G-S Spends Bankster "Winnings" On "Our" Infrastructure: Reagan, Clinton and Warren Buffett - What They Built (Crap Shelters for Haitian Relief)

I look at the Rethugs found in every Starbucks, McDonalds, Wal-Mart everywhere, expounding on their unquestioned belief in the rightness of the "free-enterprise system" that Ronald Reagan brought to their sweet American lives and how all the world will be so much better places when they have same, and gag. Yep. They are "right" and it's very good for them.

Did anyone happen to mention today that the reason we shouldn't have allowed all that deregulation of industry/banks, the rules about money creation, bank size and get-out-of-jail cards to the very rich (and well-connected) is that it enables the following (which ultimately leads to the collapse of civilizations)?

Because someone really should.

And speaking of what someone should have said: wouldn't it be nice if someone had exposed the Clinton/Bush/Buffett foundations instead of just giving them all that feel-good, free publicity? (Emphasis marks are added - Ed.)

Tuesday, July 12, 2011 Goldman Sachs Is In the Toll Road Business It is surprising to read an article about a coalition of businesses, including Goldman Sachs, which is operating toll roads in Puerto Rico and will continue to do so for 40 years. The consortium bid $1.08 billion to operate and maintain the roads and spent $350 million to make road repairs and improvements under the contract. The government said it could not afford to make the highway improvements. Is that a bargain with the devil? Infrastructure, such as roads, sewers, schools, transportation and communications, and (sometimes) health care are publicly run for all citizens to use. They are usually monopolies that have been paid for by the taxpayer. If these necessary things become privatized, they can be used for profit-making ventures and may not, therefore, any longer meet the needs of the public or may become too expensive for the public to use. That is why a democracy must forever be vigilant about its public facilities and public needs. Dylan Ratigan discusses Wall Street's "infrastructure funds" which are a part of Goldman Sachs's business model. Monday, July 11, 2011 The Nation The Shelters That Clinton Built by Isabel Macdonald and Isabeau Doucet

When Demosthene Lubert heard that Bill Clinton's foundation was going to rebuild his collapsed school at the epicenter of Haiti's January 12, 2010, earthquake, in the coastal city of Léogâne, the academic director thought he was "in paradise."

IHRC co-chairs former President Bill Clinton and Former Prime Minister Jean-Maz Bellerive. The Nation made multiple attempts to reach Bill Clinton for comment, but the former president never responded. Garry Conille, the chief of staff for the office of the UN Special Envoy, acknowledged in a telephone interview that the trailer classrooms "would never meet the standards for school building" under Haitian or international regulations. Above, the two co-chairs of the IHRC, Former President Bill Clinton and Former Prime Minister Jean-Maz Bellerive, at an IHRC press conference following the fourth meeting of the commission, February 23, 2011, at the Karibe Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Isabeau Doucet)

The project was announced by Clinton as his foundation's first contribution to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which the former president co-chairs. The foundation described the project as "hurricane-proof...emergency shelters that can also serve as schools...to ensure the safety of vulnerable populations in high risk areas during the hurricane season," while also providing Haitian schoolchildren "a decent place to learn" and creating local jobs. The facilities, according to the foundation, would be equipped with power generators, restrooms, water and sanitary storage. They became one of the IHRC's first projects.

However, when Nation reporters visited the "hurricane-proof" shelters in June, six to eight months after they'd been installed, we found them to consist of twenty imported prefab trailers beset by a host of problems, from mold to sweltering heat to shoddy construction.

Most disturbing, they were manufactured by the same company, Clayton Homes, that is being sued in the United States for providing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with formaldehyde-laced trailers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Air samples collected from 12 Haiti trailers detected worrying levels of this carcinogen in one, according to laboratory results obtained as part of a joint investigation by The Nation and The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund.

Clayton Homes is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company run by Warren Buffett, one of the "notable" private-sector members of the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the initiative's website. ("Members" are typically required to pay $20,000 a year to the charity, but foundation officials would not disclose whether Buffett had made such a donation.) Buffett was also a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter during the 2008 presidential race, and he co-hosted a fundraiser that brought in at least $1 million for her campaign.

By mid-June, two of the four schools where the Clinton Foundation classrooms were installed had prematurely ended classes for the summer because the temperature in the trailers frequently exceeded 100 degrees, and one had yet to open for lack of water and sanitation facilities.

As Judith Seide, a student in Lubert's sixth-grade class, explained to The Nation, she and her classmates regularly suffer from painful headaches in their new Clinton Foundation classroom. Every day, she said, her "head hurts and I feel it spinning and have to stop moving, otherwise I'd fall." Her vision goes dark, as is the case with her classmate Judel, who sometimes can't open his eyes because, said Seide, "he's allergic to the heat." Their teacher regularly relocates the class outside into the shade of the trailer because the swelter inside is insufferable.

Sitting in the sixth-grade classroom, student Mondialie Cineas, who dreams of becoming a nurse, said that three times a week the teacher gives her and her classmates painkillers so that they can make it through the school day. "At noon, the class gets so hot, kids get headaches," the 12-year-old said, wiping beads of sweat from her brow. She is worried because "the kids feel sick, can't work, can't advance to succeed."

Word about the students' headaches has made it all the way to the Léogâne mayor's office, but like the students, their teachers and parents, Mayor Santos Alexis chalked it up to the intense heat inside the trailers.

* * *

But headaches were not the only health problems students, staff and parents at the Institut Haitiano-Caribbean (INHAC) told us they've suffered from since the inauguration of the classrooms. Innocent Sylvain, a shy janitor who looks much older than his 41 years, spends more time than anyone in the new trailer classrooms, with the inglorious task of mopping up the water that leaks through the doors and windows each time it rains. He has felt a burning sensation in his eyes ever since he began working long hours in the trailers. One of his eyes is completely bloodshot, and he said, "They itch and burn." He'd previously been sensitive to eye irritation, but he says he's had worse "problems since the month of January"—when the schoolrooms opened their doors.

Rot in the wall of a Clinton Foundation trailer (7 of 12). Holes began rotting in the walls of the Clinton Foundation's unventilated trailer classrooms at INHA just six months after the trailer was inaugurated. (Isabeau Doucet and Isabel Macdonald)

Any number of factors might be contributing to the headaches and eye irritation reported by INHAC staff and students. However, similar symptoms were experienced by those living in the FEMA trailers that were found by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to have unsafe levels of formaldehyde.

Lab tests conducted as part of our investigation in Haiti discovered levels of the carcinogen in the sixth-grade Clinton Foundation classroom in Léogâne at 250 parts per billion—two and a half times the level at which the CDC warned FEMA trailer residents that sensitive people, such as children, could face adverse health effects.

Assay Technologies, the accredited lab that analyzed the air tests, identifies 100 parts per billion and more as the level at which "65–80 percent of the population will most likely exhibit some adverse health symptoms . . . when exposed continually over extended periods of time."

Randy Maddalena, a scientist specializing in indoor pollutants at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, characterized the 250 parts per billion finding as "a very high level" of formaldehyde and warned that "it's of concern," particularly given the small sample size. An elevated level of formaldehyde in one of twelve trailers tested is comparable to the formaldehyde emissions problems detected in about 9 percent of similar Clayton mobile homes supplied by FEMA after Hurricane Katrina. Maddalena explained that in "normal" buildings, you'll see rates twelve to twenty-five times lower than 250 parts per billion, "and even that's considered above regulatory thresholds."

According to the CDC, formaldehyde exposure can exacerbate symptoms of asthma and has been linked to chronic lung disease. Studies have shown that children are particularly vulnerable to its respiratory effects. The chemical was recently added to the US Department of Health and Human Services' "Report of Carcinogens," based on studies linking exposure to formaldehyde with increased risk for rare types of cancer.

"You should get those kids outta there," Maddalena said. The scientist emphasized that Haiti's hot and humid climate could well be contributing to high emissions of the carcinogen in the classroom. Indeed, months before the launch of the Clinton trailer project, the nation's climate was widely cited as a key problem with a trailer industry proposal to ship FEMA trailers to Haiti for shelter after the earthquake. The proposal was ultimately rejected by FEMA, following a critical letter from Bennie Thompson, chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, who argued, "This country's immediate response to help in this humanitarian crisis should not be blemished by later concerns over adverse health consequences precipitated by our efforts."

Yet several months later, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Clayton Homes had been awarded a million-dollar contract to ship twenty trailers to Haiti, for use as classrooms for schoolchildren. The Clinton Foundation claims it went through a bidding process before awarding the contract to Clayton Homes, which was already embroiled in the FEMA trailer lawsuit. But despite repeated requests, the foundation has not provided The Nation with any documentation of this process.

There are hints that Clayton Homes aggressively pursued the contract. For example, a company press release dated August 6, 2010, notes, "When former President Bill Clinton was named to head the relief effort, Clayton's Director of International Development, Paul Thomas, called the Clinton Foundation to see if there was a way to help."

The chief of staff for the office of the UN Special Envoy, Garry Conille, emphasized that the foundation's decision-making on the project took place in a context of great urgency, with the advent of the 2010 hurricane season, when 1.5 million people were living in tent camps. "Under the circumstances, with all these people exposed, with the first rains," said Conille, "it would have been completely acceptable to go to a single source, but we didn't."

The Clinton Foundation's chief operating officer, Laura Graham, said in a phone interview that the contract was awarded to Clayton on the basis of a "limited request for proposals" from nine companies. She added that the decision was informed by "recommendations from a panel including a lot of these experts that do this work for a living, and Clayton was recommended as the most cost-efficient, with the best product and with the strongest Haitian partner." She clarified that she did not participate in the bidding process but said there were "representatives from the foundation as well as [the UN] Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [OCHA], the UN Special Envoy Office and the International Organization for Migration [IOM]...and there was a request for proposals run by them."

When asked to comment on that claim, Bradley Mellicker, IOM's Port-au-Prince–based emergency preparedness and response officer, said, "That's a lie. The Clinton Foundation paid for the containers through a no-bid process." Imogen Wall, former spokeswoman for OCHA in Haiti, responded by e-mail that OCHA never deals with procurement or project management.

The Nation made multiple attempts to reach Bill Clinton for comment. However, the former president, known for championing the role of nonprofits in global affairs ("Unlike the government, we don't have to be quite as worried about a bad story in the newspapers," he recently said in a speech), never responded. A Clayton Homes official referred all queries regarding the contract to the Clinton Foundation.

When he heard that the new classrooms in his community had been built by a FEMA formaldehyde litigation defendant, Santos Alexis, Léogâne's stately mayor, said, "I hope these are not the same trailers that made people sick in the US. Otherwise I would be very critical; it would be chaos." (They are indeed different trailers, according to an engineer at Clayton Homes, who said the new classrooms were constructed specifically for the Clinton Foundation's Haiti project.)

"It would be humiliating to us, and we'll take this as a black thing," the mayor added, drawing a parallel between his community in Haiti, the world's first black republic, and the disproportionate numbers of African-Americans affected by the US government's mismanagement of the emergency response after Hurricane Katrina.

* * *

Demosthene Lubert's disappointment is palpable as he sits in one of his new-smelling classrooms, perspiration dripping from his face. He had envisioned that the foundation of the former US president would rebuild INHAC, his school, as a modern institution with solar panel–powered lights and Wi-Fi. At a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in May, Dr. Paul Farmer, Clinton's deputy UN special envoy, called for healthcare to be integrated into schools. At the very least, Lubert expected the Clinton Foundation, which is active in global health philanthropy and cholera prevention in Haiti, to help with school sanitation.

"I thought the grand foundation of Clinton was going to build us latrines and dig us wells for the children to wash their hands before meals and after using the toilet...especially as we're at the mercy of cholera," Lubert says with a sigh. Less than an hour north of Léogâne, in Carrefour, the number of cholera cases went from eighty-five per week at the end of April to 820 a week at the beginning of June, according to Sylvain Groulx, country director of Médecins Sans Frontières. The disease, which is preventable with proper sanitary conditions, has killed 5,500 people since the epidemic began last October.

The Clinton Foundation did not build so much as a latrine at the school, or at any of the three other schools where its trailers were installed. (INHAC and two of the other schools had a limited number of pre-existing outhouses, which the school directors saw as inadequate, while the fourth did not have a single outhouse, making it unusable, according to the school's director.)

Conille, Clinton's chief of staff at his UN office, acknowledged in a telephone interview that the trailer classrooms "would never meet the standards for school building" under Haitian or international regulations.

"Normally when you hear 'Clin-ton,' when people speak of 'Clin-ton,' the name 'Clin-ton' carries a lot of weight," says Lubert. He trails off, looking suddenly uncertain. Clinton's name echoes ambiguously through the swampy chemical air like a plea, a mantra or a brand.

June 1 marked the beginning of Haiti's 2011 hurricane season, and meteorologists project that Haiti could face up to eighteen tropical storms with three to six of these developing to hurricane strength. Léogâne, where 95 percent of the downtown area was flooded by Hurricane Tomas last year, is relying on the Clinton Foundation's trailers as Plan A in the municipality's emergency response.

The foundation's original proposal to the IHRC referred to the buildings it planned to construct in Léogâne as "hurricane-proof" shelters, and this past March, Clinton Foundation foreign policy director Ami Desai reiterated that claim in a phone interview. On the foundation website, the promotional write-up about the trailers is featured under the heading "Emergency Hurricane Shelter Project."

Larry Tanner, a wind science specialist at Texas Tech University, was "suspicious" when he heard that trailers were to be used as hurricane shelters in Haiti. Tanner thought it unlikely that Clayton Homes had developed a mobile home that could safely be used as a hurricane shelter, saying in a telephone interview that he put the odds at "slim to none." Mobile homes are considered by FEMA to be so unsafe in hurricanes that the agency unequivocally advises the public to evacuate them.

In an interview with The Nation, Clayton Homes engineer Mark Izzo said the Léogâne trailers could withstand winds of up to 140 miles per hour. The company arrived at this figure through calculations, he said, rather than testing.

But Tanner emphasizes that such structures must be rigorously tested for resistance to high winds and projectiles. Clayton Homes's failure to test the trailers meant that they would not meet the international construction standard for hurricane shelter. "It certainly would not be accepted by FEMA either," Tanner added. Moreover, the kind of anchoring systems used by the trailers in Léogâne—which rely on metal straps to attach the shelter to the ground—"fail routinely," according to Tanner.

Two weeks into Haiti's hurricane season, The Nation visited some of the Clinton shelters with Kit Miyamoto, a California-based structural engineer contracted by USAID and the Haitian government to assess the safety of buildings in Port-au-Prince. Standing in front of one of the trailers, Miyamoto looked doubtful when asked whether, in his professional view, these structures were, as the Clinton Foundation has repeatedly claimed, "hurricane-proof." In the world of engineering, buildings are rarely considered to be truly hurricane-proof, explained Miyamoto, who said he had never heard of a wooden trailer being used as a hurricane shelter, let alone being referred to as a hurricane-proof building. "To be hurricane-proof you a need a heavier structure with concrete or blocks," he explained.

Miyamoto emphasized that one of the most crucial elements for the public safety was how well the shelters' limitations were explained to the community expected to use them. "Hopefully people do understand that these windows do need to be protected if a major hurricane is expected to be coming," he said. Miyamoto said the likelihood is "really high" that the windows will break without storm shutters, and "once those window systems break," he explained, making a toppling motion with his arms, "you cannot just be in there." The roof will "pop off."

When asked if the shelters had come with any storm shutters, Andre Hercule, director of Saint Thérèse de Darbonne elementary school, which has also received Clinton trailers, shook his head, then grabbed the nearest open trailer window and effortlessly slid it shut. Clicking it locked, he explained, "We'd close all the windows." The school director remains confident after hearing Clinton speak at a news conference in August 2010 at his school that the trailers are hurricane-proof.

Léogâne's Department of Civil Protection may also be operating on this assumption. At the Léogâne town hall, a derelict white paint-chipped building that looks stately in contrast to the seventeen-month-old tent camp nearby, DCP coordinator Philippe Joseph explained the municipality's plans for community outreach in the event of a hurricane. "We'll send scouts with megaphones and tell people to gather their papers and go to the Clinton Foundation shelters," he said as he sketched a rough map, indicating the best routes to the dual-purpose school buildings from the geographic zones most vulnerable to storms.

Asked if he believed the trailers would offer adequate protection during a hurricane, Joseph seemed taken aback: Clinton had himself said that these were hurricane-proof shelters, he said.

* * *

In a jungly field on the outskirts of Léogâne, four of the twenty Clinton classrooms sit empty at another school, Coeur de Jesus. Because of the trailers' leaky roofs, puddles form on the floor that need to be mopped up by the maintenance staff. As school director Antoine Beauvais explained, the new sixteen-by-forty-foot trailers were too bulky to fit in the cramped residential area where his school was previously located. But for lack of toilet facilities or running water provided by the foundation for the newly created remote campus, the school has been unable to use its new trailer classrooms.

When The Nation visited the site with Miyamoto, at least one strap on a trailer slated to be used as a hurricane shelter in the coming months was already loose. As Miyamoto moved the slack metal ribbon that is meant to ensure the trailer stays stable during a storm, the structural engineer remarked that these kinds of anchoring systems are liable to corrode. "You definitely want to look at it at least once a year," he said grimly.

It's unclear whether such maintenance will occur. Clayton Homes recently visited some of the schools after the International Organization for Migration, which works with the UN, raised concerns about the condition of the shelters. However, Conille said he did not know anything about plans the Clinton Foundation had made for the maintenance of the "hurricane shelters" in the longer term. The Haitian contractor who was initially hired to help install the shelters, Philippe Cinéas of AC Construction, said that neither he nor his staff were trained to service them. This raised concerns for Cinéas because, as he knew from experience, "in Haiti maintenance is always a problem."

While Clinton Foundation COO Laura Graham claims that the foundation has always been "very accessible" to the school and municipal officials in Léogâne, neither the school directors nor the civil protection coordinator had any way of getting in touch with the foundation, they told The Nation, and had to resort to going through intermediaries.

Joseph, the DCP chief for Léogâne, faults the trailer project for being decided from afar and "from the top down," like so much of Haiti relief. While the Clinton Foundation claims that it worked with local government to implement the shelter plan, Joseph disputes this. The foundation simply informed him that it was building four schools in his district, he says. "To me this is not a consultation," the local official remarked. "To consult people you have to ask them what they need and how they think it could best be implemented."

Joseph ascribes the new shelters' "infernal" heat, humidity and other problems to this lack of on-the-ground consultation. He added, with regret, that people in desperate need of employment and shelters watched as "the Clinton Foundation came in with all its specialists and equipment, but they didn't give any training." He said that "if they use a local firm they will not only create jobs in a community that has been decapitalized by the quake but they will also take into account the environmental reality on the ground."

In the proposal approved by the IHRC, the Clinton Foundation said that "up to 300 local workers would be employed to build the schools." Cinéas said there were only five to eight people hired by his firm on a very temporary basis, and the foundation declined to comment on what additional jobs were created.

Farmer, the Clinton envoy, recently published a report on trends in Haiti's dysfunctional aid system. He stressed the need for "accompaniment" to be the guiding principle of Haiti's reconstruction, with Haitians "in the driver's seat" and the international community listening to their priorities. Farmer also emphasized the importance of local procurement and job creation.

It is hard to imagine a better case study of the very opposite approach than the Clinton trailers. In response to questions about what due diligence the foundation did to ensure the safety of the trailers it purchased for use as hurricane shelters, the Clinton Foundation initially insisted that the most appropriate person to speak to was a Haitian employee of Clinton's UN Office.

When Graham, the foundation's COO, finally agreed to talk about the project on the record, she denied that the foundation had been responsible for any due diligence regarding its own project, claiming that those responsible were a "panel of experts," including one point person from the foundation, Greg Milne, and representatives of other organizations. (Milne referred all questions to the foundation's press office.) The Clinton Foundation agreed to furnish documentation of who was on this panel but by press time had not done so.

Graham said that the staff of the Clinton Foundation—which has for more than a year publicized the "hurricane shelters" that "President Clinton" built in Léogâne—are "not experts" in hurricane shelter construction. She claimed the same "panel of experts" would have been responsible for due diligence to ensure air quality of the shelters whose secondary purpose was as classrooms.

Explaining Bill Clinton's rationale for the trailers, which were installed at the tail end of the 2010 hurricane season, Conille said, "It was not meant to be sustainable. It was meant because we didn't want to have dead people in September." According to Conille, Clinton was deeply troubled by what would happen to the women and children in case of a serious storm—and as the former president felt that "no one" was doing anything about the issue, he took the lead himself. Moreover, Clinton didn't want to have his new "hurricane shelters" sitting empty while schoolchildren had classes in tents, Conille added.

Yet according to Maddalena, given the high rate of formaldehyde found in one of the classrooms, and the children's headaches, "they'd be better off studying outside under a tarp."

Wall, the former OCHA spokeswoman, responded by e-mail, "We all knew that that project was misconceived from the start, a classic example of aid designed from a distance with no understanding of ground level realities or needs. It has had a predictably long and unhappy history from the start."

Even Conille largely concurred, in a telephone interview, that there were many problems with the project, saying, "It made sense at that time, and I guess someone could argue it wasn't the best idea in retrospect."

For his part, Léogâne Mayor Santos Alexis says he is still waiting for Bill Clinton to follow through on his pledge to equip Léogâne with hurricane-proof school buildings. Asked about his view on the Clinton Foundation's claims to having completed an "Emergency Hurricane Shelter Project" replete with new classrooms for his town, Alexis is defiant. "If those at the Clinton Foundation are sure it's done then they should prove it, they should show it to us, because I know nothing about it," he remarked coyly, gazing out from behind his shades. Seated at his desk in a crumbling municipal building, the mayor said he is still waiting for the real Clinton Foundation schools, "built with norms that protect people from hurricanes and flooding."

To view a slideshow, click here.

They are pretty good salesmen though (and extremely successful (all right, rich!), aren't they? And here's the original "salesman!" Da-da!!!!! (People where I am in the South don't have a f*cking clue who Ronald Reagan really was - and don't care.) And we are desperately hurt by the (and the Bushes/Clinton/Obama) policies, which sprang from his tall-tale-telling fount. (Not that I think there was anything original concerning him, of course, but wasn't he a great actor?) (/snark)

Reagan Mythology is Leading US Off a Cliff

During Reagan's presidency, the US went from a creditor to debtor nation and marked a take-off for financial inequality.

by Paul Rosenberg

As things stand today, the US is hurtling toward a budget showdown in less than a month. Either President Obama will once again capitulate to extreme Republican budget-slashing demands, making Democrats seem as much of a threat to Medicare as Republicans, and virtually ensuring a GOP electoral sweep in 2012, or the US will default on its debt for the first time in its history, most likely plunging the world economy back into another five-continent recession, also costing Democrats the 2012 elections. These are the options left for a president and a political class completely divorced both from reality, and its own history of how one of the three greatest US presidents of all time steered the country from the brink of collapse eight decades ago

Corporate Cowboy

Entirely forgetting the real history of how Franklin D Roosevelt used activist government to save American capitalism from itself, the entire US political establishment is instead hypnotized by the false history woven around its most over-hyped president of all time: Ronald Reagan. Idolatry of Reagan's supposed tax-cutting wonders propels the now widespread economic belief that up is down, that cutting government spending is the way out of - rather than into - a severe recession. At the same time, idolatry of Reagan's supposed political wonders propels GOP extremists to ignore all other considerations.

Because of this hypnotism, America's political establishment has barely even begun to notice two unconventional possible ways out that remain, neither of which require anything from Congress, but both of which need bold presidential leadership ala FDR.

The first is to ignore the debt ceiling, relying directly on the 14th Amendment's statement that: "the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned". The second is a proposal from maverick Republican Ron Paul to have the Federal Reserve Board destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds that it currently holds, which progressive economist Dean Baker recently wrote, "actually makes a great deal of sense". It might take some arm-twisting on Obama's part, but Congress has no say over the Fed, and central bankers have no great love of spreading financial panic.

In anything close to a sane world, either one of these two bold strokes would be widely hailed for avoiding a reckless threat to the still-fragile world economy. But we do not live in a sane world, and the idolatry of Ronald Reagan is one of the principle reasons why. This is why it behooves us to review some of the principle lies involved with Ronald Reagan's record, focusing specifically on the economy. What follows is but a brief rundown.

The idea that Reagan produced a uniquely booming economy is false

First, Reagan's record on the economy was not just exaggerated by his boosters, it's almost exactly the opposite of what they claim. It was a fairly ordinary time by the most common measurements of economic growth, looking good only in comparison with a selective time-slice of the 1970s. But once you start looking beneath the surface even the tiniest bit, the picture turns very dark indeed.

In terms of the most basic measure of economic growth - increase in gross domestic product (GDP) - the vaunted "Reagan boom" was an unremarkable period of time. If we look at Reagan's eight years, and compare them with Clinton's and JFK/LBJ's, Reagan comes in dead last, with 31.7 per cent compared with Clinton's 33.1 per cent and JFK/LBJ's 47.1 per cent. Only Nixon/Ford's eight years make Reagan look good, with a mere 26.2 per cent growth.

The idea that Reagan brought prosperity is true only for those at the top, not for average American workers

If we examine incomes, we discover that Reagan's eight years marked a real take-off for inequality, while average incomes stagnated. The income growth of the top once per cent was ten times that of everyone else during his term: 61.5 per cent versus 6.15 per cent. Under JFK/LBJ, the bottom 99 per cent actually did better: gaining 30.9 per cent compared with 26.9 per cent for the top once per cent. And while inequality continued to rise under Clinton, the bottom 99 per cent did more than twice as well as they did under Reagan, gaining 16.7 per cent compared with 56.6 per cent for the wealthiest one per cent.

The idea that Reagan was good for the American economy in general is false

Reagan was a disaster for the American economy in at least four fundamental ways: Debtor Nation Status: Under Ronald Reagan, the US went from being the world's largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years - and we have remained the largest debtor nation ever since. In 1981, Reagan's first year in office, the US was a net creditor to the tune of $140.9bn. By 1984, that had shrunk to just $3.3bn - and the next year, the US shifted from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation for the first time in almost 70 years. By 1987, the US was a net debtor by $378.3bn - the largest debtor nation in the world. The figure rose to $532.5bn by the end of 1988, when Reagan left office.

De-Industrialization: While the percentage of industrial jobs in the economy had been declining since the 1950s, with the growth of the service sector, the raw number of industrial jobs continued to increase right up through 1979, just before the 1980/1982 double-dip recession. From that year onward, the number of industrial jobs began declining, with a smattering of years when the number would increase. In addition to the raw number of jobs declining, the number of unionized jobs and the number of jobs with American companies declined even further.

Personal indebtedness: The income stagnation that began under Reagan has had a devastating impact on personal savings. While it fluctuated considerably, the personal savings rate had more than doubled between 1949 and 1982, from 5.0 per cent up to 11.2 per cent. Ironically, one of the main stated purposes of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts, the basis for Reagan's 1981 tax cut bill, was to boost personal savings. Instead, they plunged precipitously, falling all the way down into negative territory by 2006.

Government Indebtedness: The idea that Reagan was "fiscally conservative" is false. The story of government indebtedness was even more bleak. Before Reagan, debt really wasn't a problem for America. From World War II to 1981, every president had reduced the debt as a percentage of GDP, except for the divided term of Nixon-Ford, which saw a tiny 0.2 per cent increase.

The debt-to-GDP ratio is much more significant than the debt alone, since the GDP represents the nation's total capacity to pay off the debt. And from WWII to 1981, the debt-to-GDP ratio fell from almost 120 per cent down to just down to just 32.5 per cent. The sharpest drop came early on, but even during the supposed "big government" heyday of the Kennedy/Johnson years, the ratio fell by over 16 per cent in eight years. Conservatives then might have complained about the debt - and they certainly did - but no one knowledgeable about economics took them seriously, because the debt grew significantly slower than our ability to repay it.

During Reagan's term, this changed dramatically. The ratio rose by over 20 per cent, and it rose another 13 per cent under his successor, George Bush Sr. It took a Democrat, Bill Clinton, to get the ratio headed down again - by almost 10 per cent during his two terms, before Bush Jr sent it skyrocketing again - by almost 28 per cent. It's rising fast under Obama as well - but that's to be expected as a result of the worst recession since the 1930s.

The idea that Ronald Reagan consistently opposed tax increases is false

The idea that Ronald Reagan always opposed tax increases is completely untrue. He raised taxes dramatically as Governor of California in 1967 - by a whopping 30 per cent. But he also raised them as president - 11 times. Sure, his 1981 tax increase, along with three smaller increases, was much larger than his total tax cuts. But his willingness to raise as well as lower taxes would have made him at least somewhat compatible with President Obama, and totally unacceptable to movement conservatives today, especially Tea Partiers.

Bruce Bartlett was a leading supply-side economist in the 1970s, who helped draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill as a staff economist for Congressman Jack Kemp. He went on to serve in both the Reagan and Bush I administrations. In an April 2010 blog post, listing Reagan's 11 presidential tax hikes and four tax cuts, Bartlett wrote: "It may come as a surprise to some people that, once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, Republicans actually cared enough about budget deficits that they thought raising taxes was necessary to bring them down. Today, Republicans believe that deficits are nothing more than something to ignore when they are in power and to bludgeon Democrats with when they are out of power."

Bartlett was obviously overstating his case, given how the debt skyrocketed under Reagan. But things would have clearly been much, much worse if Reagan had never raised taxes. And if Reagan were around today, he would no doubt be denounced as a "socialist" for all the tax increases he signed onto.

The idea that Reagan's tax cuts spurred job creation is false

As noted in Bartlett's table of tax cuts and increases, Reagan followed up his 1981 tax cuts with increases in 1982 and 1983. And for good reason: The unemployment rate - already high when Reagan took office - continued to skyrocket after his tax cuts were passed - peaking at 11.2 percent in 1983, when the jobless rate finally started to come down. The exact mixture of cause and effect over such an extended period may be subject to debate. But one thing is certain: Reagan's 1981 tax cuts did not magically result in job creation in anything like the way that conservatives nowadays mindlessly claim.

The idea that Reagan changed America's mind about taxes and the role of government is false

Political scientist James Stimson, author of Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings, has constructed an index of economic liberalism based on hundreds of public opinion questions asked repeatedly over the years. This index reached a low-point in 1980 and rose dramatically for the next seven years, reaching a plateau at levels not seen since Nixon's first term, as if Reagan's rhetoric were convincing more and more people of the exactly the opposite of what he was saying.

This rise was reflected, for example, in four questions asked in the General Social Survey, the most-cited data source for social scientists after the US Census. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of people saying the government was spending "too little" nationally increased 27.4 per cent on health care, 32.9 per cent on education, 67.8 per cent on welfare and 46.7 per cent on the environment. The questions all reminded people that increased taxes might be required if more was spent.

What's more, 20 years after Reagan's election, in 2000, federal tax receipts as a percent of GDP were up 8.4 per cent over what they had been the year Reagan was elected, indisputable proof that government's role had ultimately not decreased across that time-span.

TIME Magazine Cover: Why Obama ♥ Reagan. Feb. 7, 2011 - The idea that Reagan was a singularly popular president is false.

Reagan was quite fortunate in getting re-elected in 1984 when his popularity was particularly high, but that was not true of his record in general. According to Gallup, Reagan's overall average approval rating was only 52.8 per cent, lower than John F Kennedy (70.1 per cent), Dwight Eisenhower (65 per cent), GHW Bush (60.1 per cent), Bill Clinton (55.1 per cent), and Lyndon Johnson (55.1 percent). It's only modestly higher than George W Bush (49.4 per cent) and Richard Nixon (49.1 per cent).

Summing Up

Surveying all these lies in a single panorama, it should be clear that neither Reagan's economic record nor his political one should provide any case at all for embracing conservative economics. Quite the opposite: They clearly point to failure on both counts. What's more, the only reason his mythology is possible at all is because he significantly backtracked by raising taxes, when doing otherwise would have completely exposed the failure of his principal economic intentions.

President Obama is as drunk on Reagan's kool-aid as anyone else in Washington today. It will be difficult indeed for him to break the spell in time to save the country - and himself - from repeating the economic disaster that conservative policies led to just before he was elected.

One thing about Reagan is true, however: His wife did play a significant role in saving him from following ideologues into dangerous folly on a number of occasions. Perhaps Michelle Obama is America's last best hope. Perhaps she can see what her husband thus far cannot.

Sure, Michelle will save him. Just like she's stopped the rest of this dangerous, right-wing light (so-called in some quarters (not here)) Presidency. Jeeeeebuuuusss God! (They are singing my song.) Have mercy on our wicked ways. Please.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

" 'Car Sleepers' the New US Homeless"

By Rajesh Mirchandani

“Santa Barbara boasts a classic laidback California lifestyle, with uncongested beaches, wholesome cafes and charming Spanish-style architecture. Of course there's a hefty price tag: nestled between the gentle Santa Ynez mountains and the inviting Pacific Ocean are multi-million dollar homes. But in this sun-washed haven of wealth, many live far from the American dream.

In a car park across the street from luxury mansions, the evening brings a strange sight. A few cars arrive and take up spaces in different corners. In each car, a woman, perhaps a few pets, bags of possessions and bedding. Across the street from homes with bedrooms to spare, these are Santa Barbara's car sleepers. Homeless within the last year, they are a direct consequence of America's housing market collapse. In this woman-only parking lot, Bonnee, who gives only her first name, wears a smart blue dress and has a business-like demeanour. A year ago, she was making a healthy living as, ironically, a real estate agent. But when people stopped buying houses, her commission-based income dried up, and, like many clients, she too was unable to pay her mortgage. Car sleeper Bonnee still works in the real estate business Soon she found herself with nowhere to live but her 4x4. Piles of blankets are in the back of the vehicle. Personal documents are stuffed into seat pockets. Books litter the back seat. A make-up bag and gym membership card (she washes at the gym) are in the front. With her constantly, are photos of her former life. She can't quite believe her situation. "My God, America's heart is bleeding," she tells me. Tears fill her eyes. "I know it'll get better. But it feels sad. I really fought hard." A medium-sized 4x4 pulls into the parking lot and 66-year-old Barbara Harvey gets out. She opens the back door and two large Golden Retrievers jump out. Barbara begins her nightly routine. She moves a few bags from the boot to the front seat and takes out pyjamas and a carton of yogurt (her dinner). She then arranges blankets in the back of the car. Barbara used to work in housing finance - this is the double whammy of the housing collapse where many who worked in the sector lost their jobs and their homes. But since April, she and her dogs, Ranger and Phoebe, have spent every night in her car. It's cramped, but she says if they sleep diagonally they can all fit. The car park lets the car sleepers enter from 7pm, local public toilets close at dusk. As a result, Barbara says she doesn't drink any liquids after she arrives. In the mornings, she showers at a friend's house. Dressed in clean, comfortable clothes and wearing sunglasses, she is far removed from the stereotypical image of homelessness. "I don't think I fit into anybody's image," she says. "There's going to be lots of homeless individuals who are middle-class, there can't be anything but. We're in an awful mess economically. I don't think we've seen half of what's going to happen in this country." This new phenomenon of middle-class homelessness is hard to quantify, but New Beginnings, an organisation that runs the car park sleeping scheme in Santa Barbara, says they accommodate some 55 people in a dozen parking lots. Outreach worker Nancy Kapp, once homeless herself, says there is a waiting list for car park spaces and she is getting more and more calls each day from people about to lose their homes. She identifies it as a new breed of homeless emerging in America.

"Being poor is like this cancer, and now this cancer is filtering up to the middle-class," she says. "I don't care how strong you are, it's a breakdown of the human psyche when you start to lose everything you have. These people have worked their whole lives to have a house and now it's crumbling and it's in ashes and how devastating is that?" she says. "It's not an American dream, it's an American nightmare." California house prices fell by 30% in the year to May. Few parts of America have been hit as hard. But national housing groups say they have seen a rise in homelessness across the US since the foreclosure crisis began last year. In another car park in Santa Barbara, Craig Miller, his wife Paige and their two children say they feel cramped in the small mobile home where they have been living for several months. "It's hard to keep things clean," says Paige. "It's hard to feel complete and whole." Originally from Florida, the family used to own a four-bedroom house with a pool. But when Craig's business failed, they lost it. Undeterred, the family embarked on a dream to drive across America and make a new start in California. But unable to find full-time work, and unable to afford rent, as Craig puts it "we got stuck". He says it was like a holiday at first but now it is much harder. "Getting money for food, it's not something we've had to think about before," says Craig. "We're definitely looking forward to getting out and getting a place. And we're working hard at getting there. This is just the journey, it's not the destination.' As darkness falls on Santa Barbara, the car sleepers settle in for the night. They'll have to be up early: they are not allowed to stay in the car parks beyond 7am. Some work, others spend their days driving from one spot to another. When evening comes around again, they return to their car park homes. In comparison to other countries, and indeed America's own long-term homeless, they are still fortunate. But as America's economic crisis deepens, could there soon be more of them?"

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"Land of the free, and the home of the brave..." Really?

You gotta love that reporting we've had since Reagan ascended to the Imperial Presidency. ________________________