Friday, November 21, 2008
Push-me Pull-you
So here's yet another of my President Bush rants. There really isn't much time left for these to be relevant, so I must strike while the iron is hot. Or warm. So it scars more and hurts.
Here are two unrelated articles ~ one regarding ramped up attempts by the Bush administration to pass regulations regarding the protection of endangered species and plants. The new regulations would eliminate the required input of independent federal wildlife biologists, etc. before a new construction project is approved. It also (and more to the point in the administration's view) "bar federal agencies from assessing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming on species and habitats, a tactic environmentalists have tried to use to block new coal-fired power plants.". Read it. They are bending over backwards to get this passed before a set deadline so that it can't be reversed easily by President Obama when he takes office. It literally would take an act of Congress to undo this. There have been a quarter of a million written comments in response to this proposed regulation. Lawmakers have vocally urged that it not be pursued and passed. Yet the administration pushes forward.
AN ON THE OTHER HAND ... we come to the second, unrelated article.
Unrelated except for the idea that here, the President is basically taking the hands-off approach to management with regard to the nations economic turmoil. The man whose administration has been assertive almost to the point of arrogance throughout his tenure, is pretty much doing the opposite in this case. Now, one might say that he knows he is only 2 months from being out of office and that it would be unwise to take some steps that might contradict the next administration's plans, but in this instance, 2 months is a VERY long time.
The President-elect CAN'T do anything at this point. He can make some plans behind the scene, and offer suggestions - but no current administration is going to accept that kind of "advice" unless it is the same as their own. And Mr. Obama cannot come out publicly and criticize the current administration's actions (or inactions) without undermining the confidence in the office of President itself.
And this is my point. Mr. President - YOU are the man between now and Jan 20th. YOU need to speak to the American people. YOU need ot lead. YOU need to stop letting/encouraging your people to focus on vindictive, questionably motivated regulatory crap and START stepping up here.
Now I know... there are those that think that people like me will stop at nothing to criticize President Bush. Really and truly, that's not so. But THIS is a major crisis ~ one that calls for leadership in the name of The President. You wanted this job, Sir .... please finish what you started. The nation may not needyou, but it needs its President.
From The Huffinton Report 11/19/08
WASHINGTON — Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them.
The rules must be published Friday to take effect before Obama is sworn in Jan. 20. Otherwise, he can undo them with the stroke of a pen.
The Interior Department rushed to complete the rules in three months over the objections of lawmakers and environmentalists who argued that they would weaken how a landmark conservation law is applied.
A Nov. 12 version of the final rules obtained by the Associated Press has changed little from the original proposal, despite the more than 250,000 comments received since it was first proposed in August.
The rules eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, allowing the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself if it is likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.
Current regulations require independent wildlife biologists to sign off on these decisions before a project can go forward, at times modifying the design to better protect species.
The regulations also bar federal agencies from assessing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming on species and habitats, a tactic environmentalists have tried to use to block new coal-fired power plants.
Tina Kreisher, an Interior Department spokeswoman, could not confirm whether the rule would be published before the deadline, saying only that the White House was still reviewing it. But she said changes were being made based on the comments received.
_______________
From CNN.COM 11/21/08 by Eliott C. McLaughlin
(CNN) -- As the United States writhes in a collapsing economy, analysts and observers are wondering: Who's skippering the ship?
President Bush has been noticeably absent from the machinations aimed at righting the nation's financial course. Analysts and key players differ over whether President-elect Barack Obama should get his economic team in place and take charge, or sit back and await his turn at the helm.
"Somebody has to speak up soon," said CNN senior political analyst David Gergen, explaining that he understands why Americans are growing anxious and yearning for direction and leadership.
"I think ... sort of the bottom feels like it is falling out for many people," said Gergen, who has advised four presidents. "They sense there's a total lack of leadership in Washington, that the White House is silent, the treasury secretary has been battered, the Federal Reserve can't speak up. These automakers come up to Capitol Hill and fail. And the president-elect is silent in Chicago."
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said Obama has avoided entering the congressional tussle over whether to bail out the Big Three automakers.
"I think that President-elect Obama is being very careful to remind people that we still have a president who still makes the final decision about things being signed into law," said Durbin, one of Obama's closest Senate confidantes.
Asked if Obama was offering guidance on the issue, Durbin replied, "No, no."
Obama noted shortly after his election that "the United States has only one government and one president at a time, and until January 20th of next year, that government is the current administration."
Meanwhile, jobless numbers are skyrocketing, the stock market is plummeting and the banking industry continues a decline, outpaced only by the fall of the U.S. auto industry.
The Bush administration has not said much about the issues other than to quietly state its positions.
The executive office has approved extending unemployment benefits, has opposed a wholesale bailout of the auto industry and frowns on the idea of using the $700 billion in Temporary Asset Relief Program funds to help homeowners or to provide bridge loans to automakers. Obama said last week that neglecting to provide relief to the auto industry would be disastrous, but he has done nothing to break a deadlocked Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that automakers must come up with a plan if they expect to receive any federal loans or funds.
"Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," she said.
"That will only happen if they can get their act together," added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Durbin said Obama is staying out of it for now because the present Congress is divided, and that won't change until Obama and the 111th Congress take their posts next year.
"There's a limited amount of opportunity and authority on a very contentious issue," he saidGreg Valliere, chief political strategist for the Stanford Group, a policy research firm based in Washington, D.C., concurred, saying earlier this week, "The lame-duck session of Congress will earn its 'lame' label and pass only a grab-bag of modest stimulus, leaving the heavy lifting until early 2009."
But even if the Big Three were to present a viable plan to Congress by their December 2 deadline, there are other troubling matters on the U.S. economic horizon.
Most notably, the S&P 500 -- used to gauge the stock market's health -- has hit an 11-year low. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, another indicator, closed Thursday around 7,552 points -- it was hovering around 14,000 just over a year agoAnd jobless claims -- the number of people filing for unemployment benefits -- is close to doubling in the span of a year, from about 300,000 people in January, to 524,000 people this week. Four million people -- about the population of Oregon -- are on unemployment insurance as well.
"If all these people are out of work getting money from the government, they're not net spenders or contributors to the economy. They're not net taxpayers. It means it's going to be a lot longer to get us out of this recession," said CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi.
Gergen said he has spoken to investment advisers who are downright fearful, especially after this week's economic convulsions.
It's understandable that Obama is staying visibly out of the fray, Gergen said, but the president-elect needs to work behind the scenes to persuade Congress to provide bridge financing for the automobile companies, and the White House has to take a more active role in mitigating the situation. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has faced this sort of economic crisis, Velshi said, but the tumult also provides an opportunity that hasn't been seen since the days of FDR.
If Obama can quickly name a treasury secretary and get working on the green economy that he says will drive U.S. finances for the next 15 to 20 years, it could create the jobs necessary to reverse the tumbling economy, Velshi said.
"We need to see if this is an opportunity we can turn around into the new New Deal," he said, referring to the program Roosevelt kicked off in 1933 to create jobs and mend the broken economy.
Names on Obama's shortlist to head Treasury include JP Morgan Chase President Jamie Dimon, New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger said Obama and his team are probably trying to gauge the totality of the situation, and many internal questions also have to be answered: Do we need someone younger? Would a former treasury secretary bring vital experience? Does it matter if the secretary has ties to Sen. Hillary Clinton?
"I think they're having these kinds of conversations, and so I would expect, though, that we're going to see something on the economic team in early December, if not sooner," she said.
There is speculation that Obama may name the incoming treasury secretary by Thanksgiving, but he may be distracted by the hullabaloo surrounding the potential appointment of Clinton as secretary of state
"I cannot stress enough that, while we go through this Kabuki dance about Hillary -- will she, won't she, will she be there or not -- the issue, increasingly, for the president-elect is the economy," Gergen said.
Borger concurs that the Obama team may be preoccupied with the prospect of appointing Clinton to head the State Department, but, she said, "I'm surprised, honestly, that they haven't put in a treasury secretary yet."
However, Borger said she thinks Obama is already working behind the scenes through his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and she doesn't think the Democrats would have postponed their decision on a Big Three bailout without checking with Obama.
Borger said she expects a "big push" from Democrats to find a way to save Detroit when the lame-duck Congress reconvenes in December, and Emanuel and Obama will be a part of it.
"But honestly, you can't expect a president-elect, who hasn't even been sworn in, to use all of his political capital -- and, by the way, he's going to have a lot -- before he takes office," she said.
There's a lot of risk involved in Obama pushing his economic agenda before he takes office, and it would be unwise to publicly state what the Bush administration should do, said Stephen Hayes, a conservative columnist and CNN contributor.
"Politically, he wants to stay as far away from this as he can," Hayes said. "I think it's smart of him to say, 'We have one president at a time; I have got my four years.' "
Here are two unrelated articles ~ one regarding ramped up attempts by the Bush administration to pass regulations regarding the protection of endangered species and plants. The new regulations would eliminate the required input of independent federal wildlife biologists, etc. before a new construction project is approved. It also (and more to the point in the administration's view) "bar federal agencies from assessing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming on species and habitats, a tactic environmentalists have tried to use to block new coal-fired power plants.". Read it. They are bending over backwards to get this passed before a set deadline so that it can't be reversed easily by President Obama when he takes office. It literally would take an act of Congress to undo this. There have been a quarter of a million written comments in response to this proposed regulation. Lawmakers have vocally urged that it not be pursued and passed. Yet the administration pushes forward.
AN ON THE OTHER HAND ... we come to the second, unrelated article.
Unrelated except for the idea that here, the President is basically taking the hands-off approach to management with regard to the nations economic turmoil. The man whose administration has been assertive almost to the point of arrogance throughout his tenure, is pretty much doing the opposite in this case. Now, one might say that he knows he is only 2 months from being out of office and that it would be unwise to take some steps that might contradict the next administration's plans, but in this instance, 2 months is a VERY long time.
The President-elect CAN'T do anything at this point. He can make some plans behind the scene, and offer suggestions - but no current administration is going to accept that kind of "advice" unless it is the same as their own. And Mr. Obama cannot come out publicly and criticize the current administration's actions (or inactions) without undermining the confidence in the office of President itself.
And this is my point. Mr. President - YOU are the man between now and Jan 20th. YOU need to speak to the American people. YOU need ot lead. YOU need to stop letting/encouraging your people to focus on vindictive, questionably motivated regulatory crap and START stepping up here.
Now I know... there are those that think that people like me will stop at nothing to criticize President Bush. Really and truly, that's not so. But THIS is a major crisis ~ one that calls for leadership in the name of The President. You wanted this job, Sir .... please finish what you started. The nation may not needyou, but it needs its President.
From The Huffinton Report 11/19/08
WASHINGTON — Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them.
The rules must be published Friday to take effect before Obama is sworn in Jan. 20. Otherwise, he can undo them with the stroke of a pen.
The Interior Department rushed to complete the rules in three months over the objections of lawmakers and environmentalists who argued that they would weaken how a landmark conservation law is applied.
A Nov. 12 version of the final rules obtained by the Associated Press has changed little from the original proposal, despite the more than 250,000 comments received since it was first proposed in August.
The rules eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, allowing the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself if it is likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.
Current regulations require independent wildlife biologists to sign off on these decisions before a project can go forward, at times modifying the design to better protect species.
The regulations also bar federal agencies from assessing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming on species and habitats, a tactic environmentalists have tried to use to block new coal-fired power plants.
Tina Kreisher, an Interior Department spokeswoman, could not confirm whether the rule would be published before the deadline, saying only that the White House was still reviewing it. But she said changes were being made based on the comments received.
_______________
From CNN.COM 11/21/08 by Eliott C. McLaughlin
(CNN) -- As the United States writhes in a collapsing economy, analysts and observers are wondering: Who's skippering the ship?
President Bush has been noticeably absent from the machinations aimed at righting the nation's financial course. Analysts and key players differ over whether President-elect Barack Obama should get his economic team in place and take charge, or sit back and await his turn at the helm.
"Somebody has to speak up soon," said CNN senior political analyst David Gergen, explaining that he understands why Americans are growing anxious and yearning for direction and leadership.
"I think ... sort of the bottom feels like it is falling out for many people," said Gergen, who has advised four presidents. "They sense there's a total lack of leadership in Washington, that the White House is silent, the treasury secretary has been battered, the Federal Reserve can't speak up. These automakers come up to Capitol Hill and fail. And the president-elect is silent in Chicago."
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said Obama has avoided entering the congressional tussle over whether to bail out the Big Three automakers.
"I think that President-elect Obama is being very careful to remind people that we still have a president who still makes the final decision about things being signed into law," said Durbin, one of Obama's closest Senate confidantes.
Asked if Obama was offering guidance on the issue, Durbin replied, "No, no."
Obama noted shortly after his election that "the United States has only one government and one president at a time, and until January 20th of next year, that government is the current administration."
Meanwhile, jobless numbers are skyrocketing, the stock market is plummeting and the banking industry continues a decline, outpaced only by the fall of the U.S. auto industry.
The Bush administration has not said much about the issues other than to quietly state its positions.
The executive office has approved extending unemployment benefits, has opposed a wholesale bailout of the auto industry and frowns on the idea of using the $700 billion in Temporary Asset Relief Program funds to help homeowners or to provide bridge loans to automakers. Obama said last week that neglecting to provide relief to the auto industry would be disastrous, but he has done nothing to break a deadlocked Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that automakers must come up with a plan if they expect to receive any federal loans or funds.
"Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," she said.
"That will only happen if they can get their act together," added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Durbin said Obama is staying out of it for now because the present Congress is divided, and that won't change until Obama and the 111th Congress take their posts next year.
"There's a limited amount of opportunity and authority on a very contentious issue," he saidGreg Valliere, chief political strategist for the Stanford Group, a policy research firm based in Washington, D.C., concurred, saying earlier this week, "The lame-duck session of Congress will earn its 'lame' label and pass only a grab-bag of modest stimulus, leaving the heavy lifting until early 2009."
But even if the Big Three were to present a viable plan to Congress by their December 2 deadline, there are other troubling matters on the U.S. economic horizon.
Most notably, the S&P 500 -- used to gauge the stock market's health -- has hit an 11-year low. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, another indicator, closed Thursday around 7,552 points -- it was hovering around 14,000 just over a year agoAnd jobless claims -- the number of people filing for unemployment benefits -- is close to doubling in the span of a year, from about 300,000 people in January, to 524,000 people this week. Four million people -- about the population of Oregon -- are on unemployment insurance as well.
"If all these people are out of work getting money from the government, they're not net spenders or contributors to the economy. They're not net taxpayers. It means it's going to be a lot longer to get us out of this recession," said CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi.
Gergen said he has spoken to investment advisers who are downright fearful, especially after this week's economic convulsions.
It's understandable that Obama is staying visibly out of the fray, Gergen said, but the president-elect needs to work behind the scenes to persuade Congress to provide bridge financing for the automobile companies, and the White House has to take a more active role in mitigating the situation. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has faced this sort of economic crisis, Velshi said, but the tumult also provides an opportunity that hasn't been seen since the days of FDR.
If Obama can quickly name a treasury secretary and get working on the green economy that he says will drive U.S. finances for the next 15 to 20 years, it could create the jobs necessary to reverse the tumbling economy, Velshi said.
"We need to see if this is an opportunity we can turn around into the new New Deal," he said, referring to the program Roosevelt kicked off in 1933 to create jobs and mend the broken economy.
Names on Obama's shortlist to head Treasury include JP Morgan Chase President Jamie Dimon, New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger said Obama and his team are probably trying to gauge the totality of the situation, and many internal questions also have to be answered: Do we need someone younger? Would a former treasury secretary bring vital experience? Does it matter if the secretary has ties to Sen. Hillary Clinton?
"I think they're having these kinds of conversations, and so I would expect, though, that we're going to see something on the economic team in early December, if not sooner," she said.
There is speculation that Obama may name the incoming treasury secretary by Thanksgiving, but he may be distracted by the hullabaloo surrounding the potential appointment of Clinton as secretary of state
"I cannot stress enough that, while we go through this Kabuki dance about Hillary -- will she, won't she, will she be there or not -- the issue, increasingly, for the president-elect is the economy," Gergen said.
Borger concurs that the Obama team may be preoccupied with the prospect of appointing Clinton to head the State Department, but, she said, "I'm surprised, honestly, that they haven't put in a treasury secretary yet."
However, Borger said she thinks Obama is already working behind the scenes through his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and she doesn't think the Democrats would have postponed their decision on a Big Three bailout without checking with Obama.
Borger said she expects a "big push" from Democrats to find a way to save Detroit when the lame-duck Congress reconvenes in December, and Emanuel and Obama will be a part of it.
"But honestly, you can't expect a president-elect, who hasn't even been sworn in, to use all of his political capital -- and, by the way, he's going to have a lot -- before he takes office," she said.
There's a lot of risk involved in Obama pushing his economic agenda before he takes office, and it would be unwise to publicly state what the Bush administration should do, said Stephen Hayes, a conservative columnist and CNN contributor.
"Politically, he wants to stay as far away from this as he can," Hayes said. "I think it's smart of him to say, 'We have one president at a time; I have got my four years.' "
Here, we like 'em YOUNG!
Nebraska limits safe-haven law to babies
(from CNN.COM 11/21/08)
Nebraska lawmakers voted today to change a controversial safe-haven law intended to protect infants, but that made the state a magnet for parents with troubled teens. Thirty-five children -- all but six of them older than 10 -- have been dropped off at Nebraska hospitals since the law took effect in September. Lawmakers amended the law to say that no child older than 30 days can be dropped off.
Asked to comment on this development, the Chief Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court responded....
'Well, DUH".
Note: Apparently corn is not "brain" food.
The Cancer Among Us
And so I whine and rant about the state of RI being in such horrible fiscal shape, and lo & behold MSNBC later today publishes an article exploring EXACTLY one of the problems that I spoke of: States selling their souls by taking loans on their tobacco settlement money up front.
Only it's even WORSE than I thought.
Because they usually only got .30 or .40 cents on the dollar for these.... and HUGE profits went to the investment banks, of whom many of the big players in this are now defunct.
The states rarely use the cash for the intended (and promised) purposes, and because these were floated as "bonds", then they also affected many people's retirement investments, as now they are involved in this from that end.
So the ultimate result is that it's imperative that the tobacco industry be allowed to exist AND profit because if they fail, then the states who've borrowed against the settlement are on the hook for the unpaid loan balances ....
Yet another example of despicable behavior by elected officials, the people who elect them, and wall street "creativity".
But I guess it's just me.. on e unheeded voting slob who readily admitted all along that he's no expert, but that KNEW this behavior was the wrong thing to do from the moment of inception.
Ten years later, tobacco deal going up in smoke
Posted: Friday, November 21 by Bob Sullivan (posted from MSNBC.COM)
Consider this the next time you see a teenager take a drag on a cigarette: Your state government likely has a financial stake in that kid continuing to smoke. And quite possibly, so does your retirement portfolio.
That was hardly the intention 10 years ago, when a collection of state attorneys general delivered a crushing blow to Big Tobacco. On Nov. 23, 1998, the nation's four largest cigarette sellers agreed to pay $200 billion over 30 years in what seemed like a victory for David over Goliath. The money was supposed to help the states pay for health care and anti-smoking campaigns. Instead, much of it -- even payments that aren't due for 20 years -- has already been spent on politically popular tax breaks through complicated borrowing schemes initiated by Wall Street investment banks.
Because these states have essentially borrowed against future payments from the tobacco industry, they are now dependent on the continued vitality of cigarette sales. If Big Tobacco stumbles, states will be on the hook for these massive, billion-dollar loans. In other words, David and Goliath are now allies.
Where did those loans come from? Perhaps from you. When Wall Street talked 25 states into borrowing against future tobacco payments -- a process known as “securitization” -- it sold bonds to individual investors and mutual funds that buy municipal bonds. Now, they are betting on Big Tobacco, too.
Worse yet, anyone invested in tobacco bonds has been seeing their money go up in smoke. Some bond funds that are heavily invested in tobacco have lost nearly 40 percent of their value this year. The reason for the sharp drop is disputed, but some observers say it's partly attributable to anti-smoking efforts. For the first time, fewer than 20 percent of American adults are smoking, new government statistics show. In other words, good news for the state health department is bad news for the revenue department -- and for the portfolios of those who invested in tobacco bonds.
It's a stunning reversal: The lawsuit designed to cut the legs out from under the tobacco industry has instead landed much of America -- often unwittingly – in the industry’s corner. One such investor is Avivah Litan, of Potomac, Md., who two years ago purchased shares in one of Oppenheimer & Co.'s “Rochester” municipal bond funds.
Like many investors, she was attracted to municipal bonds by tax free returns and the relatively low risk. Governments rarely go bankrupt. Cities issue municipal bonds to pay for such infrastructure as firetrucks and schools, and bond funds pool hundreds of such securities together. Similar to stock funds, the value of a bond fund fluctuates with changes in investors’ perceptions of the ability of the issuer to repay the loan. Because of governments’ solid record of paying off bonds, the funds have proven popular with investors. Americans have placed about $1.7 trillion in bond funds, according to the Investment Company Institute, compared with about $6.5 trillion in stock funds.
Litan was taken aback by the Rochester fund's recent poor performance, and began looking into its holdings. What she saw was confusing: 4 percent invested in "Tobacco Settlement," about 3 percent in "Golden St. Tob Securitization" and another 1 percent in the “Buckeye Ohio Tob Settlement." In fact, none of the fund’s top 10 holdings appeared to have anything to do with government infrastructure projects.
Here's the explanation: Bond issues aren't just for firetrucks and schools anymore. Bond funds can invest in complicated bonds issued by pseudo-government agencies that are ultimately backed by private ventures, such as housing developments. The largest segment of this pseudo-bond market is made up of tobacco bonds -- bonds issued by states that have borrowed against their future tobacco settlement payments.“I didn’t really understand that I would lose money every time a state passed an anti-smoking law,” Litan said. “I didn’t really understand what tobacco bonds were.”
What are tobacco bonds?
Oppenheimer’s Rochester family offers 18 different bond funds, some of which have as much as 20 percent of their assets invested in tobacco bonds, according to fund manager Daniel Loughran. The Rochester funds, while among the most aggressive investors in tobacco bonds, are hardly unique. A review of 660 leading bond funds covered by the investment research firm Morningstar Inc., conducted at msnbc.com's request, showed that more than 260 are invested in tobacco bonds.
The rush to tap the revenue stream began soon after the tobacco settlement was signed 10 years ago. The cigarette companies agreed to make annual payments that would total $200 billion by 2025. The money was to be divided among the 46 participating states, with New York and California each getting about $700 million a year, Ohio about $300 million, Wisconsin just over $100 million and so on.
It didn't take long for Wall Street to invent a way to take a cut. The creative minds at the now-defunct Bear Stearns investment bank traveled the country making this pitch to statehouses: Why wait for the money? Why not take a lump sum payment up front? Bear Stearns and other Wall Street firms eventually persuaded legislators in most states to “securitize” the payouts by issuing bonds and paying the bondholders back with the annual tobacco payments. The first tobacco bond issue hit in 1999. Soon, states around the country fell in line.
"Every time there are economic problems in a state, it happens,” said Eric Lindblom, director of Policy Research at Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “The governor says, ‘We're in trouble, we need money. But we are not going to get it by raising taxes, we’re going to do this securitization gobbledygook.’ People think, ‘Well, either our taxes are going up or they will do this thing we don't understand. So let’s do that.’ ”
For years, tobacco bonds have been an easy sell. Because they are perceived as more risky than standard state-issued bonds, they offer slightly higher interest rates, making them popular with municipal bond fund managers seeking strong returns. The first tobacco bond and the 94 others that followed have raised a total of $55 billion, said Loughran, the Oppenheimer fund manager.
30 cents on the dollar
Taking the early lump-sum payment has its price, however. Many states receive only 30 or 40 cents on the dollar. In a typical example, Wisconsin would have been entitled to about $5 billion in payments through 2025. Instead, it settled on one payment of $1.6 billion in 2001.
“When you securitize on the municipal market, you lose a lot of money,” said Kevin Olson, who runs the independent Web site MunicipalBonds.com. “It’s not very efficient.”
Through the years, state officials have offered numerous rationales for the benefits of securitization. Five years ago, Don Benton, a Republican state senator in Washington, told USA Today that spending on smoking cessation programs was “a complete waste of money. You'd be hard-pressed to find any citizen who does not know smoking is hazardous to your health." He wanted the money to go instead to infrastructure projects like new roads. "Sitting in traffic for two hours would make you want to smoke," he told the newspaper.
States also say that they prefer the certainty of immediate payments to the uncertainty surrounding the tobacco industry’s long-term future.
But Lindblom, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids official, said that line of thinking is foolish.“The states have this horribly naive view that they will outsmart Wall Street,” he said. “Wall Street always gets the better deal.”
Investment banks, in particular, love tobacco bonds. Because they are more complex than standard debt offerings, they offer steeper commissions. In 2007, when Ohio traded its future payments for an immediate payout of about $5 billion, it paid brokers $30 million. During the dot-com bust, when initial public offerings all but vanished from Wall Street, tobacco bond offerings filled the void for companies like Bear Stearns, nearly doubling from around $7 billion in 2002 to nearly $13 billion in 2003.
From the beginning, Bear Stearns was at the forefront of tobacco bond sales, and ultimately brokered about half of them before it was sold off to JPMorgan Chase.
The outcome for many states – including California, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin -- is that the tobacco money destined for state coffers in 2010, 2015 and 2025 has already been spent.
'An incentive not to put tobacco out of business'
The irony is that the states and some smaller governmental bodies need tobacco firms to make their payments every year because, to varying degrees, they are on the hook to pay off bondholders if the cigarette companies default. Some, including New York and California, have directly guaranteed their tobacco bond debt with general revenue in order to secure more favorable rates. Others have an implied obligation not to let their bonds default, lest their credit ratings be tarnished.
“They have created mass structural deficits,” said Hans Baden, a lawyer at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has filed a lawsuit claiming that the Master Settlement Agreement is unconstitutional. “They have sold the money they are getting in the future in exchange for money now, based on a gradually dwindling revenue stream. They have retained the risk while selling the money … and now they have an incentive not to put tobacco out of business.”
An interruption in tobacco industry payments would be catastrophic both to state budgets and individual investors. For example, when the tobacco industry threatened to exercise a loophole in the settlement in 2006 and withhold about $1.5 billion in payments, the value of tobacco bonds sank. It happened again in 2007. The price recovered even though the payments remain in dispute, but notice was served of the perilous relationship between governments and the smoking industry.
Critics of the arrangement contend that states that have issued tobacco bonds have no incentive to pass anti-smoking laws or launch advertising campaigns. Doing so could lead to fiscal ruin. So could any additional class-action lawsuit success against the tobacco industry.
Fears that new tobacco litigation could undermine the settlement run so high that 36 states filed briefs in 2003 in support of the tobacco industry after it was hit with a $10 billion judgment from a lawsuit for alleged false advertising.
David, in other words, was sticking up for Goliath.
In the briefs, state officials fretted that the judgment would impair the industry’s ability to make its annual payments and “directly impact important state programs.”
'A real tragedy for our country'
Those state programs often have nothing to do with tobacco.
From the start, the tobacco settlement money was intended to help states pay for health care costs related to smoking illnesses and to fund smoking-cessation programs, though the agreement not bind the states to use it for those purposes.
But to date, only about 3 percent of the tobacco settlement money has gone to cessation efforts, such as "quit smoking" marketing campaigns. Meanwhile, 10 times that amount has been used by state legislatures to plug budget gaps, or by governors to offer tax relief.
“There is a horrible failure of the states to invest even a minuscule amount of the funds for tobacco control,” said Lindblom of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “It’s a real tragedy for our country.”
Though smoking continues to decline in the U.S., it remains a major health problem. Every year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control, smoking-related illnesses are responsible for $96 billion in health-care expenses. But states have invested only about $3 billion from the settlement fund in the past 10 years on anti-smoking campaigns.
Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, who was the state’s attorney general at the time of the tobacco settlement and one its chief negotiators, said five years ago that tobacco securitization was her “wildest nightmare.” Over her objections, Washington state securitized part of its tobacco settlement in 2002, before she became governor.
"My hope was to see as much of the settlement money as possible go to improving health,” she told msnbc.com recently. “We've certainly done that in Washington state and the results have been tremendous — youth smoking is down by half and adult smoking is down 25 percent. I'm disappointed that other states haven't done the same thing. Far too many have used the money for purposes other than it was intended." None of the states covered by the settlement spends the amount recommended by the Centers for Disease Control on tobacco-cessation programs. Only nine states pay even half that amount. Meanwhile, 13 states spend less than 10 percent of what the agency recommends. Ohio, for example, will spend $7.1 million on anti-smoking efforts in 2009, compared to the $266 million prescribed by the CDC. Anti-smoking education can have a tremendous impact, the agency says. If every smoker on Medicare quit smoking today, Ohio would save more than $500 million annually.
The end of Ohio's tobacco-fighting foundation
Ohio had planned to spend much more on anti-smoking campaigns. Soon after the signing of the tobacco settlement , the state Legislature created the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation and vowed to put $1 billion of the $10 billion it expected to receive over 25 years in a trust fund to generate $60 million a year for the foundation’s operating expenses.
Ohio’s smoking rate in 2001 was 28 percent, well above the national average. But thanks in part to foundation-funded projects like the state’s toll-free Ohio Tobacco Quit Line, it had fallen to 22 percent by 2006.
But by that time, Ohio’s economy was reeling and the tobacco money was too tempting for new Gov. Ted Strickland. In 2007, Ohio traded in its future payments for a one-time sum of $5 billion – the largest tobacco bond issue to date. The money paid for a massive property tax relief program for senior citizens and helped build schools.
It did not, however, shore up the state’s economy. This year Strickland pushed through a $1.4 billion economic stimulus package funded in part by money from the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation trust fund. The bill authorized seizure of most of the $300 million in the foundation’s accounts, leaving it with $40 million – less than one year’s operating expenses. The foundation rebelled and tried to shift the money to an anti-smoking nonprofit agency. In retaliation, the Legislature voted to close the foundation. Dozens of anti-smoking programs around the state were shut down.
After a 2003 lawsuit scare, the market for tobacco bonds went silent. This year's credit crunch has similarly discouraged new tobacco bond issues.Keith Daily, a spokesman for Strickland, said the money, which remains frozen pending resolution of a lawsuit over the state seizure, is critical to the effort to create more than 50,000 jobs by investing in infrastructure and boosting industries.
“We recognize the great importance of reducing tobacco use and making other healthy decisions,” he said. “The governor’s top priority is creating jobs here in Ohio -- ... $230 million from the former Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation’s endowment will be used to pay for the biomedical and bio-products portions of the jobs plan."
Lindblom, the anti-smoking activist, said the decision of the Ohio legislature to close effective tobacco-fighting programs has been repeated around the country.
'It's in the prospectus'
“There was the full expectation that the money was going to be used to prevent and reduce tobacco use and to treat smoking-caused illnesses,” he said. “That’s gone out the window. There’s been a complete breaking of the promise of the settlement.”
Loughran, the Oppenheimer manager, said that the settlement money is “fungible” and states can use it for anything they choose.
While it’s “certainly possible” some people invest unknowingly in tobacco, Loughran said it should be obvious to anyone who researches Rochester funds that they are heavily tilted toward tobacco bonds. “It’s in the prospectus,” he said.
“Some people, when they look at this sector, they think, ‘this is tobacco, so it’s evil.’ But remember, the settlement penalizes the industry,” Loughran said. Buying one of his funds is more like investing in the penalty, he suggested. And plenty of consumers clearly have no moral issues with tobacco bonds, he said, noting that many individual investors buy them directly.
The future of tobacco bond issues
While a substantial amount of the tobacco settlement money has already been spent, some states have held out. But each year, Lindblom said, more dominoes fall. Earlier this year, Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki tried to persuade state legislators to trade in the state’s $50 million annual payment for a one-time $600 million windfall. While legislators argued, the bond market collapsed, effectively eliminating any opportunity for issuing tobacco bonds.
But with the bond market expected to recover before the overall economy does, pressure is certain to mount for states like Nevada to seek quick fiscal rescues courtesy of the tobacco industry.
“I expect more of this as our economic situation continues. From our perspective and a fiscal perspective it will be hard to beat it back,” Lindblom said.
As for individual investors who are backing tobacco, Loughran – whose fund bought the very first tobacco bond in 1999 -- makes a compelling case that the bonds will recover. Their yields are still higher than other state-issued bonds, he said, and in 10 years there hasn’t been any hint of a default.
”Every one has made their scheduled interest and principal payments on time, and many of them have made principal payments ahead of maturity,” he said. While the smoking rate has been sinking about 2 percent every year, inflation adjustments built into the settlement make up for the loss, he said. He wouldn’t predict when tobacco bonds might turn around, but he asserted that their fundamental value remains strong.
"The main risk some people (worry about) is litigation,” he said. “We've identified it as a risk but a very slight risk. In fact the industry has a long winning streak … against class-action lawsuits” -- a 57-case run dating to 1998.
Having state attorneys general filing amicus briefs on your behalf doesn’t hurt, he noted, adding, “They are in our corner.”
That, he suggested, indicates the smoking industry isn’t going anywhere for a long time.
But Baden, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, isn’t so sure. He said the constitutional challenge filed by his organization or other legal challenges could undo the settlement. Or the declining smoking rate could at some point overtake the tobacco companies' ability to pay, he said.
“It just seems weird the idea that the tobacco (settlement) is going to go on forever,” Baden said. “In the long run my suspicion is something will take out the settlement. The thing won't last forever.”
Only it's even WORSE than I thought.
Because they usually only got .30 or .40 cents on the dollar for these.... and HUGE profits went to the investment banks, of whom many of the big players in this are now defunct.
The states rarely use the cash for the intended (and promised) purposes, and because these were floated as "bonds", then they also affected many people's retirement investments, as now they are involved in this from that end.
So the ultimate result is that it's imperative that the tobacco industry be allowed to exist AND profit because if they fail, then the states who've borrowed against the settlement are on the hook for the unpaid loan balances ....
Yet another example of despicable behavior by elected officials, the people who elect them, and wall street "creativity".
But I guess it's just me.. on e unheeded voting slob who readily admitted all along that he's no expert, but that KNEW this behavior was the wrong thing to do from the moment of inception.
Ten years later, tobacco deal going up in smoke
Posted: Friday, November 21 by Bob Sullivan (posted from MSNBC.COM)
Consider this the next time you see a teenager take a drag on a cigarette: Your state government likely has a financial stake in that kid continuing to smoke. And quite possibly, so does your retirement portfolio.
That was hardly the intention 10 years ago, when a collection of state attorneys general delivered a crushing blow to Big Tobacco. On Nov. 23, 1998, the nation's four largest cigarette sellers agreed to pay $200 billion over 30 years in what seemed like a victory for David over Goliath. The money was supposed to help the states pay for health care and anti-smoking campaigns. Instead, much of it -- even payments that aren't due for 20 years -- has already been spent on politically popular tax breaks through complicated borrowing schemes initiated by Wall Street investment banks.
Because these states have essentially borrowed against future payments from the tobacco industry, they are now dependent on the continued vitality of cigarette sales. If Big Tobacco stumbles, states will be on the hook for these massive, billion-dollar loans. In other words, David and Goliath are now allies.
Where did those loans come from? Perhaps from you. When Wall Street talked 25 states into borrowing against future tobacco payments -- a process known as “securitization” -- it sold bonds to individual investors and mutual funds that buy municipal bonds. Now, they are betting on Big Tobacco, too.
Worse yet, anyone invested in tobacco bonds has been seeing their money go up in smoke. Some bond funds that are heavily invested in tobacco have lost nearly 40 percent of their value this year. The reason for the sharp drop is disputed, but some observers say it's partly attributable to anti-smoking efforts. For the first time, fewer than 20 percent of American adults are smoking, new government statistics show. In other words, good news for the state health department is bad news for the revenue department -- and for the portfolios of those who invested in tobacco bonds.
It's a stunning reversal: The lawsuit designed to cut the legs out from under the tobacco industry has instead landed much of America -- often unwittingly – in the industry’s corner. One such investor is Avivah Litan, of Potomac, Md., who two years ago purchased shares in one of Oppenheimer & Co.'s “Rochester” municipal bond funds.
Like many investors, she was attracted to municipal bonds by tax free returns and the relatively low risk. Governments rarely go bankrupt. Cities issue municipal bonds to pay for such infrastructure as firetrucks and schools, and bond funds pool hundreds of such securities together. Similar to stock funds, the value of a bond fund fluctuates with changes in investors’ perceptions of the ability of the issuer to repay the loan. Because of governments’ solid record of paying off bonds, the funds have proven popular with investors. Americans have placed about $1.7 trillion in bond funds, according to the Investment Company Institute, compared with about $6.5 trillion in stock funds.
Litan was taken aback by the Rochester fund's recent poor performance, and began looking into its holdings. What she saw was confusing: 4 percent invested in "Tobacco Settlement," about 3 percent in "Golden St. Tob Securitization" and another 1 percent in the “Buckeye Ohio Tob Settlement." In fact, none of the fund’s top 10 holdings appeared to have anything to do with government infrastructure projects.
Here's the explanation: Bond issues aren't just for firetrucks and schools anymore. Bond funds can invest in complicated bonds issued by pseudo-government agencies that are ultimately backed by private ventures, such as housing developments. The largest segment of this pseudo-bond market is made up of tobacco bonds -- bonds issued by states that have borrowed against their future tobacco settlement payments.“I didn’t really understand that I would lose money every time a state passed an anti-smoking law,” Litan said. “I didn’t really understand what tobacco bonds were.”
What are tobacco bonds?
Oppenheimer’s Rochester family offers 18 different bond funds, some of which have as much as 20 percent of their assets invested in tobacco bonds, according to fund manager Daniel Loughran. The Rochester funds, while among the most aggressive investors in tobacco bonds, are hardly unique. A review of 660 leading bond funds covered by the investment research firm Morningstar Inc., conducted at msnbc.com's request, showed that more than 260 are invested in tobacco bonds.
The rush to tap the revenue stream began soon after the tobacco settlement was signed 10 years ago. The cigarette companies agreed to make annual payments that would total $200 billion by 2025. The money was to be divided among the 46 participating states, with New York and California each getting about $700 million a year, Ohio about $300 million, Wisconsin just over $100 million and so on.
It didn't take long for Wall Street to invent a way to take a cut. The creative minds at the now-defunct Bear Stearns investment bank traveled the country making this pitch to statehouses: Why wait for the money? Why not take a lump sum payment up front? Bear Stearns and other Wall Street firms eventually persuaded legislators in most states to “securitize” the payouts by issuing bonds and paying the bondholders back with the annual tobacco payments. The first tobacco bond issue hit in 1999. Soon, states around the country fell in line.
"Every time there are economic problems in a state, it happens,” said Eric Lindblom, director of Policy Research at Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “The governor says, ‘We're in trouble, we need money. But we are not going to get it by raising taxes, we’re going to do this securitization gobbledygook.’ People think, ‘Well, either our taxes are going up or they will do this thing we don't understand. So let’s do that.’ ”
For years, tobacco bonds have been an easy sell. Because they are perceived as more risky than standard state-issued bonds, they offer slightly higher interest rates, making them popular with municipal bond fund managers seeking strong returns. The first tobacco bond and the 94 others that followed have raised a total of $55 billion, said Loughran, the Oppenheimer fund manager.
30 cents on the dollar
Taking the early lump-sum payment has its price, however. Many states receive only 30 or 40 cents on the dollar. In a typical example, Wisconsin would have been entitled to about $5 billion in payments through 2025. Instead, it settled on one payment of $1.6 billion in 2001.
“When you securitize on the municipal market, you lose a lot of money,” said Kevin Olson, who runs the independent Web site MunicipalBonds.com. “It’s not very efficient.”
Through the years, state officials have offered numerous rationales for the benefits of securitization. Five years ago, Don Benton, a Republican state senator in Washington, told USA Today that spending on smoking cessation programs was “a complete waste of money. You'd be hard-pressed to find any citizen who does not know smoking is hazardous to your health." He wanted the money to go instead to infrastructure projects like new roads. "Sitting in traffic for two hours would make you want to smoke," he told the newspaper.
States also say that they prefer the certainty of immediate payments to the uncertainty surrounding the tobacco industry’s long-term future.
But Lindblom, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids official, said that line of thinking is foolish.“The states have this horribly naive view that they will outsmart Wall Street,” he said. “Wall Street always gets the better deal.”
Investment banks, in particular, love tobacco bonds. Because they are more complex than standard debt offerings, they offer steeper commissions. In 2007, when Ohio traded its future payments for an immediate payout of about $5 billion, it paid brokers $30 million. During the dot-com bust, when initial public offerings all but vanished from Wall Street, tobacco bond offerings filled the void for companies like Bear Stearns, nearly doubling from around $7 billion in 2002 to nearly $13 billion in 2003.
From the beginning, Bear Stearns was at the forefront of tobacco bond sales, and ultimately brokered about half of them before it was sold off to JPMorgan Chase.
The outcome for many states – including California, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin -- is that the tobacco money destined for state coffers in 2010, 2015 and 2025 has already been spent.
'An incentive not to put tobacco out of business'
The irony is that the states and some smaller governmental bodies need tobacco firms to make their payments every year because, to varying degrees, they are on the hook to pay off bondholders if the cigarette companies default. Some, including New York and California, have directly guaranteed their tobacco bond debt with general revenue in order to secure more favorable rates. Others have an implied obligation not to let their bonds default, lest their credit ratings be tarnished.
“They have created mass structural deficits,” said Hans Baden, a lawyer at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has filed a lawsuit claiming that the Master Settlement Agreement is unconstitutional. “They have sold the money they are getting in the future in exchange for money now, based on a gradually dwindling revenue stream. They have retained the risk while selling the money … and now they have an incentive not to put tobacco out of business.”
An interruption in tobacco industry payments would be catastrophic both to state budgets and individual investors. For example, when the tobacco industry threatened to exercise a loophole in the settlement in 2006 and withhold about $1.5 billion in payments, the value of tobacco bonds sank. It happened again in 2007. The price recovered even though the payments remain in dispute, but notice was served of the perilous relationship between governments and the smoking industry.
Critics of the arrangement contend that states that have issued tobacco bonds have no incentive to pass anti-smoking laws or launch advertising campaigns. Doing so could lead to fiscal ruin. So could any additional class-action lawsuit success against the tobacco industry.
Fears that new tobacco litigation could undermine the settlement run so high that 36 states filed briefs in 2003 in support of the tobacco industry after it was hit with a $10 billion judgment from a lawsuit for alleged false advertising.
David, in other words, was sticking up for Goliath.
In the briefs, state officials fretted that the judgment would impair the industry’s ability to make its annual payments and “directly impact important state programs.”
'A real tragedy for our country'
Those state programs often have nothing to do with tobacco.
From the start, the tobacco settlement money was intended to help states pay for health care costs related to smoking illnesses and to fund smoking-cessation programs, though the agreement not bind the states to use it for those purposes.
But to date, only about 3 percent of the tobacco settlement money has gone to cessation efforts, such as "quit smoking" marketing campaigns. Meanwhile, 10 times that amount has been used by state legislatures to plug budget gaps, or by governors to offer tax relief.
“There is a horrible failure of the states to invest even a minuscule amount of the funds for tobacco control,” said Lindblom of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “It’s a real tragedy for our country.”
Though smoking continues to decline in the U.S., it remains a major health problem. Every year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control, smoking-related illnesses are responsible for $96 billion in health-care expenses. But states have invested only about $3 billion from the settlement fund in the past 10 years on anti-smoking campaigns.
Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, who was the state’s attorney general at the time of the tobacco settlement and one its chief negotiators, said five years ago that tobacco securitization was her “wildest nightmare.” Over her objections, Washington state securitized part of its tobacco settlement in 2002, before she became governor.
"My hope was to see as much of the settlement money as possible go to improving health,” she told msnbc.com recently. “We've certainly done that in Washington state and the results have been tremendous — youth smoking is down by half and adult smoking is down 25 percent. I'm disappointed that other states haven't done the same thing. Far too many have used the money for purposes other than it was intended." None of the states covered by the settlement spends the amount recommended by the Centers for Disease Control on tobacco-cessation programs. Only nine states pay even half that amount. Meanwhile, 13 states spend less than 10 percent of what the agency recommends. Ohio, for example, will spend $7.1 million on anti-smoking efforts in 2009, compared to the $266 million prescribed by the CDC. Anti-smoking education can have a tremendous impact, the agency says. If every smoker on Medicare quit smoking today, Ohio would save more than $500 million annually.
The end of Ohio's tobacco-fighting foundation
Ohio had planned to spend much more on anti-smoking campaigns. Soon after the signing of the tobacco settlement , the state Legislature created the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation and vowed to put $1 billion of the $10 billion it expected to receive over 25 years in a trust fund to generate $60 million a year for the foundation’s operating expenses.
Ohio’s smoking rate in 2001 was 28 percent, well above the national average. But thanks in part to foundation-funded projects like the state’s toll-free Ohio Tobacco Quit Line, it had fallen to 22 percent by 2006.
But by that time, Ohio’s economy was reeling and the tobacco money was too tempting for new Gov. Ted Strickland. In 2007, Ohio traded in its future payments for a one-time sum of $5 billion – the largest tobacco bond issue to date. The money paid for a massive property tax relief program for senior citizens and helped build schools.
It did not, however, shore up the state’s economy. This year Strickland pushed through a $1.4 billion economic stimulus package funded in part by money from the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation trust fund. The bill authorized seizure of most of the $300 million in the foundation’s accounts, leaving it with $40 million – less than one year’s operating expenses. The foundation rebelled and tried to shift the money to an anti-smoking nonprofit agency. In retaliation, the Legislature voted to close the foundation. Dozens of anti-smoking programs around the state were shut down.
After a 2003 lawsuit scare, the market for tobacco bonds went silent. This year's credit crunch has similarly discouraged new tobacco bond issues.Keith Daily, a spokesman for Strickland, said the money, which remains frozen pending resolution of a lawsuit over the state seizure, is critical to the effort to create more than 50,000 jobs by investing in infrastructure and boosting industries.
“We recognize the great importance of reducing tobacco use and making other healthy decisions,” he said. “The governor’s top priority is creating jobs here in Ohio -- ... $230 million from the former Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation’s endowment will be used to pay for the biomedical and bio-products portions of the jobs plan."
Lindblom, the anti-smoking activist, said the decision of the Ohio legislature to close effective tobacco-fighting programs has been repeated around the country.
'It's in the prospectus'
“There was the full expectation that the money was going to be used to prevent and reduce tobacco use and to treat smoking-caused illnesses,” he said. “That’s gone out the window. There’s been a complete breaking of the promise of the settlement.”
Loughran, the Oppenheimer manager, said that the settlement money is “fungible” and states can use it for anything they choose.
While it’s “certainly possible” some people invest unknowingly in tobacco, Loughran said it should be obvious to anyone who researches Rochester funds that they are heavily tilted toward tobacco bonds. “It’s in the prospectus,” he said.
“Some people, when they look at this sector, they think, ‘this is tobacco, so it’s evil.’ But remember, the settlement penalizes the industry,” Loughran said. Buying one of his funds is more like investing in the penalty, he suggested. And plenty of consumers clearly have no moral issues with tobacco bonds, he said, noting that many individual investors buy them directly.
The future of tobacco bond issues
While a substantial amount of the tobacco settlement money has already been spent, some states have held out. But each year, Lindblom said, more dominoes fall. Earlier this year, Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki tried to persuade state legislators to trade in the state’s $50 million annual payment for a one-time $600 million windfall. While legislators argued, the bond market collapsed, effectively eliminating any opportunity for issuing tobacco bonds.
But with the bond market expected to recover before the overall economy does, pressure is certain to mount for states like Nevada to seek quick fiscal rescues courtesy of the tobacco industry.
“I expect more of this as our economic situation continues. From our perspective and a fiscal perspective it will be hard to beat it back,” Lindblom said.
As for individual investors who are backing tobacco, Loughran – whose fund bought the very first tobacco bond in 1999 -- makes a compelling case that the bonds will recover. Their yields are still higher than other state-issued bonds, he said, and in 10 years there hasn’t been any hint of a default.
”Every one has made their scheduled interest and principal payments on time, and many of them have made principal payments ahead of maturity,” he said. While the smoking rate has been sinking about 2 percent every year, inflation adjustments built into the settlement make up for the loss, he said. He wouldn’t predict when tobacco bonds might turn around, but he asserted that their fundamental value remains strong.
"The main risk some people (worry about) is litigation,” he said. “We've identified it as a risk but a very slight risk. In fact the industry has a long winning streak … against class-action lawsuits” -- a 57-case run dating to 1998.
Having state attorneys general filing amicus briefs on your behalf doesn’t hurt, he noted, adding, “They are in our corner.”
That, he suggested, indicates the smoking industry isn’t going anywhere for a long time.
But Baden, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, isn’t so sure. He said the constitutional challenge filed by his organization or other legal challenges could undo the settlement. Or the declining smoking rate could at some point overtake the tobacco companies' ability to pay, he said.
“It just seems weird the idea that the tobacco (settlement) is going to go on forever,” Baden said. “In the long run my suspicion is something will take out the settlement. The thing won't last forever.”
Terrorists Beware
As President-elect Obama puts together his cabinet, there are some choices that should be easy.
For example, this is the person MOST qualified to be our next Director of Homeland Security
For example, this is the person MOST qualified to be our next Director of Homeland Security
Stupid is as Stupid Does
from Prov Journal, 11/21/08
....At least 41 states are facing budget shortfalls in the current or coming fiscal years, according to the national Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But the center found that Rhode Island’s current budget shortfall –– which amounts to more than 11 percent of state spending –– is the worst in the nation. The next closest state is California, where the budget gap equals 9.4 percent of its general fund....
REALLY? REALLY??!!
There is not ONE person in this state who votes, listens to the radio, watches TV, reads the paper or speaks to anyone else living here that IS or can be surprised by this. It is ludicrous and disgusting ~ and completely predictable. The people of this state have3 allowed it to be run by their elected officials like an irresponsible teen with their first credit card.
They've borrowed against future tobacco lawsuit settlement dollars to pay the budget; They've based a major proportion of the budget on proposed gambling revenues; They've allowed corruption within their ranks to run rampant; The major unions wield unprecedented power over budgets and contract; They have made irresponsible decisions regarding the welfare of the people, economy and infrastructure at almost every turn; They have encouraged the continuation of an "old boy" network within every level of government ranks; They have played partisan politics with a 99% Democratic majority. The despicable ethic is so entrenched that a relatively huge proportion of elected positions at every level are filled with unopposed candidates; Every decision is made with no thought for the future and every thought for personal gain. The state or the people are considered with contempt by those elected.
It's despicable and disgusting ... and anyone who has not worked to change it before now deserves what they get.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Long & Pot-holed Road
The four seasons of New England:
Almost Winter
Winter
STILL Winter
Road Construction
Almost Winter
Winter
STILL Winter
Road Construction
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Like a Bad Penny..
Secretary of STATE??!?!?!!!
Does no one see the inappropriateness and danger of this person?
I'm supposed to TRUST the key members of my government.
They are supposed to be above reproach.
They certainly shouldn't have economic (and personal) ties either themselves or in their family to other governments and leader, reputable or questionable.
Her ex-President husband might have key connections throughout the world, but we don;t fill the position with a FAMILY. Oh, and I guess it's unimportant that HE WAS IMPEACHED FOR INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR & LYING ABOUT THAT BEHAVIOR.
They BOTH have reputations as ruthless, snide and manipulative political players.
I'm sorry, but this is a poor decision.
The Secretary of State represents the administration and the country on many occaisions.
Details, accuracy and believability are important in performing this job. And there is a lack of those attributes in this person as far as I am concerned.
Does no one see the inappropriateness and danger of this person?
I'm supposed to TRUST the key members of my government.
They are supposed to be above reproach.
They certainly shouldn't have economic (and personal) ties either themselves or in their family to other governments and leader, reputable or questionable.
Her ex-President husband might have key connections throughout the world, but we don;t fill the position with a FAMILY. Oh, and I guess it's unimportant that HE WAS IMPEACHED FOR INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR & LYING ABOUT THAT BEHAVIOR.
They BOTH have reputations as ruthless, snide and manipulative political players.
I'm sorry, but this is a poor decision.
The Secretary of State represents the administration and the country on many occaisions.
Details, accuracy and believability are important in performing this job. And there is a lack of those attributes in this person as far as I am concerned.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Tenure Ago, They Wouldn't Write Like This
These are the things that many consider "nit-picky, but that just PISS ME OFF.
The following sentence was the second one in a headline article on ESPN.COM
"Speaking to WEEI Radio's Dennis and Callahan show on Wednesday, Ortiz admitted that Ramirez's tenure with the Red Sox had gone downhill."
Excuse me... WHAT does that mean? The use of the word 'tenure' there makes zero sense. Why can't "media" outlets at least exercise proper editing techniques if they can't be bothered to hire people who can write. Manny's "TENURE" can be near an end. It can be over, but it can't have "gone downhill".
Naturally there is no "by line" other than "ESPN news services".
Apparently, in addition to not being able to write proper grammar, the monkey who writes these articles can't sign its name either.
The following sentence was the second one in a headline article on ESPN.COM
"Speaking to WEEI Radio's Dennis and Callahan show on Wednesday, Ortiz admitted that Ramirez's tenure with the Red Sox had gone downhill."
Excuse me... WHAT does that mean? The use of the word 'tenure' there makes zero sense. Why can't "media" outlets at least exercise proper editing techniques if they can't be bothered to hire people who can write. Manny's "TENURE" can be near an end. It can be over, but it can't have "gone downhill".
Naturally there is no "by line" other than "ESPN news services".
Apparently, in addition to not being able to write proper grammar, the monkey who writes these articles can't sign its name either.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
I don;t unusually get all over Veteran's Day, but I read this today and it's reasons such as this are why we remember....why we must remember.
I was born in 1957. This happened 12 years before. To me, by the time I was old enough to know about it, it felt like ancient history. But it wasn't. What were YOU doing in 1996? Remember it? THAT's how recent these atrocities were.
====================
WW II Vet held in Nazi Slave Camp Breaks Silence: 'Let it be known'
By Wayne Drash, Thelma Gutierrez and Sara Weisfeldt (CNN)
LOMA LINDA, California (CNN) -- Anthony Acevedo thumbs through the worn, yellowed pages of his diary emblazoned with the words "A Wartime Log" on its cover. It's a catalog of deaths and atrocities he says were carried out on U.S. soldiers held by Nazis at a slave labor camp during World War II -- a largely forgotten legacy of the war.
Acevedo pauses when he comes across a soldier with the last name of Vogel.
"He died in my arms. He wouldn't eat. He didn't want to eat," says Acevedo, now 84 years old. "He said, 'I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!' "
The memories are still fresh, some 60 years later. Acevedo keeps reading his entries, scrawled on the pages with a Schaeffer fountain pen he held dear. See inside Acevedo's diary »
He was one of 350 U.S. soldiers held at Berga am Elster, a satellite camp of the Nazis' notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march, he says.
Acevedo shows few emotions as he scans the pages of his diary. But when he gets to one of his final entries, the decades of pent-up pain, the horror witnessed by a 20-year-old medic, are too much.
"We were liberated today, April the 23, 1945," he reads.
His body shakes, and he begins sobbing. "Sorry," he says, tears rolling down his face. "I'm sorry." Watch Acevedo's emotional account of being freed »
Acevedo's story is one that was never supposed to be told. "We had to sign an affidavit ... [saying] we never went through what we went through. We weren't supposed to say a word," he says.
The U.S. Army Center of Military History provided CNN a copy of the document signed by soldiers at the camp before they were sent back home. "You must be particularly on your guard with persons representing the press," it says. "You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures."
The document ends with: "I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action."
The information was kept secret "to protect escape and evasion techniques and the names of personnel who helped POW escapees," said Frank Shirer, the chief historian at the U.S. Army Center for Military History.
Acevedo sees it differently. For a soldier who survived one of the worst atrocities of mankind, the military's reaction is still painful to accept. "My stomach turned to acid, and the government didn't care. They didn't give a hullabaloo."
It took more than 50 years, he says, before he received 100 percent disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Despite everything Acevedo endured during the war, little had prepared him for his own father's attitude toward his capture. "My dad told me I was a coward," he says.
"I turned around and got my duffel bag, my luggage, and said, 'This is it, Father. I'm not coming back.' So I took the train the following day, and I didn't see my parents for years, because I didn't want to see them. I felt belittled."
For decades, Acevedo followed the rules and kept his mouth shut. His four children didn't know the extent of his war experience. He says he felt stymied because of the document he signed. "You never gave it a thought because of that paper."
Now, he says it's too important to be forgotten. In recent years, he's attended local high schools to tell his story to today's generation.
"Let it be known," he says. "People have to know what happened."
Born July 31, 1924, in San Bernardino, California, Anthony C. Acevedo is what is known in today's parlance as a "citizen child" -- one who was born in the United States to parents from Mexico. iReport: Tell us your war stories
A Mexican-American, he was schooled in Pasadena, California, but couldn't attend the same classes as his white peers. "We couldn't mix with white people," he says. Both of his parents were deported to Mexico in 1937, and he went with them.
Acevedo returned to the States when he was 17, he says, because he wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army. He received medical training in Illinois before being sent to the European theater.
A corporal, he served as a medic for the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division. Acevedo was captured at the Battle of the Bulge after days of brutal firefights with Nazis who surrounded them. He recalls seeing another medic, Murry Pruzan, being gunned down.
"When I saw him stretched out there in the snow, frozen," Acevedo says, shaking his head. "God, that's the only time I cried when I saw him. He was stretched out, just massacred by a machine gun with his Red Cross band."
He pauses. "You see all of them dying out there in the fields. You have to build a thick wall."
Acevedo was initially taken to a prison camp known as Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany, where thousands of American, French, Italian and Russian soldiers were held as prisoners of war. Acevedo's diary entry reads simply: "Was captured the 6th of January 1945."
For the next several months, he would be known by the Germans only as Prisoner Number 27016. One day while in Stalag IX-B, he says, a German commander gathered American soldiers and asked all Jews "to take one step forward." Few willingly did so. Watch Acevedo describe being selected as an "undesirable" »
Jewish soldiers wearing Star of David necklaces began yanking them off, he says. About 90 Jewish soldiers and another 260 U.S. soldiers deemed "undesirables" -- those who "looked like Jews" -- were selected. Acevedo, who is not Jewish, was among them.
They were told they were being sent to "a beautiful camp" with a theater and live shows.
"It turned out to be the opposite," he says. "They put us on a train, and we traveled six days and six nights. It was a boxcar that would fit heads of cattle. They had us 80 to a boxcar. You couldn't squat. And there was little tiny windows that you could barely see through."
It was February 8, 1945, when they arrived. The new camp was known as Berga am Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp where tens of thousands of Jews and other political prisoners were killed under Adolf Hitler's regime. See the horrors of Buchenwald »
Acevedo says he was one of six medics among the 350 U.S. soldiers at Berga. Political prisoners from other countries were held at Berga separate from the Americans. "We didn't mingle with them at all," he says, adding that the U.S. soldiers worked in the same tunnels as the other political prisoners.
"We were all just thin as a rail."
The U.S. prisoners, Acevedo says, were given 100 grams of bread per week made of redwood sawdust, ground glass and barley. Soup was made from cats and rats, he says. Eating dandelion leaves was considered a "gourmet meal."
If soldiers tried to escape, they would be shot and killed. If they were captured alive, they would be executed with gunshots to their foreheads, Acevedo says. Wooden bullets, he says, were used to shatter the inside of their brains. Medics were always asked to fill the execution holes with wax, he says.
"Prisoners were being murdered and tortured by the Nazis. Many of our men died, and I tried keeping track of who they were and how they died."
The soldiers were forced to sleep naked, two to a bunk, with no blankets. As the days and weeks progressed, his diary catalogs it all. The names, prisoner numbers and causes of death are listed by the dozens in his diary. He felt it was his duty as a medic to keep track of everyone.
"I'm glad I did it," he says.
As a medic, he says, he heard of other more horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis at camps around them. "We heard about experiments that they were doing -- peeling the skins of people, humans, political prisoners, making lampshades." Watch Acevedo talk about Nazi atrocities »
He and the other soldiers were once taken to what Acevedo believes was the main camp of Buchenwald, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Berga. They noticed large pipes coming from one building.
"We thought we were going to be gassed when we were told to take our clothes off," he says. "We were scared. We were stripped."
"Rumors were around that this was where the political prisoners would be suffocated with gas." It turned out to be a shower, the only time during their captivity they were allowed to bathe.
The main Buchenwald camp was officially liberated on April 11, 1945. But the camp and its subcamps were emptied of tens of thousands of prisoners as American troops neared. The U.S. troops held at the Berga compound were no exception.
"Very definite that we are moving away from here and on foot. This isn't very good for our sick men. No drinking water and no latrines," Acevedo wrote in his diary on April 4, 1945.
He says they began a death march of 217 miles (349 kilometers) that would last three weeks. More than 300 U.S. soldiers were alive at the start of the march, he says; about 165 were left by the end, when they were finally liberated.
Lines of political prisoners in front of them during the march caught the full brunt of angry Nazi soldiers.
"We saw massacres of people being slaughtered off the highway. Women, children," he says. "You could see people of all ages, hanging on barbed wire."
One of his diary entries exemplifies an extraordinary patriotism among soldiers, even as they were being marched to their deaths. "Bad news for us. President Roosevelt's death. We all felt bad about it. We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul," Acevedo wrote on April 13, 1945.
It adds, "Burdeski died today."
To this day, Acevedo still remembers that soldier. He wanted to perform a tracheotomy using his diary pen to save Burdeski, a 41-year-old father of six children. A German commander struck Acevedo in the jaw with a rifle when he asked.
"I'll never forget," he says.
On a recent day, about a dozen prisoners of war held during World War II and their liberators gathered at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center in Loma Linda, California. Many applauded Acevedo for his heroics.
"Those of us in combat have our own heroes, and those are the medics. And that's Antonio. Thank you, Antonio," one of the men said.
The men gathered there nodded their heads. Two stood to shake Acevedo's hand.
"The people that are in this room really are an endangered species," another man said. "When they're gone, they're gone. ... That is why they should be honored and put in history for generations to come, because there are not that many of them left."
Donald George sat next to Acevedo. The two were captured about a half-mile apart during the Battle of the Bulge. "It's hard to explain how it is to be sitting with a bunch of people that you know they've been through the same thing you've been through," George said.
"Some of us want to talk about it, and some of us don't. Some of us want to cry about it once in a while, and some of us won't. But it's all there," he said.
"We still like to come and be together a couple times a month," George added, before Acevedo finished his sentence: "To exchange what you are holding back inside."
Acevedo says the world must never forget the atrocities of World War II and that for killing 6 million Jews, Hitler was the worst terrorist of all time. He doesn't want the world to ever slide backward.
His message on this Veterans Day, he says, is never to hold animosity toward anybody.
"You only live once. Let's keep trucking. If we don't do that, who's going to do it for us? We have to be happy. Why hate?" he says. "The world is full of hate, and yet they don't know what they want."
I was born in 1957. This happened 12 years before. To me, by the time I was old enough to know about it, it felt like ancient history. But it wasn't. What were YOU doing in 1996? Remember it? THAT's how recent these atrocities were.
====================
WW II Vet held in Nazi Slave Camp Breaks Silence: 'Let it be known'
By Wayne Drash, Thelma Gutierrez and Sara Weisfeldt (CNN)
LOMA LINDA, California (CNN) -- Anthony Acevedo thumbs through the worn, yellowed pages of his diary emblazoned with the words "A Wartime Log" on its cover. It's a catalog of deaths and atrocities he says were carried out on U.S. soldiers held by Nazis at a slave labor camp during World War II -- a largely forgotten legacy of the war.
Acevedo pauses when he comes across a soldier with the last name of Vogel.
"He died in my arms. He wouldn't eat. He didn't want to eat," says Acevedo, now 84 years old. "He said, 'I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!' "
The memories are still fresh, some 60 years later. Acevedo keeps reading his entries, scrawled on the pages with a Schaeffer fountain pen he held dear. See inside Acevedo's diary »
He was one of 350 U.S. soldiers held at Berga am Elster, a satellite camp of the Nazis' notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march, he says.
Acevedo shows few emotions as he scans the pages of his diary. But when he gets to one of his final entries, the decades of pent-up pain, the horror witnessed by a 20-year-old medic, are too much.
"We were liberated today, April the 23, 1945," he reads.
His body shakes, and he begins sobbing. "Sorry," he says, tears rolling down his face. "I'm sorry." Watch Acevedo's emotional account of being freed »
Acevedo's story is one that was never supposed to be told. "We had to sign an affidavit ... [saying] we never went through what we went through. We weren't supposed to say a word," he says.
The U.S. Army Center of Military History provided CNN a copy of the document signed by soldiers at the camp before they were sent back home. "You must be particularly on your guard with persons representing the press," it says. "You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures."
The document ends with: "I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action."
The information was kept secret "to protect escape and evasion techniques and the names of personnel who helped POW escapees," said Frank Shirer, the chief historian at the U.S. Army Center for Military History.
Acevedo sees it differently. For a soldier who survived one of the worst atrocities of mankind, the military's reaction is still painful to accept. "My stomach turned to acid, and the government didn't care. They didn't give a hullabaloo."
It took more than 50 years, he says, before he received 100 percent disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Despite everything Acevedo endured during the war, little had prepared him for his own father's attitude toward his capture. "My dad told me I was a coward," he says.
"I turned around and got my duffel bag, my luggage, and said, 'This is it, Father. I'm not coming back.' So I took the train the following day, and I didn't see my parents for years, because I didn't want to see them. I felt belittled."
For decades, Acevedo followed the rules and kept his mouth shut. His four children didn't know the extent of his war experience. He says he felt stymied because of the document he signed. "You never gave it a thought because of that paper."
Now, he says it's too important to be forgotten. In recent years, he's attended local high schools to tell his story to today's generation.
"Let it be known," he says. "People have to know what happened."
Born July 31, 1924, in San Bernardino, California, Anthony C. Acevedo is what is known in today's parlance as a "citizen child" -- one who was born in the United States to parents from Mexico. iReport: Tell us your war stories
A Mexican-American, he was schooled in Pasadena, California, but couldn't attend the same classes as his white peers. "We couldn't mix with white people," he says. Both of his parents were deported to Mexico in 1937, and he went with them.
Acevedo returned to the States when he was 17, he says, because he wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army. He received medical training in Illinois before being sent to the European theater.
A corporal, he served as a medic for the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division. Acevedo was captured at the Battle of the Bulge after days of brutal firefights with Nazis who surrounded them. He recalls seeing another medic, Murry Pruzan, being gunned down.
"When I saw him stretched out there in the snow, frozen," Acevedo says, shaking his head. "God, that's the only time I cried when I saw him. He was stretched out, just massacred by a machine gun with his Red Cross band."
He pauses. "You see all of them dying out there in the fields. You have to build a thick wall."
Acevedo was initially taken to a prison camp known as Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany, where thousands of American, French, Italian and Russian soldiers were held as prisoners of war. Acevedo's diary entry reads simply: "Was captured the 6th of January 1945."
For the next several months, he would be known by the Germans only as Prisoner Number 27016. One day while in Stalag IX-B, he says, a German commander gathered American soldiers and asked all Jews "to take one step forward." Few willingly did so. Watch Acevedo describe being selected as an "undesirable" »
Jewish soldiers wearing Star of David necklaces began yanking them off, he says. About 90 Jewish soldiers and another 260 U.S. soldiers deemed "undesirables" -- those who "looked like Jews" -- were selected. Acevedo, who is not Jewish, was among them.
They were told they were being sent to "a beautiful camp" with a theater and live shows.
"It turned out to be the opposite," he says. "They put us on a train, and we traveled six days and six nights. It was a boxcar that would fit heads of cattle. They had us 80 to a boxcar. You couldn't squat. And there was little tiny windows that you could barely see through."
It was February 8, 1945, when they arrived. The new camp was known as Berga am Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp where tens of thousands of Jews and other political prisoners were killed under Adolf Hitler's regime. See the horrors of Buchenwald »
Acevedo says he was one of six medics among the 350 U.S. soldiers at Berga. Political prisoners from other countries were held at Berga separate from the Americans. "We didn't mingle with them at all," he says, adding that the U.S. soldiers worked in the same tunnels as the other political prisoners.
"We were all just thin as a rail."
The U.S. prisoners, Acevedo says, were given 100 grams of bread per week made of redwood sawdust, ground glass and barley. Soup was made from cats and rats, he says. Eating dandelion leaves was considered a "gourmet meal."
If soldiers tried to escape, they would be shot and killed. If they were captured alive, they would be executed with gunshots to their foreheads, Acevedo says. Wooden bullets, he says, were used to shatter the inside of their brains. Medics were always asked to fill the execution holes with wax, he says.
"Prisoners were being murdered and tortured by the Nazis. Many of our men died, and I tried keeping track of who they were and how they died."
The soldiers were forced to sleep naked, two to a bunk, with no blankets. As the days and weeks progressed, his diary catalogs it all. The names, prisoner numbers and causes of death are listed by the dozens in his diary. He felt it was his duty as a medic to keep track of everyone.
"I'm glad I did it," he says.
As a medic, he says, he heard of other more horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis at camps around them. "We heard about experiments that they were doing -- peeling the skins of people, humans, political prisoners, making lampshades." Watch Acevedo talk about Nazi atrocities »
He and the other soldiers were once taken to what Acevedo believes was the main camp of Buchenwald, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Berga. They noticed large pipes coming from one building.
"We thought we were going to be gassed when we were told to take our clothes off," he says. "We were scared. We were stripped."
"Rumors were around that this was where the political prisoners would be suffocated with gas." It turned out to be a shower, the only time during their captivity they were allowed to bathe.
The main Buchenwald camp was officially liberated on April 11, 1945. But the camp and its subcamps were emptied of tens of thousands of prisoners as American troops neared. The U.S. troops held at the Berga compound were no exception.
"Very definite that we are moving away from here and on foot. This isn't very good for our sick men. No drinking water and no latrines," Acevedo wrote in his diary on April 4, 1945.
He says they began a death march of 217 miles (349 kilometers) that would last three weeks. More than 300 U.S. soldiers were alive at the start of the march, he says; about 165 were left by the end, when they were finally liberated.
Lines of political prisoners in front of them during the march caught the full brunt of angry Nazi soldiers.
"We saw massacres of people being slaughtered off the highway. Women, children," he says. "You could see people of all ages, hanging on barbed wire."
One of his diary entries exemplifies an extraordinary patriotism among soldiers, even as they were being marched to their deaths. "Bad news for us. President Roosevelt's death. We all felt bad about it. We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul," Acevedo wrote on April 13, 1945.
It adds, "Burdeski died today."
To this day, Acevedo still remembers that soldier. He wanted to perform a tracheotomy using his diary pen to save Burdeski, a 41-year-old father of six children. A German commander struck Acevedo in the jaw with a rifle when he asked.
"I'll never forget," he says.
On a recent day, about a dozen prisoners of war held during World War II and their liberators gathered at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center in Loma Linda, California. Many applauded Acevedo for his heroics.
"Those of us in combat have our own heroes, and those are the medics. And that's Antonio. Thank you, Antonio," one of the men said.
The men gathered there nodded their heads. Two stood to shake Acevedo's hand.
"The people that are in this room really are an endangered species," another man said. "When they're gone, they're gone. ... That is why they should be honored and put in history for generations to come, because there are not that many of them left."
Donald George sat next to Acevedo. The two were captured about a half-mile apart during the Battle of the Bulge. "It's hard to explain how it is to be sitting with a bunch of people that you know they've been through the same thing you've been through," George said.
"Some of us want to talk about it, and some of us don't. Some of us want to cry about it once in a while, and some of us won't. But it's all there," he said.
"We still like to come and be together a couple times a month," George added, before Acevedo finished his sentence: "To exchange what you are holding back inside."
Acevedo says the world must never forget the atrocities of World War II and that for killing 6 million Jews, Hitler was the worst terrorist of all time. He doesn't want the world to ever slide backward.
His message on this Veterans Day, he says, is never to hold animosity toward anybody.
"You only live once. Let's keep trucking. If we don't do that, who's going to do it for us? We have to be happy. Why hate?" he says. "The world is full of hate, and yet they don't know what they want."
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Happy Election Day
The American flag at 6:30 AM this morning, as I waited for my polling place to open.It was a beautiful morning ~ a great day to move forward with our democracy.
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