HONOLULU (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard is setting up a security zone in the waters off President Barack Obama's vacation home on Oahu.
The Coast Guard said Thursday small boats will enforce the zone around part of Kailua Bay through Jan. 5. The restrictions may be lifted before then.
Those entering the zone without permission may be fined up to $25,000 and imprisoned for up to 10 years. Yellow buoys mark the restricted area.
Obama and his family are expected to arrive Thursday. It will be Obama's first visit since the inauguration to the state where he was born and spent most of his childhood.
The Obama family is due to stay at an oceanfront rental home in Kailua through early next month.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Escalating War in Afghanistan Apt to Hurt Fragile U.S. Economy
If Iraq war spending helped plunge the U.S. economy into its worst slump since the Depression, what does President Obama think his escalation of the Afghan war will do it?
Besides forcing taxpayers to cough up fresh billions to enable the Pentagon to chase down a few hundred Taliban fighters, the Afghan war is liable to continue to inflate oil prices—and this means more than the ongoing swindle of motorists at the pump.
Higher oil prices also slow the global economy, causing our trading partners to buy fewer Made-in-USA goods, thus reducing demand for our products and leading to layoffs.
Spending money on war also siphons billions of dollars from truly productive uses.
“Today, no serious economist holds the view that war is good for the economy,” write Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard government finance expert Linda Bilmes in their book “The Three Trillion Dollar War: the True Cost of The Iraq Conflict.”
Referring to Iraq, they write, “The question is not whether the economy has been weakened by the war. The question is only by how much.” They note, “Oil prices started to soar just as the war began, and the longer it has dragged on, the higher prices have gone.”
Even so, by their estimate, (a word they stress,) the increased price of oil attributed to the war comes “to somewhat in excess of $1.6 trillion.” Not only consumers but State and local governments “have had to cut back other spending to pay the higher prices of oil imports.”
The co-authors reason, “Government money spent in Iraq does not stimulate the economy in the way that the same amounts spent at home would.” A thousand dollars spent to hire a Nepalese worker to perform services in Iraq does not directly increase the income of Americans, Stiglitz and Bilmes point out. Ditto for Afghanistan—and Pakistan, friends.
By contrast, the same thousand dollars spent on university research in the U.S. directly boosts the U.S. economy, then ripples out as the university researchers spend their money on goods and services, many of them made in America.
“The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns. It could also have been spent more productively within the Department of Veterans Affairs, in its teaching and research programs, or in expanding medical facilities such as mental health clinics….Expenditures on the Iraq war have no benefits of this kind.” And by fiscal year 2010, the Center For Defense Information reports, the cost of the Afghan fighting will total $739 billion on the cost of Iraq fighting $2.337 trillion. Imagine the good those dollars would have done spent at home!
Bilmes and Stiglitz say by the end of last year, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq hiked U.S. indebtedness by $900 billion and just the debt from military spending (excluding veterans’ benefits) will exceed $2 trillion.
Today, the Pentagon sponge not only causes the U.S. to borrow billions from China and others but it is also putting American entrepreneurs out of business. “As the private sector competes for funds with the government, private investment gets crowded out…As a result, output is lower.”
The co-authors add that the crowding out causes a loss in investment in our economy by $1.2 trillion and “the forgone output” (unbuilt homes, etc.) could be as high as $5trillion.
Another expense the Pentagon doesn’t talk about is the waste involved when it doles out no-bid contracts to favored insiders such as KBR. Nearly all of the top 10 war machine contractors are said to land the majority of contracts without competing bidders. What a kick in the teeth to capitalist free enterprise!
Have your stocks suffered? U.S. economist Robert Wescott, Stiglitz and Bilmes write, estimated in the years immediately following the beginning of the Iraq war that “the value of the stock market was some $4 trillion less than would have been predicted on the basis of past performance.”
Why? Because, “Uncertainties caused by the war, the resulting turmoil in the Middle East, and soaring oil prices dampened prices from what they ‘normally’ would have been. This decrease in corporate wealth implies that consumption was lower than it otherwise would have been, again weakening the economy.”
Back in 2007, Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee issued a report on the two wars estimating their cost from 2002 to 2008 at $1.6 trillion. They put the cost to an American family of four at $20,900. That’s a whopping sum—but given all the indirect ways the wars have crippled the U.S. economy, probably a gross undercount.
President Obama’s expansion of the Afghan war into Pakistan has engulfed much of the Middle East in bloodshed that is, sad to say, of America’s making. And pouring more U.S. treasure into Pakistan will only further weaken the U.S. economy. This writer believes the American people—who want only what President Eisenhower’s slogan, “Peace and Prosperity,” once promised them—are going to pay dearly for a widening war the majority of them reject. And it may also bring economic catastrophe our way, courtesy of the “military-industrial complex” of which Eisenhower warned.
By Sherwood RossSherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations counselor who formerly worked for major dailies and wire services.
梵蒂岡‧平安夜子夜彌撒肇意外‧女子衝出圍欄扯跌教宗
（梵蒂岡）梵蒂岡教廷發言人表示，在平安夜，教宗本篤16世主持子夜彌撒時，衝出圍欄將教宗扯跌的紅衣女子馬約洛，料將得到寬恕。
25歲的馬洛約突然越過保安圍欄，在場的保安人員未能及時阻止，但本篤16世沒有受傷。
教宗寬恕紅衣女子
教廷證實，馬洛約有精神問題，去年亦曾在同一場合企圖接近教宗。當局將重新檢討保安程序，防止事件重演。
發言人強調，馬約洛沒有持械，因此這宗襲擊沒有重大危險。
82歲的教宗跌倒後迅速站起並開始主持彌撒。他週五（12月25日）也如常在聖伯多祿大教堂陽台上發表65種語文的聖誕文告，呼吁世人放棄暴力，推動和平共存。
他說：“社會還殘留著金融風暴所帶來的影響，以及戰爭和衝突的帶來的傷痛。”
馬約洛去年在同一場合曾企圖以同一方法接近教宗，但未跨過木欄便被警衛攔截，她當時也是穿著紅色連帽運動衫。
今次教宗遭襲兩週前前，意大利總理貝魯斯科尼也遭到精神病患襲擊，導致鼻樑和兩顆假牙被打落。
保安隊提醒教宗曝光率過高
本案也是本篤16世在5年前上任以來，襲擊者首次與他艱直接接觸。保安團隊此前經常提醒本篤16世的曝光率過高，發言人隆巴爾迪神父認為，他們的顧慮不是多餘的。
另外一名法國籍樞機主教、87歲的埃切加雷在事件中不慎跌倒，造成髖部骨折，他將在接下來數天內動手術。
歷任教宗遇襲事件簿
1981年5月13日：若望保祿二世在聖伯多祿廣場發表演講時，被土耳其男子阿賈開鎗擊中，若望保祿二世身中兩鎗，送院急救。
阿賈當場被捕，兩年後在監獄中與若望保祿二世見面，獲後者寬恕。
1978年9月：若望保祿一世就任僅33天便逝世，梵迪岡指他死於心臟病，但拒驗屍證實，引起外界揣測他可能死於謀殺，其中一個傳言指他喝“毒茶”致死。
1970年11月：保祿六世出訪菲律賓，一名玻利維亞男子在機場拔刀行刺，但保祿6世一名隨從挺身阻止，並且制服行刺者。
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