A Call To Action
The New York Times
March 13, 2005
By DAVID BARSTOW
and ROBIN STEIN
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public-relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 different federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, such as the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were seen in millions of homes and were broadcast in some of nation's largest TV markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.
It is also a world where all participants benefit.
Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks, which play a crucial role in distributing the government's coverage of itself, collect fees from the government agency that produces segments as well as the affiliate that shows them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting.
The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton administration, is continuing despite President Bush's recent call for a clearer demarcation between journalism and government publicity efforts. "There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press," Mr. Bush told reporters in January, explaining why his administration would no longer pay pundits to support his policies.
In interviews, though, press officers for several federal agencies said the president's prohibition did not apply to government-made TV news segments, also known as video news releases. They described the segments as factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers. They noted that the Clinton administration also distributed video news releases, and they insisted that there was no similarity to the case of Armstrong Williams, a conservative columnist who promoted the administration's chief education initiative, the No Child Left Behind legislation, without disclosing $240,000 in payments from the Department of Education.
What is more, these officials argued, it is the responsibility of television news directors to inform viewers that a segment about the government was in fact written by the government.
"Talk to the television stations that ran it without attribution," said Bill Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. "This is not our problem. We can't be held responsible for their actions."
Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."
It is not certain, though, whether the office's pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a few federal agencies have stopped making television news segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and "purely informational" news segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal, the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is disclosed to viewers.
Even if agencies do disclose their role, those efforts can easily be undone in a broadcaster's editing room. Some news organizations, for example, simply identify the government's "reporter" as one of their own and then edit out any phrase suggesting the segment was not of their making.
So in a recent segment produced by the Agriculture Department, the agency's narrator ended the report by saying "In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture." Yet AgDay, a syndicated farm news program that is shown on some 160 stations, simply introduced the segment as being by "AgDay's Pat O'Leary." The final sentence was then trimmed to "In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting."
Brian Conrady, executive producer of AgDay, defended the changes. "We can clip 'Department of Agriculture' at our choosing," he said. "The material we get from the U.S.D.A., if we choose to air it and how we choose to air it is our choice."
Spreading the Word
Government Efforts
And One Woman's Role
Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase "covert propaganda." These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they have attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs.
Not long ago, Ms. Ryan was a much sought-after "reporter" for news segments produced by the federal government. A journalist at ABC and PBS who became a public relations consultant, Ms. Ryan worked on about a dozen reports for seven federal agencies in 2003 and early 2004. Her segments for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy were a subject of the accountability office's recent inquiries.
The G.A.O. concluded that the two agencies "designed and executed" their segments "to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by private sector television news organizations." A significant part of that execution, the office found, was Ms. Ryan's expert narration, including her typical sign-off - "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting" - delivered in a tone and cadence familiar to television reporters everywhere.
Last March, when The New York Times first described her role in a segment about new prescription drug benefits for Medicare patients, reaction was harsh. The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an editorial under the headline "Karen Ryan, You're a Phony," and she was the object of late night jokes by Jon Stewart and received hate mail.
"I'm like the Marlboro man," she said in a recent interview.
In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than $5,000 for her work on government reports. She was also playing an accepted role in a lucrative art form, the video news release.
"I just don't feel I did anything wrong," she said. "I just did what everyone else in the industry was doing."
It is a sizeable industry. One of its largest players, Medialink Worldwide Inc., has about 200 employees, with offices in New York and London. It produces and distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year, most commissioned by major corporations. The Public Relations Society of America even gives an award, the Bronze Anvil, for the year's best video news release.
In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters.
"No TV news organization has the resources in labor, time or funds to cover every worthy story," one video news release company, TVA Productions, said in a sales pitch to potential clients, adding that "90 percent of TV newsrooms now rely on video news releases."
Federal agencies have been commissioning video news releases since at least the first Clinton administration. An increasing number of state agencies are producing television news reports, too; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department alone has produced some 500 video news releases since 1993.
Under the Bush administration, federal agencies appear to be producing more releases, and on a broader array of topics.
A definitive accounting is nearly impossible. There is no comprehensive archive of local television news reports, as there is in print journalism, so there is no easy way to determine what has been broadcast, and when and where.
Still, several large agencies, including the Defense Department, the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledge expanded efforts to produce news segments. Many members of Mr. Bush's first-term cabinet appeared in such segments.
A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers another rough indicator: the Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent.
Karen Ryan was part of this public-relations push - a "paid shill for the Bush administration," as she self-mockingly puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.
Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in journalism. But over time, she said, she grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television news - too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts.
In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from journalism was not as far as one might expect. "It's almost the same thing," she said.
There are differences, though. When she went to interview Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, about the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential political benefits.
Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major accomplishments.
The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."
The segment, though, made no mention of the many critics who decry the measure as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment was "not strictly factual," that it contained "notable omissions" and that it amounted to "a favorable report" about a controversial program.
And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services of America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms. Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest television markets.
Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the reach of her work. Consider the case of News 10 Now, a cable station in Syracuse owned by Time Warner. In February 2004, days after the government distributed its Medicare segment, News 10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report, including the suggested anchor lead-in. The News 10 Now segment, however, was not narrated by Karen Ryan. Instead, the station edited out the original narration and had one of its own reporters repeat the script almost word for word.
The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in an e-mail message, "Our policy on provided video is to clearly identify the source of that video." In the case of the Medicare report, he said, the station believed it was produced and distributed by a major network and did not know that it had originally come from the government.
Ms. Ryan said she was surprised by the number of stations willing to run her government segments without any editing or acknowledgement of origin. As proud as she says she is of her work, she did not hesitate, even for a second, when asked if she would have broadcast one of her government reports if she were a local news director.
"Absolutely not."
Little Oversight
TV's Code of Ethics,
With Uncertain Weight
"Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders."
Those words are from the code of ethics of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the main professional society for TV news directors in the United States. Some stations go further, all but forbidding the use of any outside material, especially entire reports. And spurred by embarrassing publicity last year about Karen Ryan, the news directors association is close to proposing a stricter rule, said its executive director, Barbara Cochran.
Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect is unclear; it is not hard to find broadcasters who are not adhering to the existing code, and the association has no enforcement powers.
The Federal Communications Commission does, but it has never disciplined a station for showing government-made news segments without disclosing their origin, a spokesman said.
Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C. rules say yes. They point to a 2000 decision by the agency, which stated, "Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded."
In interviews, more than a dozen station news directors endorsed this view without hesitation. Several expressed disdain for the prepackaged segments they received daily from government agencies, corporations and special interest groups who wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or influence.
But when told that their stations showed government-made reports without attribution, most reacted with indignation. Their stations, they insisted, would never allow their news programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside party, let alone the government.
"They're inherently one-sided, and they don't offer the possibility for follow up questions - or any questions at all," said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the news director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky.
Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America indicate that WDRB has broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan segments, including one for the government, without disclosing their origin to viewers.
Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, was equally opposed to putting government news segments on the air.
"It amounts to propaganda, doesn't it?" he said.
Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services of America show that from 2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one government-made segments featuring Karen Ryan, 5 others featuring her work on behalf of corporations, and 19 other segments produced by corporations and other outside organizations. It does not appear that KGTV viewers were told the origin of these 25 segments.
"I thought we were pretty solid," Mr. Stutz said, adding that they intend to take more precautions.
Confronted with such evidence, most news directors were at a loss to explain how the segments made it on the air. Some said they were unable to find archive tapes that would help answer the question. Others promised to look into it, then stopped returning telephone messages. A few removed the segments from their Web sites, promised greater vigilance in the future or pleaded ignorance.
Afghanistan to Memphis
An Agency's Report
Ends Up on the Air
On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis, marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on how assistance from the United States was helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan.
Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving decent medical care for the first time and even participating in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women.
In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful American intervention abroad was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning friends.
What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used by WHBQ were actually conducted by State Department contractors. The contractors also selected the quotes used from those interviews and filmed the footage that went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms. Clark repeated with only minor changes.
As it happens, the viewers of WHBQ were not the only ones in the dark.
Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State Department. "If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone would false report on anything like that," she said.
How a television reporter in Memphis came to unwittingly narrate a segment by the State Department reveals much about the extent to which government-produced news accounts have seeped into the broader new media landscape.
The explanation begins inside the White House, where the president's communications advisers devised a strategy after Sept. 11, 2001, to encourage supportive news coverage of the fight against terrorism. The idea, they explained to reporters at the time, was to counter charges of American imperialism by generating accounts that emphasized American efforts to liberate and rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq.
An important instrument of this strategy was the Office of Broadcasting Services, a State Department unit of 30 or so editors and technicians whose typical duties include distributing footage from news conferences. But in early 2002, with close editorial direction from the White House, the unit began producing narrated feature reports, many of them promoting American achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq and reinforcing the administration's rationales for the invasions. These reports were then widely distributed in the United States and around the world for use by local TV stations. In all, the State Department has produced 59 such segments.
United States law contains provisions intended to prevent the domestic dissemination of government propaganda. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, for example, allows Voice of America to broadcast pro-government news to foreign audiences, but not at home. Yet State Department officials said that law does not apply to the Office of Broadcasting Services. In any event, said Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman, "Our goal is to put out facts and the truth. We're not a propaganda agency."
Even so, as a senior department official, Patricia Harrison, told Congress last year, the Bush administration has come to regard such "good news" segments as "powerful strategic tools" for influencing public opinion. And a review of the department's segments reveals a body of work in sync with the political objectives set forth by the White House communications team after 9/11.
In June 2003, for example, the unit produced a segment that depicted American efforts to distribute food and water to the people of southern Iraq. "After living for decades in fear, they are now receiving assistance - and building trust - with their coalition liberators," the unidentified narrator concluded.
Several segments focused on the liberation of Afghan women, which a White House memo from January 2003 singled out as a "prime example" of how "White House-led efforts could facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on terror."
Tracking precisely how a "good news" report on Afghanistan could have migrated to Memphis from the State Department is far from easy. The State Department typically distributes its segments via satellite to international news organizations like Reuters and Associated Press Television News, which in turn distribute them to the major United States networks, which then transmit them to local affiliates.
"Once these products leave our hands, we have no control," Robert A. Tappan, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, said in an interview. The department, he said, never intended its segments to be shown unedited and without attribution by local news programs. "We do our utmost to identify them as State Department-produced products."
Representatives for the networks insist that government-produced reports are clearly labeled when they are distributed to affiliates. Yet with segments bouncing from satellite to satellite, passing from one news organization to another, it is easy to see the potential for confusion. Indeed, in response to questions from The Times, Associated Press Television News acknowledged distributing at least one segment about Afghanistan to the major United States networks without identifying it as the product of the State Department. A spokesman said it "slipped through our net because of a sourcing error."
Kenneth W. Jobe, vice president of news at WHBQ in Memphis, said he could not explain how his station came to broadcast the State Department's segment on Afghan women. "It's the same piece, there's no mistaking it," he said in an interview, insisting that it would not happen again.
Mr. Jobe, who was not with WHBQ in 2002, said the station's script for the segment has no notes explaining its origin. But Tish Clark Dunning said it was her impression at the time that the Afghan segment was her station's version of one done first by network correspondents at either Fox News or CNN. It is not unusual, she said, for a local station to take network reports and then give them a hometown look.
"I didn't actually go to Afghanistan," she said. "I took that story and reworked it. I had to do some research on my own. I remember looking on the Internet and finding out how it all started as far as women covering their faces and everything."
At the State Department, Mr. Tappan said the broadcasting office is moving away from producing narrated feature segments. Instead, the department is increasingly supplying only the ingredients for reports - sound bites and raw footage. Since the shift, he said, even more State Department material is making its way into news broadcasts.
Meeting a Need
Rising Budget Pressures,
Ready-to-Run Segments
WCIA is a small station with a big job in central Illinois.
Each weekday, WCIA's news department produces a three-hour morning program, a noon broadcast and three evening programs. There are plans to add a 9 p.m. broadcast. The staff, though, has been cut to 37 from 39. "We are doing more with the same," said Jim P. Gee, the news director.
Farming is crucial in Mr. Gee's market, yet with so many demands, he said, "it is hard for us to justify having a reporter just focusing on agriculture."
To fill the gap, WCIA turned to the Agriculture Department, which has assembled one of the most effective public relations operations inside the federal government. The department has a Broadcast Media and Technology Center with an annual budget of $3.2 million that each year produces some 90 "mission messages" for local stations - mostly feature segments about the good works of the Agriculture Department.
"I don't want to use the word filler, per se, but they meet a need we have," Mr. Gee said.
The Agriculture Department's two full-time reporters, Bob Ellison and Pat O'Leary, travel the country filing reports, which are vetted by the department's office of communications before they are distributed via satellite and mail. Alisa Harrison, who oversees the communications office, said Mr. Ellison and Mr. O'Leary provide unbiased, balanced and accurate coverage.
"They cover the secretary just like any other reporter," she said.
Invariably, though, their segments offer critic-free accounts of the department's policies and programs. In one report, Mr. Ellison told of the agency's efforts to help Florida clean up after several hurricanes. "They've done a fantastic job," a grateful local official said in the segment.
More recently, Mr. Ellison reported that Mike Johanns, the new agriculture secretary, and the White House were determined to reopen Japan to American beef products. Of his new boss, Mr. Ellison reported: "He called Bush the best envoy in the world."
WCIA, based in Champaign, has run some 40 segments by Mr. Ellison over the past three months alone. Or put another way, WCIA has run 40 reports that did not cost it anything to produce.
Mr. Gee, the news director, readily acknowledges that these accounts are not exactly independent, tough-minded journalism. But, he added, "We don't think they're propaganda. They meet our journalistic standards. They're informative. They're balanced."
More than a year ago WCIA asked the Agriculture Department to record a special sign-off that implies the segments are the work of WCIA reporters. So, for example, instead of closing his report with "I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for the U.S.D.A.," Mr. Ellison says, "With the U.S.D.A., I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for 'The Morning Show.' "
Mr. Gee said the customized sign-off helped raise "awareness of the name of our station." Could it give viewers the idea that Mr. Ellison is reporting on location with the U.S.D.A. for WCIA? "We think viewers can make up their own minds," Mr. Gee said.
Ms. Harrison, the Agriculture Department press secretary, said the WCIA sign-off was an exception. The general policy, she said, is to make clear in each segment that the reporter works for the department. In any event, she added, she did not think there was much potential for viewer confusion. "It's pretty clear to me," she said.
The 'Good News' People
A Menu of Reports
From Military Hot Spots
The Defense Department is working hard to produce and distribute its own news segments for television audiences in the United States.
The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw footage and interviews to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-funded Web site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite feed.
Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members.
"We're the 'good news' people," said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director.
Each year, the unit films thousands of soldiers sending holiday greetings to their hometowns. Increasingly, the unit also produces news reports that reach large audiences. The 50 stories it filed last year were broadcast 236 times in all, reaching 41 million households in the United States.
The news service makes it easy for local stations to run its segments unedited. Reporters, for example, are never identified by their military titles. "We know if we put a rank on there they're not going to put it on their air," Mr. Gilliam said.
Each account is also specially tailored for local broadcast. A segment sent to a station in Topeka, Kan., would include an interview with a service member from there. If the same report is sent to Oklahoma City, the soldier is switched out for one from Oklahoma City. "We try to make the individual soldier a star in their hometown," Mr. Gilliam said, adding that segments were distributed only to towns and cities selected by the service members interviewed.
Few stations acknowledge the military's role in the segments. "Just tune in and you'll see a minute-and-a-half news piece and it looks just like they went out and did the story," Mr. Gilliam said. The unit, though, makes no attempt to advance any particular political or policy agenda, he said.
"We don't editorialize at all," he said.
Yet sometimes the "good news" approach carries political meaning, intended or not. Such was the case after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal surfaced last spring. Although White House officials depicted the abuse of Iraqi detainees as the work of a few rogue soldiers, the case raised serious questions about the training of military police officers.
A short while later, Mr. Gilliam's unit distributed a news segment, sent to 34 stations, that examined the training of prison guards at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where the military police officers implicated at Abu Ghraib had been trained.
"One of the most important lessons they learn is to treat prisoners strictly but fairly," the reporter said in the segment, which depicted a regimen emphasizing respect for detainees. A trainer told the reporter that military police officers were taught to "treat others as they would want to be treated." The account made no mention of Abu Ghraib or how the scandal had prompted changes in training at Fort Leonard Wood.
According to Mr. Gilliam, the report was unrelated to any effort by the Defense Department to rebut suggestions of a broad command failure.
"Are you saying that the Pentagon called down and said we need some good publicity?" he asked. "No, not at all."
Anne E. Kornblut contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Friday, March 11, 2005
Fw: 42 Percent of Your Tax Dollars Buys More War
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie"
To: "Miriam Vieni"
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 3:04 PM
Subject: FCNL: 42 Percent of Your Tax Dollars Buys More War
Tax day is April 15. Did you know that about 42% of our income taxes
this year will go for military purposes?
This figure is computed based on federal funds outlays in fiscal year
2004 (FY04) of $1.7 trillion. The federal funds budget includes
spending for all discretionary programs (for which Congress
appropriates funds each year) and for all mandatory programs such as
Medicaid, food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit, and other needs-based
programs (which are paid for out of general revenues). The federal
funds budget does not include spending by trust funds such as Social
Security and Medicare, as these are paid for through separate,
dedicated payroll taxes--not income taxes.
We estimate that in total the U.S. spent $715 billion in FY04 for past,
present, and future military purposes. This includes funding for the
Defense Department, Energy Department nuclear weapons programs,
military-related activities of other agencies, international military
financing and training, expenses paid for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, mandatory spending for military retirement and health
care, veterans programs ($59 billion), and the estimated portion of
interest paid on the national debt which can be attributed to past wars
and military spending ($157 billion).
Why do other organizations report that a higher percentage goes for
military purposes? Most likely, their calculation includes only
"discretionary" spending, which is roughly half of the
federal funds budget that FCNL analyzes in its calculation. Their pie
leaves out lots of "mandatory" spending for programs like
interest on the debt, Medicaid, and food stamps for which our income
taxes are also used. They also leave out mandatory spending for
military retirement and health care and the portion of interest on the
debt that can be attributed to past wars and military spending. In
short, they are showing us only about half of what we pay for with our
income taxes.
For a detailed breakdown of how FCNL calculates this figure go to
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/GSREEIWJRH/NCJLEIWSST/
Click here to view the FCNL Minute on Conscientious Objection to War
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Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Fw: Proposed UN Ambassador Signals Shift Back to Unilateralism
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie"
To: "Miriam Vieni"
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 2:34 PM
Subject: FCNL: Proposed UN Ambassador Signals Shift Back to Unilateralism
"There's no such thing as the United Nations....If the UN
secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit
of difference."
This is a direct quote from the John Bolton, the man President Bush has
nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. This
nomination raises serious questions about whether recent actions by the
Bush administration that seemed to indicate a shift to a more
multilateral foreign policy have been accurately interpreted. Bolton,
who served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security in the first Bush administration, is an advocate
of unilateral U.S. military action, an opponent of arms control, and
previously an advocate for withdrawal of U.S. funds from the UN. The
Senate Foreign Relations Committee must take a long, hard look at John
Bolton to determine whether he is the right choice to represent the
United States at the UN.
During his time in and out of government, Bolton has consistently taken
positions that undermine the United Nations and other forms of global
cooperation to prevent deadly conflict. At a 1994 panel discussion
sponsored by the World Federalist Association, Bolton made the
statement quoted at the top of this message. When the Bush
administration failed to persuade the UN to back the invasion of Iraq,
John Bolton observed that it was "further evidence to many why
nothing more should be paid to the UN system."
Bolton told the Wall Street Journal that signing the letter informing
the UN that the United States was removing its signature from the Rome
Treaty to create the International Criminal Court "was the
happiest moment of my government service." The Senate must try to
discover why the Bush administration nominated someone who has
repeatedly expressed his contempt for the United Nations to lead the
U.S. mission to the world body.
Will working with the UN force Bolton to be more diplomatic or is this
nomination a signal that the Bush administration plans a shift in
diplomatic strategy at the UN? The performance of Bolton as Under
Secretary of State over the last four years suggests the latter.
During his first term, President Bush used Bolton to deliver blunt
messages. For example, Bolton's harsh rhetorical statements directed at
North Korea's leadership often seemed timed to sabotage potential
diplomatic breakthroughs. When England, France, and Germany tried to
engage the U.S. in developing a carrot-and-stick approach to negotiate
an end to Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, Bolton refused to
participate arguing that, "I don't do carrots." Bolton also
falsely claimed that Cuba was developing biological weapons - a charge
that was not substantiated by any evidence and that was challenged by
experts.
Global problems require global responses. The United Nations serves an
essential role in the current age of escalating, politically motivated
mass murders, global warming, the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS,
and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In announcing the nomination
of Bolton, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice aptly noted the
existence of a "challenging agenda" before the UN and said it
"must play a critical role as it strives to fulfill the dreams and
hopes and aspirations of its original promise."
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is planning hearings on the
nomination of John Bolton in early April. Please urge senators to
question how the appointment of an official with a long history of
disdaining the United Nations can help that body to meet the pressing
challenges it faces in the years ahead.
Quotes from John Bolton are on FCNL's web site:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/NXMVEIPUMS/LYOEEIPVCP/
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Monday, March 07, 2005
Fw: [StopTheDraft] Petition: Demand 80% Dem Block Against $80 B War Bill
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 11:17 PM
Subject: Fwd: [StopTheDraft] Petition: Demand 80% Dem Block Against $80 B
War Bill
Connie Mancini-Haack,LCSW
914-682-8283
Battle for Choice Rages Through States
A Call To Action
AlterNet
By Cynthia L. Cooper, Women's eNews
Posted on March 7, 2005, Printed on March 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21419/
In Michigan, the legislative session had only been open a matter of hours on Jan. 12 before Rebekah Warren, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Michigan, was wrangling with the first anti-choice bill, a proposal to ban embryonic stem cell research.
"Michigan has one of the most active and best funded right-to-life movements," said Warren. "Things start here. We see bills introduced in Michigan popping up later around the country."
One law enacted in Michigan last year, despite a veto by the governor, redefines the time of "legal birth" – formerly considered to be when a healthy infant is brought into the world – to a fetal stage. As a result, abortions in the first eight weeks of pregnancy could be prosecuted as homicide, legal experts have told Women's eNews.
On March 1, three national pro-choice legal organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan, asking the court to strike down the law, scheduled to take effect on March 30. The groups – the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, all based in New York – argue that the law is unconstitutional because it fails to protect women's health and encroaches on a woman's right to make a decision about an abortion even in the first trimester.
Merging on Virginia Capital
Early last month in Virginia, meanwhile, 300 people, decked out with orange neon "pro-family, pro-choice" stickers and handmade signs, joined the Virginia Pro-Choice Coalition and converged on the state capital of Richmond on Feb 3.
Inside committee rooms and outside on the streets, they declared their opposition to proposals by state legislators that will further thwart women's reproductive choices.
"There were especially a lot of young people from all over the state. It was astonishing," said Marjorie Signer, legislative vice president of Virginia NOW, which joined in the day of pro-choice lobbying.
As these pro-choice lobbyists looked on, one committee rejected a bill that would jeopardize the operation of abortion clinics by requiring expensive and unnecessary physical modifications. Two other bills on the same topic were later defeated, as well.
Deluge of Anti-Choice Proposals
Across the states, pro-choice activists are fighting against a deluge of anti-abortion proposals.
As of Feb. 1, 100 pieces of anti-choice legislation had already been introduced in the states, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization in New York. In 2004, 714 anti-choice bills were proposed in the states and 29 were enacted, according to a January report by NARAL Pro-Choice America, based in Washington, D.C.
"There are people who don't accept a legal right to abortion and want to make it more difficult for people to access safe, quality care," said Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the pro-choice National Abortion Federation, a national association of abortion providers that monitors state activities. "Each year, they try to pass legislation to restrict or undermine women's right to choose."
This year, states are witnessing a number of new anti-choice proposals that would give a fetus "personhood" rights equal to those of a living child or that require women undergoing an abortion to accede to a separate injection of anesthesia for the fetus or, alternatively, to sign a statement that a fetus feels pain, a point that lacks consensus among medical experts.
In Montana, an anti-abortion bill was introduced requiring death certificates for fetuses. In North Dakota, a proposal states that a woman who takes the "abortion pill," can be prosecuted for murder. (The proposal refers to mifepristone, which is marketed as Mifeprex and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.)
A bill in South Dakota would make all abortions illegal unless a woman faces severe health risks or her life is in danger.
"The way this is happening across the country, I think it's pretty scary, actually," said Warren, the activist from Michigan.
States Are New Legal Battleground
Anti-choice proposals began spreading through state legislatures after 1992 when the U.S. Supreme Court permitted states wide discretion to regulate abortion, without completely outlawing it.
Between 1995 and 2004, states enacted 409 anti-choice legislative measures, according to NARAL.
In some states today, women must wait 24 hours to get an abortion, teens may have to tell their parents and doctors and clinicians and hospitals may refuse to provide abortions.
These barriers at the state level have been reinforced by efforts to pass restrictions on abortion that extend to all U.S. citizens. Two years ago, the U.S. Congress passed a federal abortion ban on abortions in the second and third trimesters, but the law has been stopped from going into effect by the rulings of three federal courts that found it to be unconstitutional. The Bush administration is now appealing those decisions.
The five most-common targets of current anti-choice legislation, said NARAL, are: restricting teenager access; requiring the delivery of negative literature to a woman seeking an abortion and applying a waiting period; subjecting abortion facilities to onerous regulations; promoting abstinence-only education and approving the refusal of reproductive health care.
Instant Outrage in Virginia
One 2005 proposal in Virginia caused instant outrage. The bill would have subjected women to arrest for not reporting a miscarriage or other "fetal death" to the local police within 12 hours. After an internet alert by Democracy for Virginia, a group of activists who first coalesced to campaign for Howard Dean, thousands of women, including those who had suffered miscarriages, sent e-mail messages to bill sponsor John Cosgrove. Cosgrove withdrew the bill, saying its intention was misunderstood. (He said the bill was intended to apply to situations of "full-term babies who were abandoned shortly after birth" and not miscarriages.)
Also stopped in its tracks was a proposal by Virginia Delegate Robert Marshall to make the gynecological procedure of menstrual extraction, a low-tech method of removing shedding menstrual tissue directly from the uterus, into a felony unless a pregnancy test were conducted first. Other of Marshall's ideas, including one subjecting colleges to potential lawsuits for distributing emergency contraception, were also sidelined by the time the legislative session ended on Feb. 28, according to Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.
Meanwhile, a bill introduced in Kansas could affect women with difficult pregnancies throughout the country. Because third-trimester abortions are illegal or inaccessible in a majority of states, many women with life and health-endangering conditions travel to Wichita, where Dr. George Tiller operates one of the few clinics that can help them. The proposed law would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks except at hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers. The proposal threatens Tiller's practice, said Julie Burkhart, executive director of ProKanDo, a political action committee founded by Tiller.
"I think about how many women will be affected and how abortion and reproductive rights save women's lives," said Burkhart, who lobbies against the legislation daily. "That's what keeps me going."
Pro-choice activists are fighting a similar law passed last year in Texas, where other anti-choice bills are also up for debate. One would permit pharmacists to refuse women's prescriptions for birth-control pills or emergency contraception. Another would make it harder for young women to get abortions by restricting how judges hear petitions from them, if parental notification – required in Texas – is impossible.
By rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, minors who do feel that they cannot safely tell their parents about a pregnancy are entitled to seek a "judicial bypass," by which a judge can confidentially approve their request for an abortion. The new proposal would add reporting requirements for judges and would identify those who grant judicial bypasses and the circumstances of the cases before them.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21419/
AlterNet
By Cynthia L. Cooper, Women's eNews
Posted on March 7, 2005, Printed on March 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21419/
In Michigan, the legislative session had only been open a matter of hours on Jan. 12 before Rebekah Warren, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Michigan, was wrangling with the first anti-choice bill, a proposal to ban embryonic stem cell research.
"Michigan has one of the most active and best funded right-to-life movements," said Warren. "Things start here. We see bills introduced in Michigan popping up later around the country."
One law enacted in Michigan last year, despite a veto by the governor, redefines the time of "legal birth" – formerly considered to be when a healthy infant is brought into the world – to a fetal stage. As a result, abortions in the first eight weeks of pregnancy could be prosecuted as homicide, legal experts have told Women's eNews.
On March 1, three national pro-choice legal organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan, asking the court to strike down the law, scheduled to take effect on March 30. The groups – the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, all based in New York – argue that the law is unconstitutional because it fails to protect women's health and encroaches on a woman's right to make a decision about an abortion even in the first trimester.
Merging on Virginia Capital
Early last month in Virginia, meanwhile, 300 people, decked out with orange neon "pro-family, pro-choice" stickers and handmade signs, joined the Virginia Pro-Choice Coalition and converged on the state capital of Richmond on Feb 3.
Inside committee rooms and outside on the streets, they declared their opposition to proposals by state legislators that will further thwart women's reproductive choices.
"There were especially a lot of young people from all over the state. It was astonishing," said Marjorie Signer, legislative vice president of Virginia NOW, which joined in the day of pro-choice lobbying.
As these pro-choice lobbyists looked on, one committee rejected a bill that would jeopardize the operation of abortion clinics by requiring expensive and unnecessary physical modifications. Two other bills on the same topic were later defeated, as well.
Deluge of Anti-Choice Proposals
Across the states, pro-choice activists are fighting against a deluge of anti-abortion proposals.
As of Feb. 1, 100 pieces of anti-choice legislation had already been introduced in the states, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization in New York. In 2004, 714 anti-choice bills were proposed in the states and 29 were enacted, according to a January report by NARAL Pro-Choice America, based in Washington, D.C.
"There are people who don't accept a legal right to abortion and want to make it more difficult for people to access safe, quality care," said Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the pro-choice National Abortion Federation, a national association of abortion providers that monitors state activities. "Each year, they try to pass legislation to restrict or undermine women's right to choose."
This year, states are witnessing a number of new anti-choice proposals that would give a fetus "personhood" rights equal to those of a living child or that require women undergoing an abortion to accede to a separate injection of anesthesia for the fetus or, alternatively, to sign a statement that a fetus feels pain, a point that lacks consensus among medical experts.
In Montana, an anti-abortion bill was introduced requiring death certificates for fetuses. In North Dakota, a proposal states that a woman who takes the "abortion pill," can be prosecuted for murder. (The proposal refers to mifepristone, which is marketed as Mifeprex and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.)
A bill in South Dakota would make all abortions illegal unless a woman faces severe health risks or her life is in danger.
"The way this is happening across the country, I think it's pretty scary, actually," said Warren, the activist from Michigan.
States Are New Legal Battleground
Anti-choice proposals began spreading through state legislatures after 1992 when the U.S. Supreme Court permitted states wide discretion to regulate abortion, without completely outlawing it.
Between 1995 and 2004, states enacted 409 anti-choice legislative measures, according to NARAL.
In some states today, women must wait 24 hours to get an abortion, teens may have to tell their parents and doctors and clinicians and hospitals may refuse to provide abortions.
These barriers at the state level have been reinforced by efforts to pass restrictions on abortion that extend to all U.S. citizens. Two years ago, the U.S. Congress passed a federal abortion ban on abortions in the second and third trimesters, but the law has been stopped from going into effect by the rulings of three federal courts that found it to be unconstitutional. The Bush administration is now appealing those decisions.
The five most-common targets of current anti-choice legislation, said NARAL, are: restricting teenager access; requiring the delivery of negative literature to a woman seeking an abortion and applying a waiting period; subjecting abortion facilities to onerous regulations; promoting abstinence-only education and approving the refusal of reproductive health care.
Instant Outrage in Virginia
One 2005 proposal in Virginia caused instant outrage. The bill would have subjected women to arrest for not reporting a miscarriage or other "fetal death" to the local police within 12 hours. After an internet alert by Democracy for Virginia, a group of activists who first coalesced to campaign for Howard Dean, thousands of women, including those who had suffered miscarriages, sent e-mail messages to bill sponsor John Cosgrove. Cosgrove withdrew the bill, saying its intention was misunderstood. (He said the bill was intended to apply to situations of "full-term babies who were abandoned shortly after birth" and not miscarriages.)
Also stopped in its tracks was a proposal by Virginia Delegate Robert Marshall to make the gynecological procedure of menstrual extraction, a low-tech method of removing shedding menstrual tissue directly from the uterus, into a felony unless a pregnancy test were conducted first. Other of Marshall's ideas, including one subjecting colleges to potential lawsuits for distributing emergency contraception, were also sidelined by the time the legislative session ended on Feb. 28, according to Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.
Meanwhile, a bill introduced in Kansas could affect women with difficult pregnancies throughout the country. Because third-trimester abortions are illegal or inaccessible in a majority of states, many women with life and health-endangering conditions travel to Wichita, where Dr. George Tiller operates one of the few clinics that can help them. The proposed law would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks except at hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers. The proposal threatens Tiller's practice, said Julie Burkhart, executive director of ProKanDo, a political action committee founded by Tiller.
"I think about how many women will be affected and how abortion and reproductive rights save women's lives," said Burkhart, who lobbies against the legislation daily. "That's what keeps me going."
Pro-choice activists are fighting a similar law passed last year in Texas, where other anti-choice bills are also up for debate. One would permit pharmacists to refuse women's prescriptions for birth-control pills or emergency contraception. Another would make it harder for young women to get abortions by restricting how judges hear petitions from them, if parental notification – required in Texas – is impossible.
By rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, minors who do feel that they cannot safely tell their parents about a pregnancy are entitled to seek a "judicial bypass," by which a judge can confidentially approve their request for an abortion. The new proposal would add reporting requirements for judges and would identify those who grant judicial bypasses and the circumstances of the cases before them.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21419/
Saturday, March 05, 2005
A Fighting Strategy For Veterans
The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: A Fighting Strategy for Veterans
The New York Times
March 5, 2005
EDITORIAL
A Fighting Strategy for Veterans
Military veterans are crying foul over President Bush's budget proposals to
cut spending on their health care. The budget must not be balanced "on the
backs
of veterans," wrote Stephen P. Condon, the chairman of the Air Force
Association, in a recent letter to The Times, a point that was echoed by
other veterans
at Congressional hearings last month. We agree with the veterans - but for
somewhat different reasons than they have put forth.
The veterans' goal is to block the president's attempt to impose new
hospital fees, higher prescription co-payments and other spending
constraints - all
of which would add up to an estimated 16 percent reduction in veterans'
benefits in 2010. (The estimate is from the nonprofit Center on Budget and
Policy
Priorities because the administration, breaking with 16 years of budget
tradition, did not provide five-year projections for specific programs.) But
if
veterans succeed in preserving only their own benefits, they will have been
outfoxed by the administration.
Mr. Bush knows that wartime is no time to go after veterans' benefits. But
by proposing changes that are politically implausible while challenging
Congress
to cut spending, the administration gains a bargaining chip: if lawmakers
aren't willing to make the veterans' cuts the president has proposed, they
will
be pressured to make even deeper cuts in programs for people who don't have
the veterans' ability to fight back.
In effect, Mr. Bush's budget pits veterans against the 660,000 women,
infants and children whose food assistance is on the chopping block; against
the 120,000
preschoolers who would be cut from Head Start; against the 370,000 families
and disabled and elderly individuals who would lose rental assistance;
against
the whole communities that would lose support for clean air and drinking
water; and so on.
The only way for veterans to avoid those unacceptable trade-offs is to
refuse to fight on the president's terms. The size and scope of Mr. Bush's
proposed
spending cuts are a direct result of his refusal to ask for tax-cut
rollbacks - that is, to ask wealthy investors, who have had lavish,
deficit-bloating
tax cuts over the past four years, to contribute toward deficit reduction.
On the contrary, Mr. Bush's budget proposes even more tax breaks,
specifically
for people with six-figure incomes or more and overflowing investment
portfolios.
Most galling, the new tax cuts would be, in themselves, so large that the
net spending cuts Mr. Bush has requested would not be enough to pay for
them,
let alone reduce the existing deficit.
Veterans have the moral and institutional clout to argue that no one group
should be singled out to make sacrifices until all groups are asked to
sacrifice.
Bolstering that case is the fact that all successful deficit-cutting budgets
have included tax increases on the affluent, including President Reagan's
1983 budget, the first President George Bush's 1991 budget and President
Bill Clinton's 1994 budget. Mr. Bush's 2006 budget must do the same. If
veterans
drive that point home, the benefits they'll save will be their own, and
those of many women and children, too.
Copyright 2005
Posted by Miriam V. 3/5
Friday, March 04, 2005
Deficits and Deceit
March 4, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Deficits and Deceit
By
PAUL KRUGMAN
Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that
the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt.
On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger:
he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable
future,
leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against
reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security,
Medicare
and Medicaid.
Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom
seriously?
When Mr. Greenspan made his contorted argument for tax cuts back in 2001,
his reputation made it hard for many observers to admit the obvious: he was
mainly
looking for some way to do the Bush administration a political favor. But
there's no reason to be taken in by his equally weak, contorted argument
against
reversing those cuts today.
To put Mr. Greenspan's game of fiscal three-card monte in perspective,
remember that the push for Social Security privatization is only part of the
right's
strategy for dismantling the New Deal and the Great Society. The other big
piece of that strategy is the use of tax cuts to "starve the beast."
Until the 1970's conservatives tended to be open about their disdain for
Social Security and Medicare. But honesty was bad politics, because voters
value
those programs.
So conservative intellectuals proposed a bait-and-switch strategy: First,
advocate tax cuts, using whatever tactics you think may work - supply-side
economics,
inflated budget projections, whatever. Then use the resulting deficits to
argue for slashing government spending.
And that's the story of the last four years. In 2001, President Bush and Mr.
Greenspan justified tax cuts with sunny predictions that the budget would
remain
comfortably in surplus. But Mr. Bush's advisers knew that the tax cuts would
probably cause budget problems, and welcomed the prospect.
In fact, Mr. Bush celebrated the budget's initial slide into deficit. In the
summer of 2001 he called plunging federal revenue "incredibly positive news"
because it would "put a straitjacket" on federal spending.
To keep that straitjacket on, however, those who sold tax cuts with the
assurance that they were easily affordable must convince the public that the
cuts
can't be reversed now that those assurances have proved false. And Mr.
Greenspan has once again tried to come to the president's aid, insisting
this week
that we should deal with deficits "primarily, if not wholly," by slashing
Social Security and Medicare because tax increases would "pose significant
risks
to economic growth."
Really? America prospered for half a century under a level of federal taxes
higher than the one we face today. According to the administration's own
estimates,
Mr. Bush's second term will see the lowest tax take as a percentage of
G.D.P. since the Truman administration. And don't forget that President
Clinton's
1993 tax increase ushered in an economic boom. Why, exactly, are tax
increases out of the question?
O.K., enough about Mr. Greenspan. The real news is the growing evidence that
the political theory behind the Bush tax cuts was as wrong as the economic
theory.
According to starve-the-beast doctrine, right-wing politicians can use the
big deficits generated by tax cuts as an excuse to slash social insurance
programs.
Mr. Bush's advisers thought that it would prove especially easy to sell
benefit cuts in the context of Social Security privatization because the
president
could pretend that a plan that sharply cut benefits would actually be good
for workers.
But the theory isn't working. As soon as voters heard that privatization
would involve benefit cuts, support for Social Security "reform" plunged.
Another
sign of the theory's falsity: across the nation, Republican governors,
finding that voters really want adequate public services, are talking about
tax
increases.
The best bet now is that Mr. Bush will manage to make the poor suffer, but
fail to make a dent in the great middle-class entitlement programs.
And the consequence of the failure of the starve-the-beast theory is a
looming fiscal crisis - Mr. Greenspan isn't wrong about that. The middle
class won't
give up programs that are essential to its financial security; the right
won't give up tax cuts that it sold on false pretenses. The only question
now
is when foreign investors, who have financed our deficits so far, will
decide to pull the plug.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Posted by Miriam V 3/4/05
CNN Fact Check: Bush on Social Security
PERSONAL/PRIVATE ACCOUNTS
Claim: "One way for a younger worker to come closer to what the government has promised is to be able to take a portion of the money and get a better rate of return on your own money than that which the Social Security system gets."
CNN Fact Check: The president implies that a "personal" or private retirement account will "get a better rate of return" than the current Social Security system, but he doesn't clarify the risk of getting a lower return or even losing money on the investments.
Historically, returns from private investments have outpaced those of Social Security, but there is no guarantee that a worker will always receive a higher return with a private retirement account than under the current system.
The administration generally estimates that the Social Security system generates about a 3 percent return.
A worker with a private savings account whose investments exceed a 3 percent return would be better off under the Bush plan. But a worker who experienced returns of less than 3 percent would have less retirement money than he or she would under the current system.
The federal Thrift Savings Savings Plan, which is the basis for Bush's private account plan, contains funds that generally have increased over time and outpaced Social Security, but have also posted losses in some years.
Bush does suggest there are some risks involved, though he doesn't say it explicitly: "Right now your money is making very little compared to what you can get from conservative stocks and bonds and investments. I'm talking conservative. I'm not talking the lottery or taking it to the track."
SUPPLEMENT OR REPLACEMENT?
Claim: "It's your money, and the interest off that money goes to supplement the Social Security check that you're going to get from the federal government. Personal accounts is an add-on to that which the government is going to pay you. It doesn't replace the Social Security system. It is a part of getting a better rate of return to come closer to the promises made."
CNN Fact Check: The statement is misleading. The president says the money from the private account is an "add-on" to the traditional plan, which implies that a retiree under this plan would receive the same check he or she would normally get under the current system, and additional money from a private account. That is incorrect.
It is true that a retiree who opts for the private account plan would essentially receive two Social Security checks each month: one from the traditional plan (which the president refers to as "the federal government") and a second from the private account. But the check the retiree would receive from the federal government would be smaller than if the retiree had stayed in the traditional system.
INHERITING FUNDS
Claim: "You can pass that money [from a private account] to whomever you want."
CNN Fact Check: That is only partially true. The president does not mention that only part of the money in a private retirement account can be passed on to others as an inheritance.
Under Bush's proposal, a portion of the funds in a private account may be set aside by the government and paid back to the retiree in the form of an annuity.
Any remaining funds in the private account, if any, can be spent by the retiree or passed on as an inheritance, but the annuity itself cannot be inherited. In a briefing February 2, a senior administration official said, "We specifically say that the money that is not annuitized can be left as an inheritance ... The annuity part would not come back, but the rest could be inherited."
$11 TRILLION DEFICIT?
Claim: "If we don't act, we're looking at about an $11 trillion hole for the American taxpayer coming up. This is a big liability not for me or baby boomers ... but if you're a young worker, you've got a problem."
CNN Fact Check: The president incorrectly suggests that the young workers of today will face an $11 trillion Social Security shortfall if the program continues on its current course.
The annual report from the Social Security Trustees says the projected Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years is about $3.7 trillion, a significant amount, but considerably less than $11 trillion.
The $11 trillion figure that President Bush uses also comes from the annual Social Security Trustees report, but that figure estimates the shortfall over the "infinite" future.
Accountants sometimes make financial projections over what's called an "infinite horizon" to gauge the financial effect of a program over the very long term. The trustees' report essentially says the program faces an $11 trillion deficit over the infinite future, but that the shortfall in 75 years will be significantly less than that.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/04/social.security.factcheck
Fw: Iraq Campaign Builds Momentum After Lobby Days
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie"
To: "Miriam Vieni"
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 1:07 PM
Subject: FCNL: Iraq Campaign Builds Momentum After Lobby Days
IRAQ CAMPAIGN BUILDS MOMENTUM AFTER LOBBY DAYS
Last week delegations of concerned citizens across the country stepped
up the pressure on Congress to declare that the U.S. should have no
imperial ambitions in Iraq by taking that message directly to the state
and district offices of their senators and representatives.
Many thanks to the hundreds of people who are participating in the FCNL
Interfaith Lobby Days on Iraq and to the many other national
organizations that participated in this campaign. Grassroots lobby
visits will be continuing throughout the next month. Among the meetings
that have already taken place:
* In Peoria, Illinois, an interfaith delegation met with Congressman
Ray LaHood
* In Lansing, Michigan, the Red Cedar Friends Meeting organized an
interfaith delegation that met with key staff working for their member
of Congress
* In Columbus, North Carolina, members of a local retirement community
questioned an aide to their member of Congress about the war in Iraq
and pressed for a clarification of policy
* In Boston, Massachusetts, a state representative helped Beacon Hill
Friends House set up a meeting with the senior foreign policy staff for
Senator John Kerry
Meetings took place in senators' and representatives' home offices in
Arkansas, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan,
North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington. More more meetings are being
planned in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, Montana,
Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Participants in the FCNL network have also flooded congressional
offices with thousands of messages over the last month urging our
elected representatives to declare that the U.S. has no imperial
ambitions in Iraq. Specifically, FCNL is calling on members of Congress
to attach a resolution to the President's request for supplemental
funding for the war in Iraq that states clearly: "It is the policy
of the United States to withdraw all military troops and bases from
Iraq." No deadlines, no timetables, just a simple statement of
policy.
NEXT STEPS:
1. Urge Congress to declare the U.S. has no imperial ambitions in Iraq.
Many members of Congress are still unwilling to take even this first
step to define U.S. policy toward Iraq. The President's request for
$61 billion in supplemental funding for the war in Iraq (which is part
of a larger $81.9 billion supplemental funding bill) is now being
debated in the House of Representatives. In the coming weeks, FCNL will
be encouraging concerned citizens to contact their representatives and
urge them to attach a resolution to the Iraq war spending bill that
states that the policy of the United States is to "withdraw all
military troops and bases from Iraq."
2. Participate in events to mark second anniversary of the U.S.
invasion. Hundreds of local communities around the United States are
planning events to mark the second anniversary of the launch of the
U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 19. Tens of thousands of people around
the country will be organizing vigils and other events to raise their
voices for peace. Part of our work should be to channel some of that
creative energy into effective pressure on Congress. Many of these
groups have calendars on their web sites that list local activities.
______________________________________
The Next Step for Iraq: Join FCNL's Iraq Campaign,
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/JZHBEHVWQC/IECEEHVZCV/
Contact Congress and the Administration:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/JZHBEHVWQC/CVKLEHVZCW/
Order FCNL publications and "War is Not the Answer" campaign
bumper stickers and yard
signs:
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http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/JZHBEHVWQC/HJHEEHVZCY/
Contribute to FCNL:
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________________________________________
Friends Committee on National Legislation
245 Second St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-5795
fcnl@fcnl.org * www.fcnl.org
phone: (202)547-6000 * toll-free: (800)630-1330
We seek a world free of war and the threat of war
We seek a society with equity and justice for all
We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled
We seek an earth restored.
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Fw: [Norton AntiSpam] Bush's budget disaster in New York
----- Original Message -----
From: "DNC Grassroots Action Team"
To: "Miriam Vieni"
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 12:27 PM
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] Bush's budget disaster in New York
DNC Action Alert
------------------------------
Dear Miriam,
New York residents are facing severe cuts if George Bush's new budget
becomes law -- but you can help stop it in its tracks.
Bush recently unveiled his reckless plan to privatize Social Security, and
now he's touting a budget that slashes key programs that help New York's
working families.
Bush plans devastating cuts to America's top priorities, from homeland
security to health care to education to benefits for veterans and much more.
Despite these cuts, this budget is a fiscal disaster, with Bush's trademark
irresponsibility pushing America deeper into the red with another record
deficit.
And this budget is a huge disaster for New York. Here are just a few of the
cuts New York faces under Bush's 2006 budget:
HOMELAND SECURITY
* The Bush 2006 budget cuts $420 million to state and local funding for
homeland security, including a $49.4 million cut for New York. These cuts
will take police and firefighters off your streets.
* The Bush budget cuts the COPS program, which has put 11,927 officers on
New York streets, by 96 percent.
HEALTH CARE
* The Bush budget cuts $45 billion from Medicaid, enough to provide health
care to 1.8 million children. New York's share of these cuts is $6.1
billion.
* Bush's budget cuts the very same community and rural health care programs
he touted during the campaign.
EDUCATION
* Bush underfunds his own No Child Left Behind Act by $13.1 billion in his
budget. In New York, that means a shortfall of $1 billion, leaving behind
296,648 New York children.
* Bush promised to fund Pell Grants in his State of the Union address, but
his budget is $6.6 billion short. That's $508.8 million less than what's
needed in New York, a real burden for the 358,375 students in New York who
receive the grants.
OTHER PRIORITIES
* Bush cuts $9.3 million from New York job training programs in his 2006
budget.
* The Bush budget would require many veterans to pay a new $250 annual
"user fee" to use the Veterans Administration health care system, and would
double the prescription drug co-payment for the 1,361,164 New York veterans.
* Bush cuts New York clean water programs by $42.7 million.
* Bush's 2006 budget also cuts the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance
Program -- which helps low-income families afford heating fuel in the
winter -- by $234.4 million, including $29.3 million cut for New York
residents.
And Bush's irresponsible budget is a record $427 billion in the red,
increasing each New York family's share of the federal debt by $37,870.
****
TAKE ACTION
Take action today to help stop Bush's disastrous budget in its tracks. Write
a letter to the editor of your local paper explaining why Bush's budget is
such a disaster for America.
Be sure to include some of the facts about New York above, or download our
full report here for even more useful information.
http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/www.democrats.org/pdfs/2006_budget/NY.pdf
Write your letter here:
http://www.democrats.org/action/200503010001.html?psc=demnews
And be sure to tell your friends to join in. Forward this email to all your
friends in New York, or tell them to find the report for their own state
here:
http://www.democrats.org/bushbudget/
Sincerely,
The DNC Grassroots Action Team
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DNC, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington DC 20003
Fw: Stop Continuing Genocide in Sudan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie"
To: "Miriam Vieni"
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 8:57 AM
Subject: FCNL: Stop Continuing Genocide in Sudan
STOP CONTINUING GENOCIDE IN SUDAN
"The world is failing Darfur."
That's the message from the United Nations, from humanitarian
organizations, and from Africa about the unfolding crisis in the Darfur
region of Sudan, East Africa. While world attention has focused on the
tsunami disaster and the war in Iraq, and the United States has been
distracted by the debate about Social Security, the situation on the
ground in Darfur has grown worse in the last few months.
Quakers and others returning from that region report that, although an
African Union peacekeeping force has been deployed in the region,
militias backed by the government of Sudan continue to burn entire
villages to the ground, harass, beat and rape women and girls, and
block delivery of humanitarian aid. Today drought and famine threaten
millions of desperate people who already suffer under the continuing
genocide.
As the movie "Hotel Rwanda" reminds us, inaction in the face
of preventable genocide has grave consequences. Action by the United
States and the international community in the next month could change
the situation in Darfur and stop the killing. War is not the answer.
Senators Jon Corzine (NJ) and Sam Brownback (KS) this week introduced
bipartisan legislation (S 495) calling on the U.S. to support the
expansion of the African peacekeeping force, to impose focused
sanctions on the government of Sudan, and to press the United Nations
Security Council to impose sanctions on "perpetrators of crimes
against humanity in Darfur."
ACT NOW
Write your senators urging them to cosponsor of the "Darfur
Accountability Act of 2005" (S 495). If your senator is already a
cosponsor of this legislation (for a list of cosponsors see
"background" below), please thank them, and urge quick Senate
action on this legislation. You can find cosponsorship information and
sample letters on FCNL's web site,
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/AZJIEIBQFK/
BACKGROUND
Thank the co sponsors of Darfur Accountability Act of 2005: Corzine
(NJ), Brownback (KS), Dodd (CT), Durbin (IL), Feingold (WI), Lieberman
(CT), Talent (MO), Dewine (OH), and Coburn (OK). (For more information
on the bill see http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/CSXUEIBQFL/)
To read the New York Times interview with a former U.S. Marine deployed
in Darfur who describes the situation on the ground last month and why
peacekeeping troops do not yet have the capacity to prevent the
killings, click here:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/KYZPEIBQFM/ "The world is
failing Darfur," Jan Egeland, the UN under secretary general for
humanitarian affairs told the New York Times. "We're only playing
the humanitarian card, and we're just witnessing the massacres."
The movie "Hotel Rwanda" that is playing now in theaters
across the United States has powerfully reminded viewers that the world
stood by while hundreds of thousands of people were murdered . The
world knew what was happening in Rwanda and chose not to act to stop
the killings.
In Darfur, Sudan,the crisis has been unfolding for years. President
Bush declared the situation in Darfur a genocide, the United Nations
Security Council has called on the government of Sudan to stop the
killing, and other African countries have sent peacekeeping forces to
the area. These measure are commendable, but they are not enough. The
situation in Darfur is getting worse.
There is an alternative. By strengthening the peacekeeping forces,
imposing focused sanctions that pressure the government of Sudan and
cut off its revenues from oil sales, and by taking leadership in
demanding the prosecution of those responsible for crimes against
humanity, the United States can work cooperatively with the
international community to stop the killing.
This is an opportunity to reaffirm the central FCNL argument that there
is an alternative to war; there are realistic measures available that
the international community can take to peacefully prevent deadly
conflict. War is Not the Answer.
For more information on Darfur, see
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/EQDSEIBQFN/
To read FCNL's letter to senators asking them to cosponsor the Darfur
Accountability Act, see
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/ANMBEIBQFO/
To read the background essay on Darfur that FCNL distributed last year,
see http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/NMZWEIBQFP/
For information on the Save Darfur Coalition, see
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/FXYGEIBQFQ/
---------------------
The Next Step for Iraq: Join FCNL's Iraq Campaign,
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/BWKTEIBQFR/
Contact Congress and the Administration:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/FIJWEIBQFT/
Order FCNL publications and "War is Not the Answer" campaign
bumper stickers and yard
signs:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/HIUMEIBQFU/
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/DCQDEIBQFV/
Contribute to FCNL:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/EBEWEIBQFW/
Subscribe or update your information to this list:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/LIAXEIBQFX/ To unsubscribe
from this list, please see the end of this message.
Subscribe to other FCNL legislative, policy, and action alert lists:
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/NYZWEIBQFY/
--------------------------------
Friends Committee on National Legislation
245 Second St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-5795
fcnl@fcnl.org * http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/1/BVFTEIBPUV/GHBMEIBQFZ/
phone: (202)547-6000 * toll-free: (800)630-1330
We seek a world free of war and the threat of war
We seek a society with equity and justice for all
We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled
We seek an earth restored.
---
You may unsubscribe from our mailing list at any time by visiting
http://capwiz.com/fconl/lmx/u/?jobid=51209569.
So Now Bush Cares?
A Call To Action
washingtonpost.com
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, March 4, 2005; Page A21
I have to assume that President Bush's sudden concern for my life expectancy, and that of my homies, is just breathtaking political cynicism, nothing more. He isn't sincere. If he were, it would mean a road-to-Damascus transformation as profound as his earlier conversion from jejune, fun-loving frat boy to sober, responsible man of God.
Here's what he said in January, pitching his dodgy private Social Security accounts at a forum: "African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed."
Like I said, it takes your breath away. An administration that claims to be colorblind, that has been consistently hostile to affirmative action, that deals with black America mainly by inviting some preachers to the White House every now and then to toss them a few faith-based dollars -- an administration that denies race any importance -- has suddenly identified a blatant racial injustice and is determined to right it?
What this would mean, if Bush were serious, is that he now accepts race as an objective, quantifiable factor in American life. Not only that: It would also mean that to measure the impact of race he is using not "opportunity" -- the Republican mantra -- but "outcome," which is doctrinal heresy. The grave, after all, qualifies as the ultimate outcome.
If the president were serious, he'd have to spend the rest of his term reversing his policies. Take the death penalty. Bush was the Grand Executioner of Texas as governor, but since blacks are disproportionately represented on death row and the killers of white victims are more likely to be executed than those who killed blacks, the system must be "inherently unfair." Obviously it "needs to be fixed," doesn't it?
What's so cynical about the whole thing is that Bush, for once, is right. Black men in America, statistically, do die six years sooner than white men. That's irrelevant to the Social Security discussion, because most of those excess deaths occur earlier in life, but it's still a fact -- white men live to 75 on average, black men to 69.
So let's fix it, Mr. President. According to health statistics your administration published last year, one big factor is that infant and neonatal mortality rates for black Americans are nearly three times those for whites. A lot of black baby boys never make it out of the hospital. Let's start with that.
Why would infant mortality in black America be nearly twice as high as in impoverished, repressed Cuba, to cite one comparison? For one thing, the mothers of those doomed black baby boys are twice as likely to be teenagers as the mothers of white baby boys, and those too-young black mothers are twice as likely to have had no prenatal care. Blacks are less likely than whites to have health insurance and more likely to use hospital emergency rooms as their primary source of physician care.
Please, no lectures about personal responsibility and choice. That was the old you. I agree we're all responsible for our decisions, but nobody gets to choose his parents. Nor do black boys choose, in much larger numbers than whites, to grow up in single-mother households, often in desperate, violent, drug-ridden neighborhoods. Black men 15 to 24 are eight times more likely to be murdered than white men that age. Fix it, please.
Black men are also much more likely to suffer from stress-related diseases such as hypertension and to suffer "serious psychological distress" -- if they're poor, that is. If they're not poor, they have fewer mental problems than whites.
That's the real reason we black men go to our reward so soon, Mr. Bush -- poverty. According to your figures, 24.1 percent of black Americans live in poverty vs. 8 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Yet you accept this as a given, so you can make specious arguments to salvage your attempt to privatize Social Security.
Raise the minimum wage. Put some real money into health care, especially prenatal care, and, while you're at it, put some real money into No Child Left Behind -- serious money, Iraq-scale money, enough to put decent teachers and new books in the classrooms of inner-city schools and toilet paper in the bathrooms. Stop slashing every discretionary program your budget-cutters can find. Care as much about what's happening on the streets of Washington, Detroit and Chicago as you care about Baghdad, Mosul and Basra.
Until you do, please, no more crocodile tears for my posse and me.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, March 4, 2005; Page A21
I have to assume that President Bush's sudden concern for my life expectancy, and that of my homies, is just breathtaking political cynicism, nothing more. He isn't sincere. If he were, it would mean a road-to-Damascus transformation as profound as his earlier conversion from jejune, fun-loving frat boy to sober, responsible man of God.
Here's what he said in January, pitching his dodgy private Social Security accounts at a forum: "African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed."
Like I said, it takes your breath away. An administration that claims to be colorblind, that has been consistently hostile to affirmative action, that deals with black America mainly by inviting some preachers to the White House every now and then to toss them a few faith-based dollars -- an administration that denies race any importance -- has suddenly identified a blatant racial injustice and is determined to right it?
What this would mean, if Bush were serious, is that he now accepts race as an objective, quantifiable factor in American life. Not only that: It would also mean that to measure the impact of race he is using not "opportunity" -- the Republican mantra -- but "outcome," which is doctrinal heresy. The grave, after all, qualifies as the ultimate outcome.
If the president were serious, he'd have to spend the rest of his term reversing his policies. Take the death penalty. Bush was the Grand Executioner of Texas as governor, but since blacks are disproportionately represented on death row and the killers of white victims are more likely to be executed than those who killed blacks, the system must be "inherently unfair." Obviously it "needs to be fixed," doesn't it?
What's so cynical about the whole thing is that Bush, for once, is right. Black men in America, statistically, do die six years sooner than white men. That's irrelevant to the Social Security discussion, because most of those excess deaths occur earlier in life, but it's still a fact -- white men live to 75 on average, black men to 69.
So let's fix it, Mr. President. According to health statistics your administration published last year, one big factor is that infant and neonatal mortality rates for black Americans are nearly three times those for whites. A lot of black baby boys never make it out of the hospital. Let's start with that.
Why would infant mortality in black America be nearly twice as high as in impoverished, repressed Cuba, to cite one comparison? For one thing, the mothers of those doomed black baby boys are twice as likely to be teenagers as the mothers of white baby boys, and those too-young black mothers are twice as likely to have had no prenatal care. Blacks are less likely than whites to have health insurance and more likely to use hospital emergency rooms as their primary source of physician care.
Please, no lectures about personal responsibility and choice. That was the old you. I agree we're all responsible for our decisions, but nobody gets to choose his parents. Nor do black boys choose, in much larger numbers than whites, to grow up in single-mother households, often in desperate, violent, drug-ridden neighborhoods. Black men 15 to 24 are eight times more likely to be murdered than white men that age. Fix it, please.
Black men are also much more likely to suffer from stress-related diseases such as hypertension and to suffer "serious psychological distress" -- if they're poor, that is. If they're not poor, they have fewer mental problems than whites.
That's the real reason we black men go to our reward so soon, Mr. Bush -- poverty. According to your figures, 24.1 percent of black Americans live in poverty vs. 8 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Yet you accept this as a given, so you can make specious arguments to salvage your attempt to privatize Social Security.
Raise the minimum wage. Put some real money into health care, especially prenatal care, and, while you're at it, put some real money into No Child Left Behind -- serious money, Iraq-scale money, enough to put decent teachers and new books in the classrooms of inner-city schools and toilet paper in the bathrooms. Stop slashing every discretionary program your budget-cutters can find. Care as much about what's happening on the streets of Washington, Detroit and Chicago as you care about Baghdad, Mosul and Basra.
Until you do, please, no more crocodile tears for my posse and me.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Village Gang-Rape Sentences Are Upset by Court in Pakistan
A Call To Action
The New York Times
March 4, 2005
By SALMAN MASOOD
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 3 - Five men sentenced to death in 2002 for their role in a gang rape that was approved by a council in a remote Pakistani village had their convictions overturned Thursday. A sixth man convicted in the case, which set off worldwide outrage, had his death sentence commuted to life in prison, lawyers in the case said.
The circumstances of the rape, in June 2002 in Meerwala, in southern Punjab Province, brought demands for justice, and the government moved fast to bring the case to trial.
According to the prosecution, the Meerwala council ordered the gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, then 30, as punishment for the alleged illicit sexual relations of her brother Shakoor with a woman from the rival Mastoi tribe.
It was later revealed that he had been molested by Mastoi men who tried to conceal it by accusing him of illicit relations with a Mastoi woman. The Mastoi demanded revenge. That was delivered when the council approved the rape of Ms. Mukhtar.
Fourteen men were charged in the case and six of them - the leader of the village council, a council member and the four men suspected of carrying out the rape - were convicted and sentenced to death in September 2002. The convicted men appealed.
Two High Court judges, in their decision on Thursday, cited loopholes in the prosecution case and faulty police investigations, Pakistani news media reported.
Defense lawyers said the 2002 decision was "influenced by media hype and government pressure."
Ms. Mukhtar said she was disappointed at the latest decision, and blamed her lawyers.
The case gained international prominence because the assault was approved by the village council. The councils have no legal authority but are used in remote areas because of the poor reach of central authority. Public outcry led the government to place the case in an antiterrorism court and give Ms. Mukhtar police guards and $8,300 in compensation.
She has won praise for speaking out after the rape and for using the money to set up schools. Since the first trial, she said, she had faced death threats. She said Thursday's ruling intensified her fear. "We are afraid for our lives, but we will face whatever fate brings for us."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 4, 2005
By SALMAN MASOOD
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 3 - Five men sentenced to death in 2002 for their role in a gang rape that was approved by a council in a remote Pakistani village had their convictions overturned Thursday. A sixth man convicted in the case, which set off worldwide outrage, had his death sentence commuted to life in prison, lawyers in the case said.
The circumstances of the rape, in June 2002 in Meerwala, in southern Punjab Province, brought demands for justice, and the government moved fast to bring the case to trial.
According to the prosecution, the Meerwala council ordered the gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, then 30, as punishment for the alleged illicit sexual relations of her brother Shakoor with a woman from the rival Mastoi tribe.
It was later revealed that he had been molested by Mastoi men who tried to conceal it by accusing him of illicit relations with a Mastoi woman. The Mastoi demanded revenge. That was delivered when the council approved the rape of Ms. Mukhtar.
Fourteen men were charged in the case and six of them - the leader of the village council, a council member and the four men suspected of carrying out the rape - were convicted and sentenced to death in September 2002. The convicted men appealed.
Two High Court judges, in their decision on Thursday, cited loopholes in the prosecution case and faulty police investigations, Pakistani news media reported.
Defense lawyers said the 2002 decision was "influenced by media hype and government pressure."
Ms. Mukhtar said she was disappointed at the latest decision, and blamed her lawyers.
The case gained international prominence because the assault was approved by the village council. The councils have no legal authority but are used in remote areas because of the poor reach of central authority. Public outcry led the government to place the case in an antiterrorism court and give Ms. Mukhtar police guards and $8,300 in compensation.
She has won praise for speaking out after the rape and for using the money to set up schools. Since the first trial, she said, she had faced death threats. She said Thursday's ruling intensified her fear. "We are afraid for our lives, but we will face whatever fate brings for us."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Fw: False Attacks Over "Windfalls" to Wall Street
----- Original Message -----
From: "FactCheck.org"
To:
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 6:10 PM
Subject: False Attacks Over "Windfalls" to Wall Street
False Attacks Over "Windfalls" to Wall Street
Summary
New information turned up by FactCheck.org shows that the type of private
Social Security accounts being proposed by President Bush would yield very
little profit to the securities industry, contrary to persistent claims of a
potentially huge "windfall" to Wall Street.
What we have discovered is that the model for Bush's accounts -- the Federal
Thrift Savings Plan for federal workers -- actually paid securities firms a
net total of only 16 cents for every $10,000 in workers accounts. The TSP
had refused to make that information public -- until now. It shows that fees
actually being paid to Wall Street are hundreds of times smaller than some
critics had assumed.
For that reason and others we find that ads run in Louisiana by the liberal
Democratic group Campaign for America's Future are grossly misleading. The
group is accusing Republican Rep. James McCrery, who is chairman of the
Social Security subcommittee and a supporter of Bush's private accounts, of
"corruption" for accepting campaign donations from Wall Street, which it
falsely claims will "profit most" from private accounts.
Click the link below for the full article:
http://www.factcheck.org/article310m.html
If the link does not work, copy and paste this link into your browser and
hit "ENTER":
http://www.factcheck.org/article310m.html
If you wish to un-subscribe, please copy and paste the following link into
your browser and hit "RETURN":
http://www.factcheck.org/list/maillist/unsubscribe.php?mail=miriam@panix.com&id=22
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Lebanon faces a critical week
A Call To Action
The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com
from the March 02, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0302/p01s04-wome.html
By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
BEIRUT - Syria's domination of neighboring Lebanon looks increasingly in doubt following the Monday resignation of Omar Karami, the Lebanese prime minister, a move that has generated the greatest political upheaval in this tiny Mediterranean country since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Flushed with victory at unseating the pro-Syrian government and buoyed by the presence of thousands of protesters, the Lebanese opposition is gearing up for a showdown with key Lebanese allies of Syria, including President Emile Lahoud and the heads of the intelligence services.
"This week is going to be a very critical week," says Nizar Hamzeh, professor of politics at the American University of Beirut. "Either the country will emerge united in terms of forming a transitional government or ... if there are no concessions between the two sides, Lahoud will have the choice of resigning or forming a military government."
The rapid pace of developments in Beirut comes amid growing indications that Damascus has decided to withdraw almost all its 14,000 troops as a precursor to readjusting its relationship with Lebanon.
"Syria is going to disengage. I think they have no option.... Syria is looking for an honorable way out," says Joshua Landis, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of the syriacomment.com weblog, who is currently living in Damascus.
The Lebanese opposition meets Wednesday at the mountain residence of Walid Jumblatt, the most outspoken critic of Syria's presence here, to decide its next moves. Analysts say the opposition has to choose whether to push for a confrontation with the pro-Syrian president now or wait until after the parliamentary elections, which must be held by the end of May.
"The ideal course is for Lahoud to resign, a compromise candidate to be elected and a new government to be formed. The new president and the new government would then ask the Syrians to leave before elections are held," says Chibli Mallat, a professor of international law at St. Joseph University.
A transparent electoral process, free of traditional Syrian-backed gerrymandering, could give the opposition the majority in parliament, which would make President Lahoud's position untenable.
However, analysts doubt that Lahoud will go quietly.
A former commander of the Lebanese Army, he has been a staunch ally of Syria since taking office in 1998. Last September, the Lebanese parliament, with a nod from Syria, voted to change the constitution to allow Lahoud a three-year extension to his six-year mandate, which was due to expire in November. It was the extension that precipitated mounting opposition to Syria's influence here, which reached a climax after the Feb. 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister. Many blame Syria for Mr. Hariri's murder.
If Lahoud is cornered by the opposition, he may seek to form a military government rather than step down, says Professor Hamzeh. "If the opposition accepts the resignation of the government as a major victory and is willing to compromise on a neutral government, the country might be saved by the skin of its teeth," he says.
But the opposition also has set its sights on the heads of Lebanon's intelligence services, who are accused of subordinating Lebanon's interests to those of Syria and some of whom are suspected by many Lebanese of having played a role in Mr. Hariri's assassination.
While the prospects looks bleak for some of Syria's most loyal allies in Lebanon, analysts in Damascus say that the Syrian government is "optimistic" it can forge a new relationship with a future government in Beirut.
"The crucial time will be from now until the elections," says Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian political analyst and correspondent for the Arabic Al Hayat daily. "If the Syrians play the game cleverly, they can have good relations with any government in Beirut."
Indeed, despite the intense anti-Syrian protests on the streets of Beirut over the past two weeks, opposition leaders have been careful to stress their desire for good relations with Syria.
"The Syrian-Lebanese security agencies should be dismantled next ... and Syrian forces must be withdrawn from Lebanon," said Mr. Jumblatt following Mr. Karami's resignation. "All this should be done without hostility to Syria. Hostility toward Syria will not be tolerated."
And that, analysts say, is why Syria is believed to be ready to stage a near total troop withdrawal, leaving around 2,000 soldiers in eastern Lebanon along the Syrian border in a defensive posture against Israel.
Analysts in Damascus say that senior members of the ruling Baath Party have accepted the necessity of withdrawing from Lebanon and regularizing relations between the two countries. But only up to a point.
Landis, the Damascus-based professor, says that in order of importance, the Syrians view retaining influence in Lebanon as second only to the survival of the regime. With the tentacles of Syrian influence removed from Lebanon, Damascus will sit back and watch from afar as the Lebanese adjust to the new realities, he says.
"They [the Lebanese] may be in the flush of freedom, but once the battleground for the future of Lebanon begins to take shape we are going to see all of those old confessional divisions line up, and Syria wants to be in a position where it's not the focus of attention, [but is a player] in the background," says Landis. "Syria's relationship with Lebanon is special and that's what Syria is trying to maintain throughout this whole thing."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright
The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com
from the March 02, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0302/p01s04-wome.html
By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
BEIRUT - Syria's domination of neighboring Lebanon looks increasingly in doubt following the Monday resignation of Omar Karami, the Lebanese prime minister, a move that has generated the greatest political upheaval in this tiny Mediterranean country since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Flushed with victory at unseating the pro-Syrian government and buoyed by the presence of thousands of protesters, the Lebanese opposition is gearing up for a showdown with key Lebanese allies of Syria, including President Emile Lahoud and the heads of the intelligence services.
"This week is going to be a very critical week," says Nizar Hamzeh, professor of politics at the American University of Beirut. "Either the country will emerge united in terms of forming a transitional government or ... if there are no concessions between the two sides, Lahoud will have the choice of resigning or forming a military government."
The rapid pace of developments in Beirut comes amid growing indications that Damascus has decided to withdraw almost all its 14,000 troops as a precursor to readjusting its relationship with Lebanon.
"Syria is going to disengage. I think they have no option.... Syria is looking for an honorable way out," says Joshua Landis, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of the syriacomment.com weblog, who is currently living in Damascus.
The Lebanese opposition meets Wednesday at the mountain residence of Walid Jumblatt, the most outspoken critic of Syria's presence here, to decide its next moves. Analysts say the opposition has to choose whether to push for a confrontation with the pro-Syrian president now or wait until after the parliamentary elections, which must be held by the end of May.
"The ideal course is for Lahoud to resign, a compromise candidate to be elected and a new government to be formed. The new president and the new government would then ask the Syrians to leave before elections are held," says Chibli Mallat, a professor of international law at St. Joseph University.
A transparent electoral process, free of traditional Syrian-backed gerrymandering, could give the opposition the majority in parliament, which would make President Lahoud's position untenable.
However, analysts doubt that Lahoud will go quietly.
A former commander of the Lebanese Army, he has been a staunch ally of Syria since taking office in 1998. Last September, the Lebanese parliament, with a nod from Syria, voted to change the constitution to allow Lahoud a three-year extension to his six-year mandate, which was due to expire in November. It was the extension that precipitated mounting opposition to Syria's influence here, which reached a climax after the Feb. 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister. Many blame Syria for Mr. Hariri's murder.
If Lahoud is cornered by the opposition, he may seek to form a military government rather than step down, says Professor Hamzeh. "If the opposition accepts the resignation of the government as a major victory and is willing to compromise on a neutral government, the country might be saved by the skin of its teeth," he says.
But the opposition also has set its sights on the heads of Lebanon's intelligence services, who are accused of subordinating Lebanon's interests to those of Syria and some of whom are suspected by many Lebanese of having played a role in Mr. Hariri's assassination.
While the prospects looks bleak for some of Syria's most loyal allies in Lebanon, analysts in Damascus say that the Syrian government is "optimistic" it can forge a new relationship with a future government in Beirut.
"The crucial time will be from now until the elections," says Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian political analyst and correspondent for the Arabic Al Hayat daily. "If the Syrians play the game cleverly, they can have good relations with any government in Beirut."
Indeed, despite the intense anti-Syrian protests on the streets of Beirut over the past two weeks, opposition leaders have been careful to stress their desire for good relations with Syria.
"The Syrian-Lebanese security agencies should be dismantled next ... and Syrian forces must be withdrawn from Lebanon," said Mr. Jumblatt following Mr. Karami's resignation. "All this should be done without hostility to Syria. Hostility toward Syria will not be tolerated."
And that, analysts say, is why Syria is believed to be ready to stage a near total troop withdrawal, leaving around 2,000 soldiers in eastern Lebanon along the Syrian border in a defensive posture against Israel.
Analysts in Damascus say that senior members of the ruling Baath Party have accepted the necessity of withdrawing from Lebanon and regularizing relations between the two countries. But only up to a point.
Landis, the Damascus-based professor, says that in order of importance, the Syrians view retaining influence in Lebanon as second only to the survival of the regime. With the tentacles of Syrian influence removed from Lebanon, Damascus will sit back and watch from afar as the Lebanese adjust to the new realities, he says.
"They [the Lebanese] may be in the flush of freedom, but once the battleground for the future of Lebanon begins to take shape we are going to see all of those old confessional divisions line up, and Syria wants to be in a position where it's not the focus of attention, [but is a player] in the background," says Landis. "Syria's relationship with Lebanon is special and that's what Syria is trying to maintain throughout this whole thing."
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright
Fw: Bush's plan to stack the courts begins today
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Brandzel, MoveOn PAC"
To: "Miriam Vieni"
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 6:07 PM
Subject: Bush's plan to stack the courts begins today
Dear MoveOn member,
As we write this, the Senate is debating the nomination of mining and
cattle industry lobbyist William Myers III for a lifetime appointment to
the Circuit Court of Appeals -- the second highest court in the land.
Myers is the first of 20 nominees Bush has re-submitted in his second
term. All 20 repeat nominees were rejected last term by Senate Democrats
(as compared to 204 judges they accepted) because these nominees
consistently sided with corporate special interests over the rights of
ordinary Americans.
The Senate has the power to approve or reject judicial nominations because
judges -- above all else -- must be trusted by Americans on all sides to
rule fairly. So why does Bush refuse to send new nominees both parties can
agree on? Because while his presidency will be over in 4 years, the judges
he appoints will be on the bench for the rest of their lives. This is
Bush's big push to lock in his hard right, corporate-friendly ideology for
decades to come -- and that is exactly why we must not back down now.
The fight begins today. The Myers vote is a key test -- and may well
determine whether Bush can stack the judiciary, all the way up to the
Supreme Court, with a steady stream of hard right, pro-corporate judges.
It's crucial that our Senators know that we out here in America are
counting on them to hold the line against all 20 of Bush's rejected,
partisan judges.
Please sign today:
http://www.moveonpac.org/judges/?id=5135-3285954-WN4cyfUtZYjVpSnJeEK6kQ
We will deliver your comments to your Senators before the crucial votes on
these 20 judicial nominees.
Here's a brief summary of just the first three of the 20 partisan judges
re-nominated by President Bush.
William Myers III has never been a judge and spent most of his career as
a lobbyist for the cattle and mining industry.[1] He has written that
all habitat conservation laws are unconstitutional because they
interfere with potential profit.[2] In 2001, Bush appointed him as the
chief lawyer for the Department of the Interior. In that role he
continued as a champion of corporate interests, setting his agenda in
meetings with former employers he promised not to speak with, and even
illegally giving away sacred Native American land to be strip mined.[3]
Terrence Boyle was a legal aide to Jesse Helms. As a judge, his
signature decisions have attempted to circumvent federal laws barring
employment discrimination by race, gender, and disability.[4] His
rulings have been overturned a staggering 120 times by the conservative
4th District Court of Appeals, either due to gross errors in judgment or
simple incompetence.[5]
William Pryor Jr. served as Attorney General of Alabama, where he took
money from Phillip Morris, fought against the anti-tobacco lawsuit until
it was almost over, and cost the people of Alabama billions in
settlement money for their healthcare system as a result.[6] He called
Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our
history," and has consistently argued against the federal protections
for the civil rights of minorities, lesbian and gay couples, women, and
the disabled.[7]
If we falter now, then decades down the road dozens of judges like this
will still be ruling in favor of unchecked corporate greed and against the
basic principles of accountability and fairness.
The Bush Administration is prepared to stop at nothing to smash Democratic
resistance and stack the courts. As President of the Senate, Dick Cheney
has even threatened to push these 20 through by using a parliamentary
trick so abusive even he calls it the "nuclear option." If they can get
away with it, the "nuclear option" would eliminate the right to filibuster
-- a rule that has allowed 40 or more Senators to keep extremists from all
sides off the courts for centuries.
If that happens, when Supreme Court vacancies begin to open up in a few
months there will be no motivation for Bush to nominate justices
acceptable to both parties, and no ability for Democrats to oppose even
the most dangerous extremists.
We must draw the line here, by stopping Bush's 20 repeat nominees. They
were rejected once -- they can and must be rejected again.
Please sign the petition today:
http://www.moveonpac.org/judges/?id=5135-3285954-WN4cyfUtZYjVpSnJeEK6kQ
Thanks for all that you do,
--Ben Brandzel, Eli Pariser and the whole MoveOn PAC Team
Tuesday, March 1st, 2005
Notes:
[1] "Unfit to Judge," Community Rights Council, 4/2/04.
[2] "Myers Troubling Legal Philosophy," People for the American Way.
[3] "Environmental Group Calls on Senate to Block Myers Nomination:
Ethical Problems and Anti-Environmental Activism Make Him Unfit for
Judgeship," Friends of the Earth, 2/5/05.
[4] "Federal Judge Terrence Boyle Unfit for Promotion to Appeals Court,"
People for the American Way, 2/23/05.
[5] "Eastern District of North Carolina Terrence Boyle Nominated to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit," Alliance for Justice.
[6] Eric Fleischauer, "Pryor Called a Tobacco Sellout," Decatur Daily
News, 10/30/02.
[7] Ann Woolner, "Bush Judicial Candidate Shows How Things Change,"
Bloomberg News, 5/16/03.
PAID FOR BY MOVEON PAC
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
________________
Subscription Management:
This is a message from MoveOn PAC. To remove yourself (Miriam Vieni) from
this list, please visit our subscription management page at:
http://moveon.org/s?i=5135-3285954-WN4cyfUtZYjVpSnJeEK6kQ
UK to stockpile drugs against bird flu pandemic
A Call To Action
March 01, 2005
By Philippe Naughton, Times Online
Britain is to buy almost 15 million courses of a powerful antiviral drug to protect the country against a pandemic of the deadly bird flu that could claim tens of thousands of lives.
John Reid, the Health Secretary, announced the purchase of the drug oseltamivir, sold under the brand name Tamiflu, today as Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, published the Government’s Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan setting out the steps being taken to prepare for a flu pandemic.
The drug purchase, which will cost almost £200 million, will be enough to treat one in four of the UK population, the level recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Forty-six people have died in southeast Asia since an outbreak of bird flu in late 2003 and public health experts fear that the virus could soon mutate, opening up rapid transmission from human to human.
’The plan we are publishing today, together with our procurement of these antivirals, puts the UK in the forefront of international preparedness for a possible flu pandemic," Mr Reid said.
"We are working closely with other governments and the World Health Organization to ensure the international community is as well prepared as it can be to spot and address the early signs of a pandemic as quickly as possible. However, it makes sense to ensure we in the UK are as prepared as we can be and have drugs for use against an influenza pandemic here.
"That is why I have ordered 14.6 million courses of oseltamivir for delivery over the next two financial years. This will enable us to treat one in four of the UK population - the proportion which the WHO recommends we plan for.’
Around 12,000 people die in the UK every winter from 'seasonal flu', but experts say that a global flu pandemic, involving a new strain of the disease, is overdue. If a pandemic broke out there would be a delay until an effective vaccine could be developed - during which time the anti-viral drug could be used to control the illness and alleviate its effects.
The effects of a global pandemic would depend on the virulence of the flu strain that eventually emerges, but the Department of Health says an outbreak could claim 50,000 lives in the UK or more.
"It might never happen, but what is clear is that the experts tell us the risk of if happening is high enough to make it necessary to plan for it and spend some serious money on antivirals," a Department of Health spokesman said today.
"It's not inevitable, but for planning purposes we're assuming it's inevitable."
The official contingency plan includes quarantine measures and arrangements for the emergency services. Concerts and football matches could both be banned and travel restricted in the event of an outbreak to stop the virus spreading.
Sir Liam said: "Wherever in the world a flu pandemic starts, perhaps with its epicentre in the Far East, we must assume we will be unable to prevent it reaching the UK. When it does, its impact will be severe in the number of illnesses and the disruption to everyday life. The steps we are setting out today will help us to reduce the disease's impact on our population.
'We have already started work which should help speed up the production of a vaccine once a pandemic strain of flu has emerged."
There have been three major flu pandemics in the past 100 years. The worst one in 1918 killed up to 50 million people, including more than 200,000 in Britain. Around one million people were killed in the last pandemic of Hong Kong flu in 1918.
Measures set out in the plan include:
* Improving surveillance of avian or'bird' flu in South East Asia - seen by experts as the most likely source of a pandemic strain of flu transmitted by people. The UK Government recently gave the World Health Organization £500,000 to boost avian flu monitoring in the region and improve the chances of an early warning of a pandemic.
* Ensuring robust surveillance of possible cases in the UK, using the existing procedures of the Health Protection Agency and Royal College of General Practitioners to monitor flu-like cases seen by GPs.
* Informing the public about the likely risks of a pandemic and what they should do in the event of pandemic flu.
* Being prepared to take steps to reduce the risk of spread of the disease, such as advising against certain travel, possibly closing schools and cancelling events where large crowds gather such as football matches or pop concerts.
The Swiss drugs company Roche will supply 14.6 million courses of Tamiflu over the next two financial years, with 7.3 million courses available by the end of 2005-06 and the rest as soon as possible during the next financial year.
Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
March 01, 2005
By Philippe Naughton, Times Online
Britain is to buy almost 15 million courses of a powerful antiviral drug to protect the country against a pandemic of the deadly bird flu that could claim tens of thousands of lives.
John Reid, the Health Secretary, announced the purchase of the drug oseltamivir, sold under the brand name Tamiflu, today as Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, published the Government’s Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan setting out the steps being taken to prepare for a flu pandemic.
The drug purchase, which will cost almost £200 million, will be enough to treat one in four of the UK population, the level recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Forty-six people have died in southeast Asia since an outbreak of bird flu in late 2003 and public health experts fear that the virus could soon mutate, opening up rapid transmission from human to human.
’The plan we are publishing today, together with our procurement of these antivirals, puts the UK in the forefront of international preparedness for a possible flu pandemic," Mr Reid said.
"We are working closely with other governments and the World Health Organization to ensure the international community is as well prepared as it can be to spot and address the early signs of a pandemic as quickly as possible. However, it makes sense to ensure we in the UK are as prepared as we can be and have drugs for use against an influenza pandemic here.
"That is why I have ordered 14.6 million courses of oseltamivir for delivery over the next two financial years. This will enable us to treat one in four of the UK population - the proportion which the WHO recommends we plan for.’
Around 12,000 people die in the UK every winter from 'seasonal flu', but experts say that a global flu pandemic, involving a new strain of the disease, is overdue. If a pandemic broke out there would be a delay until an effective vaccine could be developed - during which time the anti-viral drug could be used to control the illness and alleviate its effects.
The effects of a global pandemic would depend on the virulence of the flu strain that eventually emerges, but the Department of Health says an outbreak could claim 50,000 lives in the UK or more.
"It might never happen, but what is clear is that the experts tell us the risk of if happening is high enough to make it necessary to plan for it and spend some serious money on antivirals," a Department of Health spokesman said today.
"It's not inevitable, but for planning purposes we're assuming it's inevitable."
The official contingency plan includes quarantine measures and arrangements for the emergency services. Concerts and football matches could both be banned and travel restricted in the event of an outbreak to stop the virus spreading.
Sir Liam said: "Wherever in the world a flu pandemic starts, perhaps with its epicentre in the Far East, we must assume we will be unable to prevent it reaching the UK. When it does, its impact will be severe in the number of illnesses and the disruption to everyday life. The steps we are setting out today will help us to reduce the disease's impact on our population.
'We have already started work which should help speed up the production of a vaccine once a pandemic strain of flu has emerged."
There have been three major flu pandemics in the past 100 years. The worst one in 1918 killed up to 50 million people, including more than 200,000 in Britain. Around one million people were killed in the last pandemic of Hong Kong flu in 1918.
Measures set out in the plan include:
* Improving surveillance of avian or'bird' flu in South East Asia - seen by experts as the most likely source of a pandemic strain of flu transmitted by people. The UK Government recently gave the World Health Organization £500,000 to boost avian flu monitoring in the region and improve the chances of an early warning of a pandemic.
* Ensuring robust surveillance of possible cases in the UK, using the existing procedures of the Health Protection Agency and Royal College of General Practitioners to monitor flu-like cases seen by GPs.
* Informing the public about the likely risks of a pandemic and what they should do in the event of pandemic flu.
* Being prepared to take steps to reduce the risk of spread of the disease, such as advising against certain travel, possibly closing schools and cancelling events where large crowds gather such as football matches or pop concerts.
The Swiss drugs company Roche will supply 14.6 million courses of Tamiflu over the next two financial years, with 7.3 million courses available by the end of 2005-06 and the rest as soon as possible during the next financial year.
Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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