bush attended)...Nelly said she has seen sodomy committed at those parties."
The Walters report continued: "On December 19, 1988, Nelly was contacted and voluntarily came to the FBI offices on December 30, 1988. She was interviewed by [FBI agents] Brady, Tucker and Phillips...in September or October, 1984 when Lisa was 14 she went to Chicago with Larry King and 15-20 boys from Omaha...She indicates she attended a party in Chicago with King and the male youths. She indicated George Bush was present...she sat at a table at the party wearing nothing but a negligee. She stated George Bush saw her on the table. She stated she saw George Bush pay King money and Bush left the party with a nineteen year old black boy named Brent. Lisa said the party Bush attended was in Chicago in September or October 1984. The Chicago Tribune of October 31, 1984 said Bush was in Illinois campaigning for congressional candidates at the end of October."
Bush 41 surfaced again in Lowe's May, 1989 review of reports by Thomas Vlahoulis from the state attorney general's office: "Sorenson told Vlahoulis that both Kimberly and Nelly [Webb] brought up the name of George Bush and indicated that they had both met him..."
In spite of four polygraph tests administered by a Nebraska state trooper who said he was convinced Nelly was telling the truth, a Washington country, Nebraska judge in December, 1990 ignored Julie Walter’s 50-page report, numerous debriefings of the girls by foster care officials and youth workers stating the sisters told the truth--specifically about George Bush Sr., and dismissed all charges against their foster parents Jarrett and Barbara Webb, who Nelly and Kimberly said had allowed them to be abused.
Regarding his role in taking blackmail photos of government officials, recently re-arrested Rusty Nelson confirmed Bonacci’s testimony to Judge Urbom: "Q: Children on the airplane?...yes. Q: How young?...There was one situation went back to Washington, DC he had probably 10, 12 years old...Q: Boys, girls?...Both...Q: Who attended the parties?...Prominent business people, very prominent high-ranking officials, politicians. The younger people. What would transpire was they would have a party and then a party after the party...after the party was more of a sex-type deal...That’s what Larry [King] would -- -- Q: These old politicians were having sex with each other?...Or people Larry would bring...some younger people...Did you take pictures of the parties?...I took pictures at some of the parties, yes..." [U.S. District Court testimony, 2-5-1999, pp. 89-91]
Gosch to Guckert to Gannon?
Cable television news reports have recently linked an alleged male prostitute to the present White House since George W. Bush permitted James Guckert to use an unprecedented Secret Service-approved alias (Jeff Gannon) while having access to the White House for two years as a pool reporter serving the younger Bush--before which Gannon had advertised himself on internet pornography sites as a male "escort" charging $200 an hour. [Gannon is the subject of independent news reports which have referred to him as the former kidnapped Des Moines, Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch--forced into child sex-slavery.] John DeCamp told this writer "I believe Johnny Gosch and Jeff Gannon are one and the same person--but I am not in a position to know positively."
During a recent phone interview, Noreen Gosch told TomFlocco.com that she is still not sure whether her missing son Johnny is in fact James Gannon, because she has "not seen enough evidence." But having been abducted in 1982, Johnny Gosch would now be about 35-36 years old. Gannon claims to be 47 but his "male4male" website escorts profile lists him as 31 in 2000, which would also make him 35-36 years old today.
George W. Bush has not explained how Guckert/Gannon--who had advertised himself as a male escort--could apparently operate in the White House as a reporter for two years using a Secret Service-approved alias and regularly be called upon by George W. Bush and press secretary Scott McClellan during nationally televised presidential press conferences.
Questions can be raised as to whether Gannon also had access to the White House living quarters as Paul Bonacci and other call-boys did during his father’s administration--as the Washington Times reported. Photos of George W. Bush and Jeff Gannon together indicate that they have a cordial personal relationship.
Noreen Gosch said her son Johnny is living under an assumed name after being abducted on September 5, 1982 while serving his Sunday morning paper route. During a clandestine visit from her son when he was 27 or 28, Mrs. Gosch said Johnny told her he was taken by a highly organized, very corporate global pedophile/pornography ring--linked to the Washington, DC congressional call-boy scandal during the 1980's.
Hunter Thompson directed child murder-sex film?
A controversial author, Hunter Thompson was allegedly linked to Larry King as implicated in Paul Bonacci's testimony in which the pedophile victim revealed that Thompson directed a graphic ‘snuff’ film [Franklin Cover-up, pp.102-105 & 327] made near Sacramento, California at a location called " Bohemian Grove ."
Bonacci--flown numerous times across state lines for sexual exploitation to Washington, DC and other cities--testified on videotape [5-14-1990] for Nebraska State Police investigator Gary Caradori. Bonacci said that while on a trip to Sacramento, he was forced at gun-point to commit homosexual acts on another boy before he watched other men do the same--after which the boy was shot in the head.
In separate testimony, Decamp said Bonacci told him "Larry King was smiling and laughing the whole time the film was being shown...as the men watched, they passed Nicholas [another victim] and me around as if we were toys, and sexually abused us." [U.S. District Court, 2-5-1999, pp.115-129]
Bonacci’s testimony has been evaluated as credible and well-informed by leading child abuse experts, psychiatrists, psychologists and polygraph tests; and he has also testified that he was forced to lure Johnny Gosch into being kidnapped--considered by many to be the most notorious U.S. child sex-slavery case.
Protecting legislators at the expense of children
John Decamp told TomFlocco.com that Franklin child-abuse witness "Alisha Owen was convicted of lying that as a minor, she had sex with Omaha Chief of Police Robert Wadman. She was placed in solitary confinement for years--the most brutal treatment of a female inmate in Nebraska history for a first-time offense," to which Decamp added, "it was done to keep her silent and away from other inmates, but also as a warning to the other children."
21 year-old Alisha Jahn Owen was sentenced on August 8, 1991 to serve nine to twenty-seven years in prison for telling a grand jury that she was sexually abused as a juvenile by a Nebraska District Court judge, by Omaha's Chief of Police, by the manager of the Franklin Credit Union, and others.
DeCamp said "Alisha witnessed abuse of other children and functioned as an illegal drug courier traveling nationwide for some of Nebraska's wealthiest, most powerful and prominent businessmen." But a local and a federal grand jury indicted the victim-witnesses for perjury--throwing the key young people in prison to cover up child-sex and illegal drugs.
The Nebraska State Senate’s primary Franklin Committee investigator Gary Caradori's March 14, 1990 notes revealed that on the day of the federal agents' raid on Franklin Credit Union, "a large amount of pornographic material was taken out of the credit union, including videos and photographs depicting sexual acts. I was told that if Friedrichs or any of the other people working for the CPA firm contacted by the government [audit] would say anything, they would automatically lose their jobs."
That evidence was never made available to the Nebraska Senate's Franklin Committee, nor was its existence publicly acknowledged by the FBI; and all raid warrants were sealed by United States Magistrate Richard Kopf--the same court official who ordered to have Larry King taken by federal agents to a federal psychiatric facility for "tests," on February 7, 1990 as President George H. W. Bush was coming to Omaha for a fundraising event.
Alisha Owen testified to the Franklin Committee on June 11, 1990 that the FBI attempted to influence federal witness testimony--that her former lawyer Pam Vuchetich had come to see her in the spring: "giving a proposal from the FBI that if I recanted my story then nothing would happen to me; I could get out of prison and no charges would ever be brought against me...they would write letters to the judge asking for my sentence reduction..."
Her parents, Donna and Alvin Owen told the committee about the incident on June 21, 1990: "Q: You testified that your husband was there?...sitting in the living room, I remember...Q: Did she tell you who in the FBI made that deal, made that offer to her?...Mickey Mott...He works closely with Rick Culver and John Pankonon...
Curiously, state policeman Gary Caradori, died July 11, 1990 in a small-plane explosion, one month after FBI officials attempted to coerce a key child witness to recant her testimony--and even though a deputy sheriff first at the crash site said there was child pornography scattered all over the farmer’s field and the farmer said he witnessed the plane exploding in mid-air before crashing to the ground
Johnny Gosch’s mother, Noreen, said "undisclosed sources told her the FBI immediately arrived with three flatbed trucks [modus operandi of FBI and Gov. Jeb Bush confiscating 9/11 hijacker documents at Venice, Florida’s Huffman flight school?], grabbed the evidence from the sheriff’s hands, cordoned off the field, walked the field, picked up every piece of evidence, took the plane and all its parts and put it on the flatbed trucks, and told the peace officer, ‘This is confidential information and don’t ever speak of it again.’ The evidence has never surfaced again in Nebraska’s Franklin investigation or any other investigation." [ Ted Gunderson Report , June 28, 2000]
DeCamp's book reveals more clear evidence of witness tampering and possible accessory to murder: On the evening of July 11, 1990, the day her husband crashed to his death, Sandie Caradori received several phone calls from [key Franklin child-abuse witness] Troy Boner. She wrote in her notes: "I am familiar with his voice and can be 100% assured that I did in fact receive telephone calls from him...Troy: Gary wasn't lying. He didn't tell me what to say. What I told him was the truth. (He spoke rapidly, fighting back tears) They made me take it back. They threatened me...You don't understand, they threatened me. They made me take it back. I was so scared..." [pp. 186-187]
In 1990, according to DeCamp, "Troy Boner was going to provide the information in open court, under oath, that would blow the lid off the Franklin case and force a new trial for Alisha Owen...As Troy came into the courthouse, he was immediately ushered into a private room by county judicial authorities...the hearing was delayed for one hour...Troy was in the room with a "Special Attorney" and with other officials from the prosecutor's office-- the very same prosecutorial team Troy was about to testify against."
"... Troy leaned over and whispered to me, "Oh God, forgive me. They guaranteed if I talk here today, they will put me away for twenty years...told me I would be charged with perjury for my original testimony if I opened my mouth today in court...Look what they did to Alisha...Look what they did to my brother." [found dead after playing "Russian Roulette"]
DeCamp's 2005 edition incredibly reveals, " In late 2003 [just before the 2004 election campaign started to heat up], Troy Boner [key abused child witness to national sex-ring] walked into a hospital in New Mexico screaming "they're after me, they're after me because of this book." The book Boner was waving was The Franklin Cover-up . Boner was '... mildly sedated and calmed down...and put in a private room for observation .' "
"When nurses came back to check on him early next morning, Boner was sitting in a chair, bleeding from the mouth and quite dead. Former FBI Los Angeles Bureau Chief Ted Gunderson tried to get autopsy and other information and details that were promised him on Boner's death, but Gunderson and apparently every other entity, were totally shut out of all information. No news stories were published on Boner's death despite his "notoriety" in the Franklin case." (John DeCamp, The Franklin Cover-up ) Another witness was gone.
DeCamp added that the FBI had also confiscated Larry King’s flight manifests from various airline charter companies, thus helping to cover up proof of sexual exploitation of children and interstate transportation of minors across state lines for sexual purposes.
Washington, DC: child sodomy hotbed?
Rusty Nelson’s quick arrest following on the heels of Hunter Thompson’s ‘suicide’ and alleged assertions that Jeff Gannon could be Johnny Gosch may all have serious criminal implications, as Thompson and Nelson were said to be closely linked to child sexual criminality at the highest levels of government--acts still punishable by law and easily meriting cover-up attempts by powerful forces.
Paul Bonacci, forced to help kidnap Johnny Gosch into sex-slavery, also told Franklin Committee investigators he toured the White House at midnight on July 3, 1988 with Craig Spence--a lobbyist and political operative who arranged male prostitute visits to the White House but who turned up dead himself just three months after the 6-29-89 Washington Times call-boy headline. The police were quick to call a suicide.
Spence had "hinted the tours were arranged by ‘top-level’ persons, including Donald Gregg, national security advisor to Vice-President Bush," according to the Washington Times [8-9-89], adding, "Spence, according to friends, was also carrying out homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA."
Spence and Gregg were reportedly close friends, as Spence had sponsored a dinner in Gregg’s honor in the spring of 1989 at Washington posh Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown just before the White House prostitution scandal broke at the beginning of the Bush 41 tenure. [ George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography , Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter 21--Omaha]
A June 30, 1989 Washington Times report said "Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat and a self-proclaimed homosexual who several weeks ago threatened to reveal a list of Republican homosexuals in Congress, said he was ‘not surprised’ by the revelations."
The Times also said [8-25-1989], "A male prostitute convicted of drug trafficking and sex offenses against a minor used the Chevy Chase Elementary School in late 1987 to run his prostitution operation after the school's principal began buying sex from him."
"The call-boy was allowed to sleep and use phones in the school even after the principal left at 5 p.m., while teachers and the children were still involved in after-school activities such as chorus," said the principal, Gabriel A. Massaro, who also revealed "he had a four-year relationship with the prostitute and provided him with a guidance counselor's office and telephone at the model ‘magnet school’ even while children were in classes elsewhere in the building."
Also according to the Times, "Massaro acknowledged that he attended a meeting between Davis and his Alexandria probation officer at the Capitol Hill home of Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, another client whose home the call-boy used to perform sexual services." The paper did not reveal the age or name of the call-boy or whether he serviced Congressman Frank.
A clearly unethical and likely illegal presidential appointment was also linked to the White House child sex-ring: "In August, 1990, Bush appointed Ronald Roskens of Nebraska to head the Agency for International Development (AID). Roskens had been fired the previous year as chancellor of the University of Nebraska, where Larry King was a member of his advisory committee.
[State Police "Franklin" investigator] Gary Caradori’s daily notes for February 19, 1989 record: ‘I was informed that Roskens was terminated by the state because of sexual activities reported to the Regents and verified by them. Mr. Roskens was reported to have had young men at his residence for sexual encounters." [ Franklin Cover-up , p.177]
DeCamp added that AID assignments have been used as a "cover" by CIA agents; and in spite of Roskens’ sexual background and termination by Nebraska educators and his clear potential for being blackmailed, President Bush appointed him anyway.
Karl: ‘Rove’ing DC, approving 'special' WH press passes?
The extent to which White House Senior Domestic Policy Advisor Karl Rove played a part in approving the Gucket/Gannon White House press passes is not known.
However, CBS News spoke of a Rove-Gannon connection , saying "Gannon's aggressively partisan work and the ease with which he got day passes for the White House press room the past two years make it hard to believe that he wasn't at least implicitly sanctioned by the "boy genius."
Following on the heels of Guckert-Gannon, Walter Storch, editor of the Barnes Review News reported a three weeks ago that "Karl Rove was seen by one of my people entering a private homosexual orgy at a five-star Washington hotel over the Mid-Atlantic Leather (MAL) weekend last year." [2004]
A Barnes reporter told Storch that "Karl greatly enjoyed the supervision of a certain hairy 350-lb. Leather Dominator who had won the Miss Virginia Daddy Bear title at the MAL festivities."
Storch wrote, "Karl used to hang out a JR’s, which is on 17th between P & S streets, before he became so well-known. This is a respectable gay bar for discreet people...," adding, "there is an expensive apartment...over near Dupont Circle that certain powerful senators take turns visiting with their pickups."
"Bush, via Karl Rove, was projected as a moral man who would return a hedonistic America to the simpler virtues of a bygone era. A large part of the American public, unhappy with what they saw as debilitating liberalism, abortion on demand, gay marriage and other forms of moral decay, put Bush back in office," said the Barnes editor.
"Now they have to deal with rampant male whores prancing around the White House in consort with a small army of closet queens, all of whom very obviously have the ear, and the confidence, (and hopefully, that’s all they have) of their ‘moral’ choice for President," said Storch.
Interestingly, TBRNews.org also counts "one Supreme Court Justice, several governors (all Republican) and at least one very prominent televangelist" among those high officials who are saying one thing and doing another with respect to Storch's closet queen issue.
While American citizens watch, unanswered questions remain as Democrats and Republicans ignore young witnesses with clear and credible evidence--refusing to hold each other's legislators criminally accountable for their unspeakable crimes against children.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
MSN Money - Whom to believe -- Buffett or Greenspan? - Jubak's Journal
MSN Money - Whom to believe -- Buffett or Greenspan? - Jubak's Journal
Jubak's Journal
Whom to believe -- Buffett or Greenspan?
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The Oracle of Omaha foresees dire consequences for our debt-ridden ways. The Fed chairman predicts a soft landing and says the debt is no big deal. Who's right?
By Jim Jubak
The Oracle versus the Chairman. In terms of heavyweight bouts, they don’t get much bigger than this. What these two champions of capitalism are slugging it out over is no less than the future of the U.S. economy.
Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, news, msgs), charges the United States is headed for a massive dollar crisis caused by a trade deficit running at better than $600 billion annually. Bam! Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, counters the economy is headed for a soft landing and the debt owed to foreign investors and savers is no big deal. Smack!
One of these guys is wrong. Before telling you who I’m putting my money on, let me put the two head to head so you can make your own call.
First, the numbers
Nobody has a better command of the data on the current state of the economy than Greenspan. And the picture he paints by his numbers isn't pretty. The national personal saving rate has plunged to an average of 1% in 2004, shockingly below the 7% average for the last three decades.
Indeed, we've been running up debt like there's no tomorrow. The unified federal budget (which is the budget that includes the current Social Security surpluses) is running a deficit equal to about 3.5% of gross domestic product. That deficit is only going to climb as outlays for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, now 8% of gross domestic product, climb to somewhere near 13% by 2030 as the baby boom generation ages and retires.
Meanwhile, the U.S. current account deficit, a measure of how much more we buy from foreigners than we sell to them, has climbed to 6% of gross domestic product. According to the Fed’s economists, you have to go back to the 19th century to find larger current account deficits as a percentage of the size of a country's economy. All this debt has been funded by an increase in the value of homes (and the size of home mortgages) on the domestic side, and the willingness of foreigners to hold IOUs denominated in U.S. dollars, such as U.S. Treasury bills and notes. Social Security.
Are you worried, too?
Our special report.
Buffett's approach is data-lite, but the data he does cite agree with the details of Greenspan's picture. Last year, we purchased $618 billion more in goods and services from the rest of the world than we sold. To pay for this current consumption, we're selling off our accumulated national wealth to the rest of the world at a rate of $1.8 billion a day. "Consequently, other countries and their citizens now own a net of about $3 trillion of the U.S.," Buffett wrote to his shareholders recently. Our overseas borrowing to fund the current account deficit is equivalent, he notes, to a family that sells off "part of its farm every day in order to finance its overconsumption."
Same data, different conclusions
What’s so striking is that from this remarkably similar picture of the current situation, Greenspan and Buffett reach almost diametrically opposed conclusions.
To Greenspan, it's no biggie. Even though we're running that huge trade deficit, the dollar's real exchange value, despite its recent decline, remains above its 1995 low, he told the Council on Foreign Relations. Interest rates on Treasury notes maturing 10 years in the future remain very low, despite the size of the federal deficit and the huge retirement obligations we're putting on the books. And there's no evidence that households are facing "inordinate financial pressures as a consequence of record-high levels of household debt relative to income."
The United States, Greenspan notes, almost with surprise, "appears to have been pressing a number of historic limits in recent years without experiencing the types of financial disruption that almost surely would have arisen in decades past."
Buffett, on the other hand, believes that we're headed for real trouble. "A country that is now aspiring to an 'Ownership Society' will not find happiness in -- and I'll use hyperbole for emphasis -- a 'Sharecropper's Society.' But that's precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us."
Buffet sees dire consequences
Buffett isn't forecasting economic collapse because he believes that foreigners will continue to lend to us: Foreign investors, he wrote in his letter to shareholders, "may view us as spending junkies, but they know we are rich junkies, as well."
But the consequences are still dire, Buffett believes. If current trends continue, a decade from now, just at the time when we'll need every dollar to pay for the retirement benefits of baby boomers, the United States will be sending 3% of its current annual output to the rest of the world as interest on the debt run up by its past consumption.
That royalty would run forever, unless we export more and consume less. And given the way global trade policies work, Buffett concludes, massively expanding U.S. exports isn't likely. Hence paying off this royalty would require a huge decline in U.S. consumption, Buffett says, with all sorts of nasty consequences for the global economy and the lives of U.S. workers and retirees. Don't pay it off and the already-projected squeeze on such frills as health care and education spending just gets worse.
Greenspan: The landing is soft
Don't worry, Greenspan says. We're headed for a soft landing. Foreigners will continue to send us their savings without demanding a huge increase in U.S. interest rates. Market forces --a fall in the price of the dollar and a consequent rise in U.S. exports and a drop in imports -- will gradually defuse the potential bomb represented by the huge increase in the U.S. trade deficit.
What's his logic?
Because the federal budget deficit, the run-up in consumer debt, projections of huge future retirement liabilities and the buildup in the trade deficit haven't resulted in the expected crisis to date -- and, in fact, haven't even produced the big projected hike in U.S. interest rates or a crash in the dollar -- something must be different this time. "Has something fundamental happened to the U.S. economy that enables us to disregard all the time-test criteria for assessing when economic imbalances become worrisome?" Greenspan asks.
Answering his own question, it's the increasing globalization of capital markets that has made all the difference. What Greenspan calls the "home bias" that kept investor's money in their national financial markets has eased so that investors seeking higher returns or diversification have sent more of their savings overseas. And the United States has been the prime beneficiary of that trend. (As you'd expect from Greenspan, he has data to support his belief in a decline in home bias: One measure of the propensity to invest at home for the developed countries representing four-fifths of world GDP has declined to 0.8 in 2003 from 0.97 in 1990.)
My problems with Greenspan's theories
I've got two problems with Greenspan's formulation. First, as Greenspan admits, a change in home bias doesn't solve the U.S. current account deficit; it just delays the reckoning. But since economists don't really know -- and can't reliably project -- the lag between trade deficits and deficit corrections, we don't really have any idea whether we are currently just in the lag period for a business-as-usual correction of the trade deficit or whether we've entered some unspecified lag period created by Greenspan's increasingly global financial markets.
It's an interesting theory. But as a guide to investing strategies, it leaves me completely without a road map or timeline.
Second, we've been down this "it's different this time" path with the Fed chairman before. Sometime after his more famous remarks about the irrational exuberance of the stock market, Greenspan became an apologist for higher valuations by citing the extraordinary productivity gains in the U.S. economy in the late 1990s. Historical measures of danger weren't valid for the then-current situation because the U.S. economy was growing so much faster than it had in other periods. Frankly, having bought into the first "it's different this time" argument to my pain and chagrin, I'm reluctant to buy into this new version.
The rate of capital-markets globalization remains vague. And while we know there must be some point at which foreigners will stop putting money into U.S. dollar-denominated investments, home bias or no, we have no idea where that point might be.
I've also paid attention to Greenspan's recent characterization of the problems of using productivity growth as a guide to policy. If you change "productivity" to "financial globalization," they're a warning to anyone who wants to use the newest version of "it's different this time" financial globalization to guide policy in the current global economy. "Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict . . . We have scant ability to infer the pace at which such (productivity) gains will pay out and, therefore, their implications for the growth of productivity over the longer run."
A bet that globalization of the financial markets will give the capital markets time to engineer a soft landing is a bet on faith in the powers of omniscience of the Fed. That may be good enough for Congress, these days, but it doesn't hold much appeal to me.
No, my money’s on Buffett. He's not asking me to believe it will be different this time. Again. And he has actually put $21.4 billion of his company's money in foreign exchange contracts that will pay off only if the dollar declines.
Jubak's Journal
Whom to believe -- Buffett or Greenspan?
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The Oracle of Omaha foresees dire consequences for our debt-ridden ways. The Fed chairman predicts a soft landing and says the debt is no big deal. Who's right?
By Jim Jubak
The Oracle versus the Chairman. In terms of heavyweight bouts, they don’t get much bigger than this. What these two champions of capitalism are slugging it out over is no less than the future of the U.S. economy.
Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, news, msgs), charges the United States is headed for a massive dollar crisis caused by a trade deficit running at better than $600 billion annually. Bam! Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, counters the economy is headed for a soft landing and the debt owed to foreign investors and savers is no big deal. Smack!
One of these guys is wrong. Before telling you who I’m putting my money on, let me put the two head to head so you can make your own call.
First, the numbers
Nobody has a better command of the data on the current state of the economy than Greenspan. And the picture he paints by his numbers isn't pretty. The national personal saving rate has plunged to an average of 1% in 2004, shockingly below the 7% average for the last three decades.
Indeed, we've been running up debt like there's no tomorrow. The unified federal budget (which is the budget that includes the current Social Security surpluses) is running a deficit equal to about 3.5% of gross domestic product. That deficit is only going to climb as outlays for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, now 8% of gross domestic product, climb to somewhere near 13% by 2030 as the baby boom generation ages and retires.
Meanwhile, the U.S. current account deficit, a measure of how much more we buy from foreigners than we sell to them, has climbed to 6% of gross domestic product. According to the Fed’s economists, you have to go back to the 19th century to find larger current account deficits as a percentage of the size of a country's economy. All this debt has been funded by an increase in the value of homes (and the size of home mortgages) on the domestic side, and the willingness of foreigners to hold IOUs denominated in U.S. dollars, such as U.S. Treasury bills and notes. Social Security.
Are you worried, too?
Our special report.
Buffett's approach is data-lite, but the data he does cite agree with the details of Greenspan's picture. Last year, we purchased $618 billion more in goods and services from the rest of the world than we sold. To pay for this current consumption, we're selling off our accumulated national wealth to the rest of the world at a rate of $1.8 billion a day. "Consequently, other countries and their citizens now own a net of about $3 trillion of the U.S.," Buffett wrote to his shareholders recently. Our overseas borrowing to fund the current account deficit is equivalent, he notes, to a family that sells off "part of its farm every day in order to finance its overconsumption."
Same data, different conclusions
What’s so striking is that from this remarkably similar picture of the current situation, Greenspan and Buffett reach almost diametrically opposed conclusions.
To Greenspan, it's no biggie. Even though we're running that huge trade deficit, the dollar's real exchange value, despite its recent decline, remains above its 1995 low, he told the Council on Foreign Relations. Interest rates on Treasury notes maturing 10 years in the future remain very low, despite the size of the federal deficit and the huge retirement obligations we're putting on the books. And there's no evidence that households are facing "inordinate financial pressures as a consequence of record-high levels of household debt relative to income."
The United States, Greenspan notes, almost with surprise, "appears to have been pressing a number of historic limits in recent years without experiencing the types of financial disruption that almost surely would have arisen in decades past."
Buffett, on the other hand, believes that we're headed for real trouble. "A country that is now aspiring to an 'Ownership Society' will not find happiness in -- and I'll use hyperbole for emphasis -- a 'Sharecropper's Society.' But that's precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us."
Buffet sees dire consequences
Buffett isn't forecasting economic collapse because he believes that foreigners will continue to lend to us: Foreign investors, he wrote in his letter to shareholders, "may view us as spending junkies, but they know we are rich junkies, as well."
But the consequences are still dire, Buffett believes. If current trends continue, a decade from now, just at the time when we'll need every dollar to pay for the retirement benefits of baby boomers, the United States will be sending 3% of its current annual output to the rest of the world as interest on the debt run up by its past consumption.
That royalty would run forever, unless we export more and consume less. And given the way global trade policies work, Buffett concludes, massively expanding U.S. exports isn't likely. Hence paying off this royalty would require a huge decline in U.S. consumption, Buffett says, with all sorts of nasty consequences for the global economy and the lives of U.S. workers and retirees. Don't pay it off and the already-projected squeeze on such frills as health care and education spending just gets worse.
Greenspan: The landing is soft
Don't worry, Greenspan says. We're headed for a soft landing. Foreigners will continue to send us their savings without demanding a huge increase in U.S. interest rates. Market forces --a fall in the price of the dollar and a consequent rise in U.S. exports and a drop in imports -- will gradually defuse the potential bomb represented by the huge increase in the U.S. trade deficit.
What's his logic?
Because the federal budget deficit, the run-up in consumer debt, projections of huge future retirement liabilities and the buildup in the trade deficit haven't resulted in the expected crisis to date -- and, in fact, haven't even produced the big projected hike in U.S. interest rates or a crash in the dollar -- something must be different this time. "Has something fundamental happened to the U.S. economy that enables us to disregard all the time-test criteria for assessing when economic imbalances become worrisome?" Greenspan asks.
Answering his own question, it's the increasing globalization of capital markets that has made all the difference. What Greenspan calls the "home bias" that kept investor's money in their national financial markets has eased so that investors seeking higher returns or diversification have sent more of their savings overseas. And the United States has been the prime beneficiary of that trend. (As you'd expect from Greenspan, he has data to support his belief in a decline in home bias: One measure of the propensity to invest at home for the developed countries representing four-fifths of world GDP has declined to 0.8 in 2003 from 0.97 in 1990.)
My problems with Greenspan's theories
I've got two problems with Greenspan's formulation. First, as Greenspan admits, a change in home bias doesn't solve the U.S. current account deficit; it just delays the reckoning. But since economists don't really know -- and can't reliably project -- the lag between trade deficits and deficit corrections, we don't really have any idea whether we are currently just in the lag period for a business-as-usual correction of the trade deficit or whether we've entered some unspecified lag period created by Greenspan's increasingly global financial markets.
It's an interesting theory. But as a guide to investing strategies, it leaves me completely without a road map or timeline.
Second, we've been down this "it's different this time" path with the Fed chairman before. Sometime after his more famous remarks about the irrational exuberance of the stock market, Greenspan became an apologist for higher valuations by citing the extraordinary productivity gains in the U.S. economy in the late 1990s. Historical measures of danger weren't valid for the then-current situation because the U.S. economy was growing so much faster than it had in other periods. Frankly, having bought into the first "it's different this time" argument to my pain and chagrin, I'm reluctant to buy into this new version.
The rate of capital-markets globalization remains vague. And while we know there must be some point at which foreigners will stop putting money into U.S. dollar-denominated investments, home bias or no, we have no idea where that point might be.
I've also paid attention to Greenspan's recent characterization of the problems of using productivity growth as a guide to policy. If you change "productivity" to "financial globalization," they're a warning to anyone who wants to use the newest version of "it's different this time" financial globalization to guide policy in the current global economy. "Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict . . . We have scant ability to infer the pace at which such (productivity) gains will pay out and, therefore, their implications for the growth of productivity over the longer run."
A bet that globalization of the financial markets will give the capital markets time to engineer a soft landing is a bet on faith in the powers of omniscience of the Fed. That may be good enough for Congress, these days, but it doesn't hold much appeal to me.
No, my money’s on Buffett. He's not asking me to believe it will be different this time. Again. And he has actually put $21.4 billion of his company's money in foreign exchange contracts that will pay off only if the dollar declines.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Mr. Sharon and the Settlers
Failure to back away from the settlements now would be a self-inflicted wound far more painful and damaging in the long run than all of Arafat's attacks put together...
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Mr. Sharon and the Settlers: "Mr. Sharon and the Settlers
Published: February 16, 2005
While the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is having to take on extremist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the struggle for peace, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, faces challenges of his own.
The parliamentary debate that started yesterday on Mr. Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza came with all the overwrought melodrama that usually accompanies any discussion of what most sensible Israelis know is a necessary first step on the road to peace. One legislator from the far-right National Union began reading out loud the name of every settler scheduled for 'deportation,' adding the phrase 'Jew, designated for expulsion.'
Meanwhile, extremists have issued death threats against the transport minister, who is steering the bill through Parliament. West Bank settlers protested in Jerusalem and beyond, demonstrators assaulted the police, and some of those arrested tore up their jail cells.
In addition, the housing minister, Isaac Herzog, told Reuters yesterday that the Jewish settlers to be evacuated from Gaza could move to yet another new West Bank settlement. It's no surprise that the Palestinian Authority objected. The so-called road map to peace calls for Israel to stop building settlements on land it captured in 1967.
With so much at stake, now is hardly the time for Mr. Sharon to reward Mr. Abbas's efforts for accommodation with this slap in the face. So far, Mr. Sharon has been pragmatic and bold: pragmatic in recognizing that a vast majority of Israelis don't think that hanging on to Gaza is worth the bloodshed; bold in standing up to the extremists who view Gaza as their birthright, despite the Palestinian majority living there now.
It appears that Mr. Sharon must be bolder still. Members of his Likud Party often describe the West Bank settlers as "human shields," Israel's first line of defense against Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorists. But those settlements are also one of the largest barriers to any possibility of peace.
On the radio yesterday, Israel's vice prime minister, Ehud Olmert, put the choice facing Israel starkly. "One cannot help but see that we are dealing with a Palestinian leadership which speaks differently, and, it would appear, also acts differently," he said, referring to Mr. Abbas. "We shall never forgive ourselves if we don't give a chance to a leadership which says it is opposed to terrorism."
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Mr. Sharon and the Settlers: "Mr. Sharon and the Settlers
Published: February 16, 2005
While the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is having to take on extremist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the struggle for peace, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, faces challenges of his own.
The parliamentary debate that started yesterday on Mr. Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza came with all the overwrought melodrama that usually accompanies any discussion of what most sensible Israelis know is a necessary first step on the road to peace. One legislator from the far-right National Union began reading out loud the name of every settler scheduled for 'deportation,' adding the phrase 'Jew, designated for expulsion.'
Meanwhile, extremists have issued death threats against the transport minister, who is steering the bill through Parliament. West Bank settlers protested in Jerusalem and beyond, demonstrators assaulted the police, and some of those arrested tore up their jail cells.
In addition, the housing minister, Isaac Herzog, told Reuters yesterday that the Jewish settlers to be evacuated from Gaza could move to yet another new West Bank settlement. It's no surprise that the Palestinian Authority objected. The so-called road map to peace calls for Israel to stop building settlements on land it captured in 1967.
With so much at stake, now is hardly the time for Mr. Sharon to reward Mr. Abbas's efforts for accommodation with this slap in the face. So far, Mr. Sharon has been pragmatic and bold: pragmatic in recognizing that a vast majority of Israelis don't think that hanging on to Gaza is worth the bloodshed; bold in standing up to the extremists who view Gaza as their birthright, despite the Palestinian majority living there now.
It appears that Mr. Sharon must be bolder still. Members of his Likud Party often describe the West Bank settlers as "human shields," Israel's first line of defense against Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorists. But those settlements are also one of the largest barriers to any possibility of peace.
On the radio yesterday, Israel's vice prime minister, Ehud Olmert, put the choice facing Israel starkly. "One cannot help but see that we are dealing with a Palestinian leadership which speaks differently, and, it would appear, also acts differently," he said, referring to Mr. Abbas. "We shall never forgive ourselves if we don't give a chance to a leadership which says it is opposed to terrorism."
Monday, February 14, 2005
The New York Times > Books > Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity
Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity: "Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity
By PETER EDIDIN
Published: February 14, 2005
Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house's distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called 'On Bull - - - - .'
The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity:
The balance of the work tries, with the help of Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine and the spy novelist Eric Ambler, among others, to ask some of the preliminary questions - to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none.
What is [bull], after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.
"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it."
The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all."
And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting "the possibility of knowing how things truly are." It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal.
The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance. "All that is solid," as Marx once wrote, "melts into air."
Mr. Frankfurt is an unlikely slinger of barnyard expletives. He is a courtly man, with a broad smile and a philosophic beard, and he lives in apparently decorous retirement with his wife, Joan Gilbert, in a lovely old house near the university.
On a visit there earlier this month, there was Heifetz was on the stereo, good food and wine on the table.
But appearances, in this case, are somewhat misleading. Mr. Frankfurt spent much of his childhood in Brooklyn, and still sees himself as a disputatious Brooklynite - one who still speaks of the Dodgers as "having betrayed us." And, in any event, Mr. Frankfurt is not particularly academic in the way he views his calling.
"I got interested in philosophy because of two things," he said. "One is that I was never satisfied with the answers that were given to questions, and it seemed to me that philosophy was an attempt to get down to the bottom of things."
"The other thing," he added, "was that I could never make up my mind what I was interested in, and philosophy enabled you to be interested in anything."
Those interests found expression in a small and scrupulous body of work that tries to make sense of free will, desire and love in closely reasoned but jargon-free prose, illustrated by examples of behavior (philosophers speak of the "Frankfurt example") that anyone would recognize.
He's dealing with very abstract matters," said Sarah Buss, who teaches philosophy at the University of Iowa, "but trying not to lose touch with the human condition. His work keeps faith with that condition."
Mr. Frankfurt's teaching shares with his prose a spirit Ms. Buss, who was once his graduate student, defines as, "Come in and let's struggle with something."
"He was very willing," she added, "to say, 'I just don't understand this.' "
The essay on [bull] arose from that kind of struggle. In 1986, Mr. Frankfurt was teaching at Yale, where he took part in a weekly seminar. The idea was to get people of various disciplines to listen to a paper written by one of their number, after which everyone would talk about it over lunch.
Mr. Frankfurt decided his contribution would be a paper on [bull]. "I had always been concerned about the importance of truth," he recalled, "the way in which truth is foundational to civilization and the various deformities of it that were current."
"I'd been concerned about the prevalence" of [bull], he continued, "and the lack of concern for truth and respect for truth that it represented."
"I used the title I did," he added, "because I wanted to talk about [bull] without any [bull], so I didn't use 'humbug' or 'bunkum.' "
Research was a problem. The closest analogue came from Socrates.
"He called it rhetoric or sophistry," Mr. Frankfurt said, "and regarded philosophy as the great enemy of rhetoric and sophistry."
"These were opposite, incompatible ways of persuading people," he added. "You could persuade them with rhetoric" - or [bull] - "with sophistic arguments that weren't really sound but that you could put over on people, or you could persuade them by philosophical arguments which were dedicated to rigor and clarity of thought."
Mr. Frankfurt recalled that it took him about a month to write the essay, after which he delivered it to the humanities group. "I guess I should say it was received enthusiastically," he said, "but they didn't know whether to laugh or to take it seriously."
Some months after the reading, the essay, title intact, was published by The Raritan Review, a journal then edited by Richard Poirier, a distinguished literary critic. In 1988, Mr. Frankfurt included it in "The Importance of What We Care About," a collection of his essays.
The audience for academic journals and collections of philosophical essays is limited, however, and so the essay tended to be passed along, samizdat style, from one aficionado to another.
"In the 20 years since it was published," Mr. Frankfurt said, "I don't think a year has passed in which I haven't gotten one or two letters or e-mails from people about it."
One man from Wales set some of the text to music; another who worked in the financial industry wanted to create an annual award for the worst piece of analysis published in his field (an idea apparently rejected by his superiors). G. A. Cohen, the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls College, Oxford University, has written two papers on the subject.
"Harry has a unique capacity to take a simple truth and draw from it very consequential implications," Mr. Cohen said. "He is very good at identifying the potent elementary fact."
It was Ian Malcolm, the Princeton University Press editor responsible for philosophy, who approached Mr. Frankfurt about publishing the essay as a stand-alone volume. "The only way the essay would get the audience it deserved was to publish it as a small book," he said. "I had a feeling it would sell, but we weren't quite prepared for the interest it got."
For Mr. Frankfurt, who says it has always been his ambition to move philosophy "back to what most people think of as philosophy, which is a concern with the problems of life and with understanding the world," the book might be considered a successful achievement. But he finds he is still trying to get to the bottom of things, and hasn't arrived.
"When I reread it recently," he said at home, "I was sort of disappointed. It wasn't as good as I'd thought it was. It was a fairly superficial and incomplete treatment of the subject."
"Why," he wondered, "do we respond to [bull] in such a different way than we respond to lies? When we find somebody lying, we get angry, we feel we've been betrayed or violated or insulted in some way, and the liar is regarded as deceptive, deficient, morally at fault."
Why we are more tolerant of [bull] than lying is something Mr. Frankfurt believes would be worth considering.
"Why is lying regarded almost as a criminal act?" he asked, while bull "is sort of cuddly and warm? It's outside the realm of serious moral criticism. Why is that?"
By PETER EDIDIN
Published: February 14, 2005
Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house's distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called 'On Bull - - - - .'
The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity:
'One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [bull]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize [bull] and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.'The essay goes on to lament that lack of inquiry, despite the universality of the phenomenon. 'Even the most basic and preliminary questions about [bull] remain, after all,' Mr. Frankfurt writes, 'not only unanswered but unasked.'
The balance of the work tries, with the help of Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine and the spy novelist Eric Ambler, among others, to ask some of the preliminary questions - to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none.
What is [bull], after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.
"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it."
The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all."
And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting "the possibility of knowing how things truly are." It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal.
The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance. "All that is solid," as Marx once wrote, "melts into air."
Mr. Frankfurt is an unlikely slinger of barnyard expletives. He is a courtly man, with a broad smile and a philosophic beard, and he lives in apparently decorous retirement with his wife, Joan Gilbert, in a lovely old house near the university.
On a visit there earlier this month, there was Heifetz was on the stereo, good food and wine on the table.
But appearances, in this case, are somewhat misleading. Mr. Frankfurt spent much of his childhood in Brooklyn, and still sees himself as a disputatious Brooklynite - one who still speaks of the Dodgers as "having betrayed us." And, in any event, Mr. Frankfurt is not particularly academic in the way he views his calling.
"I got interested in philosophy because of two things," he said. "One is that I was never satisfied with the answers that were given to questions, and it seemed to me that philosophy was an attempt to get down to the bottom of things."
"The other thing," he added, "was that I could never make up my mind what I was interested in, and philosophy enabled you to be interested in anything."
Those interests found expression in a small and scrupulous body of work that tries to make sense of free will, desire and love in closely reasoned but jargon-free prose, illustrated by examples of behavior (philosophers speak of the "Frankfurt example") that anyone would recognize.
He's dealing with very abstract matters," said Sarah Buss, who teaches philosophy at the University of Iowa, "but trying not to lose touch with the human condition. His work keeps faith with that condition."
Mr. Frankfurt's teaching shares with his prose a spirit Ms. Buss, who was once his graduate student, defines as, "Come in and let's struggle with something."
"He was very willing," she added, "to say, 'I just don't understand this.' "
The essay on [bull] arose from that kind of struggle. In 1986, Mr. Frankfurt was teaching at Yale, where he took part in a weekly seminar. The idea was to get people of various disciplines to listen to a paper written by one of their number, after which everyone would talk about it over lunch.
Mr. Frankfurt decided his contribution would be a paper on [bull]. "I had always been concerned about the importance of truth," he recalled, "the way in which truth is foundational to civilization and the various deformities of it that were current."
"I'd been concerned about the prevalence" of [bull], he continued, "and the lack of concern for truth and respect for truth that it represented."
"I used the title I did," he added, "because I wanted to talk about [bull] without any [bull], so I didn't use 'humbug' or 'bunkum.' "
Research was a problem. The closest analogue came from Socrates.
"He called it rhetoric or sophistry," Mr. Frankfurt said, "and regarded philosophy as the great enemy of rhetoric and sophistry."
"These were opposite, incompatible ways of persuading people," he added. "You could persuade them with rhetoric" - or [bull] - "with sophistic arguments that weren't really sound but that you could put over on people, or you could persuade them by philosophical arguments which were dedicated to rigor and clarity of thought."
Mr. Frankfurt recalled that it took him about a month to write the essay, after which he delivered it to the humanities group. "I guess I should say it was received enthusiastically," he said, "but they didn't know whether to laugh or to take it seriously."
Some months after the reading, the essay, title intact, was published by The Raritan Review, a journal then edited by Richard Poirier, a distinguished literary critic. In 1988, Mr. Frankfurt included it in "The Importance of What We Care About," a collection of his essays.
The audience for academic journals and collections of philosophical essays is limited, however, and so the essay tended to be passed along, samizdat style, from one aficionado to another.
"In the 20 years since it was published," Mr. Frankfurt said, "I don't think a year has passed in which I haven't gotten one or two letters or e-mails from people about it."
One man from Wales set some of the text to music; another who worked in the financial industry wanted to create an annual award for the worst piece of analysis published in his field (an idea apparently rejected by his superiors). G. A. Cohen, the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls College, Oxford University, has written two papers on the subject.
"Harry has a unique capacity to take a simple truth and draw from it very consequential implications," Mr. Cohen said. "He is very good at identifying the potent elementary fact."
It was Ian Malcolm, the Princeton University Press editor responsible for philosophy, who approached Mr. Frankfurt about publishing the essay as a stand-alone volume. "The only way the essay would get the audience it deserved was to publish it as a small book," he said. "I had a feeling it would sell, but we weren't quite prepared for the interest it got."
For Mr. Frankfurt, who says it has always been his ambition to move philosophy "back to what most people think of as philosophy, which is a concern with the problems of life and with understanding the world," the book might be considered a successful achievement. But he finds he is still trying to get to the bottom of things, and hasn't arrived.
"When I reread it recently," he said at home, "I was sort of disappointed. It wasn't as good as I'd thought it was. It was a fairly superficial and incomplete treatment of the subject."
"Why," he wondered, "do we respond to [bull] in such a different way than we respond to lies? When we find somebody lying, we get angry, we feel we've been betrayed or violated or insulted in some way, and the liar is regarded as deceptive, deficient, morally at fault."
Why we are more tolerant of [bull] than lying is something Mr. Frankfurt believes would be worth considering.
"Why is lying regarded almost as a criminal act?" he asked, while bull "is sort of cuddly and warm? It's outside the realm of serious moral criticism. Why is that?"
Thursday, February 10, 2005
FAA Had Dozens of Pre-9/11 Warnings
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terror attacks.
The report by the 9/11 commission that investigated the suicide airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to Sept. 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al-Qaida's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. However, none of the warnings pinpointed what would happen on Sept. 11.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency received intelligence from other agencies, which it passed on to airlines and airports.
But, she said, "We had no specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures."
Brown also said the FAA was in the process of tightening security at the time of the attacks.
"We were spending $100 million a year to deploy explosive detection equipment at the airports," she said. The agency was also close to issuing a regulation that would have set higher standards for screeners and, for the first time, give it direct control over the screening work force."
... and how close to doing something useful like putting bars on the cockpit doors? Not very, I suppose.
The report by the 9/11 commission that investigated the suicide airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to Sept. 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al-Qaida's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. However, none of the warnings pinpointed what would happen on Sept. 11.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency received intelligence from other agencies, which it passed on to airlines and airports.
But, she said, "We had no specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures."
Brown also said the FAA was in the process of tightening security at the time of the attacks.
"We were spending $100 million a year to deploy explosive detection equipment at the airports," she said. The agency was also close to issuing a regulation that would have set higher standards for screeners and, for the first time, give it direct control over the screening work force."
... and how close to doing something useful like putting bars on the cockpit doors? Not very, I suppose.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Steve Kangas, RIP with so many others
It's been six years but we shouldn't forget Old #5...
(1) J. Clifford Baxter Found dead in his car, shot in the head. Mr. Baxter was vice chairman of Enron Corp. when he resigned in May 2001. Enron had been hot copy with the revelation that they were the largest campaign contributors for George W. Bush. Was J. Clifford Baxter a potential witness to Bush foreknowledge of their wrongdoings? His death was ruled a suicide.
(2)Charles Dana Rice He was the senior vice president and treasurer of El Paso Corp., an energy corporation swept up in the recent energy scandal. Two months after the "suicide" of Enron executive Clifford Baxter, in the midst of questions about the accounting practices of El Paso Corp., Charles Rice was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. His death was ruled a suicide.
(3)James Daniel Watkins His body was found on December 1, 2001 in the Pike National Forest in Colorado, a gunshot wound to the head. Mr. Watkins was a consultant for Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm for Enron. He disappeared on November 13, 2001 after he left work. He was described as a devoted family man who always called home if he were going to be late. Officials initially said that the death was suspicious, but have changed their tune and have ruled his death a suicide.
(4) Jake Horton He was the senior vice-president of Gulf Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, a cohort of Enron in the energy industry, and a major contributer to the Bush agenda. According to reporter Gregory Palast, Horton knew of the company's appalling accounting practices, and "... had no doubt about its illegal campaign contributions to Florida politicans - he'd made the payments himself. In April of 1989 Horton decided to come clean with state officials, and reserved the company jet to go confront company officials. Ten minutes after takeoff the jet exploded
(5)Steve Kangas His web site, Liberalism Resurgent, was meticulously researched and presented such a problem to the "real boss" of George Bush, Richard Scaife, that he hired a private detective to look into Kangas' past (a not infrequent practice of Scaife's). In February 1999, Steve Kangas was found in a 39th-floor bathroom outside of Scaife's offices at One Oxford Centre, in Pittsburgh, an apparent suicide.
Mr. Kangas, a very prolific writer, left no note. He had brought a fully-packed suitcase of clothes with him to Pittsburgh. He bought a burglar alarm shortly before he left for Pittsburgh. Why did he need a burglar alarm if he was going to commit suicide? An avowed advocate of gun control, he nevertheless bought a gun. What was he afraid of? Why did he go to Pittsburgh? After his death, his computer was sold for $150 and its hard drive wiped clean. Everything in his apartment was thrown away.
(6) Danny Casolaro He was working on a book that tied together the scandals surrounding the presidency of George H. W. Bush. He told his friends he was going to "bring back" the head of the Octopus. Instead, his body was found in a hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on August 10, 1991, an apparent suicide.
(7) Mark Lombardi He was an accomplished conceptual artist who, while chatting on the phone with a banker friend about the Bush savings and loan scandal, started doodling a diagram and was inspired to create a complex series of drawings and sketches that charted the details of the scandal. According to the New York Times, "He was soon charting the complex matrices of personal and professional relationships, conflict of interest, malfeasance and fraud uncovered by investigations into the major financial and political scandals of the day; to keep facts and sources straight, he created a handwritten database that now includes around 12,000 3-by-5-inch cards." On the evening of March 22, 2000, Mark Lombardi was found hanging in his loft, an apparent suicide.
(8) James Hatfield Mr. Hatfield was the author of Fortunate Son, an unauthorized biography of George W. Bush. The book detailed Bush's cocaine use and cover up of a cocaine arrest. He was found dead in a motel room, an apparent suicide, in July 2001.
(1) J. Clifford Baxter Found dead in his car, shot in the head. Mr. Baxter was vice chairman of Enron Corp. when he resigned in May 2001. Enron had been hot copy with the revelation that they were the largest campaign contributors for George W. Bush. Was J. Clifford Baxter a potential witness to Bush foreknowledge of their wrongdoings? His death was ruled a suicide.
(2)Charles Dana Rice He was the senior vice president and treasurer of El Paso Corp., an energy corporation swept up in the recent energy scandal. Two months after the "suicide" of Enron executive Clifford Baxter, in the midst of questions about the accounting practices of El Paso Corp., Charles Rice was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. His death was ruled a suicide.
(3)James Daniel Watkins His body was found on December 1, 2001 in the Pike National Forest in Colorado, a gunshot wound to the head. Mr. Watkins was a consultant for Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm for Enron. He disappeared on November 13, 2001 after he left work. He was described as a devoted family man who always called home if he were going to be late. Officials initially said that the death was suspicious, but have changed their tune and have ruled his death a suicide.
(4) Jake Horton He was the senior vice-president of Gulf Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, a cohort of Enron in the energy industry, and a major contributer to the Bush agenda. According to reporter Gregory Palast, Horton knew of the company's appalling accounting practices, and "... had no doubt about its illegal campaign contributions to Florida politicans - he'd made the payments himself. In April of 1989 Horton decided to come clean with state officials, and reserved the company jet to go confront company officials. Ten minutes after takeoff the jet exploded
(5)Steve Kangas His web site, Liberalism Resurgent, was meticulously researched and presented such a problem to the "real boss" of George Bush, Richard Scaife, that he hired a private detective to look into Kangas' past (a not infrequent practice of Scaife's). In February 1999, Steve Kangas was found in a 39th-floor bathroom outside of Scaife's offices at One Oxford Centre, in Pittsburgh, an apparent suicide.
Mr. Kangas, a very prolific writer, left no note. He had brought a fully-packed suitcase of clothes with him to Pittsburgh. He bought a burglar alarm shortly before he left for Pittsburgh. Why did he need a burglar alarm if he was going to commit suicide? An avowed advocate of gun control, he nevertheless bought a gun. What was he afraid of? Why did he go to Pittsburgh? After his death, his computer was sold for $150 and its hard drive wiped clean. Everything in his apartment was thrown away.
(6) Danny Casolaro He was working on a book that tied together the scandals surrounding the presidency of George H. W. Bush. He told his friends he was going to "bring back" the head of the Octopus. Instead, his body was found in a hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on August 10, 1991, an apparent suicide.
(7) Mark Lombardi He was an accomplished conceptual artist who, while chatting on the phone with a banker friend about the Bush savings and loan scandal, started doodling a diagram and was inspired to create a complex series of drawings and sketches that charted the details of the scandal. According to the New York Times, "He was soon charting the complex matrices of personal and professional relationships, conflict of interest, malfeasance and fraud uncovered by investigations into the major financial and political scandals of the day; to keep facts and sources straight, he created a handwritten database that now includes around 12,000 3-by-5-inch cards." On the evening of March 22, 2000, Mark Lombardi was found hanging in his loft, an apparent suicide.
(8) James Hatfield Mr. Hatfield was the author of Fortunate Son, an unauthorized biography of George W. Bush. The book detailed Bush's cocaine use and cover up of a cocaine arrest. He was found dead in a motel room, an apparent suicide, in July 2001.
Taking on Farm Subsidies
'The Bush administration is going to take on farm subsidies, the NYT reports. If they thought Social Security was tough, wait till this firestorm hits. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Thad Cochrane says he'll "work as hard as I can to oppose any changes." Will other Republicans stand up for fiscal responsibility and market principles? Will conservative pundits make a big deal of this issue? Will the libertarians and liberals who've scored the Bush administration for its earlier fiscal (and trade) foolishness? In other words, is there any kind of vocal, principled coalition to balance the concentrated interests of subsidized agriculture? A few environmental groups can't do it alone.'
http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/001598.html
... and the Coalition of the Conniving and the Clueless can't quite figure out how to form a circular firing squad.
http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/001598.html
... and the Coalition of the Conniving and the Clueless can't quite figure out how to form a circular firing squad.
Monday, February 07, 2005
A body blow to the self-esteem movement
A teacher named James in New York responding to This Is True article on the dumbing down of scholastics in the name of self-esteem: "Finally, it
happened. You offended me. In your latest dispatch someone with very
little insight wrote a piece about teachers trying to shove their
students into the same mold. This professional educator, along with
many, feel our hands tied by ADMINISTRATORS who, like the spineless
cretins they are, worry about such things as if we hurt the feelings of
a child when we tell them the answer they gave is wrong. They are the
ones with parents breathing down their backs. The administrators also
know that Johnny can't read. That's because Mom and dad will buy a 65
inch HDTV plasma television before they buy a book to put into their
kids hands. Don't forgot that in mommy and daddy's eyes Johnny can't do
any wrong. When he doesn't study because there are no rules at home and
Johnny is up later than the teacher. It is always the teacher's fault
why Johnny can't read. I don't teach in an affluent part of town, nor
do I teach in the heart of a crime infested city. I have several 13
year olds in my classes who have rap sheets longer than my tie. They
are found wandering the streets at three or four in the morning when
there is school the next day. Mom and dad didn't even know they were
out. Of course when the blame is unrefutably the parents, they just
throw up their hands and say, 'I just don't know what to do any more.'
But somewhere along the lines an administrator is telling us from their
ivory tower, how to fix the world and make everything all better for
the kid. What does the administrator do? Worry about the self esteem of
the child. Teachers seem to be the scapegoat in your little blurb. Walk
a mile in my shoes and you'll run screaming the other way. Is it the
teacher who pushes the child with a single digit average on? NO! We
know better. We know skills and lessons were not learned. But heaven
forbid the school district should look bad. Currently in New York State
the Commissioner of Education (the head administrator) is thinking of
tying student performance to State aid. So if the kids do poorly they
suffer with less tools like books, papers, and pencils (do you really
think everyone brings them to school)? Teaching positions are cut
because the aid is no long flowing in and the classes get crowded and
little Johnny is lucky to get the attention of one teacher for four
minutes a week. Don't get me wrong, not all administrators are like
this. So I'm not sure who wrote that piece but obviously someone who is
ill informed. If you would pass it on to them, I would appreciate it."
... How's that teaching gig working for ya, James?
happened. You offended me. In your latest dispatch someone with very
little insight wrote a piece about teachers trying to shove their
students into the same mold. This professional educator, along with
many, feel our hands tied by ADMINISTRATORS who, like the spineless
cretins they are, worry about such things as if we hurt the feelings of
a child when we tell them the answer they gave is wrong. They are the
ones with parents breathing down their backs. The administrators also
know that Johnny can't read. That's because Mom and dad will buy a 65
inch HDTV plasma television before they buy a book to put into their
kids hands. Don't forgot that in mommy and daddy's eyes Johnny can't do
any wrong. When he doesn't study because there are no rules at home and
Johnny is up later than the teacher. It is always the teacher's fault
why Johnny can't read. I don't teach in an affluent part of town, nor
do I teach in the heart of a crime infested city. I have several 13
year olds in my classes who have rap sheets longer than my tie. They
are found wandering the streets at three or four in the morning when
there is school the next day. Mom and dad didn't even know they were
out. Of course when the blame is unrefutably the parents, they just
throw up their hands and say, 'I just don't know what to do any more.'
But somewhere along the lines an administrator is telling us from their
ivory tower, how to fix the world and make everything all better for
the kid. What does the administrator do? Worry about the self esteem of
the child. Teachers seem to be the scapegoat in your little blurb. Walk
a mile in my shoes and you'll run screaming the other way. Is it the
teacher who pushes the child with a single digit average on? NO! We
know better. We know skills and lessons were not learned. But heaven
forbid the school district should look bad. Currently in New York State
the Commissioner of Education (the head administrator) is thinking of
tying student performance to State aid. So if the kids do poorly they
suffer with less tools like books, papers, and pencils (do you really
think everyone brings them to school)? Teaching positions are cut
because the aid is no long flowing in and the classes get crowded and
little Johnny is lucky to get the attention of one teacher for four
minutes a week. Don't get me wrong, not all administrators are like
this. So I'm not sure who wrote that piece but obviously someone who is
ill informed. If you would pass it on to them, I would appreciate it."
... How's that teaching gig working for ya, James?
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Spend. Lie. Stick your kids with the bill
"How Washington tackles the thorny issue of Social Security reform.
By Jim Jubak
Recently my 87-year-old father asked me a question that many other elderly are asking as politicians in Washington begin talking about "reforming" Social Security: "Am I going to get less in my Social Security?"
He's fine. And at 55, so am I. Right now, the average worker gets a Social Security benefit equal to 42% of earnings when he or she retires at 65. Over the next two decades, as the retirement age slowly moves up to 67, that contribution from Social Security is set to shrink to 36%.
But if my 9-year-old son or my 21-year-old friend Sam had asked the same question, I would tell them their benefits are going to get cut -- and cut deep -- and that their generations will be saddled with $2 trillion in debt to fund those "private retirement accounts" that are now getting so much attention.
These younger workers will pay into Social Security at the same tax rate as someone who retired in my generation or my father's, but they'll get back nearly 50% less in benefits, according to current proposals.Social Security.
Are you worried, too?
Our special report.
Why am I so sure? It's not because I've got some secret source. Or because I think the current system works so well. Or because I think the proposed changes will fix the problem.
No, my predictions are based on my understanding of how our government in Washington works. As I explained in my last column, "Uncle Sam gets an 'F' in money management," our government (and we as voters) are addicted to a set of financial rules that I'd summarize as: Spend now. Lie about the cost. And pay later. Much, much later.
Best of all, of course, would be Never. But if the day of reckoning is unavoidable then "Let the kids pay."
We've done it before
If you need a primer on how this works, you don't have to look any further than the Medicare drug benefit that President Bush championed and that Congress voted into law in 2003.
Spend now. Paying for prescription drugs is a big financial burden for many seniors, and the problem is getting worse day by day because drug costs are rising at a rate that far outstrips the rate of inflation. By creating a prescription drug benefit for seniors, the president and his party got the enthusiastic political backing of the 36-million-member AARP. That support was crucial to getting the bill through Congress.
Lie about the cost. Even so, Congress might not have passed the bill if the Bush administration hadn't pulled out the Washington accounting handbook to make the cost of the drug benefit look as small as possible. Fiscally conservative members of Congress were willing to spend $400 billion over 10 years, but no more, on the program. So all the president's men, including the chief actuary at Medicare, said this bill would cost -- surprise! -- $400 billion over 10 years. Medicare's chief actuary actually had calculated that the cost of the bill over 10 years was more like $500 billion to $600 billion. But he'd been warned not to tell Congress of the true cost before it voted.
Pay later. Even $500 billion to $600 billion isn't the true bill handed to future taxpayers. Because drug costs, along with other health-care costs, are climbing at a rate well above inflation, and because the huge baby boom generation is just starting to become eligible for this drug benefit, the 10-year costs of this program are just a fraction of the long-term bill. If you measured total present value of the total future obligations created by the Medicare drug benefit plan, according to the trustees of the Medicare Trust fund, the cost would be $16.6 trillion. Since that's an unsustainable sum, future generations of taxpayers will likely have to eliminate this benefit for themselves after paying for the drugs consumed by previous generations.
Think that calculating the cost of the Medicare drug benefit plan that way is unfair? Well, it's exactly the calculation that the Bush administration has used to come up with its figure of a $10.4 trillion shortfall in Social Security. But then, of course, the Bush administration wants to make the Social Security gap into a crisis. For that purpose, the bigger number is more useful. (The standard way to measure the shortfall is to look at the next 75 years. Measured that way, the Social Security shortfall is a smaller but still a very large $3.7 trillion, according to the Social Security Administration.)
Do the math
Now apply these same three steps to predict the most likely outcome of the Social Security debate.
Spend now I. Look at the demographics of AARP, certainly the most powerful lobbying group representing seniors and maybe the most powerful lobbying group in the country. AARP is fully mobilized for the fight over Social Security. The organization's goal is clear: to save Social Security for its members. President Bush has already conceded that he won't cut benefits for anyone who is retired or close to retirement. The battle now will be over how to define "close to retirement." AARP, I'm sure, will push hard toward 50.
Spend now II. "Saving" Social Security isn't much of a "sweetener" to offer younger workers, who are sufficiently cynical or realistic to doubt that the program will be around to pay them much of anything. The major new sweetener for these workers is private accounts, valuable to workers for whom retirement is a long, long way off. The sweetener is targeted at younger workers who already don't have much faith that they'll ever collect from Social Security. Hey, who under the age of 50 doesn't think they could invest their money better than the old fogies who run the Social Security trust fund? And don't forget that this sweetener will be funded by borrowing $2 trillion. Get the private accounts now and pay for them later.
Lie about the cost. All the debate about the cost of fixing Social Security has focused on how much it would cost to set up the new private accounts. Because money going into the accounts wouldn't be available for paying current Social Security benefits, the government would have to borrow something like $2 trillion to make up for the shortfall in pay-as-you-go Social Security benefits.
But that's not the cost number to watch. The true cost is buried so deep in the details of these proposals that we're all likely to fall asleep before we get to the bottom line.
Nobody in Congress wants to come right out and propose a tax hike or a benefit cut: that could be political suicide. So the current idea is to change the way that Social Security benefits are calculated.
The change sounds very simple. Right now, Social Security payments are indexed to increases in wages. As wages go up, Social Security benefit checks get larger so that retirees get a constant percentage of the average current wage in their checks. The proposal is to change the index to a ratio of the increase in the Consumer Price Index (commonly called price inflation) to the increase in wages beginning in 2009. Since wages climb more rapidly than prices, this would lower the rate at which benefits increase over time.
The change doesn't seem radical. But over time, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration estimates, this one change would close the entire Social Security shortfall within 75 years. Make this one change and there is no Social Security crisis. (If you want to read all the details about how Social Security benefits are calculated and how indexing works now and would work under these proposals, follow this link to "How benefits are calculated.")
Pay later. Look at the size of bill to younger workers and children yet unborn that this one very-hard-to-understand change creates. The chief actuary of Social Security estimates that, under these rules, a worker born in 1977 who retires at 65 in 2042 would get 26% less than under the current rules. Instead of replacing 42% of average earnings, as Social Security does now, or the 36% as current benefit reductions phase in, this worker would see just 27% of his earnings replaced. For the worker retiring in 2075 -- a worker not yet born -- the benefits are 46% lower than under the current system: Social Security would replace just 20% of earnings.
Bad policy and bad karma
How did we get to this proposal? The Social Security Commission put them on the table in 2001 after it was charged by President Bush to "fix" the system but told that it could not consider any alternative that would increase revenue from the Social Security payroll tax, that it couldn't consider rolling back the 2001 tax cut to fund Social Security from general tax revenue, and that it couldn't dedicate some other tax, such as part of the estate tax, to Social Security. In other words, the only solution it could look at was to cut benefits. At the same time, it was to consider a proposal for private accounts that would increase the size of the Social Security gap and lead to larger benefit cuts.
I think trading this kind of certain reduction in the Social Security safety net -- it's insurance, not an investment account, which is precisely what makes it worth keeping --for the uncertain benefits of private investment accounts is a bad deal that I'd reject for myself.
But beyond that, there's something that sticks in my craw about maintaining my benefits at the cost of cutting those of young workers, of children not yet in the workforce, and of workers not yet born.
Would you feel good about explaining Spend Now, Pay Later to your kids? I know I wouldn't."
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P105697.asp
By Jim Jubak
Recently my 87-year-old father asked me a question that many other elderly are asking as politicians in Washington begin talking about "reforming" Social Security: "Am I going to get less in my Social Security?"
He's fine. And at 55, so am I. Right now, the average worker gets a Social Security benefit equal to 42% of earnings when he or she retires at 65. Over the next two decades, as the retirement age slowly moves up to 67, that contribution from Social Security is set to shrink to 36%.
But if my 9-year-old son or my 21-year-old friend Sam had asked the same question, I would tell them their benefits are going to get cut -- and cut deep -- and that their generations will be saddled with $2 trillion in debt to fund those "private retirement accounts" that are now getting so much attention.
These younger workers will pay into Social Security at the same tax rate as someone who retired in my generation or my father's, but they'll get back nearly 50% less in benefits, according to current proposals.Social Security.
Are you worried, too?
Our special report.
Why am I so sure? It's not because I've got some secret source. Or because I think the current system works so well. Or because I think the proposed changes will fix the problem.
No, my predictions are based on my understanding of how our government in Washington works. As I explained in my last column, "Uncle Sam gets an 'F' in money management," our government (and we as voters) are addicted to a set of financial rules that I'd summarize as: Spend now. Lie about the cost. And pay later. Much, much later.
Best of all, of course, would be Never. But if the day of reckoning is unavoidable then "Let the kids pay."
We've done it before
If you need a primer on how this works, you don't have to look any further than the Medicare drug benefit that President Bush championed and that Congress voted into law in 2003.
Spend now. Paying for prescription drugs is a big financial burden for many seniors, and the problem is getting worse day by day because drug costs are rising at a rate that far outstrips the rate of inflation. By creating a prescription drug benefit for seniors, the president and his party got the enthusiastic political backing of the 36-million-member AARP. That support was crucial to getting the bill through Congress.
Lie about the cost. Even so, Congress might not have passed the bill if the Bush administration hadn't pulled out the Washington accounting handbook to make the cost of the drug benefit look as small as possible. Fiscally conservative members of Congress were willing to spend $400 billion over 10 years, but no more, on the program. So all the president's men, including the chief actuary at Medicare, said this bill would cost -- surprise! -- $400 billion over 10 years. Medicare's chief actuary actually had calculated that the cost of the bill over 10 years was more like $500 billion to $600 billion. But he'd been warned not to tell Congress of the true cost before it voted.
Pay later. Even $500 billion to $600 billion isn't the true bill handed to future taxpayers. Because drug costs, along with other health-care costs, are climbing at a rate well above inflation, and because the huge baby boom generation is just starting to become eligible for this drug benefit, the 10-year costs of this program are just a fraction of the long-term bill. If you measured total present value of the total future obligations created by the Medicare drug benefit plan, according to the trustees of the Medicare Trust fund, the cost would be $16.6 trillion. Since that's an unsustainable sum, future generations of taxpayers will likely have to eliminate this benefit for themselves after paying for the drugs consumed by previous generations.
Think that calculating the cost of the Medicare drug benefit plan that way is unfair? Well, it's exactly the calculation that the Bush administration has used to come up with its figure of a $10.4 trillion shortfall in Social Security. But then, of course, the Bush administration wants to make the Social Security gap into a crisis. For that purpose, the bigger number is more useful. (The standard way to measure the shortfall is to look at the next 75 years. Measured that way, the Social Security shortfall is a smaller but still a very large $3.7 trillion, according to the Social Security Administration.)
Do the math
Now apply these same three steps to predict the most likely outcome of the Social Security debate.
Spend now I. Look at the demographics of AARP, certainly the most powerful lobbying group representing seniors and maybe the most powerful lobbying group in the country. AARP is fully mobilized for the fight over Social Security. The organization's goal is clear: to save Social Security for its members. President Bush has already conceded that he won't cut benefits for anyone who is retired or close to retirement. The battle now will be over how to define "close to retirement." AARP, I'm sure, will push hard toward 50.
Spend now II. "Saving" Social Security isn't much of a "sweetener" to offer younger workers, who are sufficiently cynical or realistic to doubt that the program will be around to pay them much of anything. The major new sweetener for these workers is private accounts, valuable to workers for whom retirement is a long, long way off. The sweetener is targeted at younger workers who already don't have much faith that they'll ever collect from Social Security. Hey, who under the age of 50 doesn't think they could invest their money better than the old fogies who run the Social Security trust fund? And don't forget that this sweetener will be funded by borrowing $2 trillion. Get the private accounts now and pay for them later.
Lie about the cost. All the debate about the cost of fixing Social Security has focused on how much it would cost to set up the new private accounts. Because money going into the accounts wouldn't be available for paying current Social Security benefits, the government would have to borrow something like $2 trillion to make up for the shortfall in pay-as-you-go Social Security benefits.
But that's not the cost number to watch. The true cost is buried so deep in the details of these proposals that we're all likely to fall asleep before we get to the bottom line.
Nobody in Congress wants to come right out and propose a tax hike or a benefit cut: that could be political suicide. So the current idea is to change the way that Social Security benefits are calculated.
The change sounds very simple. Right now, Social Security payments are indexed to increases in wages. As wages go up, Social Security benefit checks get larger so that retirees get a constant percentage of the average current wage in their checks. The proposal is to change the index to a ratio of the increase in the Consumer Price Index (commonly called price inflation) to the increase in wages beginning in 2009. Since wages climb more rapidly than prices, this would lower the rate at which benefits increase over time.
The change doesn't seem radical. But over time, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration estimates, this one change would close the entire Social Security shortfall within 75 years. Make this one change and there is no Social Security crisis. (If you want to read all the details about how Social Security benefits are calculated and how indexing works now and would work under these proposals, follow this link to "How benefits are calculated.")
Pay later. Look at the size of bill to younger workers and children yet unborn that this one very-hard-to-understand change creates. The chief actuary of Social Security estimates that, under these rules, a worker born in 1977 who retires at 65 in 2042 would get 26% less than under the current rules. Instead of replacing 42% of average earnings, as Social Security does now, or the 36% as current benefit reductions phase in, this worker would see just 27% of his earnings replaced. For the worker retiring in 2075 -- a worker not yet born -- the benefits are 46% lower than under the current system: Social Security would replace just 20% of earnings.
Bad policy and bad karma
How did we get to this proposal? The Social Security Commission put them on the table in 2001 after it was charged by President Bush to "fix" the system but told that it could not consider any alternative that would increase revenue from the Social Security payroll tax, that it couldn't consider rolling back the 2001 tax cut to fund Social Security from general tax revenue, and that it couldn't dedicate some other tax, such as part of the estate tax, to Social Security. In other words, the only solution it could look at was to cut benefits. At the same time, it was to consider a proposal for private accounts that would increase the size of the Social Security gap and lead to larger benefit cuts.
I think trading this kind of certain reduction in the Social Security safety net -- it's insurance, not an investment account, which is precisely what makes it worth keeping --for the uncertain benefits of private investment accounts is a bad deal that I'd reject for myself.
But beyond that, there's something that sticks in my craw about maintaining my benefits at the cost of cutting those of young workers, of children not yet in the workforce, and of workers not yet born.
Would you feel good about explaining Spend Now, Pay Later to your kids? I know I wouldn't."
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P105697.asp
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