Prometheus 6

McCain's Wife Sells Funds With Holdings in Sudan

Cindy McCain, the wife of John McCain, sold $2 million in mutual funds yesterday after inquiries from a news organization about the funds' holdings in Sudan.

The presumptive Republican nominee has called for international sanctions against the Sudanese government for mass killings in the Darfur region. The Associated Press reported that his wife sold her interest in American Funds' EuroPacific Growth Fund and Capital World Growth and Income Fund. Both funds have holdings in companies that operate in Sudan.

Cindy McCain's decision to sell the investments comes after several other presidential candidates, including Democrat Barack Obama, last year chose to divest Sudan-related stocks and mutual funds. Her investments in the mutual funds are listed on disclosure forms McCain is required to file as a senator and candidate.

Multiday attacks against CNN and Yahoo in 2000 and against Estonia in 2007 cost tens of millions of dollars. The SANS Institute projects that increasingly sophisticated botnets will be the No. 2 cyber security menace for 2008. A DDOS attack against a net-centric military could stop or delay any operation it intended. How could the U.S. military build such a system?

Carpet bombing in cyberspace
Why America needs a military botnet
BY COL. CHARLES W. WILLIAMSON III

The world has abandoned a fortress mentality in the real world, and we need to move beyond it in cyberspace. America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic. America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack.

America faces increasingly sophisticated threats against its military and civilian cyberspace. At the same time, America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere. Worse, our defensive concept is fundamentally flawed, and we have not learned the simplest lessons of history.

As much as some think the information age is revolutionary, local networks and the Internet are conceptually similar to the ancient model of roads and towns: Things are produced in one place and moved to another place where they have more value. The road-and-town model works well between cooperating states, but states also compete, and when they do, they sometimes have to defend themselves from attack. In today’s Internet, network “towns” are “fortified” with firewalls, gateways, passwords, port blocking, intrusion detection devices and law enforcement. This approach uses the same strategy as the medieval castle with its walls, moat, drawbridge, guards, alarms and a sheriff. While castles worked more or less for hundreds of years, they are now abandoned as completely ineffective except against the most anemic attack.

The time for fortresses on the Internet also has passed, even though America has not recognized it. Now, the only consequence for an adversary who intrudes into or attacks our networks is to get kicked out — if we can find him and if he has not installed a hidden back door. That is not enough. America must have a powerful, flexible deterrent that can reach far outside our fortresses and strike the enemy while he is still on the move.

When Mr. Bush hasn’t been busy saying no to worthy efforts, he has been endorsing Orwellian-named programs that have failed to address the problem effectively. Hope Now, the mortgage industry alliance that pledged a big effort five months ago to modify subprime loans, has barely made a dent. Project Lifeline, announced last February, has yet to release any results. The Times reported last month that another program much touted by Mr. Bush, FHA Secure, has helped fewer than 2,000 homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

Meanwhile, defaults, the first link in the foreclosure chain, are running at an annual pace of 2.2 million so far this year.

Saying No to Everything

Even before the House passed a new plan last week to prevent foreclosures, President Bush threatened to veto the bill, calling it “overly burdensome.” The bill is not burdensome enough.

To help an estimated 500,000 borrowers switch to federally insured loans, it relies on the voluntary participation of lenders, an approach that has doomed other foreclosure-prevention efforts.

WE don't get welfare. We get help, to stay off welfare.

The new strategy reflects, in part, a growing concern about the challenges facing the poor nearly 12 years after Congress overhauled welfare laws. While states have drastically reduced their welfare caseloads, research suggests that they have been far less successful in helping people find and keep jobs that lift families out of poverty.

That's because they weren't designed to lift anyone out of poverty. They were designed to reduce expenditures on poor folks. 

The trend has also been driven by new federal rules that require states to engage 50 percent of welfare recipients in work-related activities. By offering payments to people already working, states are also trying to ensure that they meet federal mandates and avoid steep fines.

Oh. Thar explains it...

State Programs Add Safety Net for the Poorest
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — For years, state welfare offices like the one alongside Interstate 30 have drawn the unemployed. But these days, the red-brick building here is also attracting poor, working parents with an unexpected offer: $204 a month in cash.

Shelly Thomas, a stockroom clerk and single mother, is using her windfall from the State of Arkansas to tune up the old Chevrolet she drives to work. Talia Greenwood, a day care worker with four children, spends the money on gas, diapers and baby formula.

The women are pioneers in an emerging social experiment as states across the country try to go beyond simply moving people off welfare. Over the last two years, officials in Arkansas and at least a dozen other states have announced plans to extend the safety net — through monthly cash payments — to thousands of low-income workers struggling to gain a foothold in the work world. 

Most states focus on people who have left welfare for low-wage jobs. Officials believe that the programs, which typically combine several months of cash assistance with career counseling, health insurance and subsidized child care, will help low-wage workers weather family illnesses and cash shortages and deter them from cycling back onto the welfare rolls.

Some former officials said putting aside money was meant to help correct mistakes, like forgetting to finance an important program, without having to formally seek approval for additional spending from the mayor. Council leaders once tried to create a general reserve fund for such contingencies, but the concept never took hold, so council officials set out to devise their own response to the problem....

“It’s a device that he has in his political arsenal,” said Eric Lane, a law professor at Hofstra University who was counsel to the charter revision commission. “In many ways the mayor can say, ‘You guys got yours, now just go along with the budget.’ ”

Longtime Practice of City Council Financing Lands on Speaker’s Shoulders
By DIANE CARDWELL

In the widening scandal that has revealed the peculiar accounting methods of the New York City Council, a harsh light has been cast on Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, who is being asked to answer for a system not of her own making.

Defined by phrases like “phantom organizations” and “slush funds,” the tale of how the Council stashed taxpayer dollars for later use in the names of fictitious groups has surprised watchdog organizations and private citizens. Criminal investigators are now poring over the spending habits of some council members to see if they funneled city money to groups with questionable programs or to whom they had close ties.

It is quickly becoming a campaign issue for officials staring at election battles, including Ms. Quinn, the first female speaker of the Council, who once seemed a promising hopeful for mayor.

But veterans of New York City politics say that many of the practices now being revealed are far from novel or rare. Indeed, they say, they are woven into the very fabric of city government, tough threads spun from the mayor’s near lock on power, which leaves lawmakers with few ways to wield influence, affect life in their communities or make a name for themselves.

“Storage has my hopes in it,” said Mr. Martin, who sleeps on a foldout bed in his mother’s guest room. “I don’t tell anyone this, but at least once a week I go over and look at my couch, my refrigerator, my TV stand, my mattress and realize I did have a life, and maybe there’s a way to go back to it.”

Losing a Home, Then Losing All Out of Storage
By DAVID STREITFELD

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. — The foreclosure crisis is hitting yet another American locale: the self-storage center.

As they lose their homes, people are turning to these humble cinderblock and sheet-metal boxes to store their stuff. But some people cannot keep up with their storage bills any better than they could handle their mortgage payments, and storage companies are auctioning off their property for a pittance.

A cottage industry has developed to profit from these lost and abandoned items. The other day in this Chicago suburb, Stephanie Donahou and her son Marcus had only a moment to decide whether to bid on a unit in default. They could see a couch, a sewing machine, a fish tank, a washer and dryer, lots of Christmas wrapping paper, a television and other trappings of daily life.

The Lucrative Art of War

Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and Congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the Treasury is being shorted.

No one will be surprised to hear that one of the suspected prime offenders is KBR, the Texas-based defense contractor, formerly a part of the Halliburton conglomerate allied with Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in The Boston Globe, KBR, which has landed billions in Iraq contracts, has used two Cayman shell companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions in payroll, Medicare and unemployment taxes.

It’s naïve to think that the oil companies have forgotten the ’70s. They know there’s a decent chance that economic populism will return. In fact, it already has: Senator Clinton’s full proposal is to combine her tax holiday with a ’70s-style windfall profits tax.

In this light, that oil companies might pocket most of the tax cut could easily be a good thing. It helps cancel out the negative legacy of the last energy crisis: public hysteria will occasionally work in your favor. 

The 18-Cent Solution
By BRYAN CAPLAN

Fairfax, Va.

BOTH Hillary Clinton and John McCain say that we should suspend the 18-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax this summer. After her beating at the polls Tuesday, there may not be much reason left to worry about what Senator Clinton thinks, but the McCain proposal is alive and well.

Most laughter isn't because something is funny.

Humans are laughing by the age of four months and then progress from tickling to the Three Stooges to more sophisticated triggers for laughter (or, in some inexplicable cases, to Jim Carrey movies). Laughter can be used cruelly to reinforce a group’s solidarity and pride by mocking deviants and insulting outsiders, but mainly it’s a subtle social lubricant. It’s a way to make friends and also make clear who belongs where in the status hierarchy.

These folk are profoundly uncomfortable. I wonder why...

And some districts have found other benefits to a closed-lunch policy: In Denver, attendance in afternoon classes improved after many 9th and 10th graders were barred from going out to lunch last school year. In Bridgman, Mich., a town of about 2,500 on Lake Michigan, cafeteria sales have been up more than 10 percent in the two years since the high school closed its campus.

“Our food service program operates in the black now, whereas it never did before,” said Kevin Ivers, Bridgman’s superintendent, noting that the high school had added a second lunch period to reduce lines, and overhauled the menu to introduce quesadillas, yogurt, salads and fruit. “That enables us to put more money into the classrooms.”

Fatal Accidents Erode Perk of Off-Campus Lunches
By WINNIE HU

SMITHTOWN, N.Y. — The students used to overflow the wooden booths and green tables at Don Jono’s Pizzeria, racing through pepperoni slices and large sodas before driving the quarter-mile back to Smithtown High School West in time for their next class.

But now the pizzas pile up behind the counter. Pete Crescimanno, a compact man with a neat black mustache who co-owns the place, estimates that he has lost more than $500 a week in sales since the school district ended its longstanding policy of allowing seniors to go off-campus for lunch. One recent morning, Mr. Crescimanno and an assistant pounded and tossed dough in a nearly empty storefront, with only the radio to break the silence.

“It’s not the same, and you miss that because you used to prepare for the kids and now you don’t see them,” he said. “Of course, you miss the business, but you also miss the fact that they’re not here anymore.”

But while our out-of-control financial system has been bad for the country, it has been very good for wheeler-dealers, who collect huge fees when things seem to be going well, then get to walk away unscathed — indeed, often with large severance packages — when things go wrong. They don’t want regulations that would stabilize the economy but cramp their style.

And now that the financial clouds have lifted a bit, the pushback against sensible regulation is in full swing. Even the Fed’s very modest proposal to curb abusive mortgage lending with new standards is under fire, and there are worrying signs that the Fed may back down.

Success Breeds Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Cross your fingers, knock on wood: it’s possible, though by no means certain, that the worst of the financial crisis is over. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that as markets stabilize, chances for fundamental financial reform may be slipping away. As a result, the next crisis will probably be worse than this one.

Even the Insured Feel the Strain of Health Costs
By REED ABELSON and MILT FREUDENHEIM

The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs.

Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be — often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.

With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.

“It just keeps eating into people’s income,” said James Corbin, a former union official who works for the local utility in Tucson.

For Democrats, Instincts Differ on Economics
By DAVID LEONHARDT

As they traveled across Indiana and North Carolina over the last few days, trading charges and countercharges about the wisdom of suspending the federal gas tax for the summer, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were really having a larger fight.

They were arguing over who had better economic instincts....

Truth, I don't think either...ANY of them have "economic instincts."

20,000 Jobs Lost as U.S. Registers 4th Monthly Dip
By PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

The American economy lost 20,000 jobs in April, the fourth consecutive month of decline, in what many economists took as powerful evidence that the United States is almost certainly now ensnared in a recession.

But the number of jobs reported lost by the Labor Department on Friday was significantly smaller than most analysts had predicted, and the unemployment rate nudged down to 5 percent, raising hopes that the economy may not suffer as severely as once feared.

This poor woman has her political parties totally reversed. She thinks she's voting her interests...she really does.

Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain have explained the inconsistency in their positions. We know pandering when we see it. We also know that suspending the gas tax for the summer won’t solve this country’s energy problems or even reduce the price of gas....

Fortunately, Mr. Obama has not caved to the rising calls for cheap energy and has refused to follow his rivals down this misguided path.

The Gas-Guzzler Gambit

Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have hit on a new way to pander to American voters: a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The proposal may draw applause and votes from Americans feeling the pain of nearly $4-a-gallon gasoline. But it is an expensive and environmentally unsound policy that would do nothing to help American drivers.

Salespeople question whether you'll follow through on your own -- as if spending $3,500 for software will ensure that you'll use it. Tell that to couch potatoes whose high-end exercise equipment gathers dust.

Software System Is One Mortgage Offer to Avoid
By Pat Mertz Esswein
Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Sunday, April 27, 2008; F03

You may have received e-mails touting a system that promises to help you pay off your mortgage early. The package, which includes a software program, relies heavily on the use of a home-equity line of credit. The software analyzes your financial data to reveal when and how much extra you should prepay.

The Money Merge Account system, sold by United First Financial, costs $3,500. For the price, you may also receive a recruiting pitch. United First is a multilevel marketer that encourages salespeople to bring others aboard, passing the profit up the food chain.

And some can't learn, I guess.

President Repeats First-Term Answers to Rising Gas Prices
By Dan Eggen and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A04

Soaring gasoline prices spilled over into Washington and the presidential race yesterday, as Congress moved toward a showdown with President Bush over legislation aimed at forcing oil companies to help ease the burden on consumers.

Bush, reaching back to the earliest days of his administration, resurrected GOP demands for new drilling in the Alaska wilderness, fewer restrictions on oil refineries and other measures aimed at lowering fuel prices through higher production.

Mortgage Broker Sues Lenders in Privacy Breach
Passwords Were Leaked, LendingTree Says
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; D01

LendingTree, an online mortgage broker that claims to have reached more than 20 million customers, had a privacy breach that exposed personal data such as income and job information on an undisclosed number of users.

The private company notified customers by letter last week that "several former employees may have helped a handful of mortgage lenders gain access to LendingTree's customer information by sharing confidential passwords with the lenders."

The company filed suit last week against five Southern California home loan lenders, alleging that they improperly gained access to customers' data, according to court records and a copy of the letter posted on LendingTree's Web site. The company also filed suit against two former executives in North Carolina, claiming that they shared the passwords with the lenders.

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

Some Chinese Exporters Prefer Euros to Dollars
By KEITH BRADSHER

GUANGZHOU, China — Facing the double-barreled threat of a falling dollar and weakening American demand, some Chinese exporters are starting to ask European customers to pay in euros.

Others are trying to increase domestic sales. This, in a nation whose economic juggernaut was built on exports.

Drastic times call for drastic measures. The dollar’s fall against China’s currency has been accelerating — it is down 4 percent so far this year, after dropping 7 percent last year. That has left businesses across China nursing losses and trying to figure out how to raise prices for overseas buyers, Chinese executives and sales representatives said in interviews here at the Canton Trade Fair. The fair runs through Wednesday.

Ma Lin Ping, the general manager of Taizhou City Qizhou Industry, said that his company had lost $43,000 on a single deal last year because of the dollar’s tumble against China’s currency, known as the yuan or renminbi.

Iran Ends Oil Transactions In U.S. Dollars
TEHRAN, Iran, April 30, 2008

(AP) Iran, OPEC's second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran's nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq.

Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.

Oil is priced in U.S. dollars on the world market, and the currency's depreciation has concerned producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and eroded the value of their dollar reserves.

"The dollar has totally been removed from Iran's oil transactions," Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard told state-run television Wednesday. "We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies."

"At the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex -- an unhealthy alliance between the defense industry, the Pentagon, and their friends on Capitol Hill," wrote Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which wrote the report. "Now the agro-industrial complex -- an alliance of agricultural commodity groups, scientists at academic institutions who are paid by the industry, and their friends on Capitol Hill -- is a concern in animal food production in the 21st century."

The report, "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Production in America," comes at a time when food, agriculture and animal welfare issues are prominent in the American psyche. 

Report Targets Costs Of Factory Farming
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A02

“At the heart of my approach is a simple belief,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren’t paying their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump.”

And you can take advantage of that by lining up with McCain, with a suggestion that will increase demand if it does anything at all.

Democrats Divided Over Gas Tax Break
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — As angry truckers encircled the Capitol in a horn-blaring caravan and consumers across the country agonized over $60 fill-ups, the issue of high fuel prices flared on the campaign trail on Monday, sharply dividing the two Democratic candidates.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

“The process is flawed because it starts with the assumption that a property tax cap is something that we need,” said Richard C. Iannuzzi, the union’s president, above. “When you start with the conclusion that it has to be a cap, you limit the ability to look at things.

“That destroyed the public school system in California, and we’re not going to let that happen in New York.” 

A Hunger for a Property Tax Cap, but the Teachers’ Union Isn’t Feeling It
By DANNY HAKIM

ALBANY — The next battleground for the teachers’ union is almost certain to be property taxes.

Last week, a special property tax commission set up by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and supported by his successor, Gov. David A. Paterson, wrapped up its sixth and final hearing. The commission is due to issue a report by May 22 that will include imposing a ceiling on annual property tax increases by school districts as its signature proposal, though the form of any limit remains to be determined.

“There seems to be a real appetite to do something,” the Nassau County executive and the commission’s chairman, Thomas R. Suozzi, said of the idea of a tax cap. Mr. Suozzi added that he had courted the leaders of the Legislature — Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno — and was encouraged.

But here’s the hitch.