Monday, April 26, 2010
REPUBLICANS AND SOCIALISTS AGREE: OBAMA-CARE IS NOT THE ANSWER
Sunday, April 18, 2010
HUNGER POLITICS: OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO A WELL-FED WORLD
Three challenges central to the global conversation on hunger reduction that need to be addressed, according to a paper produced by the Worldwatch Institute are:
- Unify the food security, climate change and ecosystem agendas.
- Rise above conflicting projections on the causes and solutions to hunger.
- Empower farmers and communities to feed themselves.
She added: "Yet in the midst of all this conflict, a rapidly growing set of individuals and institutions has been exploring innovations for reconciling these objectives for developing landscape mosaics that overcome these challenges simultaneously."
Technical and institutional innovations to boost smallholders productively, gain market access, and restore natural resources are transforming agriculture in ways that can ensure food security, mitigate climate change, and conserve critical ecosystem services, including watershed protection, pollination, and pest and disease control.
Such innovations are often hidden, however, as entrepreneurial farmers are overlooked by national and international government leaders and funders.
,"Despite these obstacles, agricultural innovation is taking place in the fields of Uganda, Ghana, Kenya and elsewhere across Africa to overcome the blight of global hunger," says Danielle Nierenberg, senior reseracher at Wordwatch and co-director of the Nourishing the Planet Project.
"In order to feed the 1.02 billion people who go to bed hungry every night," she stresses, "change-makers must overcome the policy challenges that have plagued this issue for generations and embrace the innovations that have proven most effective to date."
One in nearly six people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life and hunger and malnutrition are the leading risk to health worldwide, greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, according to the United Nations World Hunger Program.
Among the principal causes of hunger are natural disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agricultural infrastructure and over-exploitation of the environment. Recently, financial and economic crises have pushed more people into hunger.
As well as the obvious hunger resulting from an empty stomach, there is the hidden hunger of micronutrient deficiencies which make people susceptible to infectious diseases, impair physical and mental development, reduce their labor productivity and increase the risk of premature death.
Hunger does not only weigh on the individual. It also imposes a crushing economic burden on the developing world. Economists estimate that every child whose physical and mental development is stunted by hunger and malnutrition stands to lose 5-10 percent in lifetime savings.
The WHP observes that whereas good progress was made in reducing chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, hunger has been slowly but steadily rising for the past decade.
NEW REPORT CALLS FOR 'MIDDLE WAY' TO DEAL WITH IRANIAN CENSORSHIP
A result of the first meeting of the Iran-U.S. Advisory Group, convened by the Century Foundation and the National Security Network, the report presents insights about present-day Iran often missing from public policy discussion.
The advisory group, which is scheduled to meet over the next 12-18 months, consists of Iranian activists with close ties to the opposition movement in Iran, including the Green Movement, and European and American current and retired officials and diplomats.
Iranian members of the group developed a set of recommendations specifically addressing how the United States and other western governmnets can foster connectivity and discourage government surveillance and repression.
Among specific measures recommended are:
- Increase Iranian public access to the Internet by sanctioning companies that assist the Iranian government in Internet filtering, surveillance and eavesdropping.
- Create a secure e-mail service that can be accessed by activists to use inside Iran. There is no major secure free e-mail in Iran.
- Facilitate the provision of high-speed Internet via satellite.
- Dedicate a hardened satellite to host Iranian television and radio channels to enable western news services such as BBC Persian and Voice of America, to escape the Islamic Republic routine jamming efforts.
Titled "Dealing with Iran: Time for A 'Middle Way' Between Confrontation Conciliation," the report was written by Century Foundation fellow Genevieve Abdo, with assistance from the National Security Network.
Abdo is the editor of InsiderIRAN.org, a new website that provides information and analysis from scholars both within and outside of Iran.
Before joining The Century Foundation, Abdo served as liaison for the United Nations' Alliance of Civilization, a project created by the United Nations Secretary General to improve relations between Western and Islamic societies. She was a foreign correspondent for many years in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
THE WASHINGTON GAME IS GETTING BOTH ROUGHER AND UGLIER
MEASURING WHAT MATTERS: GDP, ECOSYSTEMS AND ENVIRONMENT
- In February of 2008, French President Nicholas Sarkozy established the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, led by Joseph Stiglitz. The commission was charged with addressing the growing disconnect between people's perceptions of their own day-to-day economic experiences and official economic performance pronouncements by statisticians and politicians. The commission's initial report specified the major flaws with GDP and outlined the contours of a better measure. The commission is hard at work developing a single new indicator to replace GDP. The scope of the commission's work has now expanded and will be housed under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
- In February 2007, the European Parliament launched its Beyond GDP initiative, bringing together decision makers and policy experts throughout the world to develop a new set of "headline" indicators that can supplement and gauge a nation's overall sustainability. Eurostat, the European Union's statitistical agency, is now developing a workplan to incorporate new indicators into economic performance evaluations and policy analyses.
- Also in 2008, the OECD launched its Meausring Progress of Societies initiative to foster the development of sets of key economic, social and environmental indicators, sets to inform and promote "evidence-based decision-making, where the effects of policy on these indicators are quantified over time rather than simply being discussed in purely qualitative terms."
- The newly enacted U.S. health care legislation establishes a Commission on Key National Indicators. The commission is charged with partnering into the National Academies to establish, maintain and disseminate indicators responsive to critical public issues including indicators that provide a more accurate portrayal of true economic welfare.
- The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Initiative -- a major United Nations Environmental Program study on the economics of biodiversity loss -- is researching ways to integrate changes in ecosystem service stocks and flows into national accounts.
- For the first time since the early 1990s, the Bureau of Economic Analysis is set to consider ways to revamp the U.S. statistical architecture to include "(m)easures of sustainability of economic trends. . ." This could provide a critical policy screen -- policies designed to boost GDP must also be shown to be sustainable over time.
- Throughout the country, U.S. states are considering new metrics to replace GDP's state level equivalent -- gross state product. The State of Maryland is leading the way. In February, Governor Martin O'Malley released a Genuine Progress Indicator and sanctioned its use in policy analysis at the state level. The state has expressed interest in coordinating a network of GPI practitioners throughout the United States.
There are two essential features of a macro economic indicator to replace GDP: (1) It should measure genuine economic welfare over time. Proper valuation of natural capital, such as overfishing, are by definition unsustainable, and therefore should not be credited in a measure of sustainable economic welfare since they limit the next generation's prospects.
In addition, depleting natural capital degrades ecosystem services important to current welfare. For example, when we lose forests we also lose clean and regular water supplies. The externalized costs (e.g., expenditures on water filtration or groundwater pumping) now show up as positive contributions to GDP when in fact they represent the costs of poor land management. National accounts should be debited, not credited, to reflect these costs.
Replacing GDP with a measure of sustainable economic welfare is not an end to itself but rather a means for guiding policy. For the past 50 years, growth in GDP has been an overall policy objective pursued by governments at every level. Obsession with GDP growth has spurred policies to liquidate natural capital as quickly as possible. By correctly valuing changes in our stocks of natural capital and the ecosystem services that they provide will help advance a science of new metrics capable of inspiring more sustainable policy choices.
The author is the senior economist with the People and Ecosystems Program of the World Resources Institute.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
SORTING OUT BOTH THE WINNERS AND LOSERS IN HEALTH CARE REFORM
What will health care reform mean for insurers, hospitals, doctors, Medicare patients, seniors who are now on Medicare Advantage, Medicaid patients and state budgets? Who wins and who loses?You may be surprised by some of the answers. The legislation is rich in details that have been ignored. Liberals as well as conservatives are making assumptions that just don’t square with the facts.Below, I focus on the impact that reform will have on the private insurance industry--and on the industry’s customers.
MYTH # 1: Health Care Reform represents a “boon” for private insurers.FACT: It is s true that, beginning in 2014, virtually all Americans will be required to buy insurance, or pay a fine. But while insurers will pick up a boatload of new customers, many will be refugees from a health care system that treated them poorly. Think of the boat as a life raft. These could be very expensive customers.
Moreover, between now and 2014, insurers will face some serious financial hits. These new regulations will make our health care system fairer and more affordable. But the rules also suggest that going forward, for-profit health insurance may not be a viable business--unless these companies learn how to keep patients healthy, while insisting on value for health care dollars. Insurers that over-pay drug-makers or hospitals will find that they can no longer turn a profit by simply passing the added expense along in the form of higher premiums. Consider what will happen in the next three years:
1) This year, Washington sliced funding for private insurers who offer Medicare (a.k.a. Medicare Advantage) by 5%. Next year, payments will be frozen. In 2012, the serious cutting begins. Over ten years, Medicare will slash over-payments to Medicare Advantage insurers by $132 billion.When the Medicare Advantage bill was passed in 2003, Congress agreed to pay Advantage insurers 12 percent more, per beneficiary, than it would cost Medicare to cover those patients itself. Most agree that this is corporate welfare that our health care system cannot afford. But recent years, insurers have become increasingly dependent on the windfall payments from Medicare Advantage. As unemployment rises, insurers have been losing customers in the employer-based insurance market, and Advantage has come to represent a larger share of their profits. Humana, for example, has been receiving 60% of its operating income from Medicare Advantage.Meanwhile, insurers selling plans in the private sector have been scrambling to rachet up premiums fast enough to keep up with the spiraling cost of healthcare. For ten years private insurers’ payouts to doctors, hospitals and patients have been climbing by roughly 8% a year. Rising prices plus volume have driven reimbursements skyward. Each year Americans are taking more medications and undergoing more surgeries and tests. And every year, virtually every product and service in our healthcare system costs more. This is why, according to Morningstar Investment Research, the health insurance industry showed an average profit margin of just 3.4% in 2009. This means that, in terms of profitability, it ranked 87th out of 215 US industries. As Henry Aaron, a highly-respected progressive reformer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution observed last fall, “Insurance company profits in the larger picture have very little to do with the overall rising cost of health care.” Given the skimpy profits that the industry has seen in recent years, generous subsidies from Medicare Advantage have remained what Carl McDonald, an analyst with CIBC World Markets in New York, calls a “bright spot” for companies such as industry leader UnitedHealth Group.
2) Next year, the new rules regarding pay-outs will apply to private sector plans. Insurers selling in the individual and small group market will be required to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical services, while plans in the large group market will be expected to spend 85 percent. Insurers that do not meet these pay-out thresholds will have to provide rebates to policyholders.
3) The new pay-out rules will make premium hikes far less profitable for insurers. Even if an company raises its premiums by 10%--for example, lifting a $14,000 annual premium for a family plan to $15,400--the insurer must pay out 85% of the $1,400 increase, or an additional $1,190 to hospitals doctors and patients , keeping only $210 of the $1,400 to cover overhead and profits.
4) Another new cost for insurers: beginning in 6 months, all new group health plans as well as new plans in the individual market will have to provide coverage for preventive services at no charge. Co-pays and deductibles will not apply to recommended services.
(5) Beginning this year, if you become seriously ill, insures won’t be able to drop your coverage on the grounds that you forgot some detail of your medical history when you applied for insurance. They will be able to rescind your policy only if they can prove fraud, or that you intentionally set out to deceive them. This won’t be easy.
(6) In 2011, insurers will no longer be allowed to cap how much they pay out to an individual over the course of his or her life. If a customer suffers from a serious illness that requires multiple hospitalizations and high-tech treatments over many years, the insurer faces an open-ended bill. Starting in 2014, insurers will no longer be able to limit how much they pay out annually.Make no mistake: patients need this protection. Parents should not have to worry that the insurance covering a child suffering from cancer is going to “run out” if her care costs too much in any one year—or if she survives too long. But while the new rule is welcome, it will make the insurance business riskier: Actuaries will have a hard time guesstimating just how high those bills could mount, especially over 10 or 15 years. This is another reason why reform is far from a sweetheart deal for insurers.
(7) In 2011 it will become more difficult to raise premiums. Given falling Advantage reimbursements, coupled with rising expenses, one might assume that insurers would simply lift premiums to make up the difference. But it won’t be quite that easy. Reform legislation helps states insist that insurance companies submit justification for requested premium increases. Any company with excessive or unjustified premium increases may not be able to participate in the new health insurance exchanges. Already, some state regulators are getting tougher. In March, the Providence Journal reported that Rhode Island’s state health insurance commissioner slashed proposed premiums increases, keeping rate increases in the single digits, while calling Blue Cross's proposed 14.6-percent hike "just not affordable." And in April the Massachusetts insurance commissioner rejected nearly 9 out of 10 rate increases—ranging from 7% to 34%--that the state’s health insurers had requested for individual and small group plans.Still, many argue that long-term, insurers will emerge as big winners.
MYTH #2: In 2014, when the mandate requiring that everyone must purchase insurance kicks in, insurers will capture millions of new customers, government subsidies in hand, and their profits will, at last, soar.FACT: In 2014, insurers will find that many of those new customers will be coming from low-income households. These are families who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but too poor to purchase insurance without the government subsidies that will become available in 2014.
Today about one-third, or nearly 15 million of the 47 million uninsured live in households earning between $25,000 and $50,000. These are the families who will be receiving good subsidies—and they are likely to sign up for insurance. But many will need extensive care.
According to a 2009 report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 11% of the uninsured are in “fair “or “poor” health, compared to 5% of those with private insurance. About half of all uninsured adults suffer from a chronic condition. About 75% have gone without insurance for more than one year; 55% have not had insurance for more than 3 years. Some haven’t seen a physician during that time. Others have seen doctors, but have not been able to afford the medications physicians prescribed.
These patients are likely to need more tests, treatments and surgeries than the average customer.Keep in mind that, under the new reform law, insurance companies will not be able to charge these new customers more than they charge others in their community. Moreover, insurers will have to offer all patients comprehensive insurance that meets a high bar defining basic benefits. No more “Swiss cheese” policies filled with holes. This is all fair. But it does mean that insurers will be operating in an unfamiliar marketplace, where the rules are designed to benefit patients, not the corporations that sell them coverage.
Of course, not all of today’s uninsured are poor: 9.7 million live in households earning over $75,000 a year. Why don’t they have insurance? Some suffer from pre-existing conditions that have made it impossible for them to secure insurance. Most likely, they will buy coverage adding to the number of sick patents in their insurers' pool.Many others in this income bracket are healthy, and haven’t bought insurance because they just don’t think it’s a good value.
Under reform rules, most earn too much to receive government subsidies. Unless premiums are significantly lower than they are today, many may well decide to pay the penalty rather than buy insurance.After all, the penalties for individuals who ignore the mandate are surprisingly low: $95 in 2014, $325 in 2015, $695 (or up to 2.5 percent of income) in 2016. Families will pay half the amount for children, up to a cap of $2,250 per family. After 2016, penalties are indexed to the Consumer Price Index.
In addition, roughly 40% or about 19 million of the 47 million uninsured are 18-to-34-years old. Most in this group are healthy, and just don't believe that they need protection. Under the reform legislation, some under the age of 26 will sign up for their parents’ insurance. But many of these invincible youngsters are likely to shrug, and pay the puny penalty.As a result, analysts at Fitch, the bond rating agency, observe: “It is not unreasonable to envision that too many new sick customers will overwhelm the individual segment of the market, driving many health plans from it altogether.”
In other words, these Fitch analysts are suggesting that a fair number oy insurers may not even try to compete for the new but unprofitable business in the Exchange. “This could become most acute under a scenario in which healthy, younger individuals decide to pay the penalty as opposed to purchasing coverage,” the Fitch analysts write, “and older individuals let policies lapse during periods when they do not need medical services, and purchase coverage only when they face a pending medical need, such as a surgery or expensive sets of tests or treatments."This is why I predict that sometime between now and 2014, Congress will lift the penalties, and change the rules to make it impossible for someone to pay a penalty--and then buy insurance when he or she falls ill. The rest of us cannot afford to carry "free riders."
Some have suggested that when a person decides not to buy insurance, he should be required to sign a document saying that he will not try to buy insurance for three years, taking the financial risk that he will be in an accident or become sick during that period of time and wind up broke, with medical debt that he will be paying off for years.We need young, healthy people in the pool or insurance will become unaffordable for everyone.
Make no mistake, there are many unknowns. We don’t yet know whether premiums will be high enough to guarantee that insurers will recover the dollars they spend on new customers. But industry analysts predict that rate increases will be held in check by the new rules on the percentage of premiums’ that insurers must pay out, and by heightened competition for customers, who will have more choice of plans than they currently do in the individual market. Insurers "will be free to price themselves into oblivion if they choose to do so," Sheryl Skolnick, an industry analyst with CRT Capital Group, told the Washington Post.
When all is said and done, it strikes me that the cuts and regs that go into effect in the next four years could easily lead to an industry shake-out. My guess is that some for-profit insurance companies won’t make it to 2014.
On Wall Street, analysts vary in how they assess the net effect of reform legislation on insurers, but no one is jubilant. Keep in mind that most Wall Street analysts would prefer to be optimistic.
Most companies are in the business of selling stocks. It is not good for business to be bearish.But everyone on the Street knows that while insurers will have more customers, profit margins are likely to be even lower than they are now. At best, this could prove to be a wash.Offering a moderate assessment of the damage, Ana Gupte, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein, suggests that "insurers come out a net negative, but not severely net negative."
What Will This Mean For You? If for-profit insurers are going to survive and thrive, they will be compelled to be more creative and efficient than they are today. They will be competing in the Exchanges where they will be offering comparable policies that promise the same essential benefits with less fine print. Thus it will be far easier for customer to make head-to-head comparisons.
If you are buying your own insurance or work for a small business that doesn't offer insurance and are shopping the exchange, you are likely to find that insurers are offering better value for your health-care dollars.
This will not mean that premiums for employer-based coverage will climb. If insurers selling to large corporations try to jack up premiums, many corporations will simply switch to another insurance company. In this new, more regulated environment, buyers will have more leverage. Meanwhile, the best of not-for-profit insurers are likely to do well in a regulated market.
Some already have pioneered using comparative effectiveness research to learn how to keep customers well. Kaiser Permanente, for examples has been honored for its work in preventing heart disease. Some for-profits also have been trying to do a better job of managing chronic disease.
But too many-profit companies have relied on various gimmicks to stay in the black: cherry-picking, selling Swiss cheese policies, canceling policies when patients become ill, putting caps on annual and lifetime pay-outs.
Many have relied on Medicare Advantage to stay afloat, while shifting risk to Advantage customers. Now, they are going to find themselves operating in much more difficult climate.
Some of these companies just don’t know how to make money unless they are able to do it the old-fashioned, predatory way. I suspect that more than a few will go under.If that happens, it is quite possible that non-profits that couldn’t have competed in the laissez-faire environment of the past will become viable.
In the 1980s and early 1990s for-profits with deep pockets drove many non-profits out of business. Now, new non-profits are likely to pop up.Finally, if for-profit insures have difficulty designing affordable plans that meet the new rules, my guess is that Congress will revive the public option.
A senior fellow specializing in health care issues at The Century Foundation, Ms. Mahar is the author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Harper/Collins
Monday, April 5, 2010
U.S. JOB MARKET IS SHOWING SIGNS THAT IT IS BEGINNING TO REBOUND
After more than half a year in which the nation's economy grew but payroll employment stagnated or fell, we now see clear evidence that employers are adding to their payrolls.
URBAN SPRAWL IS NOW A PROBLEM IN WORLD'S DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
The Mexican city of Guadalajara is cited as an example in a new report by UN-Habitat. Between 1970 and 2000, the surface area of the city grew 1.5 times faster than the population. The same is true for cities in China, as well as Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar; Johannesburg, South Africa's largest commercial hub, and the capitals of Egypt and Mexico -- Cairo and Mexico City, respectively.
In many developing countries, urban sprawl comprises two main, contrasting types of development in the same city, says the report entitled, State of World Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide.
One type is characterized by large, peri-urban areas with informal and illegal patterns of land use and is combined with a lack of infrastructure, public facilities and basic services; this is often accompanied by little or no public transportation and by inadequate access roads.
The other is a form of suburban sprawl in which residential zones for high and middle income groups and highly valued commercial and retail complexes are well connected by individual rather than public transportation.
Urban sprawl adds to the urban divide, pushing social segregation along economic lines that result in spatial differences in wealth and quality of life across various parts of cities and metropolitan areas, run down inner cities and more suburbs.
Suburbanization in developing countries happens mainly because people -- rich and poor -- flee poor governance, lack of planning and poor access to amenities. "In a nutshell: sprawl is a symptom of a divided city," the report stresses.
Urban sprawl involving the poor occurs because authorities pay little attention to slums, land, services and transportation. Authorities lack the ability to predict urban growth and, as a result fail to provide land for the urbanizing poor.
In addition, the urban poor are denied land rihts which is one of the main facgtors driving people to the periphery of towns associated with urban spread in developing countries.
Other features typically associated with sprawl include overdependence on personal motorized transportation coupled with a lack of alternatives, limited housing options and urban spaces that discourage pedestrian traffic.
Most South African cities, for example, expand primarily through development of new housing areas located beyond the existing urban periphery, and are therefore relatively unplanned. As a result, the urba periphery consists of pockets of housing developments isolated and separated from each other by trunk roads or open space.
Urban sprawl has a negative impact on infrastructure and the sustainability of cities. In most cases, sprawl translates into an increase in the cost of transportation, public infrastructure and of residential and commercial development.
Moreover, sprawling metropolitan areas require more energy, metal, concrete and asphalt than do compact cities because homes, offices and utilities are set farther apart.
In many places, urban sprawl encourages new developments that cause significant loss of prime farmland. When cities are improperly planned, urban sprawl adds to environmental degradation. Such is the case around several cities in Latin America where sizeable damage has been caused by environmentally sensitive areas including: Panama City, Panama, and its surrounding Canal Zone; Caracas, Venezuela and its adjacent coastline; San Jose, Costa Rica and its mountainous area, and Sao Paolo, Brazil and its water basin.
AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ VETS EXPECTED TO NEED LONG-TERM HEALTH CARE
According to the report, the VA needs to institute a process of forecasting the amount and types of resources necessary to meet the needs of the veteran and their families in the next three decades or more when their demand for health care and disability compensation is likely to peak.
Requests for disability care and compensation by veterans of previous wars did not peak until 30 years or more after their service ended, suggesting that the maximum demand on support services for military personnel of current wars and their families may not occur until 2040 or later, the report notes.
Many wounds suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq will persist over veterans' lifetimes, the report points out, and some impacts of military service may not be felt until decades later.
Requested by Congress and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense, the study calls for the VA to institute annual projections of the future health and disability benefits of West Asia war veterans and their families.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been identified as the signature wound of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. But the VA lacks protocols to manage lifetime effects of TBI because the issue has not been studied in either military or civilian populations.
The report maintains that the VA should sponsor research to determine the efficacy and cost effectiveness of developing protocols for the long-term management of polytrauma and TBI.
To help current and former military personnel of ongoing wars and their families readjust to post-deployment life, the VA and the Department of Defense need to gather information to answer many uncertainties, the study contends.
The information required includes how many mental health care providers are needed and where, what works best in treatment of TBI over the long term, and whether giving service members time to decompress before returning home would be beneficial.
The report further calls for VA and DOD to oversee coordination and communication among the dozens of public and private programs created to serve current and former Iraq and Afghanistan service members, veterans and their families.
An independent evaluation of the programs should be organized by these two agencies, the report suggests, given that it is unclear whether they are effective and whether redundancy among te programs help ensure the needs of service members, veterans and their families.
The study represents preliminary findigs of the two-phase study of the readjustment needs of current and former service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and their families.
In the first phase, the authors sought to identify the most pressing needs of this population through an initial review of the limited scientic literature available as well as reports and testimony from veterans and their families at town hall meetings.
The second phase report will present more detailed findings and recommendations based on an in-depth review of additional information, including data anticipated from several ongoing studies.
The committee that wrote the report was chaired by Dr. George W. Rutherford, Salvatore Pablo Lucia Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Director of Prevention and Public Health Group, Global Health Sciences, University of California.
Members of the committe included representatives of the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry; Duke University Medical Center; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; Ohio State University Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; the National Bureau of Economic Research; Georgetown University Department of Psychiatry; George Washington University Department Neurology
VENEZUELAN GOVERNMENT TARGETS CRITICS OF PRESIDENT CHAVEZ
At least three individuals seen as opposed to President Hugo Chavez were arrested and charged in March alone.
"Charges brought for political reasons against critics are being used to silence dissent and prevent others from speaking out," said Guadalupe Marengo, Americas deputy director at Amnesty International. "President Chavez must stop persecuting those who think differently or speak out against the government."
Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, former governor of the state of Zulia, was arrested on March 22, after he said in an interview that Venezuela had become a haven for drug trafficking and citing accusations by a Spanish court that the government supports armed opposition groups. He is currently being held in the Heleraido, headquarters of the national intelligence service.
Wilmer Azuaje, parliamentary deputy and a critic of President Chavez, was arrested on March 25. He was accused of reportedly insulting and hitting a woman police officer. He has since been released but faces prosecution.
Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of television station Globavision, was arrested on March 25 and charged with disseminating false information and insulting the President in statements that he made during a recent Inter American Press Association meeting in Aruba. He has since been released but faces prosecution.
In December 2009, Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni was arrested and charged with complicity in the escape of a former banker because she ordered his release.
Richard Blanco, a member of an opposition party, was arrested in August 2009 and charged with inciting and injuring a police officer during a demonstration.
The evidence against Blanco is based on video footage from the demonstration. Amnesty International has found no evidence in these videos of Blanco inciting violence or injuring a police officer.
Over recent years, the Venezuelan government appears to have established a pattern of clamping down on dissent through the use of legislative and administrative methods to silence and harass critics.
Laws are being used to justify what essentially seems to be politically motivated charges, which would indicate that the Venezuelan governmnet is deliberately targeting opponents, Amnesty International asserts.
The Inter American Commission on Human Rights has stated that the arrest of Zuloaga "evidences the lack of independence of the judiciary and the utilization of the criminal justice system to punish criticism, producing an intimidating effect that extends to all of society."
Following the detention of Judge Lourdes Afiuni, United Nations experts said, "Reprisals for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed function and creating a climate of fear among the judiciary and lawyers' profession serve no purpose except to undermine the rule of law and obstruct justice."
In January, after RCTV and other television channels were suspended from broadcasting, the European Parliament stated, "The National Telecommunications Commission should show itself to be independent of political and economic authorities and ensure equitable pluralism."
Friday, April 2, 2010
MURDER, MAYHEM ON MEXICAN BORDER EXPOSES DRUG PROHIBITION FUTILITY
In her incisive March 16 column, "The Slaughter on the Southern Border," Michele Malkin again asks why both Presidents Bush and Obama supported the failed Merida policy of subsidizing Mexican law enforcement. She wrote:By Donald A. Collins
"With bipartisan support, the Bush administration handed over $1.6 billion to help Mexico control its border chaos in 2008. The crime-fighting package known as the Merida Initiative funded helicopters, surveillance equipment, computer infrastructure, the expansion of intelligence data bases, anti-corruption initiatives, human rights education and training, and an anti-money laundering program for our southern neighbors.