EFTA00657822.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 04/28/2013 Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 13:33:41 +0000 Attachments: S0_Human_Body_Mysteries.pdf; Why_does_America_lose_its_head_over_terror_but_ignore_its_daily_gun_deaths_Michael_ Cohen_The_Guardian_April_21,_2013.pdf; The_end_of_macro_magic_Robert_Samuelson_TWP_April_21,_2013.pdf; Deficits_are_falling._For_now_Jeanne_Sahadi_CNN_Money_April_22,_2013.pdf; Richard_Havens'_bio.pdf; Ken_Burns_takes_strong_tone_in_Central_Park_Five_Noel_Murray_review_LAT_Apri1_21 ,_2013.pdf; Solar_becomes_single_largest_source_of_new_grid_capacity_in_the_USA_LexisNexis_04_ 23 2013.pdf; Libya_on_shaky_ground_as_insurgency_rises_Zawya_Apr_22_2013.pdf; Reasons_for_optimism_in_today's_world_Fareed_Zakaria_CNN_World_April_25,_2013.pd f; The_l_Percent_Paul_Krugman_NYT_April_25,_20 I 3.pdf Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png DEAR FRIEND I was mystified this past week by the out-cry of Republicans lawmakers in Washington demanding to know how did the FBI and other Homeland agencies miss the markers that allowed Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to go unnoticed after Russian security officials flagged Tamerian as "Islamist." I believe that in the absence of being a police state there was simply no way that authorities could have anticipated and prevented the bombing of the Boston Marathon. But rest assured that we will move heaven and earth looking for answers. Since the 9/11 attacks, we have demonstrated that when alienated young men who are foreign-born and Muslim kill innocents, we will do anything in our power to keep such atrocities from happening again. While trying to assess blame because our intelligence agencies were not being able to prevent the Boston attack, some of these same lawmakers are suggesting that in light of this latest terrorist assault Congress should delay immigration reform. The real hypocrisy is that after wanton slaughter in Newtown, that on the same day of Boston bombing, eleven other Americans were killed in gun violence and that these two Boston terrorist were armed to the teeth with all types of guns and ammunition and there is no similar public outcry in Washington for a step-up in gun control reform. However, we have shown that when alienated young men who are not foreign-born or Muslim do the same, we are powerless and as such we need to enact policy changes so that terrorist attacks don't happen again. It is inescapably ironic that while Boston was under siege last week, the Senate was busy rejecting a measure that would have mandated near-universal background checks for gun purchases nationwide — legislation prompted by the massacre of 20 first-graders and six adults last December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Gun violence is an epidemic, costing 30,000 lives in the country each year. Imagine what our laws would be like if the nation were losing 30,000 lives each year to Islamist terrorism. Do you think for one minute that a young man named, say, Abdullah or Hussein — or EFTA00657822 Tsarnaev — would be able to go to a gun show and buy a semiautomatic AR-15 knockoff with a 30- round clip, no questions asked? Would the NRA still argue, as it essentially does now, that those thousands of lives are the price we must pay for the Second Amendment? Obviously when we say "never again" about terrorism, we really mean it. But when we say those same words about gun violence, obviously we really don't. This week I had the pleasure of watching award winning Ken Burns latest documentary film — The Central Park 5 — on PBS. It chronicles the Central Park Jogger case — an assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a female jogger in New York City's Central Park, on April 19, 1989. In a rush to justice, five juvenile males — four black and one Hispanic — were tried and convicted for the crime. The convictions were vacated in 2002 when Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer serving a life sentence for other crimes, confessed to committing the crime alone and DNA evidence confirmed his involvement in the rape. The narrative of The Central Park 5 is based on the perspective of these five teenagers whose lives and that of their families were upended by this total miscarriage of justice. 2,Inline image 1 Rapist suspect Yusef Salaam is escorted by police. Part of the Ken Bums documentary "The Central Park Five." The victim, Ellen Meili was 28 at the time. She lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, working at the Wall Street investment bank Salomon Brothers at the time of the attack. Meili was referred to simply as the "Central Park Jogger" in most media accounts of the incident. She was raped and beaten almost to death. When found about four hours later after the attack, she was suffering from severe hypothermia and blood loss from multiple lacerations and internal bleeding, and her skull had been fractured so badly that her left eye was removed from the socket. The initial medical prognosis was that she would die or, at best, remain in a permanent coma due to her injuries. Remarkably, she largely recovered, with some lingering disabilities related to balance and loss of vision. As a result of the severe trauma, she had no memory of the attack or of any events up to an hour preceding the assault. Contrary to normal police procedure, which stipulates that the names of suspects under the age of sixteen are also to be withheld, the names of the juveniles arrested in this case were released to the press before any of them had been formally arraigned or indicted, including one 14-year-old who was ultimately not charged. The mainstream media's decision to print the names, photos, and addresses of the juvenile suspects while withholding Meili's identity was cited by the editors of the City Sun and the Amsterdam News to explain their own continued use of Meili's name in their coverage of the story. While many teenage suspects were identified (or identified themselves) as participants in the Central Park assaults that night — although not necessarily in the attack on Meili — only five, known later as the Central Park Five, were brought to trial. All five were convicted in 1990. After as much as 4o hours of intensive interrogation by detectives and prosecutors and being told that if they implicated the others they would be released. And then based on these "so called" confessions, four of the juveniles charged — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Kharey Wise. A fifth suspect, Yusef Salaam, made verbal admissions, but refused to sign a confession or make one on videotape. Salaam was, however, implicated by all of the other four and convicted. Salaam's supporters and attorneys charged on appeal that he had been held by police without access to parents or guardians, but as the majority appellate court decision noted, that was because Salaam had initially lied to police in claiming to be 16, and had backed up his claim with a transit pass that indeed (falsely, as it turned out) said that he was 16. If a suspect has reached 16 years of age, his parents or guardians no longer have a right to accompany him during police questioning, or to refuse to permit him to answer any questions. When Salaam informed police of his true age, police permitted his mother to be present. EFTA00657823 No DNA evidence tied the suspects to the crime, so the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confessions. In fact, analysis indicated that the DNA collected at the crime scene did not match any of the suspects — and that the crime scene DNA had all come from a single, as yet unknown person. And not having Johnnie Cochran and the OJ defense "Dream Team," the young defendants sat powerless while the prosecutors threaded together their own words to implicate each other for a crime that not only they didn't do, but they had no knowledge of.... In 2002, another man's confession, plus DNA evidence confirming his crime, led the district attorney's office to recommend vacating the convictions of the teenagers originally accused and sentenced to prison. In 2002, convicted rapist and murderer Matias Reyes, serving a life sentence for other crimes but not, at that point, associated by the police with the attack on Meili, declared that he had committed the assault when he was 17, and that he had acted alone. The DNA evidence confirmed his participation in the crime and identified him as the sole contributor of the semen found in and on the victim "to a factor of one in 6,000,000,000 people". Supporters of the five defendants again claimed their confessions had been coerced. An examination of the inconsistencies between their confessions led the prosecutor to question the veracity of the confessions. District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau's office wrote: '!A comparison of the statements reveals troubling discrepancies.... The accounts given by thefive defendants dffferedfrom one another on the specific details of virtually every major aspect of the crime — who initiated the attack, who knocked the victim down, who undressed her, who struck her, who held her, who raped her, what weapons were used in the course of the assault, and when in the sequence of events the attack took place.... In many other respects the defendants' statements were not corroborated by, consistent with, or explanatory of objective, independent evidence. And some of what they said was simply contrary to establishedfact." On top of this, based on eye witness accounts given to the police at the time that these same kids were seen harassing other people in a totally different part of the park, making it impossible for them to be in both places. Based on Reyes' confession, the DNA evidence, and the questionable confessions, Morgenthau recommended that the convictions be vacated. In light of the "extraordinary circumstances" of the case, the prosecutor recommended that the court vacate not only the convictions related to the assault and rape of Meili, but also those for the other crimes to which the defendants had confessed. The rationale was that the defendants' confessions to the other crimes were made at the same time, and in the same statements, as those related to the attack on Meili. Had the newly discovered evidence been available at the original trials, it might have made the juries question whether any part of the defendants' confessions were trustworthy. Morgenthau's recommendation to vacate the convictions was strongly opposed by Linda Fairstein, who had overseen the original prosecution but had since left the District Attorney's office. The five defendants' convictions were vacated by New York Supreme Court Justice Charles J. Tejada on December 19, 2002. As Morgenthau recommended, Tejada's order vacated the convictions for all the crimes of which the defendants had been convicted. Despite the analysis conducted by the District Attorney's office, New York City detectives maintained that the defendants had "most likely" been Reyes' accomplices in the assault and rape of Meili. Members of the medical crew who treated her stated her injuries were not consistent with Reyes' claim of how he acted alone. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly complained that Morgenthau's staff had denied his detectives access to "important evidence" needed to conduct a thorough investigation. This claim notwithstanding, no indictments, convictions or disciplinary actions were ever taken against District Attorney's office staff members. All of the defendants had completed their prison sentences at the time of Tejada's order, which only had the effect of clearing their names. However one defendant, Santana, remained in jail, convicted of a later, unrelated crime, although his attorney said that his sentence in that case had been extended because of his conviction in the Meili attack. All five were removed from New York State's sex offender registry. EFTA00657824 The crime, one of 3,254 rapes reported in New York City that year, was unique in the level of public outrage it provoked. And as Reverend Calvin 0. Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem told the New York Times, "Thefirst thing you do in the United States ofAmerica when a white woman is raped is round up a bunch of black youths, and I think that's what happened here." That same day, a young black girl was gang-raped in Brooklyn, and then thrown off the roof to her death, with almost no media attention. To sell newspapers, a reporter at the New York Daily News coined the phrase "wilding" suggesting that these five fourteen and fifteen year old were part of a wolf pack preying on innocent civilians in the park for the fun. With headlines "Ambush In The Park" "Wilding," "Wilding Teens Held In Rape," "Teen Gang Rapes Jogger," "Nightmare in Central Park" "Rape and Rampage," "Wolf Pack's Prey," and Mayor Ed Koch describing it as the "Crime of the Century" and Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the City's four major newspapers, demanding that the death penalty be brought back. Being a Black American who was their age in the early 196os, there go by the grace of God, that this didn't happen to me or myfriends. The "wilding" that the newspapers described was no different than the hell raising celebrated by Marlon Brando and James Dean in Hollywood movies. The fact that all five juveniles came from Middle Class homes and none of them had ever been in trouble, was totally ignored. Needless to say, if the jogger had been Black or Latino, Donald Trump would not have noticed. What is even worse is that these five teenagers spent between five to thirteen years in prison, and because they were labeled rapist and were so young, they themselves became prey while incarcerated. And then upon their release being labeled as a felon and rapist, most of them were unable to get jobs. Then there is the immense pain that this unjust railroading cause the families of these five teenagers. The Big Ugly is that although the "real rapist" has admitted that he did the rape alone and has been convicted, the detectives and prosecutors still maintain that these kids were somehow complicit. The Police Department commissioned a panel to review what it happened in The Jogger Case and the Police Department found that it had done nothing wrong, even though it had let the right guy get away and put the wrong people in prison. In 2003, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., and Antron McCray sued the city for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress. As of early 2013, the suit is yet to be settled. And the city is refusing to settle the suits, citing the "confessions that withstood intense scrutiny, infull andfair pretrial hearings and at two lengthy public trials". I strongly urge everyone to see The Central Park 5, so that collectively we will try not to make sure that this never ever happens again, especially since their innocence never received the level of attention that their guilt did. This week I was just sent an article by a friend under a headline applauding the courage of several Senators in Red States who I assumed voted in support of the gun control bill. With this initial view- point, I begin thinking that courage should not be awarded for public officials who are suppose to be doing the right thing, even if the votes might damage their chances for re-election. Especially when firefights and EMT first-responders risk their lives day in and day out. But when I looked closer, the article was actually pointing out the exact opposite to what I first thought. As it was commending Republican legislators for voting against the American public's wishes that background checks be enacted. Courageous Senators Stand Up to American People WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In the halls of the United States Senate, dozens of Senators congratulated themselves today for having what one of them called "the courage and grit to stand up to the overwhelming wishes of the American people? EFTA00657825 "We kept hearing, again and again, that ninety per cent of the American people wanted us to vote a certain way," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). "Well, at the end of the day, we decided that we weren't going to cave in to that kind of special-interest group." "It was a gut check, for sure, but we had to draw a line in the sand," agreed Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S. Carolina). "If we had voted the way the American people wanted us to, it would have sent the message that we're here in Washington to be nothing more than their elected representatives." Calling yesterday's Senate action "a bipartisan effort," Senator Mark Pryor (0-Arkansas) said, "This proves that on a matter that affects the safety of every man, woman, and child in the nation, we can reach across the aisle to defy the interests of all of them." Senator McConnell agreed that yesterday's vote "sent a powerful message," adding, "If the American people think that just because they voted us into office and pay our salaries, benefits, and pensions, we are somehow obliged to listen to them, they are sorely mistaken." Boy had I gotten things wrong based on the article's heading. Because in light of the Newtown massacre (the killing 20five and six year old, in addition to six adults) and that more than 30,000 Americans die each year as a result of gun violence, Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham should be ashamed, as these tone-deaf puppets of special interest are prime examples of what is wrong with democracy in America — as they take their victory lap in a Senate vote that they lost 46 to 54, and against the wishes of 90% of Americans, who publicly supporting tougher gun laws. As many of you know, I am a big fan and supporter of the new leadership in Libya and even with the teething pains of its new democracy and the occasional terrorist attacks (most recently the car bombing this past Tuesday that damaged the French Embassy in Tripoli), Libya's economic figures are the envy of the world. The country's real GDP leaped off the charts with a 104.5% growth last year, and is estimated to register a 20.2% growth this year and a further 10.1% in 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Admittedly, the growth comes after a 62% contraction during the bloody civil war that ended strongman Muammar Gaddafi's 4o-year rule, but the country's rapid return to form has been led purely by oil production. Obviously the lawlessness of the militant extremist groups and distrust of the government by regional leaders continues to drive investors away. The new government is looking to break this cycle by strengthening the judicial system and enforcing the rule of law Libya as it looks to build its economy on the major plank that is the oil sector. Crude output has ramp-up to 1.5 million barrels per day, dose to the 1.6 million to pre-civil war levels and is expected to exceed it this year. Libya faces the twin challenges of stabilizing the economy and responding to the aspirations of the revolution. The short- term challenges are to manage the political transition, normalize the security situation, and exercise budget discipline while maintaining macroeconomic stability. R,Inline image 1 Non-hydrocarbon growth is expected to beat hydrocarbon's growth over the next two years, but makes up less than 5% of exports. The country's non-hydrocarbon budget deficit, which is a more accurate measure of the country's fiscal position, has widened from 139.6% of non-hydrocarbon GDP in 2010 to 191% in 2012, says the IMF. Meanwhile, 64% of the country's expenditure is spent on salaries and subsidies, which leaves little for the massive reconstruction works that need to be carried out across all facets of the Libyan economy - from utilities to basic healthcare and education, as well as the development of natural resources and other sectors. With USD 65 billion in its sovereign wealth fund, financing is not a major short-term issue for the country. This was underlined when the country offered to cut a USD 2 billion check for neighboring Egypt as a deposit. EFTA00657826 Leveraging its sovereign wealth fund, the government obviously has the capacity to create a fund for critical infrastructure. This money can be spent on developing new airports, ports, et cetera. And although Tripoli remains in need of development, many other cities currently lack key infrastructure. But without stability and security, those funds can easily be frittered away on people-pleasing subsidies and recruiting the disaffected youth in the public sector. Over the medium term, the authorities should address issues including institutional capacity building, improving the quality of education, rebuilding infrastructure, putting in place an efficient social safety net, financial market development, and reducing hydrocarbon dependency. And to satisfy the raising expectation, the government has to policies and programs to promote job growth. With everything said, the new Libya has great potential, and with stability the possibility of becoming the Qatar or UAE in North Africa, as well as a major financial and cultural center. In spite claims of being a piece loving nation, America is warring nation and in Washington this week, while White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske rolled out the latest annual federal drug control strategy, the Government Accountability Office (`GAO') released a report that the War On Drugs has fallen well short of 2010 goals. And that the government has made no progress or has moved away from goals President Barack Obama outlined when he took office for reducing teen drug use, drug deaths, and HIV infections from drug use. The drug czar and the federal government "have not made progress toward achieving most of the goals articulated in the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy," the report said. Despite the Obama administration's shift away from "war on drugs" rhetoric, its 2014 budget proposal still devotes less than half of its funds to treatment and prevention. The GAO found that prevention and treatment programs are 'fragmented" across 15 federal agencies. Of the 76 anti-drug programs the GAO reviewed, 59 overlapped. The GAO report found that "no progress" had been made on reducing drug use among teens ages 12 to 17. It said this was "primarily" due to rising rates of marijuana use among kids, offset by declining use of other drugs. Voters in Colorado and Washington state legalized recreational use of the drug in November. As state officials figure out how to regulate and tax the drug, the federal government ponders whether to ignore the rise of recreational marijuana or to enforce federal laws that still make marijuana illegal. President Barack Obama's Department of Justice has yet to officially announce a position. Kerlikowske's small White House office, officially called the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has no enforcement powers of its own. Rather, it is meant to support and coordinate efforts in agencies that include the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. A spokesman for Kerlikowske's office, said in an email that illegal drug use was declining, with the exception of marijuana, particularly "over the long term." He said "the rate of drug use in the U.S. has declined by roughly 30 percent over the past 3o years." I am not recommending marijuana usefor kids, but decriminalizing itfor adults is growing in every part of the country. And instead of wasting the government's limited resources on controlling marijuana, maybe the ONDCP should concentrate its efforts on the treatment of prescription and designer drugs addiction. As Robert Reich wrote yesterday in The Huffington Post — Earth to Washington: Repeal the Sequester. Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good. Most had forecast growth of at least 3 percent (on an annualized basis) in the first quarter. But we learned this morning (in the Commerce Department's report) it grew only 2.5 percent. That's better than the 2 percent growth last year and the slowdown at the end of the year. But it's still cause for serious concern. EFTA00657827 First, consumers won't keep up the spending. Their savings rate fell sharply -- from 4.7% in the last quarter of 2012 to 2.6% from January through March. Add in March's dismal employment report, the lowest percentage of working-age adults in jobs since 1979, and January's hike in payroll taxes, and consumer spending will almost certainly drop. Median household incomes continues to decline, adjusted for inflation. Another report out today showed consumer confidence fell in April. Second, the recovery continues to be wildly lopsided. The only thing really keeping it going is the rip-roaring stock market. But the stock market only boosts the wealth of the richest 10 percent of Americans, who own 90 percent of stocks (including 401-K retirement accounts). But no economy can maintain momentum just on the spending of the richest 10 percent. Third, American exports can't possibly pick up the slack. In fact, they're dropping. Europe is falling into recession because of austerity economics. Japan is still a basket case. China's economy is slowing. Much of the developing world's economy is dependent on exports to the developed world -- so don't hold your breath for developing countries to bail us out. So what is Washington doing? Worse than nothing. It has now adopted the same kind of austerity economics that's doomed Europe -- cutting federal spending and reducing total demand. And the sequester doesn't end until September 30. It takes an even bigger bite out of the federal budget next fiscal year. Earth to Washington: The economy is slowing. The recovery is stalling. At the very least, repeal the sequester. You don't have to be an astrologer to see the dangers ahead Robert Reich All that the sequester is doing is damaging the economy. It is not a solution, and it never was never intended to be used as one. It was designed to be the "poison pill" that no one in their right mind would take. And the bipartisan congressional vote this week that loosen up funds for the FAA, so that the flying public would not be inconvenienced, when at the same time cancer clinics are turning away Medicare patients because of sequester cuts, is Congressional hypocrisy at its zenith. The sequester has been hurting millions of venerable Americans for weeks thanks to their harming effects on programs like Head Start, Meals on Wheels, and unemployment insurance. As of this week, the cuts were also nicking a lot of non-vulnerable Americans by forcing them to watch an extra loop of Headline News at Hartsfield International. But isn't this what the sequester was suppose to do. If the political class insists on sacrifice, the sacrifice should, at the very least, be distributed among both poor and affluent. This is just a basic principle of justice. And now that this is not the case, along with Robert Reich, I urge that Congress gets rid of the sequester with the same speed that was used to provide a fix for the FAA. THIS WEEK's READINGS As Michael Cohen wrote this week in The Guardian - Why does America lose its head over 'terror' but ignore its daily gun deaths? Last Friday Boston was turned into a ghost town when a million Bostonians were asked to stay in their homes — and willingly complied. Schools were closed; business shuttered; trains, subways and roads were empty; usually busy streets eerily resembled a post-apocalyptic movie set; even baseball games and cultural events were cancelled — all in response to a 19-year-old fugitive, who was on foot, clearly identified by the news media and most like injured. Without a doubt the Boston bomber was a traumatic incident of unimaginable carnage but having lived and traveled in London and Ireland in the 197os with the IRA terror, one might think that there EFTA00657828 was an over-reaction by Boston authorities, especially when at any given moment there are an estimated 20 to 3o serial killers roaming around America, including Washington, DC in 2002 when two roving snipers randomly shot and killed or disgruntled police officer and Christopher Dorner, murdered four people over several days in Los Angeles in February. Yes, after 9/11 it is understandable for Americans to be collectively concerned about terrorist acts, but willingly cowering because of the threat of terrorism by an identified teenager who might be part of a small cell, maybe a bit of overkill. If only Americans reacted the same way to the actual threats that exist in their country. There's something quite fitting and ironic about the fact that the Boston freak-out happened in the same week the Senate blocked consideration of a gun control bill that would have strengthened background checks for potential buyers, (as a routine background check denied the older brother in Bostonfrom receiving US citizenship). Remember, this reform is supported by more than 90% of Americans, and even though 56 out of roo senators voted in favor of it, the Republican minority prevented even a vote from being held on the bill because it would have allegedly violated the second amendment rights of "law-abiding Americans". More than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year, compared to the 17 who died last year in terrorist attacks. What makes US gun violence so particularly horrifying is how routine and mundane it has become. After the massacre of 20 kindergartners in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, millions of Americans began to take greater notice of the threat from gun violence. Yet since then, the daily carnage that guns produce has continued unabated and often unnoticed. The same day of the marathon bombing in Boston, 11 Americans were murdered by guns. The pregnant Breshauna Jackson was killed in Dallas, allegedly by her boyfriend. In Richmond, California, James Tucker III was shot and killed while riding his bicycle — assailants unknown. Nigel Hardy, a 13- year-old boy in Palmdale, California, who was being bullied in school, took his own life. He used the gun that his father kept at home. And in Brooklyn, New York, an off-duty police officer used her department-issued Glock 9mm handgun to kill herself, her boyfriend and her one-year old child. At the same time that investigators were in the midst of a high-profile manhunt for the marathon bombers that ended on Friday evening, 38 more Americans — with little fanfare — died from gun violence. One was a 22-year old resident of Boston. They are a tiny percentage of the 3,531 Americans killed by guns in the past four months — a total that surpasses the number of Americans who died on 9/11 and is one fewer than the number of US soldiers who lost their lives in combat operations in Iraq. Yet, none of this daily violence was considered urgent enough to motivate Congress to impose a mild, commonsense restriction on gun purchasers. It's not just firearms that produce such legislative inaction. Last week, a fertiliser plant in West, Texas, which hasn't been inspected by federal regulators since 1985, exploded, killing 14 people and injuring countless others. Yet many Republicans want to cut further the funding for the agency (OSHA) which is responsible for such reviews. The vast majority of Americans die from one of four ailments — cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease — and yet Republicans have held three dozen votes to repeal Obamacare, which expands healthcare coverage to 3o million Americans. It is a surreal and difficult-to-explain dynamic. Americans seemingly place an inordinate fear on violence that is random and unexplainable, as long as it can be blamed on "others" — jihadists, terrorists, evil-doers etc. But the lurking dangers all around us — the guns, our unhealthy diets, the workplaces that kill 14 Americans every single day — these are just accepted as part of life, the price of freedom, if you will. And so the violence goes, with more Americans dying preventable deaths. As our police, FBI and government officials take a victory lap for getting the sons of bitches who blew up the marathon. We have to wonder why no one feels the same about enacting legislation that could reduce gun violence. EFTA00657829 As Robert J. Samuelson wrote this week in The Washington Post - The end of macro magic — where he suggests that among economists today, the use of macroeconomic policies to grow economies and address financial crisis events is waning. Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy, as opposed to the examination of individual markets ("microeconomics"). The question is how much "macro" policies can produce and protect prosperity. Before the 2008-09 financial crisis, there was great confidence that they could. Now, with 38 million unemployed in Europe and the United States — and recoveries that are feeble or nonexistent — macroeconomics is in disarray and disrepute. Among economists, there is no consensus on policies. Is "austerity" (government spending cuts and tax increases) self-defeating or the unavoidable response to high budget deficits and debt? Can central banks such as the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank engineer recovery by holding short-term interest rates near zero and by buying massive amounts of bonds (so-called "quantitative easing")? Or will these policies foster financial speculation, instability and inflation? Because economists are so divided, the public is confused. The truth is that macroeconomic policies have worked. So far we have avoided a second Great Depression, due to policies that included — the Fed's support for panic-stricken financial markets; economic "stimulus" packages; the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP); the auto bailout; "stress tests"for banks; and international cooperation. Yes, the economic models didn't predict the crisis and may have added to the repeatedly overstated of the recovery. The tendency is to blame errors on one- time events — say, in 2011, the Japanese tsunami, the Greek bailout and the divisive congressional debate over the debt ceiling — as the larger cause seems to be the models themselves, which reflect spending patterns and behavior by households and businesses since World War II. But this may be due to the fact that the events [stemming from] the financial crisis were outside the experience of the models and the people running the model. The severity of the financial crisis and Great Recession changed behavior. Models based on the past don't do well in the present. Many models assumed that lower interest rates would spur more borrowing. But this wouldn't happen if lenders — reacting to steep losses — tightened credit standards and potential borrowers — already with large loans — were leery of assuming more debt. Which is what occurred. Since late 2007, the Fed has pumped more than $2 trillion into the U.S. economy by buying bonds. Economists will tell you that the weak recovery is due to uncertainty and progressive policies of raising taxes which discourage companies to invest and hire. But as "The Oracle of Omaha" Warren Buffet once said, "I don't know of a company that didn't invest because taxes was too high." My belief is that if this same $2 trillion had been spent in jobs programs to rebuild the country's infrastructure, instead of trying to goose the financial markets, the economy today would be growing by more than 3%, due to a multiplier effect, in addition to the added benefit of a more efficient and better infrastructure. And although the shifts in interest rates by central banks seemed to have neutralized major economic threats (from the 1987 stock crash to the burst "tech bubble" of 2000), these policies really only promote a false security in prosperity. ****** Sometimes you read an article that is good news and because it is good news, you are not sure (trust) that it is really good news. This week in CNN Money -- Jeanne Sahadi wrote -- Deficits are falling. For now. But is it true? In 2009 the country spent way more than it brought in and ran an eye-popping shortfall that topped io% of the size of the economy. This year the deficit is expected to be half that -- around 5.3% of GDP, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. And by 2015, its projected to drop to 2.4%. What's more, the national debt that has accumulated from annual deficits is also projected to fall to an estimated 73.1% of GDP in 2018 from an estimated 76.3% today. Obviously Good news. Sahadi says that the reasons for this downward trend, is that incoming federal revenue has risen from 6o-year lows and will soon top its historical average for much of the next decade. Spending, EFTA00657830 meanwhile, has come down from 60-year highs. Hence, the economy is on the mend. 'The deficit is manageable in the medium-term given growth coming back on-line, low borrowing costs, and political decisions to cut spending in the 2011 debt deal and raise taxes in the 2012 tax deal," said Sean West, U.S. policy director at the Eurasia Group. But the deficit reduction put in place so far won't do much to address the country's long-term fiscal situation, which is where the real debt problem lies. "It would be naive to think we're out of the woods. At the end of the decade we're back in the soup on entitlements. And debt servicing costs start to become a problem as well," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research. The bad news is that , deficits are expected to start rising again by 2016 and debt will resume its upward trek by 2019. Those imbalances will be driven by growth in spending on entitlement programs, especially Medicare, due to two factors. The first is the aging of the population. The share of the population over 65 is expected to grow to 19% by 2029, up from 13% today, according to the Government Accountability Office. The second is the growth in health care costs, which regularly tops inflation. This has to be seriously addressed, as assuming current policies stay in place and interest rates start to rise as the economy improves, the CBO projects that by 2023 interest costs alone will be $857 billion, or nearly four times what the federal government is paying today. As a percent of GDP, interest costs would more than double to 3.3%, up from 1.4% this year. That's why independent budget experts have been saying that policymakers will need to cut long-term spending, raise taxes or do both to head off a future budget crisis. The GAO now estimates that under current policies and fiscally restrained assumptions going forward federal revenue by 2030 won't be able to cover much more than spending on interest and the big entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and health insurance subsidies). By 2040, it won't even adequately cover those. Barring serious reforms, the numbers would worsen thereafter. As such I was correct in my assumption that today's good news somehow is attached to a bad story as negative consequences could begin, not too far in the future. As Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote this week in his op-ed in the New York Times - The Jobless Trap — We are creating a permanent class of unemployed Americans as a result of our austerity policies. He starts this op-ed with F.D.R.'s famous quote "we only thing that we have tofear isfear itself" and that when future historians look back at our monstrously failed response to the current economic depression, they probably won't blame fear, per se. Instead, they'll castigate our leaders for doing the wrong things as a result of unnecessary fear. Krugman: For the overriding fear driving economic policy has been debt hysteria, fear that unless we slash spending we'll turn into Greece any day now. After all, haven't economists proved that economic growth collapses once public debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P.? Well, the famous red line on debt, it turns out, was an artifact of dubious statistics, reinforced by bad arithmetic. And America isn't and can't be Greece, because countries that borrow in their own currencies operate under very different rules from those that rely on someone else's money. After years of repeated warnings that fiscal crisis is just around the corner, the U.S. government can still borrow at incredibly low interest rates. But while debt fears were and are misguided, there's a real danger we've ignored: the corrosive effect, social and economic, of persistent high unemployment. And even as the case for debt hysteria is collapsing, our worst fears about the damage from long-term unemployment are being confirmed. Krugman explains that some unemployment is inevitable and that even in good times our unemployment rate is usually around 5% but the difference today is that in 2007 when seven million Americans were unemployed, only 1.2 million had been out of work for more than six months, while today the explosion of long-term unemployment is a growing disaster as workers who have been unemployed for a long time eventually come to be seen as "unemployable", tainted goods that nobody will buy. This can happen because their work skills atrophy, but a more likely reason is that potential EFTA00657831 employers assume that something must be wrong with people who can't find a job, even if the real reason is simply the terrible economy. And today there is unfortunately growing evidence that the tainting of the long-term unemployed is happening as we speak, creating a permanent class of jobless Americans. Krugman says that this is due to policy decisions. And that the main reason our economic recovery has been so weak is that spooked by fear-mongering over debt, we've been doing exactly what basic macroeconomics says you shouldn't do — cutting government spending in the face of a depressed economy. And that long-term unemployment means that austerity policies are counterproductive even in purely fiscal terms. Workers, after all, are taxpayers too; if our debt obsession exiles millions of Americans from productive employment, it will cut into future revenues and raise future deficits. Krugman ends this op-ed, "our exaggeratedfear of debt is, in short, creating a slow-motion catastrophe. It's ruining many lives, and at the same time making us poorer and weaker in every way. And the longer we persist in thisfolly, the greater the damage will be." In the greening of America there is good news because for the first time, solar energy accounted for all new utility electricity generation capacity added to the U.S. grid last month, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) March 2013 "Energy Infrastructure Update." More than 44 megawatts (MW) of solar electric capacity was brought online from seven projects in California, Nevada, New Jersey, Hawaii, Arizona, and North Carolina. All other energy sources combined added no new generation. Solar also had a strong showing in FERC's quarterly generation numbers, accounting for about 30 percent of all utility-scale new capacity. The report focuses exclusively on larger facilities and does not include energy generated by net-metered installations. Net-metered systems account for more than half of all U.S. solar electric capacity. Since 2008, the amount of solar powering U.S. homes, businesses and military bases has grown by more than 600 percent-from 1,100 megawatts to more than 71100 megawatts today. As FERC's report suggests, and many analysts predict, solar will grow to be our nation's largest new source of energy over the next four years. FERC's report supports other findings which show solar power to be one of the fastest growing energy sources in the U.S., powering homes, businesses and utility grids across the nation. The Solar Market Insight annual edition shows the U.S. installed 3,313 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2012, a record for the industry. Some of this growth is attributed to the fact that the cost of a solar system has dropped by nearly 4o percent over the past two years, making solar more affordable than ever for utilities and consumers. In 2012, the U.S. brought more new solar capacity online than in the three prior years combined. These new numbers from FERC support our forecast that solar will continue a pattern of growth in 2013, adding 5.2 GW of solar electric capacity. This sustained growth is enabling the solar industry to create thousands of good jobs and to provide clean, affordable energy for more families, businesses, utilities, and the military than ever before. Today, America's solar industry employs 119,00o workers throughout the country. That's a 13.2 percent growth over 2011's jobs numbers, malting solar one of the fastest-growing job sectors in the nation. Finally we have some good environmental news, so hopefully detractors will stop citing the failures of Solyndra and Fiskers as the only examples of solar power. This week in CNN World, Fareed Zakaria wrote — Reasonsfor optimism in today's world. He starts his article with a line that Art Buchwald once gave in an commencement speech at Harvard, "Remember, we are leaving you a perfect world. Don't screw it up." I doubt that many commencement audiences will be hearing this kind of optimism this year, especially in light of the Newtown massacre, Boston bombing and the slowest recovery since the Great Depression, as we seem to live in an age of EFTA00657832 terror, and our lives remain altered by the fears of future attacks and a future of new threats and dangers. Then there are larger concerns that you hear about: The Earth is warming; we're running out of water and other vital resources; we have a billion people on the globe trapped in terrible poverty. Fareed Zakaria's article says that today, the world we live in is, first of all, at peace — profoundly at peace. The richest countries of the world are not in geopolitical competition with one another, fighting wars, proxy wars, or even engaging in arms races or "cold wars." This is a historical rarity. You would have to go back hundreds of years to find a similar period of great power peace. I know that you watch a bomb going off in Afghanistan or hear of a terror plot in this country and think we live in dangerous times. But here is the data. The number of people who have died as a result of war, civil war, and, yes, terrorism, is down 5o percent this decade from the 1990s. It is down 75 percent from the preceding five decades, the decades of the Cold War, and it is, of course, down 99 percent from the decade before that, which is World War II. Harvard professor Steven Pinker says that we are living in the most peaceful times in human history. The political stability we have experienced has allowed the creation of a single global economic system, in which countries around the world are participating and flourishing. In 1980, the number of countries that were growing at 4 percent a year — robust growth — was around 6o. By 2007, it had doubled. Even now, after the financial crisis, that number is more than 80. Even in the current period of slow growth, keep in mind that the global economy as a whole will grow 10 to 20 percent faster this decade than it did a decade ago, 6o percent faster than it did two decades ago, and five times as fast as it did three decades ago. The result: The United Nations estimates that poverty has been reduced more in the past 5o years than in the previous 500 years. And much of that reduction has taken place in the last 20 years. The average Chinese person is 10 times richer than he or she was 5o years ago — and lives for 25 years longer. Life expectancy across the world has risen dramatically. We gain five hours of life expectancy every day — without even exercising! A third of all the babies born in the developed world this year will live to be 100. All this is because of rising standards of living, hygiene, and, of course, medicine. Atul Gawande, a Harvard professor who is also a practicing surgeon, and who also writes about medicine for The New Yorker, writes about a 19th century operation in which the surgeon was trying to amputate his patient's leg. He succeeded — at that — but accidentally amputated his assistant's finger as well. Both died of sepsis, and an onlooker died of shock. It is the only known medical procedure to have a 300 percent fata