U.S. existing home sales fall 0.4 percent
Median home price jumps 11 percent to $191,000
Updated: 10:49 a.m. ET March 23, 2005
WASHINGTON - Sales of existing U.S. homes fell 0.4 percent in February, while home prices rose at double-digit rates, a trade association report showed Wednesday.
Sales of previously owned homes declined to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.79 million units last month, the National Association of Realtors said. That figure includes both single-family homes and condominiums.
Single-family home sales slid 0.3 percent in February to a 5.94 million unit rate from a 5.96 million unit pace in January. Condo sales dropped 1.2 percent to an 848,000 unit rate from an 858,000 unit pace in January.
Analysts had expected sales to fall to a 6.70 million unit rate from January’s upwardly revised 6.82 million clip.
The national median home price jumped 11.0 percent to $191,000 from the same month a year earlier, the NAR report showed.
David Lereah, the group’s chief economist, said the housing market appeared to be in the early stages of settling down.
“Home sales were surging at unprecedented levels for most of last year,” he said. “The cooling we expect in sales this year means we’ll be transitioning from a white-hot housing market into a very strong market that still favors home sellers, but should become more balanced as the year progresses.”
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
The death of my mother: Marion Mulligan
Thursday, February 03, 2005
The death of my mother: Marion Mulligan
(It’s amazing how time prepares us for the future –or better yet trains us for what is ahead of us. We are well versed in the worth of a disabled life –and the controversy surrounding death of a loved one).
I remember clearly being in my mothers Hospital emergency room in around 1990. She was hooked up to a ventilator and all those of tubes. It seemed straightly quite and peaceful –I was waiting for my brother and sister to come to the hospital. I remember the doctors talking about the curled arch of my mother’s foot –they said this was the result of my mother’s increasing brain damage. Iit definitely was curled. She had a severe stroke. She smoked and drank to the bitter end.
I also remember when I was a child of about 8 or 9 years old. My father died of a heart attack at the young age of 44 –I was seven when he died. My mother would go out drinking with a married man friend a few years later after my dads death –she’d come home to the low income inner city project drunk all the time. Many times she’d end up in a fight with this man –there would be huge drunken fight in his car sitting outside the house. The neighbors got quite used to these enormous screaming fights. Humorously, they found out at times there would be ripped up bills (Money) and broken jewelry on the ground where the car was the night before –and my mother would send out her kids to pick up the pieces. All the adults in our part of the project had boyfriends and girlfriends –many who came in and out of their houses all the time. I mean, there was family fights all the time –it was always funny watching your neighbor in a funny fight with a spouse or friend….
More time than I care to think about, she’d get into the house still in an enormous rage. She’d wake us up going into each of our rooms telling us we were no good son of a bitches and lazy –we’d never amount to anything –and we would hear all the time that “we’d be sorry when she was dead and gone”. She’d go on a tirade for about an hour until her rage was spent. She’d hit us at time, slap our faces and heads, but we quickly leant to dodge her drunken blows.
Where does it come from when her children can look at this child abuse in a humorous manner? The next morning we would talk to each other about her visits –and our management of her outburst, screaming in our rooms –and we’d think it was extremely funny when one of us got stuck in a corner of the room. What we’d learnt later was the trick to say something funny to my mother, make fun of the situation –and if you got her laughing, her rage would be over for everyone. That humor ended up burying a lot in all of us kids–and it was very destructive to each of us.
My mother was still living in that project in 1985. The boyfriend had turned into a long term partner –but he died a few years earlier. My wife and I visited her often. We recognized she was floundering in that project –but I told my wife I was not going to rescue her. We’d adopted my daughter in 1986–talk about what a miracle can do to you. I worried about what my mother would think about a Korean adoption being she was so proud of being Irish –but she’d came from an international project community. I started to see something different in my mother eyes as I brought my daughter to my mothers project apartment –or was it a change in me. I’d asked her to come live up north with us, we’d find you an apartment –amazingly she agreed.
I’d thought I’d never leave my daughter alone with my mother. But I’d notice after a few months she was drinking less –and was more responsible when she was drinking. She made a few friends in the apartment –and she was having a good time. My daughter and my mother absolutely lit each other up when they were together. We began leaving my daughter alone with my mother for a short period –then longer periods –she always wanted to take care of Kristie. I began watching my daughter’s relationship with my mother –and I knew that Kristie was delighted with staying with my mother. A wonderful special relationship developed between them –and that’s how I began of forgive my mother for her past problems. In the end, my feeling about my mother was transformed –I could only forgive her through the love I’d seen in my daughter’s eyes for my mother. How truly fortunate I was in those last two years!
So one morning I am talking care of my daughter when I got a phone call from one of my mother’s friends. She’d told me my mother had a head ache, it had gotten worst –now she was becoming unresponsive and she was making noises while breathing. I’d told them to call the ambulance –I'll be right down with my daughter. When I got down there I’d notice the police car –I’d went up to her apartment. She was sitting on the couch –she was making terrible noise while breathing –the officer said the ambulance is right around the corner. I became so frighten to be near her –but I’d grabbed her hand and she squeezed it. She couldn’t talk, but I knew she kept trying to regain hold of my hand. They took her to the local hospital –then up to Dartmouth hospital.
Her primary doctor told us she had a huge stroke in her head. It was right over her motor control; he said we’d had a horrible decision ahead of us. He’d told us in a meeting with my brother and sister that he’d thought she wouldn’t survive the next few days –and he’d would be a vegetable if she did survive. He said she would never be able to feed herself again. He’d told us we could withhold medical care from her –and she would quickly die. We’d quickly agreed that my mother repetively talked about wanting to die if she became not able to take care of herself. We agreed to pull the plug on my mother.
We were by ourselves, my brother and sister; I said you know we got to get another’s doctors opinion on this. I just wanted another doctor’s validation of the prognosis. Before long we were we in a meeting with both these doctors. The new doctor didn’t have such a stark opinion as the first one, but he said the damage was severe. It seemed the first doctor was a little perturbed with second one’s opinion, which unnerved me. We still agreed to pull the plug.
The doctor said they would remove the meds intended to reduce her brain swelling. He said the brain would swell, would begin protruding out of the area by her spine – then he would give her increasingly amounts of morphine –and the swelling would stop her breathing and heart beat.
It took about two days before her brain was swelled enough before they would risk talking her off the ventilator. I remember being in her room by myself –I commanded my mother to move her right toe. It made a movement to my horror. I never asked her to do that again. I rationalized it was a coincidence –an involuntary movement done at the right time.
The doctor said he was ready to give my mother a respiratory test. My guess the doctor was engineering my mothers death for us –making sure when we got in the room for the final time –he’d remove my mother from the respirator in front of us –she’d stop breathing immediately and her heart beat would stop in a few minutes for us.
The doctor came back saying my mother was ready for us. We got in there –they quickly remove my mother from the respirator –all the other line had been removed.My younger brother began having second thoughts –he said he thought she was suffocating, he couldn’t take it. The doctor calmly told him your mother can’t feel anything at all. My brother regained control of himself –and we all waited for our mother's heart to stop.
We were all crying!
It was so ugly her death –it was so horrible those last few days. I clearly remember the uncertainties that kept popping up.We all have no regrets for what we did.Thanks,mike mulliganHinsdale, Nh
The death of my mother: Marion Mulligan
(It’s amazing how time prepares us for the future –or better yet trains us for what is ahead of us. We are well versed in the worth of a disabled life –and the controversy surrounding death of a loved one).
I remember clearly being in my mothers Hospital emergency room in around 1990. She was hooked up to a ventilator and all those of tubes. It seemed straightly quite and peaceful –I was waiting for my brother and sister to come to the hospital. I remember the doctors talking about the curled arch of my mother’s foot –they said this was the result of my mother’s increasing brain damage. Iit definitely was curled. She had a severe stroke. She smoked and drank to the bitter end.
I also remember when I was a child of about 8 or 9 years old. My father died of a heart attack at the young age of 44 –I was seven when he died. My mother would go out drinking with a married man friend a few years later after my dads death –she’d come home to the low income inner city project drunk all the time. Many times she’d end up in a fight with this man –there would be huge drunken fight in his car sitting outside the house. The neighbors got quite used to these enormous screaming fights. Humorously, they found out at times there would be ripped up bills (Money) and broken jewelry on the ground where the car was the night before –and my mother would send out her kids to pick up the pieces. All the adults in our part of the project had boyfriends and girlfriends –many who came in and out of their houses all the time. I mean, there was family fights all the time –it was always funny watching your neighbor in a funny fight with a spouse or friend….
More time than I care to think about, she’d get into the house still in an enormous rage. She’d wake us up going into each of our rooms telling us we were no good son of a bitches and lazy –we’d never amount to anything –and we would hear all the time that “we’d be sorry when she was dead and gone”. She’d go on a tirade for about an hour until her rage was spent. She’d hit us at time, slap our faces and heads, but we quickly leant to dodge her drunken blows.
Where does it come from when her children can look at this child abuse in a humorous manner? The next morning we would talk to each other about her visits –and our management of her outburst, screaming in our rooms –and we’d think it was extremely funny when one of us got stuck in a corner of the room. What we’d learnt later was the trick to say something funny to my mother, make fun of the situation –and if you got her laughing, her rage would be over for everyone. That humor ended up burying a lot in all of us kids–and it was very destructive to each of us.
My mother was still living in that project in 1985. The boyfriend had turned into a long term partner –but he died a few years earlier. My wife and I visited her often. We recognized she was floundering in that project –but I told my wife I was not going to rescue her. We’d adopted my daughter in 1986–talk about what a miracle can do to you. I worried about what my mother would think about a Korean adoption being she was so proud of being Irish –but she’d came from an international project community. I started to see something different in my mother eyes as I brought my daughter to my mothers project apartment –or was it a change in me. I’d asked her to come live up north with us, we’d find you an apartment –amazingly she agreed.
I’d thought I’d never leave my daughter alone with my mother. But I’d notice after a few months she was drinking less –and was more responsible when she was drinking. She made a few friends in the apartment –and she was having a good time. My daughter and my mother absolutely lit each other up when they were together. We began leaving my daughter alone with my mother for a short period –then longer periods –she always wanted to take care of Kristie. I began watching my daughter’s relationship with my mother –and I knew that Kristie was delighted with staying with my mother. A wonderful special relationship developed between them –and that’s how I began of forgive my mother for her past problems. In the end, my feeling about my mother was transformed –I could only forgive her through the love I’d seen in my daughter’s eyes for my mother. How truly fortunate I was in those last two years!
So one morning I am talking care of my daughter when I got a phone call from one of my mother’s friends. She’d told me my mother had a head ache, it had gotten worst –now she was becoming unresponsive and she was making noises while breathing. I’d told them to call the ambulance –I'll be right down with my daughter. When I got down there I’d notice the police car –I’d went up to her apartment. She was sitting on the couch –she was making terrible noise while breathing –the officer said the ambulance is right around the corner. I became so frighten to be near her –but I’d grabbed her hand and she squeezed it. She couldn’t talk, but I knew she kept trying to regain hold of my hand. They took her to the local hospital –then up to Dartmouth hospital.
Her primary doctor told us she had a huge stroke in her head. It was right over her motor control; he said we’d had a horrible decision ahead of us. He’d told us in a meeting with my brother and sister that he’d thought she wouldn’t survive the next few days –and he’d would be a vegetable if she did survive. He said she would never be able to feed herself again. He’d told us we could withhold medical care from her –and she would quickly die. We’d quickly agreed that my mother repetively talked about wanting to die if she became not able to take care of herself. We agreed to pull the plug on my mother.
We were by ourselves, my brother and sister; I said you know we got to get another’s doctors opinion on this. I just wanted another doctor’s validation of the prognosis. Before long we were we in a meeting with both these doctors. The new doctor didn’t have such a stark opinion as the first one, but he said the damage was severe. It seemed the first doctor was a little perturbed with second one’s opinion, which unnerved me. We still agreed to pull the plug.
The doctor said they would remove the meds intended to reduce her brain swelling. He said the brain would swell, would begin protruding out of the area by her spine – then he would give her increasingly amounts of morphine –and the swelling would stop her breathing and heart beat.
It took about two days before her brain was swelled enough before they would risk talking her off the ventilator. I remember being in her room by myself –I commanded my mother to move her right toe. It made a movement to my horror. I never asked her to do that again. I rationalized it was a coincidence –an involuntary movement done at the right time.
The doctor said he was ready to give my mother a respiratory test. My guess the doctor was engineering my mothers death for us –making sure when we got in the room for the final time –he’d remove my mother from the respirator in front of us –she’d stop breathing immediately and her heart beat would stop in a few minutes for us.
The doctor came back saying my mother was ready for us. We got in there –they quickly remove my mother from the respirator –all the other line had been removed.My younger brother began having second thoughts –he said he thought she was suffocating, he couldn’t take it. The doctor calmly told him your mother can’t feel anything at all. My brother regained control of himself –and we all waited for our mother's heart to stop.
We were all crying!
It was so ugly her death –it was so horrible those last few days. I clearly remember the uncertainties that kept popping up.We all have no regrets for what we did.Thanks,mike mulliganHinsdale, Nh
Sunday, March 20, 2005
The Enronization of Terri Schiavo's life
“Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, stepped into a nearly empty chamber at 6:15 last night and said Congress ''has been working nonstop over the last three days to do its part to uphold human dignity and affirm a culture of life."”
"Republicans defined their extraordinary efforts in the context of the sanctity of life: "A society is judged by the way that it treats its most vulnerable citizens," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.
"No person in America should be deprived of the right to life without due process of law and Terri Schiavo is no different," Pence said."
So you see where this has gone with the religionist conservatives –the hypocrisy of this is startling. I could make the case its cheep conservative political PR –the political religionist conservative don’t care one wit about the lives of the disabled. The just want a cheap PR message up and running, saying they are for human dignity for the least of us. But, how can they tolerate the current condition of the mentally disabled on a national level, one that even questions a national character with charging America with Crimes Against Humanity.
You get that, they want a public image that they care for the dignity of the least of us –while the undercurrents of the results of their politics leads to the suffering and deaths of 10,000’s of the disabled.
What about the democrats –they are so wrapped up in the politics of the human service establishment getting votes from these liberals, who end up hiding more public information on the current state of the system –they become a non-participant in this controversy because they have observed the horrors of the system –because they themselves had to withhold the truth of the system from the public if they wanted to get their friends elected.
What a national disgrace both these political parties have become!!!!!!!!.
Thanks,
mike mulligan
"Republicans defined their extraordinary efforts in the context of the sanctity of life: "A society is judged by the way that it treats its most vulnerable citizens," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.
"No person in America should be deprived of the right to life without due process of law and Terri Schiavo is no different," Pence said."
So you see where this has gone with the religionist conservatives –the hypocrisy of this is startling. I could make the case its cheep conservative political PR –the political religionist conservative don’t care one wit about the lives of the disabled. The just want a cheap PR message up and running, saying they are for human dignity for the least of us. But, how can they tolerate the current condition of the mentally disabled on a national level, one that even questions a national character with charging America with Crimes Against Humanity.
You get that, they want a public image that they care for the dignity of the least of us –while the undercurrents of the results of their politics leads to the suffering and deaths of 10,000’s of the disabled.
What about the democrats –they are so wrapped up in the politics of the human service establishment getting votes from these liberals, who end up hiding more public information on the current state of the system –they become a non-participant in this controversy because they have observed the horrors of the system –because they themselves had to withhold the truth of the system from the public if they wanted to get their friends elected.
What a national disgrace both these political parties have become!!!!!!!!.
Thanks,
mike mulligan
Reforming UN and barring USA from Human Rights Commission
The USA should be bared from participating in the UN Human Rights Commission because we are performing “Crimes Against Humanity (CAH)” on our mentally disabled population –and in other disadvantaged population. I could also make the case that we are treating the black population with CAH, with their educational, economic and medical racial differances too.
So how much different are we than Cuba, Libya and Sudan in how we treat and hide the appalling condition of our mentally disabled and children of turmoil –foster care? Fundamentally, in Cuba, Libya and Sudan, the tyrant degrades the dignity of their population so as to maintain power –while in the USA we degrade the dignity of innocence human beings because of political budgetary consideration. In Syria, a tyrant maintains political control of a country by the threat and use of terrorism –while in the USA, the public inflicts Crimes Against Humanity on the weak, poor and disabled through an immoral economic disparity and massive lack of resources –while giving explosive tax breaks to the rich.
So, in the Sudan you got a few tyrants abusing all of the population –while in the USA you got the rich majority stealing opportunity and food from the disabled -instead of paying their fair share of taxes.
I don’t know who is worst?
Thanks,
mike
March 20, 2005
Annan Will Recommend Sweeping Reforms for the U.N.
By WARREN HOGE
NITED NATIONS, March 20 - Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed today sweeping reforms of the United Nations, recommending the expansion of the Security Council to reflect modern realities of global power and need, the restructuring of the discredited Human Rights Commission to keep rights violators from becoming members, and the adoption of a definition of terror that would end justifying it as an act of national resistance….
…The measures were outlined in a 63-page report from Mr. Annan titled "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all" that was released today at the United Nations after details from drafts had emerged this weekend in The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.
….Mr. Annan said the Human Rights Commission, which in recent years has included Cuba, Libya and Sudan among its members, had been undermined by allowing participation by countries whose purpose was "not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others. As a result," he said, "a credibility deficit has developed, which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole."
…He recommended replacing the 53-nation Human Rights Commission with a smaller Human Rights Council, whose members would not be chosen by regional groups as is now the case but by a two-thirds vote of the 191-nation General Assembly. "Those elected," he said, "should undertake to abide by the highest human rights standards."
Copyright 2005Help Back to Top
So how much different are we than Cuba, Libya and Sudan in how we treat and hide the appalling condition of our mentally disabled and children of turmoil –foster care? Fundamentally, in Cuba, Libya and Sudan, the tyrant degrades the dignity of their population so as to maintain power –while in the USA we degrade the dignity of innocence human beings because of political budgetary consideration. In Syria, a tyrant maintains political control of a country by the threat and use of terrorism –while in the USA, the public inflicts Crimes Against Humanity on the weak, poor and disabled through an immoral economic disparity and massive lack of resources –while giving explosive tax breaks to the rich.
So, in the Sudan you got a few tyrants abusing all of the population –while in the USA you got the rich majority stealing opportunity and food from the disabled -instead of paying their fair share of taxes.
I don’t know who is worst?
Thanks,
mike
March 20, 2005
Annan Will Recommend Sweeping Reforms for the U.N.
By WARREN HOGE
NITED NATIONS, March 20 - Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed today sweeping reforms of the United Nations, recommending the expansion of the Security Council to reflect modern realities of global power and need, the restructuring of the discredited Human Rights Commission to keep rights violators from becoming members, and the adoption of a definition of terror that would end justifying it as an act of national resistance….
…The measures were outlined in a 63-page report from Mr. Annan titled "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all" that was released today at the United Nations after details from drafts had emerged this weekend in The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.
….Mr. Annan said the Human Rights Commission, which in recent years has included Cuba, Libya and Sudan among its members, had been undermined by allowing participation by countries whose purpose was "not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others. As a result," he said, "a credibility deficit has developed, which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole."
…He recommended replacing the 53-nation Human Rights Commission with a smaller Human Rights Council, whose members would not be chosen by regional groups as is now the case but by a two-thirds vote of the 191-nation General Assembly. "Those elected," he said, "should undertake to abide by the highest human rights standards."
Copyright 2005Help Back to Top
Institutionalized IED's at Vermont Yankee
So if the VY rad dose was outage related (result of a component change) – say ending May 4 2004 …then the state fence dose should be (4months/12) 25% higher, thus and additional 6.23 mrem ending in 31.1mrem for a full effective year. We do remember post 2004 outage; there was NRC talk about all of the contamination incidences coming out of the outage. Sure sounds like bad fuel –but it could be because of the scope of the outage.
I talked about my theory in the past –about being in the construction phase of the first set of new nuclear power plants with a catastrophe at the first generation (old) leading to the political destruction of the new plants.
Of course, we could be talking about a rather minor fuel melt, which would be bad enough. But in the mind's eyes of the public, the accident would uncover massive collusion and corruption within the NRC and the nuclear industry. Much like in TMI, it was the uncovering of the massive institutional latent failures that leveraged the magnitude of the accident in the public's eyes and media –with the regulatory and utilities being extraordinarily foolish, arrogant and blind in not perceiving that they were shooting themselves in the foot prior to the TMI accident.
So, the planetary catastrophic scenario would go like this –I do mean the public relation fallout would impact the nuclear industry outside the USA. VY would have a partial fuel melt, which lead to a rather small dose being released across the fence boundary. There might have been some fumbling in the control room –with the avalanche starting from a component that should have been fixed. It would be nice if there was some fumbling in the off site declaration –with much public panicking –and troubles getting the buses to the schools. You understand the power uprate, relicencing and all the rest of the historical regulatory problems at the plant would feed into the public and media frenzy.
During the unprecedented scrutiny, including international condemnation, it came out, as in the current issues of VY that the fence reading of the state and VY were indicating grossly different doses–with VY reading being underreported for emergency planning purposes. So in this unprecedented media storm, all the rest of the plants radiation reporting and detection processes would come under close scrutiny. If it came to be that more plants than VY have intentionally created this illusionary reporting of public doses –then our national and international political consequences would be astronomical.
It is my understand that many good-hearted people have spent a lifetime in preparing for the next nuclear generation –we'd just wasted their efforts. I might add, in our coming energy shortages and global warming –the inability to use nuclear power may raise havoc with our economy, and I consider this a severe national security issue.
We think this model of latent institutional breakdowns is systemic throughout the industry, as in the Vermont Yankee fence dose controversy –it has been a policy of our politician's and NRC to accept widespread nuclear power plant corruption in the name of many flawed safety philosophies of the industry. So a moderate accident at any time in these nuclear power plants have the potential to set off a public, bureaucratic and political avalanche with uncovering accepted corruption as these plants –with the snowball that started it being insignificant to the unimagined damaged cause by the avalanche. Didn't we see that in Davis Besse –were the massive cultural failure of the industry and the utility led to the stupid hole in the head.
We think in the current system there had been planted many institutional political and regulatory IEDS laying under/near the roadsides; with a moderate trigger accident necessary to create a national public firestorm with uncovering widespread normalized corruption.
It seems to us almost like self-sabotage for the next nuclear generation –and for all of us in the up coming energy crisis.
…a lot of leakers would prematurely fill up the fuel pool leading to a shutdown before 2007?
Thanks,
mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
I talked about my theory in the past –about being in the construction phase of the first set of new nuclear power plants with a catastrophe at the first generation (old) leading to the political destruction of the new plants.
Of course, we could be talking about a rather minor fuel melt, which would be bad enough. But in the mind's eyes of the public, the accident would uncover massive collusion and corruption within the NRC and the nuclear industry. Much like in TMI, it was the uncovering of the massive institutional latent failures that leveraged the magnitude of the accident in the public's eyes and media –with the regulatory and utilities being extraordinarily foolish, arrogant and blind in not perceiving that they were shooting themselves in the foot prior to the TMI accident.
So, the planetary catastrophic scenario would go like this –I do mean the public relation fallout would impact the nuclear industry outside the USA. VY would have a partial fuel melt, which lead to a rather small dose being released across the fence boundary. There might have been some fumbling in the control room –with the avalanche starting from a component that should have been fixed. It would be nice if there was some fumbling in the off site declaration –with much public panicking –and troubles getting the buses to the schools. You understand the power uprate, relicencing and all the rest of the historical regulatory problems at the plant would feed into the public and media frenzy.
During the unprecedented scrutiny, including international condemnation, it came out, as in the current issues of VY that the fence reading of the state and VY were indicating grossly different doses–with VY reading being underreported for emergency planning purposes. So in this unprecedented media storm, all the rest of the plants radiation reporting and detection processes would come under close scrutiny. If it came to be that more plants than VY have intentionally created this illusionary reporting of public doses –then our national and international political consequences would be astronomical.
It is my understand that many good-hearted people have spent a lifetime in preparing for the next nuclear generation –we'd just wasted their efforts. I might add, in our coming energy shortages and global warming –the inability to use nuclear power may raise havoc with our economy, and I consider this a severe national security issue.
We think this model of latent institutional breakdowns is systemic throughout the industry, as in the Vermont Yankee fence dose controversy –it has been a policy of our politician's and NRC to accept widespread nuclear power plant corruption in the name of many flawed safety philosophies of the industry. So a moderate accident at any time in these nuclear power plants have the potential to set off a public, bureaucratic and political avalanche with uncovering accepted corruption as these plants –with the snowball that started it being insignificant to the unimagined damaged cause by the avalanche. Didn't we see that in Davis Besse –were the massive cultural failure of the industry and the utility led to the stupid hole in the head.
We think in the current system there had been planted many institutional political and regulatory IEDS laying under/near the roadsides; with a moderate trigger accident necessary to create a national public firestorm with uncovering widespread normalized corruption.
It seems to us almost like self-sabotage for the next nuclear generation –and for all of us in the up coming energy crisis.
…a lot of leakers would prematurely fill up the fuel pool leading to a shutdown before 2007?
Thanks,
mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
Thursday, March 17, 2005
CHINA, RUSSIA TO 'REHEARSE INVASION OF TAIWAN'
REPORT: CHINA, RUSSIA TO 'REHEARSE INVASION OF TAIWAN'Thu Mar 17 2005 11:02:09 ET
MOSCOW, March 17. (RIA Novosti)-Yesterday, Chief of the Russian General Staff Yury Baluyevsky left for China to settle a scandal over the first Russian-Chinese military exercise, Commonwealth-2005, which is due to be held this fall off the Yellow Sea coast, writes Kommersant.
The initial plans were to practice operational teamwork in combating terrorism during the exercise. However, Beijing, skillfully changing the format of the exercise, has tried to re-orient the two countries' armies to practicing an invasion of Taiwan.
The choice of where the exercise will take place became a stumbling block. The Russian military selected the Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region, basing their choice on the area's problematic nature due to Uigur separatists and its proximity to Central Asia, which has become an arena in the fight against international terrorism. However, Beijing flatly rejected the proposal. Instead, it suggested the Zhejiang province near Taiwan.
A joint exercise in this area would look too provocative and trigger a strong reaction not only from Taiwan but also America and Japan, which recently included the island in the zone of their common strategic interests.
Beijing is trying to use Russia as an additional lever of pressure on the disobedient island to show it that its policy is also causing dissatisfaction in Russia, from which the Taiwanese are expecting assistance in their dialogue with Beijing and bid to join the WTO and the UN.
On the Russian military's insistence, the exercise was shifted north to the Shangdong peninsula. However, the Chinese are trying to change the format of the exercise with proposals to enlarge the contingents with Marines and Pacific Fleet warships. Marine landings to seize the area will be practiced during the "antiterrorist" exercise.
Russia's agreement to hold the exercise will inevitably cause a furor in America, Japan and Taiwan. But a refusal will spoil relations with China, which three months ago courteously agreed to Russia's proposal to hold an exercise.
Developing...
MOSCOW, March 17. (RIA Novosti)-Yesterday, Chief of the Russian General Staff Yury Baluyevsky left for China to settle a scandal over the first Russian-Chinese military exercise, Commonwealth-2005, which is due to be held this fall off the Yellow Sea coast, writes Kommersant.
The initial plans were to practice operational teamwork in combating terrorism during the exercise. However, Beijing, skillfully changing the format of the exercise, has tried to re-orient the two countries' armies to practicing an invasion of Taiwan.
The choice of where the exercise will take place became a stumbling block. The Russian military selected the Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region, basing their choice on the area's problematic nature due to Uigur separatists and its proximity to Central Asia, which has become an arena in the fight against international terrorism. However, Beijing flatly rejected the proposal. Instead, it suggested the Zhejiang province near Taiwan.
A joint exercise in this area would look too provocative and trigger a strong reaction not only from Taiwan but also America and Japan, which recently included the island in the zone of their common strategic interests.
Beijing is trying to use Russia as an additional lever of pressure on the disobedient island to show it that its policy is also causing dissatisfaction in Russia, from which the Taiwanese are expecting assistance in their dialogue with Beijing and bid to join the WTO and the UN.
On the Russian military's insistence, the exercise was shifted north to the Shangdong peninsula. However, the Chinese are trying to change the format of the exercise with proposals to enlarge the contingents with Marines and Pacific Fleet warships. Marine landings to seize the area will be practiced during the "antiterrorist" exercise.
Russia's agreement to hold the exercise will inevitably cause a furor in America, Japan and Taiwan. But a refusal will spoil relations with China, which three months ago courteously agreed to Russia's proposal to hold an exercise.
Developing...
Eugenics: Harvard Study Leads to Legislation
Harvard study leads to legislation
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer March 17, 2005
WASHINGTON --A study about mothers of Down syndrome children that was published just this month by a Harvard Medical School student has quickly made its way to the halls of Congress.
Brian Skotko's survey found that doctors don't provide pregnant women with enough information about Down syndrome and the prospects for their child after birth. All too often, said Skotko, the mothers received the news about their child in a negative, gloomy fashion that failed to relay any positive information about the child's life expectancy and possible development.
On Wednesday, two senators offered new legislation that would require doctors to provide expectant mothers with up-to-date, scientific information about the child's condition, possible treatment options and expected development. It also calls for a study of existing health care and support services.
"Our real vision should be for families to grow and prosper and continue to bring new life into the world -- and we need to support that effort," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
Skotko, also a student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, culled his study results from 1,250 survey responses he got from mothers in Down syndrome parent organizations in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, California, Colorado, and North Carolina.
"Doctors continue to find it very challenging to deliver a diagnosis like Down syndrome to an otherwise happy expectant mom," said Skotko, who has a sister with Down syndrome.
Beth Allard, a Boston-area parent who brought her young son Ben to Capitol Hill Wednesday, said when an expectant mother is told her child will have Down syndrome or some other condition, it is scary and confusing.
Kennedy and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said parents need to be equipped to handle the diagnosis.
"For some conditions that can be detected in the womb, we are aborting 80 percent or more of the babies who test positive," said Brownback. "The effect of this sort of weeding out is creating new eugenics, a form of systematic, disability-based discrimination."
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer March 17, 2005
WASHINGTON --A study about mothers of Down syndrome children that was published just this month by a Harvard Medical School student has quickly made its way to the halls of Congress.
Brian Skotko's survey found that doctors don't provide pregnant women with enough information about Down syndrome and the prospects for their child after birth. All too often, said Skotko, the mothers received the news about their child in a negative, gloomy fashion that failed to relay any positive information about the child's life expectancy and possible development.
On Wednesday, two senators offered new legislation that would require doctors to provide expectant mothers with up-to-date, scientific information about the child's condition, possible treatment options and expected development. It also calls for a study of existing health care and support services.
"Our real vision should be for families to grow and prosper and continue to bring new life into the world -- and we need to support that effort," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
Skotko, also a student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, culled his study results from 1,250 survey responses he got from mothers in Down syndrome parent organizations in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, California, Colorado, and North Carolina.
"Doctors continue to find it very challenging to deliver a diagnosis like Down syndrome to an otherwise happy expectant mom," said Skotko, who has a sister with Down syndrome.
Beth Allard, a Boston-area parent who brought her young son Ben to Capitol Hill Wednesday, said when an expectant mother is told her child will have Down syndrome or some other condition, it is scary and confusing.
Kennedy and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said parents need to be equipped to handle the diagnosis.
"For some conditions that can be detected in the womb, we are aborting 80 percent or more of the babies who test positive," said Brownback. "The effect of this sort of weeding out is creating new eugenics, a form of systematic, disability-based discrimination."
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Is the Global Economy Unstable?
Is the Global Economy Unstable?
By Robert J. SamuelsonWednesday, March 16, 2005; Page A23
One of the big questions of our time is whether the global economy is stable. The gains from "globalization" -- more cross-border trade, investment and technology transfers -- are indisputable. Countless millions have escaped poverty in Asia and Europe. A recent study by the Institute for International Economics concluded that American living standards are roughly 10 percent higher as a result of globalization's benefits (cheap imports, greater competition, new technologies). Globalization's winners vastly outnumber its losers.
Unfortunately, that could change if the world economy turns out to be unstable -- incapable of sustaining adequate growth or vulnerable to severe crises. For the moment the dangers are abstract. In 2004 the global economy grew 4.7 percent, economists at Goldman Sachs report. Asia (excluding Japan) grew 8.2 percent; Latin America, 5.6 percent; the United States, 4.4 percent. Global economic growth should average about 4 percent in 2005 and 2006, the Goldman economists predict. Still, the specter of instability lingers.
Global economic integration -- the merging of markets, the mutual dependencies of countries -- has raced well ahead of either political integration or intellectual mastery. We simply don't understand well how the global economy operates. Nor is it clear how countries with diverging interests and shared suspicions will cooperate in a crisis.
One obvious problem is oil. Even if the United States could end dependence on imports for 64 percent of its oil demand (a practical impossibility anytime soon), Europe would still import 80 percent of its needs and Japan 100 percent. Any major shutdown of Persian Gulf exports -- from war, terrorism or a political act -- could devastate the world economy. Global terrorism or a world pandemic would also pose threats beyond the initial tragedies. Countries might try to protect themselves from outsiders -- imposing restrictions on trade, travel and immigration -- in ways that would destroy global commerce.
At present the greatest peril may lie in huge global trade imbalances -- and the financial pressures they create. The basic dilemma is that the world needs American trade deficits as an "engine" of growth, compensating for weak growth in Europe and Japan. But the same trade deficits may now be destabilizing because they send large amounts of dollars abroad. The danger: a dollar "crash" on foreign exchange markets that spills over into the U.S. stock and bond markets, driving down those markets and triggering a global recession.
Look at the numbers. In 2004 the U.S. current account deficit reached an estimated $650 billion, or a record 5.6 percent of gross domestic product. (The current account includes all trade, plus other international payments such as those generated by travel and tourism.) The mirror images of U.S. deficits are other countries' surpluses. In 2004 Japan's current account surplus was 3.7 percent of GDP, Germany's was 2.9 percent and China's was 2.3 percent, Economy.com estimates. But even with the stimulus of selling to the United States, economic growth in Europe and Japan has averaged only 2 percent and 1.5 percent annually since 1994.
What's the problem? Foreign exporters receive dollars for what they ship to the United States. If those dollars aren't reinvested in American assets -- say, U.S. stocks, bonds or Treasury securities -- they'll be sold on foreign exchange markets for other currencies: the euro, the yen, the pound. As dollar sales drive down its value, foreigners note that their existing U.S. stocks and bonds are worth less in their own currencies. So they may sell U.S. securities to limit losses. At the end of 2003, foreigners owned $1.5 trillion in U.S. stocks; widespread sales could trigger steep market declines.
The risk is an economic implosion. A sinking stock market could damage American consumer confidence and spending. Higher currencies for Europe and Japan could weaken their export competitiveness. (A higher currency tends to make a country's exports more expensive and its imports cheaper.) Together, the United States, Europe and Japan are half the global economy. If they went into recession, other countries might follow.
Economists are divided. Some fear the worst, because the world is flooded with dollars. Relax, say others. Asian central banks (their versions of the Federal Reserve) will buy surplus dollars, because they want to export to the United States and don't want their currencies to rise against the dollar. Still other economists (including Alan Greenspan) believe that we'll muddle through -- that shifts in exchange rates and economic growth will slowly narrow today's trade imbalances. So far the evidence supports everyone. Since mid-2001 the dollar has dropped against many currencies, especially the euro. Asian central banks have bought lots of dollars. And we have muddled through.
Every economic system requires a political framework, but the framework for the global economy is creaky. Twenty years ago, the "world economy" consisted mainly of the United States and its Cold War allies. Economic, military and foreign policy objectives overlapped. Now the world economy includes China, India and the former Soviet Union. Global interdependence has inspired some cooperation -- the SARS outbreak and Asia's 1997-98 financial crisis being examples. But the political foundation for cooperation has weakened. Our relations with old Cold War allies are strained, while relations with new trading partners -- China especially -- are ambiguous. Could we someday be at war with China over Taiwan? Or will trade defuse conflict?
The well-being of advanced nations presumes a smoothly operating global economy. We take this for granted without knowing whether it will always be true. We don't ask hard questions because we don't know the answers and fear what they might be.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
By Robert J. SamuelsonWednesday, March 16, 2005; Page A23
One of the big questions of our time is whether the global economy is stable. The gains from "globalization" -- more cross-border trade, investment and technology transfers -- are indisputable. Countless millions have escaped poverty in Asia and Europe. A recent study by the Institute for International Economics concluded that American living standards are roughly 10 percent higher as a result of globalization's benefits (cheap imports, greater competition, new technologies). Globalization's winners vastly outnumber its losers.
Unfortunately, that could change if the world economy turns out to be unstable -- incapable of sustaining adequate growth or vulnerable to severe crises. For the moment the dangers are abstract. In 2004 the global economy grew 4.7 percent, economists at Goldman Sachs report. Asia (excluding Japan) grew 8.2 percent; Latin America, 5.6 percent; the United States, 4.4 percent. Global economic growth should average about 4 percent in 2005 and 2006, the Goldman economists predict. Still, the specter of instability lingers.
Global economic integration -- the merging of markets, the mutual dependencies of countries -- has raced well ahead of either political integration or intellectual mastery. We simply don't understand well how the global economy operates. Nor is it clear how countries with diverging interests and shared suspicions will cooperate in a crisis.
One obvious problem is oil. Even if the United States could end dependence on imports for 64 percent of its oil demand (a practical impossibility anytime soon), Europe would still import 80 percent of its needs and Japan 100 percent. Any major shutdown of Persian Gulf exports -- from war, terrorism or a political act -- could devastate the world economy. Global terrorism or a world pandemic would also pose threats beyond the initial tragedies. Countries might try to protect themselves from outsiders -- imposing restrictions on trade, travel and immigration -- in ways that would destroy global commerce.
At present the greatest peril may lie in huge global trade imbalances -- and the financial pressures they create. The basic dilemma is that the world needs American trade deficits as an "engine" of growth, compensating for weak growth in Europe and Japan. But the same trade deficits may now be destabilizing because they send large amounts of dollars abroad. The danger: a dollar "crash" on foreign exchange markets that spills over into the U.S. stock and bond markets, driving down those markets and triggering a global recession.
Look at the numbers. In 2004 the U.S. current account deficit reached an estimated $650 billion, or a record 5.6 percent of gross domestic product. (The current account includes all trade, plus other international payments such as those generated by travel and tourism.) The mirror images of U.S. deficits are other countries' surpluses. In 2004 Japan's current account surplus was 3.7 percent of GDP, Germany's was 2.9 percent and China's was 2.3 percent, Economy.com estimates. But even with the stimulus of selling to the United States, economic growth in Europe and Japan has averaged only 2 percent and 1.5 percent annually since 1994.
What's the problem? Foreign exporters receive dollars for what they ship to the United States. If those dollars aren't reinvested in American assets -- say, U.S. stocks, bonds or Treasury securities -- they'll be sold on foreign exchange markets for other currencies: the euro, the yen, the pound. As dollar sales drive down its value, foreigners note that their existing U.S. stocks and bonds are worth less in their own currencies. So they may sell U.S. securities to limit losses. At the end of 2003, foreigners owned $1.5 trillion in U.S. stocks; widespread sales could trigger steep market declines.
The risk is an economic implosion. A sinking stock market could damage American consumer confidence and spending. Higher currencies for Europe and Japan could weaken their export competitiveness. (A higher currency tends to make a country's exports more expensive and its imports cheaper.) Together, the United States, Europe and Japan are half the global economy. If they went into recession, other countries might follow.
Economists are divided. Some fear the worst, because the world is flooded with dollars. Relax, say others. Asian central banks (their versions of the Federal Reserve) will buy surplus dollars, because they want to export to the United States and don't want their currencies to rise against the dollar. Still other economists (including Alan Greenspan) believe that we'll muddle through -- that shifts in exchange rates and economic growth will slowly narrow today's trade imbalances. So far the evidence supports everyone. Since mid-2001 the dollar has dropped against many currencies, especially the euro. Asian central banks have bought lots of dollars. And we have muddled through.
Every economic system requires a political framework, but the framework for the global economy is creaky. Twenty years ago, the "world economy" consisted mainly of the United States and its Cold War allies. Economic, military and foreign policy objectives overlapped. Now the world economy includes China, India and the former Soviet Union. Global interdependence has inspired some cooperation -- the SARS outbreak and Asia's 1997-98 financial crisis being examples. But the political foundation for cooperation has weakened. Our relations with old Cold War allies are strained, while relations with new trading partners -- China especially -- are ambiguous. Could we someday be at war with China over Taiwan? Or will trade defuse conflict?
The well-being of advanced nations presumes a smoothly operating global economy. We take this for granted without knowing whether it will always be true. We don't ask hard questions because we don't know the answers and fear what they might be.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
The bankruptcy of Wal-Mart ---Taiwan, China and the USA
I guess the question China is going to be asked us; you chose between subjugation of Taiwan or the health of Wal-Mart. How bad would it be if we reindustrialize the USA with all new facilities.
China is faced with an unexpected industrial production increase of 18% from a year ago and now is in a speculative housing market. There is even the talk of foreign manipulation of currency with China, leading to the trade deficit in the USA. China is at the edge of being profoundly destabilized through it grouth–which is going to have a profound destabilizing effect of the whole globe.
In the USA we are seeing many businesses closing moving to china and other low wage countries We got a falling dollar, we got exploding housing prices, got low wages, we got historic gasoline prices ---and take a look at the massive current account deficit of 700 billion dollars.
So the current account and trade crisis is unsustainable for either the USA or China. Say President Bush comes out on a podium saying the planet is in a world of hurt with foreign trade. The continued damage caused by this is going to destroy the USA… China and the world economic system. So, as a result of the prediction of this damage –we are going to severely limit foreign trade to China for a period of time. You can bet on the next election, we would elect all democrats.
So if China’s Hu talked in the same manner with our growth is going to destabilize our country and the planet’s economic system –so we are going to severely limit export to America and certain other parts of the world. I bet you there would be an overthrow of the communist country very soon.
So none of our country’s can regain control of the planet's economic system at this time –and we are sailing for an object failure of the planet’s economic relationships.
So what does the Taiwan war crisis symbolize? It just might be the political cover that both sides need. So China might ramp up the Taiwan crisis blaming American and we might retaliated by limiting trade –so both these countries will be able to blame the other, as trade controls begin forcing profound changes in the character of both these countries –and the whole global economic relationships.
Of course, we might not control this –it could spin into a war for both of this. Of course to do nothing might just be worst than a war.
China is faced with an unexpected industrial production increase of 18% from a year ago and now is in a speculative housing market. There is even the talk of foreign manipulation of currency with China, leading to the trade deficit in the USA. China is at the edge of being profoundly destabilized through it grouth–which is going to have a profound destabilizing effect of the whole globe.
In the USA we are seeing many businesses closing moving to china and other low wage countries We got a falling dollar, we got exploding housing prices, got low wages, we got historic gasoline prices ---and take a look at the massive current account deficit of 700 billion dollars.
So the current account and trade crisis is unsustainable for either the USA or China. Say President Bush comes out on a podium saying the planet is in a world of hurt with foreign trade. The continued damage caused by this is going to destroy the USA… China and the world economic system. So, as a result of the prediction of this damage –we are going to severely limit foreign trade to China for a period of time. You can bet on the next election, we would elect all democrats.
So if China’s Hu talked in the same manner with our growth is going to destabilize our country and the planet’s economic system –so we are going to severely limit export to America and certain other parts of the world. I bet you there would be an overthrow of the communist country very soon.
So none of our country’s can regain control of the planet's economic system at this time –and we are sailing for an object failure of the planet’s economic relationships.
So what does the Taiwan war crisis symbolize? It just might be the political cover that both sides need. So China might ramp up the Taiwan crisis blaming American and we might retaliated by limiting trade –so both these countries will be able to blame the other, as trade controls begin forcing profound changes in the character of both these countries –and the whole global economic relationships.
Of course, we might not control this –it could spin into a war for both of this. Of course to do nothing might just be worst than a war.
China Raises Home-Loan Rate in Bid to Slow Soaring Growth
March 16, 2005
China Raises Home-Loan Rate in Bid to Slow Soaring GrowthBy KEIT
ONG KONG, March 16 - China's central bank announced late today that it was raising the cost of housing loans, after more signs emerged that the country's economy may be growing at an unsustainable pace as property prices soar.
The minimum regulated interest rate for housing loans of five years or more will rise to 5.51 percent, from 5.31 percent. Banks will also be encouraged to require down payments of 30 percent of the purchase price, instead of 20 percent, in cities that have seen especially rapid appreciation lately, the People's Bank of China said.
The moves come a week after Shanghai began assessing a capital gains tax of 5.6 percent on real estate bought and sold in less than a year, and after delegates to the National People's Congress in Beijing voiced worries in the past week that real estate speculation was becoming out of control and hurting the affordability of housing.
Real estate prices have been climbing faster in China than in much of the United States, with urban prices escalating 10.8 percent in the fourth quarter after a jump of 8.6 percent in the third quarter. Prices have been rising even faster in Shanghai, where overseas investors have been buying up apartments in hopes of profiting from not only from rising prices but also a possible increase in the value of China's currency against the dollar.
The Chinese central bank tempered the effects of the housing loan rate increase on the overall economy, however, by reducing the interest rate it pays banks for reserves they hold in excess of regulatory minimums. The effect of the decrease, to 99-hundredths of a percent from 1.62 percent, is to encourage banks to lend more money, although the banks are still under administrative controls governing the total volume of their loans.
Unexpectedly strong increases this year in exports, industrial production and consumer price inflation, together with a jump in fixed-asset investment announced today, are prompting many economists to begin questioning whether Chinese leaders can follow through on pledges to slow the growth rate of the economy to 8 percent this year, from 9.5 percent last year.
"We have an economy that is stronger than we thought; the slew of January and February numbers is pretty impressive," said Jonathan Anderson, a UBS economist here.
If growth continues to accelerate in China this year, creating greater demand for raw materials, it could push even higher the prices of crude oil and other commodities that China already imports in enormous quantities. Copper prices jumped 2 percent today in London to a record $3,307 a ton as Chinese companies placed large orders, while oil prices were down slightly after member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to increase production by 2 percent.
The big question now is whether the Chinese economy's vigor, combined with a huge inflow of both speculative and long-term investment, will feed inflation within China, which could be socially and even politically disruptive. While consumer prices were 3.9 percent higher last month than a year earlier, some economists are less worried now about inflation than they were in the spring of last year, as the pace of growth has become more even among many sectors of the economy.
Construction of new steel mills, which boomed in early 2004, has slowed. Some of the fastest growth this year has been in exports, while investment spending has soared fastest this year in areas that proved bottlenecks to growth last year, notably coal mining, electricity generation, oil refining and transportation.
Liang Hong, a Goldman Sachs analyst, said that she had no plans to increase her forecast that consumer prices in China would rise just 2.6 percent this year, even though she expects growth to exceed the government's target of 8 percent.
"It seems to be close to 9 rather than close to 8," she said.
Qu Hongbin, an HSBC economist, said Chinese regulators had been effective in persuading banks to slow the annual growth rate in loans, to less than 15 percent now from 24 percent at the end of 2003. This will start slowing investment spending and the rest of the economy soon, he predicted.
But Andy Xie, a Morgan Stanley economist, was more pessimistic, contending in a research note that China faced an overheating economy and a property bubble.
Vigorous economic growth and rising exports combined with currency speculation are increasing the pressure on China to allow greater flexibility in its currency, which is known as the yuan or renminbi and has been effectively pegged at 8.28 to the dollar for almost a decade. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao surprised financial markets on Monday by mentioning that if China acted on the currency, it would do so unexpectedly, although he also cautioned that there would be risks to the global economy from any revaluation.
China's foreign currency reserves jumped nearly $100 billion in the fourth quarter alone as the central bank exchanged yuan for the flood of dollars pouring into the country mostly through unofficial channels. Raghuram Rajan, the research director of the International Monetary Fund, urged China in a speech here on Tuesday to let the yuan trade in a wider range, a step that would likely result in its appreciation in the short term, saying that steps like interest rate controls, bond sales and capital controls could not indefinitely prevent the inflow of money from feeding inflation.
"The inflation genie can indeed be bottled up," he said. "Eventually, however, it will get out as all these controls lose their effectiveness. Long-term undervaluation is simply too difficult to manage."
Investment in factories, office buildings and other fixed assets in urban areas climbed 24.5 percent in the first two months of this year compared with a year earlier, an acceleration from a year-over-year increase of 21.3 percent in December, China's National Bureau of Statistics said today. Data for the first two months of the year are often combined in China because of difficulties in adjusting for the shifting dates for the beginning of Chinese New Year celebrations, which depend on a lunar calendar.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times CompaHelp Back to Top
China Raises Home-Loan Rate in Bid to Slow Soaring GrowthBy KEIT
ONG KONG, March 16 - China's central bank announced late today that it was raising the cost of housing loans, after more signs emerged that the country's economy may be growing at an unsustainable pace as property prices soar.
The minimum regulated interest rate for housing loans of five years or more will rise to 5.51 percent, from 5.31 percent. Banks will also be encouraged to require down payments of 30 percent of the purchase price, instead of 20 percent, in cities that have seen especially rapid appreciation lately, the People's Bank of China said.
The moves come a week after Shanghai began assessing a capital gains tax of 5.6 percent on real estate bought and sold in less than a year, and after delegates to the National People's Congress in Beijing voiced worries in the past week that real estate speculation was becoming out of control and hurting the affordability of housing.
Real estate prices have been climbing faster in China than in much of the United States, with urban prices escalating 10.8 percent in the fourth quarter after a jump of 8.6 percent in the third quarter. Prices have been rising even faster in Shanghai, where overseas investors have been buying up apartments in hopes of profiting from not only from rising prices but also a possible increase in the value of China's currency against the dollar.
The Chinese central bank tempered the effects of the housing loan rate increase on the overall economy, however, by reducing the interest rate it pays banks for reserves they hold in excess of regulatory minimums. The effect of the decrease, to 99-hundredths of a percent from 1.62 percent, is to encourage banks to lend more money, although the banks are still under administrative controls governing the total volume of their loans.
Unexpectedly strong increases this year in exports, industrial production and consumer price inflation, together with a jump in fixed-asset investment announced today, are prompting many economists to begin questioning whether Chinese leaders can follow through on pledges to slow the growth rate of the economy to 8 percent this year, from 9.5 percent last year.
"We have an economy that is stronger than we thought; the slew of January and February numbers is pretty impressive," said Jonathan Anderson, a UBS economist here.
If growth continues to accelerate in China this year, creating greater demand for raw materials, it could push even higher the prices of crude oil and other commodities that China already imports in enormous quantities. Copper prices jumped 2 percent today in London to a record $3,307 a ton as Chinese companies placed large orders, while oil prices were down slightly after member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to increase production by 2 percent.
The big question now is whether the Chinese economy's vigor, combined with a huge inflow of both speculative and long-term investment, will feed inflation within China, which could be socially and even politically disruptive. While consumer prices were 3.9 percent higher last month than a year earlier, some economists are less worried now about inflation than they were in the spring of last year, as the pace of growth has become more even among many sectors of the economy.
Construction of new steel mills, which boomed in early 2004, has slowed. Some of the fastest growth this year has been in exports, while investment spending has soared fastest this year in areas that proved bottlenecks to growth last year, notably coal mining, electricity generation, oil refining and transportation.
Liang Hong, a Goldman Sachs analyst, said that she had no plans to increase her forecast that consumer prices in China would rise just 2.6 percent this year, even though she expects growth to exceed the government's target of 8 percent.
"It seems to be close to 9 rather than close to 8," she said.
Qu Hongbin, an HSBC economist, said Chinese regulators had been effective in persuading banks to slow the annual growth rate in loans, to less than 15 percent now from 24 percent at the end of 2003. This will start slowing investment spending and the rest of the economy soon, he predicted.
But Andy Xie, a Morgan Stanley economist, was more pessimistic, contending in a research note that China faced an overheating economy and a property bubble.
Vigorous economic growth and rising exports combined with currency speculation are increasing the pressure on China to allow greater flexibility in its currency, which is known as the yuan or renminbi and has been effectively pegged at 8.28 to the dollar for almost a decade. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao surprised financial markets on Monday by mentioning that if China acted on the currency, it would do so unexpectedly, although he also cautioned that there would be risks to the global economy from any revaluation.
China's foreign currency reserves jumped nearly $100 billion in the fourth quarter alone as the central bank exchanged yuan for the flood of dollars pouring into the country mostly through unofficial channels. Raghuram Rajan, the research director of the International Monetary Fund, urged China in a speech here on Tuesday to let the yuan trade in a wider range, a step that would likely result in its appreciation in the short term, saying that steps like interest rate controls, bond sales and capital controls could not indefinitely prevent the inflow of money from feeding inflation.
"The inflation genie can indeed be bottled up," he said. "Eventually, however, it will get out as all these controls lose their effectiveness. Long-term undervaluation is simply too difficult to manage."
Investment in factories, office buildings and other fixed assets in urban areas climbed 24.5 percent in the first two months of this year compared with a year earlier, an acceleration from a year-over-year increase of 21.3 percent in December, China's National Bureau of Statistics said today. Data for the first two months of the year are often combined in China because of difficulties in adjusting for the shifting dates for the beginning of Chinese New Year celebrations, which depend on a lunar calendar.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times CompaHelp Back to Top
"Crimes against humanity In America"
Thursday, March 10, 2005
"Crimes Against Humanity in America"
....So I don’t get it, if you were at a hospital with an operation – with operating room not having the money to sterilize the scalpel and instrumentation –you would expect everyone with a license to report the problem to the state authorities –let alone the threat a huge legal suit.
So I don’t have to much faith in the staff members, the nurses, doctors, bureaucrats, CEO and board of directors, who knowingly sit back not reporting life threatening deficiencies in their faculties. I am a little tired with the- I am just trying to do my job -in an environment of life threatening resources squeeze –with nobody having the courage to raise hell.
I can say that across the board –I never seen a more unconscionable group of educated people, as in the human service industry –where they tolerate such inhuman treatment of their patients for the sake of their jobs.
We killed Dontel Jeffers
By Peter Pollard March 16, 2005
I AM RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dontel Jeffers. Not because of any act of violence I committed against the 4-year-old boy who died in foster care in Dorchester on March 6. I never met him or even heard his name until his death.
I am responsible for the death of Dontel Jeffers because of my silence.
After serving 14 years as a frontline social worker for the Department of Social Services, I know his death is the direct, predictable result of a system overburdened, underfunded, and largely ignored, except when a tragedy involving an abused or neglected child erupts in the headlines. Then, as a community, we look for somewhere to point a finger of blame.
I'll start with me.
For 14 years, I struggled with my colleagues at DSS, many of whom had dedicated their entire working lives, committed to the seemingly impossible task of protecting children from physical, emotional, and sexual violence and neglect. In most instances, by the time families came to our notice, the children were already seriously harmed. Our efforts to help were stymied by severely limited funding for therapy, nearly nonexistent pediatric psychiatric services, courts so clogged that trials to determine a child's future often stretched out for more than a year, and a foster-care crisis so dire that good homes are drowned in placements, and that the temptation to accept mediocre caregivers has become too great to resist.
DSS is so overwhelmed with casualties, it is reduced to operating like a field hospital, making triage decisions on small children's lives. But as a social worker, I felt we were the frontline defense, doing our best with what we'd been given. So I'll admit that when I had misgivings about a foster home or a residential placement or a hospital discharge, I often saw no choice but to accept quietly what I knew was inadequate. And though lack of alternatives was a factor, I'm embarrassed to admit that that calculation inevitably also included loyalty to the system, to my coworkers, and fear of the personal consequences of rocking the boat.
But I should have been shouting, openly declaring that those inadequacies threatened the very children we were trying to help.
I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are thousands of social workers, agency managers, community mental health workers, foster parents, judges, police and probation officers, attorneys, and teachers who every day see firsthand the evidence of the gradual diminishment in these already victimized children's lives.
Each in his own way has accepted the limitations of the system, passing from anger to frustration to resignation to quiet defeat. They should be shouting too, declaring that our refusal to do more is in fact society's crime of neglect.
As adults, we pay lip service to our commitment to keep children safe. But we don't have the courage to really face the depth of their vulnerability or the enormity of our failure. If you want proof, try breaking the silence by bringing up child abuse at a social gathering. Collectively, we've handed that ugly topic over to someone else. We've horribly shirked our personal responsibility to protect Dontel Jeffers and thousands like him who are our neighbors.
For Dontel, it's too late. But as a community, we should be openly declaring our willingness to open our eyes and our hearts to provide the enormous resources required to save the others. Effective early intervention could ultimately bring huge benefits in the form of well-functioning families and curtailed cycles of violence, sexual abuse, homelessness, and substance abuse. But the investment has to be made because it's right, not just because it's cost effective.
I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are you.
Peter Pollard, a social worker for 14 years at the Department of Social Services, is a graduate student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
GLOBE EDITORIAL
Questions on a tragedy
March 16, 2005
THE DEATH of Dontel Jeffers, a 4-year-old foster child, remains under investigation. One investigator has cited signs that the boy was beaten. Regardless of whether the March 6 death, in Dorchester, is ruled accidental or the result of a criminal act, it is fair to ask if the tragedy was the result of a system failure within the Department of Social Services and its orbit of private contractors or was an extraordinary occurrence.
Oversight did break down in at least one area. Normally, both a DSS social worker and a social worker associated with the private provider of specialized foster care services would visit the foster home within about a week of placement. DSS Commissioner Harry Spence says a DSS social worker had arranged such a meeting for March 2, but the foster mother canceled the visit. No visit had been conducted by the foster care contract agency Massachusetts Mentor, according to Spence.
Jeffers suffered from emotional disabilities and had been placed in so-called therapeutic foster care on Feb. 24 with a 24-year-old foster mother who also cared for her own toddler. Nothing about the foster mother raised red flags, according to Spence. Before taking Jeffers into her home, the foster mother had received training to deal with emotionally disturbed children from Massachusetts Mentor, the DSS contractor specializing in out-of-home and in-home care for the disabled. The foster mother passed a criminal background check and had cared for foster children on eight other occasions, according to Spence.
There is no way to know if a timely home visit might have revealed potential for danger. But the rationale for contracting out specialized home care to private providers like Massachusetts Mentor is based, largely, on the better staff-to-client ratios and administrative supports found in the private social service agencies. If private providers fail to perform up to par in areas like home visits, the Legislature should consider bringing the tougher foster care cases back under the roof of DSS.
While the Jeffers investigation continues, the governor and Legislature should also be thinking about how best to serve the state's 11,000 foster care children, including the roughly 3,000 emotionally disturbed youngsters who require specialized foster care in home settings. Right now, it is possible for a foster care parent who is found unfit by one contractor to affiliate with a new agency with little fear that the records will follow, although no evidence has surfaced that this applied to the Jeffers case. But access to records is a key area for reform.
Budget cuts in recent years also hurt efforts to recruit new foster parents, as do low per diem payments.
The investigation is ongoing, and so should the efforts to improve the quality of foster care in Massachusetts.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
"Crimes Against Humanity in America"
....So I don’t get it, if you were at a hospital with an operation – with operating room not having the money to sterilize the scalpel and instrumentation –you would expect everyone with a license to report the problem to the state authorities –let alone the threat a huge legal suit.
So I don’t have to much faith in the staff members, the nurses, doctors, bureaucrats, CEO and board of directors, who knowingly sit back not reporting life threatening deficiencies in their faculties. I am a little tired with the- I am just trying to do my job -in an environment of life threatening resources squeeze –with nobody having the courage to raise hell.
I can say that across the board –I never seen a more unconscionable group of educated people, as in the human service industry –where they tolerate such inhuman treatment of their patients for the sake of their jobs.
We killed Dontel Jeffers
By Peter Pollard March 16, 2005
I AM RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dontel Jeffers. Not because of any act of violence I committed against the 4-year-old boy who died in foster care in Dorchester on March 6. I never met him or even heard his name until his death.
I am responsible for the death of Dontel Jeffers because of my silence.
After serving 14 years as a frontline social worker for the Department of Social Services, I know his death is the direct, predictable result of a system overburdened, underfunded, and largely ignored, except when a tragedy involving an abused or neglected child erupts in the headlines. Then, as a community, we look for somewhere to point a finger of blame.
I'll start with me.
For 14 years, I struggled with my colleagues at DSS, many of whom had dedicated their entire working lives, committed to the seemingly impossible task of protecting children from physical, emotional, and sexual violence and neglect. In most instances, by the time families came to our notice, the children were already seriously harmed. Our efforts to help were stymied by severely limited funding for therapy, nearly nonexistent pediatric psychiatric services, courts so clogged that trials to determine a child's future often stretched out for more than a year, and a foster-care crisis so dire that good homes are drowned in placements, and that the temptation to accept mediocre caregivers has become too great to resist.
DSS is so overwhelmed with casualties, it is reduced to operating like a field hospital, making triage decisions on small children's lives. But as a social worker, I felt we were the frontline defense, doing our best with what we'd been given. So I'll admit that when I had misgivings about a foster home or a residential placement or a hospital discharge, I often saw no choice but to accept quietly what I knew was inadequate. And though lack of alternatives was a factor, I'm embarrassed to admit that that calculation inevitably also included loyalty to the system, to my coworkers, and fear of the personal consequences of rocking the boat.
But I should have been shouting, openly declaring that those inadequacies threatened the very children we were trying to help.
I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are thousands of social workers, agency managers, community mental health workers, foster parents, judges, police and probation officers, attorneys, and teachers who every day see firsthand the evidence of the gradual diminishment in these already victimized children's lives.
Each in his own way has accepted the limitations of the system, passing from anger to frustration to resignation to quiet defeat. They should be shouting too, declaring that our refusal to do more is in fact society's crime of neglect.
As adults, we pay lip service to our commitment to keep children safe. But we don't have the courage to really face the depth of their vulnerability or the enormity of our failure. If you want proof, try breaking the silence by bringing up child abuse at a social gathering. Collectively, we've handed that ugly topic over to someone else. We've horribly shirked our personal responsibility to protect Dontel Jeffers and thousands like him who are our neighbors.
For Dontel, it's too late. But as a community, we should be openly declaring our willingness to open our eyes and our hearts to provide the enormous resources required to save the others. Effective early intervention could ultimately bring huge benefits in the form of well-functioning families and curtailed cycles of violence, sexual abuse, homelessness, and substance abuse. But the investment has to be made because it's right, not just because it's cost effective.
I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are you.
Peter Pollard, a social worker for 14 years at the Department of Social Services, is a graduate student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
GLOBE EDITORIAL
Questions on a tragedy
March 16, 2005
THE DEATH of Dontel Jeffers, a 4-year-old foster child, remains under investigation. One investigator has cited signs that the boy was beaten. Regardless of whether the March 6 death, in Dorchester, is ruled accidental or the result of a criminal act, it is fair to ask if the tragedy was the result of a system failure within the Department of Social Services and its orbit of private contractors or was an extraordinary occurrence.
Oversight did break down in at least one area. Normally, both a DSS social worker and a social worker associated with the private provider of specialized foster care services would visit the foster home within about a week of placement. DSS Commissioner Harry Spence says a DSS social worker had arranged such a meeting for March 2, but the foster mother canceled the visit. No visit had been conducted by the foster care contract agency Massachusetts Mentor, according to Spence.
Jeffers suffered from emotional disabilities and had been placed in so-called therapeutic foster care on Feb. 24 with a 24-year-old foster mother who also cared for her own toddler. Nothing about the foster mother raised red flags, according to Spence. Before taking Jeffers into her home, the foster mother had received training to deal with emotionally disturbed children from Massachusetts Mentor, the DSS contractor specializing in out-of-home and in-home care for the disabled. The foster mother passed a criminal background check and had cared for foster children on eight other occasions, according to Spence.
There is no way to know if a timely home visit might have revealed potential for danger. But the rationale for contracting out specialized home care to private providers like Massachusetts Mentor is based, largely, on the better staff-to-client ratios and administrative supports found in the private social service agencies. If private providers fail to perform up to par in areas like home visits, the Legislature should consider bringing the tougher foster care cases back under the roof of DSS.
While the Jeffers investigation continues, the governor and Legislature should also be thinking about how best to serve the state's 11,000 foster care children, including the roughly 3,000 emotionally disturbed youngsters who require specialized foster care in home settings. Right now, it is possible for a foster care parent who is found unfit by one contractor to affiliate with a new agency with little fear that the records will follow, although no evidence has surfaced that this applied to the Jeffers case. But access to records is a key area for reform.
Budget cuts in recent years also hurt efforts to recruit new foster parents, as do low per diem payments.
The investigation is ongoing, and so should the efforts to improve the quality of foster care in Massachusetts.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Historic Housing Bubble -Reuters
We got to figure out what broadly happens in real estate price rises -what does the home owner do with it-is it saved in the the appreaciation or used to boost credit card debt or consumer purchasing. What's the relationship is real estate price rises, debt and maintianing the economy -what %?
March 10, 2005OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Five Years Later and Still FloatingBy JAMES GRANT
ODAY marks the fifth anniversary of the peak of the great millennial stock market. What were you doing when the lights began to dim? Were you a bull or a bear? Rich or otherwise?
What about today? Are you inoculated against the new alleged sure things? Or perhaps you believe in the permanent hegemony of the dollar in the world's currency markets? In the inevitability of rising house prices? Or of falling interest rates? Answer true or false: the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is clairvoyant.
From the March 2000 top to the October 2002 trough, the United States stock market gave up more than half of its quoted value, some $9.2 trillion. Five years ago today, Cisco Systems was the world's biggest company by market capitalization. Its line of business, the computer networking business, was universally heralded as the industry of the future. Owners of Cisco still devoutly hope it is. They have lost 75 percent of their investment.
Americans hate to lose, especially when it comes to money, and they've demanded an accounting of the misdeeds of the bubble era. A certain number of former chief executives, like Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom, have had to answer the charges against them in court. And Congress, in 2002, overhauled and stiffened the nation's securities laws. But the chairman, governors and staff of the Federal Reserve have yet to be called to account.
Booms and busts are recurrent in history and in nations. In not every episode was there a culpable central bank. But in virtually every case, there was a clever neighbor. The unbearable sight of a neighbor getting rich in the stock market in the late 1990's made millions of Americans bipolar. Shopping at Wal-Mart, they would pay any price except full retail. Investing in the stock market, however, they would pay nothing but.
By the late 1990's, stocks had lost any connection to the value of the businesses in which they represented partial ownership. Picture an artful consumer settling into a discounted hotel room for the night. Now try to imagine this savvy individual formulating a calculated financial decision to make a meal of the $10 cashews and the $6 candy bars on sale in the hotel minibar. That was Wall Street a half decade ago.
And, to a lesser but still striking degree, it is still Wall Street today - and Main Street, too. The Federal Reserve did not stand idly by after the bubble burst. It radically reduced the interest rate it controls (the so-called federal funds rate), pushing it from 6.5 percent in May 2000 to 1 percent by June 2003. Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Fed, had worried about a stock market bubble as early as 1995, had warned against "irrational exuberance" in 1996, and batted around the possibility that there might, indeed, be a stock-market bubble in discussions with his Federal Reserve colleagues as late as 1999.
But he was not the man to stick a pin in the bubble. Indeed, he himself became a vociferous booster of the "New Economy." In a speech he gave only four days before the Nasdaq touched its high, he sounded as if he were working for Merrill Lynch, cheering that "the capital spending boom is still going strong." Should the boom turn to bust, the chairman had testified before Congress less than a year before, the Fed would "mitigate the fallout when it occurs and, hopefully, ease the transition to the next expansion."
In so many words, Mr. Greenspan promised that the Fed would make money cheaper and more plentiful than it would otherwise be. He would override the market's judgment with his own. Nobody in earshot quoted the words of the German central banker Hjalmar Schacht, who protested in 1927: "Don't give me a low rate. Give me a true rate, and then I shall know how to put my house in order." Someone should have. Interest rates are the traffic lights of a market economy. To investors, they signal when to go and when to stop. Under the Fed's bubble recovery program, every interest-rate light turned green.
With no lights flashing red or even amber, investors sped through the financial intersections. They paid more for houses, office buildings and junk bonds than they would have if interest rates were not hugging 40-year lows. The proliferation of dollars helped to lift the stock market out of its doldrums - though the doldrums of 2002 were singularly shallow ones. In comparison to earlier bear market lows, bargains were scarce on the ground (by March 2000, stocks were uniquely overvalued; never before had a dollar of corporate earnings been so costly to buy). At the checkout counter, inflation was well-nigh invisible. On Wall Street, however, it was - and still is - on the rise.
To hear Mr. Greenspan tell it in 1999, post-bubble damage control was as simple as cutting interest rates. He passed lightly over the possible consequences of the rates he cut. The list so far includes a bubble-like housing market (geographically localized but ferocious), an overheated debt market (this one spans the globe) and a steady depreciation in the foreign exchange value of the dollar. Consuming much more than it produces, the United States emits hundreds of billions of greenbacks into the world's payment stream every year - about $600 billion in 2004. The recipients of these dollars willingly invest them in American assets if the price is right. On the evidence of the dollar's decline, the price - the available rate of return - is too low.
Ultra-low interest rates not only serve to inflate the value of bonds, stocks and real estate. They also entice investors in those assets to employ the elixir called "leverage." Leverage means debt. Borrowing at 2.5 percent, a speculator can invest at 3 percent and still make a handsome living - if he or she can be sure when 2.5 percent might be raised to 2.75 percent or 3 percent.
The Fed is happy to oblige. Forswearing the element of surprise in its policy actions, it has told the market exactly what it proposes to do. Paying close attention, professional investors, including thousands of hedge funds, have borrowed fearlessly. A little fear would help to improve the quality of financial stewardship.
"A stock well bought is half sold," said the Wall Street ancients. What they meant is that success in investing depends on one's entry price. As Congress debates an overhaul of Social Security to permit tax-advantaged saving by millions of new investors, a passage from the new Berkshire Hathaway annual report warrants attention. "We don't enjoy sitting on $43 billion of cash equivalents that are earning paltry returns," writes Warren Buffett, Berkshire's chairman. "Instead, we yearn to buy more fractional interests similar to those we now own or - better still - more large businesses outright. We will do either, however, only when purchases can be made at prices that offer us the prospect of a reasonable return on our investment."
Five years later, the bubble is still unpopped.
James Grant, the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, is the author of "John Adams: Party of One."
March 10, 2005OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Five Years Later and Still FloatingBy JAMES GRANT
ODAY marks the fifth anniversary of the peak of the great millennial stock market. What were you doing when the lights began to dim? Were you a bull or a bear? Rich or otherwise?
What about today? Are you inoculated against the new alleged sure things? Or perhaps you believe in the permanent hegemony of the dollar in the world's currency markets? In the inevitability of rising house prices? Or of falling interest rates? Answer true or false: the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is clairvoyant.
From the March 2000 top to the October 2002 trough, the United States stock market gave up more than half of its quoted value, some $9.2 trillion. Five years ago today, Cisco Systems was the world's biggest company by market capitalization. Its line of business, the computer networking business, was universally heralded as the industry of the future. Owners of Cisco still devoutly hope it is. They have lost 75 percent of their investment.
Americans hate to lose, especially when it comes to money, and they've demanded an accounting of the misdeeds of the bubble era. A certain number of former chief executives, like Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom, have had to answer the charges against them in court. And Congress, in 2002, overhauled and stiffened the nation's securities laws. But the chairman, governors and staff of the Federal Reserve have yet to be called to account.
Booms and busts are recurrent in history and in nations. In not every episode was there a culpable central bank. But in virtually every case, there was a clever neighbor. The unbearable sight of a neighbor getting rich in the stock market in the late 1990's made millions of Americans bipolar. Shopping at Wal-Mart, they would pay any price except full retail. Investing in the stock market, however, they would pay nothing but.
By the late 1990's, stocks had lost any connection to the value of the businesses in which they represented partial ownership. Picture an artful consumer settling into a discounted hotel room for the night. Now try to imagine this savvy individual formulating a calculated financial decision to make a meal of the $10 cashews and the $6 candy bars on sale in the hotel minibar. That was Wall Street a half decade ago.
And, to a lesser but still striking degree, it is still Wall Street today - and Main Street, too. The Federal Reserve did not stand idly by after the bubble burst. It radically reduced the interest rate it controls (the so-called federal funds rate), pushing it from 6.5 percent in May 2000 to 1 percent by June 2003. Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Fed, had worried about a stock market bubble as early as 1995, had warned against "irrational exuberance" in 1996, and batted around the possibility that there might, indeed, be a stock-market bubble in discussions with his Federal Reserve colleagues as late as 1999.
But he was not the man to stick a pin in the bubble. Indeed, he himself became a vociferous booster of the "New Economy." In a speech he gave only four days before the Nasdaq touched its high, he sounded as if he were working for Merrill Lynch, cheering that "the capital spending boom is still going strong." Should the boom turn to bust, the chairman had testified before Congress less than a year before, the Fed would "mitigate the fallout when it occurs and, hopefully, ease the transition to the next expansion."
In so many words, Mr. Greenspan promised that the Fed would make money cheaper and more plentiful than it would otherwise be. He would override the market's judgment with his own. Nobody in earshot quoted the words of the German central banker Hjalmar Schacht, who protested in 1927: "Don't give me a low rate. Give me a true rate, and then I shall know how to put my house in order." Someone should have. Interest rates are the traffic lights of a market economy. To investors, they signal when to go and when to stop. Under the Fed's bubble recovery program, every interest-rate light turned green.
With no lights flashing red or even amber, investors sped through the financial intersections. They paid more for houses, office buildings and junk bonds than they would have if interest rates were not hugging 40-year lows. The proliferation of dollars helped to lift the stock market out of its doldrums - though the doldrums of 2002 were singularly shallow ones. In comparison to earlier bear market lows, bargains were scarce on the ground (by March 2000, stocks were uniquely overvalued; never before had a dollar of corporate earnings been so costly to buy). At the checkout counter, inflation was well-nigh invisible. On Wall Street, however, it was - and still is - on the rise.
To hear Mr. Greenspan tell it in 1999, post-bubble damage control was as simple as cutting interest rates. He passed lightly over the possible consequences of the rates he cut. The list so far includes a bubble-like housing market (geographically localized but ferocious), an overheated debt market (this one spans the globe) and a steady depreciation in the foreign exchange value of the dollar. Consuming much more than it produces, the United States emits hundreds of billions of greenbacks into the world's payment stream every year - about $600 billion in 2004. The recipients of these dollars willingly invest them in American assets if the price is right. On the evidence of the dollar's decline, the price - the available rate of return - is too low.
Ultra-low interest rates not only serve to inflate the value of bonds, stocks and real estate. They also entice investors in those assets to employ the elixir called "leverage." Leverage means debt. Borrowing at 2.5 percent, a speculator can invest at 3 percent and still make a handsome living - if he or she can be sure when 2.5 percent might be raised to 2.75 percent or 3 percent.
The Fed is happy to oblige. Forswearing the element of surprise in its policy actions, it has told the market exactly what it proposes to do. Paying close attention, professional investors, including thousands of hedge funds, have borrowed fearlessly. A little fear would help to improve the quality of financial stewardship.
"A stock well bought is half sold," said the Wall Street ancients. What they meant is that success in investing depends on one's entry price. As Congress debates an overhaul of Social Security to permit tax-advantaged saving by millions of new investors, a passage from the new Berkshire Hathaway annual report warrants attention. "We don't enjoy sitting on $43 billion of cash equivalents that are earning paltry returns," writes Warren Buffett, Berkshire's chairman. "Instead, we yearn to buy more fractional interests similar to those we now own or - better still - more large businesses outright. We will do either, however, only when purchases can be made at prices that offer us the prospect of a reasonable return on our investment."
Five years later, the bubble is still unpopped.
James Grant, the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, is the author of "John Adams: Party of One."
Historic Housing Bubble -Reuters
The Wall Street Journal speaks of a "Real Estate Foreign Affair" in 3/9 B section, talks of the dollar devaluation and the massive foreign purchase of American real estate -that is inflating American real estate.
UPDATE 1-American household wealth surges to new record—Fed
Thu Mar 10, 2005 01:05 PM ET
By Laura MacInnis
WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - Rising real estate prices and a resurgent U.S. stock market pushed the net wealth of American households to a record $48.53 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2004, the Federal Reserve said on Thursday.
In its quarterly "Flow of Funds" report, the central bank said household balance sheet values rose nearly $2 trillion above $46.59 trillion in the third quarter. U.S. household net worth pierced a new record in each of 2004's four quarters.
Higher values for real estate, equities and mutual funds led the fourth quarter net worth jump, the Fed said. Pension fund reserves and Treasury securities also posted big gains.
Residential real estate prices, boosted by historically low mortgage loan costs, continued to rise in the fourth quarter to $17.165 trillion and contributed to the gain in wealth.
Household balance sheets also benefited from buoyant stock markets in the period. The S&P 500 index gained nearly 8.7 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial index rose 7.7 percent and the Nasdaq was up 14.7 percent in the fourth quarter, Reuters data showed.
Net worth figures are not adjusted for seasonal factors.
Elsewhere in the report, the Fed said borrowing outside the financial sector rose at a seasonally adjusted 8.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the same rate as in the prior three months. Third quarter non-financial debt was first reported growing a weaker 7.4 percent rate.
For 2004 as a whole, the Fed said debt incurred by households, non-financial businesses and the federal and local governments rose 8.5 percent compared with 8.0 percent in 2003.
The total level of U.S. non-financial debt outstanding at the end of 2004 was $24.2 trillion, the Fed said, of which government debt made up $4.4 trillion.
Household debt grew 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter after a 11.5 percent expansion in the earlier period. The Fed said the quarterly deceleration reflected slower growth in mortgage debt and consumer credit.
Household debt increased 11 percent for 2004 as a whole, compared with a 10 percent gain in 2003, the Fed said. It attributed the 2004 pickup to higher demand for mortgage debt, as well as a slight rise in consumer credit. (Additional reporting by Michael Flaherty in New York)
Reuters 2005
UPDATE 1-American household wealth surges to new record—Fed
Thu Mar 10, 2005 01:05 PM ET
By Laura MacInnis
WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - Rising real estate prices and a resurgent U.S. stock market pushed the net wealth of American households to a record $48.53 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2004, the Federal Reserve said on Thursday.
In its quarterly "Flow of Funds" report, the central bank said household balance sheet values rose nearly $2 trillion above $46.59 trillion in the third quarter. U.S. household net worth pierced a new record in each of 2004's four quarters.
Higher values for real estate, equities and mutual funds led the fourth quarter net worth jump, the Fed said. Pension fund reserves and Treasury securities also posted big gains.
Residential real estate prices, boosted by historically low mortgage loan costs, continued to rise in the fourth quarter to $17.165 trillion and contributed to the gain in wealth.
Household balance sheets also benefited from buoyant stock markets in the period. The S&P 500 index gained nearly 8.7 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial index rose 7.7 percent and the Nasdaq was up 14.7 percent in the fourth quarter, Reuters data showed.
Net worth figures are not adjusted for seasonal factors.
Elsewhere in the report, the Fed said borrowing outside the financial sector rose at a seasonally adjusted 8.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the same rate as in the prior three months. Third quarter non-financial debt was first reported growing a weaker 7.4 percent rate.
For 2004 as a whole, the Fed said debt incurred by households, non-financial businesses and the federal and local governments rose 8.5 percent compared with 8.0 percent in 2003.
The total level of U.S. non-financial debt outstanding at the end of 2004 was $24.2 trillion, the Fed said, of which government debt made up $4.4 trillion.
Household debt grew 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter after a 11.5 percent expansion in the earlier period. The Fed said the quarterly deceleration reflected slower growth in mortgage debt and consumer credit.
Household debt increased 11 percent for 2004 as a whole, compared with a 10 percent gain in 2003, the Fed said. It attributed the 2004 pickup to higher demand for mortgage debt, as well as a slight rise in consumer credit. (Additional reporting by Michael Flaherty in New York)
Reuters 2005
"Crimes Against Humanity in America"
....So I don’t get it, if you were at a hospital with an operation – with operating room not having the money to sterilize the scalpel and instrumentation –you would expect everyone with a license to report the problem to the state authorities –let alone the threat a huge legal suit.
So I don’t have to much faith in the staff members, the nurses, doctors, bureaucrats, CEO and board of directors, who knowingly sit back not reporting life threatening deficiencies in their faculties. I am a little tired with the- I am just trying to do my job -in an environment of life threatening resources squeeze –with nobody having the courage to raise hell.
I can say that across the board –I never seen a more unconscionable group of educated people, as in the human service industry –where they tolerate such inhuman treatment of their patients for the sake of their jobs.
Article published Mar 10, 2005
Missing point on mental health
An article in the Herald dated Feb. 18, indicates that many are still taking bites out of the cute and harmless "Crazy for You" bear. I don't know if it is a peculiarly American trait or if we just raise it to an art form: grab onto a simplistic symbol or an inaccurate sound bite, blow it out of proportion and make it the focus of anger and debate, thereby missing the big picture.
I continue to struggle with mental illness, and I have received treatment in the Rutland area. Several years ago while participating in a treatment program at Rutland Mental Health, it was apparent that a dedicated management and staff were working very hard to provide optimum patient care on an inadequate budget. While at the Rutland Regional Medical Center for stabilization, I observed patients whose options for extended or follow-up care were severely limited by availability and affordability. A number of these patients had no choice but to return to the same situations that had exacerbated their conditions in the first place. In both of these cases the caregivers were dedicated, and the patients were trying hard. There are simply large gaps in mental health programs. Isn't this a better reason for discussion, anger and action than a toy?
If you want to discuss corporate business ethics, sensitivity and connection to communities, may I suggest you focus on whether companies treat their employees with respect by providing living wage, adequate and affordable health care and reasonable retirement benefits?
If you need a research project, may I suggest you investigate whether possible changes in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or other components of the social safety net may make an already tenuous mental health situation even worse.
To focus attention on a stuffed bear presented for sale with tongue firmly planted in check is akin to criticizing the color of the life boats on the Titanic while ignoring the fact there are too few of them.
LEONARD M. POWERS Jr.
Rutland Herald
Article published Mar 10, 2005
VSEA wants mental health change in jails
MONTPELIER — The union for Vermont's government workers is calling for mental health services in Vermont's prisons to be performed by state workers rather than a private contractor.
The Vermont State Employees' Association's proposal, which is expected to be unveiled later this week, charges that the private company that has the contract is not performing adequately and might be charging too much.
An economic analysis by the association found that the company, run by Dr. Paul Cotton, is getting nearly $1.2 million in surplus profit over the three-year contract — in addition to the 11 percent profit typical for Vermont health care providers.
The contract is for $5.1 million over that term.
"We feel delivery of services is not adequate," said Nicole Dewing, a lobbyist for VSEA who drafted the proposal.
Corrections officers, whom the union represents, are left to deal with mentally ill prisoners and are not given training the contractor is supposed to provide, Dewing said.
"Our members are very unhappy with services they provide to the inmates," she said. "Services are not prompt. (Officers) are left dealing with the mentally ill inmates … which they have not been trained for."
John Hollar, an attorney for Cotton, said that allegation is unsubstantiated.
"They have consistently done training at the facilities," he said.
Training needs to be balanced against the need for mental health services, but if the Department of Corrections asks for more training of officers it will get it, he said.
"We are not aware of any concern from the department on any lack of training," Hollar said. "There is an enormous need within the Corrections Department for patient care."
Last month, Cotton's Burlington-based company had 2,500 patient contacts with inmates, Hollar said.
"It's just an enormous volume of patients that they see," he said.
VSEA and its members are not the only ones who have had problems with the company. A 2004 audit by then-state auditor Elizabeth Ready found that the company and its predecessor had billed for services that were never provided. The company returned $143,000 in a settlement with the state.
Changes in the contract with the company cleared up those issues, which centered on whether the company was billing for a 40-hour work week or less than that, Hollar said. He is not aware of any other systemic billing issues between the company and the state, he said.
But some are not so sure.
Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans, said he first became aware of problems with mental health services in the prisons after an inmate's suicide.
"Prior to that, there had been all kind of warning sings," Illuzzi said.
Corrections officers, prisoners and inmate advocates all told him about widespread problems in mental health services, and he is still getting such calls, he said.
"What has changed is a reasonable question," Illuzzi said. "Why has the department continued to contract with the same provider when it was determined that payments were received and services not provided? It strikes me as (though), despite the investigation, nothing has substantially changed."
Robert Hofmann, who recently became commissioner of corrections, said he will study the mental health contract and how services are provided.
"This is an area that I am very interested in understanding more about," he said. "There are scores of issues, and there are probably a dozen or 15 top issues … I would put this as one of those I need to review and I am anxious to do so."
The questions about the mental health contract arise as another prison health contract is also generating controversy.
The New York Times recently ran stories on problems and alleged abuses by a for-profit company, Prison Health Services.
That company recently won a contract to provide health care in Vermont jails.
"We certainly are aware of the accusations in the New York Times report," Hofmann said.
The contract with Prison Health Services has a series of safeguards and oversight provisions, he said.
"We already were geared up to oversee this much more actively than any other contract I am aware of," he said.
Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@rutlandherald.com.
So I don’t have to much faith in the staff members, the nurses, doctors, bureaucrats, CEO and board of directors, who knowingly sit back not reporting life threatening deficiencies in their faculties. I am a little tired with the- I am just trying to do my job -in an environment of life threatening resources squeeze –with nobody having the courage to raise hell.
I can say that across the board –I never seen a more unconscionable group of educated people, as in the human service industry –where they tolerate such inhuman treatment of their patients for the sake of their jobs.
Article published Mar 10, 2005
Missing point on mental health
An article in the Herald dated Feb. 18, indicates that many are still taking bites out of the cute and harmless "Crazy for You" bear. I don't know if it is a peculiarly American trait or if we just raise it to an art form: grab onto a simplistic symbol or an inaccurate sound bite, blow it out of proportion and make it the focus of anger and debate, thereby missing the big picture.
I continue to struggle with mental illness, and I have received treatment in the Rutland area. Several years ago while participating in a treatment program at Rutland Mental Health, it was apparent that a dedicated management and staff were working very hard to provide optimum patient care on an inadequate budget. While at the Rutland Regional Medical Center for stabilization, I observed patients whose options for extended or follow-up care were severely limited by availability and affordability. A number of these patients had no choice but to return to the same situations that had exacerbated their conditions in the first place. In both of these cases the caregivers were dedicated, and the patients were trying hard. There are simply large gaps in mental health programs. Isn't this a better reason for discussion, anger and action than a toy?
If you want to discuss corporate business ethics, sensitivity and connection to communities, may I suggest you focus on whether companies treat their employees with respect by providing living wage, adequate and affordable health care and reasonable retirement benefits?
If you need a research project, may I suggest you investigate whether possible changes in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or other components of the social safety net may make an already tenuous mental health situation even worse.
To focus attention on a stuffed bear presented for sale with tongue firmly planted in check is akin to criticizing the color of the life boats on the Titanic while ignoring the fact there are too few of them.
LEONARD M. POWERS Jr.
Rutland Herald
Article published Mar 10, 2005
VSEA wants mental health change in jails
MONTPELIER — The union for Vermont's government workers is calling for mental health services in Vermont's prisons to be performed by state workers rather than a private contractor.
The Vermont State Employees' Association's proposal, which is expected to be unveiled later this week, charges that the private company that has the contract is not performing adequately and might be charging too much.
An economic analysis by the association found that the company, run by Dr. Paul Cotton, is getting nearly $1.2 million in surplus profit over the three-year contract — in addition to the 11 percent profit typical for Vermont health care providers.
The contract is for $5.1 million over that term.
"We feel delivery of services is not adequate," said Nicole Dewing, a lobbyist for VSEA who drafted the proposal.
Corrections officers, whom the union represents, are left to deal with mentally ill prisoners and are not given training the contractor is supposed to provide, Dewing said.
"Our members are very unhappy with services they provide to the inmates," she said. "Services are not prompt. (Officers) are left dealing with the mentally ill inmates … which they have not been trained for."
John Hollar, an attorney for Cotton, said that allegation is unsubstantiated.
"They have consistently done training at the facilities," he said.
Training needs to be balanced against the need for mental health services, but if the Department of Corrections asks for more training of officers it will get it, he said.
"We are not aware of any concern from the department on any lack of training," Hollar said. "There is an enormous need within the Corrections Department for patient care."
Last month, Cotton's Burlington-based company had 2,500 patient contacts with inmates, Hollar said.
"It's just an enormous volume of patients that they see," he said.
VSEA and its members are not the only ones who have had problems with the company. A 2004 audit by then-state auditor Elizabeth Ready found that the company and its predecessor had billed for services that were never provided. The company returned $143,000 in a settlement with the state.
Changes in the contract with the company cleared up those issues, which centered on whether the company was billing for a 40-hour work week or less than that, Hollar said. He is not aware of any other systemic billing issues between the company and the state, he said.
But some are not so sure.
Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans, said he first became aware of problems with mental health services in the prisons after an inmate's suicide.
"Prior to that, there had been all kind of warning sings," Illuzzi said.
Corrections officers, prisoners and inmate advocates all told him about widespread problems in mental health services, and he is still getting such calls, he said.
"What has changed is a reasonable question," Illuzzi said. "Why has the department continued to contract with the same provider when it was determined that payments were received and services not provided? It strikes me as (though), despite the investigation, nothing has substantially changed."
Robert Hofmann, who recently became commissioner of corrections, said he will study the mental health contract and how services are provided.
"This is an area that I am very interested in understanding more about," he said. "There are scores of issues, and there are probably a dozen or 15 top issues … I would put this as one of those I need to review and I am anxious to do so."
The questions about the mental health contract arise as another prison health contract is also generating controversy.
The New York Times recently ran stories on problems and alleged abuses by a for-profit company, Prison Health Services.
That company recently won a contract to provide health care in Vermont jails.
"We certainly are aware of the accusations in the New York Times report," Hofmann said.
The contract with Prison Health Services has a series of safeguards and oversight provisions, he said.
"We already were geared up to oversee this much more actively than any other contract I am aware of," he said.
Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@rutlandherald.com.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
The connection between Hinsdale’s Monument road and Manhattan’s Bowery Street –A nation’s disgrace
http://villagevoice.com/
An Elegy for the Bowery
The Last Days of Loserville Once home to hustlers, drunks, and bohemians, America's slummiest street has turned into a new millionaire's row
by Joy Press March 1st, 2005 1:01 PM
….It's just a construction site now, girders and planks strewn on the floor. Instead of giant picture windows and balconies, there are unfinished walls and a sheer drop. But use your imagination: In a few months, this will be a glorious 16th-floor penthouse, complete with panoramic views, Sub-Zero fridge, and Italian bathroom fixtures. For $4.4 million, you can hover over all of downtown Manhattan like some kind of god, absorbing the sunlight that once flowed west down Spring Street. You can gaze down upon the crumbling tenements far below you, the lamp stores, the scrawny men who shuffle in and out of the flophouse next door. Your address is 195 Bowery and you are part of the transformation of a street once synonymous with bleak failure into a new millionaire's row….
See also the “The Endangered Garden” and “The Last of the Mohicans” articles in Loserville.
http://www.ij.org/private_pr
property_backgrounder.html
Coveting Thy Neighbor's Land in New London
……In early 1998, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that it would build a $270 million research facility in New London. [2] Pfizer bought the land along the Thames River from the State for $10 million. The company and other development groups associated with the project are slated to receive at least $118.2 million in federal and state subsidies over 13 years….
What you should remember NYC’s mayor Rudy Guliani’s policy of taking vagrants off the streets –which translates into our present high percentage of our jail population being the mentally disable –many term it as our American Gulag.
....Well, I was out there at my Hinsdale post office protesting the construction and debris incineration plant on this beautiful blue-sky morning. Again, I am wondering what the meaning of this is for all of NE –indeed for the nation. What economic and national political factors are driving this –what sector of the population benefits?
Many people think we are in an unsustainable economic bubble with housing shortages and unbelievable housing prices increasing –and just check out the construction materials (like plywood and cement) price spikes and shortage. We got record-breaking housing starts –and we got heavy turbulence for the middle and poor class with housing affordability. I guess the free market is broken here. You understand what I saying –you work hard and play by the rules –this doesn’t mean you are going to have an enriching life with adequate time for your family.
What you got is living further distances from your job, and we are all living more time in our cars because of inadequate investment in our educational and transportation infrastructures –and a higher risk of having a traffic accident. Let alone insurance prices are rising also… What we got here friends, is building Saddam Hussein like Mac-palaces for a segment of our population –and I might add, through there influences, they are removing human dignity to an enormous percentage of our population. We are building Hussein like palaces in the USA –instead of building schools, roads, and electrical infrastructure projects. You understand where this is going, is we are giving unprecedented tax and investments breaks to our higher incomes –and the results of this excess capital to the rich is undermining the dreams of our democracy to the middle and poor class. Do not kid yourself –the democrats are up to there neck with this corruption, as with the republicans.
According to the New York Times, metro New York City is seeing a historic building boom leading to a revolutionary change in the city’s skyline on the big buildings. Many areas in the city are seeing massive reconstruction of old buildings into new upscale housing. Check out the apartment and housing price increases in Bill Clinton’s Harlem in NYC. The middle class cannot afford any of this housing –they are seeing this throughout the big city NE. New Jersey is seeing a 30% increase in real-estate prices a year –what is the % rise of your raise this year?
So the question is what are the economic drivers of the increasing demand for the need of construction and debris removal industry. What is the magnitude of the increase in the future for this need? What are the percentage increases from all of the areas? Who profits most from the explosion of real-estate appreciation –who are the losers?
We are seeing a developing national slow motion catastrophe; where most of our young children will never be able to afford their own homes -let along afford a roof over their heads. Fundamentally, we are seeing a huge failure of our free market to provide a space for our young children within basic human rights to “be free” –we are enslaving the younger generation and the poor, in housing price and rental bondage. This is an unprecedented failure of the American dream for the next generation –and it is a direct threat to our national unity and structure.
I think what you will be seeing is huge run-up in housing prices driving construction materials price spikes –leading to a collapse in the housing sector, leading to mind numbing scandals and bankruptcies when the collapse comes. Are we already seeing that, with Fanny May and Freddy Mac, where our elites and CEO compensation with a lack of morality; the corruption and lying becomes the prime driver of our national cultural ethics and morality in the management of our nation’s housing needs and economic development? Is it all about an elite game of self interest that is undermining national cohesiveness?
It questions corruption on a massive national scale; it questions all of our conscience with facilitating this inhumanity, seeing how the management of housing policies comes from “We the People”. This questions the basic human dignity needs of adequate housing for all of us -if even one human lack dignity on this planet, then we all our lacking in some dignity within ourselves. The few of us are bulldozering unconscionable profits at the expense of basic human rights.
This is becoming “bigger” a than an Enron style scandal, where the elites our gaming the rules of the electric grid and withholding the use of many power plants to increase electric prices –where all our politicians gain advantage from the housing shortage and increasing prices –where our housing policy and local rules are facilitating this unsustainable pyramid scheme.
Why don’t we just turn our Constitution into a money making endeavor –where everyone gets to purchase freedom through a set price –we would have the fairest democracy in the world, with setting a transparent price on human dignity?
So what is the real story with the increasing needs of the construction and debris incineration/dump industry telling us; what is the magnitude telling us?
My friends, though the incineration controversy in Hinsdale NH, we are watching the making of history on a breath taking national scale.
It just might indicate that human dignity is for sale through the action of our governmental housing policies and the powers of our elites to enslave the majority of us.
An Elegy for the Bowery:
· Noise on Music Central From minstrelsy to vaudeville and Monk to punk, never under-estimate urban ugliness By Robert Christgau
· Mose Is Back in Town By Toni Schlesinger
· The Endangered Garden AvalonBay makes concessions, but will Liz Christy's trees and plants survive? By Danial Adkison
· The Last of the Mohicans Searching for a place to flop on what was once skid row By Darren Reidy
http://www.ij.org/private_property/connecticut/con_
property_backgrounder.html
Coveting Thy Neighbor's Land in New London
……In early 1998, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that it would build a $270 million research facility in New London. [2] Pfizer bought the land along the Thames River from the State for $10 million. The company and other development groups associated with the project are slated to receive at least $118.2 million in federal and state subsidies over 13 years….
….But the New London City Council authorized the NLDC to use eminent domain to force Fort Trumbull residents to give up their homes and businesses. The NLDC remains unapologetic about the use of eminent domain to accomplish its redevelopment plan. As former NLDC President Claire Gaudiani, who initiated the destruction of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, said in a speech to higher education and civic leaders justifying the NLDC's actions in Fort Trumbull, "Anything that's working in our great nation is working because somebody left skin on the sidewalk."[1][5] Thus, according to Gaudiani, the home and business owners must be sacrificed for the supposed "greater good" of the community….
…….A notable exception to the NLDC's plan to clear-cut the neighborhood is the Italian Dramatic Club, a politically connected "social club" of Connecticut's political establishment, which is located in the very same neighborhood as all the homes targeted for destruction. Among the Italian Dramatic Club's patrons was former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, who helped direct much of the State funding for the NLDC's work in New London and who resigned in June 2004 amid an ethics scandal. The club was informed in September 2000 that it could remain in the neighborhood.[2][6] The un-elected NLDC decision to preserve the politically powerful Italian Dramatic Club while demanding that New Londoners move out led Fort Trumbull homeowner Matt Dery to quip that the NLDC's actions in his neighborhood have been both shameful and shameless.…..
………Three of the property owners in the lawsuit have homes in so-called Parcel 3 of the redevelopment area. That parcel is slated for development as privately owned office space. Four of the property owners live in Parcel 4A of the project. Throughout much of the battle over Fort Trumbull, the NLDC had no specific plan or use for the site; it simply wanted to acquire the land, bulldoze the homes and businesses, and then sell it to developers. This led the Institute for Justice, which represents the property owners for free, to question, "How can you have a Ôpublic use' for taking someone's property, which the Constitution demands, when you don't know what that use will be?" (More recently the U.S. Coast Guard has made overtures to construct a museum on the site.)…….
Institute for Justice http://www.ij.org/
Lawsuit Challenging Eminent Domain Abuse in New London, Connecticut –some amazing information –check out the magnitude of the bulldozing throughout our nation….
Is it our nation tax policy that is at the root cause of our incineration and debris troubles?
http://www.ij.org/private_property/connecticut
Thanks,
mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
An Elegy for the Bowery
The Last Days of Loserville Once home to hustlers, drunks, and bohemians, America's slummiest street has turned into a new millionaire's row
by Joy Press March 1st, 2005 1:01 PM
….It's just a construction site now, girders and planks strewn on the floor. Instead of giant picture windows and balconies, there are unfinished walls and a sheer drop. But use your imagination: In a few months, this will be a glorious 16th-floor penthouse, complete with panoramic views, Sub-Zero fridge, and Italian bathroom fixtures. For $4.4 million, you can hover over all of downtown Manhattan like some kind of god, absorbing the sunlight that once flowed west down Spring Street. You can gaze down upon the crumbling tenements far below you, the lamp stores, the scrawny men who shuffle in and out of the flophouse next door. Your address is 195 Bowery and you are part of the transformation of a street once synonymous with bleak failure into a new millionaire's row….
See also the “The Endangered Garden” and “The Last of the Mohicans” articles in Loserville.
http://www.ij.org/private_pr
property_backgrounder.html
Coveting Thy Neighbor's Land in New London
……In early 1998, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that it would build a $270 million research facility in New London. [2] Pfizer bought the land along the Thames River from the State for $10 million. The company and other development groups associated with the project are slated to receive at least $118.2 million in federal and state subsidies over 13 years….
What you should remember NYC’s mayor Rudy Guliani’s policy of taking vagrants off the streets –which translates into our present high percentage of our jail population being the mentally disable –many term it as our American Gulag.
....Well, I was out there at my Hinsdale post office protesting the construction and debris incineration plant on this beautiful blue-sky morning. Again, I am wondering what the meaning of this is for all of NE –indeed for the nation. What economic and national political factors are driving this –what sector of the population benefits?
Many people think we are in an unsustainable economic bubble with housing shortages and unbelievable housing prices increasing –and just check out the construction materials (like plywood and cement) price spikes and shortage. We got record-breaking housing starts –and we got heavy turbulence for the middle and poor class with housing affordability. I guess the free market is broken here. You understand what I saying –you work hard and play by the rules –this doesn’t mean you are going to have an enriching life with adequate time for your family.
What you got is living further distances from your job, and we are all living more time in our cars because of inadequate investment in our educational and transportation infrastructures –and a higher risk of having a traffic accident. Let alone insurance prices are rising also… What we got here friends, is building Saddam Hussein like Mac-palaces for a segment of our population –and I might add, through there influences, they are removing human dignity to an enormous percentage of our population. We are building Hussein like palaces in the USA –instead of building schools, roads, and electrical infrastructure projects. You understand where this is going, is we are giving unprecedented tax and investments breaks to our higher incomes –and the results of this excess capital to the rich is undermining the dreams of our democracy to the middle and poor class. Do not kid yourself –the democrats are up to there neck with this corruption, as with the republicans.
According to the New York Times, metro New York City is seeing a historic building boom leading to a revolutionary change in the city’s skyline on the big buildings. Many areas in the city are seeing massive reconstruction of old buildings into new upscale housing. Check out the apartment and housing price increases in Bill Clinton’s Harlem in NYC. The middle class cannot afford any of this housing –they are seeing this throughout the big city NE. New Jersey is seeing a 30% increase in real-estate prices a year –what is the % rise of your raise this year?
So the question is what are the economic drivers of the increasing demand for the need of construction and debris removal industry. What is the magnitude of the increase in the future for this need? What are the percentage increases from all of the areas? Who profits most from the explosion of real-estate appreciation –who are the losers?
We are seeing a developing national slow motion catastrophe; where most of our young children will never be able to afford their own homes -let along afford a roof over their heads. Fundamentally, we are seeing a huge failure of our free market to provide a space for our young children within basic human rights to “be free” –we are enslaving the younger generation and the poor, in housing price and rental bondage. This is an unprecedented failure of the American dream for the next generation –and it is a direct threat to our national unity and structure.
I think what you will be seeing is huge run-up in housing prices driving construction materials price spikes –leading to a collapse in the housing sector, leading to mind numbing scandals and bankruptcies when the collapse comes. Are we already seeing that, with Fanny May and Freddy Mac, where our elites and CEO compensation with a lack of morality; the corruption and lying becomes the prime driver of our national cultural ethics and morality in the management of our nation’s housing needs and economic development? Is it all about an elite game of self interest that is undermining national cohesiveness?
It questions corruption on a massive national scale; it questions all of our conscience with facilitating this inhumanity, seeing how the management of housing policies comes from “We the People”. This questions the basic human dignity needs of adequate housing for all of us -if even one human lack dignity on this planet, then we all our lacking in some dignity within ourselves. The few of us are bulldozering unconscionable profits at the expense of basic human rights.
This is becoming “bigger” a than an Enron style scandal, where the elites our gaming the rules of the electric grid and withholding the use of many power plants to increase electric prices –where all our politicians gain advantage from the housing shortage and increasing prices –where our housing policy and local rules are facilitating this unsustainable pyramid scheme.
Why don’t we just turn our Constitution into a money making endeavor –where everyone gets to purchase freedom through a set price –we would have the fairest democracy in the world, with setting a transparent price on human dignity?
So what is the real story with the increasing needs of the construction and debris incineration/dump industry telling us; what is the magnitude telling us?
My friends, though the incineration controversy in Hinsdale NH, we are watching the making of history on a breath taking national scale.
It just might indicate that human dignity is for sale through the action of our governmental housing policies and the powers of our elites to enslave the majority of us.
An Elegy for the Bowery:
· Noise on Music Central From minstrelsy to vaudeville and Monk to punk, never under-estimate urban ugliness By Robert Christgau
· Mose Is Back in Town By Toni Schlesinger
· The Endangered Garden AvalonBay makes concessions, but will Liz Christy's trees and plants survive? By Danial Adkison
· The Last of the Mohicans Searching for a place to flop on what was once skid row By Darren Reidy
http://www.ij.org/private_property/connecticut/con_
property_backgrounder.html
Coveting Thy Neighbor's Land in New London
……In early 1998, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that it would build a $270 million research facility in New London. [2] Pfizer bought the land along the Thames River from the State for $10 million. The company and other development groups associated with the project are slated to receive at least $118.2 million in federal and state subsidies over 13 years….
….But the New London City Council authorized the NLDC to use eminent domain to force Fort Trumbull residents to give up their homes and businesses. The NLDC remains unapologetic about the use of eminent domain to accomplish its redevelopment plan. As former NLDC President Claire Gaudiani, who initiated the destruction of the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, said in a speech to higher education and civic leaders justifying the NLDC's actions in Fort Trumbull, "Anything that's working in our great nation is working because somebody left skin on the sidewalk."[1][5] Thus, according to Gaudiani, the home and business owners must be sacrificed for the supposed "greater good" of the community….
…….A notable exception to the NLDC's plan to clear-cut the neighborhood is the Italian Dramatic Club, a politically connected "social club" of Connecticut's political establishment, which is located in the very same neighborhood as all the homes targeted for destruction. Among the Italian Dramatic Club's patrons was former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, who helped direct much of the State funding for the NLDC's work in New London and who resigned in June 2004 amid an ethics scandal. The club was informed in September 2000 that it could remain in the neighborhood.[2][6] The un-elected NLDC decision to preserve the politically powerful Italian Dramatic Club while demanding that New Londoners move out led Fort Trumbull homeowner Matt Dery to quip that the NLDC's actions in his neighborhood have been both shameful and shameless.…..
………Three of the property owners in the lawsuit have homes in so-called Parcel 3 of the redevelopment area. That parcel is slated for development as privately owned office space. Four of the property owners live in Parcel 4A of the project. Throughout much of the battle over Fort Trumbull, the NLDC had no specific plan or use for the site; it simply wanted to acquire the land, bulldoze the homes and businesses, and then sell it to developers. This led the Institute for Justice, which represents the property owners for free, to question, "How can you have a Ôpublic use' for taking someone's property, which the Constitution demands, when you don't know what that use will be?" (More recently the U.S. Coast Guard has made overtures to construct a museum on the site.)…….
Institute for Justice http://www.ij.org/
Lawsuit Challenging Eminent Domain Abuse in New London, Connecticut –some amazing information –check out the magnitude of the bulldozing throughout our nation….
Is it our nation tax policy that is at the root cause of our incineration and debris troubles?
http://www.ij.org/private_property/connecticut
Thanks,
mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Winchester/Ashuelot paper mill –corruption.
“What we really need with the Winchester/Ashuelot paper mill –is a public accounting of all the public monies, incentives, borrowing, and tax breaks given to this plant.
I guess I would worry about the justification of private borrowing –seeing how that led to the downfall of American Tissue. It would not be bad to look at the Berlin mill in the same lens. What is a rather well warn path throughout New Hampshire with all the Mill closings and economic development –is that there has been a lot of ineffective governmental help in an attempt to help prevent most of these mill closing. But I don’t think the beneficiaries have been the employees with grave threats against their jobs –but on a cadre of special interests crooks, like lobbyist, lawyers, politicians, real-estate people, banks and politically connected non transparent quasi governmental economic (re)development authorities. We are even worrying about the meaning of the non profit TIP –where they create economic development –and then get compensated by diverting taxes to the communities for a long period of time into their own account.”
“So, a lot of this governmental help in grants, borrowing and regulatory assistance ends in creating an unconscionable profit opportunity to a select group of people –this drives up debt in these failed ventures charged to the public through governmental and quasi governmental authorities. It limits the mitigation of local economic damage when a business closes. What you got is a group of corrupt insiders who untransparently control a huge amount of public resources (tax monies) –these guys are scratching each others back with special deals that unbelievably enrich themselves in the tragic face of many families losing a livelihood.
So I’d like to see the compensation and bonus plans for the officials of these authorities –and asked if there are any conflict of interest issues here. I would also included all the related issues like how NHDES paid for the recent pollution services with the leaking heating fuel oil tanks, I might add I think they paid for the pollution sampling wells too.
This just might be a lens where the public gets to see how corruption is played in Monadnock regions, in the name of employee and family altruism when faced with a loss of a business.
You see, I am asking what is the meaning of this. The situation frames it in the preview of a private company -it always has. But I have faced these guys -the corporation the federal and state officials, our local politicians, who were blatantly lied to my face in front of a massive corruption issue. They all play stupid. You see, it is always about a business privacy issue to the regulator and the politicians -when somebody asked for transparency and accountable for these governmental officials.
I see it as the typical way our local political system interact with the public on our economic interest -and I can make the case that our economic and educational depravation of this area is a result of our political dysfunction. You understand, when we allow these things to go on between the officials and business, we ask for corruption, and by that, we invite poverty into our area.
I don't know, I think in metro area we would get a local politician to stand up next to a microphone, telling us that this is an intolerable situation, focusing a lot of media attention of the act of this company - talking about how hard it's been on the employees in the last five years... one way or another, we would get to the bottom of what's going on, and send signal to the rest of the businesses that this is improper behavior.
So I would say in this way -it is in the typical dysfunctional ways that individuals, the media, the bureaucracies and the politicians -over and over again sees these things -that this is what drives local economic deprivation and stagnation.
"We have such a political vacuum in our area.”
I guess I would worry about the justification of private borrowing –seeing how that led to the downfall of American Tissue. It would not be bad to look at the Berlin mill in the same lens. What is a rather well warn path throughout New Hampshire with all the Mill closings and economic development –is that there has been a lot of ineffective governmental help in an attempt to help prevent most of these mill closing. But I don’t think the beneficiaries have been the employees with grave threats against their jobs –but on a cadre of special interests crooks, like lobbyist, lawyers, politicians, real-estate people, banks and politically connected non transparent quasi governmental economic (re)development authorities. We are even worrying about the meaning of the non profit TIP –where they create economic development –and then get compensated by diverting taxes to the communities for a long period of time into their own account.”
“So, a lot of this governmental help in grants, borrowing and regulatory assistance ends in creating an unconscionable profit opportunity to a select group of people –this drives up debt in these failed ventures charged to the public through governmental and quasi governmental authorities. It limits the mitigation of local economic damage when a business closes. What you got is a group of corrupt insiders who untransparently control a huge amount of public resources (tax monies) –these guys are scratching each others back with special deals that unbelievably enrich themselves in the tragic face of many families losing a livelihood.
So I’d like to see the compensation and bonus plans for the officials of these authorities –and asked if there are any conflict of interest issues here. I would also included all the related issues like how NHDES paid for the recent pollution services with the leaking heating fuel oil tanks, I might add I think they paid for the pollution sampling wells too.
This just might be a lens where the public gets to see how corruption is played in Monadnock regions, in the name of employee and family altruism when faced with a loss of a business.
You see, I am asking what is the meaning of this. The situation frames it in the preview of a private company -it always has. But I have faced these guys -the corporation the federal and state officials, our local politicians, who were blatantly lied to my face in front of a massive corruption issue. They all play stupid. You see, it is always about a business privacy issue to the regulator and the politicians -when somebody asked for transparency and accountable for these governmental officials.
I see it as the typical way our local political system interact with the public on our economic interest -and I can make the case that our economic and educational depravation of this area is a result of our political dysfunction. You understand, when we allow these things to go on between the officials and business, we ask for corruption, and by that, we invite poverty into our area.
I don't know, I think in metro area we would get a local politician to stand up next to a microphone, telling us that this is an intolerable situation, focusing a lot of media attention of the act of this company - talking about how hard it's been on the employees in the last five years... one way or another, we would get to the bottom of what's going on, and send signal to the rest of the businesses that this is improper behavior.
So I would say in this way -it is in the typical dysfunctional ways that individuals, the media, the bureaucracies and the politicians -over and over again sees these things -that this is what drives local economic deprivation and stagnation.
"We have such a political vacuum in our area.”
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Governors Work to Improve H.S. Education
Governors Work to Improve H.S. Education
The nation's governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short.
"We can't keep explaining to our nation's parents or business leaders or college faculties why these kids can't do the work," said Virginia Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, as the state leaders convened for the first National Education Summit aimed at rallying governors around high school reform.
The governors say they want to emerge Sunday with specific plans for enacting policy, weary of statistics showing that too many students are coasting, dropping out or failing in college.
At least one agreement is likely. Achieve, a nonprofit group formed by governors and corporate leaders, plans to announce Sunday that roughly 12 states are committing to raise high school rigor and align their graduation requirements with skills demanded in college or work.
The high school summit drew at least 45 governors from the 50 states and five U.S. territories, along with top names in U.S. industry and education. The leaders broke into groups late in the day to debate ideas, and planned to do the same through Sunday.
Most of the summit's first day amounted to an enormous distress call, with speakers using unflattering numbers to define the problem. Among them: Of every 100 ninth-graders, only 68 graduate high school on time and only 18 make it through college on time, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Once in college, one in four students at four-year universities must take at least one remedial course to master what they should have learned in high school, government figures show.
The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who has put more than $700 million into reducing the size of high school classes through the foundation formed by him and his wife, Melinda. He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.
"America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they're working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."
Summit leaders have an ambitious agenda for every state: to raise the requirements of a high school diploma, improve information sharing between high schools and universities, and align graduation standards with the expectations of colleges and employers. Governors say they're in a position to unite the often splintered agendas of business leaders, educators and legislatures.
But such changes will take what Gates singled out as the biggest obstacle: political will.
Requiring tougher courses for all students, for example, could face opposition from parents and school officials, particularly if more rigor leads to lower test scores and costly training.
Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., said the most reliable predictor of success in college is a student's exposure to challenging high school courses _ and that governors know they must act.
"This is an issue that transcends all those typical things that cause people to split in different directions," Huckabee said.
The governors also planned to meet with President Bush and his Cabinet while in Washington.
The summit is the governors' fifth on education, but the first devoted to high schools. The original governors' education summit, organized by the first President Bush in 1989, is credited with spurring a movement of basing student performance on higher standards.
Warner has made improving high schools the centerpiece of his chairmanship of the National Governors Association, which is co-sponsoring the summit with Achieve. He is considered a possible candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.
Among the more high-profile governors who did not attend Saturday were two Republicans: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother.
___
On the Net:
National Education Summit:
The nation's governors offered an alarming account of the American high school Saturday, saying only drastic change will keep millions of students from falling short.
"We can't keep explaining to our nation's parents or business leaders or college faculties why these kids can't do the work," said Virginia Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, as the state leaders convened for the first National Education Summit aimed at rallying governors around high school reform.
The governors say they want to emerge Sunday with specific plans for enacting policy, weary of statistics showing that too many students are coasting, dropping out or failing in college.
At least one agreement is likely. Achieve, a nonprofit group formed by governors and corporate leaders, plans to announce Sunday that roughly 12 states are committing to raise high school rigor and align their graduation requirements with skills demanded in college or work.
The high school summit drew at least 45 governors from the 50 states and five U.S. territories, along with top names in U.S. industry and education. The leaders broke into groups late in the day to debate ideas, and planned to do the same through Sunday.
Most of the summit's first day amounted to an enormous distress call, with speakers using unflattering numbers to define the problem. Among them: Of every 100 ninth-graders, only 68 graduate high school on time and only 18 make it through college on time, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Once in college, one in four students at four-year universities must take at least one remedial course to master what they should have learned in high school, government figures show.
The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates, who has put more than $700 million into reducing the size of high school classes through the foundation formed by him and his wife, Melinda. He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.
"America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools _ even when they're working as designed _ cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."
Summit leaders have an ambitious agenda for every state: to raise the requirements of a high school diploma, improve information sharing between high schools and universities, and align graduation standards with the expectations of colleges and employers. Governors say they're in a position to unite the often splintered agendas of business leaders, educators and legislatures.
But such changes will take what Gates singled out as the biggest obstacle: political will.
Requiring tougher courses for all students, for example, could face opposition from parents and school officials, particularly if more rigor leads to lower test scores and costly training.
Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., said the most reliable predictor of success in college is a student's exposure to challenging high school courses _ and that governors know they must act.
"This is an issue that transcends all those typical things that cause people to split in different directions," Huckabee said.
The governors also planned to meet with President Bush and his Cabinet while in Washington.
The summit is the governors' fifth on education, but the first devoted to high schools. The original governors' education summit, organized by the first President Bush in 1989, is credited with spurring a movement of basing student performance on higher standards.
Warner has made improving high schools the centerpiece of his chairmanship of the National Governors Association, which is co-sponsoring the summit with Achieve. He is considered a possible candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.
Among the more high-profile governors who did not attend Saturday were two Republicans: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother.
___
On the Net:
National Education Summit:
Our area, the Forth Estate and Corruption –that deforms the life of our children.
Well, the UN says that poverty and corruption are inextricably linked. We know that in my corner of the state of NH -we are poor, economically disadvantaged and educationally deprived. I could make the case that our schools are inadequate because of our poor economic growth. I believe there are massive amounts of political corruption going on throughout our area. I believe the corruption facilitates the self-interest of a very few. I believe that businesses do not want to move to our area because of this corruption and the poor education of our children –where the insiders control all the rules and property. So, the very few control for their self interest, finds that it’s to their benefit to maintain the politics and government in a primitive form –to leash the creatively of the people for their own interest. Even the financing of development is based on the self-interest of the few.
What we know for a fact is that in our area is poverty and corruption deforms the lives of the many-through many generations -the local newspapers and media plays a huge role in maintaining the privilege of the few. When you have a forth estate who has become weak and shallow –who doesn’t drive its population toward non corruption and improvement –then special interest deforms the potential of a whole regions. The primary driver of corruption ends up being the weakness of the forth estate.
What this area needs is new competitors against the current set of media player in our area. We should figure out a way to fold in the new way of information dispersal, blogging and the typical forms of information media –newspapers and local cable channel. These new sources of the forth estate should drive a brand new set of political leaders into office.
Did you see the National Governors Association meeting on the national crisis of in high schools –this is the first time that I have admired CEO Gates of Microsoft.
What we know for a fact is that in our area is poverty and corruption deforms the lives of the many-through many generations -the local newspapers and media plays a huge role in maintaining the privilege of the few. When you have a forth estate who has become weak and shallow –who doesn’t drive its population toward non corruption and improvement –then special interest deforms the potential of a whole regions. The primary driver of corruption ends up being the weakness of the forth estate.
What this area needs is new competitors against the current set of media player in our area. We should figure out a way to fold in the new way of information dispersal, blogging and the typical forms of information media –newspapers and local cable channel. These new sources of the forth estate should drive a brand new set of political leaders into office.
Did you see the National Governors Association meeting on the national crisis of in high schools –this is the first time that I have admired CEO Gates of Microsoft.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Stellar black hole within an organization –within multiple organizations
From: Michael Mulligan
Date: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:59 pm Subject: Re: [Root_Cause_State_of_the_Practice_II] apparently safe systems can drift into failure
What's the book?
I could make the case that all genocides are generated by scarce resources. The population begins to feel the results of scarce resources –begins to feel they are being unfairly victimized, gets angry, with a political leader coming to the scene flipping the anger onto a subset of the population or neighbor. It is like taking candy from a baby. So are our brains hard wired by evolution to bond together when faced by scarce resources, are predisposed to violence in order to eat –with a skilled leader able to take advantage of this shortcoming? What’s that mean to our modern organizations?
Well from what I’ve seen, it could be looked as in the event horizon of a black hole star. We know the gravitation power of the star sucks light back to itself. From what I understand, that on the other side of the horizon nothing matters, not even the question of what is on the other side. I guess all the properties of the universe breaks down even including time and space.
So, as the problems of a facility increments up, you get the culture to increasingly “rule up” –it eventually leads to an avalanche. By ruling up, I mean the organization across a host of individual and bureaucratic manners begins to limit internal and external transparency –they limit transparency by a set of rules –those that are documented, and those that agreed upon by the individuals. The rules that limit communication are applied over and over again you get to the point that it is internalized. You get into these cold mechanical logic systems –and new information in the worst systems is never allowed in, and the truth is never allowed out. Once you get to the point of no return –much like an avalanche, there is nothing you can do to stop the process until the energy is expended.
Of course, the event horizon can be a continuum, but is it razor thin. Once you are standing on that horizon –you really can’t tell how close you are to the beginning of the avalanche -might have already started that can’t be stopped. Even when you put together in you mind that a future accident is a sure thing, there is nothing you can do to interrupt it because it might have already begun, and the bureaucratic system is automatically set up to block out all information that an accident is around the corner –or begun.
So let say you wake up inside one of these systems, whereby you pose a question asking is a accident around the corner -has it begun– the immunity of the dysfunctional system is already fully geared up, thus there is a huge immunity response such the person who begins to question the system rules is quickly isolated and thrown out. So everyone in the system then recognizes that a non believer will be thrown out.
I can make the cause that the dysfunctional system has infected similar other systems –whereby they have influence the regulators and the politicians. This organization has become extraordinarily dangerous tothe surrounding and society in general.
So a person who has perceived that something is wrong knows enough to go to knowledgeable outsiders –might not realize that the regulator, media and politicians are already been co-opted. So you go to the regulator to make a complaint before the accident –the regulator has already been trained to not accept any new information or you must have absolute quality of information that nobody has.
A person who is a wake in this system has two choices –he either believes that he is the last sane person inthe world or that the he is the only one who is insane.
Do you understand what I am saying –when you get into one of these black holes –none of us has the prior experience or education to recognize what we are in, never mine be able to interact with the system –never mine that there is no independent entities skilled at recognizing, coming in and retraining the organization –don’t forget all the otherorganizations…regulators…politicians…into becoming healthy again.
So can two unrelated dysfunctional organizations come together –then come up with a generic virus to co-opta bigger part of our political system?Thanks,mike mulliganHinsdale, Nh
Date: Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:59 pm Subject: Re: [Root_Cause_State_of_the_Practice_II] apparently safe systems can drift into failure
What's the book?
I could make the case that all genocides are generated by scarce resources. The population begins to feel the results of scarce resources –begins to feel they are being unfairly victimized, gets angry, with a political leader coming to the scene flipping the anger onto a subset of the population or neighbor. It is like taking candy from a baby. So are our brains hard wired by evolution to bond together when faced by scarce resources, are predisposed to violence in order to eat –with a skilled leader able to take advantage of this shortcoming? What’s that mean to our modern organizations?
Well from what I’ve seen, it could be looked as in the event horizon of a black hole star. We know the gravitation power of the star sucks light back to itself. From what I understand, that on the other side of the horizon nothing matters, not even the question of what is on the other side. I guess all the properties of the universe breaks down even including time and space.
So, as the problems of a facility increments up, you get the culture to increasingly “rule up” –it eventually leads to an avalanche. By ruling up, I mean the organization across a host of individual and bureaucratic manners begins to limit internal and external transparency –they limit transparency by a set of rules –those that are documented, and those that agreed upon by the individuals. The rules that limit communication are applied over and over again you get to the point that it is internalized. You get into these cold mechanical logic systems –and new information in the worst systems is never allowed in, and the truth is never allowed out. Once you get to the point of no return –much like an avalanche, there is nothing you can do to stop the process until the energy is expended.
Of course, the event horizon can be a continuum, but is it razor thin. Once you are standing on that horizon –you really can’t tell how close you are to the beginning of the avalanche -might have already started that can’t be stopped. Even when you put together in you mind that a future accident is a sure thing, there is nothing you can do to interrupt it because it might have already begun, and the bureaucratic system is automatically set up to block out all information that an accident is around the corner –or begun.
So let say you wake up inside one of these systems, whereby you pose a question asking is a accident around the corner -has it begun– the immunity of the dysfunctional system is already fully geared up, thus there is a huge immunity response such the person who begins to question the system rules is quickly isolated and thrown out. So everyone in the system then recognizes that a non believer will be thrown out.
I can make the cause that the dysfunctional system has infected similar other systems –whereby they have influence the regulators and the politicians. This organization has become extraordinarily dangerous tothe surrounding and society in general.
So a person who has perceived that something is wrong knows enough to go to knowledgeable outsiders –might not realize that the regulator, media and politicians are already been co-opted. So you go to the regulator to make a complaint before the accident –the regulator has already been trained to not accept any new information or you must have absolute quality of information that nobody has.
A person who is a wake in this system has two choices –he either believes that he is the last sane person inthe world or that the he is the only one who is insane.
Do you understand what I am saying –when you get into one of these black holes –none of us has the prior experience or education to recognize what we are in, never mine be able to interact with the system –never mine that there is no independent entities skilled at recognizing, coming in and retraining the organization –don’t forget all the otherorganizations…regulators…politicians…into becoming healthy again.
So can two unrelated dysfunctional organizations come together –then come up with a generic virus to co-opta bigger part of our political system?Thanks,mike mulliganHinsdale, Nh
Skipping stones and NH Paper Mill
From: Michael Mulligan Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 1:33 pm Subject: Re: [rootcauseconference] RE: Evidence Question #1
I mean what is the function of a RCA or any of the other problem analysis?
Are you people dealing with the “idealogs of objective philosophy” managers who demand absolute proof –especially if you run up against one of their interest? Maybe it goes; before you attack me as incompetent manager before the accident and attack the system of self interest that sustains my power –you will have to have absolute proof based on complicated set of rules for evidence gathering. So is RCA based upon looking through the rear view mirror –based on the extraordinary processes of evidence qualification?
I remember working on the issue on our local nuclear plant of high river water temperatures during the drought of 1998/99. We knew the upstream temps were getting near the design limits –and on a national level, we wondered what the meaning of magnitude of licensing changes that up’d the limits by a few degrees in the depths of the NE droughts. You will remember the results of the European adventure with a summertime heat wave –with this threatening the operation of many French nuclear power plants.
So my 6 year old son asked me of go throw rocks in the waters of the Ashuelot River –just a small stream nearmy house. We are skipping stones in the river, and I am mulling the meaning of the extraordinary low flowsof the river, as I see only a sliver of stream water in the Ashuelot -you know my mind is spinning wondering what the meaning of all this is in the issue of global warming. I am really involved with monitoring the flows of the rivers on the USGS web pages during these times.
It is a this point that I notice the water has a milky tint to it. I remember being upstream a few miles the day before looking at the same river –with my mind spinning on the issues of droughts and low flows. I then think in my minds eye that yesterday’s water was clear, while today’s has a milky tint to it.
It came from the puny upstream paper/tissue mill. I called the state environmental people –they are so disorganized I got disconnected from their office phone system six times before I talked to the pollution office. I remember finally getting the inspector to meet me at the site–he tells me with a straight face that this stream of milky white substances bubbling out of the rocks below the sludge lagoon, with him saying straight face to me “everyone thinks this is pollution, but I know it isn’t because I’ve tested it.” I tell him all the little streams that are feeding the river are dry now –we are in a historic drought –how can it be a natural spring. This is coming from that leaking lagoon above us.
This ended up with a 300 to 400 million dollar fraud case and bankruptcy against the CEO of the corporation -believe it was the forth largest tissue maker in the USA.I got them to build a new lagoon. I couldn’t imagine the consequences of this with looking at that tinted water with my son.
So from the get-go I acted on filaments of information –none of it was qualified. Matter of fact, if you would have asked me to put it in a qualified process, it would have inhibited me from acting on the slivers of truth that I though I saw. You understand, my mind was spinning on a completely different issue –but that spinning mind and the innocent pleasure of my son got me to the edge of the stream –one who I had walked by for weeks. So if you would have asked me to qualifythe evidence -you would have limited my minds ability to allow the opportunity of chance.
So let’s say I didn’t have an interest with the river temperatures at the nuclear power plant –I wouldn’t have had the information foundation of the special conditions at hand, or the minds interest that got me to the point of detecting that subtle milky appearance of the water. What gets you to the point, where a thought from the back of your mind says that something is wrong with the color water? How does the mind connect all these subtle differences in unrelated areas by chance? Think about all that wasted neural activity that is designed to catch that 1 and 10,000 chance of success. I tell you something, there is an enormous amount of thinking that goes on in the subconscious level -and it smashes throught the rules that we build.
I think that by depending on the mindset of the typical rules of evidence –you limit these interconnection in you mind.
But I guess the problem is, how do you persuade the guy next to you to see what you see. I guess we got to that point when the CEO was removed.thanks,mike
I mean what is the function of a RCA or any of the other problem analysis?
Are you people dealing with the “idealogs of objective philosophy” managers who demand absolute proof –especially if you run up against one of their interest? Maybe it goes; before you attack me as incompetent manager before the accident and attack the system of self interest that sustains my power –you will have to have absolute proof based on complicated set of rules for evidence gathering. So is RCA based upon looking through the rear view mirror –based on the extraordinary processes of evidence qualification?
I remember working on the issue on our local nuclear plant of high river water temperatures during the drought of 1998/99. We knew the upstream temps were getting near the design limits –and on a national level, we wondered what the meaning of magnitude of licensing changes that up’d the limits by a few degrees in the depths of the NE droughts. You will remember the results of the European adventure with a summertime heat wave –with this threatening the operation of many French nuclear power plants.
So my 6 year old son asked me of go throw rocks in the waters of the Ashuelot River –just a small stream nearmy house. We are skipping stones in the river, and I am mulling the meaning of the extraordinary low flowsof the river, as I see only a sliver of stream water in the Ashuelot -you know my mind is spinning wondering what the meaning of all this is in the issue of global warming. I am really involved with monitoring the flows of the rivers on the USGS web pages during these times.
It is a this point that I notice the water has a milky tint to it. I remember being upstream a few miles the day before looking at the same river –with my mind spinning on the issues of droughts and low flows. I then think in my minds eye that yesterday’s water was clear, while today’s has a milky tint to it.
It came from the puny upstream paper/tissue mill. I called the state environmental people –they are so disorganized I got disconnected from their office phone system six times before I talked to the pollution office. I remember finally getting the inspector to meet me at the site–he tells me with a straight face that this stream of milky white substances bubbling out of the rocks below the sludge lagoon, with him saying straight face to me “everyone thinks this is pollution, but I know it isn’t because I’ve tested it.” I tell him all the little streams that are feeding the river are dry now –we are in a historic drought –how can it be a natural spring. This is coming from that leaking lagoon above us.
This ended up with a 300 to 400 million dollar fraud case and bankruptcy against the CEO of the corporation -believe it was the forth largest tissue maker in the USA.I got them to build a new lagoon. I couldn’t imagine the consequences of this with looking at that tinted water with my son.
So from the get-go I acted on filaments of information –none of it was qualified. Matter of fact, if you would have asked me to put it in a qualified process, it would have inhibited me from acting on the slivers of truth that I though I saw. You understand, my mind was spinning on a completely different issue –but that spinning mind and the innocent pleasure of my son got me to the edge of the stream –one who I had walked by for weeks. So if you would have asked me to qualifythe evidence -you would have limited my minds ability to allow the opportunity of chance.
So let’s say I didn’t have an interest with the river temperatures at the nuclear power plant –I wouldn’t have had the information foundation of the special conditions at hand, or the minds interest that got me to the point of detecting that subtle milky appearance of the water. What gets you to the point, where a thought from the back of your mind says that something is wrong with the color water? How does the mind connect all these subtle differences in unrelated areas by chance? Think about all that wasted neural activity that is designed to catch that 1 and 10,000 chance of success. I tell you something, there is an enormous amount of thinking that goes on in the subconscious level -and it smashes throught the rules that we build.
I think that by depending on the mindset of the typical rules of evidence –you limit these interconnection in you mind.
But I guess the problem is, how do you persuade the guy next to you to see what you see. I guess we got to that point when the CEO was removed.thanks,mike
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