from: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
subject: Guardian: US Bankruptcy Bill hits poor. Oily presidents
With unseemly haste, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on March
15 for a Bill that makes it far harder for jobless workers or people
with huge medical bills to file for bankruptcy to protect themselves
and their families from creditors. The House passed an equally vicious
version March 1, also by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. George
W Bush has vowed to sign whatever measure a House-Senate conference
sends him.
by Tim Wheeler
MBNA, the nation's largest issuer of credit cards and the largest
contributor to the Bush-Cheney election campaign, unleashed a full-
court press to win passage of the bankruptcy Bill.
It is one of a host of "business-friendly" measures the Bush
administration has rammed through in the past month using blitz tactics
of stealth, surprise and hypocritical appeals to bipartisanship to
confuse and divide the opposition.
Former Senator Howard Metzenbaum (Democrat-Ohio), Chairman of the
Consumer Federation of America (CFA), said, "In all my years in
and out of the Senate, I've never seen a Bill that was so one-sided.
"The cries and claims and concerns of vulnerable Americans who
have a financial emergency have been drowned out by the political
might of the credit card industry."
Senator Paul Wellstone (Democrat-Minn.), one of only 13 Democrats
who voted against the Bill, said, "What does it say about us as
a Congress -- and I level this charge at Democrats and Republicans
alike -- that the first major piece of legislation that we bring
to the floor of the 107th Congress is an unjust and unfair bankruptcy
[Bill] for the benefit of big banks and credit card companies?...
"A special interest boondoggle, a bail-out for the big banks and
credit companies is ahead of education, it is ahead of prescription
drug coverage for seniors ..."
Wellstone attempted to push through an amendment preserving bankruptcy
protections for people hit by catastrophic medical bills, the cause
of nearly 50 percent of filings.
The Senators, who enjoy cradle-to-grave health care, rejected it by
a 65 to 34 margin.
Voted down 55 to 42 was an amendment to impose a US$2,500 limit on
credit cards issued to people under 21 years old aimed at protecting
young people lured into debt by easy credit.
The Senators also rejected an amendment by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-
Mass.)
to put a cap on the amount the credit card companies can garnishee
from individual retirement accounts.
Small businesses will be hard-hit by the Bill. They account for 80
percent of the 9,000 companies that filed for protection from creditors
under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.
Companies will be given only 175 days to gain court approval for their
reorganisation plans. Critics warn that many small businesses will
fail, destroying thousands of jobs.
The Senate tabled by a 50 to 49 vote an amendment by Senator Richard
Durbin (D-Ill.) to prevent lenders who violate "truth-in-lending"
laws from forcing victims who go bankrupt to repay these illegal loans.
Consumers Union spokesman, Frank Torres said, "Here was the opportunity
for the Senate to tell predatory lenders they can't use the bankruptcy
system to benefit from illegal practices. It just shows you the kind
of pressure Congress is under to pass a Bill that meets the credit
industry's approval."
The banks and credit card companies, wallowing in record profits,
have grown extremely nervous as the Stock Market plummets and mass
layoffs multiply.
Economists cite grim signs of the mountain of personal debt: for the
first time ever, last year, total household debt including credit
cards, car loans, mortgages, and student loans exceeded 100 percent
of disposable annual income. Two decades ago, the ratio stood at about
two-thirds.
Consumers in the US charged more than US$1 trillion to their credit
cards, last year, more than they spent in cash. The average
cardholder's
outstanding balance is US$4,400, up 123 percent in just one decade,
according to the Nilson Report, while personal income rose only 72
percent in the same time period.
Last year ended with US$675 billion in outstanding credit card debt.
But only US$30 billion was delinquent as consumers work ever longer
hours at two and sometimes three low wage jobs to keep their noses
above water.
However, with layoffs and corporate downsizing spreading, financial
forecasters expect applications for Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy
relief to exceed the record 1.4 million who filed for bankruptcy in
1998.
The new bankruptcy law, critics charge, will give banks the leverage
to squeeze every last pound of flesh out of debt-stricken consumers
even if it means they lose their homes and cars. The result will be
a new surge in homelessness and hunger.
The Federal Reserve reported last week that the estimated combined
net worth of all Americans US$41.42 trillion, declined last year by
US$841.5 billion or about two percent, from net worth at the end of
1999. It was the first decline in 55 years. Personal savings are at
the lowest point in history.
The consumer protection movement warned that enactment of the
bankruptcy
"reform" Bill will give the green light for an even more aggressive
effort to sucker people into accepting, and using, credit cards. The
industry last year mailed out an estimated 3.3 billion credit card
solicitations, about 30 per household.
(Abridged) People's Weekly World", paper of Communist
Party USA
************
from: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
subject: Guardian-Culture & Life: Oily Presidents
I was looking through some old issues of the British magazine
"Time Out", prior to removing and filing the film section, when
I came across a familiar face (well, two, really) in a news photo.
It was a November 1990 issue and the photo was of then-President George
Bush, giving a thumbs-up sign, accompanied by his relatively unknown
son, George Jr.
by Rob Gowland
The Iraq-Kuwait crisis was on but the Gulf War was still two months
away. Numerous observers were crediting President Bush's vehement
concern for the King of Kuwait to the influence of US oil interests.
But the article accompanying the photo in "Time Out" reminded
us that the Bushes had a personal interest in Persian Gulf oil.
The article pointed out that back in 1986, "a little-known oil
company called Harken Energy Corporation of Dallas, Texas, merged
with another firm, Spectrum 7 Exploration Corporation". Spectrum
was owned by none other than George Bush Jr, the son of the then-Vice
President. Under the merger, George Jr became a director, stockholder
and $120,000-a-year consultant to Harken.
Harken's operations at that time were based mainly in Louisiana,
Oklahoma
and Texas and brought in revenues of around $8 million a year. Two
years later, in 1988, Bush Sr was elected President and the following
year Harken's annual revenue was $1.1 "billion". These two facts
are of course unconnected.
Although a "relatively small, unknown company with modest assets",
Harken had surprisingly been able to obtain a lucrative contract for
oil drilling rights in Bahrain, on the Persian Gulf.
"Forbes", the corporate heavyweight's magazine, described Harken's
drilling rights as "immensely valuable".
A year later still, when the Iraq-Kuwait crisis had been provoked,
those rights were considered to be under threat. As with other US
interests in the region, however, the Gulf War of 1991 rendered them
"secure".
It's old history now, a tawdry but common enough little tale of
influence
used for (major) commercial gain. It would be of no importance at
all if one of the principal players had not just been elected to the
White House in what many observers are already describing as a re-run
of his father's unlamented incumbency.
A Rosenberg fights on
In 1953, the United States Government executed Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg
for "conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb".
The development of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union thwarted US
plans -- extremely detailed and developed plans -- for a victorious
war against the USSR involving the dropping of 320 (!) atomic bombs
on Soviet cities.
The capitalist US vented its rage on the hapless Rosenbergs, railroaded
to the electric chair in a travesty of due legal process.
Why is it, I wonder, that almost none of those numerous US TV courtroom
dramas show you a legal system that is corrupt, subject to political
and media influence, and dominated by the ability of the accused to
pay for a decent defence?
The Rosenbergs' younger son, now known as Robert Meeropol, was six
years old when his parents were murdered. He subsequently became a
lawyer himself and has been an outspoken campaigner against the death
penalty.
As a public speaker across the USA, Robert Meeropol gives a "searing
indictment of capital punishment" that connects the wrongful execution
of the Rosenbergs with the politically and racially motivated use
of the death penalty in the United States today.
In 1990, he gave up his law practice to found the Rosenberg Fund for
Children.
The Fund provides for the educational and emotional needs of activist
youth in the US who are targeted by the state or the right-wing, as
well as children whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed,
lost their jobs or died in the course of their progressive activities.
It says a lot about "human rights" in the USA that such a
fund is actually needed.
Mir's successful record
So Mir has finally gone, and with it the only competition for the
US-dominated international space lab.
Mir was launched as part of the Soviet space program on February 20,
1986. From September 1989 until August 1999 it was kept continuously
manned by crews of (mainly Russian) cosmonauts.
Unlike the US space-shuttle program, Mir's function was always
scientific.
It was also far more functional, efficient and just plain "successful"
than the Western media tried to make out.
Mir could be operated for a year for half the cost of a single shuttle
flight (that typically lasted only ten or eleven days).
Now that Mir is no longer a threat to the West's "commercial"
space program, some of the capitalist media have been allowed to write
honestly about it at last.
Richard Macey observed in the "Sydney Morning Herald": "Western
scientists often spent years waiting for their experiments to be flown
aboard NASA shuttles. But with such short flights the time allocated
to any experiments in orbit was often a few hours.
"Experiments that malfunctioned generally had to be brought
back to Earth and go back in the queue for a chance to fly again.
"Aboard Mir experiments could run for days or weeks at a time.
If something failed it might only take a delay of a few months for
a new part to be sent up in a cargo rocket for the experiment to be
tried again."
Russian cosmonauts on Mir logged a total of 33 man-years in space,
a record that prompted the joke (among "Western" space enthusiasts)
that, when it came to living in space, NASA was "a Mir observer". JC
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