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U.S. to Grow Grayer, More Diverse
Minorities Will Be Majority by 2042, Census Bureau Says

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 14, 2008; A06

The nation's population will look dramatically different by mid-century, becoming more racially and ethnically diverse and a good deal older as it increases from about 302 million to 439 million by 2050, according to projections released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The findings are in line with recent analyses published by independent demographers, but they are the first such official Census Bureau projections in years.

Minorities, about one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become a majority by 2042 and be 54 percent of U.S. residents by 2050.

The shift will happen sooner among children, 44 percent of whom are minority. By 2023, more than half are expected to be minority, and by 2050, the proportion will be 62 percent.

The largest share of children, 39 percent, is projected to be Hispanic, followed by non-Hispanic whites (38 percent), African Americans (11 percent) and Asians (6 percent).

Hispanics, including immigrants and their descendants as well as U.S.-born residents whose American roots stretch back generations, are expected to account for the most growth among minorities. That population is expected to nearly triple by 2050, growing from about one in six residents to one in three.

The black and Asian populations are each expected to increase about 60 percent, with the black share rising from 14 to 15 percent by 2050 and the Asian share jumping from 5 to 9 percent.

The number of people who identify themselves as being from two or more races is also expected to grow, more than tripling to 16.2 million, or 4 percent of the population.

By contrast, the non-Hispanic, single-race white population is expected to grow by less than 2 percent, reducing its share of the overall population from 66 to 46 percent. That group is projected to decline in the 2030s and 2040s, as more members die than are born in or move to the United States.

However, the 65-and-older population is expected to remain mostly white because of the number of whites born during the post-World War II baby boom. By 2030, all boomers will be 65 or older; by 2050, that age group will have more than doubled and will account for more than one in five residents, compared with one in eight today.

Similarly, the 85-and-older population is expected to more than triple, accounting for about 4 percent of U.S. residents in 2050, compared with fewer than 2 percent today.

The percentage of the population that is of working age will drop from 63 to 57 percent. As is the case with children, the working-age population is projected to become majority-minority before 2050. By mid-century, it is expected to be 30 percent Hispanic, 15 percent black and nearly 10 percent Asian.

William H. Frey, a researcher with the Brookings Institution, said the demographic changes could presage equally profound political cleavages.

"Politically, whites will be much more interested in issues like health care and pensions," he said. "At the same time, the growing minority population -- Hispanics, especially -- will be concerned about more youthful issues, like schools."

Other analysts focused on the potential environmental and quality-of-life effects of the projected population increases and the degree to which immigration might affect them.

"What this population rise means to me is anywhere from 40 to 80 million more cars on the road, 35 to 40 million more houses built," said Steven Camarota, a researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter limits on immigration.

"As a consequence of federal immigration policy, we're going to be a significantly more densely settled country," Camarota said, "and it's important to recognize that this is a choice we're making. This is not the weather that we have no control over. This is something we can change, so it's worth asking ourselves if this is something we want."

As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record

March 31, 2008

By ERIK ECKHOLM

Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.

The number of recipients, who must have near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits averaging $100 a month per family member, has fluctuated over the years along with economic conditions, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which led to a spike in the South.

But recent rises in many states appear to be resulting mainly from the economic slowdown, officials and experts say, as well as inflation in prices of basic goods that leave more families feeling pinched. Citing expected growth in unemployment, the Congressional Budget Office this month projected a continued increase in the monthly number of recipients in the next fiscal year, starting Oct. 1 — to 28 million, up from 27.8 million in 2008, and 26.5 million in 2007.

The percentage of Americans receiving food stamps was higher after a recession in the 1990s, but actual numbers are expected to be higher this year.

Federal benefit costs are projected to rise to $36 billion in the 2009 fiscal year from $34 billion this year.

“People sign up for food stamps when they lose their jobs, or their wages go down because their hours are cut,” said Stacy Dean, director of food stamp policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, who noted that 14 states saw their rolls reach record numbers by last December.

One example is Michigan, where one in eight residents now receives food stamps. “Our caseload has more than doubled since 2000, and we’re at an all-time record level,” said Maureen Sorbet, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Human Services.

The climb in food stamp recipients there has been relentless, through economic upturns and downturns, reflecting a steady loss of industrial jobs that has pushed recipient levels to new highs in Ohio and Illinois as well.

“We’ve had poverty here for a good while,” Ms. Sorbet said. Contributing to the rise, she added, Michigan, like many other states, has also worked to make more low-end workers aware of their eligibility, and a switch from coupons to electronic debit cards has reduced the stigma.

Some states have experienced more recent surges. From December 2006 to December 2007, more than 40 states saw recipient numbers rise, and in several — Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, North Dakota and Rhode Island — the one-year growth was 10 percent or more.

In Rhode Island, the number of recipients climbed by 18 percent over the last two years, to more than 84,000 as of February, or about 8.4 percent of the population. This is the highest total in the last dozen years or more, said Bob McDonough, the state’s administrator of family and adult services, and reflects both a strong enlistment effort and an upward creep in unemployment.

In New York, a program to promote enrollment increased food stamp rolls earlier in the decade, but the current climb in applications appears in part to reflect economic hardship, said Michael Hayes, spokesman for the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. The additional 67,000 clients added from July 2007 to January of this year brought total recipients to 1.86 million, about one in 10 New Yorkers.

Nutrition and poverty experts praise food stamps as a vital safety net that helped eliminate the severe malnutrition seen in the country as recently as the 1960s. But they also express concern about what they called the gradual erosion of their value.

Food stamps are an entitlement program, with eligibility guidelines set by Congress and the federal government paying for benefits while states pay most administrative costs.

Eligibility is determined by a complex formula, but basically recipients must have few assets and incomes below 130 percent of the poverty line, or less than $27,560 for a family of four.

As a share of the national population, food stamp use was highest in 1994, after several years of poor economic growth, with an average of 27.5 million recipients per month from a lower total of residents. The numbers plummeted in the late 1990s as the economy grew and legal immigrants and certain others were excluded.

But access by legal immigrants has been partly restored and, in the current decade, the federal and state governments have used advertising and other measures to inform people of their eligibility and have often simplified application procedures.

Because they spend a higher share of their incomes on basic needs like food and fuel, low-income Americans have been hit hard by soaring gasoline and heating costs and jumps in the prices of staples like milk, eggs and bread.

At the same time, average family incomes among the bottom fifth of the population have been stagnant or have declined in recent years at levels around $15,500, said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

The benefit levels, which can amount to many hundreds of dollars for families with several children, are adjusted each June according to the price of a bare-bones “thrifty food plan,” as calculated by the Department of Agriculture. Because food prices have risen by about 5 percent this year, benefit levels will rise similarly in June — months after the increase in costs for consumers.

Advocates worry more about the small but steady decline in real benefits since 1996, when the “standard deduction” for living costs, which is subtracted from family income to determine eligibility and benefit levels, was frozen. If that deduction had continued to rise with inflation, the average mother with two children would be receiving an additional $37 a month, according to the private Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Both houses of Congress have passed bills that would index the deduction to the cost of living, but the measures are part of broader agriculture bills that appear unlikely to pass this year because of disagreements with the White House over farm policy.

Another important federal nutrition program known as WIC, for women, infants and children, is struggling with rising prices of milk and cheese, and growing enrollment.

The program, for households with incomes no higher than 185 percent of the federal poverty level, provides healthy food and nutrition counseling to 8.5 million pregnant women, and children through the age of 4. WIC is not an entitlement like food stamps, and for the fiscal year starting in October, Congress may have to approve a large increase over its current budget of $6 billion if states are to avoid waiting lists for needy mothers and babies.

U.S. incarcerates more than any other nation: report

Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:13pm EST

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world and for the first time in the nation's history, more than one in every 100 American adults is confined in a prison or jail, according to a report released on Thursday.

The report by the Pew Center on the States said the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults at the start of the year.

The far more populous nation of China ranked second with 1.5 million behind bars, with Russia a distant third with 890,000 inmates.

"Beyond the sheer number of inmates, America also is the global leader in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizenry, outpacing nations like South Africa and Iran," according to the report.

Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, criminal justice experts say.

The latest report tracked similar findings on the U.S. prison population by the Justice Department and various private groups. A report in November by a criminal justice research group found the number of people in U.S. prison had risen eight-fold since 1970.

The new report said that the national prison population has nearly tripled between 1987 and 2007.

"The number of people behind bars in the United States continued to climb in 2007, saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," it said.

States last year spent more than $44 billion on corrections, the report said, compared with $10.6 billion in 1987, the report said, adding that the rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending.

The report said the current prison growth has not been driven mainly by a parallel increase in crime or a corresponding surge in the nation's population.

"Rather, it flows principally from a wave of policy choices that are sending more lawbreakers to prison and, through the popular 'three-strikes' measures and other sentencing enhancements, keeping them there longer," it said.

The report said some states, such as Texas and Kansas, have acted to slow their prison population growth, with greater use of community supervision for lower-risk offenders and sanctions other than prison for minor probation and parole violations, such as missing a counseling session.

Some Homeless Squat in Foreclosed Houses

Sunday February 17, 2:26 pm ET
By Thomas J. Sheeran, Associated Press Writer Some Homeless People Turn to Empty Houses for Shelter Amid Nation's Foreclosure Crisis CLEVELAND (AP) -- The nation's foreclosure crisis has led to a painful irony for homeless people: On any given night they are outnumbered in some cities by vacant houses. Some street people are taking advantage of the opportunity by becoming squatters.

Foreclosed homes often have an advantage over boarded-up and dilapidated houses abandoned because of rundown conditions: Sometimes the heat, lights and water are still working.

"That's what you call convenient," said James Bertan, 41, an ex-convict and self-described "bando," or someone who lives in abandoned houses.

While no one keeps numbers of below-the-radar homeless finding shelter in properties left vacant by foreclosure, homeless advocates agree the locations -- even with utilities cut off -- would be inviting to some. There are risks for squatters, including fires from using candles and confrontations with drug dealers, prostitutes, copper thieves or police.

"Many homeless people see the foreclosure crisis as an opportunity to find low-cost housing (FREE!) with some privacy," Brian Davis, director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, said in the summary of the latest census of homeless sleeping outside in downtown Cleveland.

The census had dropped from 40 to 17 people. Davis, a board member of the National Coalition for the Homeless, cited factors including the availability of shelter in foreclosed homes, aggressive sidewalk and street cleaning and the relocation of a homeless feeding site. He said there are an average 4,000 homeless in Cleveland on any given night. There are an estimated 15,000 single-family homes vacant due to foreclosure in Cleveland and suburban Cuyahoga County.

In Texas, Larry James, president and chief executive officer of Central Dallas Ministries, said he wasn't surprised that homeless might be taking advantage of vacant homes in residential neighborhoods beyond the reach of his downtown agency.

"There are some campgrounds and creek beds and such where people would be tempted to walk across the street or climb out of the creek bed and sneak into a vacant house," he said.

Bertan, who doesn't like shelters because of the rules, said he has been homeless or in prison for drugs and other charges for the past nine years. He has noticed the increased availability of boarded-up homes amid the foreclosure crisis.

He said a "fresh building" -- recently foreclosed -- offered the best prospects to squatters.

"You can be pretty comfortable for a little bit until it gets burned out," he said as he made the rounds of the annual "stand down" where homeless in Cleveland were offered medical checkups, haircuts, a hot meal and self-help information.

Shelia Wilson, 50, who was homeless for years because of drug abuse problems, also has lived in abandoned homes, and for the same reason as Bertan: She kept getting thrown out of shelters for violating rules. "Every place, I've been kicked out of because of drugs," she said.

Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, hasn't seen evidence of increased homeless moving into foreclosed homes but isn't surprised. He said anecdotal evidence -- candles burning in boarded-up homes, a squatter killed by a fire set to keep warm -- shows the determination of the homeless to find shelter.

Davis said Cleveland's high foreclosure rate and the proximity of downtown shelters to residential neighborhoods has given the city a lead role in the homeless/foreclosure phenomenon.

Many cities roust homeless from vacant homes, which more typically will be used by drug dealers or prostitutes than a homeless person looking for a place to sleep, Stoops said.

Police across the country must deal with squatters and vandalism involving vacant homes:

-- In suburban Shaker Heights, which has $1 million homes on wide boulevards, poorer neighborhoods with foreclosed homes get extra police attention.

-- East of San Francisco, a man was arrested in November on a code violation while living without water service in a vacant home in Manteca, Calif., which has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.

-- In Cape Coral, Fla., a man arrested in September in a foreclosed home said he had been living there since helping a friend move out weeks earlier.

Bertan and Wilson agreed that squatting in a foreclosed home can be dangerous because the locations can attract drug dealers, prostitutes and, eventually, police.

William Reed, 64, a homeless man who walks with a cane, thumbed through a shoulder bag holding a blue-bound Bible, notebooks with his pencil drawings and a plastic-wrapped piece of bread as he sat on a retainer wall in the cold outside St. John Cathedral in downtown Cleveland. He's gone inside empty homes but thinks it's too risky to spend the night.

Even the inviting idea of countless foreclosed empty homes didn't overcome the possible risk of entering a crack house.

"Their brains could be burned up," said Reed, who didn't want to detail where he sleeps at night.

Sometimes it's hard to track where the homeless go.

In Philadelphia, the risk is too great to send case workers into vacant homes to check for homeless needing help, said Ed Speedling, community liaison with Project H.O.M.E. "We're very, very wary of going inside. There's danger. I mean, if the floor caves in. There's potential danger: Sometimes they are still owned by someone," Speedling said.

William Walker, 57, who was homeless for seven years and now counsels drifters at a sprawling warehouse-turned-shelter overlooking Lake Erie, has seen people living in foreclosed homes in his blue-collar neighborhood in Cleveland. He estimated that three or four boarded-up homes in his neighborhood have homeless living there from time to time.

Sometimes homeless men living in tents in a nearby woods disappear from their makeshift homes, Walker said. "The guys who were there last year are not there now. Are they in the (foreclosed) homes? I don't know. They are just not in their places," Walker said.

Noose tightening around Clemens

February 13, 2008

Damaging Information Said to Await Clemens

By DUFF WILSON and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

WASHINGTON — Roger Clemens will be confronted with a new and damaging affidavit from Andy Pettitte when he appears before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday to testify about allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs, two lawyers familiar with the matter said late Tuesday.

Clemens will also be asked about corroborating information that committee staff members developed on their own that ties Clemens to such drugs, the lawyers said. That information, they said, stands separate and apart from the assertions made about Clemens by his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, who contends that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone from 1998 to 2001.

The two lawyers familiar with what may be confronting Clemens at the hearing spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. They would not reveal details of the new Pettitte affidavit or of the new information obtained apart from McNamee’s assertions.

“The committee is not messing around and has other damaging evidence against Roger,” one of the lawyers said.

The other lawyer said, “Andy said enough to really hurt Roger.”

Clemens continued to insist on Tuesday that he never received injections. He made those denials while visiting privately with six more members of the committee, bringing his three-day lobbying total to 25 of the 40 committee members. But in many respects, it was the calm before a momentous clash for Clemens, the most decorated pitcher in baseball history.

On Wednesday, he will sit before the committee, with McNamee, in a nationally televised event that will begin at 10 a.m. in a wood-paneled hearing room in the Rayburn Office Building. They will be joined by one other person — the lawyer Charles P. Scheeler, who helped produce the report on baseball and drugs prepared by former Senator George J. Mitchell.

Scheeler will answer questions about the report but is also expected to sit between Clemens and McNamee. “That’s 99 percent of the reason he’s there,” a committee staff member said.

A Congressional staff member familiar with the recent events said that Pettitte gave the new affidavit — which is distinct from the two-and-a-half-hour deposition he provided last week — in lieu of appearing before the committee. Another staff member said the affidavit, which Pettitte signed, was being closely guarded by committee staff members and leadership, and had not been given to other members of the 40-member panel on Tuesday for fear it would be leaked.

Pettitte was excused from testifying after his lawyers said he did not want to provide negative information about Clemens, his former longtime friend, teammate and workout partner, in the glare of a national spotlight. Pettitte has admitted to taking injections of H.G.H., as McNamee has asserted, and it is believed that he made statements in his deposition that would not be helpful to Clemens’s cause.

The chairman of the committee, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, is expected to read portions of Pettitte’s affidavit during the hearing and ask Clemens to respond, in what could be a dramatic and awkward moment for both players, and, for that matter, the entire sport.

Clemens, 45, of Houston, gave a five-hour sworn deposition to the committee on Feb. 5 and, his lawyer says, he wants to testify publicly in a bid to restore his reputation as one of the game’s greatest pitchers.

Clemens even wrote his own opening statement to the committee, one of his lawyers, Lanny A. Breuer, said in a phone interview Tuesday night.

“It’s completely Roger speaking from the heart,” he said. “We look forward to the committee and the country judging this man.”

McNamee, 40, gave a seven-hour deposition on Thursday. He has told investigators and Mitchell that he injected Clemens with steroids at least 12 times in 1998, 2000 and 2001, and at least four times with H.G.H. in 2000. But he has added vivid details to his account this year. He also handed over syringes and bloody gauze that he said were used when injecting Clemens in 2001 and had been saved since then.

McNamee’s newer details raise the issue of whether he violated the proffer agreement he signed last summer with federal prosecutors to tell them the truth in order to avoid prosecution. McNamee’s lawyers said the prosecutors accepted his new information as merely having been omitted, rather than as being untrue. The prosecutors declined comment.

“We’ve got the truth on our side,” Richard Emery, a lawyer for McNamee, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It should be unequivocally clear that Roger, if he contradicts Brian, will not be telling the truth.”

Assuming that the testimony of Clemens and McNamee continues to collide Wednesday, the committee is unlikely to make a referral to the Department of Justice to investigate either one of them for lying under oath, a committee staff member said Tuesday. Instead, it will allow the Department of Justice to make its own determination.

“The D.O.J. can do what it wants,” the staff member said.

Last month, Waxman and Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, formally asked the Department of Justice to investigate shortstop Miguel Tejada for suspected false statements in 2005. That referral was made in part because Tejada made his statements during a private interview with committee staff members in 2005. Those statements would not have been known to other federal authorities, including the Justice Department, the staff member said.

But the Clemens and McNamee testimony will be on plain view for all to see — including Jeff Novitzky, the I.R.S. special agent from California who has led the federal government’s investigations into the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs and who is expected to be in attendance at the hearing.

Irwin Rogers, another I.R.S. agent, and Heather Young, an F.B.I. agent, are also expected to attend the hearing. Their presence underlines the dangerous path Clemens could be on as he continues to insist that McNamee is lying.

Meanwhile, Clemens visited six more members of the committee in their offices on Tuesday afternoon. It brought his three-day total to 14 of the 22 Democrats and 11 of the 18 Republicans. Mark Souder, a Republican from Indiana, refused to meet with Clemens. “They were very persistent,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “I had to tell them, ‘It’s not a scheduling problem — it’s that I don’t want to meet with him.’ ”

Souder added of Clemens: “He’s wandering around the Hill like it’s a campaign. It’s unseemly.”

Diane E. Watson, Democrat of California, emerged from a meeting with Clemens saying it was mostly anecdotal but would help her evaluate his testimony.

“My staff told me, ‘Don’t do this,’ but I said, ‘No, I really want to,’ ” she said.

Asked about Clemens’s motives for meeting her, Watson said, “I found him, you know, very charming.

“I’ve been in public life for a quarter of a century, and I’ve had every lobbyist in the world in front of me,” she said.

Earlier Tuesday, the committee held a two-hour hearing on growth hormone and vitamin B12. Four medical experts testified that H.G.H. could be harmful if used for illegal uses like bodybuilding or so-called anti-aging. Side effects may include diabetes, joint pain and cancer.

“Doctors who are prescribing the drug to enhance performance or to reverse aging are actually breaking the law,” Waxman said.

The law will be at issue again on Wednesday, but this time the question will be who is telling the truth, who is lying and who is risking a possible perjury charge.

Alan Schwarz contributed reporting.

GA #2 in bankruptcies

By CARRIE TEEGARDIN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/29/08

Thousands of Georgians facing economic woes have given the state a dubious ranking: the second-highest personal bankruptcy rate in the nation.

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In 2007, bankruptcy courts statewide processed one personal bankruptcy filing for every 65 households, according to statistics compiled by the National Bankruptcy Research Center. Only in Tennessee was personal bankruptcy more common, with one filing for every 59 households.

"The economy is just so bad that that is spurring bankruptcies," said Rich Thomson, a partner at Clark & Washington, Atlanta's largest bankruptcy firm. "We have record numbers of foreclosures every month."

Bankruptcy filings across the nation were up significantly in 2007, and Georgia was no exception. Bankruptcy courts statewide processed 48,227 personal bankruptcy filings last year, an increase of 24 percent over the 2006 total, according to the research center.

In a comparison of the total volume of filings, irrespective of the rates, Georgia also stood out. Only California and Ohio had more 2007 filings than Georgia did.

Georgia has routinely landed near the top of the bankruptcy rankings in recent years. Experts cite a variety of forces, ranging from a slate of creditor-friendly laws, to the state's entrepreneurial spirit to a booming real estate market.

"Many of the things that make Georgia a wonderful place to live also make it potentially vulnerable to spikes in bankruptcy filings," said Jack Williams, a professor at Georgia State University's law school.

The penchant of Georgians to start their own businesses enriches only a minority of the folks who set out to be their own boss.

"Most new businesses fail, that's simply the nature of the beast," said Williams, currently the resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute.

When small businesses go under, that often results in a personal bankruptcy filing as well.

Georgia also stands out for a healthy real estate market that was buoyed in part by reliance on subprime mortgages, Williams said. Those mortgages have much higher failure rates than lower-interest prime mortgages.

The state's attractiveness to young retirees may also be playing a role, Williams said. These are people who are at risk for health problems and vulnerable to bankruptcy if they have no health insurance coverage.

"The folks in the 55 age group and above are the fastest-growing segment of bankruptcy filers," Williams said. "Georgia has a lot of folks who fit in that age group."

Thomson, the bankruptcy attorney, said Georgia's foreclosure laws also push up the number of bankruptcies. Georgia allows one of the fastest foreclosure processes in the nation. The process is fast here, in part, because Georgia allows "non-judicial" foreclosures, meaning that foreclosures can proceed without the approval of a judge.

"Georgia is definitely a creditor-rights state and the non-judicial foreclosure process certainly spurs a lot of bankruptcies," said Thomson, the bankruptcy attorney.

Filing for bankruptcy protection automatically halts a foreclosure sale and gives the homeowner more time to cover overdue mortgage payments.

"Many, many people are able to keep the house" as a result of filing for bankruptcy, Thomson said.

Most people facing a foreclosure file for Chapter 13, which allows consumers to hold onto their house and car, but requires that they repay a portion of their debts. Chapter 13 filings are more common in Georgia than Chapter 7, a liquidation in which most debts are wiped out, but so are all of a consumer's assets that aren't protected by exemptions.

Congress attempted to cut down on the number of bankruptcy filings with reforms that took effect in October 2005. Bankruptcy filings skyrocketed right before the law was enacted, then fell dramatically right after the law was implemented.

But the numbers have been steadily rising since. Overall consumer filings across the country hit 801,840 last year, up 40 percent from the 2006 totals, according to the research center. Experts expect economic problems to fuel another big year in 2008.

Although bankruptcy has become commonplace in states like Georgia, it's still a difficult step for many consumers, Williams said.

"Go down to the court and watch people file these petitions and go through their examinations and talk to them," he said. "You will realize that there is still a tremendous stigma and I'm not just talking about the 10 years it floats on your credit history report. I'm talking about people who really feel horrible about the fact that they are in the situation."

For many, Williams said, bankruptcy could have been avoided if American consumers had a better grasp on the basics of budgeting and debt — and especially preparing for difficult times.

"Many of us are vulnerable," he said. "We're one job layoff or reduction in work hours or disease or illness or accident away from bankruptcy, because we haven't saved for the rainy day."

A Hand the Clintons Aren't Showing

This issue is comical. For anyone who's been living the United States for any length of time knows that everything here is about race. Every word is parsed, every actioned scrutinized, this country isn't even close to having normalized race relations. Anyone who doubted for an instant that blacks wouldn't vote for the first viable black presidential candidate is a fool. Of course blacks are going to vote for Obama....are you kidding?!

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, January 15, 2008; A13

It turns out that Toni Morrison's famous line about Bill Clinton as "our first black president" was just a bon mot. If the Clintons took it as a sign of African Americans' unconditional fealty, they were mistaken.

A new Post-ABC News poll shows that black Democrats nationwide support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination by nearly 2 to 1. This striking reversal -- a month ago, Clinton held a big lead among African Americans -- is perhaps why race has suddenly become such a hot issue in a campaign that previously had dodged the subject.

It was never realistic to think that race -- or gender, for that matter -- would stay out of a contest starring the first woman and the first African American with realistic hopes of becoming president. From the Democrats' perspective, it's probably better to hash all this out now rather than wait until the general election campaign, when the Republican Swift-boat machine would set the parameters and tone for the discussion.

Still, it's surprising that the Clinton campaign has been so aggressive in keeping the race issue alive. On "Meet the Press," Clinton didn't just seek to explain her remarks about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s role in landmark civil rights legislation (she said it took a president to bring about real action) or Bill's "fairy tale" crack about Obama's record on the Iraq war (which some African Americans took as a dismissal of Obama's candidacy as mere fantasy). Instead, she went on the attack, accusing the Obama campaign of "deliberately distorting" her words in a way that was "unfair and unwarranted."

That seemed a curious tactic to employ just two weeks before the South Carolina Democratic primary, in which African Americans are expected to cast about half the total votes. It seemed especially curious after the most powerful black politician in the state, U.S. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, indicated he was so "bothered" by the Clintons' remarks that he might rethink his decision not to endorse any candidate before the primary.

With most polls showing Clinton well behind in South Carolina, it was unclear how this approach would do anything but put her further behind.

The charitable explanation would be that the Clintons are, in their political position, simply disoriented. They are accustomed to Bill Clinton's campaigns, in which African American support was pretty much assumed. Backing for Hillary Clinton from prominent friends and allies such as Andrew Young, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Vernon Jordan, Magic Johnson, Quincy Jones and others didn't manage to keep Obama out of the race -- and, according to the polls, won't keep black voters from supporting him. It would be understandable if the Clintons were frustrated at seeing such an important Democratic constituency lured away, and if they were doubly frustrated at the difficulty of finding a way to criticize Obama without further alienating African Americans.

This is politics, however, which means that less charitable explanations have to be considered as well.

Race is just one of the fights that the Clinton campaign is pressing with Obama; the other is an attempt to discredit Obama's opposition to the war. It could be that the idea is to engage Obama in so much tit-for-tat combat that his image as a new, post-partisan kind of politician is tarnished.

Or the strategy could be more subtle. I can't help but recall a certain piece of history.

In 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president, a controversial hip-hop artist named Sister Souljah made an ugly comment about the Los Angeles riots: "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" Candidate Clinton highlighted the remark in a speech to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, comparing Souljah to Ku Klux Klan member David Duke. The episode demonstrated that Clinton was not only tough on lawlessness but also willing to challenge "special interests" -- in this case, black activists.

The Clintons are reading the polls, too; they might well be resigned to the possibility that most black Democrats will vote for Obama. This would mean that South Carolina is probably already lost and that the campaign's focus now has to be on Florida and the many states whose delegates are up for grabs on "Tsunami Tuesday."

Is it possible that accusing Obama and his campaign of playing the race card might create doubt in the minds of the moderate, independent white voters who now seem so enamored of the young, black senator? Might that be the idea?

Yes, that's a cynical view. But history is history.

Schilling sticks it to Clemens

He says pitcher should lose the last four of his seven Cy Young Awards.

By Bill Shaikin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 20, 2007

Curt Schilling challenged Roger Clemens to come out from behind his prepared statement, calling on Clemens to surrender the final four Cy Young Awards he has won unless he obtains a retraction for his citation in the Mitchell Report as a user of steroids and human growth hormone.

In a scathing indictment of several of the biggest names in the game, the outspoken Boston Red Sox pitcher Wednesday urged baseball to strip Clemens of his statistics and records over the past decade unless he can refute the Mitchell Report, called the career of Jose Canseco a drug-aided "sham" and "hoax" and expressed concern for the sport that Clemens and Barry Bonds each has yet to clear himself amid evidence each used performance-enhancing substances.

"What does that say about this game, us as athletes and the future of the sport and our place in it?" Schilling wrote on his blog, 38pitches.com. "The greatest pitcher and greatest hitter of all time are currently both being implicated, one is being prosecuted, for events surrounding and involving the use of performance-enhancing drugs."

The Mitchell Report cites Clemens for using steroids and human growth hormone from 1998 to 2001, starting after he joined the Toronto Blue Jays in 1997. Clemens has won the Cy Young Award a record seven times, including in 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2004.

On Tuesday, Clemens issued a statement denying he had used performance-enhancing drugs "at any time in my baseball career or, in fact, my entire life." On Wednesday, Schilling said Clemens must back his denial by retaining lawyers to obtain a retraction and public apology so his name can be "completely cleared."

"If he doesn't do that," Schilling said, "then there aren't many options as a fan for me other than to believe his career 192 wins and three Cy Youngs he won prior to 1997 were the end. From that point on the numbers were attained through using [performance-enhancing drugs]. . . .

"The four Cy Youngs should go to the rightful winners and the numbers should go away if he cannot refute the accusations."

The Baseball Writers Assn. of America administers the Cy Young Award -- and baseball's other major awards -- and BBWAA President Bob Dutton said he was unaware of any such precedent.

"We didn't take anything away from [Pete] Rose when he was banned from baseball," Dutton said. "If Roger said he didn't want them, I don't know what we'd do."

Clemens is far from the only award winner named in the Mitchell Report. Eric Gagne won a Cy Young Award, and the most-valuable-player winners include Canseco, Miguel Tejada, Jason Giambi, Mo Vaughn and Ken Caminiti.

The runners-up would not necessarily be free of suspicion. Canseco edged Wally Joyner for the 1986 American League rookie of the year award; Joyner admitted in the Mitchell Report that he used steroids later in his career.

Schilling saluted Canseco for shattering the code of silence on steroids in baseball but rebuked him for building his career upon them.

"He never belonged in the big leagues and anything he ever did in the major leagues is a hoax," Schilling said. "He made it clear that he would not have been the player he was had he not cheated. His statistics should be erased, his MVP given to the runner up and he should go down as the guy who broke the silence on a horrible period of the game, period."

Schilling credited the players who had admitted to drug use cited in the report, including backup catcher Gary Bennett, signed by the Dodgers on Monday.

"Gary Bennett is a guy who I always respected because I never figured him as a guy that would be able to play as long as he has," Schilling said. "He was always a hard worker and a nice guy and I always enjoyed throwing to him because he cared about his game calling skills.

"He's made a nice career for himself and my hope is that it was more through his hard work and effort than through cheating, either way he's a friend of mine and always will be."

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

America: The Land of the Drugged

With the story breaking last week about the trainer ratting out all of the players doing steroids, I thought it was time to revisit an article I wrote back in 2005.


National Pastimes, Steroids and Media Circuses

Last week congress was engaged in one of its favorite past times; grandstanding. A congressional panel heard testimony from current and former professional baseball players including Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. The biggest buzz-making item to come out of the testimony was Mark McGwire’s refusal to answer the question of whether or not he had taken steroids. His unwillingness to answer the question has fueled speculation that he was in fact taking steroids while chasing Maris’ home run record and his reputation has predictably suffered as a result.

Several observations can be drawn from the hearings that really illustrate the sort of illusory world that Americans live in today. To begin with, the whole circus sideshow was instigated by a book written by former slugger Jose Canseco. Canseco outs a number of player, including McGwire, as taking steroids when he was still in the game. Not surprisingly, Canseco has become the target of much condemnation from managers, owners and players alike, one of which is Curt Schilling.

Schilling has been an outspoken critic of steroids for a number of years; even implying in the past that steroid use in baseball is “rampant”. In last Thursday’s testimony Schilling called Canseco, whose book corroborates Schillings views on steroids, a liar. This is the conundrum that the issue of drugs creates in United States. When an outspoken critic of steroid use brands the one person who openly admits to using steroids as a liar, we begin to see the quandary this issue causes.

The issue, in a broader sense, isn’t solely about steroids; it is about American’s acceptance of certain drugs and their opposition to others. It is a kind of built-in hypocrisy that seems to come with being an American. McGwire’s public conscience wrestling seemed to show a man who was not desirous of being a liar, while struggling with the knowledge that if he did tell the truth, he would be branded a cheat; a dilemma seemingly not shared by his contemporaries. However, the worst hypocrites in this spectacle are the shameless congress members pretending to be the protectors of old-fashioned American values while at the same time accepting enormous amounts of money from the pharmaceutical industry, an industry that shamelessly advertises their drugs even after many are known to be harmful to people’s health.

Americans are bombarded daily with advertisements from the pharmaceutical companies that encourage all manner of drugs to enhance their performance. You cannot watch television for more than ten minutes without being subjected to commercials hocking male sexual arousal pills, like Viagra and Cialis. Schools across the country have become defacto pharmacies dispensing drugs likes Ritalin and adderall to our nation’s children to enhance their concentration. Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac and Zoloft, just to name a few, are now household words. These are all drugs, we are told, that supposedly enhance the quality of our lives and all of these drugs have the full backing and support of the government and Congress especially.

The message that is being sent is clear, it is not only proper to ingest drugs to enhance performance but it is absolutely encouraged. However, when it comes to athletes using drugs to enhance their performance we are supposed to be incredulous that they would even entertain such an idea. What absurdity! Why on earth would anyone be shocked by the revelation that athletes use steroids? Drug use is ingrained in our culture, it is inescapable. We are the most medicated society on earth and yet we still feign outrage that athletes use steroids.

These are classic symptoms of the American psyche’s need to present itself as steadfastly moral while at the same time giving a wink and a nod to behavior we supposedly don’t tolerate. This is America’s real, national past time

A Real Estate Agent speaks

I loved selling RE in the early 90’s after the last bubble blew. The buyers were loyal and really need help sorting through the MOUNTAIN of inventory and were grateful for your time and service finding them a good purchase. Shortly after 2000 everything went to shit (except the money) when the lenders gave money to any chimp with a bananna. Then the sellers acted as if they were doing you a favor by letting you “have the listing” and the buyers would screw you at the drop of a hat no matter how much time and effort you gave to them. Around ‘02 the corruption started in earnest and it really became a game of “SCREW THE FB!!!!”. By the time we got to 05′ I had took the time to finish my Accounting degree and stopped selling to buyers. The corruption (actual blatant law breaking) became so common place with the new agents/lenders/title cos. that those involved assumed that “this is the way it works”… Break the law, get paid… wash, rinse, repeat..

I am getting ready to get my RE brokers license, but don’t think I will ever practice openly again. Will do my own deals, or for friends, but this bubble has crushed my desire to work actively with others that entered the business. I am sure that most of the shukamajivers will get washed out, but it just put a horrible taste in my mouth that will be hard to forget.

How we are fleeced

Social Security Checks to Rise 2.3%
Cost-of-Living Adjustment Is Smallest Since '03

By Howard Schneider and Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 18, 2007; D01

Payments to Social Security recipients and most federal retirees will increase 2.3 percent in January. It is the smallest cost-of-living adjustment since 2003, reflecting a lower rate of inflation.

editor: ANYONE WHO BUYS GROCERIES OR GAS KNOWS INFLATION IS GETTING BAD! BUT AS LONG AS THE ARE ABLE TO EXTRACT THESE TWO ITEMS THEY GET TO KEEP THE INCREASE TO A MINIMUM...

The adjustment will increase the average monthly Social Security retirement benefit by $24, to $1,079. It is based on the rise in the consumer price index in the third quarter, a figure the Labor Department released yesterday.

It is also a significant number to the more than 4 million federal government and military retirees, about 500,000 of whom live in the Washington region. The pensions of most civil service, foreign service and military retirees will match Social Security's 2.3 percent increase. Government workers covered by the newer Federal Employees Retirement System who are age 62 or older will receive an adjustment of 2 percent under the rules of that program.

The Social Security Administration announced another closely watched figure yesterday, raising to $102,000 from $97,500 the figure below which earnings are subject to Social Security taxes. By law, the cutoff is set using a formula based on the change in average wages. Yesterday's recalculation will increase taxes for about 12 million of the 164 million workers expected to pay into the Social Security system in 2008, the agency said.

editor: SO WHILE THEY DOLE OUT AN EXTRA $288 PER YEAR, THEY GRAB AN EXTRA $4500 PER YEAR....GREAT SYSTEM HUH?!

Retirees are generally better off with low inflation, even if it means a smaller increase in their Social Security benefits, said David Certner, legislative policy director of AARP.

editor: THIS SHOULD ACTUALLY READ, THE GOVERNMENT IS BETTER OFF WITH FRAUDULENTLY MISREPRESENTED LOW INFLATION SINCE THEN THEY ARE ABLE TO SCREW YOU ON THE FRONT END BY INFLATING THE CURRENCY LOWERING YOUR PURCHASE POWER AND THEN SCREW YOU ON THE BACK END BY MINIMIZING YOUR BENEFITS...THEY GET TO HAVE THEIR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!

That is because Social Security is the only source of many retirees' income that automatically rises with inflation. During periods of high inflation, they might get a higher Social Security adjustment, but if their savings and other sources of income stay the same, they are harder hit by increases in what they have to spend.

Moreover, the price increases that retirees routinely face are frequently higher than the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment because older families spend more of their incomes on health care and energy than the overall U.S. population. Those costs have been rising faster than prices in general.

"Energy and health care are just far outstripping these COLA numbers," Certner said.

HILARIOUS! SINCE THE COLA LEAVES OUT ENERGY!

After two years of relatively steep cost-of-living adjustments, this year's increase was modest because of easing energy costs and lower prices for clothing and some other goods. The COLA was 2.7 percent in 2004, 4.1 percent in 2005 and 3.3 percent in 2006.

HA!, HA!, HA!, HA! EASING ENERGY COSTS?! OIL IS AT ALMOST $90 A BARREL AND BESIDES THAT, ENERGY COSTS ARE SUBTRACTED FROM THE GOVERNMENT INFLATION NUMBER ANYWAY SO THE POINT IS MOOT....

The cost-of-living calculation was based on a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that indicated inflation over the past year was contained but jumped significantly from August because of rising energy prices. Food costs continued to rise steadily, as did prices for medical care and housing.

ONCE AGAIN THE MORON WHO WROTE THIS PAP CONTINUALLY REFERENCES ENERGY AND FOOD, TWO ITEMS NOT CALCULATED IN THE COST-OF-LIVING-ADJUSTMENT!!

Overall prices rose 0.3 percent in September from August on a seasonally adjusted basis. Excluding food and energy prices, a measure more closely watched by the Federal Reserve as it guides the nation's economy, the consumer price index rose 0.2 percent in September and 2.1 percent over the previous 12 months.

Economists said that level of consumer inflation, while a bit higher than Fed leaders prefer, is not high enough to tie the central bank's hands as it heads into its next policymaking meeting Oct. 31.

WHAT A LOAD OF HORSE SHIT!! WHAT BUREAU OF LABOR AND STATISTICS ASS CLOWN WROTE THIS "NEWS ITEM"?!

The Latte Era Grinds Down

Average Americans were living like the Riches, thanks to easy credit and the real-estate bubble. Now they're trading down instead of trading up.

By Daniel Gross

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:30 PM ET Oct 13, 2007

Brian LaCroix, a 34-year-old computer engineer, developed a taste for expensive coffees. Earlier this year, however, he stopped frequenting a French coffee shop in Dallas and bought an espresso machine, slashing the daily cost for deux lattes from $8 to $1. The newlywed and his wife, who have a combined income of about $200,000, have also cut spending by mowing their own lawn. And Brian asked to work from home two days a week to save on gas for his 2002 Ford Ranger. The LaCroixs have been motivated by a combination of factors: frugality, environmentalism and concern about the job and real-estate markets. (Earlier in the decade Yvette, now an operations manager for Fannie Mae, lost her job in the telecom bust.) "We want to be sure that we can afford our home on just one salary without having to dip into savings," says Brian.

For the past several years, American consumers at every rung of the income ladder have been trading up—splurging on a growing array of luxury products, from $4 lattes to $4,000 handbags. With easy access to credit, especially home-equity loans, middle-class Americans began regularly trading up for items that appealed to them, buying food staples at Kroger but splurging on Kobe beef at Whole Foods. Suddenly, everybody was a luxury consumer—for certain items.

But as the saying goes, what goes up must come down. Now many of those same Americans who traded up are shunning luxuries and returning to basics. The upshot: many of the companies that expanded in the hopes of reaching a mass audience of luxury consumers are suffering. Blame the overall slowdown in economic growth, the growing scarcity and cost of credit, and, above all, the sad-sack housing market. "The top 20 percent of households haven't seen a decline in real income, but the bottom 20 percent is suffering and the middle 60 percent is getting by," says Michael Silverstein, senior partner with Boston Consulting Group and coauthor of "Trading Up."

Across the economy, consumers are now opting for smaller, less expensive items. In the past three years, sales of compact cars—cheaper to buy and operate than SUVs—have risen from 13.6 percent to 17.7 percent of total U.S. auto sales, even as automakers' incentive spending per compact car fell by 55 percent. Leasetrader.com, a 10-year-old company in Miami that helps people get in and out of car leases, says that up to 15 percent of its customers are seeking to trade down to smaller cars. "This is the first time in at least six years that we've noticed people wanting to do that," says Leasetrader.com spokesman John Sternal.

Mark and Erin Reed Adams, wedding photographers who live in Reynoldstown, a neighborhood near downtown Atlanta, have kicked this trend down a notch. This spring, they bought a pink 2005 Stella scooter on eBay for $2,300. By using the scooter for most transportation, the couple has cut its monthly gasoline bill by $250. "It's also nice that we're doing our part to reduce our dependence on oil and help the environment a little bit," says Adams.

Like the Adamses, many consumers who are trading down are influenced by the trend toward environmentalism. But for others, simple economics is the main motivator. In October, Alex Yakulis, a 47-year-old marketing executive, and his fiancée, Meg Stewart, put their million-dollar mega-manse in the affluent Dallas suburb of Frisco on the market, posting on a real-estate blog. While he loves the home, and the gated community in which it sits, it was more than they needed, especially with a variable-rate mortgage about to reset. "I find myself going into rooms I haven't been into in a couple months, in a home that's too big with a mortgage payment ready to double," he says. Yakulis still wants his granite countertops and travertine tile—but in a house half the size and half the cost.

He should have no trouble finding one. The median size of newly completed single-family homes, which had been rising steadily, fell from a record 2,302 square feet in the first quarter of this year to 2,241 in the second quarter, according to the Census Bureau. Bernard Markstein, a senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders, says builders are "putting in fewer amenities, [and] a lower grade of cabinet and counter." Meanwhile, many owners of existing homes have stopped remodeling. In the pricy Santa Fe, N.M., area, smaller-scale renovation jobs have dried up. "The $20,000 to $30,000 kitchen job and the $12,000 to $15,000 bathroom are harder to come by than last year," says Douglas Maahs, president of Honey Do Home Repair and chair of the Santa Fe Remodelers Association.

The phenomenon is even having an impact on what people eat. Waiting outside a Beverly Hills Ruth's Chris Steak House, Tom Brant, a retired CPA?who lives in Covina, Calif., said the bill for dinner to celebrate his daughter's 35th birthday hurt: $400 for four people. His real-estate and stock-market investments "aren't doing so well lately," says Brant, 69. "I like to eat out and I like steak. But do I come a couple of times a month. Not lately, or any time soon." McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants, Inc., a high-end chain that has expanded rapidly from business districts in major cities to places like Dayton, Ohio, hit a wall this summer after 16 straight quarters of comparable-restaurant sales growth. In late September, it reported that traffic at its 72 U.S. restaurants was weak, "which we attribute primarily to less demand from our aspirational guest," as Doug Schmick, chairman and chief executive officer, put it in a news release. Meanwhile, McDonald's and Burger King are reporting supersized sales growth.

Apparel shoppers are similarly sheathing their debit cards. An online survey conducted this spring by WSL Strategic Retail found that 70 percent of respondents were cutting back on spending for accessories like watches, jewelry and bags. And when big retailers posted same-store sales for September, many reported disappointing results: down 4.6 percent at JCPenney, up only 1.2 percent at Target. Consumers are still willing to trade up. "But if someone wants the designer jeans, they'll cut back on something else," says Mary Brett Whitfield, an analyst at TNS Retail Forward in Columbus, Ohio.

The impulse to spend less and save more has always been cyclical. In the aftermath of a debt binge, Americans always rediscover the joys and benefits of frugality—only to whip out the credit cards once interest rates fall. Michael Silverstein points to powerful, long-term trends that suggest customers will continue to reach for luxury. Real income is still growing, and "trading up has been driven over the long term by women going to work and earning wages that are closer to parity with men."

Of course, luxuries and necessities are in the eyes of the beholder. Janie Pryor, a Los Angeles-based jewelry designer, has had to pare back on discretionary spending. Her company's sales have been off for the last year. But thus far she's been resisting cutting back on one luxury: skin treatments, including her beloved Botox. (Pryor, a 48-year-old former sun worshiper, says the injections take "at least 12 years off" her face.) "I'm not there yet," she says of going Botox-less. "But I'm?starting to accept the fact that?that's what I might have to do if this keeps going on." Oh, the perils of a sagging economy.

Crime or commerce?

Recently an article in the AJC reported that in Cobb County and other places people were being fined for hiring Mexicans to help them with household tasks such as cleaning gutters or moving furniture. It seemed that in some instances people were being fined for merely speaking with someone who was Mexican.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in this country when some city council declares it is a crime to employ a person for the purpose of some menial labor such as yard work or moving furniture. How is it a crime for two adults to agree upon an hourly amount for a specified task for the duration of several hours? It’s not a crime it is commerce!

Under the auspices of this kind of perverse logic how many kids throughout the country would now be in violation of the law for mowing neighborhood yards for pay? Are we now under the burden of being required to maintain workman’s comp insurance for the neighborhood kid who mows grass in the summer? Are little old ladies going to be subject to fines for hiring the next door neighbor’s kid to paint her eaves?

But wait, that’s not the rub is it? The rub is that the prospective worker is Mexican and the person needing the help is a gringo. Would the cops even have given a second glance had the two people involved both been white or black? I don’t think so.

The so-called crime is really guilt by association. What it boils down to is that now it is a crime for white/blacks to co-mingle with Mexicans. The insinuation is that the only reason any two people of mixed nationalities would have to converse with one another is for the sole purpose of a labor transaction and even if it is how is that a crime?!

Does the mere discussion of work invoke the penalty? Can we be fined for asking someone what time it is? If no money has been exchanged and no labor performed then the so called crime never took place. At least when police put a female officer disguised as a prostitute on the street to catch would-be “Johns” she is wearing a wire and the conversation and the agreed upon amount are recorded on tape. And prostitution is an illegal act. Since when did blowing leaves become illegal? Where is the evidence, the taped conversation, the parcel of drugs? How can this be left to stand? It’s beyond unconstitutional, it’s immoral.

Georgia seems to be regressing back to the fifties, when a black man could get locked up or worse for being seen talking to a white woman. How is society wronged by two adults agreeing to a set price for a set task of honest work? The law is the crime and it should be challenged in court, yesterday.

The disingenuous excuse of it being a safety hazard is the argument of a child. Enforce the loitering laws if crowds gather. Arrest people for trespassing if they are on private property. Tying up police officers in stake-outs waiting for gringos to pull up in vehicles near a crowd of Mexicans is a waste of resources and tax money. It’s also racial profiling at it’s worst. These laws must be repealed.

What a crock!

“Some local brokers who attended Yun’s talk blamed the media for giving the perception that the market is bad, which in turn hurts foreign investment who base real estate choices on media input. Others attributed the market downturn to the overzealous mortgage firms and the bottoming-out of subprime lending.”


Saying media attention caused the downturn in the mortgage industry is like blaming an eye witness for a car crash.

Batting for the cycle

This is not new. It is as old as financial capitalism itself. The late Hyman Minsky, who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, laid down the canonical model. The process starts with "displacement", some event that changes people's perceptions of the future. Then come rising prices in the affected sector. The third stage is easy credit and its handmaiden, financial innovation.

The fourth stage is over-trading, when markets depend on a fresh supply of "greater fools". The fifth stage is euphoria, when the ignorant hope to enjoy the wealth gained by those who came before them. The warnings of those who cry "bubble" are ridiculed, because these Cassandras have been wrong for so long. In the sixth stage comes insider profit-taking. Finally, comes revulsion.

US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

The Associated Press
Sunday, August 12, 2007; 5:02 AM

WASHINGTON -- Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.

"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore.

The shortest life expectancies were clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, as well as famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years, followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.

Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.

But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."

Among the other factors:

_ Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."

_ Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.

Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.

_ A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.

Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.

"It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."

Another reason for the U.S. drop in the ranking is that the Census Bureau now tracks life expectancy for a lot more countries _ 222 in 2004 _ than it did in the 1980s. However, that does not explain why so many countries entered the rankings with longer life expectancies than the United States.

Murray, from the University of Washington, said improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy. But, he predicted, the U.S. won't move up in the world rankings as long as the health care debate is limited to insurance.

Policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, said Murray. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar.

"Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go along way toward improving health care in the United States," Murray said. "The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does."

Judge Voids Ordinance on Illegal Immigrants

By JULIA PRESTON

A federal judge in Pennsylvania yesterday struck down ordinances adopted by the City of Hazleton to bar illegal immigrants from working or renting homes there, the most resounding legal blow so far to local efforts across the country to crack down on illegal immigration.

The decision, by Judge James M. Munley of Federal District Court, presents a new roadblock to local officials who want to take action against illegal immigration after broad federal legislation to address the issue failed in the Senate last month.

Judge Munley ruled that ordinances first passed last July by the Hazleton City Council interfered with federal law, which regulates immigration, and violated the due process rights of employers, landlords and illegal immigrants.

The ruling resonated beyond Hazleton because the town was the first in the country to pass such measures, after its mayor, Louis J. Barletta, vowed last year to make the city “one of the toughest places in the United States” for illegal immigrants. Many other local initiatives were modeled on Hazleton’s ordinances, which were never put into effect because of the legal challenge.

“Whatever frustrations officials of the City of Hazleton may feel about the current state of immigration enforcement,” Judge Munley wrote in the 206-page decision, “the nature of the political system in the United States prohibits the city from enacting ordinances that disrupt a carefully drawn federal statutory scheme.”

Mr. Barletta said the city would appeal and would fight to the United States Supreme Court if necessary.

“I will not sit back because the federal government has refused to do its job,” Mr. Barletta said at a news conference on the steps of City Hall.

Judge Munley reached his conclusion after a full hearing of the issues in a bench trial, the first such trial in the various legal challenges to local ordinances restricting illegal immigration. The challenge was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and Cozen O’Connor, a private law firm.

The judge emphasized that illegal immigrants had the same civil rights as legal immigrants and citizens.

“Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community,” he wrote.

Kris W. Kobach, a University of Missouri law professor who assisted Hazleton, called the ruling “an extraordinarily bold activist decision.” Mr. Kobach said Judge Munley had misconstrued the limitations on cities like Hazleton in making laws on immigration, which is generally subject to federal law.

According to the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, more than 100 municipalities have considered ordinances to crack down on illegal immigrants.

On June 19 a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a housing ordinance similar to Hazleton’s in Farmers Branch, Tex., a Dallas suburb. The ordinance, which voters approved in May, would have imposed fines on landlords who rented to illegal immigrants.

Last Friday, the city of Valley Park, Mo., rescinded a similar housing ordinance, after one version of it was struck down in March by a state judge and a revised ordinance brought new state and federal challenges. Similar ordinances were dropped in Escondido, Calif.

Mr. Barletta, the Hazleton mayor, has championed the city’s ordinances because he said illegal immigrants had unleashed a crime wave in Hazleton and had overburdened health and other public services.

At the nine-day trial in March, A.C.L.U. lawyers worked as hard to debunk those claims as they did to undercut the city’s legal arguments. They showed that 4 of 428 violent crimes in Hazleton in the last six years could be attributed to illegal immigrants.

“This opinion should be a glaring red stop light for any local officials thinking about passing similar laws,” said Witold Walczak, the lead A.C.L.U. lawyer in the case.

Among the plaintiffs were four illegal immigrants. Judge Munley allowed them to remain anonymous and to testify through depositions.

This month Pennsylvania prosecutors dropped murder charges against two immigrants in the May 2006 shooting of Derek Kichline, a Hazleton resident whom Mr. Barletta often cited as a victim of an illegal immigrant crime wave. The prosecutors said that important witnesses were not available to testify, including one illegal immigrant who had been deported by federal authorities.

Mr. Barletta and his campaign against illegal immigrants have remained popular in Hazleton, a faded coal-mining center 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that has recently seen a manufacturing revival. In a mayoral primary in May, Mr. Barletta handily won both the Republican and the Democratic nominations.

OxyContin Maker, 3 Execs Fined $634.5M

Purdue Pharma, 3 Executives Ordered to Pay $634.5M Fine for Misleading Public About OxyContin ABINGDON, Va. (AP) -- Purdue Pharma L.P., the maker of OxyContin, and three of its executives were ordered Friday to pay a $634.5 million fine for misleading the public about the painkiller's risk of addiction.

U.S. District Judge James Jones levied the fine on Purdue, its top lawyer and former president and former chief medical officer after a hearing that lasted about three-and-a-half hours. The hearing included statements by numerous people who said their lives were changed forever by addiction to OxyContin, a trade name for a long-acting form of the painkiller oxycodone.

Designed to be swallowed whole and digested over 12 hours, the pills can produce a heroin-like high if crushed and then swallowed, snorted or injected.

From 1996 to 2001, the number of oxycodone-related deaths nationwide increased fivefold while the annual number of OxyContin prescriptions increased nearly 20-fold, according to a report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2002, the DEA said the drug caused 146 deaths and contributed to another 318.

Purdue, its top lawyer and former president and former chief medical officer pleaded guilty in May to claiming to doctors that OxyContin was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications. The sentencing Friday ends the national case.

Michael Friedman, who retired in June as Purdue's president, general counsel Howard Udell and former chief medical officer Paul Goldenheim each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of misbranding the drug. Of the total fine, $34.5 million was levied on those three.

Jones placed the company on probation for five years and each of the executives on probation for three years. He also ordered the three to perform 400 hours of community service related to prevention of prescription drug abuse.

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani played a central role in negotiating on behalf of Purdue with federal prosecutors, but Jones said "I completely reject" suggestions that political influence resulted in a lesser punishment for Purdue.

Many of the nearly 20 speakers called for jail terms for Friedman, Udell and Goldenheim, saying the fines were a small price for the devastation to lives from OxyContin addiction.

"Money can't buy all the lives that are lost," said Robert Palmisano, 23, who said he was addicted to OxyContin for four years but has been off the drug for 17 months.

Attorneys for the three executives said giving them criminal convictions was punishment enough, and noted they were charged because of their job titles, not because they themselves promoted OxyContin as a drug with little addiction potential.

"They are not here today because of any acts of misconduct on their part," defense attorney Howard Shapiro said. "They are good men."

The speakers, many of whose children died after trying the drug only once, disagreed.

"I feel you are legal drug users, nothing more than a large corporate drug cartel," Lee Nuss of Palm Coast, Fla., said as she addressed the Purdue Pharma contingent.

Nuss held up a stone urn slightly larger than a pill bottle that she said contained her 18-year-old son's ashes.

Attorneys for both sides acknowledged the pain of those who had lost loved ones, but urged Jones to accept the plea agreement.

"By pleading guilty they acknowledged that doing nothing was not good enough," Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Ramseyer said. "We cannot bring those people back. It's not something this case can do."

Dillie Walker and his wife Joyce of Bay City, Mich., testified on behalf of Purdue that OxyContin has enabled them to function again despite chronic pain.

"I don't get high from it. It goes straight to my pain," Dillie Walker said.

But Kenny Keith of Roanoke said it took very little time for him to get addicted after he was prescribed OxyContin.

"The withdrawals were worse than the pain I was having," he said.

Jones said he would have preferred to have the plea agreements call for spending money on education of those at risk of drug abuse and treatment of those who are addicted to OxyContin. But Jones said he would not reject the agreement.

"Many young people mistakenly believe today that prescription drugs are safer than other drugs," Jones said.

The fines are to be distributed to state and federal law enforcement agencies, the federal government, federal and state Medicaid programs, a Virginia prescription monitoring program and individuals who had sued the company. About $5 million will go toward a six-year company program to monitor compliance with the agreement.

Survivors of the victims want the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify OxyContin for use only for severe pain. The drug currently can be prescribed for moderate pain.

Purdue, based in Stamford, Conn., has said it accepted responsibility for its employees' actions and has put in place training and monitoring programs to ensure overpromotion of OxyContin doesn't happen again. But officials objected to any ties between the plea agreement and abuse of the drug.

The coal-mining region of southwest Virginia where the sentencing took place has had a number of oxycodone-related deaths -- 119 from 2003 through 2005, according to the state medical examiner's office.

Price of bread at record high!

HEARD the one about the sharemarket's new record high? On Wednesday the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly breached the 14,000-point level, and on Friday the sharemarket barometer closed above 14,000 for the first time, at 14,000.41.

Even last week, as the Dow picked up sharply, we were hearing about "A record day on Wall Street" in the NBC Nightly News broadcast. The Wall Street Journal led its Friday paper with this headline: "Dow again soars to record high despite unease".

Technically, all the talk about records is perfectly accurate. But it's also fundamentally wrong. In fact, the attention that's being showered on "Dow 14,000" goes a long way towards explaining why our economy has become so susceptible to speculative bubbles.

The idea stock prices tend to rise over time really should not be surprising. The price of almost everything rises over time, thanks to inflation. Each year, the government prints more money, which is the main reason that the price of groceries, cars, clothes and, yes, stocks keeps on going up. Of course, incomes are rising, too.

This doesn't mean, however, that everything is always getting more expensive and everyone is always getting richer (which would be a contradiction). And the sharemarket's record high does not mean that stocks have been a wonderful investment lately. They haven't been.

The Standard & Poor 500-stock index, which is a much better measure than the Dow, closed Thursday at 1553.08, just 1.4 per cent higher than the peak it reached in March 2000. Think about what that means. While the price of nearly everything has risen over the past seven years, stocks have barely budged. They have only marginally outperformed cash sitting in a bureau drawer. So if we are going to talk about a sharemarket record, we should be doing the same for a whole lot of other things: "Loaves of bread surge to new highs".

This can sound like statistical nitpicking, but it actually relates to something quite important. When you overlook inflation, you can start to think that every investment is a can't-miss investment, because its value always seems to be going up. This mistake, combined with the enormous attention that society now devotes to the value of its investments, helps create the conditions for a bubble.

A few years ago, I was interviewing a US real estate agent in the Midwest, and she mentioned that her daughter had recently sold her house for 30 per cent more than she had bought it for a decade earlier. "Where else can you get a return like that?" the agent asked. One answer, which I didn't give, is a boring old savings account.

The only meaningful way to measure an investment is to strip away the distortions caused by inflation. You're then able to focus on its real value - what it can buy in the marketplace - rather than just a number on a piece of paper.

A good rule of thumb is that something appearing to have doubled in price or value since the early 1980s costs the same now, in real terms, as it did then. When you make these adjustments, it becomes disturbingly obvious that stocks and real estate are by no means can't-miss investments.

The average house in the New York region sold for roughly the same nominal price in 1997 as it had in 1988, which in inflation-adjusted terms means its value dropped 31 per cent. House prices in New York didn't exceed their 1988 real value until 2002. Then, of course, they soared like never before.

The sharemarket has suffered through even longer stretches of mediocrity. The S&P 500 first went over 100 in the summer of 1968. In today's dollars, that means it was up near 600. It then entered a long period in which it failed to keep pace with inflation - leading to BusinessWeek's famous 1979 cover article, "The death of equities" - and didn't exceed its real 1968 high until 1992. Over the next eight years, it tripled, even after taking inflation into account.

Today, the S&P remains 17 per cent below its inflation-adjusted 2000 peak, which could be considered good news. If the market isn't really at a record high, it may still have a lot of running room. But I wouldn't be too confident about that. Relative to their earnings, stocks remain more expensive than they have been at any time except the 1920s and the 1990s.

That's the thing about bubbles: they usually take a long time to overcome. The normal pattern after a huge boom - like the sort we recently had in stocks and then real estate - is years if not decades in which an investment doesn't keep up with savings accounts. That's not so much of a record.

Most Synthetic Vitamins Are Now Made in China

• Mercola, June 4, 2007
  Straight to the Source
  
  

You may be surprised to know that China is actually one of the largest exporters of many drugs and vitamins. About 90 percent of all Vitamin C sold in the United States is from China, for example. They also produce 50 percent of the world's aspirin and 35 percent of all Tylenol. Ditto for the majority of Vitamins A, B12 and E.

Hot on the heels of the poisoned pet food scandal, and reported instances of toxic food and toothpaste, all eyes are now turning toward the Chinese vitamin market. How safe are they?

The industry in China appears to be split between top-notch operations and bottom-of-the-barrel producers. Since the United States does not require country-of-origin labels for any of our drugs, foods or supplements, there is no telling where that vitamin you are taking came from.

China also suffers from the same conflict of interest that we are seeing here in the United States, where the regulators have financial interest in the industries they are supposed to regulate and inspect.

Supplements can sometimes be helpful; however, your best bet will always be to try to get the majority of your vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. You can't "make up" for a poor diet by simply adding vitamin supplements. Processed foods are sorely lacking in nutrients, but eating plenty of raw organic foods, farmed locally (or as nearby as possible), can supply you with most of the vital nutrients that you need.

The Seattle Times June 3, 2007

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

Almost all vitamin C sold in the United States is from China. They also produce 50 percent of the world's aspirin and 35 percent of all Tylenol. Since the United States does not require country-of-origin labels for any of our drugs, foods or supplements, there is no telling where that vitamin you are taking came from.

The industry in China appears to be split between top-notch operations and bottom-of-the-barrel producers, with no way for a consumer to easily tell which produced a given product. China also suffers from the same regulatory conflict of interest that we are seeing here in the United States.

Remember that while supplements can sometimes be helpful, your best bet will always be to try to get the majority of your vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. You can't "make up" for a poor diet by simply adding vitamin supplements.

Remember it is your total lifestyle, not a "magic" supplement, that will help you achieve optimal health. Relying exclusively on supplements is a typical allopathic approach. If you don't understand that then please watch the video I created, The Town of Allopath.

Processed foods are sorely lacking in nutrients, but eating plenty of raw organic foods, farmed locally (or as nearby as possible), can supply you with most of the vital nutrients that you need.