I think of myself as an optimist. Over the years, I have seen a lot of crises resolved, as often as not by what can only be described as muddling through.
It is hard to see how the world will muddle through the Greek debt crisis. "New Bailout is a Reprieve for Greece, but Doubts Persist," was the February 21 headline in the New York Times. Count me among the doubters.
As complicated as the debt crisis is, the resolution of the problem is in the hands of two governments -- Germany and Greece -- and, more importantly, the electorates in each of those democracies.
Before I explain that, let's look at how grim runescape gold the situation is. The Greek national debt stands at 160 percent of GDP. In order to get relief from the rest of the eurozone (read: Germany), the government had to agree to get that down to 120.5 percent by 2020. In order to do that, Greece has introduced severe austerity measures that will slash 150,000 government jobs, cut private sector wages by 22 percent, reduce or eliminate pensions, sell off public enterprises, and raise taxes. All this in a country where unemployment among those under 25 is just under 50 percent.
Here's the catch-22: if the government were able to buy runescape gold do all of this (a big if), the immediate effects on the Greek economy would be crushing. The austerity measures are bound to shrink the economy, thus making the debt to GDP ratio even worse.
Meanwhile bondholders have agreed to a 50 percent cut in value, and the second round of bailouts just announced allows Greece temporarily to avoid a default. But what happens now?
Within Greece, the people have to agree with what their leaders have promised to its eurozone benefactors. Will they accept the extreme hardships that will be imposed on them? Greece is a democracy. Ultimately, the government cheap runescape gold will either respond to what the people want or it will fall. The riots and the burning of buildings in Athens aren't hopeful signs for the current government.
Germany, which essentially controls the eurozone, is a democracy as well. Just how many billions of their money will the German people sacrifice to prop up a country they consider irresponsible? Contrary to many press reports, Germany has demonstrated more than most countries a willingness to take on the burdens of others. West Germany shouldered a herculean economic load when the wall came down and it merged with East Germany. But a strong majority rs gold of Germans do not believe they should finance a country like Greece, particularly when the social benefits offered there have been greater than their own.
Put yourself in a German's place. You pick up your newspaper last October and read that Diomidis Spinellis, Secretary General of the special task force to stop tax evasion in the Greek Finance Ministry, has thrown up his hands in disgust and quit because of what he describes as a "deficit of management" will to stop the corruption that permeates the tax system. Obviously the systematic tax evasion that has long been part of Greek culture is proving difficult to change. Spinellis charged cheap wow gold that tax collectors continue to skim off the top of taxes they do collect, and many publicly identified tax avoiders have still not paid their taxes. Am I, as a German, going to support my government if it wants to send more of my money to this place?
Add this: if you are a law-abiding Greek taxpayer, given what austerity is doing to your job or your business, paying greatly increased taxes may prove to be impossible.
There are lots of catch-22s in this terrible crisis, and they should have been taken into account when the eurozone was first established. The countries that joined gave up control of their individual monetary policies when they lost the ability to control their money supply. It was clear from the beginning that Germany would end up in effective control of eurozone monetary policy because of its size, economic power and culture. It should also have been clear that part of that culture was a deeply ingrained fear of inflation, a legacy of the collapse of the Weimar Republic.
We are watching a tragedy unfold, one that could ultimately have wide-ranging negative effects on our own economy. I can only wish I were more optimistic about our chances of muddling through.
Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. Senator from Delaware. Please visit www.tedkaufman.com for more information.
2012年2月28日星期二
2012年2月23日星期四
Slavery and the Presidents: Where Is the Public Acknowledgement?
On Feb. 9, a member of Congress took an important step in attempting to educate the nation about an important slice of history relative to the White House. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) sent a letter to President Barack Obama to suggesting that the latter find a way to commemorate those enslaved individuals who helped to build the White House.
The letter stated, in part, "An acknowledgement of the role of slave labor displayed in the White House would be an important swtor credits symbol that the United States does not run from its history, but rather learns from it." The White House, of course, is an important icon of the nation's identity but embodies one of its most long-standing contradiction: a revolution against tyranny that maintain (and expanded) the enslavement of millions.
According to the White House website, in the last two years alone, there were 1.5 million individuals buy swtor credits who visited the White House. None of those visitors would necessarily know that 12 U.S. presidents were slaveholders and seven of them had slaves in the building we now call the White House which opened in 1801. There is no mention of these facts either in White House tourist brochures or any other documents given to visitors.
George Washington is not included in this scenario because he and nine of his slaves spent his presidency swtor gold in Philadelphia. Ironically, a plaque does exist recognizing those nine individuals which is part of the new pavilion in Philadelphia that houses the Liberty Bell. The pavilion is built over the site and specifically the slave quarters where Washington lived as president. It took a decade of protests, lawsuits, and grassroots activism to finally get the National Park Service to include the plaque which it initially refused to do.
Plaques wow gold also exist that acknowledge the slaves who helped to build the U.S. Capitol, many of whom also worked on the White House. In June 2010, Congress dedicated two plaques in "Emancipation Hall" at the Congressional Visitor's Center. The plaques state, "This original exterior wall was constructed between 1793 and 1800 of sandstone quarried by laborers, including enslaved African Americans who were an important part of the work force that built the United States Capitol."
As buy wow gold noted, many of these individuals built the White House between 1790 and 1800. This included unskilled as well as skilled labor. For example, there were at least five black carpenters -- Peter, Ben, Daniel, Harry, and Tom -- who worked on both structures. Slave labor also cut down trees, made bricks, cleared the land, and performed many, many other tasks all without pay, adequate food, or basic health care.
A public plaque or some other display would, in part, complete the circle of owning the history of presidents, Congress, and slavery. While there are hundreds of memorials, plaques, and other means that present a false narrative of American history, there are too few that genuinely tell the more complicated and often harsh reality that many faced as U.S. democracy unfolded.
As Rep. Ackerman notes in his letter, "I urge you to take steps to have an appropriate representation acknowledging the role of slave labor in constructing the White House in an area of public viewing."
The letter stated, in part, "An acknowledgement of the role of slave labor displayed in the White House would be an important swtor credits symbol that the United States does not run from its history, but rather learns from it." The White House, of course, is an important icon of the nation's identity but embodies one of its most long-standing contradiction: a revolution against tyranny that maintain (and expanded) the enslavement of millions.
According to the White House website, in the last two years alone, there were 1.5 million individuals buy swtor credits who visited the White House. None of those visitors would necessarily know that 12 U.S. presidents were slaveholders and seven of them had slaves in the building we now call the White House which opened in 1801. There is no mention of these facts either in White House tourist brochures or any other documents given to visitors.
George Washington is not included in this scenario because he and nine of his slaves spent his presidency swtor gold in Philadelphia. Ironically, a plaque does exist recognizing those nine individuals which is part of the new pavilion in Philadelphia that houses the Liberty Bell. The pavilion is built over the site and specifically the slave quarters where Washington lived as president. It took a decade of protests, lawsuits, and grassroots activism to finally get the National Park Service to include the plaque which it initially refused to do.
Plaques wow gold also exist that acknowledge the slaves who helped to build the U.S. Capitol, many of whom also worked on the White House. In June 2010, Congress dedicated two plaques in "Emancipation Hall" at the Congressional Visitor's Center. The plaques state, "This original exterior wall was constructed between 1793 and 1800 of sandstone quarried by laborers, including enslaved African Americans who were an important part of the work force that built the United States Capitol."
As buy wow gold noted, many of these individuals built the White House between 1790 and 1800. This included unskilled as well as skilled labor. For example, there were at least five black carpenters -- Peter, Ben, Daniel, Harry, and Tom -- who worked on both structures. Slave labor also cut down trees, made bricks, cleared the land, and performed many, many other tasks all without pay, adequate food, or basic health care.
A public plaque or some other display would, in part, complete the circle of owning the history of presidents, Congress, and slavery. While there are hundreds of memorials, plaques, and other means that present a false narrative of American history, there are too few that genuinely tell the more complicated and often harsh reality that many faced as U.S. democracy unfolded.
As Rep. Ackerman notes in his letter, "I urge you to take steps to have an appropriate representation acknowledging the role of slave labor in constructing the White House in an area of public viewing."
2012年2月20日星期一
Let Us Honor Slave-Owning Presidents?
Here it is again, the intersection of Presidents Day and Black History Month. Eight of our early presidents, beginning with George Washington, owned slaves during their tenure in the nation's highest office. The two I am most familiar with, given my career at the historic sites of Monticello and Montpelier, and as the author of the recently published A Slave in the White House (Palgrave Macmillan, $28.00) are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Jefferson and Madison owned over a hundred enslaved people at their Virginia plantations and took several slaves with them to swtor credits the White House. Running the domestic side of the executive mansion was a private undertaking then, and the third and fourth president each assembled a household staff, headed by a French steward, of about ten: white and free black workers, slaves hired in the capital, as well as slaves from their plantation.
Slavery was not a debate. It was a crime being perpetrated on real people in real time.
Ten-year-old Paul Jennings was one of the home slaves selected by President James Madison for the White House household staff. As a buy swtor credits footman Jennings set and served meals, assisted the coachman, and ran messages and other errands. Later he became Madison's personal manservant or valet, and in freedom he authored the first White House memoir.
One enslaved man, John Freeman, served as a White House footman during both Jefferson's and Madison's administrations. Jefferson purchased Freeman in 1804 with the understanding, set by his former master, that he was to be freed in sixteen years. In 1809, the year Madison's first term began, the third president sold Freeman to his swtor gold successor for $231.81 (calculated to the penny based on Freeman's remaining time as a slave). This is the only recorded instance of the sale of human property between these two presidents, though Jefferson also sold a woman, Thenia Hemings, and her five young daughters, to another of our slave-owning presidents, James Monroe.
It is easy to see the contradiction--some say hypocrisy--in the author of the Declaration of Independence and the father of the Constitution lording over plantations of more than one hundred slaves and presiding over a government wow gold devoted to upholding individual rights while being served by enslaved footmen in livery.
Yet we tend to make excuses for the failure of our Founding Fathers to end slavery. They were men of their time, they had to put union first, they did not understand that we are all one biological race. We look back and see slavery less as a political issue, more as a moral offense. The truth is that Madison and Jefferson saw it that way, too.
Madison acknowledged that slavery was an evil of great magnitude, a "moral, social and economical" failure. Jefferson called it an "abominable buy wow gold crime" and a "moral depravity" and allowed that should a violent contest between slaves and slave owners transpire, there was no doubt which side God would be on.
Both men supported gradual emancipation if something could be done with the free blacks. It was the concept of colonization, the transport of free blacks to Africa that offered Madison relief from his despair over slavery. Maybe all slaves could be freed, he wrote, if the "double operation"--emancipation followed by colonization--was put in place.
Thus in the end it was not slavery but race--racism--that was the cheap wow gold sticking point. Jefferson and Madison thought that people of color should enjoy the same individual rights as white citizens. But not here. They averred that black and white could never live harmoniously in America together.
Two centuries later (centuries!) we are still working on proving them wrong in their prediction, still working on realizing a truly pluralistic society that all Americans honor.
Paul Jennings's great grandson, Dr. C Herbert Marshall, who, along with his fellow black doctors, could not practice in all-white hospitals or even join the American Medical Association, wrote an "op-ed" in the Negro History Bulletin in February of 1960 that started off, " I have every reason to be proud of being an American." It concluded, "Today, we find ourselves on the threshold of a new era ushering in the type of freedom for all for which my fore-parents sacrificed so much."
If Dr. Marshall could offer that positive a sentiment in February 1960, then certainly we in February 2012 can take a sanguine view of the distance we have come since then. If we are not post-racial yet, we are getting there. No matter the sins of the Fathers, it is on us now. A sprint to the finish, anyone? Everyone?
Jefferson and Madison owned over a hundred enslaved people at their Virginia plantations and took several slaves with them to swtor credits the White House. Running the domestic side of the executive mansion was a private undertaking then, and the third and fourth president each assembled a household staff, headed by a French steward, of about ten: white and free black workers, slaves hired in the capital, as well as slaves from their plantation.
Slavery was not a debate. It was a crime being perpetrated on real people in real time.
Ten-year-old Paul Jennings was one of the home slaves selected by President James Madison for the White House household staff. As a buy swtor credits footman Jennings set and served meals, assisted the coachman, and ran messages and other errands. Later he became Madison's personal manservant or valet, and in freedom he authored the first White House memoir.
One enslaved man, John Freeman, served as a White House footman during both Jefferson's and Madison's administrations. Jefferson purchased Freeman in 1804 with the understanding, set by his former master, that he was to be freed in sixteen years. In 1809, the year Madison's first term began, the third president sold Freeman to his swtor gold successor for $231.81 (calculated to the penny based on Freeman's remaining time as a slave). This is the only recorded instance of the sale of human property between these two presidents, though Jefferson also sold a woman, Thenia Hemings, and her five young daughters, to another of our slave-owning presidents, James Monroe.
It is easy to see the contradiction--some say hypocrisy--in the author of the Declaration of Independence and the father of the Constitution lording over plantations of more than one hundred slaves and presiding over a government wow gold devoted to upholding individual rights while being served by enslaved footmen in livery.
Yet we tend to make excuses for the failure of our Founding Fathers to end slavery. They were men of their time, they had to put union first, they did not understand that we are all one biological race. We look back and see slavery less as a political issue, more as a moral offense. The truth is that Madison and Jefferson saw it that way, too.
Madison acknowledged that slavery was an evil of great magnitude, a "moral, social and economical" failure. Jefferson called it an "abominable buy wow gold crime" and a "moral depravity" and allowed that should a violent contest between slaves and slave owners transpire, there was no doubt which side God would be on.
Both men supported gradual emancipation if something could be done with the free blacks. It was the concept of colonization, the transport of free blacks to Africa that offered Madison relief from his despair over slavery. Maybe all slaves could be freed, he wrote, if the "double operation"--emancipation followed by colonization--was put in place.
Thus in the end it was not slavery but race--racism--that was the cheap wow gold sticking point. Jefferson and Madison thought that people of color should enjoy the same individual rights as white citizens. But not here. They averred that black and white could never live harmoniously in America together.
Two centuries later (centuries!) we are still working on proving them wrong in their prediction, still working on realizing a truly pluralistic society that all Americans honor.
Paul Jennings's great grandson, Dr. C Herbert Marshall, who, along with his fellow black doctors, could not practice in all-white hospitals or even join the American Medical Association, wrote an "op-ed" in the Negro History Bulletin in February of 1960 that started off, " I have every reason to be proud of being an American." It concluded, "Today, we find ourselves on the threshold of a new era ushering in the type of freedom for all for which my fore-parents sacrificed so much."
If Dr. Marshall could offer that positive a sentiment in February 1960, then certainly we in February 2012 can take a sanguine view of the distance we have come since then. If we are not post-racial yet, we are getting there. No matter the sins of the Fathers, it is on us now. A sprint to the finish, anyone? Everyone?
2012年2月15日星期三
In the Debate on Immigration, Deportation Must Be Sensible
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in his Roll Call op-ed ("President Is Ignoring Immigration Laws," Feb. 6), argues that a policy of deporting serious criminals instead of parents, military families and students attending college is bad for the country. Once again the Republicans are on the wrong side of the law-and-order approach to immigration.
Like so many Republican accusations swtor credits about this president, the ones surrounding immigration come straight out of a fantasy world. I wish we had the president that Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) says we have. If we did, I could have saved two trips to Park Police headquarters for being arrested in front of the White House protesting the president's deportation policies.
I praise buy swtor credits the president when he does well, and I criticize him when he's wrong. But the fact is that President Barack Obama has deported more people, put more personnel on the ground at the border and reduced illegal entry more than any previous president. He is proud of it and trumpets it frequently. But through the Republican political lens, he appears to be a president swtor gold who is soft on illegal immigration.
The question is not how many people to deport. Unfortunately, given the complete obstructionism of the Republican side to craft a more sensible alternative, we are stuck with a system that forcibly removes about 400,000 people per year, with huge costs to taxpayers, families and communities. A population about the size of Minneapolis is deported runescape gold every year, and we have reached our capacity to deport more.
For this president, the question has not been how many to deport but who to deport first. Republicans say we should deport anyone we find, even if that means reducing the number of criminals we deport and reducing the capacity of both local law enforcement and our criminal courts to go after actual violent criminals -- regardless buy runescape gold of whether they are immigrants. A sophomore in college or a handyman with two U.S. citizen children are simply not threats to public safety. But Republicans want them prioritized equally with someone who has murdered, driven while drunk or trafficked drugs. That is plain crazy, but that is the Republican approach to immigration.
When this Congress is over and the president is re-elected, I rs gold fully expect a debate on how we re-establish law and order in our immigration system, and I fully expect the leading Republicans on the immigration issue to fight every attempt at reform tooth and nail. Too many on that side of the aisle are addicted to scapegoating and denigrating immigrants -- and Democrats -- to have it any other way.
But the rest of us want a legal immigration system that works and a way for those who have been here for years and built lives here -- the vast majority of those who are here illegally in the absence of a functioning legal immigration system -- to get in the system and on the books so that immigration enforcement has teeth and employers play by the rules.
We will have that debate eventually, over the strenuous objections of Republicans who oppose a sensible law-and-order approach to immigration reform.
Like so many Republican accusations swtor credits about this president, the ones surrounding immigration come straight out of a fantasy world. I wish we had the president that Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) says we have. If we did, I could have saved two trips to Park Police headquarters for being arrested in front of the White House protesting the president's deportation policies.
I praise buy swtor credits the president when he does well, and I criticize him when he's wrong. But the fact is that President Barack Obama has deported more people, put more personnel on the ground at the border and reduced illegal entry more than any previous president. He is proud of it and trumpets it frequently. But through the Republican political lens, he appears to be a president swtor gold who is soft on illegal immigration.
The question is not how many people to deport. Unfortunately, given the complete obstructionism of the Republican side to craft a more sensible alternative, we are stuck with a system that forcibly removes about 400,000 people per year, with huge costs to taxpayers, families and communities. A population about the size of Minneapolis is deported runescape gold every year, and we have reached our capacity to deport more.
For this president, the question has not been how many to deport but who to deport first. Republicans say we should deport anyone we find, even if that means reducing the number of criminals we deport and reducing the capacity of both local law enforcement and our criminal courts to go after actual violent criminals -- regardless buy runescape gold of whether they are immigrants. A sophomore in college or a handyman with two U.S. citizen children are simply not threats to public safety. But Republicans want them prioritized equally with someone who has murdered, driven while drunk or trafficked drugs. That is plain crazy, but that is the Republican approach to immigration.
When this Congress is over and the president is re-elected, I rs gold fully expect a debate on how we re-establish law and order in our immigration system, and I fully expect the leading Republicans on the immigration issue to fight every attempt at reform tooth and nail. Too many on that side of the aisle are addicted to scapegoating and denigrating immigrants -- and Democrats -- to have it any other way.
But the rest of us want a legal immigration system that works and a way for those who have been here for years and built lives here -- the vast majority of those who are here illegally in the absence of a functioning legal immigration system -- to get in the system and on the books so that immigration enforcement has teeth and employers play by the rules.
We will have that debate eventually, over the strenuous objections of Republicans who oppose a sensible law-and-order approach to immigration reform.
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