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Last Updated: Apr 22nd, 2009 - 23:40:24 |
Pennsylvania Youth Sentences Overturned
In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court has overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions handed down by two corrupt judges who took bribes in return for placing the youths in privately owned jails. Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are said to have received $2.6 million for ensuring that juvenile suspects were sent to private prisons. Some of the young people were jailed over the objections of their probation officers. The judges pleaded guilty to fraud last month and face up to seven years in prison. On Thursday, the Pennsylvania court ruled Ciavarella violated the constitutional rights of youth suspects in his courtroom from 2003 to 2008.
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Unemployment Rate Over 10 Percent in Seven States
New employment figures show Michigan still has the nation’s highest unemployment rate at 12 percent. In February, the unemployment rate jumped into double figures in Nevada, North Carolina and Oregon. The jobless rate is also above ten percent in California, South Carolina and Rhode Island.
Estimate of Chronically Hungry Passes 1B
A top UN official says the global economic crisis has pushed the number of chronically hungry people past the one billion mark for the first time. Food and Agriculture Organization head Jacques Diouf disclosed the figure to the Financial Times. Last year the FAO estimated about 960 million people were chronically hungry worldwide.
Student Loan Defaults Rise
New figures show the economic downturn has led to an increase in defaults on student loans. The US Department of Education says the student loan default rate last year rose to 6.9 percent from 5.2 percent a year earlier. An estimated half-trillion dollars in federal student loan debt is now outstanding.
Study: Nearly 1 in 5 Workers Uninsured
In other healthcare news, a new study shows nearly one in five US workers are uninsured. The figure marks an increase over the mid-1990s, when fewer than one in seven workers were uninsured. That translates to around six million more uninsured workers over the last decade.
Sen. Sanders Introduces Single-Payer Healthcare Act
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has introduced a measure to establish a single-payer healthcare system. The American Health Security Act of 2009 would establish a single government program to guarantee healthcare to all Americans, including the 46 million currently uninsured. Advocates say the proposal would save some $400 billion by eliminating the bureaucratic costs of the current privately run system. The measure is similar to bills introduced by Democratic Congress members Jim McDermott of Washington and John Conyers of Michigan in the House.
Cardin Introduces Newspaper Rescue Bill
Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland has introduced a measure aimed at rescuing the struggling newspaper industry. The Newspaper Revitalization Act would let newspaper companies become educational non-profits and operate similar to public broadcasters. Audiences would be eligible to give tax-deductible donations, while advertising and subscription revenue would become tax exempt. Cardin said, “The business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.”
US, Israel Accused of Deadly Sudan Bombing
The US and Israel are being accused of killing up to thirty-nine people in a bombing attack in Sudan this past January. According to reports, US or Israeli forces allegedly attacked a convoy of seventeen trucks suspected of carrying weapons intended for smuggling into the Gaza Strip. A Sudanese government minister confirmed the strike, saying a “major power” carried it out.
Probe: Labor Dept. Fails to Safeguard Worker Rights
A new congressional probe says the government agency for enforcing labor laws has failed to protect workers. In a report set for release today, the Government Accountability Office says the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division hasn’t adequately enforced violations of minimum wage, overtime and other labor rights. The study says agency officials mishandled nine out of ten cases brought by undercover agents posing as workers. Some investigators dropped cases simply because the accused employers didn’t return their calls. Others waited months to respond to worker complaints and then said it would take another several months to act on them. The report says, “Labor has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn. Unfortunately, far too often the result is unscrupulous employers’ taking advantage of our country’s low-wage workers.”
EPA Halts Mountaintop Removal Projects
The Environmental Protection Agency has delayed hundreds of mountaintop coal-mining projects for a new review of their environmental impact. Mountaintop removal has been widely criticized for endangering waters and streams in the Appalachian Valley. The review effectively overrides last month’s federal appeals court ruling that backed the Army Corps of Engineers’ authority to oversee mountaintop removals. Environmentalists had previously won court judgments affirming that the Army Corps violated the Clean Water Act. In a related action, the EPA also announced it will block two projects that had won Army Corps approval. The EPA says the mountaintop removals would have endangered streams in West Virginia and Kentucky with thousands of feet of mining waste.
Specter Withdraws Support for Employee Free Choice Act
Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has dealt a blow to organized labor, announcing he won’t support the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill would stop employers from demanding secret-ballot elections and require them to recognize unions if a majority of workers consented. It’s been fiercely opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups who’ve launched a multi-million-dollar lobbying and ad campaign to stop it. Specter had previously signaled support for the bill, and its sponsors had been counting on his backing.
Study: Lots of Red Meat Increases Mortality Risk
And a major new study from the National Cancer Institute has found people who eat the most red meat and the most processed meat have the highest overall risk of death from all causes, including heart disease and cancer. Researchers came to this conclusion after studying the eating habits of more than 500,000 people between the ages of fifty and seventy-one. The researchers said thousands of deaths could be prevented if people simply ate less meat.
NYC Pays $1.5 Million to Families of Two Killed by NYPD
In New York, the city has agreed to pay out $1.5 million to the families of two young men shot dead by New York police detectives fourteen years ago in the Bronx. The families of Hilton Vega and Anthony Rosario had sued the city, claiming police used excessive force in the shooting. The detectives in the case were both former bodyguards for Rudolph Giuliani during his 1993 mayoral campaign.
Thomas Geoghegan on “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy”
The Obama administration has unveiled its plan to stabilize the banking industry. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced the government plan to buy up as much as $1 trillion in troubled mortgages and other risky assets from banks. Wall Street was certainly happy with the plan with all the major stock indexes soaring as soon as the market opened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up nearly 500 points. Investors saw the plan as a way to rescue the US financial system, clearing a path to recovery from what many have described as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The crisis has been largely blamed on deregulation of the financial industry and lax government oversight. But a new article in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine argues otherwise. It reads, quote, “no amount of New Deal regulation or SEC-watching could have stopped what happened…The problem was not that we ‘deregulated the New Deal’ but that we deregulated a much older, even ancient, set of laws.” The article goes on to say, quote, “We dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter’s term.”
The article in Harper’s Magazine is written by Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago-based labor lawyer, recent congressional candidate and author of many books. His most recent is See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation. His Harper’s article is called “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy.”
Usury Country: Payday Loans Pushing Millions of Middle Class Americans Deeper into Debt
Lawmakers and public officials in California, Ohio, South Carolina, Missouri, Washington and other states are attempting to crack down on the controversial practice known as payday lending. On Wednesday, the Governor of Kentucky, Steve Beshear, signed into law a ten-year moratorium on new payday lenders in the state.
Payday loans are short-term loans or cash advances secured by a post-dated check. The annual interest rate for these loans can be as high as 400 percent, ten times the highest credit card rates. Consumers who renew their loans often end up paying more in fees than they had originally borrowed. Critics say the system is a form of a predatory lending that traps the poor in a cycle of debt.
In the early ’90s, there were fewer than 200 payday lending stores in the country. Today it’s a $40 billion industry with more than 22,000 stores. There are more payday lending stores than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. As more Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, the demand for payday loans is increasing.
35,000 Protest in London Ahead of G20 Summit
At least 35,000 protesters marched in London Saturday to kick off a series of demonstrations leading up to the G20 summit. Protest organizers said the turnout was three times larger than expected. Protest organizer Chris Knight with the group G20 Meltdown said the demonstrations will focus on the bankers who wrecked the economy.
Chris Knight: “The main message to them, really, is you are—you are financial fools. You are the architects of this catastrophe, with the exception of Barack Obama, of course, who has to make a choice which side he’s on still. But those fools, what makes them feel that they are the people qualified to sort out the mess? And if you ask me what do we want from them, I would say it’s quite a lot, actually. It’s—we want the earth. Give us back our planet. We want it; you’ve got it. We’re gonna take it, and you should be good-humored about it. You are incompetent idiots who have messed everything up, and you should step aside and let the people take over.”
The protest against the G20 is expected to be the largest anti-capitalist demonstration in London in years.
Terry Pierce, protester: “We say that unless the leaders of the world break from capitalism, unless there’s a change in the whole attitude towards climate change and towards poverty, towards the problem in the world, then there’s no chance resolving these problems. We need a socialist alternative.”
Large demonstrations are also expected this week in France and Germany during the NATO summit in the French city of Strasbourg.
White House Forces Out GM CEO Wagoner
In business news, General Motors Chair and CEO Rick Wagoner has stepped down after he was asked to resign by the Obama administration as part of the government’s demand for GM and Chrysler to restructure before receiving more federal aid. President Obama is scheduled to unveil his full plan for the auto industry today. The McClatchy Newspapers reports Obama will reject requests for almost $22 billion in new taxpayer bailout money for GM and Chrysler, saying the car makers have failed to take steps to ensure their viability. The government sought the departure of the GM chief and said the company needed to be widely restructured if it had any hope of survival. The government is expected to provide the company with sixty days’ operating capital to give it time to undertake reforms. The government will also grant Chrysler thirty days’ operating funds, but said it must merge with the Italian car maker Fiat in order to remain viable. So far, GM and Chrysler have received $17.4 billion in government rescue money, a fraction of what the government has given to help revive the banking industry.
Spanish Court Launches Probe of Bush Administration Officials
A Spanish court has launched a criminal investigation into whether six Bush administration lawyers, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the Bush administration’s use of torture at Guantanamo. Spain’s law allows it to claim jurisdiction in the case because five Spanish citizens or residents who were prisoners at Guantanamo Bay say they were tortured there. The case was sent to the Spanish prosecutor’s office for review by Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998. The other former Bush administration officials facing investigation are former Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee, Pentagon official Douglas Feith, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights praised the Spanish court’s decision and said arrest warrants might have already been issued.
Michael Ratner, author of The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: “If you’re any of those six at this point, you don’t want to go to the twenty-five countries that make up the European Union, because you may be subject to immediate arrest. What will happen next is this investigation will most likely continue in a very vigorous form. It will look at those six, and it also has the possibility of going up the chain of command, not just to Rumsfeld, but all the way up to Cheney and Bush. So it’s a serious investigation. It’s one that the Obama administration has to take very seriously. And it means, for them, that the pressure is increasing really in this country to open its own criminal investigation.”
Waterboarding, Torture of Abu Zubaydah Produced False Leads
Meanwhile, former senior government officials have told the Washington Post that the CIA’s decision to waterboard and torture their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaydah, produced little intelligence. The officials said not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaydah’s tortured confessions. Most of the useful information gained from him was obtained before waterboarding was introduced.
Admin Unveils Wall Street Regulatory Overhaul
The Obama administration has unveiled plans to boost government regulation over the financial system. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined proposals including expanding federal regulation for the first time to cover financial derivatives trading, large hedge funds and insurers such as AIG. Regulators would also impose uniform standards to limit the range of functions of major financial firms, including banks. Speaking before the House Financial Services Committee, Geithner said the changes were prompted by the failure of the economic system to regulate excess and greed.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: “Our system failed in basic fundamental ways. Compensation practices rewarded short-term profits over long-term return. Pervasive failures in consumer protection left many Americans with obligations they did not understand and could not sustain. The huge apparent returns to financial activity attracted fraud on a dramatic scale. Market discipline failed to constrain dangerous levels of risk-taking throughout the system.”
The new rules come on top of previously announced proposals for government authority to seize troubled non-banking financial firms. President Obama is expected to promote the plan in meetings with top Wall Street bankers later today.
AIG Questioned on Billions in Bank Payouts
The insurance giant AIG is facing new congressional and legal scrutiny over how it funneled tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money to banks facing huge losses that AIG had insured. In what some have called the “backdoor bailout,” AIG gave nearly $13 billion to Goldman Sachs and tens of billions more to other firms, including Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and several foreign banks. On Thursday, twenty-six House Democrats signed a letter by Congress member Elijah Cummings asking the bailout program’s inspector general to investigate the payments. Meanwhile, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed AIG for information related to the derivatives payments funneled to the banks.
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