http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/28/do-you-want-play-again
Scott Johnson reviews War Games, now 25 years old with an all-too-relevant take on the arms race.
August 28, 2008
WHEN THE Cold War political thriller War Games was released 25 years ago, it cut against much of what was being sold by Hollywood by portraying realistic, vulnerable teenagers who weren't drunken, horny party animals and by challenging the backward thinking of the nuclear powers.
The film is about two teenagers, played by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, who hack into an online military simulator and challenge it to a game of nuclear war. It turns out this computer is actually the War Operations Planned Response (WOPR) artificial intelligence system working for the U.S. military. The Air Force radar system it is connected to confuses this "game" for a real attack, setting off a chain reaction of events that nobody seems able to control.
On paper, Broderick and Sheedy's quest to save the world from itself by convincing the U.S. military to stand down reads like a preposterous fairytale. But War Games manages to pull it off with a suspenseful plot and smart characters.
One thing that makes War Games so effective is that the writers understood--as seemingly dozens of CSI knock-offs do not--that suspense and mystery work better when the viewer gets into the mind of the guilty and the pursued. So rather than Broderick being some all-American Boy Scout, he is a young hacker who likes to get himself into trouble.
When he finally gets into the game system, Broderick is not interested in playing checkers or chess. Instead, he really wants to play Global Thermonuclear War--who wouldn't?--and when the computer asks him which side he wants to be on, he responds sheepishly, "I'll be the Russians!"
War Games dramatized the insanity of nuclear weaponsWar Games dramatized the insanity of nuclear weapons
What follows not only provides great suspense but also cuts sharply against the main assumption behind U.S. strategy in the Cold War--that we are safer by being permanently prepared to launch a devastating counterattack against the USSR.
Alongside the threat of nuclear war is the theme of computers and technology having too much power. At the beginning of the movie, we see two missile commanders in a silo ordered to launch a nuclear attack. They don't realize it is just a test and one of them refuses to carry out his orders.
We then see U.S. Air Force leaders discuss what a problem it is that 22 percent of missile commanders refuse to launch when ordered. This is certainly a problem for the military--although not necessarily for anybody else--and leads to the decision to empower the WOPR to control missile launches.
The lesson is not just about the threat of the growing power of technology, but that the nuclear powers should not act like computers. They should have a heart as well as a mind and see what madness the arms race has wrought.
There is a sense in which this message is directed more at the powers that be than the audience. This leads to some hokiness in how Broderick and Sheedy find the cynical professor who designed the WOPR and they all end up in the position to argue with U.S. military to stop the impending disaster.
But War Games had many opportunities to fall totally flat on its face. The script started as The Genius, a story of a teenage misfit and his relationship with a Stephen Hawking-like physicist. Eventually, the teenager turned into a hacker and the physicist turned into the designer of the WOPR.
Somehow, The Genius turned into a sharp political thriller with the nuclear establishment directly in its crosshairs. It should come as little surprise, though, that War Games does not portray the U.S. military as utterly worthless and irredeemable--as they are portrayed in the 1960s nuclear farce Dr. Strangelove. Certainly, Strangelove is the direct ancestor of War Games and it provides a political critique that is much more pointed and uncompromising, as with the general who thinks acceptable casualties are "10 to 20 million, tops!"
The leading general in War Games, on the other hand, is much more open to a reasonable argument. But we do get to see some of the foolishness at the top with ego battles between military and civilian leaders arguing over whose plan for nuclear holocaust should be accepted by the president and knee-jerk assumptions by military officials that Broderick is working for the KGB, straight out of some right-wing Cold War fantasy.
Ultimately, War Games is a gripping thriller that is great fun to watch with a clear political message--in the game of nuclear war, the only winning move is not to play at all. So how about a nice game of chess instead?
Monday, October 20, 2008
Counting (almost) every vote
http://socialistworker.org/2008/06/03/counting-almost-every-vote
Scott Johnson recalls the real events depicted in Recount, HBO's film about the 2000 election fiasco in Florida.
June 3, 2008
RECOUNT, WHICH premiered last week on HBO, provides an entertaining account of the behind-the-scenes fight over the 2000 Florida election results.
Unfortunately, even though the movie exposes a number of the problems in the Florida election, it presents such a narrow view of the events that, in the end, the Bush team appears to have simply outmaneuvered Gore rather than stolen the election outright through a concerted effort of racism and fraud.
The Florida election crisis--as depicted in Recount--began as simply a too-close-to-call outcome on election night, resulting in a mandatory vote recount. It became clear, however, that there were a number of irregularities that tainted the vote itself. In one county, a "butterfly ballot," in which candidate's names were lined up on two sides of the ballot, resulted in many elderly Jews mistakenly voting for anti-Semite Pat Buchanan, instead of Al Gore.
But even where voters clearly chose the candidate they wanted, many worn-down voting machines--often in lower-income communities--failed to count the "hanging" and "dimpled" chads, or incompletely punched holes, on the ballot. In some places, selecting Gore and then writing in Gore on the same ballot was considered a spoiled ballot, that was rejected by the voting machine.
HBO's film on the Florida election fiasco understates the crimes committed so the Bush family could take back the White HouseHBO's film on the Florida election fiasco understates the crimes committed so the Bush family could take back the White House
Eventually, we are shown that thousands of voters were denied the right to vote at all, as the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush removed the names of supposed felons from the voter rolls, even if they committed a felony in another state or simply shared the name of somebody who had. These people--the majority of whom were Black and tended to vote Democratic--were simply turned away at the polls.
When Kevin Spacey's character discovers this, his team is shocked, and there is a stunned silence. Those votes can't be cast again--"All we can do is make sure this doesn't happen again in 2002," says one staffer. They then continue to go about the business of making sure that the recount is carried out.
And here lies the problem with Recount. At this point, most people would stop and say, "Dear God, how could this happen in a democracy?" That was certainly the response of many people who watched the events play out.
The tactics used in Florida to suppress voter turnout were not only successful (for Bush), they were criminal--exposing the undemocratic and even racist nature of elections in the U.S.
Not only were names scrubbed from the rolls, but police set up roadblocks in Black neighborhoods to slow down traffic to polling places and intimidate people, an action not mentioned in the film.
In short, there was a concerted campaign from well before the election on the part of Jeb Bush's administration in Florida to assure that this crucial swing state would be awarded to his brother. Whether more people in his state wanted Gore to win was simply a minor inconvenience, easily overcome by altering the results--that is, stealing the election.
The racist nature of this effort is occasionally seen in the movie, but not as an overall strategy of disenfranchising the Black vote in order to assure a Bush victory. The entire recount effort, as problematic as it was, simply sought to cover Jeb Bush's tracks and assure the theft was successful. Failing this, the Republican-led Florida legislature was fully prepared to hand the state to Bush, regardless of the recount.
It is hard to believe, watching Recount, that such a systematic campaign could have been carried out. Most of the problems are seen as a series of unrelated irregularities, made difficult to overcome by the intransigence of the Bush team.
James Baker, the head of the Bush effort to stop the recount, is portrayed as a tough fighter determined to win, but otherwise, a pretty decent guy--not an election-stealer.
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was responsible for managing the recount and also happened to be the chair of the Bush for President campaign in Florida, is presented as such a buffoon that it's hard to see collusion in her actions rather than just self-serving incompetence.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
FOR ALL of Spacey's demands that "every vote should be counted," there is surprisingly little interest in the most indisputable fact of the election--Gore won over 500,000 more votes than Bush nationwide.
That Bush could still take the election is a result of the slavery-era Electoral College system still used in U.S. elections. This system was meant to assure that ordinary voters did not actually choose the president, and that Southern slave states would dominate in the federal government.
Gore's victory in the popular vote--though not the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College--is mentioned only once in passing in the film, simply as justification for why a thorough recount in Florida should occur.
Unsurprisingly for people who lived through these events--although maybe more surprising for those only familiar with them through the movie--a wave of protests occurred throughout the country, not over chads and court appeals, but over the civil rights issues raised by the election.
Many of these were small, although they were much more significant in Florida where people had experienced disenfranchisement firsthand, a reminder of what they and their parents had lived through under Jim Crow.
Protesters in Recount are occasionally seen outside courthouses and state government offices, but the only time they are discussed is near the beginning of the film, when Secretary of State and Gore supporter Warren Christopher states that Jesse Jackson should be asked to stop leading protests, so as not to hurt their chances in court.
The Gore strategy wasn't concerned with exposing the dark side of American elections, but asking the courts for recounts in just the right number of counties to assure a victory.
Had Gore actually taken up the civil rights issues, he might have been able to better expose the racist election theft that was underway and build pressure for a more thorough recount. Instead, his focus on appearing respectable simply allowed the Bush team to brush them aside.
Ironically, Gore's recount strategy would have failed to gain him enough votes to win Florida, although a full recount of all the uncounted votes in all of the counties--that is, counting all the votes--would have won Gore the election, according to a study by the New York Times and other media outlets.
This is never revealed, which isn't surprising, as the articles that described this study claimed the study proved that Bush won Florida!
This evidence that our real-life protagonists really were fighting the good fight would have provided a stirring conclusion. Instead, we simply see boxes of Florida ballots stored away in a warehouse to be forgotten forever, a la Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Unfortunately, Recount misses the opportunity to provide a more dramatic--not to mention a more thoroughly historical--story by accepting the narrow premise of the Gore campaign, and not seeing the Florida recount as fundamentally a civil rights issue. This may be too much to ask of the movie--but, as Spacey says, every vote should be counted.
Scott Johnson recalls the real events depicted in Recount, HBO's film about the 2000 election fiasco in Florida.
June 3, 2008
RECOUNT, WHICH premiered last week on HBO, provides an entertaining account of the behind-the-scenes fight over the 2000 Florida election results.
Unfortunately, even though the movie exposes a number of the problems in the Florida election, it presents such a narrow view of the events that, in the end, the Bush team appears to have simply outmaneuvered Gore rather than stolen the election outright through a concerted effort of racism and fraud.
The Florida election crisis--as depicted in Recount--began as simply a too-close-to-call outcome on election night, resulting in a mandatory vote recount. It became clear, however, that there were a number of irregularities that tainted the vote itself. In one county, a "butterfly ballot," in which candidate's names were lined up on two sides of the ballot, resulted in many elderly Jews mistakenly voting for anti-Semite Pat Buchanan, instead of Al Gore.
But even where voters clearly chose the candidate they wanted, many worn-down voting machines--often in lower-income communities--failed to count the "hanging" and "dimpled" chads, or incompletely punched holes, on the ballot. In some places, selecting Gore and then writing in Gore on the same ballot was considered a spoiled ballot, that was rejected by the voting machine.
HBO's film on the Florida election fiasco understates the crimes committed so the Bush family could take back the White HouseHBO's film on the Florida election fiasco understates the crimes committed so the Bush family could take back the White House
Eventually, we are shown that thousands of voters were denied the right to vote at all, as the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush removed the names of supposed felons from the voter rolls, even if they committed a felony in another state or simply shared the name of somebody who had. These people--the majority of whom were Black and tended to vote Democratic--were simply turned away at the polls.
When Kevin Spacey's character discovers this, his team is shocked, and there is a stunned silence. Those votes can't be cast again--"All we can do is make sure this doesn't happen again in 2002," says one staffer. They then continue to go about the business of making sure that the recount is carried out.
And here lies the problem with Recount. At this point, most people would stop and say, "Dear God, how could this happen in a democracy?" That was certainly the response of many people who watched the events play out.
The tactics used in Florida to suppress voter turnout were not only successful (for Bush), they were criminal--exposing the undemocratic and even racist nature of elections in the U.S.
Not only were names scrubbed from the rolls, but police set up roadblocks in Black neighborhoods to slow down traffic to polling places and intimidate people, an action not mentioned in the film.
In short, there was a concerted campaign from well before the election on the part of Jeb Bush's administration in Florida to assure that this crucial swing state would be awarded to his brother. Whether more people in his state wanted Gore to win was simply a minor inconvenience, easily overcome by altering the results--that is, stealing the election.
The racist nature of this effort is occasionally seen in the movie, but not as an overall strategy of disenfranchising the Black vote in order to assure a Bush victory. The entire recount effort, as problematic as it was, simply sought to cover Jeb Bush's tracks and assure the theft was successful. Failing this, the Republican-led Florida legislature was fully prepared to hand the state to Bush, regardless of the recount.
It is hard to believe, watching Recount, that such a systematic campaign could have been carried out. Most of the problems are seen as a series of unrelated irregularities, made difficult to overcome by the intransigence of the Bush team.
James Baker, the head of the Bush effort to stop the recount, is portrayed as a tough fighter determined to win, but otherwise, a pretty decent guy--not an election-stealer.
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was responsible for managing the recount and also happened to be the chair of the Bush for President campaign in Florida, is presented as such a buffoon that it's hard to see collusion in her actions rather than just self-serving incompetence.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
FOR ALL of Spacey's demands that "every vote should be counted," there is surprisingly little interest in the most indisputable fact of the election--Gore won over 500,000 more votes than Bush nationwide.
That Bush could still take the election is a result of the slavery-era Electoral College system still used in U.S. elections. This system was meant to assure that ordinary voters did not actually choose the president, and that Southern slave states would dominate in the federal government.
Gore's victory in the popular vote--though not the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College--is mentioned only once in passing in the film, simply as justification for why a thorough recount in Florida should occur.
Unsurprisingly for people who lived through these events--although maybe more surprising for those only familiar with them through the movie--a wave of protests occurred throughout the country, not over chads and court appeals, but over the civil rights issues raised by the election.
Many of these were small, although they were much more significant in Florida where people had experienced disenfranchisement firsthand, a reminder of what they and their parents had lived through under Jim Crow.
Protesters in Recount are occasionally seen outside courthouses and state government offices, but the only time they are discussed is near the beginning of the film, when Secretary of State and Gore supporter Warren Christopher states that Jesse Jackson should be asked to stop leading protests, so as not to hurt their chances in court.
The Gore strategy wasn't concerned with exposing the dark side of American elections, but asking the courts for recounts in just the right number of counties to assure a victory.
Had Gore actually taken up the civil rights issues, he might have been able to better expose the racist election theft that was underway and build pressure for a more thorough recount. Instead, his focus on appearing respectable simply allowed the Bush team to brush them aside.
Ironically, Gore's recount strategy would have failed to gain him enough votes to win Florida, although a full recount of all the uncounted votes in all of the counties--that is, counting all the votes--would have won Gore the election, according to a study by the New York Times and other media outlets.
This is never revealed, which isn't surprising, as the articles that described this study claimed the study proved that Bush won Florida!
This evidence that our real-life protagonists really were fighting the good fight would have provided a stirring conclusion. Instead, we simply see boxes of Florida ballots stored away in a warehouse to be forgotten forever, a la Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Unfortunately, Recount misses the opportunity to provide a more dramatic--not to mention a more thoroughly historical--story by accepting the narrow premise of the Gore campaign, and not seeing the Florida recount as fundamentally a civil rights issue. This may be too much to ask of the movie--but, as Spacey says, every vote should be counted.
Friday, March 7, 2008
City of a thousand foreclosures
http://socialistworker.org/2008/03/07/Stockton-foreclosures
Scott Johnson explains why his hometown of Stockton, Calif., is being hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.
March 7, 2008 | Issue 664
FOR MOST of 2007, Stockton, Calif., topped all lists of the American cities worst hit by the housing crisis.
As of last summer, one out of every 27 homes in Stockton was in foreclosure--an increase of 256 percent over the previous year. The fact that Detroit--a rust-belt city well known for its long-term economic collapse--took the lead in foreclosures late last year only goes to show the depth of the crisis in Stockton.
But the foreclosure crisis in Stockton didn't come out of nowhere. It's only the latest chapter in the roller-coaster ride that the city has been through over the past decade.
I grew up in Stockton and lived there through the mid-1990s. When I left, the city was still struggling to revive after the early '90s recession, and was best known for its incredibly high crime rate. That hasn't changed--in 2005, Stockton had the highest violent crime rate in California, putting it ahead of Oakland, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
What did change, however, was a sense that the city was getting back on its feet and beginning to move forward.
In the late 1990s, the shopping malls often seemed desolate, with surprisingly few shoppers and storefronts closing faster than they were opening. More recently, though, business and development thrived with the arrival of more big box retailers, as well as a $500 million downtown revitalization project that included the construction of a new arena for live performances and a new stadium for the minor league baseball team.
Downtown Stockton went from being notorious as a center of crime and poverty to a place where families went for weekend entertainment.
But as it turns out, much of this resurgence was built on sand. Stockton's growth was based on the booming housing market, which was spurred large part by relocating Bay Area residents looking for a home they could afford.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WITH STOCKTON within a 90-minute drive of San Francisco--although it takes up to an hour longer during rush hour and bad weather--the city's relatively low cost of living, combined with the relatively high wages for Bay Area employees, made it seem ideal for relocation.
During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, people from around the country flocked to the Bay Area to cash in on the new gold rush. But after the bubble burst, the early 2000s saw cities like San Francisco and Oakland shrink in size. Meanwhile, Stockton's population grew by 17 percent, from 243,000 to 285,000.
Considering that the median home price in San Francisco in 2000 was $566,000, but only $133,000 in San Joaquin County, where Stockton is located, the attraction was clear. According to Stockton's main newspaper, the Record, "By 2001, Stockton real-estate agents reported that eight out of 10 home buyers were coming from the Bay Area."
It's important to note that these Bay Area emigrants weren't necessarily millionaires. On the contrary, they were people who mostly couldn't afford a half-million-dollar mortgage in San Francisco.
For a generation of parents who don't expect to see their children to earn more than they do, home ownership means at least having something to pass on--so for many Bay Area workers, the hot summers of the Central Valley and the exhausting commute were worth it.
An increase in demand for housing due to an influx of higher-income homebuyers, along with an aggressive development plan aimed at attracting new buyers, caused a speculative bubble. By the end of 2006, the median home price in the county had nearly tripled since the beginning of the decade to $385,000.
According to a study from November of last year, the average family in San Joaquin County couldn't afford 95 percent of the homes on the market in the county. Home ownership became virtually unattainable for them.
Once prices maxed out and the bubble burst, there was a surge in defaults, and mortgage holders couldn't sell the homes they foreclosed on. Many homebuyers and developers are now thinking twice before getting into this mess, which puts Stockton's future growth plans in jeopardy.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BUT THIS is only part of the story. It wasn't only an influx of outsiders that created the housing bubble. The root of the problem in Stockton is the same as everywhere else--people were convinced to buy homes at inflated prices, reassured by a whole cast of unscrupulous characters that everything would work out.
The realtors, lenders and banks--and the corporate boards that oversaw the whole process and orchestrated massive profit margins out of it--are responsible for this debacle.
A recently retired escrow manager at a title company in Stockton related to me how the industry set up new homebuyers for failure. "Almost every single day, I would see a young couple in their late 20s or early 30s who were buying their first home and were in way over their head," she says. "When I went over their contract with them, I would invariably find something they hadn't agreed to, like a variable interest rate or hidden fees that hadn't been explained."
In fact, it wasn't uncommon for a homebuyer to have to unexpectedly come up with thousands of dollars in fees in order to close the deal--even when they had been told that no down payment was required for the mortgage.
Some of these were "garbage fees"--which included, for example, the lender charging hundreds of dollars for printing out the paperwork for the contract. But this was trivial compared to the unexpected rise in mortgage payments built into the contracts on variable rate loans.
The former escrow manager told me that when realtors or lenders were called on to explain the full implications of the contracts, they always found a way of convincing buyers that it would work out in their best interest. As she explained, "They would say, 'Interest rates are going down, the price on your home is going up, your salary is going to increase, so this will all work out. You can trust me.'"
Of course, none of these things about interest rates or rising salaries were actually going to happen. But for a lot of people, they were facing the final obstacle to getting their dream home and were therefore willing to believe the lenders--and in any case, they were already committed to buying and couldn't see how they could back out.
"The problem," the former escrow manager told me, "was always that it was a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and they had to be out of their apartment on Saturday or Sunday. So they were basically pressured into making a decision at the last minute that they weren't prepared for."
Once the variable interest rates started climbing, homebuyers could no longer pay their mortgages and defaults ensued.
Capitalist crises don't merely create wreckage in their immediate path. They also indirectly affect all sorts of people who never saw them coming.
So while the worst hit are people who are losing everything because they are stuck with a skyrocketing monthly mortgage payment, renters are also facing new difficulties. Increased demand is driving up the cost of renting, making it increasingly difficult, even for those with access to vouchers for low-income families, to find an affordable apartment.
There have also been stories about renters being evicted from foreclosed properties--with no power to stop the eviction, they face demands that they move within days, and may struggle to get a refund for paid rent and security deposits.
Beyond this, the growing number of mortgage defaults in places like Stockton are causing an even deeper financial crisis, which is having an effect on the world economy. The mortgage crisis will, thus, cause the coming recession to be that much worse--and the layoffs and wage cuts that are a product of the economic downturn will lead to further declines in home prices and put a strain on even more households struggling to pay off mortgages.
It is a vicious circle--and the culprit is the capitalist free market system.
Scott Johnson explains why his hometown of Stockton, Calif., is being hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.
March 7, 2008 | Issue 664
FOR MOST of 2007, Stockton, Calif., topped all lists of the American cities worst hit by the housing crisis.
As of last summer, one out of every 27 homes in Stockton was in foreclosure--an increase of 256 percent over the previous year. The fact that Detroit--a rust-belt city well known for its long-term economic collapse--took the lead in foreclosures late last year only goes to show the depth of the crisis in Stockton.
But the foreclosure crisis in Stockton didn't come out of nowhere. It's only the latest chapter in the roller-coaster ride that the city has been through over the past decade.
I grew up in Stockton and lived there through the mid-1990s. When I left, the city was still struggling to revive after the early '90s recession, and was best known for its incredibly high crime rate. That hasn't changed--in 2005, Stockton had the highest violent crime rate in California, putting it ahead of Oakland, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
What did change, however, was a sense that the city was getting back on its feet and beginning to move forward.
In the late 1990s, the shopping malls often seemed desolate, with surprisingly few shoppers and storefronts closing faster than they were opening. More recently, though, business and development thrived with the arrival of more big box retailers, as well as a $500 million downtown revitalization project that included the construction of a new arena for live performances and a new stadium for the minor league baseball team.
Downtown Stockton went from being notorious as a center of crime and poverty to a place where families went for weekend entertainment.
But as it turns out, much of this resurgence was built on sand. Stockton's growth was based on the booming housing market, which was spurred large part by relocating Bay Area residents looking for a home they could afford.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WITH STOCKTON within a 90-minute drive of San Francisco--although it takes up to an hour longer during rush hour and bad weather--the city's relatively low cost of living, combined with the relatively high wages for Bay Area employees, made it seem ideal for relocation.
During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, people from around the country flocked to the Bay Area to cash in on the new gold rush. But after the bubble burst, the early 2000s saw cities like San Francisco and Oakland shrink in size. Meanwhile, Stockton's population grew by 17 percent, from 243,000 to 285,000.
Considering that the median home price in San Francisco in 2000 was $566,000, but only $133,000 in San Joaquin County, where Stockton is located, the attraction was clear. According to Stockton's main newspaper, the Record, "By 2001, Stockton real-estate agents reported that eight out of 10 home buyers were coming from the Bay Area."
It's important to note that these Bay Area emigrants weren't necessarily millionaires. On the contrary, they were people who mostly couldn't afford a half-million-dollar mortgage in San Francisco.
For a generation of parents who don't expect to see their children to earn more than they do, home ownership means at least having something to pass on--so for many Bay Area workers, the hot summers of the Central Valley and the exhausting commute were worth it.
An increase in demand for housing due to an influx of higher-income homebuyers, along with an aggressive development plan aimed at attracting new buyers, caused a speculative bubble. By the end of 2006, the median home price in the county had nearly tripled since the beginning of the decade to $385,000.
According to a study from November of last year, the average family in San Joaquin County couldn't afford 95 percent of the homes on the market in the county. Home ownership became virtually unattainable for them.
Once prices maxed out and the bubble burst, there was a surge in defaults, and mortgage holders couldn't sell the homes they foreclosed on. Many homebuyers and developers are now thinking twice before getting into this mess, which puts Stockton's future growth plans in jeopardy.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BUT THIS is only part of the story. It wasn't only an influx of outsiders that created the housing bubble. The root of the problem in Stockton is the same as everywhere else--people were convinced to buy homes at inflated prices, reassured by a whole cast of unscrupulous characters that everything would work out.
The realtors, lenders and banks--and the corporate boards that oversaw the whole process and orchestrated massive profit margins out of it--are responsible for this debacle.
A recently retired escrow manager at a title company in Stockton related to me how the industry set up new homebuyers for failure. "Almost every single day, I would see a young couple in their late 20s or early 30s who were buying their first home and were in way over their head," she says. "When I went over their contract with them, I would invariably find something they hadn't agreed to, like a variable interest rate or hidden fees that hadn't been explained."
In fact, it wasn't uncommon for a homebuyer to have to unexpectedly come up with thousands of dollars in fees in order to close the deal--even when they had been told that no down payment was required for the mortgage.
Some of these were "garbage fees"--which included, for example, the lender charging hundreds of dollars for printing out the paperwork for the contract. But this was trivial compared to the unexpected rise in mortgage payments built into the contracts on variable rate loans.
The former escrow manager told me that when realtors or lenders were called on to explain the full implications of the contracts, they always found a way of convincing buyers that it would work out in their best interest. As she explained, "They would say, 'Interest rates are going down, the price on your home is going up, your salary is going to increase, so this will all work out. You can trust me.'"
Of course, none of these things about interest rates or rising salaries were actually going to happen. But for a lot of people, they were facing the final obstacle to getting their dream home and were therefore willing to believe the lenders--and in any case, they were already committed to buying and couldn't see how they could back out.
"The problem," the former escrow manager told me, "was always that it was a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and they had to be out of their apartment on Saturday or Sunday. So they were basically pressured into making a decision at the last minute that they weren't prepared for."
Once the variable interest rates started climbing, homebuyers could no longer pay their mortgages and defaults ensued.
Capitalist crises don't merely create wreckage in their immediate path. They also indirectly affect all sorts of people who never saw them coming.
So while the worst hit are people who are losing everything because they are stuck with a skyrocketing monthly mortgage payment, renters are also facing new difficulties. Increased demand is driving up the cost of renting, making it increasingly difficult, even for those with access to vouchers for low-income families, to find an affordable apartment.
There have also been stories about renters being evicted from foreclosed properties--with no power to stop the eviction, they face demands that they move within days, and may struggle to get a refund for paid rent and security deposits.
Beyond this, the growing number of mortgage defaults in places like Stockton are causing an even deeper financial crisis, which is having an effect on the world economy. The mortgage crisis will, thus, cause the coming recession to be that much worse--and the layoffs and wage cuts that are a product of the economic downturn will lead to further declines in home prices and put a strain on even more households struggling to pay off mortgages.
It is a vicious circle--and the culprit is the capitalist free market system.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
A safe-haven for terrorists
U.S. has become haven for war criminals, senator says
By Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers Wed Nov 14, 5:54 PM ET
WASHINGTON — More than 1,000 people from 85 countries who are accused of such crimes as rape, killings, torture and genocide are living in the United States , according to Department of Homeland Security figures.
America has become a haven for the world's war criminals because it lacks the laws needed to prosecute them, Sen. Richard Durbin , D-Ill., said Wednesday. There's been only one U.S. indictment of someone suspected of a serious human-rights abuse. Durbin said torture was the only serious human-rights violation that was a crime under American law when committed outside the United States by a non-American national.
"This is unacceptable. Our laws must change and our determination to end this shameful situation must become a priority," Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, said at a hearing of the subcommittee Wednesday.
He's trying to get more information about specific cases.
One is that of Juan Romagoza Arce, the director of a clinic that provides free care for the poor in Washington . In 1980, Romagoza was a young doctor caring for the poor in El Salvador during the early period of his country's civil war when the military seized him and tortured him for 22 days. An estimated 75,000 people died in the 12-year war.
Romagoza told Durbin that he was given electric shocks until he lost consciousness, then kicked and burned with cigarettes until he came to. He also told of being sodomized, nearly asphyxiated in a hood containing calcium oxide— which can cause severe shortness of breath when inhaled— and subjected to waterboarding, including being hung by his feet with his head immersed in water until he nearly drowned.
Romagoza and two other torture victims brought a civil suit in U.S. federal court in West Palm Beach, Fla. , against two Salvadoran generals who moved to Florida in 1989: Jose Guillermo Garcia , who was the minister of defense, and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova , who was the director general of the Salvadoran National Guard .
In 2002, a jury found them liable for the torture of the three, and a judgment of $54.6 million was entered against them and upheld on appeal.
Romagoza said he didn't expect to see any of the money.
He testified that he'd received many threatening phone calls and letters at the time of the trial but that he'd overcome his fears and testified.
"I felt like I was in the prow of a boat and that there were many people rowing behind that were moving me into this moment," he told Durbin's panel. "I felt that if I looked back at them I'd weep, because I'd see them again, wounded, tortured, raped, naked, torn and bleeding. So I didn't look back, but I felt their support, their strength and their energy."
He said he and others were angry and frustrated that the two men "live in the same country where we have found refuge from their persecution."
Durbin said he'd send a letter asking the U.S. attorney in South Florida what was being done in the case.
"If he says he doesn't have authority, we should change the law. If he has the authority and is not using it, we should change the U.S. attorney," Durbin said.
Durbin and Sen. Tom Coburn , R-Okla., have introduced legislation that would authorize the government to prosecute anyone found in the U.S. who's guilty of genocide, human trafficking or recruiting child soldiers.
David Scheffer is a Northwestern University law professor who was the ambassador at large for war-crimes issues during the Clinton administration. He testified that after the experience of war-crimes tribunals after World War II and international tribunals prosecuting many atrocities over the past 15 years, "one would be forgiven to assume that surely in the United States the law is now well established to enable U.S. courts— criminal and military— to investigate and prosecute the full range of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. . . .
"That, however, is not the case."
By Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers Wed Nov 14, 5:54 PM ET
WASHINGTON — More than 1,000 people from 85 countries who are accused of such crimes as rape, killings, torture and genocide are living in the United States , according to Department of Homeland Security figures.
America has become a haven for the world's war criminals because it lacks the laws needed to prosecute them, Sen. Richard Durbin , D-Ill., said Wednesday. There's been only one U.S. indictment of someone suspected of a serious human-rights abuse. Durbin said torture was the only serious human-rights violation that was a crime under American law when committed outside the United States by a non-American national.
"This is unacceptable. Our laws must change and our determination to end this shameful situation must become a priority," Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, said at a hearing of the subcommittee Wednesday.
He's trying to get more information about specific cases.
One is that of Juan Romagoza Arce, the director of a clinic that provides free care for the poor in Washington . In 1980, Romagoza was a young doctor caring for the poor in El Salvador during the early period of his country's civil war when the military seized him and tortured him for 22 days. An estimated 75,000 people died in the 12-year war.
Romagoza told Durbin that he was given electric shocks until he lost consciousness, then kicked and burned with cigarettes until he came to. He also told of being sodomized, nearly asphyxiated in a hood containing calcium oxide— which can cause severe shortness of breath when inhaled— and subjected to waterboarding, including being hung by his feet with his head immersed in water until he nearly drowned.
Romagoza and two other torture victims brought a civil suit in U.S. federal court in West Palm Beach, Fla. , against two Salvadoran generals who moved to Florida in 1989: Jose Guillermo Garcia , who was the minister of defense, and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova , who was the director general of the Salvadoran National Guard .
In 2002, a jury found them liable for the torture of the three, and a judgment of $54.6 million was entered against them and upheld on appeal.
Romagoza said he didn't expect to see any of the money.
He testified that he'd received many threatening phone calls and letters at the time of the trial but that he'd overcome his fears and testified.
"I felt like I was in the prow of a boat and that there were many people rowing behind that were moving me into this moment," he told Durbin's panel. "I felt that if I looked back at them I'd weep, because I'd see them again, wounded, tortured, raped, naked, torn and bleeding. So I didn't look back, but I felt their support, their strength and their energy."
He said he and others were angry and frustrated that the two men "live in the same country where we have found refuge from their persecution."
Durbin said he'd send a letter asking the U.S. attorney in South Florida what was being done in the case.
"If he says he doesn't have authority, we should change the law. If he has the authority and is not using it, we should change the U.S. attorney," Durbin said.
Durbin and Sen. Tom Coburn , R-Okla., have introduced legislation that would authorize the government to prosecute anyone found in the U.S. who's guilty of genocide, human trafficking or recruiting child soldiers.
David Scheffer is a Northwestern University law professor who was the ambassador at large for war-crimes issues during the Clinton administration. He testified that after the experience of war-crimes tribunals after World War II and international tribunals prosecuting many atrocities over the past 15 years, "one would be forgiven to assume that surely in the United States the law is now well established to enable U.S. courts— criminal and military— to investigate and prosecute the full range of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. . . .
"That, however, is not the case."
Friday, November 9, 2007
You're a Tory? What on EARTH is that?
LONDON (AFP) - Britain's main opposition leader David Cameron was initially delighted that supermodel Kate Moss asked for his phone number -- until he realised she thought he could help her with her drains.
Conservative Party leader Cameron said in an interview to be broadcast Saturday that he met Moss at a charity bash recently and inexplicably found himself engaged in a conversation with her about flood damage to her home.
"So I went on like this, twittering on, and she turned around and said, 'God, you sound like a really useful guy, can I have your phone number?'" he told the Parkinson chatshow on ITV1.
"I went back to my table and said, 'The good news is, I met Kate Moss and she wanted my telephone number. The bad news is, I think she thinks I'm something to do with drainage'."
Slick media operator Cameron is hardly plumber material. He went to Britain's top fee-paying school Eton and the elite Oxford University.
But he has been mopping up recently after a sustained leak in support for the governing Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Conservative Party leader Cameron said in an interview to be broadcast Saturday that he met Moss at a charity bash recently and inexplicably found himself engaged in a conversation with her about flood damage to her home.
"So I went on like this, twittering on, and she turned around and said, 'God, you sound like a really useful guy, can I have your phone number?'" he told the Parkinson chatshow on ITV1.
"I went back to my table and said, 'The good news is, I met Kate Moss and she wanted my telephone number. The bad news is, I think she thinks I'm something to do with drainage'."
Slick media operator Cameron is hardly plumber material. He went to Britain's top fee-paying school Eton and the elite Oxford University.
But he has been mopping up recently after a sustained leak in support for the governing Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Blame the children, not the system
This is shocking and disgusting. The legal issue, apparently, is whether this child knew right from wrong. The problem is, he almost certainly did know that it is "wrong" to play with matches, and yes he still cannot be held accountable for the massive destruction of the fires. Not only did local authorities seem to learn almost nothing from the last fires in 2003, but developers have also expanded without caution into areas that would be better left avoided. The idea that this child will be fined millions of dollars and made a ward of the state is only going to to deflect blame from where it really belongs.
By the way, in 5 years there will be a whole new generation of 10-year-olds who have never heard of this kid or the 2007 SoCal fires. Are they going to be "deterred" from playing with matches by the draconian punishment of this kid? Almost certainly not. If you really want to deter this sort of destruction, expand the forest fire fighters, limit development in fire-prone areas, give everybody access to the sort fire-prevention measures that the rich have, and bring the National Guard home from Iraq. THAT might start to solve some of these problems.
*******************************************************************
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071107/us_time/willachildbechargedinthefires
Will a Child Be Charged in the Fires?
By MICHAEL LINDENBERGER 34 minutes ago
The 10-year-old boy who accidentally started one of the worst California wildfires last month could face stern consequences, should prosecutors decide to bring charges. Though too young to be charged as an adult, the boy could still face millions of dollars in fines, removal from his home and possible detention as a ward of the state. For now the boy's fate - and that of his parents, who would be partially liable for any restitution payments he would have to pay - rests with Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. His office told TIME he has not yet decided how to proceed. "The matter is under review," spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons told TIME on Monday. "No decision has been made."
To bring those charges, all Cooley must decide is whether the boy knew right from wrong - an easy standard to meet, other prosecutors in the state say. "That is a lot easier to establish than you would think," said Cyndi Jo Means, a deputy district attorney in nearby San Diego County who leads that county's juvenile division arson team. "Think of your own children, even very small children; most of the time they know when they did something wrong."
Despite the low hurdle to prosecution, Means contends the California juvenile justice system seeks to help young suspects, who can benefit from counseling and close supervision from the court and case workers. Children under 14 are nearly always charged as juveniles, not adults - no matter what the crime. "We try to help the child, and prosecuting them as adults would not be very helpful," Means said. Any finding of guilt, she added, would not follow the boy into adulthood.
Southern Californians are still sorting through the wreckage from the fires, which burned more than 800 square miles - an area 40 times as large as Manhattan - and destroyed some 2,100 homes. The 10-year-old's carelessness sparked the Buckweed fire in Los Angeles County, which destroyed 21 homes and injured at least three people. Those losses have left some residents in a less than forgiving mood. "If you accidentally set a massive fire that destroys homes, cause residents to flee for their lives and requires millions of dollars in resources to extinguish, then you damn well need to pay the piper," wrote Dave Bossert on his online newspaper, The West Ranch Beacon.
Peter Arenella, a professor at the UCLA Law School said any prosecution of a 10-year-old that aims to punish the boy, rather than help him, "is an absurdity. The only justification for that would be if, in some extreme case, there was a need to protect society from him." Barring that, he said, prosecutors should be reluctant to sweep the boy up into the legal system.
It's hard to see how stern consequences - taking the boy from his parents, for instance, and handing down a multi-million fine - would be helpful to the 10-year-old. Much of the decision of whether to prosecute him rests with Cooley, who like prosecutors everywhere has a great deal of discretion. Unless uglier details about the boy's behavior are discovered, he could decide that in this case playing with matches doesn't rise the level of arson - even if the boy admits he knew that doing so was wrong. As Means points out, children almost always admit they knew their actions were wrong when they are questioned by police or prosecutors, which can be a scary experience for a kid.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for inmates who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, it argued that teenagers' brains are not fully formed until they are grown, and that punishing them as adults was therefore cruel and unusual. No one is saying a 10-year-old boy ought to be executed for setting a fire, but even the lesser punishment the boy is facing could be nearly as cruel. That has led some to argue that the bar for prosecution ought to be higher than simply proving that he knew right from wrong. Boys know lots of things are wrong - from ignoring bedtimes to eating too many cookies. A better standard, some argue, would be determining whether the boy, at 10, had any way of knowing the consequences of what he was doing with those matches.
With reporting by Jill Underwood/San Diego
By the way, in 5 years there will be a whole new generation of 10-year-olds who have never heard of this kid or the 2007 SoCal fires. Are they going to be "deterred" from playing with matches by the draconian punishment of this kid? Almost certainly not. If you really want to deter this sort of destruction, expand the forest fire fighters, limit development in fire-prone areas, give everybody access to the sort fire-prevention measures that the rich have, and bring the National Guard home from Iraq. THAT might start to solve some of these problems.
*******************************************************************
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071107/us_time/willachildbechargedinthefires
Will a Child Be Charged in the Fires?
By MICHAEL LINDENBERGER 34 minutes ago
The 10-year-old boy who accidentally started one of the worst California wildfires last month could face stern consequences, should prosecutors decide to bring charges. Though too young to be charged as an adult, the boy could still face millions of dollars in fines, removal from his home and possible detention as a ward of the state. For now the boy's fate - and that of his parents, who would be partially liable for any restitution payments he would have to pay - rests with Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. His office told TIME he has not yet decided how to proceed. "The matter is under review," spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons told TIME on Monday. "No decision has been made."
To bring those charges, all Cooley must decide is whether the boy knew right from wrong - an easy standard to meet, other prosecutors in the state say. "That is a lot easier to establish than you would think," said Cyndi Jo Means, a deputy district attorney in nearby San Diego County who leads that county's juvenile division arson team. "Think of your own children, even very small children; most of the time they know when they did something wrong."
Despite the low hurdle to prosecution, Means contends the California juvenile justice system seeks to help young suspects, who can benefit from counseling and close supervision from the court and case workers. Children under 14 are nearly always charged as juveniles, not adults - no matter what the crime. "We try to help the child, and prosecuting them as adults would not be very helpful," Means said. Any finding of guilt, she added, would not follow the boy into adulthood.
Southern Californians are still sorting through the wreckage from the fires, which burned more than 800 square miles - an area 40 times as large as Manhattan - and destroyed some 2,100 homes. The 10-year-old's carelessness sparked the Buckweed fire in Los Angeles County, which destroyed 21 homes and injured at least three people. Those losses have left some residents in a less than forgiving mood. "If you accidentally set a massive fire that destroys homes, cause residents to flee for their lives and requires millions of dollars in resources to extinguish, then you damn well need to pay the piper," wrote Dave Bossert on his online newspaper, The West Ranch Beacon.
Peter Arenella, a professor at the UCLA Law School said any prosecution of a 10-year-old that aims to punish the boy, rather than help him, "is an absurdity. The only justification for that would be if, in some extreme case, there was a need to protect society from him." Barring that, he said, prosecutors should be reluctant to sweep the boy up into the legal system.
It's hard to see how stern consequences - taking the boy from his parents, for instance, and handing down a multi-million fine - would be helpful to the 10-year-old. Much of the decision of whether to prosecute him rests with Cooley, who like prosecutors everywhere has a great deal of discretion. Unless uglier details about the boy's behavior are discovered, he could decide that in this case playing with matches doesn't rise the level of arson - even if the boy admits he knew that doing so was wrong. As Means points out, children almost always admit they knew their actions were wrong when they are questioned by police or prosecutors, which can be a scary experience for a kid.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for inmates who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, it argued that teenagers' brains are not fully formed until they are grown, and that punishing them as adults was therefore cruel and unusual. No one is saying a 10-year-old boy ought to be executed for setting a fire, but even the lesser punishment the boy is facing could be nearly as cruel. That has led some to argue that the bar for prosecution ought to be higher than simply proving that he knew right from wrong. Boys know lots of things are wrong - from ignoring bedtimes to eating too many cookies. A better standard, some argue, would be determining whether the boy, at 10, had any way of knowing the consequences of what he was doing with those matches.
With reporting by Jill Underwood/San Diego
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Democrats vs. democracy
They must be terrified that even a fake candidate will be more popular than they are.
Sigh . . .
******************************************************
Sigh . . .
******************************************************
Colbert won't appear on SC ballot
By JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago
COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina Democrats squashed Stephen Colbert's fanciful White House bid on Thursday.
Colbert, who poses as a conservative talk-show host on the Comedy Central cable network, filed to get on the ballot as a Democratic candidate in his native South Carolina. His campaign paid a $2,500 filing fee just before the noon deadline, said state Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler.
However, after about 40 minutes of discussion by top party officials, the executive council voted 13-3 to keep the host of "The Colbert Report" off the ballot.
"He's really trying to use South Carolina Democrats as suckers so he can further a comedy routine," said Waring Howe, a member of the executive council. And Colbert "serves to detract from the serious candidates on the ballot."
But state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter told the committee Colbert could showcase the state "in a way that none of the other candidates on the ballot have been able to do."
"I think you're taking this a little too seriously," she said.
When Colbert announced his candidacy on his show last month, he said he would run only in this key primary state. He said then he planned to run as a Democrat and a Republican — so he could lose twice.
The GOP filing fee is $35,000; the deadline was Thursday night.
Democrats say he will get his $2,500 back.
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