Article 43
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
For Want Of A Dentist
By Mary Otto
Washington Post
February 28, 2007
Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren’t so hard to find.
If his mother hadn’t been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
By the time Deamonte’s own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George’s County boy died.
Deamonte’s death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.
Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte’s brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems.
In spite of efforts to change the system, fewer than one in three children in Maryland’s Medicaid program received any dental service at all in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The figures were worse elsewhere in the region. In the District, 29.3 percent got treatment, and in Virginia, 24.3 percent were treated, although all three jurisdictions say they have done a better job reaching children in recent years.
“I certainly hope the state agencies responsible for making sure these children have dental care take note so that Deamonte didn’t die in vain,” said Laurie Norris, a lawyer for the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center who tried to help the Driver family. “They know there is a problem, and they have not devoted adequate resources to solving it.”
Maryland officials emphasize that the delivery of basic care has improved greatly since 1997, when the state instituted a managed care program, and 1998, when legislation that provided more money and set standards for access to dental care for poor children was enacted.
About 900 of the state’s 5,500 dentists accept Medicaid patients, said Arthur Fridley, last year’s president of the Maryland State Dental Association. Referring patients to specialists can be particularly difficult.
Fewer than 16 percent of Maryland’s Medicaid children received restorative services—such as filling cavities—in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.
For families such as the Drivers, the systemic problems are often compounded by personal obstacles: lack of transportation, bouts of homelessness and erratic telephone and mail service.
The Driver children have never received routine dental attention, said their mother, Alyce Driver. The bakery, construction and home health-care jobs she has held have not provided insurance. The children’s Medicaid coverage had temporarily lapsed at the time Deamonte was hospitalized. And even with Medicaid’s promise of dental care, the problem, she said, was finding it.
When Deamonte got sick, his mother had not realized that his tooth had been bothering him. Instead, she was focusing on his younger brother, 10-year-old DaShawn, who “complains about his teeth all the time,” she said.
DaShawn saw a dentist a couple of years ago, but the dentist discontinued the treatments, she said, after the boy squirmed too much in the chair. Then the family went through a crisis and spent some time in an Adelphi homeless shelter. From there, three of Driver’s sons went to stay with their grandparents in a two-bedroom mobile home in Clinton.
By September, several of DaShawn’s teeth had become abscessed. Driver began making calls about the boy’s coverage but grew frustrated. She turned to Norris, who was working with homeless families in Prince George’s.
Norris and her staff also ran into barriers: They said they made more than two dozen calls before reaching an official at the Driver family’s Medicaid provider and a state supervising nurse who helped them find a dentist.
On Oct. 5, DaShawn saw Arthur Fridley, who cleaned the boy’s teeth, took an X-ray and referred him to an oral surgeon. But the surgeon could not see him until Nov. 21, and that would be only for a consultation. Driver said she learned that DaShawn would need six teeth extracted and made an appointment for the earliest date available: Jan. 16.
But she had to cancel after learning Jan. 8 that the children had lost their Medicaid coverage a month earlier. She suspects that the paperwork to confirm their eligibility was mailed to the shelter in Adelphi, where they no longer live.
It was on Jan. 11 that Deamonte came home from school complaining of a headache. At Southern Maryland Hospital Center, his mother said, he got medicine for a headache, sinusitis and a dental abscess. But the next day, he was much sicker.
Eventually, he was rushed to Children’s Hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery. He began to have seizures and had a second operation. The problem tooth was extracted.
After more than two weeks of care at Children’s Hospital, the Clinton seventh-grader began undergoing six weeks of additional medical treatment as well as physical and occupational therapy at another hospital. He seemed to be mending slowly, doing math problems and enjoying visits with his brothers and teachers from his school, the Foundation School in Largo.
On Saturday, their last day together, Deamonte refused to eat but otherwise appeared happy, his mother said. They played cards and watched a show on television, lying together in his hospital bed. But after she left him that evening, he called her.
“Make sure you pray before you go to sleep,” he told her.
The next morning at about 6, she got another call, this time from the boy’s grandmother. Deamonte was unresponsive. She rushed back to the hospital.
“When I got there, my baby was gone,” recounted his mother.
She said doctors are still not sure what happened to her son. His death certificate listed two conditions associated with brain infections: “meningoencephalitis” and “subdural empyema.”
In spite of such modern innovations as the fluoridation of drinking water, tooth decay is still the single most common childhood disease nationwide, five times as common as asthma, experts say. Poor children are more than twice as likely to have cavities as their more affluent peers, research shows, but far less likely to get treatment.
Serious and costly medical consequences are “not uncommon,” said Norman Tinanoff, chief of pediatric dentistry at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore. For instance, Deamonte’s bill for two weeks at Children’s alone was expected to be between $200,000 and $250,000.
The federal government requires states to provide oral health services to children through Medicaid programs, but the shortage of dentists who will treat indigent patients remains a major barrier to care, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Access is worst in rural areas, where some families travel hours for dental care, Tinanoff said. In the Maryland General Assembly this year, lawmakers are considering a bill that would set aside $2 million a year for the next three years to expand public clinics where dental care remains a rarity for the poor.
Providing such access, Tinanoff and others said, eventually pays for itself, sparing children the pain and expense of a medical crisis.
Reimbursement rates for dentists remain low nationally, although Maryland, Virginia and the District have increased their rates in recent years.
Dentists also cite administrative frustrations dealing with the Medicaid bureaucracy and the difficulties of serving poor, often transient patients, a study by the state legislatures conference found.
“Whatever we’ve got is broke,” Fridley said. “It has nothing to do with access to care for these children.”
SOURCE
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Dollars and Dentists
Coming to Frontline June 26, 2012
Dental care can be a matter of life and death. Yet millions of Americans cant afford a visit to the dentist. An investigation by FRONTLINE and the Center for Public Integrity reveals the shocking consequences of a broken safety net. Poor children, entitled by law to dental care, often cannot find a dentist willing to see them. Others kids receive excessive care billed to Medicaid, or major surgery for preventable tooth infections. For adults with dental disease, the situation can be as dire җ and bankrupting. While millions of Americans use emergency rooms for dental care, at a cost of more than half a billion dollars, corporate dental chains are filling the gaps in care, in some cases allegedly overcharging patients or loading them with high priced credit card debt. Correspondent Miles OBrien investigates the flaws in our dental system and nascent proposals to fix them.
SOURCE
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Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Bad Moon Rising Part 10 - Glimpse Of Wall Street’s Next Crash
Dow Jones Drops 500 Points
By Ellis Mnyandu
Reuters
February 27, 2007
Stocks sink on fears about CHINA and GROWTH
U.S. stocks tumbled on Tuesday, driving the Dow Jones industrial average down in its worst slide since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a sell-off in China’s stock market raised concerns that equity valuations may be too high.
A U.S. government report showing a bigger-than-expected drop in January’s new orders for U.S.-made durable goods added to investors’ concerns about the outlook for economic growth and corporate profits. Those worries added more fuel to the sell-off and helped contribute to a loss of about $600 billion in market value for the day.
The New York Stock Exchange’s closing bell was greeted with a chorus of “boos” from the trading floor. A surge in trading volume triggered a technical glitch in late afternoon, contributing to an abrupt swing in the Dow average, which briefly fell 500 points. A Dow Jones Indexes spokeswoman said the glitch did not affect stock prices.
Investors dumped stocks with the biggest exposure to Chinese demand, including Caterpillar Inc., whose shares slid 3.6 percent, while Tuesday’s sell-off wiped out the year’s gains for all three major U.S. stock indexes.
“There seems to be just an air of nothing is safe anymore, there’s nowhere to go and people are rotating into bonds as a safe haven,” said Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group in Princeton, New Jersey.
The Dow Jones industrial average slid 416.02 points, or 3.29 percent, to end at 12,216.24. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 50.33 points, or 3.47 percent, to finish at 1,399.04. The Nasdaq Composite Index sank 96.65 points, or 3.86 percent, to close at 2,407.87.
GOODBYE TO THE YEAR’S GAINS
At one point, the Dow fell as much as 546.20 points, or 4.32 percent, to a session low at 12,086.06. It was its biggest one-day point decline since after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Both the Dow and the S&P 500 had their worst one-day percentage drop in almost four years, while the Nasdaq had its worst day since December 2002.
For the year to date, the Dow was down about 2 percent, while the S&P 500 was down about 1.36 percent and the Nasdaq was down about 0.31 percent.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note dropped to 4.50 percent, the lowest since late December, as investors bought bonds in a flight to quality. The 10-year note’s price, which moves in the opposite direction of its yield, rose more than a full point, or 1-1/32, to 101.
BAD NEWS BEFORE THE BELL
On Tuesday, the die for the trading day was cast when China’s Shanghai Composite Index dropped almost 9 percent on fears that the government would crack down on speculation that has driven stock prices there to record highs.
Before Wall Street’s opening bell, there was more bad news. A government report showed a much bigger-than-expected drop of 7.8 percent in January’s new orders for U.S.-made durable goods, which added to concerns about a slowdown in economic growth. Durable goods are big-ticket items, including home appliances and computers, intended to last three years or more.
“Durable goods are a key forward-looking indicator of business activity, so the broad-based drop that we saw today means that confidence in the economy is weaker across a number of sectors and the chance of an investment-led recession is quite a bit higher,” said Andrew Bernard, professor of International Economics at the Tuck School of Business in Dartmouth, New Hampshire.
FEAR FACTOR SKYROCKETS
In one sign of how shaken investors were, the CBOE Volatility Index, known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” surged 70.5 percent to a session high at 19.01 and then retraced its steps a bit to end at 18.31, a gain of 64.2 percent.
Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s, said the stock market’s tumble wiped out more than $430 billion in the S&P 500 stock values, almost matching the value of stock buybacks by S&P 500 companies last year.
He estimated that for the overall market, the loss was $600 billion.
All 30 stocks in the blue-chip Dow average finished in the red as investors unloaded shares of companies with big exposure to the Chinese economy.
During the session, all three major U.S. stock indexes broke below their 60-day moving averages—a sign that the momentum that has carried U.S. stocks through a record run higher from July has begun to stall.
Exxon Mobil Corp. was the biggest decliner in both the Dow and the S&P 500, with its stock falling 4.7 percent, or $3.57, to $71.83 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Caterpillar Inc., the U.S. heavy equipment maker that does extensive business in China, dropped 3.6 percent, or $2.43, to $64.83, also on the NYSE.
The Philadelphia Stock Exchange’s semiconductor index ended down 3.1 percent, its second-sharpest one-day slide this year.
Shares of technology bellwether Cisco Systems Inc. skidded 5.6 percent, or $1.53, to $25.71. The stock was among the biggest losers in both the Nasdaq 100 <.NDX> and the S&P 500.
A rare bright spot on the Big Board was RadioShack Corp., up 11.9 percent, or $2.68, at $25.13. The stock was the NYSE’s No. 1 percentage gainer after reporting higher quarterly profit, due to cutting costs and closing unprofitable stores.
Volume was heavy on the NYSE, where about 2.41 billion shares changed hands, well above last year’s estimated daily average of 1.84 billion. On the Nasdaq, about 3.02 billion shares traded, sharply exceeding last year’s daily average of 2.02 billion.
On the Nasdaq, the number of advancing issues totaled just 281 stocks—the smallest number in about 10 years. In contrast, a total of 2,832 stocks fell on the Nasdaq—with the decliners outnumbering the advancers by a ratio of slightly more than 10 to 1.
On the NYSE, more than six stocks fell for every one that rose. A total of 2,949 NYSE stocks declined, while only 451 shares rose and 104 issues were unchanged. (Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch, Emily Chasan and Bill Rigby)
SOURCE
Bad Moon Rising
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5
Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10
Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15
Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20
Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25
Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28 - Part 29 - Part 30
Part 31 - Part 32 - Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35
Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38 - Part 39 - Part 40
Part 41 - Part 42 - Part 43 - Part 44 - Part 45
Part 46 - Part 47 - Part 48 - Part 49 - Part 50
Part 51 - Part 52 - Part 53 - Part 54
Operation Falcon and the Looming Police State
By Mike Whitley
Information Clearinghouse
February 26, 2007
On 29th June, 1934, Chancellor Adolph Hitler, accompanied by the Schutzstaffel (SS), arrived at Wiesse, where he personally arrested the leader of the Strum Abteilung (SA), Ernnst Roehm. During the next 24 hours 200 other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiesse. Many were shot as soon as they were captured but Hitler decided to pardon Roehm because of his past service to the movement. However, after much pressure from Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Roehm should die. At first Hitler insisted that Roehm should be allowed to commit suicide but, when he refused, Roehm was shot by two SS men. (Spartacus.schoolnet.co)
Later, Hitler delivered a speech at the Reichstag in which he justified the murders of his rivals saying:
“If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it ‘The Night of the Long Knives.’ Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
The Night of the Long Knives is seen by many as the turning point where Hitler made it clear that he was above the law and the supreme leader of the German people.
Operation Falcon: Blueprint for removing dissidents and political rivals
The Bush administration has carried out three massive sweeps in the last two years, rolling up more than 30,000 minor crooks and criminals, without as much as a whimper of protest from the public.
continued
Operation Falcon is the clearest indication yet that the Bush administration is fine-tuning its shock-troops so it can roll up tens of thousands of people at a moments notice and toss them into the newly-built Halliburton detention centers. This should be a red flag for anyone who cares at all about human rights, civil liberties, or simply saving his own skin.
Operation Falcon was allegedly the brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his counterpart in the US Marshal’s office, (Director) Ben Reyna. But its roots go much deeper into the nexus of right-wing Washington think tanks where fantasies of autocratic government have a long history. The name, Falcon, is an acronym for"Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally.” It relates to the more than 960 state, local and federal agencies which are directly involved in the administration’s expansive criminal dragnets.
Typically, law enforcement agencies are protective of their own turf and wary of outside intervention. The Falcon program overrides these concerns by streamlining the information-sharing processes and setting up a chain-of-command structure that radiates from the Justice Department. This removes many of the traditional obstacles to agency interface. It also relocates the levers of power in Washington where thy can be manned by members of the Bush administration.
Dictatorships require strong centralized authority and the Falcon program is a logical corollary of that ambition. It creates new inroads for Bush to assume greater control over the nationwide police-state apparatus. That alone should be sufficient reason for alarm.
The first Operation Falcon took place during the week of April 4 to April 10, 2005. According to the US Marshals official website, ӒThe emphasis centered on gang related crimes, homicides, crimes involving use of a weapon, crimes against children and the elderly, crimes involving sexual assaults, organized crime and drug related fugitives, and other crimes of violence. More than 10,000 criminal suspects were arrested in a matter of days. It was the largest criminal sweep in the nationӔs history and, according to U.S. Marshall chief Ben Reyna, produced the largest number of arrests ever recorded during a single initiative.ғ The Washington Times noted, The sweep was a virtual clearinghouse for warrants on drug, gang, gun and sex-offender suspects nationwide.ԓ
The emphasis was clearly on quantity not quality.
Still, this doesnt explain why state and federal agencies had to be integrated with local law enforcement simply to carry out routine police work.
More importantly, it doesnԒt explain why local police ignored their duty to protect the public just so they could coordinate with outside agencies. According to one report 162 accused or convicted of murderғ were picked up in the first sweep. That means that the police knowingly left murderers on the street and put the public at risk while they orchestrated their raids with federal agencies.
Thats irresponsible. It also suggests that there may be a more sinister motive behind the program than just ensuring public safety. The plan appears to have been devised to enhance the powers of the Ԓunitary executive by putting state and local law enforcement under federal supervision. Once again, itӔs an attempt by the administration to extend its grip to the state and local level. We saw a similar strategy unfold after Hurricane Katrina when the Bush administration used the tragedy to seize control of local police and National Guard units so they could establish de facto martial law. Troops, armored vehicles and mercenaries were deployed to New Orleans to fight lawlessness and looting even though desperate people were still stranded on their rooftops waiting for food, water and medical attention.
Operation FALCON II was another massive dragnet which covered the western half of the country and focused primarily on violent sex offendersғ. The raids took place from April 17-23, and succeeded in apprehending 9,037 alleged fugitives. The US Marshals web site boasts that the operation took some of the country’s most dangerous wanted criminals off the streets and made America’s communities saferԓ.
Nonsense. Despite the claims of success, only 462 violent sex crimeԓ suspects were arrested, along with 1,094 unregistered sex offendersԓ and other minor sex crimeԓ suspects. That leaves 7,481 suspects who were rounded up for other unrelated reasons.
Who are they and what crime did they commit? Were these drug violations, dads who were delinquent on child-support payments, traffic tickets, jay-walking?!?
7,481 people who were incarcerated are unaccounted by the governments estimate. This means that the bulk of them were probably undocumented workers who were shunted off to the INS (Immigration and Naturalization) or dispatched to CheneyԒs tent-city gulags in western Texas. (See: Democracy Now Human Rights Groups Call for Closure of Texas Jail Holding Undocumented Immigrantsғ 2-23-07)
Similar inconsistencies appear in Operation FALCON III, which covered the eastern half of the country from October 22 - 28, 2006.ԓ State, local and federal police-units arrested 10,773 fugitives; including 1,659 sex offenders, 971 unregistered sex offenders, 364 gang members, 140 homicide suspects, and 3,609 drug violations. Once again, the US Marshals official tally doesnԒt pencil out. This time, 4,030 extra people were rounded up without any further explanation.
Who are they and have they been charged with a crime?
Furthermore, sex offenders, drug users and gang-bangers are not what we normally consider some of the country’s most dangerous wanted criminalsғ. In fact, there are indications that the great majority of these people are not violent at all. For example, of the 30,110 total fugitives who were apprehended in all three Falcon sweeps, a measly 586 firearms were seized.
Clearly, the people who were arrested for the most part were not armed and dangerousԓ nor were they a serious threat to public safety. They were probably just the unwitting victims of an overzealous US Marshals office and an ideologically-driven Justice Department.
So, what was the real impetus for the Falcon raids? Was it just a bean-counting exercise to see how many people would fit in the back of a Paddy-wagon or are they a dress rehearsal for future crackdowns on potential enemies of the state?
Bogus News Reports
The Falcon operation illustrates the incestuous relationship between the media and the state. They are two wings on the same plane. The Justice Department provided the TV networks with official footage of policemen and government agents raiding homes and handcuffing suspects; and the media dutifully aired the video on stations across the country. The scenes were accompanied by a reassuring commentary lauding the administrations new crime fighting strategies and linking homeland security with the nebulous war on terror.
Attorney General Gonzales told reporters, ԒOperation FALCON is an excellent example of President Bushs direction and the Justice DepartmentӒs dedication to deal both with the terrorist threat and traditional violent crime. He added, ҔThis joint effort shows the commitment of our federal, state, and local partners to make our neighborhoods safer, and it has led to the highest number of arrests ever recorded for a single initiative of its kind.
So far, not one of the more than 30,000 victims has been charged with a terror-related crime.
The media-hype surrounding the raids has been celebratory and uniform; cookie-cutter articles appeared throughout the US press (most of them unsourced) highlighting the cooperation between the divers agencies while providing an upbeat account of what amounts to police repression. Thousands of nearly identical articles appeared in the nationӔs newspapers which seem to have been authored by high-ranking officials at Homeland Security and protgs of George Orwell; although the difference between the two is far from certain.
Even stranger, most of the articles in the mainstream media can no longer be retrieved via a Google search. They seem to have vanished into the black-hole of Homeland propaganda.
No matter. If the media was supposed to make Gestapo-like crackdowns look like normal police operations; they succeeded admirably. Mission accomplished.
Former Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long once opined, ҩɓWhen fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag. Indeed, he could have added that the corporate media will gladly provide the flag and the public relations campaign as they have with Falcon.
Falcon; new drills for a new world order
The Falcon operations can only be understood in the broader context of the ongoing assault on the constitutional system of checks and balances; including the repeal of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretaps and searches, and the use of torture.
For the last 6 years, the Bush administration has been busy dismantling the legal safeguards which protect the citizen from the arbitrary and, oftentimes, ruthless actions of the state. To that end, detention camps are being prepared by Halliburton within the U.S., secret courts have been established which deny due process of law, American citizens are arrested without charge, law enforcement is increasingly militarized, and the media has strengthened its alliance with the central government.
Additionally, in October 2006, George Bush quietly changed the Insurrection Act, which prevented the President from deploying troops inside the United States. BushԒs revision effectively overturns the Posse Comitatus Act which put strict limits on the executives power to use US troops in domestic situations. Just days earlier Bush signed a similar bill, “The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007” which gives Bush the power to take command of National Guard units across the country which are traditionally under the control of the state governors.
Without fanfare, Bush has taken control of all armed forces and militias inside and outside of the country and now has a monopoly on all the state-sanctioned tools of organized violence. ItҒs a coup that could never have succeeded without the tacit cooperation of the media.
Bush is now free to declare martial law in response to a natural disaster, a pandemic or a terrorist attack. The congress is powerless to stop him.
Also, Bush recently signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows the president to arbitrarily declare citizens and non citizens enemy combatantsӔ and imprison them indefinitely without charge. The new law gives Bush the authority to disregard the Geneva Conventions and the 8th amendments ban on ғcruel and unusual punishment and apply ԓharsh interrogation which may include torture. The act effectively repeals habeas corpus, the cornerstone of American jurisprudence and the Bill of Rights.
The Military Commissions Act cannot coexist with the US Constitution; the two are mutually exclusive.
The Military Commissions Act, The John Warner Defense Authorization Act, the Homeland Security Act, the Patriot Act, and the myriad presidential signing statements have conferred absolute power on George Bush. The question is whether or not some incident will arise that will persuade Bush to use his extraordinary new powers.
General Tommy Franks predicted that a ԓmassive, casualty producing event might cause ԓour population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country; a scenario that many see as likely now.
Is that it? Will another terrorist attack provide the rationale for overturning republican government and declaring martial law?
If so, then we should know what to expect.
According to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) it would mean ԓthe suspension of the normal functions of civilian government, implying the cancellation or postponement of state and federal elections. (Global Research) It would also ԓclose public and government facilities not critical for continuity of essential operations. (FEMA)
Northern Command would assume control and under ԓthe classified ‘Continuity of Government (COG) Operations Plan’ a secret ‘shadow government’ would become functional, redeploying key staff to secret locations.Ԕ (Global Research)
Also, all forms of public gatherings or citizen’s protests which question the legitimacy of the emergency procedures and the installation of a police stateӔ would be banned. The military would be deployed to carry out police and judicialӔ functions.
Martial law in the US would be applied with the utmost attention to public sensibilities and perceptions, avoiding the garish display of force we see in Iraq. It would be a kinder and gentlerӔ martial law with a limited number of military personnel on the streets (just enough to remind us that things have changed) and an emphasis on preemptiveӔ policing operations. (Expect Falcons 4, 5 and 6 etc) It would probably be disguised by a carefully crafted public relations campaign and a predictably cheery moniker, such as, ғThe Security Enhancement and Homeland Fortification Act. The possibilities are limitless.
The Bush administration is also prepared if some unforeseen tragedy befalls congress, like another anthrax attack.
In fact, the American Enterprise Institute, to which the Bush team is closely aligned, has already “issued proposals for the operation of Congress following a catastrophic terrorist attack”. They advocate the “APPOINTING” of individuals to the House of Representatives “to fill the seats of dead or incapacitated members, a first in American history” “The Continuity of Government Commission is self-commissioned’, its members being neither elected nor appointed by any government body and mostly made up of professional lobbyists”. (Read the whole article HERE) (Coincidentally, Newsweek article ԓWhite House Rehearses for Domestic Attack 2-23-07; ԓThe White House is staging a high-level exercise Saturday to test responses to the prospect of a massive domestic terrorist attack. These drills are a critical part of the C.O.G. regimen dating back to the Reagan administration)
According to the AEIԒs plan, the future United States congress will be comprised of lobbyists and industry representatives. What else would one expect from an organization that believes that corporate interests should determine policy?
These are the chilling precedents which have paved the way for further government lawlessness and abuse. They foreshadow the ominous transition from representative government to autocratic rule; from inalienable rights to martial law.
The Falcon operations are just a small part of this larger paradigm. The program is not designed for rounding up minor crooks and drug dealers, (which no one really cares about anyway) but for removing leftists, dissidents and political rivals. These are the real targets. The power of the state is measured in terms of how effectively it defeats or eliminates its enemies. And, the Bush administration has shown a remarkable aptitude for crushing its rivals.
The Crawford Fuehrer
One day, after a particularly savage domestic purge; we can expect President Bush to stride to the presidential podium and reiterate the same words that were uttered by his German predecessor 60 years ago:
“If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the American people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the American people.Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
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Monday, February 26, 2007
Poverty In America at 32 Year High
Plight of poorest of poor extends to suburban areas
By Tony Pugh
Houston Chronicle
February 25, 2007
The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high as the gulf BETWEEN the nation’s “haves” and “have-nots” CONTINUES to widen.
A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 half the federal poverty line ח was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.
The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.
McClatchy’s review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to other areas.
The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries.
That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.
These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty the highest rate since at least 1975.
The growth, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren’t as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.
SOURCE
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The 2008 recession has caused massive increases in extreme poverty.
By Evan Soltas
June 23, 2012
For the purpose of our analysis here, an individual as “extremely poor” if he or she resides in a family unit whose income is less than half of the federal poverty threshold. To give you a sense of what that means, the awful extremity of extreme poverty: a single person under 65 must have made less than $5,851, and a family of four must have made less than $11,509. (In my opinion, it is likely that for the majority of the extreme poor, taxable income is zero.)
Recessions, in fact, appear to affect disproportionately the extreme poor, rather than those closer to the federal poverty threshold or the “near poor,” those whose income is less than half of the federal poverty threshold.
Consider this: in 2010, 6.7 percent of Americans were among the extreme poor, as compared to 5.2 percent in 2007 and 4.5 percent in 2000. That’s a 50 percent increase in the fraction of extremely poor individuals—the greatest increase, by far, of any income group relative to the poverty threshold.The unambiguous statistical trend since 2000 has been large increases in the fraction of Americans at the extreme end of poverty, with little to no change in the fraction of Americans considered “near poor.” The poor, in other words, are getting poorer—or more precisely, poverty in America is becoming an increasingly extreme and unequal phenomenon.Observe, for example, that since 2008, the percentages of individuals making between one-half and three-fourths of the poverty threshold, and between three-fourths and up to the threshold, have seen the second and third largest growth since 2000—27 percent and 21 percent respectively. The former has increased from 3 percent of Americans to 3.8 percent, the latter from 3.8 percent to 4.6 percent. Meanwhile, the fraction of near-poor individuals has remained roughly stable in the 18 percent range since 2000.
If you’re an economist, you might notice that the statistical behavior of the two most extreme poor groups in the first graph—less than half of the threshold, and between half and three-fourths of it—is dramatically different from the other income brackets. They appear highly sensitive to recession, rising as sharply as a fraction of the population during the recessions of 1981, 1990, 2000, and 2008. All other poverty-threshold groups show little to no cyclical behavior.
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Made In America. I think.
Yesterday I posted a casualty of AT&T’S USE of DISPOSABLE day laborers. Today I WONDER who Lockheed Martin’s software programmers are, and where they COME FROM.
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Navigational software glitch forces Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors back to Hawaii, abandoning first foreign deployment to Japan
By Juston Wastnage
Flight Global
February 14, 2007
Lockheed Martin is rushing a software fix to Hawaii after 12 US Air Force F-22A Raptors en route to Japan for the stealth fighters first overseas deployment had to turn back because an unspecified problem with their navigation systems.
The F-22s, of the 27th Fighter Squadron from Langley AFB in Virginia, were en route from Hickham AFB in Hawaii to Kadena AB on Okinawa for a three- to four-month deployment. They are expected to try again by the end of the week, after the software fix is incorporated and tested.
Asked to comment on rumours the problem related to crossing the international dateline, the USAF said: “The aircraft experienced a software problem involving the navigation system en route from Hickam to Kadena. For operational security reasons we will not discuss specific aircraft systems or locations.”
Taking delivery of the first F-22 for the Pacific Air Forces at Lockheeds Marietta, Georgia plant on Monday, USAF Gen Paul Hester said the reason for sending the Raptors to Kadena is ғto learn how to deploy with the F-22. We get a manual with the aircraft and we are learning every day the capabilities built into the aircraft.
PACAFԒs F-22s are being delivered to Langley for training, with the first eight aircraft to arrive at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska in August and two squadrons to be operational by the end of 2008. Eventually, Raptors will also be based at Hickam.
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