Fooling around

April 1st, 2008

It’s April Fools Day — and since the difference between getting fooled and being one is as thin as a gnats eyelash, I guess you could say — it’s our day! Silly, funny, snarky works for me — Eric’s Emotoscope today was a hoot. But since tornado’s and storms kept me away yesterday, I owe you some news — and in its own way … albeit serious in its implications … there’s a bit of April Fools in the news today if you ask the right questions.

For instance, if I told you that one of Dubby’s top henchmen just got nailed and resigned with his tail between his legs, wouldn’t you think “April Fools prank”? But it’s true — HUD chief and Housing Secretary, Alphonso Jackson was slammed with allegations of so much corruption he had no choice but slink away. At least, I’m hoping this isn’t April Fools stuff … we’ll have to check tomorrow to make sure they aren’t just slapping their legs up on the Hill and having a go at us.

How about if I told you that an 80-year old church deacon in a wheel chair was snapped up from a mall by police for wearing the wrong t-shirt? April Fools? Un-uh. Or that an 8th grade girl was strip searched for sharing Ibuprofen? Nope. We’re the Fools if we don’t fight this non-sense! And the continued race for nomination is making us all fools, but I’ll save that for another day too, and simply add that our buzzword for this campaign won’t be flip-flop … more likely, flim-flam.

Today we’ll look at three interesting bits of news:

— the 6 day war in Iraq, its truce brokered in Iran, bypassed the Bushy boyz [April Fools? Nope,] and made Bush’s head explode [April Fools? Yep, sadly.] This was required because the Iraqi police refused to fight their own. Worth 4,000 and/or 1,000,000+ lives, you think? I’m also posting an article from our friend Tina Louise regarding her Arms Against War project; free, easy and potent anti-war symbolism we should all consider.

– the mess in China and Tibet is reminding us of all we despised about the cold warriors, even as the Chinese fly an Olympic banner proclaiming “Transcendence. Integration. Equality.” [April Fools? Definitely!] DO open the link on Anti-Empire to read about the controversy surrounding Dalai Lama — I’m working up a piece on that in the near future. Meanwhile, the Chinese are showing their ugly side, and have asserted that the crackdown is necessary because the rabid Monks are planning suicide attacks [April Fools? Nope.] Some dignitaries are pulling out of the Opening Ceremonies and the torch relay, causing China to dig in deeper and talk louder — it don’t look good on ‘em.

– our economic emergency continues to blow smoke and shoot flame, one which the Brits are calling a Depression, but we won’t even call a Recession until we get another quarterly report. [April Fools? Nope -- them's the facts.] And now Dubby’s proposed giving the Fools who got us into this mess even more power — and that’s no joke today or ANY day.

Read some or all –and because the collection today is foolish but not funny, to keep you from losing your good humor the first bit IS funny and conjures mental pictures of a nekkid John McRib frolicking in the moonlight with the pagans. The imagination soars!

April Fools? Yes, collectively we are; you can’t read the news and miss that part — and we’re too pissed off to be in a good mood about it, but try to relax a bit and see what pleasures the day brings. If we stumble on to a couple of good laughs today, things may seem brighter tomorrow. And remember how majikal the Fool Card is … step out on intention to make ALL the tomorrows brighter.

Jude

McCAIN TO CAMPAIGN AT BURNING MAN
BurningMan.com
April 1, 2008

Phoenix, AZ — Senator and presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has rocked the political world by announcing his intention to bring his campaign to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert this summer, during the counter-cultural art event known as Burning Man.

“While our opponents would callously ignore them, this proud American believes that even temporary cities deserve the attention of the President of the United States,” said McCain senior staffer Mark Dosenberner. “We are proud that Black Rock City will be a stop on the ‘Straight Talk Express’ tour this summer.”

Citing the compatibility of the Burning Man festival’s “American Dream” art theme with his campaign’s message of a bigger, stronger, somewhat-taller America, McCain hopes to reach out to the thousands of “Burners” who gather in the desert for this 7-day celebration of radical self-expression, radical self-reliance, community and art. “I look forward to engaging with the good folks of Black Rock City, and showing them not just by my words, but through my actions that deep down, despite all our glaringly stark differences, we share the same American Dream. No, seriously,” said McCain, “… what’s so funny? Did I make a joke?”

The candidate’s research team has been briefing the Senator on the ways of the Burning Man participant, ensuring that McCain, renowned for his ability to “cut loose”, will not be perceived as a so-called “newbie” or “yahoo”, which could shatter his chances of garnering votes at this famed desert bacchanalia. McCain’s transportation team is working with his AV crew to retrofit the Senator’s “Straight Talk Express” bus to accommodate the largest state-of-the-art speaker stacks ever seen at Burning Man, and will be parking the bus on the 2:00 radial street with other sound camps. “We’re putting in a set of Technics SL-1200 turntables on the roof, and recruiting the hottest international Republican DJ’s to work the wheels of steel,” said Dosenberner. “The Senator looks forward to personally making grilled cheese sandwiches for revelers ‘rolling in’ from surrounding raves each night, and maybe taking a turn on the decks himself … you should expect some slammin’ big band favorites, should that happen.”

“We’re in this race to win,” said McCain, a decorated war veteran, “and if it takes coming out to a place like Burning Man, and mixing with … these … people … to do it, well … I figure I’ve been held captive in a North Vietnamese POW camp … how bad could this really be?”

McCain’s campaign will be sending an advance team to ensure all necessary security measures are in place prior to the Senator’s arrival. The team will visit the playa in May to thoroughly scour the vast desert expanse, searching for potential security risks. “The playa may be flat, but it certainly isn’t without its dangers … Americans know full well that terrorists are after each and every one of us … and don’t be fooled: expansive, desolate places like the Black Rock Desert are as much a target as our homes, schools, churches, malls and SUV’s. We must stay vigilant at all times,” said Dosenberner.

The Burning Man Project has been fully cooperating with the McCain campaign, ensuring that every possible security step will be taken to ensure the Senator’s safety while in Black Rock City. “Let’s see … I think we’ve got some caution tape around here somewhere,” said Burning Man founder Larry Harvey. “Oh yeah, here it is.” ++

Iraq: Sadr’s Brief Uprising Bloodied Maliki’s Nose (and Bush’s)
Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation
April 1, 2008

As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq’s second city, the big winners are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by U.S. -trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “a bold decision.” He added: “I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.”

That’s true — but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq’s second city, at the heart of Iraq’s oil region, it’s apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he’s the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. “There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will,” he wrote.

The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated U.S. occupying forces. (For details, see my March 10 Nation article, “Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?”) Iran has strong ties to Iraq’s ruling Shiite alliance, which is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Corps, was armed, trained, financed and commanded by Iranians during two decades in exile in Iran. Since then, hedging its bets, Iran built a close relationship to Sadr’s Mahdi Army as well, and Sadr himself has spent most of the time since the start of the U.S. surge last January in Iran*. In addition, Iran has armed and trained a loose collection of fighters that U.S. military commanders call “Special Groups,” paramilitary fighters who’ve kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on American troops. Thus, it was no surprise when Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr Corps and a leading member of ISCI, traveled over the weekend to Iran’s religious capital of Qom to negotiate the truce with Sadr that resulted in a shaky ceasefire in Basra.

That Sadr emerged victorious, and that Iran succeeded in brokering the deal that ended the fighting, is a double defeat for the United States. It is also a catastrophe for Maliki, and there is already speculation that his government could collapse. An ill-timed offensive, poorly prepared and poorly executed, resulted in an embarrassing defeat for Maliki.

Why was the offensive launched in the first place? By all accounts, Maliki, his faction of the ruling Islamic Dawa party, and ISCI intended to crush Sadr in Basra for reasons both political and strategic. Political, because Sadr’s movement is positioned to register a massive win at the polls in Basra and throughout southern Iraq in provincial elections scheduled for October, an electoral defeat that would portend the end of the Dawa-ISCI regime. Strategic, because Basra is the economic engine of all of Iraq. The city controls Iraq’s South Oil Company, which pumps and exports the vast majority of Iraq’s oil — and for years Basra has been under the control of militias loyal to Sadr and to a Sadrist splinter party, the Fadhila (Virtue) party. By controlling the Oil Protection Force, a quasi-military force, and through its own militia, Fadhila is an important player in Basra, too, and Basra’s governor is a Fadhilist. Though Fadhila has had its own clashes with Sadr’s Mahdi Army, Fadhila kept its powder dry in the recent fighting, and there is no doubt that Fadhila is a bitter opponent of the Dawa-ISCI alliance. Last year, Maliki tried to oust the governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Waeli, who defied Maliki and refused to step down.

Maliki, miscalculating badly, flew to Basra last week from Baghdad to personally oversee the assault on Sadr’s forces. In so doing, he staked his prestige on the offensive. If indeed it has failed, Maliki has lost face. That the ceasefire ending the fighting was worked out in Qom, Iran, and mediated by Tehran, is doubly embarrassing for him.

But it’s far worse for the United States. President Bush strongly backed Maliki since the Battle of Basra started. According to Steve Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, the decision to act in Basra was taken jointly between Washington and Baghdad. And U.S. air power and even some ground units supported the floundering Iraqi forces, whose weakness and incompetence were revealed for all to see. After five years of massive U.S. training and equipment, the Iraqi armed forces weren’t even able to take control of Iraq’s second-largest city.

Adding to Bush’s utter humiliation, the Iranian-negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, who brought Sadr’s representatives together with Hadi al-Ameri, the Badr Corps commander and the leading aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the ISCI leader. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a “terrorist” entity by the U.S. government. So President Bush’s “defining moment” is this: the head of an Iranian “terrorist” force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr’s movement and ISCI.

*Sadr’s supporters have repeatedly denied that he’s sought shelter in Iran, and charge that the claim is an attempt by his opponents to undermine his credibility as a fierce nationalist. ++

Why al-Maliki attacked Basra
The three reasons the Iraqi prime minister launched his ill-fated assault on the Sadrists of southern Iraq.
Juan Cole, Salon
April 1, 2008

[open link to read complete article]

Why did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki attack the Mahdi army in Basra last week?

Despite the cease-fire called Sunday by Shiite leader Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the millions-strong Sadr Movement, last week’s battles between the Mahdi army and the Iraqi army revealed the continued weakness and instability of al-Maliki’s government. Al-Maliki went to Basra on Monday, March 24, to oversee the attack on city neighborhoods loyal to al-Sadr. By Friday, the Iraqi minister of defense, Abdul Qadir Jasim, had to admit in a news conference in Basra that the Mahdi army had caught Iraqi security forces off guard. Most Sadrist neighborhoods fought off the government troops with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar fire.

At the same time, the Mahdi army asserted itself in several important cities in the Shiite south, as well as in parts of Baghdad, raising questions of how much of the country the government really controls. Only on Sunday, after the U.S. Air Force bombed some key Mahdi army positions, was the Iraqi army able to move into one of the Sadrist districts of Basra.

By the time the cease-fire was called, al-Maliki had been bloodied after days of ineffective fighting and welcomed a way back from the precipice. Both Iran, which brokered the agreement, and al-Sadr, whose forces acquitted themselves well against the government, were strengthened. As of press time Tuesday morning in Iraq, the truce was holding in Basra, and a curfew had been lifted in Baghdad, though sporadic fighting continued in the capital. Estimates of casualties for the week were 350.

The campaign was a predictable fiasco, another in a long line of strategic failures for the sickly and divided Iraqi government, which survives largely because it is propped up by the United States. So why did al-Maliki do it? With no obvious immediate crisis in Basra that called for such desperate measures, what could have motivated the decision to attack?

Three main motivations present themselves: control of petroleum smuggling, staying in power (including keeping U.S. troops around to ensure it), and the achievement of a Shiite super-province in the south. A southern super-province would spell a soft partition of the country, benefiting Shiites in the long term while cutting Sunnis out of substantial oil revenues, both licit and illicit. But all of the motivations have to do with something President Bush established as a benchmark in January 2007: upcoming provincial elections…

Unnatural Acts
Tina Louise, Arms Against War, UK

We call…but they don’t listen, we shout and they don’t hear - this is how those in power ‘handle’ the problem of those of us who disagree with the war in Iraq; we are ignored down into insignificance and pointlessness

Marches go endlessly nowhere, under-counted by a compliant media… petitions get signed for no reason, no recognition of their significance and the futility, it eats away at the souls of those who would make a stand.

The internet helps us to feel connected, helps to ever so slightly ease the futility with the warming sensation of connecting with like minds that share hope. But sadly, although the internet has enhanced how we communicate and share our distress at the actions of our governments…it is also an invisible action. Perhaps a harm? In that it satiates our need to act, creates a sense of ‘doing’ – yet maybe all it is doing is keeping us busy?

The anti-war/peace movement seems to involve a lot of signing-up to sites, buying merchandise and buying into a whole array of ideas, perhaps beyond that which we are focused on individually.

As an individual who is against the war in Iraq, I don’t believe this is a political stance - it is a moral and sane one. A stance based on the fact that we went to war with lies as intelligence and we know this - so why are we still there? What can justify this continued act that is clearly illegal?

We are splintered by issues unrelated to the reason for our need for activism. Whatever our political allegiance, our religious belief, our colour or our status – surely we are humans, outraged by inhumane actions first?

Becoming ‘active’ is something we as individuals HAVE to consider when faced with acts by our governments - in our names - that we are against. Acts that we fund with our taxes and ALLOW with our in-activism. .

In our individual human hearts we have to know that the invasion of Iraq was wrong and continues to be wrong. We have been lied to and robbed, both of our public money and our reputations as rational human beings.

But ‘activism’ is not natural to many of us, it often appears undignified, dangerous even and it gets bad press. It seems to involve dressing bad and shouting a lot - spending money buying merchandise and taking time off to travel to marches and events.

But it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be hard to be active, it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to cost or take time - I am hoping that after reading this that you will consider individual, daily activism that is free, instant and non-political at Arms Against War (www.armsagainstwar.info).

It offers the opportunity for individuals to empower themselves with a simple act of activism that costs nothing, not even time - just a simple, home-made, white fabric armband is all it takes.

This visible symbol is representative of the wearer’s agreement with the statement “I want an end to the war in Iraq” - nothing more, nothing less. Please consider this show of independent voice & unity for all the reasons that sanity tells you.

Let’s get VISIBLE and at least, as individuals, each take one step in the direction in which we want others to follow. ++

The Dwindling Flame: Tibet, China & The Olympics
Chris McGowan, HuffPo
March 31, 2008

The Olympic flame arrived Monday in Beijing. It burned not gloriously with humanitarian ideals, but sadly under the shadow of shame. It was not fully celebrated by the host city, but hurried along its way with limited participation by the populace. Totalitarian China, so leery of dissent, so ready to crush protest, couldn’t even trust its own citizens to celebrate the event. It wasn’t that the government was afraid of riots; after all, they know how to send in tanks to deal with student protesters. But free speech might have ruined the stage-perfect moment. The world might have seen a Tibetan grandmother or sympathetic Chinese activist unfurling the Tibetan flag! Couldn’t let that happen….

After arriving at the airport, the Olympic torch was rushed along a top-secret route to a somewhat empty Tiananmen Square. There, president Hu Jintao and 5,000 invited guests watched dancers perform and balloons float away in the sky. A banner read: “Transcendence. Integration. Equality.”

It should have read: “Control. Suppression. Censorship.”

China’s own citizens are under house arrest, as are the Tibetan people. The question is how long its corrupt dictatorship can survive. And why it won’t give Tibet its freedom.

Tibet doesn’t belong to China. It belongs to the Tibetans.

And China doesn’t belong to its Communist-party rulers. It belongs to the Chinese.
There will be protests in some form at the Olympics: about Tibet, about the lack of human rights and democracy in China, and about China’s policy on Darfur. What will China do? Will they arrest foreign athletes who wave Tibetan flags? Will they confiscate cell phones and shut down the internet? Will they close down CNN’s offices in Hong Kong? Will they ban foreign journalists from the games, once “trouble” (free speech) begins?

As Sherlock Holmes might have said: the games are afoot… ++

Chinese get one news source on Tibet
The official news agency provides all coverage for print and TV, while censors closely monitor the Web.
Peter Ford, The Christian Science Monitor
April 2, 2008

Beijing - When the Dalai Lama issued what he called “a personal appeal” to his “Chinese brothers and sisters” last week for an end to misunderstandings that have plagued Chinese-Tibetan relations, the spiritual leader’s call went almost entirely unheard by its intended recipients.

Chinese newspapers, TV, and radio – all controlled by the government – ignored his lengthy message. And the few Chinese “Internauts” who found it on websites were uniformly hostile, to judge by comments they posted.

The vast majority of Chinese citizens, relying on state-run media for news and official views, appear to find no fault with their government’s handling of recent Tibetan unrest, presented as an outbreak of murderous mob violence instigated by separatist plotters abroad.

“From start to finish, all the coverage of these incidents was led and managed by the Chinese government,” says one communications scholar who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. “I assume they feel a big relief. It is regarded by a lot of people as a public relations success.”

The government has ensured its control over Tibet-related information in the traditional media by the simple expedient of making sure that only news and commentary from Xinhua, the official news agency, has appeared in papers or on TV.

Not a single case has come to light of any Chinese newspaper using any other source over the last three weeks.

Editors who may have had doubts about Xinhua’s veracity or balance appear to have kept silent. Southern Weekend, for example, an independent-minded weekly popular with intellectuals, has not published articles on Tibet since the unrest began three weeks ago.

“If they see only Xinhua articles and none others being published elsewhere, they will see that as a signal that they should not talk about it,” says a former editor at Southern Weekend, who asked to remain anonymous.

“If they cannot write about it properly, they think it is better not to write,” he adds.

The Internet is harder to control, though censors known here as “Net nannies” have been working overtime to keep awkward Western media reports and other information off the websites accessible to Chinese users.

The Dalai Lama’s appeal, for example, was not easy to find in Beijing. A search on Baidu, China’s largest search engine, for “Dalai Lama appeal Chinese” produced only one link, and that had been blocked by Internet supervisors.

Though a Google search found more sites, most of them were inaccessible to visitors from China behind “The Great Firewall,” as the censorship barrier has been dubbed.

And on the few sites where the Tibetan leader’s statement was readable, he did not appear to have touched many hearts with his plea to be believed when he says he seeks only autonomy for his homeland, not independence as the Chinese authorities insist.

“You are definitely a shameless politician, a gangster, a rascal,” read one comment on powerapple.com, an entertainment website. “Nobody would believe this kind of nonsense,” scoffed an Internaut named Yancong on cmule.com, a source of music and film downloads.

One doubter raised his voice, however, in the comments thread on cmule.com. “The majority of Chinese people have never really known Tibetans’ lifestyle so they can only follow the central government’s opinion,” argued “Qdpan,” who said he himself had lived near a Tibetan region. “People don’t receive enough information so they are doomed to blindly follow.”

Western reporting has leaked onto the Chinese Web through Chinese-language sites hosted abroad, e-mails from friends living in foreign countries, and translations of articles in US and European papers that have escaped censors’ eyes.

Radically different in tone from the Chinese media, and occasionally inaccurate, these reports have sparked a wave of anti-Western resentment among Internet users here posting their opinions on sites such as anti-cnn.com; and the official media has offered detailed accounts of the phenomenon. “The government allows it to happen and makes clever use of it to manipulate it to fit its general policy,” says the communications scholar. “They’ll allow it to happen and see where it goes.”

At the same time, she suggests, officials’ show of support for the critics is self-defeating. “The unfair and unobjective reporting has been in the minority,” she says. The government’s “overreaction only shows their lack of confidence.”

Against the tide of opinion flowing the government’s way, a few voices have been raised. A group of liberal intellectuals issued a 12-point statement calling for an end to what they called “one-sided propaganda” and for negotiations with the Dalai Lama. Their declaration, widely reported abroad, got no further than a few internet sites inside China.

And some skeptics have expressed puzzlement over the government’s policy.
“After reading domestic news these days, I still have the following questions,” wrote A. Dai on his “Desert Sandstorm” blog.

“Why do Tibetans still go to protest in Lhasa” after Beijing has invested so much money in development projects? he wondered. “How could the Dalai Lama, regarded as worthless in China, win the Nobel Peace Prize?”

For now, such questions seem destined to go unanswered for Chinese news consumers. “On issues of high sensitivity, such as Taiwan or Tibet,” says the scholar, “editors know they have to follow Xinhua guidelines.” ++

The Anti-Empire Report: Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

USA 2008: The Great Depression
Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world’s richest country faces economic crisis
David Usborne in New York, Independent UK
Tuesday, 1 April 2008

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.

Emblematic of the downturn until now has been the parades of houses seized in foreclosure all across the country, and myriad families separated from their homes. But now the crisis is starting to hit the country in its gut. Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. As a barometer of the country’s economic health, food stamp usage may not be perfect, but can certainly tell a story.

Michigan has been in its own mini-recession for years as its collapsing industrial base, particularly in the car industry, has cast more and more out of work. Now, one in eight residents of the state is on food stamps, double the level in 2000. “We have seen a dramatic increase in recent years, but we have also seen it climbing more in recent months,” Maureen Sorbet, a spokeswoman for Michigan’s programme, said. “It’s been increasing steadily. Without the programme, some families and kids would be going without.”

But the trend is not restricted to the rust-belt regions. Forty states are reporting increases in applications for the stamps, actually electronic cards that are filled automatically once a month by the government and are swiped by shoppers at the till, in the 12 months from December 2006. At least six states, including Florida, Arizona and Maryland, have had a 10 per cent increase in the past year.

In Rhode Island, the segment of the population on food stamps has risen by 18 per cent in two years. The food programme started 40 years ago when hunger was still a daily fact of life for many Americans. The recent switch from paper coupons to the plastic card system has helped remove some of the stigma associated with the food stamp programme. The card can be swiped as easily as a bank debit card. To qualify for the cards, Americans do not have to be exactly on the breadline. The programme is available to people whose earnings are just above the official poverty line. For Hubert Liepnieks, the card is a lifeline he could never afford to lose. Just out of prison, he sleeps in overnight shelters in Manhattan and uses the card at a Morgan Williams supermarket on East 23rd Street. Yesterday, he and his fiancée, Christine Schultz, who is in a wheelchair, shared one banana and a cup of coffee bought with the 82 cents left on it.

“They should be refilling it in the next three or four days,” Liepnieks says. At times, he admits, he and friends bargain with owners of the smaller grocery shops to trade the value of their cards for cash, although it is illegal. “It can be done. I get $7 back on $10.”

Richard Enright, the manager at this Morgan Williams, says the numbers of customers on food stamps has been steady but he expects that to rise soon. “In this location, it’s still mostly old people and people who have retired from city jobs on stamps,” he says. Food stamp money was designed to supplement what people could buy rather than covering all the costs of a family’s groceries. But the problem now, Mr Enright says, is that soaring prices are squeezing the value of the benefits.

“Last St Patrick’s Day, we were selling Irish soda bread for $1.99. This year it was $2.99. Prices are just spiralling up, because of the cost of gas trucking the food into the city and because of commodity prices. People complain, but I tell them it’s not my fault everything is more expensive.”

The US Department of Agriculture says the cost of feeding a low-income family of four has risen 6 per cent in 12 months. “The amount of food stamps per household hasn’t gone up with the food costs,” says Dayna Ballantyne, who runs a food bank in Des Moines, Iowa. “Our clients are finding they aren’t able to purchase food like they used to.”

And the next monthly job numbers, to be released this Friday, are likely to show 50,000 more jobs were lost nationwide in March, and the unemployment rate is up to perhaps 5 per cent. ++

States Are Hit Hard by Economic Downturn
Many Cutbacks Felt by Most Needy
Keith B. Richburg and Ashley Surdin, WaPo
Monday, March 31, 2008; Front Page

NEW YORK — In Illinois’ Cook County, women in poor neighborhoods no longer have access to free mammograms from two mobile vans testing for breast cancer.

In Michigan, hikers will find about 20 campgrounds closed, and scientists are ending their studies of fish populations in the Great Lakes.

In New Jersey, state workers are being laid off, and at least one town is canceling its traditional Fourth of July fireworks.

And in California’s San Fernando Valley, Everardo Orozco, 53, who has AIDS, exhausted his medical benefits and can no longer afford the drugs that are keeping him alive.

“I don’t know which ones I can afford every month,” Orozco said, explaining how his supply is dwindling and his share of the payments has skyrocketed from $400 to $3,200 per month. He now injects himself with some medications once a day instead of twice — not enough to keep his T-cell count from dropping or to prevent his body from becoming resistant to treatment. And he fears that there will be more cuts.

State budgets have been hit hard by a worsening national economy, including rising costs for energy and health care. In addition, fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis — declining home sales, deflated property values and mounting foreclosures — has caused a slide in states’ anticipated tax receipts. Revenue from property taxes, sales taxes and real estate transfer taxes is affected.

At least half of the nation’s states are facing budget shortfalls, some of them severe, and policymakers in most of the states affected are proposing and passing often-painful measures to trim costs and close the gaps. Spending on schools is being slashed, after-school programs are being curtailed and teachers are being notified of potential layoffs. Health-care assistance is being cut for the elderly, the disabled and the poor. Some government offices, such as motor vehicle department locations, will start closing on weekends, and some state workers are receiving pink slips.

Some analysts worry that the impact is being felt disproportionately by the most needy.

“It’s disappointing, the extent they tend to focus their cuts on the most vulnerable,” said Iris J. Lav, deputy director of the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that monitors state budget issues. “It does appear to disproportionately affect low-income people.”

Unlike the federal government, which can run deficits, almost all states are required by their own laws and constitutions to balance their budgets. Many states are just now hammering out their budgets, so some targeted programs could still be saved in last-minute negotiations.

In most states, talk of raising taxes has become politically perilous, particularly with residents already hurting from falling housing values and a worsening economy.

Only half a dozen states have approved, or are considering, tax increases, including Maryland and Michigan, both of which raised taxes in 2007. In New Jersey, which has a $3 billion deficit, Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) has proposed eliminating or reducing most property tax rebates. In New York, facing a $5 billion shortfall, an idea in the General Assembly for a new income tax for people making more than $1 million per year died last week after the Republican-controlled Senate, and Gov. David A. Paterson (D), strongly opposed it.

Instead of raising taxes, most states with shortfalls are curtailing services, and the effects are already being felt nationwide. Some of the most dramatic cuts are being made in California, Maine and Rhode Island, according to budget experts, with New Jersey not far behind.

California is facing the worst budget crisis, with a $16 billion shortfall, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has proposed a $4.8 billion cut in education services.

About 20,000 teachers, counselors, librarians, nurses and other support staff members have received notice of potential layoffs, according to the state’s Education Department.

Los Angeles, which has the state’s largest school district and a $6 billion budget, faces a $460 million cut for the next school year — the dollar equivalent of shutting down the entire district for two weeks.

In Thousand Oaks, Calif., the Conejo Valley Unified School District, home to 30 schools and 22,000 students, has already closed two elementary schools for next year. Superintendent Mario Contini said layoffs could be next. “School districts have been making cuts every year, and there isn’t much left to cut,” he said.

“We’ve already cut the flesh to the bone, and now we’re removing the skeletal parts. It’s that severe.”

Schwarzenegger has also proposed $650 million in cuts to the Healthy Families Program and Medi-Cal, which together provide health-care services to more than 7 million senior citizens, disabled people and children in the state. Adults under the Medi-Cal program would lose their dental benefits, as well as optometry and psychology services.

The California Department of Public Health is also facing an $11 million cut to AIDS services, with the bulk of that — $7 million — coming from a program that helps low-income Californians, such as Orozco, obtain lifesaving antiretroviral medicine.

Orozco had been paying $400 per month for the 15 daily medications he needs. But when his allotment under the program ran out, his share jumped to $3,200, and he could no longer afford five of the drugs.

“We want to continue to live, you know,” he said. “We need to continue fighting what this is. I’ve been dealing with this since 1983. Every day, it’s a fight. It’s not easy. Either they help us do something to fight this, or we’re going to die.”

A recent 50-state survey by the Associated Press showed that hundreds of thousands of poor children, the disabled and the elderly stand to have their health coverage eliminated as a result of budget cuts, and more than 10 million people would lose access to dental care, specialists and name-brand prescription drugs.

Budget experts said they see a repeat of the pattern that happened during the recession of 2001: States generally cut health services and medical benefits first, because these costs are often rising more rapidly than others, and the savings tend to be immediate.

Subsidies to higher education are also a favored target for budget cuts — mainly because policymakers often believe that universities can find money from other sources, such as private donations or higher tuition.

Budgets for parks and recreation, and for natural resources and science, also stand to take a hit.

In cash-strapped Michigan, dealing with the struggles of the automobile industry, the Department of Natural Resources is closing 20 campgrounds, including the highly popular and rustic Pinney Bridge State Forest Campground, considered one of the most beautiful in the Lower Peninsula. The department also plans to end its studies of fish populations in the Great Lakes, and 14 conservation officials are being laid off.

Hunters in Michigan will also find their license fees increased.

In Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) has proposed ending a popular controlled pheasant-hunting program at state sites. Outraged hunters have said that among those affected will be the young and the handicapped, who have access to special hunts under the state program. ++

Surdin reported from Los Angeles. Staff writer Kari Lydersen in Chicago contributed to this report.

US: Returning veterans face mounting joblessness and low wages
Alex Lantier, WSWS
29 March 2008

On March 25, the Wall Street Journal published a brief summary of a US Veterans Affairs Department study on discharged veterans’ employment and wage prospects. The report, not yet publicly released and largely blacked out in the broader US media, paints a devastating picture of surging unemployment and low wages for returning veterans.

It found that the percentage of veterans not in the labor force—due to unemployment, having returned to school for further training, or having given up looking for work—had more than doubled between 2000 and 2005, jumping from 10 to 23 percent. Veterans aged 20-24 had an unemployment rate of 12 percent, 50 percent larger than the overall US unemployment rate for adults aged 20-24, which stands at 8 percent. On March 27, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, writing on the same report, noted that 18 percent of veterans reported being unemployed.

Many employed veterans earn salaries leaving them at constant risk of financial hardship. Twenty-five percent reported earning less than $21,840 a year. Half of those aged 20-24 earned less than $25,000 a year.

The report also exposed one of most commonly promoted claims of military recruiters: that recruits will gain valuable gain job skills for future civilian life. The Journal wrote: “The report found that most of the returning veterans were unable to find civilian jobs that matched their previous military occupations. The only exceptions were the veterans working for private security firms such as Blackwater or in the maintenance and repair fields.”

The Journal added: “The Veterans Affairs Department offers educational-assistance programs for young veterans, but the report said the initiatives had little impact on the employment status or salaries of the former military personnel.”

Several other sources noted difficulties facing veterans in looking for civilian jobs. Military.com, the veterans’ section of the online recruitment web site Monster.com, released a survey of veteran jobseekers and civilian employers in November 2007. The survey found that 81 percent of discharged veterans did not “feel fully prepared for the process of entering the job market,” with 71 percent unsure of how to negotiate salary and benefits and 76 percent reporting “an inability to effectively translate their military skills into civilian terms.”

The way these facts came to public attention—through the leaking of an internal report, which then went broadly ignored in the mainstream press—speaks volumes about the state of American political life and class relations.

As US fatalities reached 4,000 this past week, the death toll in the war and occupation of Iraq received a certain amount of coverage in the print and broadcast media. The number of wounded soldiers, however, is controversial and rarely discussed. And the difficulties facing returning veterans—the lack of jobs, financial insecurity, denial of health care, and homelessness—also receive little press coverage.

The problems of returning veterans are closely tied to the deteriorating situation of the broader American working class. They follow inevitably from the US military’s thrusting often traumatized veterans into a society marked by rising unemployment, deindustrialization, the destruction of high-paying jobs, and increasingly difficult access to health care, education, and housing.

As Ricky Singh of Black Veterans for Social Justice told OneWorld news service in November 2007, “What typically happens to young adults who go into the military at 17 or 18, when they return home, the same kind of economic conditions that forced them towards the military still exist or have gotten worse.”

The career advice offered to veterans in a February 24, 2008, posting on VeteransToday.com provides a revealing picture of the US job market. It notes that in “farming, production, and transportation—you’re looking at slow or negative growth and poor job availability.” Another major sector that VeteransToday.com encourages veterans to consider—construction—is entering recession due to the bursting of the mortgage and real estate bubbles and the crisis on Wall Street.

Observing that the US economy is “becoming more technology-oriented and less dependent on agriculture and manufacturing,” VeteransToday.com recommends the following jobs as “the place to start”: software engineer, veterinarian, financial analyst, dental hygienist, nurse, college professor, doctor, and lawyer. However, the extensive training required for these jobs makes them difficult options for returning veterans, many of whom joined the armed forces upon graduating from high school. The drying up of student loans, amid the general tightening of US credit markets, aggravates the problem.

Among service jobs, VeteransToday.com noted, “Retail sales, wait staff, and cashier jobs are numerous, but each carries a wince-inducing median salary of between $14,000 and $20,000 per year. Customer service offers the fourth most job openings for new workers, with a substantially better median salary of just over $28,000.”

The crisis of veterans’ health care has surfaced several times to the media’s attention, especially after the March 2007 revelation of gross neglect of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In November 2007, the Boston Globe reported that, according to estimates by Physicians for Social Responsibility and staff physicians at the Veterans Affairs Department, the total cost of treating veterans would top $650 billion.

Several factors account for this figure. The development of body armor and rapid battlefield medical evacuation has greatly increased the number of severely wounded soldiers who survive their injuries, pushing the wounded-to-killed ratio to over 8 to 1, from 2 to 1 during World War II. The Globe noted that the percentage of amputees was the highest since the US Civil War. Moreover, the percentage of veterans afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder (shell shock) is currently expected to reach between 30 and 36 percent of a total population of 1.5 million veterans of the current wars—an astounding half a million patients.

Though many wounded and disabled veterans are being denied treatment, the resulting flood of patients is overwhelming the Veterans Affairs Department. According to a January 2008 study by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America association, the number of outstanding claims by veterans for treatment rose from 254,000 to 378,000 between 2003 and 2006, with the average waiting time before a veteran receives treatment rising to 183 days.

This situation has provoked massive resentment among veterans. It forced the February 28 resignation of Veterans Affairs Undersecretary for Benefits Daniel Cooper, after a video surfaced in which Cooper, a member of the Christian Embassy missionary group, stated that Bible study was more important than his professional duties. In the video, Cooper said: “It’s not really about carving out time, it really is a matter of saying what is important. And since that’s more important than doing the job—the job’s going to be there, whether I’m there or not.”

CBS News reported on the epidemic of veteran suicides on March 20. Citing internal Veterans Affairs reports, CBS found that the number of suicide attempts by recently treated VA patients almost doubled, from 462 in 2000 to 790 in 2007. The total number of VA patients who succeeded in committing suicide was 1,403 in 2001 and 1,784 in 2005.

Large numbers of veterans are homeless. The Department of Veterans Affairs web page states, in its Overview of Homeless: “About 154,000 veterans (male and female) are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. Many other veterans are considered near homeless or at risk because of their poverty, lack of support from family and friends, and dismal living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing.”

The Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonprofit organization quoted by the Boston Globe, gave higher estimates: “194,254 out of 744,313 homeless people on any given night [nationwide] are veterans.” The group had based its calculations on information from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the US Census Bureau. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves