News Releases

KIP SULLIVAN, [email]
MARK ALMBERG, [email]
Sullivan wrote the new piece “How to Think Clearly about Medicare Administrative Costs: Data Sources and Measurement” in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law [PDF].

Sullivan is a member of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program; Almberg is PNHP’s communications director. The group released a statement today: “The traditional Medicare program allocates only 1 percent of total spending to overhead compared with 6 percent when the privatized portion of Medicare, known as Medicare Advantage, is included, according to a study in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

“The 1 percent figure includes all types of non-medical spending by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plus other federal agencies, such as the IRS, that support the Medicare program, and is based on data contained in the latest report of the Medicare trustees. The 6 percent figure, on the other hand, is based on data contained in the latest National Health Expenditure Accounts report.

Sullivan said today: “The high administrative costs of the privatized portion of Medicare are no surprise. What’s surprising is that the high administrative costs of the Medicare private insurance companies haven’t provoked a debate about whether spending more money on insurance industry overhead is a good use of scarce tax revenues. … The confusion is due partly to the existence of two government reports and partly to claims by critics of Medicare that the government fails to report all of Medicare’s overhead costs.”

PNHP added: “The article explains the difference between the yardstick used by the trustees and the one used by the NHEA and concludes both are accurate. The trustees’ measure counts as overhead only those administrative expenditures that support the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program, in which approximately three-fourths of all Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled. The NHEA measure takes the trustees’ measure and adds to it the overhead of insurance companies that participate in Medicare Advantage and that sell stand-alone Part D drug coverage.

“The 1 percent figure is the one that should be used to analyze several hotly debated health reform issues, including whether to expand traditional Medicare to all Americans and whether to turn Medicare over to the insurance industry, either by expanding the Medicare Advantage program or by converting Medicare to a voucher program as Rep. Paul Ryan has proposed. … The average overhead of the health insurance industry is approximately 20 percent.”

The New York Times today features a now widely reported lead story titled “Chinese Army Unit Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S.” — which is based on a new report by the internet security firm Mandiant.

SASCHA MEINRATH, TIM MAURER, [email], @NewAmericaOTI
Meinrath is vice president of the New America Foundation and director of its Open Technology Institute. He said today: “The alleged Chinese government hacking comes as no surprise to folks who have been following cybersecurity developments. The level of detail reported by the New York Times is the new development, pointing to a marked escalation in the tensions between the U.S. and China. More urgently than ever, we need to address the technical realities and likely outcomes resulting from military activities online.

“This tactic — hacking is actively pursued by the U.S. and China among others — needs to cease. Demilitarizing cyberspace must be a core goal for the Obama administration. As a global technological leader and first adopter, the United States is particularly vulnerable to the weaponization of the Internet; it’s time for the Obama administration to lead by example. Government hacking — both for espionage and warfare — is unacceptable”.

Maurer, a cybersecurity analyst with the Open Technology Institute, adds: “Targeting civilian infrastructure is a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross has pointed out that international humanitarian law also covers cyberwarfare. The global community must affirm that the Geneva Conventions apply in cyberspace much like the Human Rights Council affirmed last year that human rights must be protected online as well as off.”

See this article by Matthew Yglesias about Mandiant: “Meet the Company That’s Profiting From Chinese Hacking.”

Ten years ago, on Feb. 15, 2003, sometimes called “the day the world said ‘no’ to war,” millions marched around the world against the then-impending invasion of Iraq in what is widely regarded as the largest protest in history. Two days later The New York Times referred to “two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.”

A “Feb. 15” statement, below, is being released tomorrow — signatories include Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire. It reads: “We don’t just say ‘no’ to war — we say ‘yes’ to peace, we say yes to building economic and social systems that are not dominated by central banks and huge financial institutions. We don’t just say ‘no’ to war — we demand an end to massive resources being squandered on the military while billions are made poorer and poorer as a few reap huge wealth totally disproportionate to any labor or ingenuity of their own.” It raises the possibility of more such protests on a global level in coming months.

AMIR AMIRANI, [email]
Amirani is producer-director of the forthcoming documentary “We Are Many” about the Feb. 15, 2003 global protests. A trailer of the film will be released on Friday.

The following are among the signers of the new Feb. 15 statement:

DAVID MARTY, [email]
Marty is with the International Organization for a Participatory Society in Spain and is co-author of the new book Occupy Strategy.

BILL FLETCHER, [email]
Fletcher is co-founder of United for Peace & Justice as well as the Center for Labor Renewal. He will be speaking at an event commemorating the Feb. 15, 2003 protests on Friday.

SAM HUSSEINI, [email]
Husseini is communications director for the Institute for Public Accuracy.

The Feb. 15 Call for Global Protests for Democracy, Solidarity and Justice:

Ten years ago, millions of people around the world said “no” to war on February 15, 2003. Now, we say “yes” to peace; “yes” to demilitarizing, to having decent lives, including economic lives, determined by democratic principles.

Solidarity demands much greater communication between the people of the world, not elites planning for their continued dominance. The response to the decline of U.S. power is not a smarter use of power, or a balance of power with other elites with their own hierarchies. Instead, we issue “This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation” to establish meaningful solidarity with people worldwide.

See the full statement, with list of signatories.

JOHN SCHMITT, [email]
Senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Schmitt wrote the new paper “Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?” which finds “modest increases in the minimum wage — such as the one proposed by President Obama in his State of the Union address — have little impact on employment, due to adjustments by employers and workers.”

Schmitt said today: “This is one of the most studied topics in economics, and the evidence is clear: modest minimum wage increases don’t have much impact on employment. An increase to $9 per hour would be hugely important for the workers getting it, but the idea that this would lead to less employment is just not supported by the evidence.”

“Congressional proposals to raise the minimum wage to above $10 per hour or President Obama’s call for a minimum wage of $9 per hour are well within the range of historical increases and would still leave low-wage workers behind reasonable historical benchmarks based on cost-of-living or productivity growth.”

As CEPR’s Dean Baker and Will Kimball noted in a blog post yesterday, “The purchasing power of the minimum wage peaked in the late 1960s at $9.22 an hour in 2012 dollars. That is almost two dollars above the current level of $7.25 an hour.” They also noted that the minimum wage has not kept pace with productivity increases over the past 44 years, as it had from 1947-1969 — a period when economic “[g]rowth averaged 4.0 percent annually” and “the unemployment rate for the year 1969 averaged less than 4.0 percent.” But the link between productivity growth and minimum wage ended in the 1970s.

Baker and Kimball note that “If the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth it would be $16.54 in 2012 dollars.”

REEM KHALIFA, [email], @Reem_Khalifa
Khalifa just wrote the AP piece “Clashes mark Bahrain’s Second Uprising Anniversary,” which states: “Security forces in Bahrain clashed on Thursday with anti-government protesters in street battles that left at least one boy dead amid high tensions on the second anniversary of the uprising in the Gulf nation, activists said.

“The demonstrators also included groups chanting against talks aimed at easing the Arab Spring-inspired unrest in the country, showing the deep divisions even among opposition factions over whether to negotiate or escalate the unrest.

“Bahrain’s Shiite majority is seeking a greater political voice in the strategic Sunni-ruled kingdom, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

“More than 55 people have been killed in the two-year unrest, which began with massive marches on Feb. 14, 2011. Some activists place the death toll higher.

“The latest death was a 16-year-old boy killed by police … early Thursday in the mainly Shiite village of Dih, west of the capital, Manama, said Yousef al-Muhafedha, a rights activist.”

MARYAM AL-KHAWAJA, [email], @MARYAMALKHAWAJA
Al-Khawaja acting President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and co-director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights. She was a guest on “Democracy Now!” this morning.

See also by Jim Lobe: “U.S. Urged to Lean Harder on Bahrain’s Ruling Family.”

An Afghan boy just wounded in the air strike in Kunar province that left 10 civilians dead is treated in a hospital. (Photograph: Namatullah Karyab/AFP/Getty Images)

KATHY KELLY, [email]
Just back from Afghanistan, Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She said today: “Obama is a ‘hawkish’ president who likes to sound ‘dovish.’ He spoke of ending the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and yet the Pentagon has already told the Afghan government that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan till 2024 and beyond. The Pentagon plans to keep U.S. Special Operations troops in Afghanistan. Just outside of Kabul, the former Blackwater firm, now called ‘Academi,’ is building a 10-acre base, ‘Camp Integrity,’ that will be used to train Special Forces for night raids, drone attacks and aerial bombardments.

“In Afghanistan, on Tuesday evening, February 12, at 10:00 p.m. U.S./NATO forces bombed two homes in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, claiming to attack Taliban forces. According to the Washington Post, nine civilians were killed.

“The Taliban has already responded to announcements about troop withdrawals, saying that troop levels don’t matter — they will continue fighting until the foreign troops leave. Continued U.S. military and security contractor fighting in Afghanistan will prolong the Taliban justification for fighting. The war will continue, and President Obama will force President Karzai to agree to immunity for all U.S. troops in Afghanistan, no matter what crimes they commit.

“U.S. war and development aid have not improved life for the majority of Afghans. The most recent U.S. ‘SIGAR’ [Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction] report said that the U.S. development aid to Afghanistan is now approaching a sum of $100 billion. Yet close to a million Afghans under five are acutely malnourished, according to a UN-backed survey.

“Mainstream media has begun to question ‘drones’ and the ‘kill list’ — U.S. citizens should healthily question everything they have presumed to be ‘acceptable’ — for example, they should question the acceptability of ‘immunity’ for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.”

NORMAN SOLOMON, [email]
Available for a limited number of interviews, founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of War Made Easy, Solomon just wrote the piece “What Obama Said — and What He Meant — About Climate Change, War and Civil Liberties,” which critiques Obama’s statements (in bold):

“After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home.”

How’s that for an applause line? Don’t pay too much attention to the fine print. I’m planning to have 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan a year from now, and they won’t get out of there before the end of 2014. And did you notice the phrase “in uniform”? We’ve got plenty of out-of-uniform military contractors in Afghanistan now, and you can expect that to continue for a long time.

“And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over.”

If you believe that, you’re the kind of sucker I appreciate — unless you think “our war in Afghanistan” doesn’t include killing people with drones and cruise missiles.

“Beyond 2014, America’s commitment to a unified and sovereign Afghanistan will endure, but the nature of our commitment will change. We’re negotiating an agreement with the Afghan government that focuses on two missions: training and equipping Afghan forces so that the country does not again slip into chaos, and counterterrorism efforts that allow us to pursue the remnants of al Qaeda and their affiliates.”

We’re so pleased to help Afghan people kill other Afghan people! Our government’s expertise in such matters includes superb reconnaissance and some thrilling weaponry, which we’ll keep providing to the Kabul regime. And don’t you love the word “counterterrorism”? It sounds so much better than: “using the latest high-tech weapons to go after people on our ‘kill lists’ and unfortunately take the lives of a lot of other people who happen to be around, including children, thus violating international law, traumatizing large portions of the population and inflicting horrors on people in ways we would never tolerate ourselves.”

Last week, Solomon debated Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, on “Democracy Now!” Solomon wrote the piece “Washington’s War-Makers Aren’t ‘in a Bubble,’ They’re in a Bunker” based on the debate.

LORI WALLACH, [email]
Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Wallach said today: “It is the height of cynicism for President Obama to couple the worthy goal of rebuilding American manufacturing with a call for more of the same NAFTA-style trade-deficit boosting, job-killing FTAs [free trade agreements] — especially the 11-nation TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership]. … Since the implementation of these agreements, 50,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities have been shuttered and we have lost five million manufacturing jobs — fully one quarter of the American industrial jobs that existed before these agreements. U.S. exports to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 44 percent over the last decade. The aggregate U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners increased by more than $151 billion (inflation-adjusted) since the FTAs were implemented.”

GWENDOLYN MINK, [email]
Mink is co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy and author of Welfare’s End. She said today: “The President reiterated his cramped vision of equity and economic well-being in a speech that should set off alarm bells for anyone concerned with improving policies to assure economic security and advance equality. Instead of spelling out ways to strengthen and improve Medicare and Social Security to benefit program participants, the President continued to wave the banner of ‘entitlement reform,’ inviting unspecified policy changes in the name of deficit reduction. Instead of challenging America to end economic vulnerability and poverty by addressing root causes — such as race and gender inequality, the wage structure, and the extra-economic status of caregiving — the President offered an anemic rise in the minimum wage and repackaged old solutions that hang women’s economic security on their linkage to men through marriage and fatherhood. While the President did repeat his support for the Paycheck Fairness Act, he looked no further than this important but narrow measure to advance wage equity for women. The Paycheck Fairness Act would correct and strengthen interpretations of the Equal Pay Act to improve wage equality prospects for women who do ‘substantially equal’ (the same) work as men. But what about the 40 percent of women who work in jobs primarily staffed by women, which are also the jobs that receive less pay? Or the millions of women, especially of color, who are held to the lowest paying jobs? A President who wants to be perceived as an advocate for women needs to present brave and informed ideas to correct structures and practices that perpetuate injustice. One place to begin would be by uttering the word ‘union’ — when government abdicates, unions are still the best guarantee of an improved wage structure for women.”

KEVIN GRAY, [email]
Author of The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, Gray said today: “Doubtless, his call to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour should be applauded. He’s right that ‘in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty…’ A minor miracle was finally hearing Obama say the word ‘poverty’ in a speech. Even so, the President’s speech wasn’t even a glass half full. It was three quarters empty.

“Little was said about helping those in the black community suffering from double-digit unemployment. Or providing job training and economic reintegration to those locked out of the economy because of the drug war and other factors. Or dealing with a continuing housing-mortgage foreclosure crisis in communities of color and, how to force the banks to help those most in need. And while his ‘Fix It First’ jobs and infrastructure program may be – if enacted – a boon to a few select contractors, its impact on creating jobs where they are needed the most is sketchy at best.

“Obama touted the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan as though making people work until they die was the solution to the nation’s debt problem as opposed to ceasing to pay for wars with social security funds. People of color should be outraged at his support of such a backwards plan. He touted his and Arne Duncan’s ‘Race to the Top’ charter school scheme that is nothing more than turning over the schools to Wall Street and the corporations.”

MICHAEL DORSEY, [email]
Visiting fellow and professor at Wesleyan University, College of the Environment, Dorsey said today: , Dorsey said today: “What he could have said: ‘We must choose to end our dependence on fossil fuels in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.’

“The content of the president’s state of the union regarding climate was un-presidential. Trying to resuscitate broken carbon markets that have not worked in a decade since they began in Europe is a recipe for climate catastrophe. The failure to assemble the growing litany of oil and energy executives that are already doing more than the President proposed reveals the lackluster quality of his advisors — that are in desperate need of being replaced. The President could have reclaimed and built upon the admission of his predecessor, that we are addicted to oil. Who could have plotted a path to break our addiction to oil — not by taxing oil, but by giving us a pathway to shifting subsidies away from all fossil fuels and into viable renewables, like wind and solar. …

“It seems the only way forward on climate will be the coming non-violent civil disobedience — backed by both the NAACP and the Sierra Club, amongst others. These marches on the White House shall start this weekend and continue for the next 100 days to Earth Day, and possibly beyond, until we see presidential action for climate justice.”

CHRISTINE AHN, [email], @christineahn
Ahn is executive director of the Korea Policy Institute. She stressed: “The U.S.-ROK [South Korea] started joint military exercises in the East Sea on Feb. 4, ratcheting up the tensions in the region. South Korea under Lee Myung Bak has pursued a regime change/collapse approach which the U.S. has willfully followed. … This is the 60th anniversary of the armistice agreement signed between the U.S. and North Korea to temporarily halt the fighting of the Korean War. It is indeed time to finally put that temporary agreement to rest with a formal peace treaty. Secretary of State Kerry is one of the most knowledgeable among those inside the beltway about the situation — hopefully he will heed the call for Koreans across the peninsula and people around the world to end the arms race and finally put this Korean War to rest.

“Donald Gregg, former ambassador to ROK and former CIA Station Chief in Seoul, recently said: ‘[North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] is apparently showing his intent to develop his country’s nuclear capabilities not as a threat, but as a deterrent. The country’s nuclear program has destabilized the region and prompted Japan to consider developing its own nuclear program, which highlights the need for dialogue.’”

JOSEPH GERSON, [email]
Gerson is director of programs for the American Friends Service Committee in New England and author of Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World. He was among the signers of a recently released statement on Korea. Among the points the statement made: “We note that beginning with the Korean War, the United States has prepared and threatened to attack North Korea with nuclear weapons at least nine times, that it maintains the so-called U.S. ‘nuclear umbrella’ over Northeast Asia, and that its current contingency plans for war with North Korea include a possible first-strike nuclear attack.

“The Obama administration’s first-term policy of ‘strategic patience’ with the DPRK [North Korea], reinforced by crippling sanctions that contribute to widespread malnutrition, connected to the stunting of growth in children and starvation, has proven to be a grave failure. The policy has foreclosed crucial opportunities to explore diplomacy and engagement. ‘Strategic patience,’ combined with North and South Korea’s increasingly advanced missile programs, aggressive annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises — including preparations for the military overthrow of the DPRK government — and the Obama administration’s militarized Asia-Pacific ‘pivot,’ contributed to the DPRK’s decision to conduct a third nuclear ‘test.’”

See statement: “U.S. Working Group for Peace & Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific Statement in Response to Third DPRK Nuclear Explosive Test.”

Gerson also recently wrote the piece “Washington’s Asia-Pacific Pivot and Common Security Alternatives.”

TIM SHORROCK, [email], @TimothyS
Shorrock is author most recently of the book Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. He was on Democracy Now this morning and noted that the North Korean government is angry about “massive war games that the United States and South Korea [engage in] almost every year — one took place last week. And they see the United States and these war games as very hostile and as a threat to their sovereignty, as they put it. …

“[The U.S. and South Korea] practice first-strike nuclear capability. They practice invading North Korea. They practice taking over the territory of North Korea and having South Korea-U.S. forces take it over while there’s a crisis there.”

CHRIS HEDGES, [email]
Hedges just wrote the piece “The NDAA and the Death of the Democratic State,” which states: “On Wednesday a few hundred activists crowded into the courtroom of the Second Circuit, the spillover room with its faulty audio feed and dearth of chairs, and Foley Square outside the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan where many huddled in the cold. The fate of the nation, we understood, could be decided by the three judges who will rule on our lawsuit against President Barack Obama for signing into law Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act.

“The section permits the military to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, who ‘substantially support’ — an undefined legal term — al-Qaida, the Taliban or ‘associated forces,’ again a term that is legally undefined. Those detained can be imprisoned indefinitely by the military and denied due process until ‘the end of hostilities.’ In an age of permanent war this is probably a lifetime. Anyone detained under the NDAA can be sent … to any ‘foreign country or entity.’ This is, in essence, extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens. It empowers the government to ship detainees to the jails of some of the most repressive regimes on earth.

“Section 1021(b)(2) was declared invalid in September after our first trial, in the Southern District Court of New York. The Obama administration appealed the Southern District Court ruling.” Hedges is lead plaintiff in the NDAA lawsuit. His most recent book is The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress and he was part of a team of New York Times reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize.

MICHAEL RATNER, mratner at ccrjustice.org, @justleft
Ratner is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He said today: “The rule of law is not in peril; it is no more. The country under Obama is utterly lawless. There is nothing legal or moral about murdering with drones or assassinations, continuing indefinite detention, military commissions and renditions. There is nothing legal or moral about attacking other countries such as Yemen, Pakistan or Libya. There is nothing legal or moral about a massive surveillance state. And then just to make sure no one reveals our evil we persecute and jail our truth tellers: [Julian] Assange, [Bradley] Manning, [Jeremy] Hammond, [John] Kirakou, while the real criminals go free. What you are seeing here is the recognition by the U.S. that it is weakening as a world power and it is striking out in ways that aren’t always rational but that are certainly inhuman and lawless.”

Ratner notes in “The Ratner Report” on The Real News Network: “We’ve been litigating this issue for a number of years now. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU represent the family of Anwar al-Aulaqi, as well as [his 16-year-old son] Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi, who were killed by drones in Yemen.”

SHAHID BUTTAR, [email], @Sheeyahshee
Buttar is executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He said today: “The civil liberties abuses of the Bush administration, and their continuing extension by the Obama administration, have reduced our Constitution to a shadow of itself. This week’s State of the Union address offers a disturbing reminder that, in 2013, America can not be plausibly described as ‘the land of the free.’

“Our supposedly ‘free’ country imprisons more people than any other on Earth, including China — which has a much larger population, and a longstanding reputation for abusing rights.

“Our supposedly ‘free’ country actively suppresses dissent. Instead of enjoying meaningful First Amendment rights to speech, assembly, and the right to petition our government, the peaceful Occupy movement was targeted by federal and state authorities for surveillance, infiltration, disruption, and violent suppression. Occupy activists in several states, like peace activists, environmental activists, and labor organizers, have been charged (and in many cases, convicted) of terror offenses.

“In our supposedly ‘free’ country, the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures has collapsed. Congress recently approved mass warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, which operates not only in secret, but under a secret budget at a time when politicians claim to face a budget crisis. Meanwhile, the FBI unapologetically infiltrates faith institutions and peaceful activist groups, creating a national biometric identity scheme under cover of facilitating immigration enforcement, and faking the results of its forensic investigations. Even local police routinely work as spies, using drones and other military technology to monitor Americans for activities as ‘suspicious’ as drawing and taking notes.

“Our supposedly ‘free’ country also abuses more fundamental rights. Anyone, including citizens, is subject to arbitrary military detention without trial or proof of crime, or outright assassination by the CIA, a secret civilian agency for which the White House has announced a nominee for Director whom the Senate should reject. Brennan refuses to acknowledge that torture (which the CIA recently conducted as a matter of policy before destroying much of the evidence) is a crime. Brennan has not, and can not, explain the national security justification for drone strikes given their profound strategic risks. And Brennan hasn’t even faced questions about the CIA training domestic police departments, like the NYPD, in violation of its statutory charter.

“Finally, our supposedly ‘free’ country practices unequal justice. While millions face prosecution for relatively minor offenses, the architects of U.S. human rights abuses include a federal appellate judge wielding a lifetime appointment and six figure government paycheck. Whistleblowers, like the NSA’s Thomas Drake and the CIA’s John Kiriakou, face prison sentences not for committing crimes, but for revealing them to the public.

“Neither the President nor his partisan critics are likely to note these issues this week, but Americans feel their impact every day. Under each of the past two presidents, executive fiat, enabling legislative statutes and judicial formalism have combined to shred our Constitution and transform America from a ‘land of the free’ into a land that loudly proclaims freedom while denying it to our own people.”

AP reports: “Saturday mail may soon go the way of the Pony Express and penny postcards. The Postal Service said Wednesday that it plans to cut back to five-day-a-week deliveries for everything except packages to stem its financial losses in a world radically re-ordered by the Internet. …

“But change is not the biggest factor in the agency’s predicament — Congress is. The majority of the service’s red ink comes from a 2006 law forcing it to pay about $5.5 billion a year into future retiree health benefits, something no other agency does. Without that payment — $11.1 billion in a two-year installment last year — and related labor expenses, the mail agency sustained an operating loss of $2.4 billion for the past fiscal year, lower than the previous year.”

JEFF MUSTO, [email]
Musto is researcher and spokesperson for the Center for Study of Responsive Law, founded by Ralph Nader. Nader wrote in response to the Post Office’s announcement: “Postmaster General Donahoe would have us believe that this is one of many tough decisions that must be made to save the USPS, but nothing could be further from the truth. These are the decisions that are made by a leader without a clue and without a sense of what it takes to right the ship. He has ignored calls to implement ways of expanding postal services, many of which have been urged by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

“The USPS’s financial crisis has primarily been caused by a congressional mandate, coming from the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, that the USPS prefund the next 75 years of retiree health benefits in just a decade, by 2016. This is something that is not required of any other federal government agency or private corporation. Not to mention that there is no actuarial justification for such an accelerated schedule to prefund this future obligation. PAEA effectively forces the USPS to prefund retiree health benefits for some of its future employees who haven’t even been born yet!

“As a result, the USPS pays at least $5.5 billion each year into a fund for 75 years of future retiree health benefits in addition to paying $2.6 billion for the employer’s share of insurance premiums for the Postal Service’s current retirees. On top of this, according to reports from the USPS’s Inspector General, the USPS has overpaid $80 billion dollars to the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System which the federal government refuses to return.

“If Congress were to reverse PAEA and return the billions owed to the USPS, the U.S. Postal Service would not be facing a financial crisis.”