65 Tornadoes in Six States Kill Four People

Time to Bunker Down, Adapt and Pray. Certainly easier than to demand science freedom which would automatically unleash wisdom, understanding and open the door to an unlimited, sustainable and prosperous future for all

March 30, 2007
65 Tornadoes in Six States Kill Four People
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Four people were killed in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas after 65 tornadoes swept through six states on Wednesday, officials said yesterday.
Two people died when a tornado swirled through their rural neighborhood near Elmwood, Okla., a state emergency official, Dixie Parker, said. They were identified as Vance and Barbra Woodbury, a husband and wife.
The authorities spread into Beaver County on Wednesday, warning residents to take shelter and to offer assistance, Mrs. Parker said. “There was no house left,” she said. “It was demolished, and we found them in the field. One was still alive, the husband. He passed away just before the ambulance got there.”
The tornado appeared to have cut through their house, as the closest neighbors had just uprooted trees, Mrs. Parker said.
Tornadoes also struck Illinois, Kansas and Nebraska, said Patrick Slattery of the National Weather Service, with some regions pummeled by large hailstones and heavy snowfall.
“It was a big storm, a big system,” Mr. Slattery said. “The majority of these were almost in a straight north-south line along the Kansas-Nebraska border. The effects stretched from Colorado and Wyoming, with blowing snow.”
In Carbon County, Wyo., 19 inches of snow fell. Hail an inch and three-quarter inches in diameter, about the size of a golf ball, fell in the Nebraska Panhandle, he added.
In Holly, Colo., a town of 1,500 people east of Lamar, a woman and two children were found dangling in a tree on Wednesday night, County Coroner Joe Giardone said. The woman, Rosemary Rosales, 28, died of injuries. The children and at least nine other people were injured, Mr. Giardone said, with seven taken to trauma centers.
In the Texas Panhandle outside Amarillo, an oilfield worker from Oklahoma, Monte Ford, 53, was killed when the tornado hit his trailer, Tela Mange of the Public Safety Department said.
At least three people were injured in the panhandle, The Associated Press reported.
In Nebraska, houses were damaged or destroyed in Dundy and Perkins. No casualties were reported. Residents had left the areas, which are hilly in some parts but include flat farmland and grazing fields.
“One thing we can say is they are areas of low population,” said Cindy Newsham, the response and recovery division manager of the state’s Emergency Management Agency. “We can have tornadoes that go through a lot of area but don’t hit anything.”

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows

Increase that productivity and multitasking our corporate lords demand as they cut more corners, jobs, pay!!! And the overworked, underpaid, under insured, vacation deprived, stuck in traffic consumer/worker slaves complied - desperately trying to qualify for credit cards to be able to afford sufficient "material goods and some luxury items of the good life", despite no time to enjoy them........THESE ARE THE SYMPTOMS & WONDERS OF A CRIPPLED SCIENCE UNDER CORPORATE CONTROL that are destroying imagination, creativity, and sanity. On to the Future! Now let's profit with corn for fuel - and if you (world) ain't got food, eat cake.

NYT March 29, 2007
Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.
The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.
The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Prof. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.
“If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness,” Professor Saez said. “It can have important political consequences.”
Last year, according to data from other sources, incomes for average Americans increased for the first time in several years. But because those at the top rely heavily on the stock market and business profits for their income, both of which were strong last year, it is likely that the disparities in 2005 are the same or larger now, Mr. Saez said.
He noted that the analysis was based on preliminary data and that the highest-income Americans were more likely than others to file their returns late, so his data might understate the growth in inequality.
The disparities may be even greater for another reason. The Internal Revenue Service estimates that it is able to accurately tax 99 percent of wage income but that it captures only about 70 percent of business and investment income, most of which flows to upper-income individuals, because not everybody accurately reports such figures.
The Bush administration argued that its tax policies, despite cuts that benefited those at the top more than others, had not added to the widening gap but “made the tax code more progressive, not less.” Brookly McLaughlin, the chief Treasury Department spokeswoman, said that this year “the share of income taxes paid by lower-income taxpayers will be lower than it would have been without the tax relief, while the share of income taxes for higher-income taxpayers will be higher.”
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., she noted, has acknowledged that income disparities have increased, but, along with a “solid consensus” of experts, attributed that shift largely to “the rapid pace of technological change has been a major driver in the decades-long widening of the income gap in the United States."
Others argued that public policies had played a role in the shift. Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for the poor, said that the data understates the widening disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest of the country.
He said that in addition to rising incomes and reduced taxes, the equation should take into account cuts in fringe benefits to workers and in government services that middle-class and poor Americans rely on more than the affluent. These include health care, child care and education spending.
“The nation faces some very tough choices in coming years,” he said. “That such a large share of the income gains are going to the very top, at a minimum, raises serious questions about continuing to provide tax cuts averaging over $150,000 a year to people making more than a million dollars a year, while saying we do not have enough money” to provide health insurance to 47 million Americans and cutting education benefits.
A major issue likely to be debated in Congress in the year ahead is whether reversing the Bush tax cuts would slow investment and, if so, how much that would cost the economy.
Mr. Greenstein’s organization will release a report today showing that for Americans in the middle, the share of income taken by federal taxes has been essentially unchanged across four decades. By comparison, it has fallen by half for those at the very top of the income ladder.
Because the incomes of those at the top have grown so much more than those below them, their share of total income tax revenue has risen despite the reduced rates.
The analysis by the two professors showed that the top 10 percent of Americans collected 48.5 percent of all reported income in 2005.
That is an increase of more than 2 percentage points over the previous year and up from roughly 33 percent in the late 1970s. The peak for this group was 49.3 percent in 1928.
The top 1 percent received 21.8 percent of all reported income in 2005, up significantly from 19.8 percent the year before and more than double their share of income in 1980. The peak was in 1928, when the top 1 percent reported 23.9 percent of all income.
The top tenth of a percent and top one-hundredth of a percent recorded even bigger gains in 2005 over the previous year. Their incomes soared by about a fifth in one year, largely because of the rising stock market and increased business profits.
The top tenth of a percent reported an average income of $5.6 million, up $908,000, while the top one-hundredth of a percent had an average income of $25.7 million, up nearly $4.4 million in one year.

Saudi King Condemns U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Long time Allies deserting? I suppose the question of the exponential rise of murder and killing, including the murder and killing of women and children since the "liberation" and "occupation", does occasionally arise. The oil fields are pretty safe though.

NYT March 28, 2007
Saudi King Condemns U.S. Occupation of Iraq
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told Arab leaders on Wednesday that the American occupation of Iraq is “illegal,” and he warned that unless Arab governments settle their differences, foreign powers like the United States would continue to dictate the region’s politics.
The king’s speech, at the opening of the Arab League summit meeting here, underscored growing differences between Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration as the Saudis take on a greater regional leadership role, partly at American urging. The Saudis seem to be emphasizing that they will not be beholden to the policies of their longtime ally.
The Saudis brokered a deal between the two main Palestinian factions last month but one that both Israel and the United States found deeply problematic because it added to the power of the radical group Hamas rather than to the more moderate Fatah. On Wednesday, the king called for an end to the international boycott of the new Palestinian government. The United States and Israel want the boycott continued.
In addition, King Abdullah invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Riyadh earlier this month while the Americans want him shunned. And in trying to settle the tensions in Lebanon, the Saudis seem willing to negotiate with Iran.
Last week, the Saudi king abruptly canceled his appearance at an April White House dinner planned in his honor, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The official reason given for the cancellation was a scheduling conflict.
Mustapha Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, said the Saudis are sending Washington a message. “They are telling the U.S. they need to listen to their allies rather than imposing decisions on them and always taking Israel’s side.”
In his speech on Wednesday, the king said: “In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation and detestable sectarianism. The blame should fall on us, the leaders of the Arab nation, with our ongoing differences, our refusal to walk the path of unity. All that has made the nation lose its confidence in us.”
King Abdullah has not publicly spoken so harshly about the American-led Iraq war before and his remarks suggested that his alliance with Washington may be less strong that Bush officials have been hoping.
Since last summer, the Bush administration has asserted that a realignment is occurring in the Middle East, one that groups Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon along with Israel against Iran, Syria and the militiant groups that they back, Hezbollah of Lebanon and Hamas of the Palestinians.
The administration has urged Saudi Arabia to take a leading role in that realignment, but it is finding itself disappointed by the results.
Some here said the king’s speech was in fact a response to comments made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday calling on Arab governments to “begin reaching out to Israel.”
Many read Ms. Rice’s comments as suggesting that the Bush administration is backing away from its support for an Arab initiative aimed at solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel wants the Arabs to make changes in the initiative, most notably in their call for a right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is today Israel. The Arab League is endorsing the peace initiative, first introduced by Saudi Arabia in 2002, without changes.
The plan calls on Israel to withdraw from all land it won in the 1967 war in exchange for full diplomatic relations with the Arab world. It also calls for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Regarding the Palestinians, the king said on Wednesday, "It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force."
With regard to Iraq, the Saudis seem also to be paying attention to internal American politics. The Senate on Tuesday signaled support for legislation calling for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq in exchange for further money for the war.
Last November, Saudi officials here realized that a Democratic upset could spell major changes for the region: a possible pullout from Iraq, fueling further instability and more important, allowing Iran to extend its influence in the region.
“I don’t think that the Saudi government has decided to distance itself from Bush just yet,” said Adel al-Toraifi, a columnist with close ties to the Saudi royal family. “But I also think that the Saudis have seen that the ball is moving into the court of the Democrats and they want to extend their hand to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.”
Turki al-Rasheed, who runs a organization that promotes democracy in Saudi Arabia, said the king was “saying we may be moving on the same track, but our ends are different.”
“Bush wants to make it look like he is solving the problem, the king wants to actually solve the problems,” Mr. Rasheed said.
King Abdullah made clear that he looked forward to the day when American troops are gone because Arabs take care of their own problems: : “If confidence is restored, it will be accompanied by credibility, and if credibility is restored, then the winds of hope will blow and then we will never allow outside forces to define our future nor allow banners to be raised in Arab lands other than those of Arabism, brothers.”
The Saudis sought to enforce discipline on the two-day summit meeting, reminding Arab leaders and dignitaries to stay on message and leave here with some kind of solution in hand.
“The weight of the Saudis has ensured that this will be a problem-free summit,” said Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the Jordanian daily Al Ghad. “Nobody is going to veer from the message and go against the Saudis. But that doesn’t mean the problems themselves will be solved.”
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations gave a stark assessment of the state of the Middle East in an address to the summit meeting, speaking in unsparing language that the region was “more complex, more fragile and more dangerous than it has been for a very long time.”
In Iraq, he said, “there is a shocking” daily loss of life, and Somalia is in the grip of “banditry, violence and clan rivalries.”
Iran, which was sanctioned by the Security Council for the second time last Saturday, is “forging ahead with its nuclear program heedless of regional and international concerns.”
Having spent Monday and Tuesday in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Mr. Ban urged the new Palestinian unity government to demonstrate a “true commitment to peace.”
In return, he said, Israel must cease its settlement activity and stop building the separation barrier.
He concluded, “Instability in the Arab League states is of profound significance to international peace and security.”
Reporting was contributed by Nada Bakri from Beirut, Lebanon; Rasheed Abou Alsamh from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and Warren Hoge from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

U.N.: World must share, not war over water

The water crisis stands out as significantly important because the oceans have not run dry. And we live in the 21st Century! Clean, purified, desalinated water is not being transported (using ultra modern, ‘past due’ methods and means) wherever needed solely due to One Obstacle – Energy and the stagnant science of energy evolution. This same inadequacy in energy science causing “The Trouble With Physics” (by Lee Smolin), idling the Standard Model as Physics awaits new options, is responsible for the looming lethal threats of global warming, resource wars and deadly pollution. The avenue to evolutionary new energy options became accessible in the middle 1940’s. "For the people, by the people can either demand revelations of the ‘hidden variables in science, or create a world body to “re-discover” and implement the required evolving energy systems. Evolution will not wait.

U.N.: World must share, not war over water
Population growth, and now warming, are adding to pressures
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 12:24 p.m. CT March 22, 2007

ROME - With climate change now adding to the pressures, sharing rather than warring over the world's resources of fresh water represents the "challenge of the 21st century," the United Nations said Thursday as it marked World Water Day.
"The bulk of that challenge lies in finding more effective ways to conserve, use and protect the world’s water resources," the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement.
Already 1.1 billion people lack access to adequate clean water and, with the world's population set to grow from the current 6.5 billion to 8 billion by 2030, 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by then, the Rome-based agency estimated.
That growing population also means that "14 percent more freshwater will need to be withdrawn for agricultural purposes in the next 30 years," the FAO stated.
FAO Director Jacques Diouf said the repercussions of not meeting the challenge would be enormous. "Water conflicts can arise in water stressed areas among local communities and between countries," he told a conference marking World Water Day.
"The lack of adequate institutional and legal instruments for water sharing exacerbates already difficult conditions. In the absence of clear and well-established rules, chaos tends to dominate and power plays an excessive role," he said.
Warming 'raised the stakes'The FAO added that "climate change has raised the stakes" since some studies indicate that warming temperatures might cause more frequent droughts as well as more intense storms and flooding, "which destroy crops, contaminate freshwater and damage the facilities used to store and carry that water."
"Particularly vulnerable to climate variability," the FAO said, are the world's poorest farmers, who "often occupy marginal lands and rely on rainfall to sustain their livelihoods."
In a report on the state of the world's water resources, the FAO concluded that "climate change is expected to account for about 20 percent of the global increase in water scarcity. Countries that already suffer from water shortages will be hit hardest."
The agency also cited a 2006 study by Britain's weather agency concluding that with no mitigation of climate change, the severe droughts that now occur only once every 50 years would occur every other year by 2100.
To improve cross-border cooperation on water use, the 10 countries on the Nile River are negotiating a water sharing agreement that the FAO hopes will be a model for other areas where the scarce resource can be shared peacefully.
Polluted water victim: Great Barrier ReefThe pressures on water resources include chemical runoff from farms into rivers, contaminating water supplies and even ocean resources.
In Australia, the conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature on Thursday urged the government to take action to protect the Great Barrier Reef, which is already being stressed by warming waters, from such run-off.
Scientists last month warned of the run-off, and other researchers earlier warned that the 1,400-mile-long coral reef — the world's largest living structure — could be functionally extinct by 2050 due to global warming, taking with it a $4.5 billion tourist industry.
But the reef was actually facing a twin threat, with chemical run-off from farms along the coast of Queensland state threatening to trigger an attack by predatory Crown-of-Thorns starfish, who thrive on farm waste, WWF said in a report.
"It is reducing the reef's resilience to climate change. The risk is farm pollution will feed another outbreak of this invasive species, which devastates reefs and can halve coral cover," said WWF water expert Nick Heath.
The starfish, which lives on tiny living polyps which make up the reef, can each wipe out up to six meters of coral each year and scientists believe agricultural run-off can help it to thrive.
WWF said as many as 700 of the Great Barrier Reef's 3,000 coral outcrops were in danger because of human activity in water catchments along the coast and pesticides used by the sugar cane industry. Diuron and Atrazine — pesticides used by the cane industry — have now been found up to 60 miles offshore, it said.
The reef is home to more than a third of the world's soft corals, more than 1,500 species of fish and six of the world's seven marine turtle species.
WWF alleged that the government had done little to implement a 2003 plan to protect the water quality around the reef.
© 2007 MSNBC InteractiveReuters

Gore takes warming warnings to Congress

Our Lives are in "good hands" as we place our Trust in "Greedy Guts" Corporate Modus Operandi, the physical embodiment of the ancient Chinese symbol "the dragon eating its own tail".

An interesting dilemma, advancing Civilization cannot proceed without new energy systems, yet new energy systems more powerful than nukes and far simpler to develop once understood, require corresponding degrees of wisdom and understanding.

Gore takes warming warnings to Congress
Call for curbs on coal power, carbon emissions met with GOP skepticism
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 6:26 p.m. CT March 21, 2007

WASHINGTON - Al Gore spoke out on his signature issue Wednesday, telling Congress that the world faces “a true planetary emergency” unless it dramatically and immediately reduces emissions that most scientists tie to global warming.
In a return he described as emotional, the former vice president testified before House panels that it is not too late to deal with climate change “and we have everything we need to get started.”
Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050 to avert a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants — a major source of industrial carbon dioxide — that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.
‘A sense of hope’He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information.
“There is a sense of hope in this country that this United States Congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis,” he said. “Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it’s a challenge to the moral imagination.”
Gore favors a “cap-and-trade” program for the U.S. economy, not just specific sectors such as electricity or manufacturing, which would set an overall limit on warming emissions but allow industry to meet the target by trading pollution allowances.
“Trust the market, make it work for us,” he said.
Gore gained international recognition with his Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” as perhaps the leading spokesman on dealing with global warming. At the hearing, he was flanked by cardboard boxes that he said contained some 516,000 letters calling for congressional action to counter global warming.
Skeptics question science, costsBut several Republicans sharply questioned Gore's recommendations.
“A lot of those recommendations are more regulations and more taxation,” said former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, although he added that he agrees with Gore that the scientific debate on climate change is over. “I think we can find answers to use the coal energy, to use the natural gas we have.”
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a former chairman of the House energy committee, questioned scientific evidence from Gore’s popular film and said cutting carbon dioxide emissions would “provide little benefit at a huge cost,” particularly to major coal-producing and coal-burning states.
“You’re not just off a little, you’re totally wrong,” Barton said as he challenged Gore’s conclusion that carbon dioxide emissions cause rising global temperatures. Barton and Gore’s exchange grew testy at one point — Barton demanding that Gore get to the point and Gore responding that he would like time to answer without being interrupted.
“Global warming science is uneven and evolving,” Barton said.
House lawmakers later heard from Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician who has become a leading critic of Gore's. In his prepared testimony, Lomborg argued that “statements about the strong, ominous and immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly exaggerated.”
“Climate change is not the only issue on the global agenda,” he added, “and actually one of the issues where we can do the least good first.”
Gore said the climate issue should not be a partisan or even political issue. “I just returned from the United Kingdom, where last week the two major parties put forward their climate change platforms,” he said. “The Tory and Labour parties are in vigorous competition with one another — competing to put forward the best solution to the climate crisis.”
He said he saw a limited role for carbon-free nuclear power, which the Bush administration has promoted, because the plants are expensive to build and “only come in one size: extra large.”
Return to the HillGore’s return to Congress marked the first time he had been in the Capitol since 2001, when he was the defeated Democratic nominee still presiding over the Senate in his role as vice president. The former vice president, who 20 years ago held the first hearings in Congress on global warming, appeared before a joint hearing by two House committees.
He later spoke before the Senate environment committee, which includes the current Democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination — Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Another member is its recent past chairman, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who calls global warming the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on Americans.
Inhofe pressed Gore to commit to cutting his personal home energy consumption to no more than what the average American household consumes — without paying for carbon offsets, which Inhofe dismissed as “gimmicks used by the wealthy.”
Gore demurred, but later said, “We live a carbon-neutral life, senator, and both of my businesses are carbon-neutral. We buy green energy, we do not contribute to the problem that I am joining with others to solve.”
Living a carbon-neutral life means calculating how much carbon you emit, cutting emissions where possible and balancing the rest by buying so-called carbon offsets, such as investments in windmills or by planting trees.
Gore has lately faced public questions about his personal “carbon footprint,” especially at his large home in Tennessee. An aide noted that Gore and his wife Tipper drove to Wednesday’s hearing in a black hybrid vehicle.
Wants U.S. to lead by exampleGore rejected the contention by opponents of quick action on global warming that the United States should only impose mandatory controls on greenhouse gases if China, India and other rapidly developing nations agree to do the same.
“The best way and the only way to get China and India on board is for the U.S. to demonstrate real leadership,” Gore said. “As the world’s largest economy and the greatest superpower, we are uniquely situated to tackle a problem of this magnitude.”
Congress has nearly a dozen bills before it that call for reductions in carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases,” including some that aim to cut such emissions by as much as 80 percent by mid-century.
Curbs weighed by executivesGore's testimony comes a day after executives of some of the country’s largest electric utilities discussed the possibility of mandatory carbon emission limits to address climate change.
But they expressed concern over the potential for huge increases in the cost of electricity, depending on how such emission limits are imposed.
Gore on Tuesday told an investors' conference that climate change and environmental sustainability should be factored into investment programs and routinely integrated into financial analysis.
"Pension funds should be joining this call," Gore told the Council of Institutional Investors, which represents $3 trillion in pension funds. He urged pension-fund managers to look beyond short-term performance and "take sustainability into account" when making investment decisions.
CEO: ‘It's a business message’Specifically, Gore suggested pension managers consider factors such as how companies treat the environment, their employees, the communities in which they operate and their corporate culture and ethics. With such an approach, he said, pension funds can be "a part of the solution" to climate change.
Several large pension funds on Tuesday did endorse the notion of carbon curbs, and conference leader Jack Ehnes, CEO of the California teachers' retirement system, said Gore's thinking is much needed in politics.
"It's not just for tree-huggers in California," Ehnes said of the speech. "It's a business message. We do not have political leaders that have taken this challenge to heart. The vice president exemplifies this type of leadership."
"He's charismatic," Rob Berridge, a Boston program manager for a coalition of environmental groups and investors called Ceres, said after the speech. "Yeah, he's a sage."
© 2007 MSNBC InteractiveThe Associated Press and Reuters

Harmful Warming Effects Already Here?

In Awakening to New Energy Alternatives Andrew Mount says "It is no surprise that a rise of militarism should precede the demise of the fossil fuel empire. It is the vain attempt of the 'old guard' to extend the life of a dying ideology. Rather than take proactive steps to reconstitute the existing business model, brute force is the preferred, more expedient choice." (with the current addition "Adapt to misery and death from global warming, cook up some corn ethanol, escape to Trivia, and avoid Science FUNDAMENTALS at all costs for they threaten our Corporate Power and Glory - and so THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS PERSISTS)

Harmful Warming Effects Already Here?
CBS WASHINGTON, March 11, 2007
(AP) The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium. At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. "Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised. The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials. But some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change when it's issued in early April in Brussels, the same city where European Union leaders agreed this past week to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Their plan will be presented to President Bush and other world leaders at a summit in June. The report offers some hope if nations slow and then reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but it notes that what's happening now isn't encouraging. "Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent," the report says, in marked contrast to a 2001 report by the same international group that said the effects of global warming were coming. But that report only mentioned scattered regional effects. The draft document says scientists are highly confident that many current problems — change in species' habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs, and increases in allergy-inducing pollen — can be blamed on global warming. For example, the report says North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires. But the present is nothing compared to the future. Global warming soon will "affect everyone's life ... it's the poor sectors that will be most affected," Romero Lankao said. And co-author Terry Root of Stanford University said: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species. The report included these likely results of global warming:
· Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.
· Death rates for the world's poor from global warming-related illnesses, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, will rise by 2030. Malaria and dengue fever, as well as illnesses from eating contaminated shellfish, are likely to grow.
· Europe's small glaciers will disappear with many of the continent's large glaciers shrinking dramatically by 2050. And half of Europe's plant species could be vulnerable, endangered or extinct by 2100.
· By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming's effects.
· About 100 million people each year could be flooded by 2080 by rising seas.
· Smog in U.S. cities will worsen and "ozone-related deaths from climate (will) increase by approximately 4.5 percent for the mid-2050s, compared with 1990s levels," turning a small health risk into a substantial one.
· Polar bears in the wild and other animals will be pushed to extinction.
· At first, more food will be grown. For example, soybean and rice yields in Latin America will increase starting in a couple of years. Areas outside the tropics, especially the northern latitudes, will see longer growing seasons and healthier forests. Looking at different impacts on ecosystems, industry and regions, the report sees the most positive benefits in forestry and some improved agriculture and transportation in polar regions. The biggest damage is likely to come in ocean and coastal ecosystems, water resources and coastal settlements. The hardest-hit continents are likely to be Africa and Asia, with major harm also coming to small islands and some aspects of ecosystems near the poles. North America, Europe and Australia are predicted to suffer the fewest of the harmful effects. "In most parts of the world and most segments of populations, lifestyles are likely to change as a result of climate change," the draft report said. "Net valuations of benefits vs. costs will vary, but they are more likely to be negative if climate change is substantial and rapid, rather than if it is moderate and gradual." This report — considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research — focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposed to the more science-focused report by the same group last month. "This is the story. This is the whole play. This is how it's going to affect people. The science is one thing. This is how it affects me, you and the person next door," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. Many — not all — of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that's the case, the report says "most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur." The United Nations-organized network of 2,000 scientists was established in 1988 to give regular assessments of the Earth's environment. The document issued last month in Paris concluded that scientists are 90 percent certain that people are the cause of global warming and that warming will continue for centuries.
© MMVII The Associated Press

Crisis Looms in Mortgages

Not to worry. The sound philosophy of the prehistoric economic model and corporate structure spreading worldwide has human life, and quality of life, as its first and foremost priority - understanding full well, without human life, there would be no long term profit (historical stats may have an argument here questioning starvation, poverty, pollution, global warming, traffic nightmares, health & medical deprivation, sweatshops and so on)


NYT March 11, 2007
News Analysis
Crisis Looms in Mortgages
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial, had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks.
What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21.
The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.
Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.
Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.
Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market.
“The regulators are trying to figure out how to work around it, but the Hill is going to be in for one big surprise,” said Josh Rosner, a managing director at Graham-Fisher & Company, an independent investment research firm in New York, and an expert on mortgage securities. “This is far more dramatic than what led to Sarbanes-Oxley,” he added, referring to the legislation that followed the WorldCom and Enron scandals, “both in conflicts and in terms of absolute economic impact.”
While real estate prices were rising, the market for home loans operated like a well-oiled machine, providing ready money to borrowers and high returns to investors like pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and other institutions. Now this enormous and important machine is sputtering, and the effects are reverberating throughout Main Street, Wall Street and Washington.
Already, more than two dozen mortgage lenders have failed or closed their doors, and shares of big companies in the mortgage industry have declined significantly. Delinquencies on loans made to less creditworthy borrowers — known as subprime mortgages —recently reached 12.6 percent. Some banks have reported rising problems among borrowers that were deemed more creditworthy as well.
Traders and investors who watch this world say the major participants — Wall Street firms, credit rating agencies, lenders and investors — are holding their collective breath and hoping that the spring season for home sales will reinstate what had been a go-go market for mortgage securities. Many Wall Street firms saw their own stock prices decline over their exposure to the turmoil.
“I guess we are a bit surprised at how fast this has unraveled,” said Tom Zimmerman, head of asset-backed securities research at UBS, in a recent conference call with investors.
Even now the tone accentuates the positive. In a recent presentation to investors, UBS Securities discussed the potential for losses among some mortgage securities in a variety of housing markets. None of the models showed flat or falling home prices, however.
The Bear Stearns analyst who upgraded New Century, Scott R. Coren, wrote in a research note that the company’s stock price reflected the risks in its industry, and that the downside risk was about $10 in a “rescue-sale scenario.” According to New Century, Bear Stearns is among the firms with a “longstanding” relationship financing its mortgage operation. Mr. Coren, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.
Others who follow the industry have voiced more caution. Thomas A. Lawler, founder of Lawler Economic and Housing Consulting, said: “It’s not that the mortgage industry is collapsing, it’s just that the mortgage industry went wild and there are consequences of going wild.
“I think there is no doubt that home sales are going to be weaker than most anybody who was forecasting the market just two months ago thought. For those areas where the housing market was already not too great, where inventories were at historically high levels and it finally looked like things were stabilizing, this is going to be unpleasant.”
Like worms that surface after a torrential rain, revelations that emerge when an asset bubble bursts are often unattractive, involving dubious industry practices and even fraud. In the coming weeks, some mortgage market participants predict, investors will learn not only how lax real estate lending standards became, but also how hard to value these opaque securities are and how easy their values are to prop up.
Owners of mortgage securities that have been pooled, for example, do not have to reflect the prevailing market prices of those securities each day, as stockholders do. Only when a security is downgraded by a rating agency do investors have to mark their holdings to the market value. As a result, traders say, many investors are reporting the values of their holdings at inflated prices.
“How these things are valued for portfolio purposes is exposed to management judgment, which is potentially arbitrary,” Mr. Rosner said.
At the heart of the turmoil is the subprime mortgage market, which developed to give loans to shaky borrowers or to those with little cash to put down as collateral. Some 35 percent of all mortgage securities issued last year were in that category, up from 13 percent in 2003.
Looking to expand their reach and their profits, lenders were far too willing to lend, as evidenced by the creation of new types of mortgages — known as “affordability products” — that required little or no down payment and little or no documentation of a borrower’s income. Loans with 40-year or even 50-year terms were also popular among cash-strapped borrowers seeking low monthly payments. Exceedingly low “teaser” rates that move up rapidly in later years were another feature of the new loans.
The rapid rise in the amount borrowed against a property’s value shows how willing lenders were to stretch. In 2000, according to Banc of America Securities, the average loan to a subprime lender was 48 percent of the value of the underlying property. By 2006, that figure reached 82 percent.
Mortgages requiring little or no documentation became known colloquially as “liar loans.” An April 2006 report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, a consulting concern in Reston, Va., analyzed 100 loans in which the borrowers merely stated their incomes, and then looked at documents those borrowers had filed with the I.R.S. The resulting differences were significant: in 90 percent of loans, borrowers overstated their incomes 5 percent or more. But in almost 60 percent of cases, borrowers inflated their incomes by more than half.
A Deutsche Bank report said liar loans accounted for 40 percent of the subprime mortgage issuance last year, up from 25 percent in 2001.
Securities backed by home mortgages have been traded since the 1970s, but it has been only since 2002 or so that investors, including pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and other institutions, have shown such an appetite for them.
Wall Street, of course, was happy to help refashion mortgages from arcane and illiquid securities into ubiquitous and frequently traded ones. Its reward is that it now dominates the market. While commercial banks and savings banks had long been the biggest lenders to home buyers, by 2006, Wall Street had a commanding share — 60 percent — of the mortgage financing market, Federal Reserve data show.
The big firms in the business are Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and UBS. They buy mortgages from issuers, put thousands of them into pools to spread out the risks and then divide them into slices, known as tranches, based on quality. Then they sell them.
The profits from packaging these securities and trading them for customers and their own accounts have been phenomenal. At Lehman Brothers, for example, mortgage-related businesses contributed directly to record revenue and income over the last three years.
The issuance of mortgage-related securities, which include those backed by home-equity loans, peaked in 2003 at more than $3 trillion, according to data from the Bond Market Association. Last year’s issuance, reflecting a slowdown in home price appreciation, was $1.93 trillion, a slight decline from 2005.
In addition to enviable growth, the mortgage securities market has undergone other changes in recent years. In the 1990s, buyers of mortgage securities spread out their risk by combining those securities with loans backed by other assets, like credit card receivables and automobile loans. But in 2001, investor preferences changed, focusing on specific types of loans. Mortgages quickly became the favorite.
Another change in the market involves its trading characteristics. Years ago, mortgage-backed securities appealed to a buy-and-hold crowd, who kept the securities on their books until the loans were paid off. “You used to think of mortgages as slow moving,” said Glenn T. Costello, managing director of structured finance residential mortgage at Fitch Ratings. “Now it has become much more of a trading market, with a mark-to-market bent.”
The average daily trading volume of mortgage securities issued by government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example, exceeded $250 billion last year. That’s up from about $60 billion in 2000.
Wall Street became so enamored of the profits in mortgages that it began to expand its reach, buying companies that make loans to consumers to supplement its packaging and sales operations. In August 2006, Morgan Stanley bought Saxon, a $6.5 billion subprime mortgage underwriter, for $706 million.
And last September, Merrill Lynch paid $1.3 billion to buy First Franklin Financial, a home lender in San Jose, Calif. At the time, Merrill said it expected First Franklin to add to its earnings in 2007. Now analysts expect Merrill to take a large loss on the purchase.
Indeed, on Feb. 28, as the first fiscal quarter ended for many big investment banks, Wall Street buzzed with speculation that the firms had slashed the value of their numerous mortgage holdings, recording significant losses.
As prevailing interest rates remained low over the last several years, the appetite for these securities only rose. In the ever-present search for high yields, buyers clamored for securities that contained subprime mortgages, which carry interest rates that are typically one to two percentage points higher than traditional loans. Mortgage securities participants say increasingly lax lending standards in these loans became almost an invitation to commit mortgage fraud. It is too early to tell how significant a role mortgage fraud played in the rocketing delinquency rates — 12.6 percent among subprime borrowers. Delinquency rates among all mortgages stood at 4.7 percent in the third quarter of 2006.
For years, investors cared little about risks in mortgage holdings. That is changing.
“I would not be surprised if between now and the end of the year at least 20 percent of BBB and BBB- bonds that are backed by subprime loans originated in 2006 will be downgraded,” Mr. Lawler said.
Still, the rating agencies have yet to downgrade large numbers of mortgage securities to reflect the market turmoil. Standard & Poor’s has put 2 percent of the subprime loans it rates on watch for a downgrade, and Moody’s said it has downgraded 1 percent to 2 percent of such mortgages that were issued in 2005 and 2006.
Fitch appears to be the most proactive, having downgraded 3.7 percent of subprime mortgages in the period.
The agencies say that they are confident that their ratings reflect reality in the mortgages they have analyzed and that they have required managers of mortgage pools with risky loans in them to increase the collateral. A spokesman for S.& P. said the firm made its ratings requirements more stringent for subprime issuers last summer and that they shored up the loans as a result.
Meeting with Wall Street analysts last week, Terry McGraw, chief executive of McGraw-Hill, the parent of S.& P., said the firm does not believe that loans made in 2006 will perform “as badly as some have suggested.”
Nevertheless, some investors wonder whether the rating agencies have the stomach to downgrade these securities because of the selling stampede that would follow. Many mortgage buyers cannot hold securities that are rated below investment grade — insurance companies are an example. So if the securities were downgraded, forced selling would ensue, further pressuring an already beleaguered market.
Another consideration is the profits in mortgage ratings. Some 6.5 percent of Moody’s 2006 revenue was related to the subprime market.
Brian Clarkson, Moody’s co-chief operating officer, denied that the company hesitates to cut ratings. “We made assumptions early on that we were going to have worse performance in subprime mortgages, which is the reason we haven’t seen that many downgrades,” he said. “If we have something that is investment grade that we need to take below investment grade, we will do it.”
Interestingly, accounting conventions in mortgage securities require an investor to mark his holdings to market only when they get downgraded. So investors may be assigning higher values to their positions than they would receive if they had to go into the market and find a buyer. That delays the reckoning, some analysts say.
“There are delayed triggers in many of these investment vehicles and that is delaying the recognition of losses,” Charles Peabody, founder of Portales Partners, an independent research boutique in New York, said. “I do think the unwind is just starting. The moment of truth is not yet here.”
On March 2, reacting to the distress in the mortgage market, a throng of regulators, including the Federal Reserve Board, asked lenders to tighten their policies on lending to those with questionable credit. Late last week, WMC Mortgage, General Electric’s subprime mortgage arm, said it would no longer make loans with no down payments.
Meanwhile, investors wait to see whether the spring home selling season will shore up the mortgage market. If home prices do not appreciate or if they fall, defaults will rise, and pension funds and others that embraced the mortgage securities market will have to record losses. And they will likely retreat from the market, analysts said, affecting consumers and the overall economy.
A paper published last month by Mr. Rosner and Joseph R. Mason, an associate professor of finance at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, assessed the potential problems associated with disruptions in the mortgage securities market. They wrote: “Decreased funding for residential mortgage-backed securities could set off a downward spiral in credit availability that can deprive individuals of home ownership and substantially hurt the U.S. economy.”

Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate

Just Protocol and your standard no need to know freedumb services teaching the public about reality.

“This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,” Ms. Williams said.

NYT March 8, 2007

Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so.
In December, the Bush administration, facing a deadline under a suit by environmental groups, proposed listing polar bears throughout their range as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the warming climate is causing a summertime retreat of sea ice that the bears use for seal hunting.
Environmentalists are trying to use such a listing to force the United States to restrict heat-trapping gases that scientists have linked to global warming as a way of limiting risks to the 22,000 or so bears in the far north.
It remains unclear whether such a listing will be issued. The Fish and Wildlife Service this week held the first of several hearings in Alaska and Washington on the question.
Over the past week, biologists and wildlife officials received a cover note and two sample memorandums to be used as a guide in preparing travel requests. Under the heading “Foreign Travel — New Requirement — Please Review and Comply, Importance: High,” the cover note said:
“Please be advised that all foreign travel requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who’ll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.”
The sample memorandums, described as to be used in writing travel requests, indicate that the employee seeking permission to travel “understands the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues.”
Electronic copies of the memorandums and cover note were forwarded to The New York Times by Deborah Williams, an environmental campaigner in Alaska and a former Interior Department official in the Clinton administration.
“This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,” Ms. Williams said.
A spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, Bruce Woods, confirmed the authenticity of the notes, but interpreted them differently.
“The cover memo makes it clear nobody is being told they can’t talk about these issues,” Mr. Woods said. “What the administration wants to know is who is going to be spokesperson and do they understand administration policy? It’s not saying you won’t talk about it.”
Limits on government scientists’ freedom to speak freely about climate change became a heated issue last year after news reports showed that political appointees at NASA had canceled journalists’ interview requests with climate scientists and discouraged news releases on global warming.

Congress Takes Aim At Credit Card Policies

Long as it makes a profit, it is right and good - cause you, the people, gave me (the corporation) the power to do as I please - now keep playing trivia, watch footsybally, increase productivity, and hopefully any spare time you have left will be stuck in traffic....................long ago, there was a biblical story about money exchangers

Congress Takes Aim At Credit Card Policies
WASHINGTON, March 7, 2007
(CBS/AP) An Ohio man whose $3,200 credit card debt mushroomed to $10,700 with interest and fees told his story Wednesday to senators, who denounced the industry for confusing billing practices and shifting interest rates. Executives of three major banks defended their credit card practices as responsible and responsive to consumers' needs in testimony at the hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' investigative subcommittee. Those from Citigroup Inc. and Chase Bank USA said their companies were eliminating some practices — including the one that hit Wesley Wannemacher of Lima, Ohio, with over-limit fees on his Chase card account 47 times although he went over his credit limit only three times. The interest charges and fees on Wannemacher's account more than tripled his debt despite his having made payments averaging $1,000 a year over six years, noted Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the subcommittee's chairman. "Unfair? Clearly, I think," Levin said. He said an investigation by the panel found that "sky-high interest charges and fees are not uncommon in the credit card industry. While the Wannemacher account happened to be at Chase, penalty interest rates and fees are also employed by Bank of America, Citigroup and other major credit card issuers." Richard Srednicki, the chief executive officer of Chase Card Services, apologized to Wannemacher in his testimony. "In this case, we simply blew it," he said. Srednicki said the company has decided it no longer will charge over-the-credit-limit fees to customers who have been in a chronic over-limit position for 90 days. Wannemacher used a new Chase card in 2001 and 2002 to pay for expenses mostly related to his wedding. He had $3,200 in purchases, interest charges of $4,900, 47 over-limit charges totaling $1,500, late fees of $1,100, for total charges of $10,700 as of February. He paid $6,300, leaving a $4,400 balance — which Chase agreed to waive after he contacted the subcommittee staff. "Debt seems to invoke a feeling of hopelessness unlike any other problem I've encountered," Wannemacher testified at the hearing. "When a debtor calls you on the phone and you make a minimum payment, you know that you've made no real progress and that in a month, they will be calling again." Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the panel's senior Republican, said high interest rates on credit cards, "hefty fees and crippling penalties impede more and more hard-working families from pursuing their American dream." The problem is worsened by the "impenetrable" language of credit card disclosures provided to consumers, he said. One hidden practice is called "universal default," reports CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. For example, say a person misses a car payment. That person's bank cards, even if unrelated, could use the missed payment to raise interest rates. A similar chain of events happened to Bob Rolls, Attkisson reports. He charged $5,000 to a home improvement store credit card to buy materials to build a ramp for his 97-year-old father. That purchase somehow triggered an incredible jump in the interest rate charged on his entirely unrelated Bank of America Visa — even though his credit is spotless. "They said they were gonna raise my rate to 27.99 percent," Rolls said. "I said 27.99 percent. Forget it. I'm closing this account." While the credit card practices in question are legal, Levin is threatening possible legislation to outlaw them as a spur to the banking industry for voluntary changes. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and other Democratic senators challenged credit card executives at a hearing in January over rising late fees and other penalties and marketing practices they portrayed as predatory. Dodd, D-Conn., said he was putting the industry on notice that if it doesn't improve practices on its own, legislation may be warranted. Since Democrats assumed control of Congress in January, they have put a number of consumer issues on the legislative agenda. With Americans weighed down by some $850 billion in consumer debt, the practices of the robustly profitable credit card industry are a compelling subject for scrutiny. Citigroup, the nation's largest financial institution, announced last week that it was eliminating the practice of so-called universal default — raising interest rates for card customers because of their failure to pay other creditors on time. In addition, Citigroup said it would eliminate some types of interest rate increases that have been criticized. Credit card issuers raise customers' rates and fees, for example, when they believe it is warranted by conditions in the financial markets. But under Citigroup's new policy, rates and fees will be increased before a card expires only if the customer pays late, exceeds his credit limit or pays with a check that bounces. If the rate is linked to the prime interest rate, it would rise or fall in tandem.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc

Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile

It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.
But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.

…………freedumb, freedumb, freedumb and taxes, as government services dwindle and/or are turned over to For Profit Corporations – huh, that don’t make no lick of sense


NYT March 5, 2007
Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile
By ROBERT PEAR
SALISBURY, N.C. — Vicki H. Readling vividly remembers the start of 2006.
“Everybody was saying, ‘Happy new year,’ ” Ms. Readling recalled. “But I remember going straight to bed and lying down scared to death because I knew that at that very minute, after midnight, I was without insurance. I was kissing away a bad year of cancer. But I was getting ready to open up to a door of hell.”
Ms. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate agent, is one of nearly 47 million people in America with no health insurance.
Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay.
“I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said in an interview in her office, near the tree-lined streets and stately old homes of this city in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.
But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
And that is one reason, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, that the problems of the uninsured have jumped to the top of the domestic political agenda in Washington and on the campaign trail.
Today, more than one-third of the uninsured — 17 million of the nearly 47 million — have family incomes of $40,000 or more, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization. More than two-thirds of the uninsured are in households with at least one full-time worker.
Ms. Readling’s experience is typical; people who have had serious illnesses often have difficulty obtaining insurance. If coverage is available, the premiums are often more than they can afford.
While the government does not have an official definition of “middle class,” one commonly used point of reference is the median household income, which was $46,326 in 2005.
Katherine Swartz, a professor of health policy and economics at Harvard, said the soaring cost of health care was a major reason for the increase in the number of uninsured. She said it also reflected long-term changes in the economy, like the decline in manufacturing jobs and the growth in the share of workers in service industries and small businesses, which are less likely to provide health benefits.
Moreover, Ms. Swartz said, “Companies have become more aggressive in hiring people as temporary or contract workers with no fringe benefits.”
The National Association of Realtors says 28 percent of its 1.3 million members are without health insurance.
“Because real estate agents are independent contractors, they are forced into the individual insurance market, where there is no negotiating or leverage,” said Pat V. Combs, president of the association.
As an independent contractor with a Century 21 real estate brokerage, Ms. Readling had bought insurance on her own, a temporary extension of coverage from a prior job. But she was unable to renew it after she had surgery for breast cancer in 2005. Most insurers would not offer her coverage, she said, and one carrier quoted a price of $2,300 a month for coverage with a deductible of $5,000 a year.
Concerns about health insurance permeate her life.
To save money, Ms. Readling said, she defers visits to the doctor and stretches out her cancer medication, which costs her about $300 a month. She takes the tiny pills three or four times a week, rather than seven days a week as prescribed.
“I really try to stay away from the doctor because I am so scared of what everything will cost,” said Ms. Readling, who is divorced and has twin 18-year-old sons. Before every doctor’s visit and test, she asks, “How much are you going to charge me?” She says she tries to arrange “the best deals I can.” But in many cases, the price is still unaffordable, and “I have to do without.”
Even those with insurance have reason to be concerned, economists say, because they end up paying for the uninsured in various ways. Some of the costs are also passed on to taxpayers and employers. To help cover the cost of treating the uninsured, hospitals often increase charges to other patients. Insurers then increase premiums for companies that provide health benefits, and they in turn shift some costs to employees.
Ms. Readling is engaged to be married in June, to another real estate agent. But she said she may postpone the wedding because she would not want her husband to be legally responsible for her medical bills.
“I am scared to get married because I don’t have insurance,” Ms. Readling said. “If I have to go to the hospital and I can’t pay my hospital bills, what happens? Do they go after him? Can they take your home?”
To collect unpaid medical bills, health care providers often obtain judgments against a patient’s spouse, as well as the patient, and file liens against their homes. Ms. Readling says she does not own a house, but her fiancé does.
The idea of universal coverage, in the form proposed by President Bill Clinton, proved politically untenable. Since the Clinton plan collapsed in 1994, the politics of health care have changed because of the steady rise in health costs, the increase in the number of uninsured and the erosion of employer-sponsored insurance. Politicians are once again speaking about universal coverage as a goal, though opinion polls show that many voters still oppose the idea of a government-run health care system.
Ms. Readling said it was stressful enough visiting doctors every few months for her cancer follow-ups. Without coverage, she said, the experience is even more stressful.
“When you go to any medical person and they ask for your insurance card, you are so ashamed because you have to say, ‘I don’t have insurance,’ ” Ms. Readling said. “You just feel like you are dirt.”
Ms. Readling said she often woke up at night, terrified of the cost of getting sick without insurance.
“Anything that goes wrong with my health could destroy me financially,” Ms. Readling said. “I could be ruined.”
She said she had never voluntarily allowed her insurance to lapse and could not understand why she was being blackballed.
“What did I do wrong?” Ms. Read-ling asked. “Why am I being punished? I just don’t understand how I could have fallen through this horrible, horrible crack.”
Knowing her health benefits from her prior job would expire in January 2006, she began shopping for a new policy in May 2005. But in June 2005, she learned she had cancer.
“At that point,” Ms. Readling said, “I called everybody I could think of, begging for help. But no insurer would touch me.”
Barbara Morales Burke, the chief deputy insurance commissioner of North Carolina, said state law did not guarantee the availability of health insurance for individuals. “Most insurers decline to issue policies to those individuals whom they deem to be too risky because of their medical history,” Ms. Morales Burke said.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina will sell to anyone, regardless of the person’s medical condition, she added, but the premiums may be very high for people who have had serious illnesses.
Heidi Deja, a spokeswoman for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, said, “Rates are based on the anticipated cost of providing care.” For people who have had serious illnesses, she said, monthly premiums “can run into the thousands of dollars.”
A 1996 federal law limited the ability of insurers to discriminate against people because of pre-existing conditions. But consumer protections are much more extensive in the group health insurance market.
“In the individual market, the federal protections provide precious little help to people seeking coverage,” said Karen L. Pollitz, a research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.
When Ms. Readling was shopping for insurance, she found two responses particularly galling. One insurer, she said, suggested she return to her prior job, at a furniture company, so she could participate in its group health plan, though she loved her work as a real estate agent. Another insurer suggested she remarry her former husband to get back on his insurance plan.
Working with her doctors, Ms. Readling raced to get as many tests as possible before her coverage expired. She recalled her anxiety in the final months: “It’s like a freight train coming at you, and it’s going to get you. And there was nothing I could do.”
Ms. Readling said she was mystified by the inability of real estate agents to band together and buy health insurance as a group.
“Why can’t Realtors in North Carolina, or a few counties, have coverage under one umbrella?” she asked. “You would think that some insurance company would want our business.”
Janet S. Trautwein, executive vice president of the National Association of Health Underwriters, which represents insurance agents and brokers, said employee groups were more attractive to insurers for several reasons.
“In a group health plan,” Ms. Trautwein said, “the employer typically pays a large share of the premium, so most employees sign up as soon as they are eligible, regardless of their health status.”
“The health plan covers a mix of sick and healthy workers,” she said. “By contrast, individuals and independent contractors are more likely to defer coverage until they need it, so the pool of people insured is, over all, less healthy. Sick people consume more health care. As a result, the cost to insure them is higher.”
Though satisfied with her care, Ms. Readling continually wonders if doctors and nurses treat her differently because she is uninsured.
“Are they going to turn their nose up at you because you don’t have insurance?” Ms. Readling asked. “Will they take care of other people first? They can make more money on patients with insurance. What am I? I am just a financial loss to them.”

China Plans Big Increase in Military Budget

"Laca" Wisdom, Understanding, promotes Oblivion in the blink of an eye. If Physics did not have the deliberate missing fundamentals problem, resource wars, adapting to global warming and limitations would disappear - from health care, to food, to material goods, to technological wonders. The quality of life, including transportation, would soar. Freedom and science would replace Corporate Rule.

March 4, 2007
China Plans Big Increase in Military Budget
By JIM YARDLEY and DAVID LAGUE
BEIJING, March 4 — China announced its biggest increase in military spending in five years on Sunday, an increase that quickly prompted the United States to renew its calls for more transparency from the Chinese military about the scope and intent of its rapid arms buildup.
Jiang Enzhu, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party-controlled national legislature, said China’s military budget would rise this year by 17.8 percent, to roughly 350 billion yuan, or just under $45 billion.
“We must increase our military budget, as it is important to national security,” Mr. Jiang said at a news conference. “China’s military must modernize. Our overall defenses are weak.”
But China’s military modernization efforts, particularly its drive to develop advanced weaponry, have been raising concern from Washington to Tokyo to New Delhi. In January, China set off fears of an arms race in space when it successfully tested an anti-satellite missile that destroyed one its own aging weather satellites. A month earlier, the People’s Liberation Army began deploying the country’s first state-of-the-art jet fighter, the J-10.
These advances reflect China’s intense focus on scientific and technological development, and are the fruits of more than a decade of increased military spending. China’s defense outlays increased roughly 15 percent every year from 1990 to 2005, according to the Chinese military. This year’s jump is the largest one reported since military spending rose by 19.4 percent in 2002.
Military analysts say that China’s public military budget actually reflects only a fraction of its overall military spending, and that the real figure is likely to be two to four times higher. Most military analysts agree that China’s military focus is to build a force that would prevail in any conflict with Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, and also to be capable of creating a deterrent to prevent American forces from intervening.
On Sunday, John D. Negroponte, the new deputy secretary of state, chose not to focus on the size of the latest budget increase, but instead emphasized that China needed to be less secretive about its military buildup.
Mr. Negroponte, who is touring Asia, said military officials from both countries were already holding informational exchanges, and he called on China to use these discussions to better explain its military ambitions.
“I think the point we would make with respect to military spending and military acquisition of various types would be the point about transparency,” Mr. Negroponte said at a news conference in Beijing.
Chinese officials, meanwhile, assailed Mr. Negroponte over a recent weapons deal in which the United States approved the sale of more than $400 million in air and ground missiles to Taiwan. The missiles are considered a defensive measure against the steady buildup of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Chinese officials lobbied Mr. Negroponte to reverse the deal and urged the United States not to send “mistaken signals” to Taiwan.
The deputy secretary said that any weapons sale to Taiwan “would be for strictly defensive purposes.”
Mr. Negroponte, who last month officially became the State Department’s second-ranking official, held meetings with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan and two vice foreign ministers, Dai Bingguo and Yang Jiechi. He offered few details about the discussions, but said the topics included North Korea, Iran, trade tensions and regional security issues.
Mr. Negroponte emphasized the constructive working relationship between the United States and China. But China’s military budget increase is a reminder of the growing unease in Washington about Beijing’s long-term intentions. Japan and India are also watching China’s military drive and increasing their own military spending.
Mr. Jiang, the National People’s Congress spokesman, said that China’s intentions were peaceful, and that any fears about its military ambitions were unfounded. He noted that China spent only a fraction of the proposed United States Defense Department budget of $481.4 billion for the next fiscal year — a figure that does not include spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said China’s new spending would be dedicated to increasing salaries and benefits for soldiers, as well as to overall modernization and technological upgrades.
“China is committed to taking a path of peaceful development and it pursues a defensive military posture,” Mr. Jiang said. “China has neither the wherewithal nor the intention to enter into an arms race with any country, and China does not and will not pose a threat to any country.”
One of the goals of China’s modernization efforts is to position itself as a weapons supplier for other countries.
Military analysts say China’s main motive in developing the J-10 is to diminish the technological advantage of Taiwan’s Air Force. But the analysts say China also plans to market the fighter plane to countries that cannot afford more expensive fighter planes sold by other countries. The fighter was a breakthrough for China’s military industry, even if the J-10 is still considered inferior to top American fighter jets.
China’s technological push comes as the country continues to shrink the world’s biggest standing army. Since 2003, the army’s personnel has been reduced by 200,000, to 2.3 million soldiers, according to government figures. Spending is now focused on better training and equipment for this leaner force.