The JvL Bi-Weekly for 033109

I can be most easily reached through the following email address for suggesting new additions to the subscription list or to cancel your subscription to the Bi-Weekly:

channujames@yahoo.com

The Blog Address for the Bi-Weekly is: http://jvlbiweekly.blogspot.com

Please forward the Blog address for the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Volume 8, No. 6

7 Articles, 16 Pages

1. Is the U.S.A. the Greatest Nation Now?

2. An Army of Extremists

3. We're All In This Together

4. Ministers 'Using Fear of Terror'

5. War Comes Home To Britain

6. Stimulus: How it May Affect Your Wallet

7. It's Going To Take a Civic Jolt

1. IS THE U.S.A. THE WORLD'S GREATEST NATION NOW?
BY

BOB KENDALL

The intense anger and rage lingers that George W. Bush generated with the false claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction threatening the U.S.A. Adding to his State of the Union fright scenario was Bush's false claim that Saddam Hussein was well on the road to developing nuclear power. This false proclamation hastily launched the Iraq War.

If the claim of ex-fed chief Alan Greenspan in his book "Age of Turbulence" that "The Iraq war was largely about Oil" is accurate, we must objectively analyze the cost of Iraq oil acquisition.

Was Iraq oil acquisition worth the tragic loss of 4,242, U.S. service personnel whose flag-draped coffins coming back to the U.S.A. were barred by the Pentagon from being shown on TV?

Was it worth the wounding and suffering of over 55,000 U.S. service personnel?

The respected British organization Lancet estimate that over 1.3 million Iraqis died in the Iraq War. Was U.S. oil acquisition worth this tragic loss of life?

Does anyone think that there will never be any accountability for this colossal catastrophe? Apparently George W. Bush appears un-phased. As bombs were falling on Baghdad in this so-called "shock and awe" attack he was shown on White House video raising his arm, clenching his fist, and exclaiming "Feels good!"

While the war was still raging, Bush donned a flight uniform in San Diego and boarded a helicopter which swiftly transported him to a waiting naval ship. Once he landed on deck, with TV cameras grinding, Bush dramatically declared, "Mission Accomplished!"

Sadly, this was not true. U.S. service personnel remain in Iraq until 2012, and even after that an occupying force of 50,000 U.S. service personnel will stay. The U.S. now has its largest embassy in Iraq's capital city of Baghdad.

Bush is still blithely chasing around like a conquering hero, darting off to Calgary, Canada, giving a lecture at $400 per person for the best seats. All this occurs while Bush protestors are still continuing in marches in cities across the U.S.A. carrying signs proclaiming that Bush is a war criminal.

The New York Times March 19 headline announced: 2007 U.S. BIRTHS BREAK BABY BOOM RECORD.

The headline was expanded in the article that followed by Erik Eckholm:

"More babies were born in the United States than in any other year in American history, according to preliminary data by the Center for Health Statistics.

"The 4,317,000 births in 2007 edged out the figure for 1957 at the height of the baby boom. Also, in 2007, for the second straight year, and in a trend officials find worrisome the rate of births by teenagers rose. The growth has mainly been fueled by increases among adult women. Racial and ethnic differences remain large: 28 percent of white babies were born to un-married mothers, in 2007, compared to 51 percent of Hispanic babies and 72 percent of black babies. The U.S.A. has the highest rates of teenage pregnancies, birth and abortion of any industrialized country."

While the U.S. represents only 5 percent of the world's population, it uses 50 percent of the world's illicit drugs. This tragic fact fuels the drug wars raging in major U.S. cities.

The longest war in U.S. history in Iraq goes on and Obama is sending more troops into Afghanistan to step up that campaign.

As if the horrors on the foreign front weren't enough, the fateful prediction by British historian Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay over 100 years ago came true:

"Your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravage the Roman Empire came from without and your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country, by your own institutions."

According to the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Coalition, 3.5 million people in a given year will experience homelessness with 1.5 million of them children. The current national jobless figure stands at over 8 percent and is rising while there are 37 million Americans on food stamps.

In an economic meltdown Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, the nation's biggest banks, have collapsed with a hundred more standing on the edge of the same fate.

It took a $700 billion loan bailout from China to prop up U.S. banks, and another $700 billion stimulus package to salvage what was left of teetering American International Group, which is linked to bank failures worldwide.

No doubt about it. The U.S.A. was number one in producing more children without a father, number one in illicit drug use, and number one in triggering the world economic meltdown.

Perhaps proclaiming that we are the greatest nation in the world in 2009 is inappropriate!



2. AN ARMY OF EXTREMISTS
(How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers.)
BY

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.

I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army "chaplain" in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as "the enemies of Israel." Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defense Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively—if rather alarmingly—the man of God replied, "Germans." There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi's exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General's Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich's support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army's behalf.

The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a "political" statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It's not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him:

Moses, Eleazer the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. Moses said to them, "You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord's community was struck by the plague. Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every young woman who has known a man carnally; but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man."

Moses and Eleazar the priest go on to issue some complex instructions about the ritual cleansings that must be practiced after this exhausting massacre has been completed.

Now, it's common to hear people say, when this infamous passage and others like it come up, that it's not intended to be "taken literally." One also often hears the excuse that some wicked things are done "in the name of" religion, as if the wicked things were somehow the result of a misinterpretation. But the nationalist rabbis who prepare Israeli soldiers for their mission seem to think that this book might be the word of God, in which case the only misinterpretation would be the failure to take it literally. (I hate to break it to you, but the people who think that God's will is revealed in scripture are known as "religious." Those who do not think so must try to find another name for themselves.)

Possibly you remember Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the man who in February 1994 unslung his weapon and killed more than two dozen worshippers at the mosque in Hebron. He had been a physician in the Israeli army and had first attracted attention by saying that he would refuse to treat non-Jews on the Sabbath. Now read Ethan Bronner's report in the March 22 New York Times about the preachments of the Israeli army's latest chief rabbi, a West Bank settler named Avichai Rontzski who also holds the rank of brigadier general. He has "said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath … is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred." Those of us who follow these things recognize that statement as one of the leading indicators of a truly determined racist and fundamentalist. Yet it comes not this time in the garb of a homicidal lone-wolf nut bag but in the full uniform and accoutrement of a general and a high priest: Moses and Eleazar combined. The latest news, according to Bronner, is that the Israeli Defense Ministry has felt compelled to reprimand Rontzski for "a rabbinical edict against showing the enemy mercy" that was distributed in booklet form to men and women in uniform (see Numbers 31:13-18, above).

Peering over the horrible pile of Palestinian civilian casualties that has immediately resulted, it's fairly easy to see where this is going in the medium-to-longer term. The zealot settlers and their clerical accomplices are establishing an army within the army so that one day, if it is ever decided to disband or evacuate the colonial settlements, there will be enough officers and soldiers, stiffened by enough rabbis and enough extremist sermons, to refuse to obey the order. Torah verses will also be found that make it permissible to murder secular Jews as well as Arabs. The dress rehearsals for this have already taken place, with the religious excuses given for Baruch Goldstein's rampage and the Talmudic evasions concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Once considered highly extreme, such biblical exegeses are moving ever closer to the mainstream. It's high time the United States cut off any financial support for Israel that can be used even indirectly for settler activity, not just because such colonization constitutes a theft of another people's land but also because our Constitution absolutely forbids us to spend public money on the establishment of any religion.



3. "WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER"
(No we are not, that's the point.)

BY

CINDY SHEEHAN

President Obama basically said that we can't demonize every investor who earns a profit, because "we are all in this together." Sorry, but I am going to have to call a big fat "bull-shit" on this one.

When Obama said "we" did he have a mouse in his pocket? Obama, and his family have a very opulent, slave-built roof over their heads. He travels on the public nickel, his children attend an exclusive Washington, DC private school that has organic food on its menu, and has health care that covers everyone in his family from head to toe and side to side and inside out.

Even though he and every member of the administration, Congress and the Supreme Court are not hurting for anything, the bastard (sorry if your parents weren't married when you were conceived) Wall Street banksters are receiving billions of dollars of government welfare and are not so good about being in "this together" with us.

The only concrete steps the Treasury and Fed have taken are to buy "toxic" assets (if something is toxic can it still be an asset?) so companies like Goldman Sachs (via AIG) can have the public tit rescue them from their stupider than crap mistakes.

WE the ROBBED Class are in this together. THEY the ROBBER Class are in it for themselves. How many times does Obama have to demonstrate that his economic recovery is nothing but Reaganomics wrapped in a little bit of populist rhetoric to make it easier for the misinformed Robbed Class to swallow. If anything transpires to alleviate the suffering in our Class at all, it will be because some of the prosperity got through the cracks in the deeply cancerous system and trickled ON us. Rest assured, this is just a mistake and the only time the Robber Class cares about us, is when the interests of the two classes collide.

I will feel like I am "in this" with the Obamas when I have a free house, free health care and if my children would not have to go into lifelong debt to pay for university.

I wonder if the wall to wall homeless population (it's growing at an alarming rate) here in San Francisco feels "in this together" with the Wall Street Robbers?

I wonder if the people standing waiting for hours in municipal Emergency Rooms waiting to get some, any medical attention feel "in this together" with Congress which has 110% medical coverage?

I wonder if the foot soldiers for the Empire feel "in this together" with the War Profiteer Robbers?

I wonder if the victims of the drug wars and street wars feel "in this together" with the children of the Robbers who ride to their schools in limos with bodyguards?

I wonder if our brothers and sisters living in tent cities with their children feel "in this together" with the Pelosis and Feinsteins of the world who live in their obscenely huge mansions in exclusive neighborhoods and fly back and forth from DC in private jets that suck down gas at an immoral rate?

I wonder if our brothers and sisters who just cashed a final unemployment check feels "in this together" with the Robbers who just cashed millions in bonuses?

I, myself, feel "in this together" with the homeless, hungry, sick, jobless, struggling, stressed, frightened, confused, yet resilient, brave and strong.

WE are in this together. WE need to step outside of the Robber Class system and start to build our own systems to help each other through this Robber Class/Goldman Sachs/Federal Reserve depression.



4. MINISTERS 'USING FEAR OF TERROR'

(A former head of MI5 has accused the government of exploiting the fear of terrorism and trying to bring in laws that restrict civil liberties.)

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Dame Stella Rimington: Has said that terror law could erode civil liberties

In an interview in a Spanish newspaper, published in the Daily Telegraph, Dame Stella Rimington, 73, also accuses the US of "tortures".

The Home Office said it was vital to strike a right balance between privacy, protection and sharing personal data.



It said any policies which impact on privacy must be "proportionate".

Dame Stella, who stood down as the director general of the security service in 1996, has previously been critical of the government's policies, including its attempts to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days and the controversial plan to introduce ID cards.

"It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism - that we live in fear and under a police state," she told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

She said the British security services were "no angels," but they did not kill people.

"The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures," she said.

"MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect - there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."

'Take stock'

Dame Stella's comments come as a study is published by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) that accuses the US and the UK of undermining the framework of international law.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson, the president of the ICJ said: "Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years.

"Human rights and international humanitarian law provide a strong and flexible framework to address terrorist threats."

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner said the ICJ report would probably have more of an impact than Dame Stella's remarks because it was a wide-ranging, three-year study carried out by an eminent group of practising legal experts.



Dame Stella appeared to be more restrained in her comments than the ICJ, he added.

She was keen to stress the risk of civil liberties being curtailed, while the jurists insisted that international law had already been "actively undermined".

Shadow security minister Baroness Neville-Jones said the Conservatives were "committed to ensuring that security measures are proportionate and adhere to the rule of law".

The Tories said the government's push to extend the detention time limit for terror suspects was the kind of measure condemned by the report.

Human rights campaign group Liberty pointed to a number of other recent developments it said represented "a creeping encroachment on our fundamental rights":

* Government plans for a giant database to record the times, dates and recipients of all emails and text messages sent and phone calls made in the UK
* The growth of Britain's DNA database - it is now the world's largest, per head of population, with samples from some 4m people
* The use by councils of laws designed to track criminals and terrorists to spy on ordinary citizens. In one case a family was watched to see if they were really living in a school catchment area
* The spread of CCTV cameras. Britain now reportedly has some 4m, the highest density in western Europe
* Proposals for "secret inquests," excluding relatives, juries and the media, which the government says would prevent intelligence details leaking out

Isabella Sankey, director of policy at Liberty, said she was "enormously heartened" by what Dame Stella had said.

"Over the last seven years, we've seen a number of measures passed, some of which affect very few of us in a horrible and terrible way, whether that's house arrest under control orders or rendition and torture in foreign states," she said.



"We've also seen many, many measures that affect all of us just a little bit and, most of all, which seriously impact our rights to privacy.

"We have very broad police powers which sweep the innocent up with the guilty."

'Effective safeguards'

A Home Office spokesman said: "The government has been clear that where surveillance or data collection will impact on privacy they should only be used where it is necessary and proportionate."

"This provides law enforcement agencies with the tools to protect the public as well as ensuring government has the ability to provide effective public services while ensuring there are effective safeguards and a solid legal framework that protects civil liberties."

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said: "This is damning testament to just how much liberty has been ineffectually sacrificed in the 'war on terror'."



5. WAR COMES HOME TO BRITAIN

BY

JOHN PILGER

Freedom is being lost in Britain. The land of Magna Carta is now the land of secret gagging orders, secret trials and imprisonment. The government will soon know about every phone call, every email, every text message. Police can willfully shoot to death an innocent man, lie and expect to get away with it. Whole communities now fear the state. The foreign secretary routinely covers up allegations of torture; the justice secretary routinely prevents the release of critical cabinet minutes taken when Iraq was illegally invaded. The litany is cursory; there is much more.

Indeed, there is so much more that the erosion of liberal freedoms is symptomatic of an evolved criminal state. The haven for Russian oligarchs, together with corruption of the tax and banking systems and of once-admired public services such as the Post Office, is one side of the coin; the other is the invisible carnage of failed colonial wars. Historically, the pattern is familiar. As the colonial crimes in Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan blew back to their perpetrators, France, the United States and the Soviet Union, so the cancerous effects of Britain's cynicism in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home.

The most obvious example is the bombing atrocities in London on 7 July 2005; no one in the British intelligence mandarinate doubts these were a gift of Blair. "Terrorism" describes only the few acts of individuals and groups, not the constant, industrial violence of great powers. Suppressing this truth is left to the credible media. On 27 February, the Guardian's Washington correspondent, Ewen MacAskill, in reporting President Obama's statement that America was finally leaving Iraq, as if it were fact, wrote: "For Iraq, the death toll is unknown, in the tens of thousands, victims of the war, a nationalist uprising, sectarian infighting and jihadists attracted by the US presence." Thus, the Anglo-American invaders are merely a "presence" and not directly responsible for the "unknown" number of Iraqi deaths. Such contortion of intellect is impressive.

In January last year, a report by the respected Opinion Research Business (ORB) revised an earlier assessment of deaths in Iraq to 1,033,000. This followed an exhaustive, peer-reviewed study in 2006 by the world-renowned John Hopkins School of Public Health in the US, published in The Lancet, which found that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion. US and British officials immediately dismissed the report as "flawed" – a deliberate deception. Foreign Office papers obtained under Freedom of Information disclose a memo written by the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, in which he praised The Lancet report, describing it as "robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to 'best practice' given [the conditions] in Iraq." An adviser to the prime minister commented: "The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones." Speaking a few days later, a Foreign Office minister, Lord Triesman, said, "The way in which data are extrapolated from samples to a general outcome is a matter of deep concern."



The episode exemplifies the scale and deception of this state crime. Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet study, has since argued that Britain and America might have caused in Iraq "an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide." This is not news. Neither is it a critical reference in the freedoms campaign organized by the Observer columnist Henry Porter. At a conference in London on 28 February, Lord Goldsmith, Blair's attorney-general, who notoriously changed his mind and advised the government the invasion was legal, when it wasn't, was a speaker for freedom. So was Timothy Garton Ash, a "liberal interventionist." On 9 April, 2003, shortly after the slaughter had begun in Iraq, a euphoric Garton Ash wrote in the Guardian: "America has never been the Great Satan. It has sometimes been the Great Gatsby: 'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things ….'" One of Britain's jobs "is to keep reminding Tom and Daisy that they now have promises to keep." Less frivolously, he lauded Blair for his "strong Gladstonian instincts for humanitarian intervention" and repeated the government's propaganda about Saddam Hussein. In 2006, he wrote: "Now we face the next big test of the west after Iraq: Iran." (I have italicized we). This also adheres precisely to the propaganda; David Milliband has declared Iran a "threat" in preparation for possibly the next war.

Like so many of New Labour's Tonier-than-thou squad, Henry Porter celebrated Blair as an almost mystical politician who "presents himself as a harmonizer for all the opposing interests in British life, a conciliator of class differences and tribal antipathies, synthesizer of opposing beliefs." Porter dismissed as "demonic nonsense" all analysis of the 9/11 attacks that suggested there were specific causes: the consequences of violent actions taken by the powerful in the Middle East. Such thinking, he wrote, "exactly matches the views of Osama bin Laden … with America's haters, that's all there is – hatred." This, of course, was Blair's view.

Freedoms are being lost in Britain because of the rapid growth of the "national security state." This form of militarism was imported from the United States by New Labour. Totalitarian in essence, it relies upon fear mongering to entrench the executive with venal legal mechanisms that progressively diminish democracy and justice. "Security" is all, as is propaganda promoting rapacious colonial wars, even as honest mistakes. Take away this propaganda, and the wars are exposed for what they are, and fear evaporates. Take away the obeisance of many in Britain's liberal elite to American power and you demote a profound colonial and crusader mentality that covers for epic criminals like Blair. Prosecute these criminals and change the system that breeds them and you have freedom.



6. STIMULUS: HOW IT MAY AFFECT YOUR WALLET

(Congress has finalized the $787 billion economic recovery plan. Here's a look at some of the provisions geared at financial relief for individuals.)

By

JEANNE SAHADI

The final topline price of the economic recovery package: $787 billion. That's below both the $820 billion House-passed version and the $838 billion Senate-passed version.

The compromises that the House, Senate and White House struck to finalize legislation changed the scope of a number of provisions, including those affecting individuals directly. In some cases, they either reduced or expanded a benefit relative to what appeared in the Senate or House versions of the bill.

Here's a look at some of the provisions that will have a direct effect on individuals in their paychecks, on their tax returns, and with regard to their unemployment benefits and health insurance if they've lost a job.

Making Work Pay Credit: The bill provides a $400 credit per worker and a $800 credit per dual-earner couple. The full credit would be paid to people making $75,000 or less ($150,000 per dual-earner couple). A partial credit would be paid to those making above those amounts but no more than $100,000 ($200,000 for couples).

The credit would also be refundable, which means that even very low-income families who don't make enough to owe income tax would be able to claim it.

For most working individuals, the credit will be paid over time at roughly $15 per period, assuming 26 pay periods in a year. Estimated cost: $116 billion.

One-time payments to those who don't work: For retirees, disabled individuals and others who don't work, the bill provides a one-time $250 payment. Estimated cost: $14.2 billion.

Break for higher income families: The bill includes a one-year provision to protect middle- and upper-middle-income families from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT was intended primarily for high-income taxpayers but has in recent years threatened to engulf those lower down the income scale. Estimated cost: $70 billion.

Temporary deduction for car buyers: The bill would let those who buy a new car, light vehicle, recreational vehicle or motorcycle in 2009 deduct state and local sales taxes as well as any excise tax charged in the purchase. The deduction would be available to those earning less than $125,000 ($250,000 for joint filers). It will be an above-the-line deduction, meaning even taxpayers who don't itemize may take it in addition to the standard deduction. Estimated cost:$1.7 billion.

Temporary credit for home buyers: The bill increases the size of an existing temporary and refundable first-time home buyer credit to $8,000, up from $7,500. It also removes the requirement under current law that the credit be paid back if the buyer stays in the home for at least three years. And it would extend the credit's expiration date to Dec. 1, 2009, from July 1. Those eligible for this credit must have purchased a home after Jan. 1, 2009, and before Dec. 1, 2009.

The full credit is available to those making $75,000 or less ($150,000 for joint filers). Estimated cost: $6.6 billion.

New temporary college credit: The bill introduces the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which would be in effect for 2009 and 2010. It expands the existing Hope Scholarship tax credit and would be worth as much as $2,500 for higher education expenses, up from $1,800 currently.

The full credit would be available to those making less than $80,000 ($160,000 for joint filers). Those making between those amounts and $90,000 ($180,000 for joint filers) would get a partial credit. And the break would also be partially refundable, meaning lower income families with little or no tax liability could now claim some of the credit. Estimated cost: $13.9 billion.

Temporary Pell Grant increase: The bill increases the maximum Pell Grant by $500 to $5,350 in 2009 and $5,550 in 2010. Estimated cost: $15.6 billion.

Temporary expansion of child tax credit: The bill increases eligibility for the child tax credit by lowering the income threshold that must be met for the credit to be refundable. The threshold would be lowered to$3,000 for this year and next. That will allow lower income families to claim more of the credit than under current law. Estimated cost: $14.8 billion.

Temporary increase in earned income tax credit: The credit will be temporarily increased to 45% from 40% of qualifying earnings for low-income families with three or more children. It also includes a marriage penalty relief provision for couples who qualify for at least a portion of the credit. Estimated cost: $4.6 billion.

Direct lifeline benefits

Health insurance help for the jobless: The bill includes provisions to help eligible jobless workers pay for health insurance under Cobra. Cobra coverage allows newly unemployed workers to keep health insurance provided by their former employers for a period of time.

For workers who have been laid off between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, the government will subsidize 65% of their premiums under Cobra for up to 9 months.

Those people laid off between Sept. 1, 2008, and the day the stimulus law goes into effect, and who did not sign up for Cobra, will get an additional 60 days to do so and receive the subsidy.

The subsidy will be limited to those whose income for the year is $125,000 or less ($250,000 for couples filing jointly). Estimated cost: $24.7 billion.

Another provision provides states funding to help pay for expanded Medicaid rolls for workers who've lost their jobs and can't afford health care on their own or can't get Cobra coverage because their former employer doesn't offer a health care plan. Estimated cost: $87 billion.

Unemployment benefits: The bill provides jobless workers with an additional 20 weeks in unemployment benefits, and 13 weeks on top of that if they live in what's deemed a high unemployment state, of which there are now about 30. Estimated cost: $27 billion.

In addition, the weekly unemployment benefit will temporarily increase by $25 on top of the roughly $300 jobless workers currently receive. Estimated cost: $8.8 billion.

Plus, the first $2,400 of benefits in 2009 would be exempt from federal income taxes. Estimated cost: $4.7 billion.

Food stamp payments: The bill includes a provision would increase food stamp payments by 13.6%, so a family of four would see an additional $80 on top of the $588 per month they receive currently. Estimated cost: $19.9 billion.

The bill also provides assistance to help local groups providing food and shelter, elderly nutrition services such as Meals on Wheels, and a program to help food banks re-stock their shelves. Estimated cost: $350 million.

Other help for needy families: The bill provides funding to states to create a contingency fund through 2010 for the welfare program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides cash assistance to the needy. Estimated cost: $2.4 billion.



7. IT'S GOING TO TAKE A CIVIC JOLT

BY

RALPH NADER

Can Congress "walk and chew gum at the same time?"

This phrase used by President Lyndon Johnson for one of his political opponents comes to mind at a time early in the first 100 days of the Obama Administration when supposedly many long-overdue changes and rollbacks are possible.

It is not just that Congress is completely absorbed with the tax-cut-stimulus package. It is stasis that seems to be enveloping, even within its numerous well-funded and staffed committees in the House and Senate, from even the signaling of serious movement toward rolling back Bush-pushed legislation and starting widely supported forays that take hope to change.

The continuation of this state of stasis is made more likely because the Republican minority is feeling its oats. It put the White House on the defensive during the struggle to enact economic recovery legislation even though previous Republican policies and coddling of Wall Street for eight years build a steep cliff for financial collapse. Add the de-regulatory moves of 1999 and 2000 by the Clinton-Rubin crowd and the financial meltdown accelerates.

There is something else operating. One gets the feel on Capitol Hill among some fairly sharp people of a lack of horizon, a paucity of progressive determination, a sense of being overwhelmed by the corporate forces still bearing down on Congress-easily the most powerful branch of government under our Constitution.

But Congress does not act as if it is the most powerful branch. It routinely abdicates its constitutional responsibilities-the declaration of war authority and the plenary authority to investigate and require access to information in the executive branch.

Even after the Democrats took control of the Congress in January 2007, George W. Bush again and again got his way including a rubber stamp for the huge Iraq and Afghanistan war budgets outside of the normal appropriations processes.

Efforts by Senator Russ Feingold and Cong. John Conyers to move a modest censure resolution of Bush and Cheney for their many constitutional and statutory violations were aggressively rejected by their leaders-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid. In January 2007, Pelosi and Reid two took impeachment off the table allowing the most chronically impeachable presidency in our history to continue undisturbed.

Some staffers in Congress privately assert that the Democrats are not acting like a majority party. It is worse than that. They are not acting-period.

From their majority status in 2007 to 2009 and a Democratic President in the White House, the Congressional Democrats are not moving swiftly to repeal the ban on Uncle Sam negotiating drug prices from volume discounts under the drug benefit law. They are not moving to amend the Patriot Act, regain control of warrantless surveillance, strengthen the corporate criminal laws and enforcement budgets. Congress is not even pushing to require taxing Hedge Fund manager's income as ordinary income not as capital gains.

I cite these policies because they are policies much favored by many Democratic lawmakers. But in practice lawmakers duck and duck and duck from translating their beliefs into contentious action vis-à-vis the lobbyists and their captive legislators.

Senator Chris Dodd and the vast majority of the American people want to do something about credit card company abuses and gouges. But he is surrounded not just by the Republicans on the Senate Banking Committees but high-ranking Democrats beholden to the financial goliaths who, are demanding and receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts.

There is word from the politicians that consideration of health care insurance-apart from a quickly enacted expansion of some coverage for more poor children-will be put off for a year. The trade unions' top priority to enact labor law reforms, supported by Obama during his presidential campaign, are being held back by the Democrats.

There is even doubt whether the District of Columbia will get a voting Representative in the House when push comes to shove in the Senate.

The one-subject-at-a-time attitude is coming from the White House. "Obama doesn't want it now" is a common phrase used by legislators to excuse themselves from exercising the separate but equal Congressional powers. This pretext applies to taking away some of the hugely expensive and unnecessary weapons systems like the F-22 aircraft decried by many military and retired military analysts. The vast, bloated military budget is sacrosanct on Capitol Hill as it is in the White House.

At a time of widely perceived needs for Congressional action, with large corporations busy applying for corporate welfare and on the defensive, the Democrats are not generating any momentum for standing for and with the people. Even in the midst of food contamination, illnesses and fatalities, they cannot turn around forty years of delay on giving the Food and Drug Administration adequate authority and inspectors to protect our food supply.

It is going to take a very focused civic jolt from you all to your Senators and Representatives. A couple of million jolters from our large country can get the train moving on the tracks. It doesn't take much time to holler, yell or bellow with the facts.