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Personal Growth: Stress Relief Tips

Cherlene — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:43:02 -0800

The problem with the many stress relief techniques offered today is the requirement to take time out of your busy day to practice these techniques.
For many of us, it simply isn't possible. And, yes, while the majority agrees that allowing yourself to relax is an important health benefit, stressing oneself to find the time to relax seems a bit counter-intuitive. You think? And for many people, taking yourself out of your normal day-to-day activities to *relax* might actually *cause* more stress then relief!

Sound therapy is wonderful as it can be done *anywhere* - Home, Work, or your Car
Many wellness traditions consider sound therapy one of the most profound healing modalities. As a result, several health spas, interested in extending the relaxation their guests feel, are providing relaxation music to their customers to help with their customer's home spa routine.

The great thing about relaxation music CDs is that, regardless of your location, popping in your favorite CD will immediately bring calm. You can listen to your relaxation music in your car, calming yourself before (or after) a tough day at work, you can listen to your relaxation music at work to help keep your stress level in check, and you can listen to relaxation music while at home, dealing with the day-to-day issues life brings our way. In other words, any where you go, your ability to put relaxation music CDs to work for you follows!
Take the time to get some relaxation music in your life. Now is the time to enjoy the easy-to-use benefits of relaxation music!

Stress relief tips

You can learn to manage bad stress by making a committment to doing one or two of these tips each day.

Stress can act as a motivator or energizer. Too much of bad stress can cause medical and social problems. Because the body responds to stress physically, bad stress causes the *fight or flight* reaction and/or ANXIETY. The body changes, prepares to either confront the challenge or flee from it. Stress releases adrenaline (a stress hormone), heart rate increases, breathing quickens and blood pressures rises. The liver increases output of sugar and blood flow is diverted to the brain and large muscles. Symptoms of stress include, feeling anxious, feeling scared, irritable or moody. Stress affects thoughts. Thoughts of low self-esteem, fear of failure, inability to concentrate, worrying about the future, preoccupation with thoughts/tasks and forgetfulness can be present. Stress affects behavior. It can cause stuttering and other speech difficulties, bouts of crying for no apparent reason, laughing in a high pitch or nervous tone of voice, increased accident prone behavior, overeating, under eating and increased use of drugs and alcohol.

Breathe Deeply – Inhale deeply through your nose. Pull the air all the way down, deep into the lungs. Hold the breath for a count of six. Exhale slowly through the mouth to the count of six. Do this for several minutes. Be careful not to hyperventilate. If dizzy or light-headedness occur, begin breathing naturally.

Express Feelings and Thoughts - Call a friend. Join a group. Join a community on the Internet. If you feel these avenues are not helping talk to your doctor, seek out a counselor. Use all resources after through work, church and community. If seeing a counselor is something you’re fearful of,

Pet Therapy - Consider getting a pet. Pets listen very well. Their health benefits have been studied and are well founded for reducing blood pressure and many stress-related ailments.

Make Time for Relaxation and Fun – Find an activity that makes you feel good. It may be dancing, listening to music, walking along the beach, prayer, hiking in the mountains, working in the garden, taking photographs, watching birds, going to the movies, golfing, swimming, visiting museums. Make a list of activities that give you joy. Break them down into time segments of 2-5 minutes, 5-20 minutes, 30 minutes to ½ day and ½ day or longer. List the activities that give you joy under these time segments. Do at least three of them everyday. Most people think they have to do big things, such as vacations of whole days away from work or home to relieve stress. Not so, small activities that give you joy are the best stress busters.

Exercise - Try something new, like swimming. Begin a walking program. Do some form of exercise that interests you. Make sure to consult your physician beforehand.

Laugh - Laughter is a great way to relieve stress. If you find something funny, have a good belly laugh. Watch funny movies. Read funny stories.

Get Rid of Negatives - Take a hard look at the circle or environment you’re standing in. People who are negative and prone to “moods” spread negativity to others. Learn to say no to negativity and remove yourself from it whenever possible.

Write/Journal– Write out your complaints or troubles. Writing is no substitute for professional help but it does allow you to vent your feelings and frustrations. By writing with pen in hand or at the keyboard, you may discover an insight or solution to whatever is frustrating or bothering you.

Get A Massage – Make an investment in yourself. Massage therapy can relax muscles, easy muscle spasm, increase blood flow to skin and muscles and relieve mental and emotional stress. A massage will be one of the best investments you’ve ever made.

Be Realistic in Expectations – Don’t expect everyone to be like you or behave to your code of “shoulds and oughts”. Don’t expect to be right all the time. Don’t expect harmony all the time. Real life has conflicts in it. Be willing to confront conflict, state your needs then work at coming to a mutual compromise.

Monitor Your Communication Skills – Aggressive and hostile communication with others antagonizes and alienates. Assertive training can help you learn to express your needs without offending others or feeling ignored.

You can only change yourself - Work to grasp the full meaning of this statement. Trying to change another person causes stress to both parties. It can ruin relationships, damage relationships and cause others to withdraw from you. If you make statements such as – if only he, if only she, if only they – then you need to look in the mirror and say, what can I change about myself to make the situation better.

Accept - If you can’t leave a situation that is causing you extreme stress then accept it as it is. Adjust your approach to it. Look for ways to see positive things. Do not dwell on the negative. Above all, if the situation is abusive, either physically or emotionally (this includes work situations also) seek professional help through counseling.

Stress will not suddenly disappear in modern day life. It will remain and may even increase. To reduce and manage stress takes a commitment to do so. Make a commitment and feel BETTER!

ObamaCare Healthcare Reform Act. Action Needed Now!

lazybones101 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:05:55 -0700

I get emails from an organization called Minnesota Majority. This "action alert" is to important to keep to myself. I couldn't grab the picture they had in the email that shows the layers of beaurocracy they expect to see ObamaCare Healthcare Reform bill gets through. I urge you to take action TODAY! I know I am calling my representative. However, mine is Michele Bachman so I will only be letting her know I am 100% her vote of NO.

This is a picture of our future healthcare system if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets her way. We have just received word that Pelosi will likely try to ram the ObamaCare Healthcare 'Reform' bill through Congress this week, just like she did with the 'Cap and Tax' Energy bill. Here's what will be the result of Obama's healthcare plan:

Puts a massive government bureaucracy between you and your doctor: just look at the flowchart.

Dramatically INCREASES the cost of healthcare: contrary to the promises being made by President Obama, the non-partisan Congressional Budget offices estimates that the proposed healthcare bill will actually INCREASE the cost of healthcare in the US by over $1 trillion.

Increases the federal deficit: projections indicate that the proposed plan will increase our national debt by nearly $750 billion.

Rations healthcare delivery resulting in long waiting lines for service: watch the following video to see how healthcare is being rationed in Canada - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHr71ij36jc

Reduces the quality of health care delivery: the government will dictate which medical procedures will be allowed to be provided by medical professionals. This “one size fits all” approach will ultimately reduce the quality of care delivered.

Drives private health insurance providers out of business: while proponents of this bill claim that you will be allowed to keep your insurance if you want, the truth is the bill will eventually force private insurance providers out of the market. You will not be allowed to purchase private insurance if you decide to change employers – you will be forced to adopt the government plan (see pages 16 and 17 of the bill).

Mandates taxpayer funding of abortion: Through increased taxes and mandatory enrollment, the tax-dollars of every American will be pooled for what services the federal government deems worthy of coverage. The plan guarantees coverage for abortions.

Introduces the probability of euthanasia: President Obama hinted at it and it’s evidenced in other countries with nationalized medicine. Taking care of the elderly isn’t a good investment in government’s view. Once a person’s productive (tax-paying) years are behind them, government no longer has a financial interest in maintaining their health or quality of life. Click here to listen to a conversation between Fred Thompson and Betsy McCaughey regarding details in the bill that will impact elderly people.

Extends coverage to illegal aliens: When an amendment is offered to require verification of legal residence before receiving healthcare benefits, Speaker Pelosi's team demands a party-line vote to kill it. The only way to positively preclude healthcare benefits for illegal aliens is to include this language in the bill.

This proposed plan for a government takeover of private health care institutions is making its way through congress at a rapid pace. President Obama is demanding a bill to sign before the August recess. Debating, crafting and analyzing a quality bill that Americans are aware of and comfortable with takes a back seat to getting it done before anyone has a chance to raise objections and threaten the proposal’s popularity.

The House health care ‘reform’ bill (HR 3200) is over 1,000 pages long and makes profound changes to a myriad of existing laws and practices. Is one month enough time to analyze and understand the far-reaching impacts this proposal will bring to the entire health care infrastructure of the United States? Why the incredible rush?

TAKE ACTION

It is critically important that you ACT NOW by contacting your your representative to urge him or her to vote AGAINST the healthcare 'reform' bill. It literally could be a matter of life and death -- for you or for a loved one. Click on the link below to contact your representative:

http://www.capwiz.com/mnmajority/callalert/index.tt?alertid=13798711&typ...

A Message from Ron Paul About Socialized Medicine‏ and Campaign for Liberty

lazybones101 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:35:40 -0700

Dear Friend,

As both a defender of Liberty and a Medical Doctor, I’m very concerned about the plans the Obama Administration and many in Congress have to increase the government’s role in healthcare.

Medical decisions being made by government bureaucrats, loss of privacy of medical data, and our ability to keep our own insurance and doctors are all up for grabs once Congress starts moving on these government takeover and rationing schemes.

But the good news is you and I can fight back.

As you may know, Campaign for Liberty is carrying the Revolution forward and is leading the fight in Congress and all across the country, mobilizing Patriots to battle.

This battle against government-run healthcare is one I sincerely hope you will join.

Please take a careful look at the letter below from Campaign for Liberty’s President, John Tate, and do all you can to help our fight for freedom.

For Liberty,

Congressman Ron Paul

P.S. As I sat down to write this to you, President Obama and the House Democrats announced a deal to pass his healthcare power grab through the House no later than July 31. It’s even more urgent you read the letter below and take action TODAY!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Friend of Liberty:

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

If these words send a shiver up your spine now... just wait.

What if the next time you hear that, it’s your doctor?

What if it’s the person who decides if you get a life-saving procedure?

If that scares you as much as it scares me, I hope you’ll sumbit the petition below to Congress IMMEDIATELY.

And I hope you’ll join Campaign for Liberty’s fight against this government takeover of our healthcare system by making a generous donation as well.

I'll give you the link for petition in just a moment, but first let me explain how urgent this effort is.

As you’ll see, there’s no time to waste.

You and I must DEMAND President Obama and Congress back off their healthcare rationing Scheme and other plans for government intervention.

There’s no telling when Congress may act to implement their European-style takeover of medicine, so there’s absolutely NO time to waste.

If passed, not only could the $1.5 TRILLION federal government takeover of healthcare be the last straw to bankrupt our country, but it would also:

*** Hand control of our healthcare industry to an unelected federal board who will take charge of deciding who gets medical care -- and who doesn’t;

*** End medical privacy by establishing a nationwide Medical Record Database, allowing virtually anyone in the medical-industrial complex -- even those in foreign countries -- to access your personal medical records WITHOUT your consent;

*** End private health insurance by herding hardworking Americans into a government-sanctioned health insurance boondoggle;

*** Dramatically raise taxes by counting health benefits as “income,” or by forcing businesses and uninsured workers to pay for officially sanctioned insurance.

*** Allow for even more government intrusion into our personal lives by paving the way for bureaucrats to tell us what we can and can’t eat, drink and smoke, like New York City’s ban on smoking and “unapproved” fats in food.
I can tell you my friend; there has never in our history been a more imminent danger of government-run healthcare becoming the law of the land.

That’s why it’s vital you act TODAY!

You see -- two major events have come together to assist their diabolical plans to take over our healthcare.

First, as you know, international banksters and their allies in our federal government raided our Treasury, stole our tax dollars, and nearly sank our economy.

This job-destroying recession - largely caused by an out of control Federal Reserve, Congress and Wall Street - has caused far too many families to have to worry about their jobs – and their healthcare.

And then, just as millions of Americans were feeling the effects of this troubled economy, large-scale fear was foisted upon us by government agencies thirsty for more power and control over our lives.

You see, after radically overhyping the threat to U.S. citizens from the swine flu, the government now believes you are ready to be led to “safety.”

They believe all they have to do is constantly harp about the “high cost of healthcare” and American citizens will instantly fall in line behind their scheme to “take care of us.”

But of course, you and I both know we didn’t get here by accident and we didn’t get here in only the last few months.

The truth is, the answer to our problems is NOT more government involvement in healthcare.

The answer is LESS -- so the free market can inexpensively and efficiently distribute much-needed healthcare services to ALL American citizens.

But, of course, that’s not what those in power in Washington D.C. really want.

After all, that would mean they’d have less POWER and less CONTROL over our lives -- and power and control are EXACTLY what this fight is all about.

You see, this Government Healthcare Takeover and Rationing Scheme strikes at the heart of EVERYTHING you and I hold dear.

You and I believe American citizens ARE NOT cattle to be poked, prodded and herded like livestock by government bureaucrats who “know what’s best for us.”

But under their Big Government Healthcare power grab, you’ll be nothing more than a dehumanized statistic -- a number on a piece of paper.

The Federal Healthcare Rationing Board will make THEIR decisions on what healthcare you and your family receive based not on what YOU or your doctor decide is best . . .

. . . But on what THEY decide is best.

Isn’t your life really worth saving? What about your family’s?

Well, the Obama Administration and their Big Government allies in both parties think you’re too “personally invested” to answer those questions “objectively.”

So they want their own handpicked, Washington, D.C. bureaucrats to answer them for you.

And if you don’t like their decisions?

Well, hopefully you can live with them -- literally.

If that scares you as much as it scares me, I hope you’ll submit the Petition to Congress opposing any Government takeover of healthcare.

Campaign for Liberty will gather these Petitions from hundreds of thousands of supporters nationwide, and use them as part of a huge grassroots blitz on Washington in opposition to government-run healthcare.

You and I must lead this fight to stop the government from taking over yet another area of our lives.

You see, Campaign for Liberty supporters know first-hand what happens when out of control bureaucrats are left to make decisions that impact our freedom.

Think about what that means for your healthcare.

What do you think will happen under a government run healthcare system if your political or religious views happen to be “undesirable?”

What about if you own a gun?

You know, after seeing all those government memos accusing freedom-loving, law-abiding citizens of being “terrorists,” do you really want to find out?

Just like in that case, while we may wonder about the full extent of their schemes, we need only look at what they’re willing to say publicly for clues as to their intentions.

You see, the advocates for government-run healthcare are not at all afraid to say they want a socialized healthcare system like Canada’s.

And you and I know what the government takeover of healthcare in other countries has brought them.

There, folks have to wait over four months just to see a specialist -- and over SIX MONTHS for simple surgical procedures!

Can you imagine that? Is that really what we want for ourselves and our families?

Well, Ron Paul and Campaign for Liberty strongly say “NO!”

But as it stands now, not enough Americans understand what’s at stake for them and their families.

That means our backs are TRULY against the wall.

The good news in this fight is that IF you and I show Americans what Government Health Care is really all about, we CAN defeat it.

But to succeed, it’s up to you and me to flood the White House and Congress with a TIDAL WAVE of public opposition.

That’s why Campaign for Liberty is pulling out all the stops to inform folks about the facts -- and urge them to express their outrage to Washington, D.C.

We’ll start with these Petitions, which we’ll gather and deliver in the coming weeks. But of course, that won’t be all.

E-mail blasts. Blogs. Direct mail. Phone banking.

Town halls, meet-ups, leaflet drops.

Newspaper, radio and television ads.

Media and PR blitzes from Campaign for Liberty staff and supporters.

But such an extensive program isn’t cheap.

And it’s the ONLY way we’re going to defeat further erosions of our freedoms and the government’s takeover of our healthcare.

So in addition to submitting a signed Petition, please make your most generous contribution of $250, $100 or $50 TODAY!

The truth is, without your IMMEDIATE action, I’m afraid there just won’t be enough time or money to do everything that needs to be done.

And I’m sure you’ll agree, this is not a fight you and I can afford to lose. And that no one can bring the heat quite like you and your fellow Patriots. Just look at how much progress we are making toward Auditing the Fed!

So please click here to submit your petition along with a contribution of $250, $100 or $50 TODAY!

Power-hungry politicians in Washington, D.C. are intent on ramming this bill into law before the American people realize what’s at stake.

That’s why we may not have much time.

So please click here to submit your Petition and generous contribution of $250, $100 or $50 IMMEDIATELY!

Sincerely,

John F. Tate
President

P.S. The Federal Government is poised to hand over your healthcare, your medical records, and decisions over even life and death to unelected bureaucrats.

There’s not a moment to waste if you want to keep your freedom, your doctor, even the power to decide whether you receive life-saving medical care.

Please join Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty today in our fight to stop a Big Government takeover of Healthcare, before it’s too late!

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush

Shiloh Jolie Pitt — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:11:49 -0800

Vanity Fair - Dec. 2007

The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.

by Joseph E. Stiglitz December 2007 The American economy can take a lot of abuse, but no economy is invincible. Illustration by Edward Sorel.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris-or even the Yukon-becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands-or so he says-that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

Remember the Surplus?
The world was a very different place, economically speaking, when George W. Bush took office, in January 2001. During the Roaring 90s, many had believed that the Internet would transform everything. Productivity gains, which had averaged about 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, now approached 3 percent. During Bill Clinton’s second term, gains in manufacturing productivity sometimes even surpassed 6 percent. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, spoke of a New Economy marked by continued productivity gains as the Internet buried the old ways of doing business. Others went so far as to predict an end to the business cycle. Greenspan worried aloud about how he’d ever be able to manage monetary policy once the nation’s debt was fully paid off.

This tremendous confidence took the Dow Jones index higher and higher. The rich did well, but so did the not-so-rich and even the downright poor. The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, I’m all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities. The global-trade agreements we pushed through were often unfair to developing countries. We should have invested more in infrastructure, tightened regulation of the securities markets, and taken additional steps to promote energy conservation. We fell short because of politics and lack of money-and also, frankly, because special interests sometimes shaped the agenda more than they should have. But these boom years were the first time since Jimmy Carter that the deficit was under control. And they were the first time since the 1970s that incomes at the bottom grew faster than those at the top-a benchmark worth celebrating.

By the time George W. Bush was sworn in, parts of this bright picture had begun to dim. The tech boom was over. The nasdaq fell 15 percent in the single month of April 2000, and no one knew for sure what effect the collapse of the Internet bubble would have on the real economy. It was a moment ripe for Keynesian economics, a time to prime the pump by spending more money on education, technology, and infrastructure-all of which America desperately needed, and still does, but which the Clinton administration had postponed in its relentless drive to eliminate the deficit. Bill Clinton had left President Bush in an ideal position to pursue such policies. Remember the presidential debates in 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush, and how the two men argued over how to spend America’s anticipated $2.2 trillion budget surplus? The country could well have afforded to ramp up domestic investment in key areas. In fact, doing so would have staved off recession in the short run while spurring growth in the long run.

But the Bush administration had its own ideas. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000-more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich. Together these tax cuts, when fully implemented and if made permanent, mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.

The administration crows that the economy grew-by some 16 percent-during its first six years, but the growth helped mainly people who had no need of any help, and failed to help those who need plenty. A rising tide lifted all yachts. Inequality is now widening in America, and at a rate not seen in three-quarters of a century. A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when Bush became president. America’s class structure may not have arrived there yet, but it’s heading in the direction of Brazil’s and Mexico’s.

The Bankruptcy Boom
In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous “war of choice” in Iraq. A budget surplus of 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.), which greeted Bush as he took office, turned into a deficit of 3.6 percent in the space of four years. The United States had not experienced a turnaround of this magnitude since the global crisis of World War II.

Agricultural subsidies were doubled between 2002 and 2005. Tax expenditures-the vast system of subsidies and preferences hidden in the tax code-increased more than a quarter. Tax breaks for the president’s friends in the oil-and-gas industry increased by billions and billions of dollars. Yes, in the five years after 9/11, defense expenditures did increase (by some 70 percent), though much of the growth wasn’t helping to fight the War on Terror at all, but was being lost or outsourced in failed missions in Iraq. Meanwhile, other funds continued to be spent on the usual high-tech gimcrackery-weapons that don’t work, for enemies we don’t have. In a nutshell, money was being spent everyplace except where it was needed. During these past seven years the percentage of G.D.P. spent on research and development outside defense and health has fallen. Little has been done about our decaying infrastructure-be it levees in New Orleans or bridges in Minneapolis. Coping with most of the damage will fall to the next occupant of the White House.

Although it railed against entitlement programs for the needy, the administration enacted the largest increase in entitlements in four decades-the poorly designed Medicare prescription-drug benefit, intended as both an election-season bribe and a sop to the pharmaceutical industry. As internal documents later revealed, the true cost of the measure was hidden from Congress. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies received special favors. To access the new benefits, elderly patients couldn’t opt to buy cheaper medications from Canada or other countries. The law also prohibited the U.S. government, the largest single buyer of prescription drugs, from negotiating with drug manufacturers to keep costs down. As a result, American consumers pay far more for medications than people elsewhere in the developed world.

You’ll still hear some-and, loudly, the president himself-argue that the administration’s tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck-the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit-was astonishingly low. Therefore, the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. Looked at another way, Bush’s own fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else. Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007. “Qualified at birth” became the drunken slogan of the Bush era. American households took advantage of the low interest rates, signed up for new mortgages with “teaser” initial rates, and went to town on the proceeds.

All of this spending made the economy look better for a while; the president could (and did) boast about the economic statistics. But the consequences for many families would become apparent within a few years, when interest rates rose and mortgages proved impossible to repay. The president undoubtedly hoped the reckoning would come sometime after 2008. It arrived 18 months early. As many as 1.7 million Americans are expected to lose their homes in the months ahead. For many, this will mean the beginning of a downward spiral into poverty.

Between March 2006 and March 2007 personal-bankruptcy rates soared more than 60 percent. As families went into bankruptcy, more and more of them came to understand who had won and who had lost as a result of the president’s 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it harder for individuals to discharge their debts in a reasonable way. The lenders that had pressed for “reform” had been the clear winners, gaining added leverage and protections for themselves; people facing financial distress got the shaft.

And Then There’s Iraq
The war in Iraq (along with, to a lesser extent, the war in Afghanistan) has cost the country dearly in blood and treasure. The loss in lives can never be quantified. As for the treasure, it’s worth calling to mind that the administration, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, was reluctant to venture an estimate of what the war would cost (and publicly humiliated a White House aide who suggested that it might run as much as $200 billion). When pressed to give a number, the administration suggested $50 billion-what the United States is actually spending every few months. Today, government figures officially acknowledge that more than half a trillion dollars total has been spent by the U.S. “in theater.” But in fact the overall cost of the conflict could be quadruple that amount-as a study I did with Linda Bilmes of Harvard has pointed out-even as the Congressional Budget Office now concedes that total expenditures are likely to be more than double the spending on operations. The official numbers do not include, for instance, other relevant expenditures hidden in the defense budget, such as the soaring costs of recruitment, with re-enlistment bonuses of as much as $100,000. They do not include the lifetime of disability and health-care benefits that will be required by tens of thousands of wounded veterans, as many as 20 percent of whom have suffered devastating brain and spinal injuries. Astonishingly, they do not include much of the cost of the equipment that has been used in the war, and that will have to be replaced. If you also take into account the costs to the economy from higher oil prices and the knock-on effects of the war-for instance, the depressing domino effect that war-fueled uncertainty has on investment, and the difficulties U.S. firms face overseas because America is the most disliked country in the world-the total costs of the Iraq war mount, even by a conservative estimate, to at least $2 trillion. To which one needs to add these words: so far.

It is natural to wonder, What would this money have bought if we had spent it on other things? U.S. aid to all of Africa has been hovering around $5 billion a year, the equivalent of less than two weeks of direct Iraq-war expenditures. The president made a big deal out of the financial problems facing Social Security, but the system could have been repaired for a century with what we have bled into the sands of Iraq. Had even a fraction of that $2 trillion been spent on investments in education and technology, or improving our infrastructure, the country would be in a far better position economically to meet the challenges it faces in the future, including threats from abroad. For a sliver of that $2 trillion we could have provided guaranteed access to higher education for all qualified Americans.

The soaring price of oil is clearly related to the Iraq war. The issue is not whether to blame the war for this but simply how much to blame it. It seems unbelievable now to recall that Bush-administration officials before the invasion suggested not only that Iraq’s oil revenues would pay for the war in its entirety-hadn’t we actually turned a tidy profit from the 1991 Gulf War?-but also that war was the best way to ensure low oil prices. In retrospect, the only big winners from the war have been the oil companies, the defense contractors, and al-Qaeda. Before the war, the oil markets anticipated that the then price range of $20 to $25 a barrel would continue for the next three years or so. Market players expected to see more demand from China and India, sure, but they also anticipated that this greater demand would be met mostly by increased production in the Middle East. The war upset that calculation, not so much by curtailing oil production in Iraq, which it did, but rather by heightening the sense of insecurity everywhere in the region, suppressing future investment.

The continuing reliance on oil, regardless of price, points to one more administration legacy: the failure to diversify America’s energy resources. Leave aside the environmental reasons for weaning the world from hydrocarbons-the president has never convincingly embraced them, anyway. The economic and national-security arguments ought to have been powerful enough. Instead, the administration has pursued a policy of “drain America first”-that is, take as much oil out of America as possible, and as quickly as possible, with as little regard for the environment as one can get away with, leaving the country even more dependent on foreign oil in the future, and hope against hope that nuclear fusion or some other miracle will come to the rescue. So many gifts to the oil industry were included in the president’s 2003 energy bill that John McCain referred to it as the “No Lobbyist Left Behind” bill.

Contempt for the World
America’s budget and trade deficits have grown to record highs under President Bush. To be sure, deficits don’t have to be crippling in and of themselves. If a business borrows to buy a machine, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. During the past six years, America-its government, its families, the country as a whole-has been borrowing to sustain its consumption. Meanwhile, investment in fixed assets-the plants and equipment that help increase our wealth-has been declining.

What’s the impact of all this down the road? The growth rate in America’s standard of living will almost certainly slow, and there could even be a decline. The American economy can take a lot of abuse, but no economy is invincible, and our vulnerabilities are plain for all to see. As confidence in the American economy has plummeted, so has the value of the dollar-by 40 percent against the euro since 2001.

The disarray in our economic policies at home has parallels in our economic policies abroad. President Bush blamed the Chinese for our huge trade deficit, but an increase in the value of the yuan, which he has pushed, would simply make us buy more textiles and apparel from Bangladesh and Cambodia instead of China; our deficit would remain unchanged. The president claimed to believe in free trade but instituted measures aimed at protecting the American steel industry. The United States pushed hard for a series of bilateral trade agreements and bullied smaller countries into accepting all sorts of bitter conditions, such as extending patent protection on drugs that were desperately needed to fight aids. We pressed for open markets around the world but prevented China from buying Unocal, a small American oil company, most of whose assets lie outside the United States.

Not surprisingly, protests over U.S. trade practices erupted in places such as Thailand and Morocco. But America has refused to compromise-refused, for instance, to take any decisive action to do away with our huge agricultural subsidies, which distort international markets and hurt poor farmers in developing countries. This intransigence led to the collapse of talks designed to open up international markets. As in so many other areas, President Bush worked to undermine multilateralism-the notion that countries around the world need to cooperate-and to replace it with an America-dominated system. In the end, he failed to impose American dominance-but did succeed in weakening cooperation.

The administration’s basic contempt for global institutions was underscored in 2005 when it named Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense and a chief architect of the Iraq war, as president of the World Bank. Widely distrusted from the outset, and soon caught up in personal controversy, Wolfowitz became an international embarrassment and was forced to resign his position after less than two years on the job.

Globalization means that America’s economy and the rest of the world have become increasingly interwoven. Consider those bad American mortgages. As families default, the owners of the mortgages find themselves holding worthless pieces of paper. The originators of these problem mortgages had already sold them to others, who packaged them, in a non-transparent way, with other assets, and passed them on once again to unidentified others. When the problems became apparent, global financial markets faced real tremors: it was discovered that billions in bad mortgages were hidden in portfolios in Europe, China, and Australia, and even in star American investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. Indonesia and other developing countries-innocent bystanders, really-suffered as global risk premiums soared, and investors pulled money out of these emerging markets, looking for safer havens. It will take years to sort out this mess.

Meanwhile, we have become dependent on other nations for the financing of our own debt. Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American I.O.U.’s. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans-if they ever did, there would be a global financial crisis. But there is something bizarre and troubling about the richest country in the world not being able to live even remotely within its means. Just as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America’s moral authority, so the Bush administration’s fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority.

The Way Forward
Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. Extricating the country from Iraq will be the bloodier task, but putting America’s economic house in order will be wrenching and take years.

The most immediate challenge will be simply to get the economy’s metabolism back into the normal range. That will mean moving from a savings rate of zero (or less) to a more typical savings rate of, say, 4 percent. While such an increase would be good for the long-term health of America’s economy, the short-term consequences would be painful. Money saved is money not spent. If people don’t spend money, the economic engine stalls. If households curtail their spending quickly-as they may be forced to do as a result of the meltdown in the mortgage market-this could mean a recession; if done in a more measured way, it would still mean a protracted slowdown. The problems of foreclosure and bankruptcy posed by excessive household debt are likely to get worse before they get better. And the federal government is in a bind: any quick restoration of fiscal sanity will only aggravate both problems.

And in any case there’s more to be done. What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don’t have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.

When it comes to taxes, we should be trying to shift the burden away from things we view as good, such as labor and savings, to things we view as bad, such as pollution. With respect to the safety net, we need to remember that the more the government does to help workers improve their skills and get affordable health care the more we free up American businesses to compete in the global economy. Finally, we’ll be a lot better off if we work with other countries to create fair and efficient global trade and financial systems. We’ll have a better chance of getting others to open up their markets if we ourselves act less hypocritically-that is, if we open our own markets to their goods and stop subsidizing American agriculture.

Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix-and that’s assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden-even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.

In short, there’s a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse. Decades hence we should take stock, and revisit the conventional wisdom. Will Herbert Hoover still deserve his dubious mantle? I’m guessing that George W. Bush will have earned one more grim superlative.

Anya Schiffrin and Izzet Yildiz assisted with research for this article.

Joseph Stiglitz, a leading economic educator, is a professor at Columbia.

A case for the stimulus package (Posted for reasoned debate not ad hominem attacks)

Grandpa — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:21:48 -0800

I AM POSTING THIS TO STIR REASONED DEBATE, LIGHT NOT HEAT.----- PERSONAL OR SNIDE COMMENTS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. ==== IF YOU DO, I WILL ASK YOU TO STOP POSTING, IF YOU DON’T I WILL EITHER MAKE IT PRIVATE OR TAKE IT DOWN ALL TOGETHER. -------------DISAGREE, BUT DO NOT DISRESPECT.

The new Great Communicator ... isn't
Obama is stumbling in the stimulus debate -- and public support is dropping -- because for 30 years Republicans have lied about the role of government. Now he's got to tell the truth.
By Joan Walsh (Salon.com)
Feb. 4, 2009 | Tuesday's Tom Daschle news stepped all over President Obama's stimulus sales campaign. Likewise, it kept me from writing about Robert Reich's excellent Salon piece on the larger issues at stake in the stimulus battle, but I want to take it up today.
Reich said something Democrats almost never say: The so-called fundamentals of our economy didn't start weakening in 2007 or 2008 with the housing and credit crisis; they haven't been strong for most American workers since wages began stagnating in the 1970s.
I'm going to quote Reich in a major way in a minute. But I'm writing because I'm concerned about how Obama is and isn't selling his crucial stimulus/recovery bill. I'm wondering about what he'd say about it in an FDR-style "fireside chat." On YouTube, or wherever. Even though I'm an Obama admirer, and also, I'm paid to know these things, I'm not sure I do know how he'd make the case for why this bill will solve our economy's problems, and why it must pass. And soon, because new poll numbers now show that public support for it is already dropping fast. A Rasmussen poll says 43 percent oppose it, and 37 support it, an 8-point slide in two weeks. Nate Silver thinks that poll overstates the bill's troubles. "There is some evidence -- the trendline in the Rasmussen poll -- that he stimulus has become less popular. There is no evidence, on the other hand, that the stimulus has become unpopular; on the contrary, the preponderance of polling evidence suggests it remains a course of action that most of the public likes." Still, the Washington Post reported today that Senate Democrats don't think they have the votes to pass it right now.
Obama is the Democrats' Great Communicator, our Ronald Reagan. It's fitting that his highest priority will be reversing the tax and spending priorities Reagan enshrined as a new American compact almost 30 years ago, and reviving the notion of government as an engine of capitalist growth -- not merely the safety net provider, but the catalyst for organizing our public resources around what makes the economy strong. We've been arguing at the margins during these last two years of pain: Government should regulate more, or less. Tax rates should be higher, or lower. But there's a dangerous civic illiteracy in our country about what the larger role of government in a modern economy is, or should be, and I don't think Obama will ultimately prevail if he doesn't start to take it on.
Obama is the most remarkable Democratic communicator of my lifetime, I think, and even he's not rising to the task, yet. He needs to lay out his priorities, clearly; he needs to simplify his pitch, yet he also needs to add some depth to his and our understanding of how we got here. This economic crisis is not just about bad mortgages and/or the housing bubble bursting, and it won't be solved by reinflating that bubble, the Republicans' latest dumb idea. These problems have been building since at least the 1970s. Here's how Reich laid it out on Salon:
The bursting of the housing bubble caused the current crisis, but the underlying problem began much earlier -- in the late 1970s, when median U.S. incomes began to stall. Because wages got hit then by the double-whammy of global competition and new technologies, the typical American family was able to maintain its living standard only if women went into the workforce in larger numbers, and later, only if everyone worked longer hours.
When even these coping mechanisms were exhausted, families went into debt -- a strategy that was viable as long as home values continued to rise. But when the housing bubble burst, families were no longer able to easily refinance and take out home-equity loans. The result: Americans no longer have the money to keep consuming. When you consider that consumers make up 70 percent of the economy, the magnitude of the problem becomes apparent.
What happened to the money? According to researchers Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, since the late 1970s, a greater and greater share of national income has gone to people at the top of the earnings ladder. As late as 1976, the richest 1 percent of the country took home about 9 percent of the total national income. By 2006, they were pocketing more than 20 percent. But the rich don't spend as much of their income as the middle class and the poor do -- after all, being rich means that you already have most of what you need. That's why the concentration of income at the top can lead to a big shortfall in overall demand and send the economy into a tailspin. (It's not coincidental that 1928 was the last time that the top 1 percent took home more than 20 percent of the nation's income.)
Now, honestly, I'm not sure how President Obama makes this point, roughly hourly, for the next four (and I hope eight) years. But this point has to be made, as often as possible, by anyone with an audience. We've had a deliberate shift of resources from middle- and working-class Americans and the poor, to the very rich, supported by our tax codes, twisted political values and the "winner-take-all" ethic that's prevailed at the highest levels of business and government for the last 30 years. Now, unbelievably, Republicans are saying we need even more tax cuts. (What part of tax-cutter George W. Bush's economic catastrophe, and his 22 percent approval rating, do they not understand?) They also back measures to reinflate the housing bubble that let Americans ignore their stagnating wages, as long as they worked more hours as a family and could also use their homes as an ATM. Their plans to reinflate the housing bubble seem as delusional, frankly, as their backing tax cuts, and even more irresponsible. Tax cuts won't work, but reinflating the housing bubble might work -- to encourage more consumption and less savings, and roll this problem a few more years down the road.
Democrats know the Republicans are wrong. Little children know they're wrong. Cats and dogs know they're wrong. But somehow this week, unbelievably, Obama and the Democrats seem to be losing the spin war. There are the worrying poll numbers. And there is the Washington Post report that Senate Democrats don't have the votes to pass a stimulus bill yet, at least not with the 60 votes that would rule out a filibuster. In this economic crisis, with 2.6 million jobs lost last year and thousands more lost in every news cycle, what does it take to create the urgency and responsibility to get this done?
I'd like everyone in charge of selling the stimulus to take a deep breath, and then, in an extended sound bite, articulate the long view (I know, I ask a lot). Along with Reich, Jeff Madrick goes into all the larger issues in greater detail in his excellent book "The Case for Big Government," and winds up in the same place (even though, remarkably, the book was written before the current economic collapse and attendant debate over what the stimulus should do). I hope Obama and his team are reading Madrick and Reich. Because they're really just talking common sense: Public spending priorities need to catch up to 21st-century economic life. The long and lamentable Republican revolution of 1980 through 2008 aimed, and partly succeeded, in sending us back to the 19th century -- and we are all suffering for it. We will continue to suffer unless Democrats grab the political momentum voters gave them in November.
Of course, the 19th century wasn't all bad, but in our current political environment, we've forgotten what was good: Eventually government (thanks to political, religious and labor agitation) came to see its role as providing K-12 education, building roads, canals, bridges and railroads (after private sector efforts faltered), and the slow budding of certain health and safety regulations. In the 20th century, that public mandate expanded into Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and other safety net programs, thanks to the New Deal and the Great Society. Today, profound economic change likewise requires new government initiatives, but they are many years overdue, for a lot of depressing political and economic reasons. The years since the early 1970s have been hard for middle- and low-income workers. Real wages became stagnant -- the average weekly earnings of non-supervisory workers actually fell between 1973 and 2005. The late '60s and early '70s also marked the exodus of manufacturing jobs in the central cities, which William Julius Wilson and others persuasively argue played a huge role in creating the so-called underclass in many once-vital African-American neighborhoods.
Madrick lays out a few new-economy political priorities; you may have more, add them in comments:
Why, when post-secondary education is essential in this economy, are most families on their own when it comes to paying for college? Secondary education is awesome, isn't it? Can you imagine this country without it? But isn't it time to think beyond that? Why isn't K-16 or so an American entitlement?
A chart published a year ago by Moody's Economy.com shows that the types of measures in the Democrats' stimulus plan actually put money into the economy, fast. For example, according to Economy.com's model, every dollar lost to the Treasury from increased infrastructure spending would add $1.59 to the gross domestic product in a year. Every dollar lost to a cut in the corporate tax rate would add 30 cents to the GDP in a year.
And why, when most women work, is there so little support for childcare, family leave and other family friendly social policies?
Also: Why, when the cost of health insurance is tacking thousands of dollars onto the cost of every American-made car, and threatening to capsize many small businesses, is there so little serious progress on healthcare and insurance reform in our public realm? Where are the capitalist visionaries of yesteryear, trying to shape public spending by driving it toward what businesses need to thrive?
Oh, and climate change: If that continues, we're all screwed, college grads and high school dropouts, moms, dads, auto execs, small-business owners, capitalist pigs and visionaries alike. But we've gotten no real movement on climate change these last eight years (though I'm grateful to Obama for deferring to my GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at least a little bit on this one). Again: why?
The Democrats' stimulus plan has funding to deal with all of those enormous unmet needs (although probably not enough). The bigger question is, why isn't the country clamoring for support for such capitalism-bolstering programs, especially at this time of economic crisis and political optimism ushered in by the election of Obama, which was, paradoxically, motivated by enormous voter pessimism about that same crisis?
The answer is not merely that American workers and voters and unions and Democrats mysteriously stopped agitating for progressive change in the 1960s (although many did, and the weakness of unions is part of the story, but it's as much an effect as a cause of these political and economic sea-changes). The fact is, there was a massive organized political campaign against the egalitarian and economy-growing reforms of the 1930s and the 1960s, one that ran from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to John McCain, a very well-run and well-funded and sadly effective backlash. And it's one that nobody wants to talk about, in our convivial, bipartisan, cable-news-dominated, partisan-blog-loving, newspaper-shrinking, amnesia-promoting political and media-freakshow entertainment economy.
But we have to.
It's clear from the stimulus debate that some conservatives never stopped fighting the New Deal, as empty as their arguments were then and now. Andrew Leonard is brilliant, in my opinion, but he's only one guy, and he alone takes down multiple well-funded think tanks dedicated to anti-New Deal idiocy. The stupid, it burns, but the stupid is relentless.
Then there's the whole legacy of the Great Society. A lot of the opposition to government spending suddenly, opportunistically became (overtly or covertly) racial in the 1960s and '70s, as the social and political and economic change inspired by the civil rights movement intersected with new social programs, some of them awesome, a few of them wasteful, all of them only partly effective. The bottom line for Republicans became: The government is helping those other people with your tax dollars, they're not helping you. And some Democrats agreed.
Now, many if not most of us need help from our own tax dollars, and the Democrats seem ill-equipped to make the arguments to make that happen, despite Obama's overwhelming win in November. This really makes no political sense to me.
Here's how I think Obama should sell the stimulus. Long version here, short version below.
First, he should make it unapologetically clear that we are putting money in the hands of people who will spend it, fast, when no one else is spending: Working-class and low-income people, the employed and the recently unemployed. Food stamps, extended unemployment insurance, help with health insurance, the earned income tax credit, payroll tax relief. (Stunningly, Ronald Reagan lowered taxes on the rich but raised payroll taxes, an unforgivably regressive wealth transfer.) All those measures get money in the hands of people who can't afford to hoard it, and it goes back into the economy immediately. Democrats think such spending is justified by the principles of fairness and equity, but whatever your political beliefs, you should know that these priorities mean that money will be spent in the real world quickly, and that's what the economy needs.
Almost as quickly, we are funding so-called shovel-ready infrastructure programs, which will get money into the economy ASAP, funding jobs while also doing the things American business and government needs to catch up with the rest of the world. We can't afford more levies breaking in New Orleans or bridges collapsing in Minneapolis -- or anywhere else.
We're also putting money into not-quite shovel-ready but crucial programs, especially mass transit that links our suburbs and exurbs with our central cities, and creates opportunity for everyone, and programs that reduce climate change and move us to a future driven by green jobs and industry.
Finally, we are belatedly making down payments on our 21st-century economy that, sadly, nobody was wise enough to make in the last century. Head Start and education funding, college programs, healthcare reform, green job creation, energy efficiency and climate change spending: We can't catch up with the rest of the world if we don't spend on those things, belatedly, right now. It's not a matter of if, it's when, and I believe the time is now. That's what you elected me to do. These programs will stimulate the kind of recovery that will make sure our children don't face the same kind of crisis in another generation.
Obama can no doubt improve on my language. He can probably improve the taxonomy of spending. He may even have different priorities. The point is, he has to lay them out.
He made a start today. Here's what he said when introducing limits on executive compensation for firms getting TARP money:
That’s why I feel such a sense of urgency about the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that is before Congress today. With it, we can save or create more than three million jobs, doing things that will strengthen our country for generations to come. It is not merely a prescription for short-term spending – it’s a strategy for long-term economic growth in areas like renewable energy, health care, and education.
Now, in the past few days I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.
I reject that theory, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. So I urge members of Congress to act without delay. No plan is perfect, and we should work to make it stronger. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the essential. Let’s show people all over our country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task.
It's better, but it's not enough. He needs bigger and simpler themes: Put money in the hands of those who need it most -- and will spend it fastest. Create jobs and rebuild infrastructure so we see no more levees fail, bridges collapse and school buildings crumble. Invest in new, future-facing job-creating projects like new transit and green industry. Finally, do what our brave ancestors did, and make government again the engine of economic development, by providing the support 21st century employers and workers require: from Head Start and early education programs through college funding; new health insurance programs; lifetime worker retraining, investments in broadband infrastructure and green technologies.
It could be inspiring; it's certainly necessary. If Obama fights on big themes of rights and responsibilities and how we get through this crisis together, he wins. If he lets the debate remain on the level of "Why is there contraception funding in the bill? How is furniture for the Department of Homeland Security stimulative? We've just got to reinflate the housing bubble!" he loses, and we lose. It shouldn't be this hard.
Here's how Madrick summed up the Reagan revolution. It's depressing: "A life of family strain, inequality and insecurity has become accepted as inevitable. It is even thought to be a strength of America. This was Ronald Reagan's Trojan horse, disguised as optimism." But now it's Morning in America, for the rest of us. Obama needs to take his sales pitch to a new level. People want to believe he can make a difference, but time's a wasting.

Inside the Cult of Scientology

Shiloh Jolie Pitt — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:35:59 -0800

I was reading an article in Vanity Fair magazine, that referred to the one below published in 1991 on Time magazine about the intrincate dealings inside the "church" of Scientology.

Monday, May. 06, 1991
Cover Story: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power
By RICHARD BEHAR

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in cash, virtually the only money he hadn't yet turned over to the Church of Scientology, the self-help "philosophy" group he had discovered just seven months earlier.

His death inspired his father Edward, a physician, to start his own investigation of the church. "We thought Scientology was something like Dale Carnegie," Lottick says. "I now believe it's a school for psychopaths. Their so-called therapies are manipulations. They take the best and brightest people and destroy them." The Lotticks want to sue the church for contributing to their son's death, but the prospect has them frightened. For nearly 40 years, the big business of Scientology has shielded itself exquisitely behind the First Amendment as well as a battery of high-priced criminal lawyers and shady private detectives.

The Church of Scientology, started by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard to "clear" people of unhappiness, portrays itself as a religion. In reality the church is a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner. At times during the past decade, prosecutions against Scientology seemed to be curbing its menace. Eleven top Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife, were sent to prison in the early 1980s for infiltrating, burglarizing and wiretapping more than 100 private and government agencies in attempts to block their investigations. In recent years hundreds of longtime Scientology adherents -- many charging that they were mentally or physically abused -- have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk. Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts in excess of $500,000. In various cases judges have labeled the church "schizophrenic and paranoid" and "corrupt, sinister and dangerous."

Yet the outrage and litigation have failed to squelch Scientology. The group, which boasts 700 centers in 65 countries, threatens to become more insidious and pervasive than ever. Scientology is trying to go mainstream, a strategy that has sparked a renewed law-enforcement campaign against the church. Many of the group's followers have been accused of committing financial scams, while the church is busy attracting the unwary through a wide array of front groups in such businesses as publishing, consulting, health care and even remedial education.

In Hollywood, Scientology has assembled a star-studded roster of followers by aggressively recruiting and regally pampering them at the church's "Celebrity Centers," a chain of clubhouses that offer expensive counseling and career guidance. Adherents include screen idols Tom Cruise and John Travolta, actresses Kirstie Alley, Mimi Rogers and Anne Archer, Palm Springs mayor and performer Sonny Bono, jazzman Chick Corea and even Nancy Cartwright, the voice of cartoon star Bart Simpson. Rank-and-file members, however, are dealt a less glamorous Scientology.

According to the Cult Awareness Network, whose 23 chapters monitor more than 200 "mind control" cults, no group prompts more telephone pleas for help than does Scientology. Says Cynthia Kisser, the network's Chicago-based executive director: "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members." Agrees Vicki Aznaran, who was one of Scientology's six key leaders until she bolted from the church in 1987: "This is a criminal organization, day in and day out. It makes Jim and Tammy ((Bakker)) look like kindergarten."

To explore Scientology's reach, TIME conducted more than 150 interviews and reviewed hundreds of court records and internal Scientology documents. Church officials refused to be interviewed. The investigation paints a picture of a depraved yet thriving enterprise. Most cults fail to outlast their founder, but Scientology has prospered since Hubbard's death in 1986. In a court filing, one of the cult's many entities -- the Church of Spiritual Technology -- listed $503 million in income just for 1987. High-level defectors say the parent organization has squirreled away an estimated $400 million in bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Cyprus. Scientology probably has about 50,000 active members, far fewer than the 8 million the group claims. But in one sense, that inflated figure rings true: millions of people have been affected in one way or another by Hubbard's bizarre creation.

Scientology is now run by David Miscavige, 31, a high school dropout and second-generation church member. Defectors describe him as cunning, ruthless and so paranoid about perceived enemies that he kept plastic wrap over his glass of water. His obsession is to attain credibility for Scientology in the 1990s. Among other tactics, the group:

-- Retains public relations powerhouse Hill and Knowlton to help shed the church's fringe-group image.

-- Joined such household names as Sony and Pepsi as a main sponsor of Ted Turner's Goodwill Games.

-- Buys massive quantities of its own books from retail stores to propel the titles onto best-seller lists.

-- Runs full-page ads in such publications as Newsweek and Business Week that call Scientology a "philosophy," along with a plethora of TV ads touting the group's books.

-- Recruits wealthy and respectable professionals through a web of consulting groups that typically hide their ties to Scientology.

The founder of this enterprise was part storyteller, part flimflam man. Born in Nebraska in 1911, Hubbard served in the Navy during World War II and soon afterward complained to the Veterans Administration about his "suicidal inclinations" and his "seriously affected" mind. Nevertheless, Hubbard was a moderately successful writer of pulp science fiction. Years later, church brochures described him falsely as an "extensively decorated" World War II hero who was crippled and blinded in action, twice pronounced dead and miraculously cured through Scientology. Hubbard's "doctorate" from "Sequoia University" was a fake mail-order degree. In a 1984 case in which the church sued a Hubbard biographical researcher, a California judge concluded that its founder was "a pathological liar."

Hubbard wrote one of Scientology's sacred texts, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, in 1950. In it he introduced a crude psychotherapeutic technique he called "auditing." He also created a simplified lie detector (called an "E-meter") that was designed to measure electrical changes in the skin while subjects discussed intimate details of their past. Hubbard argued that unhappiness sprang from mental aberrations (or "engrams") caused by early traumas. Counseling sessions with the E-meter, he claimed, could knock out the engrams, cure blindness and even improve a person's intelligence and appearance.

Hubbard kept adding steps, each more costly, for his followers to climb. In the 1960s the guru decreed that humans are made of clusters of spirits (or "thetans") who were banished to earth some 75 million years ago by a cruel galactic ruler named Xenu. Naturally, those thetans had to be audited.

An Internal Revenue Service ruling in 1967 stripped Scientology's mother church of its tax-exempt status. A federal court ruled in 1971 that Hubbard's medical claims were bogus and that E-meter auditing could no longer be called a scientific treatment. Hubbard responded by going fully religious, seeking First Amendment protection for Scientology's strange rites. His counselors started sporting clerical collars. Chapels were built, franchises became "missions," fees became "fixed donations," and Hubbard's comic-book cosmology became "sacred scriptures."

During the early 1970s, the IRS conducted its own auditing sessions and proved that Hubbard was skimming millions of dollars from the church, laundering the money through dummy corporations in Panama and stashing it in Swiss bank accounts. Moreover, church members stole IRS documents, filed false tax returns and harassed the agency's employees. By late 1985, with high-level defectors accusing Hubbard of having stolen as much as $200 million from the church, the IRS was seeking an indictment of Hubbard for tax fraud. Scientology members "worked day and night" shredding documents the IRS sought, according to defector Aznaran, who took part in the scheme. Hubbard, who had been in hiding for five years, died before the criminal case could be prosecuted.

Today the church invents costly new services with all the zeal of its founder. Scientology doctrine warns that even adherents who are "cleared" of engrams face grave spiritual dangers unless they are pushed to higher and more expensive levels. According to the church's latest price list, recruits -- "raw meat," as Hubbard called them -- take auditing sessions that cost as much as $1,000 an hour, or $12,500 for a 12 1/2-hour "intensive."

Psychiatrists say these sessions can produce a drugged-like, mind-controlled euphoria that keeps customers coming back for more. To pay their fees, newcomers can earn commissions by recruiting new members, become auditors themselves (Miscavige did so at age 12), or join the church staff and receive free counseling in exchange for what their written contracts describe as a "billion years" of labor. "Make sure that lots of bodies move through the shop," implored Hubbard in one of his bulletins to officials. "Make money. Make more money. Make others produce so as to make money . . . However you get them in or why, just do it."

Harriet Baker learned the hard way about Scientology's business of selling religion. When Baker, 73, lost her husband to cancer, a Scientologist turned up at her Los Angeles home peddling a $1,300 auditing package to cure her grief. Some $15,000 later, the Scientologists discovered that her house was debt free. They arranged a $45,000 mortgage, which they pressured her to tap for more auditing until Baker's children helped their mother snap out of her daze. Last June, Baker demanded a $27,000 refund for unused services, prompting two cult members to show up at her door unannounced with an E-meter to interrogate her. Baker never got the money and, financially strapped, was forced to sell her house in September.

Before Noah Lottick killed himself, he had paid more than $5,000 for church counseling. His behavior had also become strange. He once remarked to his parents that his Scientology mentors could actually read minds. When his father suffered a major heart attack, Noah insisted that it was purely psychosomatic. Five days before he jumped, Noah burst into his parents' home and demanded to know why they were spreading "false rumors" about him -- a delusion that finally prompted his father to call a psychiatrist.

It was too late. "From Noah's friends at Dianetics" read the card that accompanied a bouquet of flowers at Lottick's funeral. Yet no Scientology staff members bothered to show up. A week earlier, local church officials had given Lottick's parents a red-carpet tour of their center. A cult leader told Noah's parents that their son had been at the church just hours before he disappeared -- but the church denied this story as soon as the body was identified. True to form, the cult even haggled with the Lotticks over $3,000 their son had paid for services he never used, insisting that Noah had intended it as a "donation."

The church has invented hundreds of goods and services for which members are urged to give "donations." Are you having trouble "moving swiftly up the Bridge" -- that is, advancing up the stepladder of enlightenment? Then you can have your case reviewed for a mere $1,250 "donation." Want to know "why a thetan hangs on to the physical universe?" Try 52 of Hubbard's tape- recorded speeches from 1952, titled "Ron's Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures," for $2,525. Next: nine other series of the same sort. For the collector, gold-and-leather-bound editions of 22 of Hubbard's books (and bookends) on subjects ranging from Scientology ethics to radiation can be had for just $1,900.

To gain influence and lure richer, more sophisticated followers, Scientology has lately resorted to a wide array of front groups and financial scams. Among them:

CONSULTING. Sterling Management Systems, formed in 1983, has been ranked in recent years by Inc. magazine as one of America's fastest-growing private companies (estimated 1988 revenues: $20 million). Sterling regularly mails a free newsletter to more than 300,000 health-care professionals, mostly dentists, promising to increase their incomes dramatically. The firm offers seminars and courses that typically cost $10,000. But Sterling's true aim is to hook customers for Scientology. "The church has a rotten product, so they package it as something else," says Peter Georgiades, a Pittsburgh attorney who represents Sterling victims. "It's a kind of bait and switch." Sterling's founder, dentist Gregory Hughes, is now under investigation by California's Board of Dental Examiners for incompetence. Nine lawsuits are pending against him for malpractice (seven others have been settled), mostly for orthodontic work on children.

Many dentists who have unwittingly been drawn into the cult are filing or threatening lawsuits as well. Dentist Robert Geary of Medina, Ohio, who entered a Sterling seminar in 1988, endured "the most extreme high-pressure sales tactics I have ever faced." Sterling officials told Geary, 45, that their firm was not linked to Scientology, he says. But Geary claims they eventually convinced him that he and his wife Dorothy had personal problems that required auditing. Over five months, the Gearys say, they spent $130,000 for services, plus $50,000 for "gold-embossed, investment-grade" books signed by Hubbard. Geary contends that Scientologists not only called his bank to increase his credit-card limit but also forged his signature on a $20,000 loan application. "It was insane," he recalls. "I couldn't even get an accounting from them of what I was paying for." At one point, the Gearys claim, Scientologists held Dorothy hostage for two weeks in a mountain cabin, after which she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown.

Last October, Sterling broke some bad news to another dentist, Glover Rowe of Gadsden, Ala., and his wife Dee. Tests showed that unless they signed up for auditing, Glover's practice would fail, and Dee would someday abuse their child. The next month the Rowes flew to Glendale, Calif., where they shuttled daily from a local hotel to a Dianetics center. "We thought they were brilliant people because they seemed to know so much about us," recalls Dee. "Then we realized our hotel room must have been bugged." After bolting from the center, $23,000 poorer, the Rowes say, they were chased repeatedly by Scientologists on foot and in cars. Dentists aren't the only ones at risk. Scientology also makes pitches to chiropractors, podiatrists and veterinarians.

PUBLIC INFLUENCE. One front, the Way to Happiness Foundation, has distributed to children in thousands of the nation's public schools more than 3.5 million copies of a booklet Hubbard wrote on morality. The church calls the scheme "the largest dissemination project in Scientology history." Applied Scholastics is the name of still another front, which is attempting to install a Hubbard tutorial program in public schools, primarily those populated by minorities. The group also plans a 1,000-acre campus, where it will train educators to teach various Hubbard methods. The disingenuously named Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a Scientology group at war with psychiatry, its primary competitor. The commission typically issues reports aimed at discrediting particular psychiatrists and the field in general. The CCHR is also behind an all-out war against Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, the nation's top-selling antidepression drug. Despite scant evidence, the group's members -- who call themselves "psychbusters" -- claim that Prozac drives people to murder or suicide. Through mass mailings, appearances on talk shows and heavy lobbying, CCHR has hurt drug sales and helped spark dozens of lawsuits against Lilly.

Another Scientology-linked group, the Concerned Businessmen's Association of America, holds antidrug contests and awards $5,000 grants to schools as a way to recruit students and curry favor with education officials. West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV unwittingly commended the CBAA in 1987 on the Senate floor. Last August author Alex Haley was the keynote speaker at its annual awards banquet in Los Angeles. Says Haley: "I didn't know much about that group going in. I'm a Methodist." Ignorance about Scientology can be embarrassing: two months ago, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, noting that Scientology's founder "has solved the aberrations of the human mind," proclaimed March 13 "L. Ron Hubbard Day." He rescinded the proclamation in late March, once he learned who Hubbard really was.

HEALTH CARE. HealthMed, a chain of clinics run by Scientologists, promotes a grueling and excessive system of saunas, exercise and vitamins designed by Hubbard to purify the body. Experts denounce the regime as quackery and potentially harmful, yet HealthMed solicits unions and public agencies for contracts. The chain is plugged heavily in a new book, Diet for a Poisoned Planet, by journalist David Steinman, who concludes that scores of common foods (among them: peanuts, bluefish, peaches and cottage cheese) are dangerous.

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop labeled the book "trash," and the Food and Drug Administration issued a paper in October that claims Steinman distorts his facts. "HealthMed is a gateway to Scientology, and Steinman's book is a sorting mechanism," says physician William Jarvis, who is head of the National Council Against Health Fraud. Steinman, who describes Hubbard favorably as a "researcher," denies any ties to the church and contends, "HealthMed has no affiliation that I know of with Scientology."

DRUG TREATMENT. Hubbard's purification treatments are the mainstay of Narconon, a Scientology-run chain of 33 alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers -- some in prisons under the name "Criminon" -- in 12 countries. Narconon, a classic vehicle for drawing addicts into the cult, now plans to open what it calls the world's largest treatment center, a 1,400-bed facility on an Indian reservation near Newkirk, Okla. (pop. 2,400). At a 1989 ceremony in Newkirk, the Association for Better Living and Education presented Narconon a check for $200,000 and a study praising its work. The association turned out to be part of Scientology itself. Today the town is battling to keep out the cult, which has fought back through such tactics as sending private detectives to snoop on the mayor and the local newspaper publisher.

FINANCIAL SCAMS. Three Florida Scientologists, including Ronald Bernstein, a big contributor to the church's international "war chest," pleaded guilty in March to using their rare-coin dealership as a money laundry. Other notorious activities by Scientologists include making the shady Vancouver stock exchange even shadier (see box) and plotting to plant operatives in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Export-Import Bank of the U.S. The alleged purpose of this scheme: to gain inside information on which countries are going to be denied credit so that Scientology-linked traders can make illicit profits by taking "short" positions in those countries' currencies.

In the stock market the practice of "shorting" involves borrowing shares of publicly traded companies in the hope that the price will go down before the stocks must be bought on the market and returned to the lender. The Feshbach brothers of Palo Alto, Calif. -- Kurt, Joseph and Matthew -- have become the leading short sellers in the U.S., with more than $500 million under management. The Feshbachs command a staff of about 60 employees and claim to have earned better returns than the Dow Jones industrial average for most of the 1980s. And, they say, they owe it all to the teachings of Scientology, whose "war chest" has received more than $1 million from the family.

The Feshbachs also embrace the church's tactics; the brothers are the terrors of the stock exchanges. In congressional hearings in 1989, the heads of several companies claimed that Feshbach operatives have spread false information to government agencies and posed in various guises -- such as a Securities and Exchange Commission official -- in an effort to discredit their companies and drive the stocks down. Michael Russell, who ran a chain of business journals, testified that a Feshbach employee called his bankers and interfered with his loans. Sometimes the Feshbachs send private detectives to dig up dirt on firms, which is then shared with business reporters, brokers and fund managers.

The Feshbachs, who wear jackets bearing the slogan "stock busters," insist they run a clean shop. But as part of a current probe into possible insider stock trading, federal officials are reportedly investigating whether the Feshbachs received confidential information from FDA employees. The brothers seem aligned with Scientology's war on psychiatry and medicine: many of their targets are health and biotechnology firms. "Legitimate short selling performs a public service by deflating hyped stocks," says Robert Flaherty, the editor of Equities magazine and a harsh critic of the brothers. "But the Feshbachs have damaged scores of good start-ups."

Occasionally a Scientologist's business antics land him in jail. Last August a former devotee named Steven Fishman began serving a five-year prison term in Florida. His crime: stealing blank stock-confirmation slips from his employer, a major brokerage house, to use as proof that he owned stock entitling him to join dozens of successful class-action lawsuits. Fishman made roughly $1 million this way from 1983 to 1988 and spent as much as 30% of the loot on Scientology books and tapes.

Scientology denies any tie to the Fishman scam, a claim strongly disputed by both Fishman and his longtime psychiatrist, Uwe Geertz, a prominent Florida hypnotist. Both men claim that when arrested, Fishman was ordered by the church to kill Geertz and then do an "EOC," or end of cycle, which is church jargon for suicide.

BOOK PUBLISHING. Scientology mischiefmaking has even moved to the book industry. Since 1985 at least a dozen Hubbard books, printed by a church company, have made best-seller lists. They range from a 5,000-page sci-fi decology (Black Genesis, The Enemy Within, An Alien Affair) to the 40-year-old Dianetics. In 1988 the trade publication Publishers Weekly awarded the dead author a plaque commemorating the appearance of Dianetics on its best-seller list for 100 consecutive weeks.

Critics pan most of Hubbard's books as unreadable, while defectors claim that church insiders are sometimes the real authors. Even so, Scientology has sent out armies of its followers to buy the group's books at such major chains as B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks to sustain the illusion of a best-selling author. A former Dalton's manager says that some books arrived in his store with the chain's price stickers already on them, suggesting that copies are being recycled. Scientology claims that sales of Hubbard books now top 90 million worldwide. The scheme, set up to gain converts and credibility, is coupled with a radio and TV advertising campaign virtually unparalleled in the book industry.

Scientology devotes vast resources to squelching its critics. Since 1986 Hubbard and his church have been the subject of four unfriendly books, all released by small yet courageous publishers. In each case, the writers have been badgered and heavily sued. One of Hubbard's policies was that all perceived enemies are "fair game" and subject to being "tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." Those who criticize the church -- journalists, doctors, lawyers and even judges -- often find themselves engulfed in litigation, stalked by private eyes, framed for fictional crimes, beaten up or threatened with death. Psychologist Margaret Singer, 69, an outspoken Scientology critic and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, now travels regularly under an assumed name to avoid harassment.

After the Los Angeles Times published a negative series on the church last summer, Scientologists spent an estimated $1 million to plaster the reporters' names on hundreds of billboards and bus placards across the city. Above their names were quotations taken out of context to portray the church in a positive light.

The church's most fearsome advocates are its lawyers. Hubbard warned his followers in writing to "beware of attorneys who tell you not to sue . . . the purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win." Result: Scientology has brought hundreds of suits against its perceived enemies and today pays an estimated $20 million annually to more than 100 lawyers.

One legal goal of Scientology is to bankrupt the opposition or bury it under paper. The church has 71 active lawsuits against the IRS alone. One of them, Miscavige vs. IRS, has required the U.S. to produce an index of 52,000 pages of documents. Boston attorney Michael Flynn, who helped Scientology victims from 1979 to 1987, personally endured 14 frivolous lawsuits, all of them dismissed. Another lawyer, Joseph Yanny, believes the church "has so subverted justice and the judicial system that it should be barred from seeking equity in any court." He should know: Yanny represented the cult until 1987, when, he says, he was asked to help church officials steal medical records to blackmail an opposing attorney (who was allegedly beaten up instead). Since Yanny quit representing the church, he has been the target of death threats, burglaries, lawsuits and other harassment.

Scientology's critics contend that the U.S. needs to crack down on the church in a major, organized way. "I want to know, Where is our government?" demands Toby Plevin, a Los Angeles attorney who handles victims. "It shouldn't be left to private litigators, because God knows most of us are afraid to get involved." But law-enforcement agents are also wary. "Every investigator is very cautious, walking on eggshells when it comes to the church," says a Florida police detective who has tracked the cult since 1988. "It will take a federal effort with lots of money and manpower."

So far the agency giving Scientology the most grief is the IRS, whose officials have implied that Hubbard's successors may be looting the church's coffers. Since 1988, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the revocation of the cult's tax-exempt status, a massive IRS probe of church centers across the country has been under way. An IRS agent, Marcus Owens, has estimated that thousands of IRS employees have been involved. Another agent, in an internal IRS memorandum, spoke hopefully of the "ultimate disintegration" of the church. A small but helpful beacon shone last June when a federal appeals court ruled that two cassette tapes featuring conversations between church officials and their lawyers are evidence of a plan to commit "future frauds" against the IRS.

The IRS and FBI have been debriefing Scientology defectors for the past three years, in part to gain evidence for a major racketeering case that appears to have stalled last summer. Federal agents complain that the Justice Department is unwilling to spend the money needed to endure a drawn-out war with Scientology or to fend off the cult's notorious jihads against individual agents. "In my opinion the church has one of the most effective intelligence operations in the U.S., rivaling even that of the FBI," says Ted Gunderson, a former head of the FBI's Los Angeles office.

Foreign governments have been moving even more vigorously against the organization. In Canada the church and nine of its members will be tried in June on charges of stealing government documents (many of them retrieved in an enormous police raid of the church's Toronto headquarters). Scientology proposed to give $1 million to the needy if the case was dropped, but Canada spurned the offer. Since 1986 authorities in France, Spain and Italy have raided more than 50 Scientology centers. Pending charges against more than 100 of its overseas church members include fraud, extortion, capital flight, coercion, illegally practicing medicine and taking advantage of mentally incapacitated people. In Germany last month, leading politicians accused the cult of trying to infiltrate a major party as well as launching an immense recruitment drive in the east.

Sometimes even the church's biggest zealots can use a little protection. Screen star Travolta, 37, has long served as an unofficial Scientology spokesman, even though he told a magazine in 1983 that he was opposed to the church's management. High-level defectors claim that Travolta has long feared that if he defected, details of his sexual life would be made public. "He felt pretty intimidated about this getting out and told me so," recalls William Franks, the church's former chairman of the board. "There were no outright threats made, but it was implicit. If you leave, they immediately start digging up everything." Franks was driven out in 1981 after attempting to reform the church.

The church's former head of security, Richard Aznaran, recalls Scientology ringleader Miscavige repeatedly joking to staffers about Travolta's allegedly promiscuous homosexual behavior. At this point any threat to expose Travolta seems superfluous: last May a male porn star collected $100,000 from a tabloid for an account of his alleged two-year liaison with the celebrity. Travolta refuses to comment, and in December his lawyer dismissed questions about the subject as "bizarre." Two weeks later, Travolta announced that he was getting married to actress Kelly Preston, a fellow Scientologist.

Shortly after Hubbard's death the church retained Trout & Ries, a respected, Connecticut-based firm of marketing consultants, to help boost its public image. "We were brutally honest," says Jack Trout. "We advised them to clean up their act, stop with the controversy and even to stop being a church. They didn't want to hear that." Instead, Scientology hired one of the country's largest p.r. outfits, Hill and Knowlton, whose executives refuse to discuss the lucrative relationship. "Hill and Knowlton must feel that these guys are not totally off the wall," says Trout. "Unless it's just for the money."

One of Scientology's main strategies is to keep advancing the tired argument that the church is being "persecuted" by antireligionists. It is supported in that position by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Council of Churches. But in the end, money is what Scientology is all about. As long as the organization's opponents and victims are successfully squelched, Scientology's managers and lawyers will keep pocketing millions of dollars by helping it achieve its ends.

L. Ron Hubbard in the late 1960s, making an adjustment to the Mark V E-Meter. From The Book Introducing the E-Meter, by L. Ron Hubbard.

The Human Cost

stephley — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:41:16 -0700

My Heart is Breaking Again Today
by Donna Smith/commondreams.org

CHICAGO - You'd think I'd get over it already. After reading so many patient horror stories and knowing how many people are hurting for healthcare, you'd think I'd have thicker skin. But I sat alone again this morning in the dark and cried. And I cried because this recession - this depression - is going to mean more and more people will have less access to healthcare both through insurance and through other means.

ABC ran a piece this morning that described the ghost town-like atmosphere in some communities where foreclosures are growing and people are just up and leaving their homes and many of their personal belongings. Trash collectors come through and empty out the homes of the food, the dishes, the clothes, the TVs, the microwaves and the toys left behind. One of the young workers wondered when it might be his own family, his own kid's doll...

These aren't events that just happened when the stock market took a dive or AIG failed or Lehman's execs went to the spa to relax. These families had been in crisis for months leading up to their fleeing. They had borrowed from friends and family members to pay the bills, they had answered angry collection notices and calls, they had tried to shield their babies from the stress, they had gone to work every day and tried to keep the ship afloat. It took a while... and neighbors knew it, friends knew it, teachers knew it, pastors knew it.

Lost jobs - in record numbers -- and lost homes mean less money for health insurance. Anyone who has left or lost a job in recent years knows that COBRA benefits can be outrageously expensive to continue, and many families simply cannot pay a mortgage and those high premiums. And as tax revenues drop for cities and counties and states, the ability to fund health facilities to treat the uninsured and the underinsured will suffer more. When those cutbacks are made, they can be measured in public health outcomes for years to come. And how many media reports have we all seen in recent days about the stress of these times and the health issues related to that stress?

When will we get over this collective position of ignorance and inaction that keeps us from acting simply because for the moment our own worlds are not rocked or ravaged? We are our neighbors' keepers. If I am happy keeping my own health insurance and access to care but know that my neighbor has none, I am responsible for fixing that - for both of us. If I have a home but my neighbor is losing theirs, it is my problem too.

So I sat in my chair this morning, listening to the opening Wall Street bell on TV and watching the commentators dance between telling us the grim reality and singing a happy song so we won't actually feel bad about the collapse. And I cried the same sort of guttural cry I felt when months ago when I internalized the reality that we could give one another healthcare if we wanted to... our denial of that right to each other is an active political and societal decision not an accident.

My favorite movie of all time is the Wizard of OZ. I always like the scenes where the curtain has been pulled back on the great and glorious OZ simply to show a man feverishly at the control panel trying to direct Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. Finally, finally, finally, the crew learns they always had courage and a brain and a heart. I know, it's a simple message and a bit moralistic. But sometimes I find the simple messages speak to the deepest of human pursuits and the common dreams we all share.

This tanking economy isn't about the media reports or the leaders at the controls or any of that power structure stuff we all have been trained to watch and listen to - they are the same people who did know it was coming and chose to wring out a bit more profit before they sounded the warning bells. The tanking economy is hurting our neighbors. It is hurting our kids. It is hurting marriages. It is hurting our towns and states.

And as the depths of the greed finally deliver the expected and long anticipated results, our already broken healthcare system will suffer more deeply from the compounding of damage done by private, market-invested, for-profit corporate control of a basic human right that is to be cared for when we are sick.

I wonder how many other Americans cried this morning when they saw that young trash collector lamenting as he tossed another baby-doll in his trash bag. If we don't collectively act soon on the healthcare crisis and move toward public funding and away from volatile private markets, it won't be just more inanimate dolls we're allowing to be tossed in the trash. It will be more and more very real American lives.

The curtain has been pulled back, and we always had the heart, the courage and the brains to change it. We were just too hoodwinked to know. It is time - well past time - to stand together and act.

Donna Smith is a community organizer for the California Nurses Association and National Co-Chair, Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign

Obama’s Broken Promises Were Entirely Predictable

Grandpa — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:19:36 -0800

Obama’s Broken Promises Were Entirely Predictable

February 14, 2009 - by Nicholas Guariglia (Pajamas Media)

Nicholas Guariglia is a polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is a graduate of the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he studied U.S. foreign policy. He can be reached at nickguar@gmail.com.

Barack Obama swept into office with the limelight at his back. For nearly two years of campaigning, Obama led a nationwide movement for change and became a phenomenon, breaking all sorts of political barriers along the way. People of all demographics used Obama as a vessel in which to invest their hopes and dreams. But today, just three weeks into his presidency, Mr. Obama is on the verge of losing the country’s confidence and the large reservoir of national goodwill afforded to all incoming presidents. There are several reasons for this, all of which should be and have already been explored. I would hate to say “I told ya so,” but …
What could anyone have possibly expected from a young, overtly leftist Chicago upstart who had accomplished precisely nothing of significance throughout his short career - and yet still promised the world, and more, to his loyal adherents?
Consider his campaign pledges: It wasn’t too long ago that Obama promised to “tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” Ah, the corporate lobbyist, every candidate’s favorite whipping boy. “They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president,” Barack once swore to his sea of idolizing worshipers.
That was then; this is now. President Obama has allowed seventeen exceptions to the no-lobbyist rule. And remember that “sunlight before signing” pledge, giving citizens enough time to read a bill - and offer their opinions on it - before it is signed into law? Well, that’s gone to the wayside, too.
Consider his tone and lack of bipartisanship: Obama’s election was supposed to end the “politics as usual,” filled with “divisiveness” and all other sorts of bad things. It was on Inauguration Day, as I recall, when Obama proclaimed “an end to the petty grievances … that for far too long have strangled our politics.” We should “set aside childish things,” Obama suggested, and “choose our better history.”
So much for that. The first thing President Obama did was allow Nancy Pelosi to write the egregious “stimulus” bill, effectively making it her own personal wish list. When opposition to the bill began to mount, Obama brought Republicans to the bargaining table - only to snicker “I won” to their faces.
Additionally, President Obama’s recent speech to House Democrats was as snide and sarcastic of a national address as you will ever see. It was laced with flippant, partisan attacks on those who dared to question the logic of this massive bill. His administration went on the offensive, campaign-style, impugning the motives of those who have philosophical problems with the stimulus - what he calls “bickering” - while discarding any semblance of bipartisan spirit or grace under pressure.
Consider the dialogue: Gone is the pie-in-the-sky talk about post-partisan politics, transcending space and time, and all that other nonsense. We just passed a spending bill which will - using contemporary monetary standards - cost more than Bush’s Iraq war and Roosevelt’s New Deal combined. It is, by far, the largest spending bill in American history. We could buy real estate on Mars for a fifth of the cost.
One would think Obama, who promised a new era of dialogue, would at least appreciate the historical magnitude of such a gargantuan bill - and conduct himself in accordance. After all it will be Sasha and Malia’s children who will pay off this government-induced debt. Even the bill’s advocates begrudgingly admit that.
Rather, we’ve seen our new leader act more like the teacher’s pet that finally gets detention, or the all-state quarterback who is finally benched for missing practice: self-righteous, arrogant, indignant, shocked, and incredibly thin-skinned. Martha Zoller and Jennifer Rubin each hit the nail on the head: if President Obama were as good at explaining the stimulus package as he is complaining to others about the stresses of the job, he wouldn’t feel the need to resort to testy pompousness. Obama has thus far proven to be better at displaying his obsession with talk radio personality Sean Hannity - he mentions him every chance he gets - than explaining, in a rational and coherent manner, how the Democratic pork-pet projects in his spending bill will save our economy. That’s the reality, and that’s sad.
Consider the language of fear: There is another sad element to President Obama’s dialogue, and that is his odd blend of draconian terminology and juvenile platitudes. Obama has said it is “inexcusable and irresponsible” not to pass the bill as soon as possible, or else there will be a “catastrophe” which will cause an “irreversible” recession - all if he doesn’t get his way! What a far cry this is from Reagan’s wish that he “appealed to [our] best hopes, not [our] worst fears.”
Far from titillating or stoking our hopes, Obama has employed that much-maligned “language of fear” - of which he accused his predecessor - time and again, attempting to scare the populace into accepting this ludicrous bill. As Charles Krauthammer put it, “So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared ‘we have chosen hope over fear.’ Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.”
Consider the intellectual dishonesty: Seemingly stunned by his initial inability to bend Washington to his will, Barack has resorted to playground logic to defend his economic proposals. “If nothing is done, this recession could linger on for years,” he forecasts. Well, then … that pretty much wraps up the debate, now doesn’t it? If bad things will happen when nothing is done, then good things might happen if something is done, right?
This kind of threat-forecasting and platitude-dribble is for the sandbox, not a national economic discussion. When Obama talks on and on about “the same failed policies” that “got us in this mess,” this is emotional, populist gibberish - not objective economic contemplation. Where are the philosophical distinctions, the economic arguments, the logical rationalizations?
If this stimulus bill is so urgent, why aren’t most of its provisions - those few which are not absurd and actually have something to do with economic recovery - going to be implemented until years from now? How will these fantastical programs save us from irreversible economic disaster? How will this bill be different from Japan’s experiences with multiple stimulus packages, all of which pretty much failed? And what’s up with that sneaky de facto health care nationalization plan in the bill, going under the public’s radar?
President Obama hasn’t answered or addressed any of this. But he has attacked Rush Limbaugh. This kind of childish behavior is supposed to be beneath the office which Obama now holds. But for Barack, it isn’t.
Consider his executive leadership: Nearly every one of President Obama’s cabinet appointments has undue baggage and closet-skeletons. Attorney General Eric Holder is best known for his role in pardoning Marc Rich. Mark Gitenstein was a corporate lobbyist from 2000 until 2008. David Ogden’s best known for defending child pornography.
The womanizing Bill Richardson had to withdraw his name because a federal grand jury wants to see him for illegal “pay-to-play” violations. William Lynn III, a recent lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, will be number two at the Pentagon. William Corr lobbied as an anti-tobacco activist as late as last year. All of this violates Obama’s own ethics rules regarding lobbyists.
Leon Panetta is a fine man, but is he qualified? Do Rangel, Dodd, and Frank - those brilliant overseers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - really deserve presidential exemptions regarding their tax excesses? General Zinni’s been wrong about Iraq for over a decade, but did he and his family deserve to be snubbed and treated in such a dishonorable fashion by the Obama administration? Do I even need to bring up the hypocrisy and audacity of appointing tax policy advisors - Geithner, Daschle, Solis, Killefer, etc. - who cheated on their taxes worse than a gypsy playing a blind man in Scrabble?
President Obama seems to think that just because he wasn’t vetted by the national media prior to his election, his administration doesn’t have to vet its cabinet nominees. Individually, these missteps wouldn’t be news. But the sum total of their parts leads one to believe there is a pattern - just as there was in Chicago with Wright, Ayers, Rezko, Pfleger, Mansour, etc. - and if it weren’t our country, it’d almost be comical. Hardly anyone today, and certainly nobody a year from now, will be able to listen to President Obama’s campaign pledges about transparency, ethics, and change and keep a straight face.
As a reader phrased it in an email, this administration has thus far had all the grace and ease of a teenager learning how to parallel park. Perhaps this is what on-the-job training looks like? He’s losing the message war because he’s not leading the debate. And he’s not leading the debate, may I surmise, because he does not have requisite leadership qualities for an executive. Sure, he’s brilliant at rallies. But so is Bon Jovi.
Consider the future: Iran has launched its own satellite into orbit and is mocking Obama as a weak leader for wanting to have a dialogue with them. North Korea has withdrawn from its non-aggression treaty and is preparing another missile test. Somalia is in tatters. Yemen has released 170 al-Qaeda terrorists. Pakistan has released mad nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan from house arrest. Russia is blocking supply lines into Afghanistan.
During last year’s campaign, critics of Barack Obama contended he was too inexperienced, too leftist, and in a sense, too good to be true. He was, we observed, just another politician - in fact, one uniquely entrenched with Chicago corruption and archaic tax-and-spend philosophies. In other words, a less noble Jimmy Carter.
Less than a month into his presidency, this view of President Obama has been vindicated - until he proves otherwise. Hang on to your hats (and wallets); it might be a long four years.

Hey Obama, how about a real debate?

Grandpa — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:21:09 -0700

Unity and Change -- or Not?
By Peter Ferrara
Published 4/3/2008 12:07:56 AM
Probably the most substantive exchange of the Presidential campaign took place within the past two weeks. But it wasn't between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or between John McCain and either of those two. It was between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich.

In an address in Philadelphia on March 18, just across from Independence Hall, Obama said,
By investing in our schools and our communities...at this moment in this election, we can come together and say [to those who would distract us from real issues], Not this time. This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn, that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids; they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a twenty first century economy. Not this time.

Gingrich interpreted these words, and the rest of the speech, as calling for a real dialogue, not a political debate, about what real change would seriously address these and similar problems throughout modern American society. So that is what he offered in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on March 28.

Gingrich began effectively saying to Obama, I know exactly what you mean, quoting Lincoln:
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

But then Gingrich put his finger on the real problem with Obama's thinking, saying, "We talk about change, and then we do more of what we are already doing." Throughout this campaign, and his entire political career, Obama has never, and will never, say or do anything to challenge any of the verities of the Left. In the end, his supposed change always seems to hearken back to the tried and failed, Big Government policies of the 1960s, or even the 1930s.

Gingrich pointed out the disastrous failure of these policies with the example of Detroit, where the Left has been in total control for half a century now:
Detroit in 1950 had 1,800,000. Last year, it dropped below 900,000...It dropped from being the number one per capita income city in the United States to ranking number sixty-second...[I]n the past three years, Detroit had three times the outmigration rate of any other city in the United States.

Obama said in his March 18 speech:
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Obama's speech suggested as a solution only even more funding for inner city schools, following the left-wing union playbook precisely. But Gingrich countered:
The Detroit schools are the third or fourth most expensive schools in the country. They're a disaster....The best estimate of the Gates Foundation was that a freshman entering the Detroit school system had one chance in four of graduating on time. Three out of four children in Detroit are being cheated by one of the most expensive school bureaucracies in America....An entrepreneur offered $200 million to develop charter schools in Detroit and was rejected on the grounds that he was obviously a white racist attempting to overturn the black power structure.

The fact is all across the country the government is spending more on failing inner city schools than on suburban schools. More money is not the answer.

Gingrich explained what would be necessary if Obama wanted to bring about real change in the nation's schools:
And if Senator Obama is serious about helping children in urban America, he will have to question whether or not in fact he's prepared to automatically reinforce the lockstep power of the National Education Association, which is the largest single provider of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Now if we're going to have an honest conversation about poverty in America, then let's have an honest conversation about poverty in America. The number one problem with expensive large urban schools is they are failed bureaucracies protected by political unions that refuse to change.

But based on Obama's speech he is not preparing to take on anything like this battle.

Gingrich identified as the root cause of these disastrous policy failures of the Left as "bad culture and bad government." Gingrich said:
The tragic truth is that at the end of segregation, the great moment of opportunity for African-Americans, we had a failure of government and a failure of culture. The rise of big bureaucracy in the Great Society starting in 1965 combined with the rise of a counterculture which despised middle class values and which taught the poor patterns and habits of destruction -- and those two patterns of bad bureaucracy reinforcing bad culture have led to a disaster.

Gingrich offered as a successful example of real change the 1996 reforms of the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), which he led the Republican Congress to enact. Those reforms sent the program back to the states with block grants of the Federal funds, under a requirement that welfare be provided in return for work by the able bodied.

With the states keeping the savings from finding jobs for the poor, but paying for any higher expenses, they dramatically reduced the old AFDC rolls by close to 60% nationwide, a bigger success than even the reform advocates, going back to Ronald Reagan, would dare to predict. After the reform:
[E]mployment of never married mothers increased by nearly 50%, of single mothers who are high school dropouts by 66%, and of young single mothers ages 18 to 24 by nearly 100%. The child poverty rate fell from 20.8% to in 1995 to 17.8% in 2004, lifting 1.6 million children out of poverty. The poverty rate among black children fell from 41.5% in 1995 to 32,9% in 2004. The poverty rate also fell from 53.1% to 39.8% for children from single-mother families.

These same reforms should now be extended to the other major federal welfare programs, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and federal housing programs, as well as the dozens of smaller federal welfare programs. Send them back to the states where they can be reformed from the bottom up with an expanded focus on work, private health insurance, even home ownership, creating a new modern welfare program to achieve middle class prosperity for the previously poor.

To create jobs, Gingrich emphasized:
In a healthy society, you want the smallest possible tax rate because you want the maximum resources with people who know how to create jobs. And the choice is simple, do you make the politician or the bureaucrat more powerful by giving them more money, or do you make the job creator more effective by letting them keep their money. But does anyone seriously want to argue that the bureaucrat is more likely to create the next million jobs than the entrepreneur?

Gingrich also argued for a cultural change encouraging more African Americans and other minorities to go into business because, "a generation of entrepreneurs can mop up poverty at a rate no bureaucracy can imagine."

In his latest book, Real Change, Gingrich also argues extensively for personal accounts for Social Security, which would provide an historic breakthrough in personal prosperity for working people. Between that book and this speech, it looks like Gingrich is really the one who has the audacity of hope to argue for sweeping real change for America.

Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation, and general counsel for the American Civil Rights Union.