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SEARCHING FOR FOOD: Following the complete collapse of the Russian economy in 1998, the number of people living below the official poverty line--in Russia, a measure of truly desperate conditions--rose to nearly 40%. Seniors in urban areas--with no access to jobs or land--were the hardest hit. Unlike those in rural areas, who could subsist on homegrown food, they had nowhere to turn. As in Soviet times, Russians were waiting in lines, hunting for scarce goods, and hoarding what they could find. The devastation of Russian life was by all measurements worse than America's Crash of 1929. U.S. unemployment at the end of 1929 reached 1.5 million, representing 1.2% of the total population, but more than 11.3 million Russians were jobless at the end of 1998--7.7% of the nation's total population. In the 1929 crash, stock prices fell 17% by year-end--and 90% by the depth of the Great Depression, four years later. By contrast, the Russian stock market lost 90% of its value in 1998 alone. Millions of ordinary men and women who had deposited their money in Russian banks lost everything. Here, an elderly Russian woman takes fruit from a trash bin in Moscow, August 28, 1998. AP Photo/Misha Japaridze
I try, but they are hungry all the time.
Potatoes, potatoes, most of all they eat potatoes. It is potatoes all the time. I am just trying to feed them.
Tatyana Shurmanova, a mother of six children in Kungur, Russia, as quoted in Newsday, April 4, 1999
On March 23, 1998, five months before the Russian government's default on its international and domestic debts led to the nation's complete economic collapse, Viktor Chernomyrdin was fired as Prime Minister. The allegations of corruption against him had only reinforced the public impression that the policy of a handful of powerful Russian officials was not the construction of a free enterprise system, but rather the subversion of the public good through crony capitalism.
The unexpected firing of Chernomyrdin, Vice President Gore's partner in the highly visible Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, unnerved Clinton administration officials. They were just as unprepared for the appointment of the little-known Sergei Kirienko to replace Chernomyrdin. Lawrence Summers, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, had inauspiciously dubbed the outgoing Prime Minister's deputies, Boris Nemtsov and Anatoly Chubais, "the Dream Team."1 Summers' characterization epitomized the wishful thinking of the administration, and its willful blindness to the worsening reality in Russia.
As late as the summer of 1998, the Clinton administration still failed to grasp the fundamental error of its policy of funneling enormous amounts of money into a corrupt central government. Despite widespread rumors that Kirienko, too, would soon be fired, the administration proposed nothing more than pouring still more loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) into Russia's central government. Vice President Gore, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Summers set to work on an additional $18 billion U.S. commitment to the IMF chiefly intended to support new lending to Russia.
"We have a significant opportunity to use the leverage of IMF financing to help the Russian government," Rubin wrote to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich on July 28, 1998. "The basics are all in the right direction," Stanley Fischer, the IMF's Deputy Managing Director, said the same day.2 The administration successfully forced the $18 billion through Congress.
The reality of the situation, however, was that the Russian economy had already begun to collapse. The stock market was plunging. The day before Rubin's letter to the Speaker of the House and the IMF's blindly upbeat assessment, the market had suffered a 9% drop. "It's looking ugly," said one Western economist on July 27. Said another Western investment strategist: "We're sitting and watching this in shock and horror."3
Over the next two weeks, the deterioration continued. Finally, on August 17--one month after the latest bailout--the roof caved in.
The Russian government announced that it would no longer be able to pay its official debts. The ruble was devalued at the same time. The default, coupled with the devaluation of the ruble after years of promises that this would not occur, led to Russia's total economic collapse--a cataclysm by all measurements worse than America's Crash of 1929.
The end of Soviet Communism had afforded the United States its greatest foreign policy opportunity since the Allied victory in World War II. Barely six years later Russia's economy lay in ruins--an opportunity lost.
The Crash of 1998
The disaster that began on August 17, 1998, spread immediately throughout Russia. In just 24 hours, some retailers raised prices by more than 30%.4 The free-falling ruble forced shopkeepers to raise prices daily, even hourly. "People are in a state of shock," one Russian woman told the New York Times.5 Prices in the first week of September alone rose by 36%.6
RUN ON CASH: A security officer tries to prevent a photographer from taking pictures as a man withdraws cash from an automatic teller machine in Moscow on Friday, Aug. 14, 1998. Customers said the bank only allowed them to withdraw money in rubles, even from accounts established in U.S. dollars. Individual deposits in Russia--which before August 17 had totaled some $27 billion--fell in value to less than $12 billion. Shortly afterward, virtually all ATMs in Russia ceased to function. AP Photo/Maxim Marmur
Millions of ordinary men and women who had deposited their money in Russian banks lost everything. Savings accounts throughout the country were frozen.7 ATM and debit cards ceased to work.8 Dozens of banks became insolvent and disappeared. Angry depositors besieged Russian banks, only to learn they had been wiped out. Within days, individual deposits in Russia--which before August 17 had totaled some $27 billion--fell in value to less than $12 billion.9
Still more millions of senior citizens, whose meager pension income had been delayed for months, were cut off completely. Pensioners who kept some money at home rather than in banks found their purchasing power greatly diminished as the value of the ruble plummeted.
At the end of 1929, following America's disastrous stock market crash, unemployment in the United States reached 1.5 million, representing 1.2% of the total population.10 But the 1998 collapse of the Russian economy was far worse. Over 11.3 million Russians were jobless at the end of 1998--7.7% of the nation's total population.11
Those who kept their jobs frequently found their wages suspended.12 When wage payments were finally made, the average Russian saw his or her wages drop by two-thirds, from $160 to $55 per month.13 The number of people living below the official poverty line--in Russia, a measure of truly desperate conditions--rose to nearly 40%.14 The standard of living for the average Russian, already low by international measures, plummeted by 30%.15
In urban areas, Russian families with children and seniors--with no access to jobs or land--were the hardest hit. Unlike those in rural areas, who could subsist on homegrown food, they had nowhere to turn. As in Soviet times, Russians were waiting in lines, hunting for scarce goods, and hoarding what they could find. Such staples as flour, butter, rice and sugar were purchased as soon as they appeared on shelves. Retailers found it difficult to restock inventories.16
The devastation of Russia's economy wreaked the kind of human misery that America experienced in the Great Depression. By 1932, the U.S. gross national product had been cut by almost one-third. But within just six months of the 1998 crash, Russia's economy, measured in dollars, had fallen by more than two-thirds. From $422 billion in 1997, Russia's gross domestic product fell to only $132 billion by the end of 1998.17
In the crash of 1929, stock prices fell 17% by year-end--and 90% by the depth of the Great Depression, four years later. By contrast, the Russian stock market lost 90% of its value in 1998 alone.18
Foreign investment in Russia plummeted by 60%. Amid a wave of panic among investors, foreign direct investment fell from $4 billion in 1997 to $1.7 billion in 1998.19 "The financial markets are dead," said Sergei Markov, an analyst at the Institute of Political Studies. "And, most fundamentally, it is a crisis of the real economy--Russia doesn't work."20
By the first week of September, the ruble had lost 60% of its value.21 When the dust finally settled in March 1999, the ruble--and with it, every Russian's life savings--had lost fully 75% of its value.
The most immediate and dramatic result of the Crash of 1998 was the virtual collapse of Russian banking. The government imposed a two-month freeze on withdrawals from the country's six largest private banks. With the ruble dropping precipitously in value every day, ordinary Russians were forced to watch in horror as the money in their bank accounts lost its value. The experience of 66-year-old Yevgeny Ushakov, who had spread his life savings of $4,000 among three different banks to diversify his risk, was illustrative. "I didn't think all three would fail," he said.22
With prices rising uncontrollably, retail stores were forced to close repeatedly throughout the day, just to figure out how much to charge.23 Even those Russians who had become accustomed to the occasional Western product were forced to do without, as the price of imports soared beyond their reach.
The collapse of international trade not only curtailed the supply of foreign goods, but also created scarcities and high prices for Russian-made goods with foreign components. Foreign providers refused to let Russian firms buy on credit, because of fear of non-payment. Wary of the declining ruble, foreign suppliers also demanded payment in hard currency, which most importers did not have. Such indignities added to the growing anti-Western sentiment.
The lack of a reliable currency reduced much of Russia to a barter economy. Many citizens were paid with whatever goods were currently available, regardless of the goods' practical value. Teachers in Voronezh, for example, received cemetery headstones in lieu of cash payments.24 A textile machinery plant in Kostroma tendered 6,000 pairs of socks to the local police in payment of its tax bill.25
Farmers were devastated by the 1998 economic collapse. Grain harvests fell 30% below 1997 levels. The sudden impact of the ruble devaluation was especially harmful because existing levels of farm production were already depressed, having fallen for years. In Kaluga, for example, local production had fallen by 22% in the four years prior to the crash.26 Shortages of meat and cooking oil were so severe that humanitarian food aid from the West, which had not been necessary since the collapse of Communism, was resumed on an emergency basis.27
DEJ� VU: Irate and bewildered customers at the closed doors of the Bank of United States, in New York City, Dec. 11, 1930. After the collapse in Russia, banks hired guards who let customers in one at a time to determine the fate of their savings, much of which was wiped out in the August 1998 collapse. AP Photo
The fallout from the economic collapse greatly exacerbated many of the problems that plagued Russia. In addition to the unemployment, lost wages and pensions, and financial hardship, there has been an attendant social crisis.
Those who were sick or under a doctor's care were badly hurt by the crash. Russia's health care system, in poor shape even before August 1998, suffered a run on medicine that quickly reduced supplies in hospitals and pharmacies to Soviet-era levels. The collapse of the ruble's value, the widespread unemployment, and the freeze on savings, wages, and pensions left millions of patients unable to pay for medical services.28
Hospitals suffered from shortages like every other Russian business. Drugs, always in short supply, became even more difficult to come by--particularly those that had to be imported. Nurses and doctors were forced to ration drugs to patients. In Novosibirsk the main hospital was reduced to a five-day supply of food. The central hospital serving a community of 1.4 million citizens had no milk for patients, and drugs sufficient to handle only 20 cases of severe injury.29
The 1998 economic crisis also helped worsen Russia's demographic crisis. According to the Russian Statistics Agency, Russia's population has fallen every year since 1992.30 Deaths outnumbered births by 784,000 in 1999, the year following the crash.31 Russia's birth rate of 1.3 children per woman falls well below the 2.1 needed to maintain the current population. Over the next 16 years, if current trends continue, the Russian population will drop to between 130 and 138 million, compared to 146 million today. Murray Feshbach, the leading Western expert on Russian demographics, projects a population of just 80 million by 2050 if Russia does not arrest its social problems.32 The population decline is expected to continue because of lower standards of living and mounting divorce, which in turn contribute to Russia's depressed birthrate.
The economic hardship of raising a child is a significant factor in Russia's sky-high abortion rates: for every birth in Russia, there are now two abortions.33 As women in poor health give birth to less healthy children, the rate of infant mortality, too, is expected to grow. The CIA estimates Russia's infant mortality rate at 23 deaths per 1,000 live births.34
Drug use and addiction in Russia have skyrocketed, fueled by growth in organized crime and widespread economic depression. More than 3 million Russians are habitual drug users, according to the Ministry of Interior.35
Alcoholism, a chronic problem in Russia, has grown worse as economic conditions have deteriorated: according to a January 2000 report, the number of deaths resulting from alcohol poisoning is 35,000 per year, compared to 300 a year in the United States.36
Russia's widespread joblessness, poverty, and drug use have led to an increase in crime, homelessness, unemployment, and school dropout rates.
The jump in drug use has also led to an increase in HIV infections. According to Russian and World Health Organization officials, drug addicts account for 90% of all HIV-infected people in Russia. The collapse of the Russian economy in 1998 coincided with a doubling of the number of people living with HIV: Russia's HIV population literally doubled between 1997 and 1999--the fastest growth rate in the world.37 According to Russia's leading epidemiologist, Dr. Vadim Pokrovsky, 10% of Russia's population will have the HIV virus by 2005.38 Tuberculosis, which has increased by 57% from 1994 to 1998, has reached near epidemic proportions in parts of the country.39
Causes of Russia's Economic Collapse
Russia received its first loan from the IMF in April 1992, for $1 billion. In 1993, the Russian government took out another loan, this time for $1.5 billion. A year later the IMF provided still another $1.5 billion. By December 31, 1995, the Russian central government had borrowed over $10 billion through the IMF. When on March 26, 1996, the IMF and Russian central government reached final agreement on a new loan of $10.2 billion--the second-largest loan ever made to any borrower by the IMF--many outside observers were dumbfounded.
In a single commitment, the IMF was preparing to flood the Kremlin with more money than it had disbursed in the more than four years since the end of the Soviet Union. The extension of such significant new credit was surprising because there was little in the way of basic free market reform legislation in place to justify it. There was still no market in banking services, no reliable protection for private property rights, no mortgage lending, and no honest system of commercial dispute resolution.
IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus asserted that the enormous new lending was in furtherance of a program of "free market reforms," but in fact the commitment had a political aura. At a time when the Russian government was spending exorbitant amounts on the 14-month-old war in Chechnya and on extravagant election campaign promises, there were virtually no strings attached, no effective legal commitments as to how the proceeds should be spent, and no effective monitoring and accounting controls to track where the billions of dollars were going. Camdessus described it as a gesture of support for Russia: "We have a program, we have a country which needs support. It is our duty and moral obligation to support this country."40
Yeltsin was more forthright about the political nature of the IMF commitment. "We had to involve Clinton, Chirac, Kohl, and Major," he said.41 In fact, Clinton had endorsed the loan a month before the details of the commitment were even agreed upon. Because of the heavy U.S. influence on the IMF, his endorsement left little doubt that the loans would be made. The United States is the only country in the world with veto power over IMF actions. Using this influence, the Clinton administration turned the IMF into an agent of U.S. policy in Russia.
From the administration's standpoint, the disbursal of the IMF moneys would help pave the way for Clinton's planned visit to Moscow in April of that year and shore up the team chosen by the administration to carry out Western aid policy.
On the merits, there was little economic justification for extending the IMF package in March 1996. The loans-for-shares ersatz "privatization" of major Russian industries into the hands of a few insiders was already notorious. The poor state of Russia's official budget and finances made it implausible to assume that the government would ever repay the latest IMF loan. Worst of all, the loan did not effectively stipulate economic conditionality: in the first year alone, the IMF granted three waivers for "nonobservance of performance criteria."42 The Clinton administration's decision to extend yet another IMF loan was purely political.
Many in the West and in Russia argued against burdening Russia with more IMF debt. Boris Fyodorov, a former Russian Finance Minister, immediately criticized the decision. "This money corrupts the system," he said the day the deal was announced. "The moment you get a billion dollars, you delay the necessary reforms."43
The sheer size of the loan caused concern among many other observers.44 Prior to March 1996, the largest amount of money given to Russia from the IMF was $6.8 billion in April 1995. The 1995 loan had been more than a six-fold increase from the first loan to Russia in 1992. With this 1996 loan, the Russian central government had borrowed close to $15 billion from the IMF alone. Moreover, the IMF's sister institution, the World Bank, had provided billions more in loans to the central government since 1992. A further $30 billion in direct bilateral assistance had been given to the Russian central government by Germany, the United States, and other countries.
Moreover, to the extent that the Clinton administration did hector for "reform," it repeatedly prescribed bad medicine.
During America's Great Depression, the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff and President Hoover's 1932 income tax increases were widely credited with shrinking the U.S. economy in an attempt to increase tax revenues. Likewise, the Clinton administration saw the root of Russia's problems as the decline in government revenues--as if Russia's mistake had been failing to impose sufficient government levies on the struggling Russian economy.45
DESPERATE FOR MEDICINE: A pharmacy clerk looks for insulin on a shelf, while a Russian woman waits in Moscow, Dec. 11, 1998. Russia's 2.2 million diabetics rely on imported insulin, but imports dried up when the government devalued the ruble. AP Photo/Oleg Nikishin
While Russia's revenue stream was indeed declining, it was declining due to the contraction of the economy itself. The Clinton administration's insistence on raising taxes was in part responsible for the worsening crisis, as Russia sought to squeeze more taxes from the economy.
In place of concrete steps to establish the building blocks of a free enterprise economy, the Clinton administration used the loans to attempt to induce Russia to reduce its budget deficit to stipulated targets: 4% of GDP in 1996, 3% in 1997, and 2% in 1998. These goals were never reached.46 To the contrary, as the Russian government continued to borrow, the rising costs of debt service added to the strain on the budget.
In March 1997, when Nizhny Novgorod Governor Boris Nemtsov was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers dubbed the new Russian economic team of Nemtsov and Chubais the "Dream Team"--a typical example of the administration's tendency to support individuals rather than actual policies. The "dream," however, soon turned into a nightmare for 146 million Russians.
The Stock Market Bubble Bursts
Vice President Gore, Treasury Secretary Rubin, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers were not the only people taken in by the Chubais "Dream Team." In mid-1997, the Russian stock market--hyped up on billions from IMF, World Bank, and bilateral aid that initially permitted the Russian Central Bank to accumulate reserves at a pace of $1.5 billion a month--became the world's leading developing country stock market, as speculators chased stratospheric investment returns.47
The economic momentum, however, was exceptionally short-lived; it would not even last the year. By the fall of 1997, the trends were again all negative.
The onset of the economic crisis in Asia had reminded investors in emerging markets to pay attention to fundamentals, which for the Russian economy were not encouraging. Continued low gas and oil prices worldwide reduced the value of Russia's energy exports, and the lack of productivity improvement in the private sector was quickly erasing the justification for high stock prices.
After the brief euphoria, investment continued to decline in 1997; capital investment amounted to less than 24% of the Soviet-era level of 1990.48 Capital flight at a rate of $2 billion to $3 billion per month (equivalent to between 4% and 10% of Russia's entire GDP)49 was becoming a major drain on the Central Bank's foreign currency reserves.
For many Russian businesses, debts and liabilities significantly outweighed assets. Back wages rose to more than $4.4 billion by the end of 1997, and reached as high as $5.6 billion by July 1998.50 At the start of 1998 business-to-business debt amounted to roughly $40 billion, while businesses' unpaid debt to the government totaled more than $35 billion.51
Russian firms, still suffering under the weight of Soviet-era laws and regulations, were unable to earn enough to pay taxes. The government's revenues were falling--at times as much as 50% below budgeted tax receipts. The decline in tax collections was exacerbated by the notoriously inefficient Russian tax system, as well as by corruption among tax authorities and sweetheart deals that granted tax leniency to select enterprises, such as the gas monopoly Gazprom.
The Clinton-Yeltsin and Gore-Chernomyrdin response to reduced tax collections--a symptom of the government's failure to building anything like a workable free enterprise system--was more government borrowing. IMF and World Bank debt would be used as a means of balancing the Russian central government's annual budgets, plugging the gap between the government's growing expenses and its rapidly declining revenues.
The heavy reliance on borrowing to finance budget shortfalls caused investors to demand an increasingly large premium to hold Russian debt. To attract investors, the government offered ever-higher interest rates--at times approaching 250%. The process was unsustainable.52
GKOs and the Russian Debt Pyramid
Russia's rapidly inflating short-term debt was an important factor in the August 1998 collapse. Facing budgetary pressures caused in part by already high debt service payments and expensive reelection campaign promises, the Russian government turned to short-term borrowing through ruble-denominated government bonds, known by their Russian acronym GKOs (Gosudarstvennykh Kratkosrochnykh Obligatsii, "State Short-Term Obligations"). Rather than solving Russia's debt problem, GKOs only delayed and intensified the final reckoning.
Russia's failure to develop a market economy and the concomitant poor investment climate meant the government had to pay investors a steep premium to sell them the GKO risk. Interest rates, which had averaged 26% in 1997, reached triple digits in July.53 This ensured that the government could not meet its obligations when GKOs came due without issuing more GKOs: "The GKO pyramid was by then a full-blown Ponzi scheme, with new bonds being issued to pay the interest on old bonds."54 GKO debt exploded during the spring and summer of 1998, and by then some 30% of Russian budgetary outlays was devoted to debt service.55
Russian and foreign investors earned enormous returns in the so-called "GKO casino." But investors were eager to convert their ruble profits into dollars and other stable currencies. Such conversions exerted more downward pressure on the already battered ruble, and raised the cost to the Russian Central Bank, which was trying to prop it up.
A considerable portion of the International Monetary Fund's $4.8 billion July 1998 rescue package was spent to prop up the ruble in the days before the collapse. Predictably, toward the end, only well-connected Russian and foreign investors were able to convert their rubles, a fact acknowledged by Treasury Secretary Rubin.56
The Clinton administration made consistent efforts to downplay the magnitude of Russia's economic crisis before the collapse. In late May 1998, for example, on the very day Russia's Central Bank tripled key refinancing rates to 150%, State Department spokesman James Rubin went out of his way to call the Russian government's economic team "fully capable," while then-Treasury Secretary Rubin blandly stated that "the Russian government is taking steps to deal with the situation."57
When asked what the administration knew about GKOs in the summer of 1998, Lawrence Summers, now Treasury Secretary, told the Speaker's Advisory Group on Russia that the administration was aware of the GKO market, knew the interest rates, and regarded them as symptomatic of an untenable fiscal situation.58 Nonetheless, the Clinton administration viewed maintenance of the GKO Ponzi scheme as insufficient cause to turn off the cash spigot.
In light of the administration's previous enthusiasm for IMF lending to Russia, many investors may have believed that the Gore-Talbott-Summers troika would squeeze new loans out of the IMF to insure that Russia's economy did not fail and that their investments were protected. Ultimately, this perspective proved only partially correct: the IMF was persuaded to issue new credits, but the Russian economy would collapse nonetheless.
The Clinton Troika Pushes to Double IMF Lending to Russia
In mid-1998, just two months before Russia's economic collapse, IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus insisted that investors should not worry about Russia: "Contrary to what markets and commentators are imagining, this is not a crisis," he said. John Odling-Smee, head of the IMF's Russia department, predicted that "large-scale additional financial resources ... will fundamentally improve the financial situation of the Russian government."59
Similarly, the Clinton troika held the view that more IMF lending could fix whatever ailed Russia. White House spokesman Mike McCurry bravely spun in July 1998 that the "program of Russian policy commitments and international financial support can provide a sound basis for increased stability and confidence."60 According to the New York Times, Summers and Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs David Lipton pressed the IMF to "double the amount of money it was willing to lend to Russia,"61 even though this would dangerously deplete the IMF's resources.62
NOT A PRAYER: President Boris Yeltsin looks for help from above during a meeting with regional leaders on the 1998 financial crisis in the Kremlin in Moscow, June 5, 1998--just months before Russia's economic collapse. The Yeltsin-Clinton prescription for the crisis was for Russians to pay more taxes, ignoring the fundamental cause of Russia's increasingly poor fiscal condition: its failure to establish the basic elements of a free enterprise economy. AP Photo/Pool
The Times reported that the Summers-Lipton diagnosis was that still more lending was required because Russia might "catch the Asian flu."63 Such emphasis on external factors revealed the Clinton administration's inattention to the inherent problems in Russia's economy. By turning a blind eye to Russia's failure to put in place the building blocks of a free enterprise economy, and instead pressuring the IMF to put the Russian government still deeper into debt, the troika's policies exacerbated the depth of the coming crisis.
In Washington, over Memorial Day weekend, Summers, Lipton, and Talbott met with Chubais, who had been appointed as Special Emissary to the West after his dismissal from the Russian government. At backyard barbecues, they discussed terms and conditions. Afterward, they started pushing publicly for an agreement between the IMF and Moscow. A few days later, Clinton voiced support for the scheme and began lobbying Congress for an additional $18 billion U.S. contribution to the IMF so that the Fund would have enough money to cover the sizable new lending they had in mind.64
In fact, the economic situation in Russia was rapidly deteriorating. It was becoming clear that even a large-scale international financial package could not stave off the Russian free-fall. Angry miners began demonstrating in Moscow to protest wage arrears. The sale of the state-owned oil company Rosneft, projected to net the government $1.6 billion, was cancelled for the second time because of the probability of fire-sale bidding.65 Interest rates on Russian debt were soaring. The Russian treasury market was showing signs of collapse: a Russian treasury bill auction failed to attract enough interested investors, despite sky-high interest rates. By July 1998, Russia's foreign currency reserves had fallen to $12 billion, down more than $3 billion from the month before. Though the handwriting was on the wall, the Clinton administration and the IMF chose to proceed with the loan.
The IMF Bails Out 'Insiders' Before the Ship Sinks
On July 16, 1998, the Russian government and the International Monetary Fund, joined by the World Bank and Japan, agreed on terms for the largest-ever infusion of cash into the central government of Russia: $17.1 billion. On top of this borrowing, Russia anticipated another $5.5 billion in international lending from prior agreements, for a grand total of $22.6 billion.
The 1998 IMF debt agreement was premised on commitments from the Russian government to implement a "comprehensive reform program," including a dramatic reduction of the budget deficit--this time to 2.8% of GDP from its then current 5.8%.66 But the IMF funds were not conditioned on any legal commitment to the IMF, or even actual Russian performance.67
The IMF board approved the deal on July 20, 1998, even though the Duma balked at some of the reform measures that Chubais had promised. Disbursements began that day with a first installment of $4.8 billion--$800 million less than had been envisaged earlier, reflecting concern over the Duma's vote. 68
The initial reaction to the IMF loan agreement was euphoric. The Russian stock market, after months of free fall, recorded a 17% rise.69 This boost was short-lived, however. By the end of July, despite the infusion of billions of dollars in IMF funds, the market resumed its plunge.
On July 27, the market dropped 9% in one day.70 Yields on the Russian government's short-term debt hovered around 60%.71 In a desperate attempt to raise revenue, the Russian government prepared to sell a 5% interest in Gazprom, despite the unfavorable market conditions.72
This was precisely the reverse of what the Clinton administration and the IMF had hoped for. Instead of rewarding the Russian government for its temporarily cash-rich position, the market hammered it because it was now deeply mired in debt, with no discernable means of repayment.
The huge July 1998 IMF loan agreement did, however, succeed in one important respect. Because it was temporarily flush in IMF money, the Russian central bank was able to accommodate well-connected investors, foreign and domestic, who had discerned the handwriting on the wall and decided to convert their ruble holdings into hard currency. Thus, the IMF encouraged and paid for the capital flight that marked the final days before the August collapse.
Throughout the brief period between the 1998 IMF loan and Russia's final economic collapse, the Russian government bravely insisted that the Ponzi scheme of financing its budget with ever higher-yielding notes would continue forever. On July 27, Nemtsov declared, "Devaluation will happen with other governments, not ours."73 The Clinton administration was equally willing to mislead the investing public. On July 28, Treasury Secretary Rubin wrote to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich that the Russian government could now be expected to "finally take the myriad steps needed to put its finances on a sustainable path."74 That same day, Stanley Fischer, the IMF's Deputy Managing Director, sounded an equally optimistic note: "Don't underestimate what's happened," he said of the IMF action. "Interest rates are down ... . The pressure is off the ruble."75
As they had for nearly five years, the small clique of Clinton administration officials had miscalculated the effects of their policies and closed their eyes to the consequences. Their tight circle excluded opposing points of view and became a self-reinforcing mechanism for pursuing failed strategies. Gore was too willing to believe Chernomyrdin and Kirienko; Rubin, Summers, and Talbott were too willing to believe Chubais. Convinced that the worst was over and a turnaround was in sight, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the Clinton troika was among the last to realize that it would all come to a bitter end on August 17.
The Final Days
The Russian stock market continued its plunge in August 1998: on August 19 alone, trading was suspended twice because of drops of more than 10%.76
Demand for Russia's debt declined dramatically, even as yields soared above 200%.77 Russian banks began calling on each other for loans--reflecting, in the words of Sergei Aleksashenko, First Deputy Chief of the Russian Central Bank, "the crisis of liquidity."78 Some banks stopped allowing panicked Russians and foreigners to buy dollars with rubles.
In Washington, President Clinton was huddling with his advisers over what to do about his summit with Yeltsin, scheduled for September. On the one hand, the economic clouds were ominous; on the other hand, Yeltsin had reassured Clinton on August 14 that there would be no devaluation.79
Scrambling to avoid a meeting in the midst of a financial crisis, the White House dispatched Treasury's Lipton to Moscow "to ensure that the show stays on the road for the next three weeks at least," according to an administration source quoted in the Economist.80 That would be just long enough to get through Clinton's visit and avoid embarrassment. Sidestepping Russia's underlying problems, it would seem, was the hallmark of administration policy in the final days before Russia's economic collapse.
CHILDREN OF RUSSIA: Two children receive free soup from the Salvation Army at a Moscow railway terminal in 1998. AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel
Over the weekend of August 15-16, a small group of Russian government officials and their advisers met to consider the situation and their options. Another bailout from the IMF or the United States was deemed unlikely to win approval in Congress and, in any event, would arrive too late. Their options came down to seeking a rescheduling of the payment of billions in foreign government and private debts or a devaluation of the ruble. Either one would be tantamount to default, a declaration of Russian bankruptcy.
The following Monday, August 17, the Russian government announced a devaluation of the ruble and a 90-day moratorium on repayment of $40 billion in corporate and bank debt to foreign creditors--coupled with unilateral "restructuring" of domestic debt scheduled to mature in 1999.81 The Wall Street Journal reported the next day, "Facing a choice between two economic evils to fight its financial woes, Russia chose both."82
The Clinton strategy of massive lending to the central government as a substitute for the construction of a free enterprise system in Russia had proved an error of historic proportions, and the administration immediately attempted to build a wall between their policy and its consequences. "It was the Russians' choice," said one administration official.83
Few in Russia accepted this version of events. Many Russians, not surprisingly, blamed the West, the IMF, and the United States for intentionally leading Russia down the path of ruin.84 The heavy-handed involvement of Clinton administration officials in Russian economic policy had made America an easy scapegoat for millions of disgruntled Russians.
What made devaluation and default an especially bitter pill for the Russian people was the knowledge that many well-connected insiders had escaped its consequences by converting their rubles into hard currency and thereby avoided the consequences of devaluation. A number of the oligarchs, Duma deputies, and other officials had anticipated the devaluation or been tipped off to it and converted their ruble holdings into dollars before the foreign currency window was slammed shut, and then sent their money overseas before the August 17 devaluation. Given the scarcity of hard currency in Russia at the time, there is no question that the IMF loan proceeds were used to convert rubles to dollars, Deutschemarks, and pounds sterling in this way. Treasury Secretary Rubin, testifying before a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee in March 1999, acknowledged that much of the final $4.8 billion IMF loan distributed to Russia in the summer of 1998 "may have been siphoned off improperly."85
Following the devaluation, widespread speculation in Russia that IMF lending was being used to bail out insiders was fueled by the Russian Central Bank's decision to single out a dozen favored banks for government credits to reestablish their liquidity. The banks included those held by several powerful oligarchs. To all appearances, while the average Russian was left to fend for himself, the well-connected oligarch was being rescued by the Central Bank, by the IMF, and ultimately, by U.S. taxpayers.
Dmitri Vasiliev, former chairman of Russia's Federal Security Commission, confirmed that IMF loans were used to bail out insiders: "The [IMF] money is all spent," he told the Los Angeles Times a month after the devaluation. "It went to foreigners and Russian speculators, including the Central Bank. They got payments for their GKOs, converted the rubles into cheap dollars, and took the money out of the country."86
As Clinton was preparing for his September 1998 trip to Moscow, Prime Minister Kirienko and his team were fired. Not much earlier, one senior Clinton administration official had called the Kirienko government "the most cohesive and most united in its commitment to reform ... Russia has had in the last five years."87 Kirienko's team lasted barely five months, and the Clinton administration was again without a policy and an interlocutor in Moscow.
For a brief moment, Gore was heartened that his former partner, Viktor Chernomyrdin, might be making his way back. However, Chernomyrdin's comeback was to be short-lived: the Duma refused to confirm him. By the fall of 1998, the Clinton administration had no "strategic partners" in the Russian government, and its policy toward Russia had fallen into disarray.
THE CLINTON GENERATION: A Muscovite begs with his dogs next to a Pepsi advertisement, featuring Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev and President Nixon in 1959, in downtown Moscow, June 3, 2000, just before Clinton arrived in Moscow for a summit with President Putin. Clinton's reception, not surprisingly after the collapse of Russia's economy, was icy cold. AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel
The Continuing Fallout
The effects of the complete collapse of the Russian economy in August 1998 were profound. They are still being felt today.
Wage and pension arrears have declined significantly, but workers' real income is still only 77% of what it was before August 1998. The nominal increase in ruble-denominated wages has not kept pace with the increase in prices. Personal consumption, as a result, dropped 5% in 1999, while retail sales were down 8%. Those Russians living below the official poverty level still total more than 35% of the population. The official unemployment rate remains above 11%.88
Servicing Russia's foreign debt, now up to $150 billion, is draining resources from the economy.89
Russia's modest economic "turnaround," such as it is, is almost wholly a windfall result of higher world oil prices, and Russia remains unprepared to capitalize on this opportunity. Gazprom, the giant gas monopoly, reported in May 2000 that its output would be down this year because of a shortage of funds to invest in new fields.90 More generally, the continued dependence of Russia's economy on basic Soviet-era industries such as the export of arms and natural resources--and one major export in particular, oil--underscores the failure to construct the basics of a free enterprise economy.
Nearly a decade after the end of Communism, the essential task still remains to be undertaken: building a free enterprise economy on the ashes of a centralized state-run system. But whereas in 1992 there was public support to see the job through, years of failed economic policy masquerading as "reform," a crushing burden of debt, and the discrediting of the United States in the eyes of the Russian people have made that task far more difficult than anyone could then have imagined.


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By BEN
Web: nj.com/ben
Phone: 856-451-1000, ext. 556
Cellphone: 856-237-6645
U.S. Army: RA13815980
The column that says Whitey Ruberts quit his crossing guard post too soon on Broad Street, in Bridgeton, because the $3-an-hour raise has been passed, and who deserves it more than people charged with guarding the safety of our children?.
Good afternoon!
Weather is not a factor in the order of things today.
How would like to be the social worker at Bridgeton High School?
Or the crisis intervention specialist at Cherry Street School?
Lara Blew has resigned as a special education teacher at Indian Avenue School.
She was just Teacher of the Year at Indian Avenue last year, and wanted to stay there.
What happened?
We loved her as a teacher.
Is she going to be the poster child for the overcrowding in the Bridgeton school system?
Special education teachers who are successful should be made saints.
It must take the patience of Job.
And it must be a small class.
Bridgeton students will spend two hour at the splash park on July 18.
They will canoe and learn water safety at Union Lake in Millville on July 21 from 9 a.m. to noon.
Both are paid for by grants.
Get a load of the West Avenue Extended Day Programs:
Sports Club, grades 5-8.
Drama & Theater Club, grades 5-8.
Lego Robotics Club, grades 5-8.
Fitness Club, grades 2-4.
Art Club, grades 2-4.
Literature Circles Club, grade 2.
And then there's the Strengthening Families Program scheduled for seven two-hour sessions during the summer learning family skills to increase resilience and reduce risk factors for substance abuse, depression, violence and aggression, delinquency and school failure in high risk 10-14-year-old children and their parents,
SODAT (Services To Overcome Drug Abuse) will conduct each session.
This is the program we want to sit in on.
It's just a training program.
We want to watch it in action.
This is where we go up against the drug dealers, hopelessness and poverty.
Warren Robinson wants the Bridgeton mayor and council gone.
And he wants that 1900s photo back his friend donated to the Nail House Museum that has never been reopened.
We'll tell you why this is humorous.
When the 90-year-old World War II vet goes to city council meetings, somebody on council always mentions on the record how glad they are to see him.
IT starts with Dennis Thompson and carries through the rest.
Then you have Dee Batten, who thanked council again and again for trying their hardest at her farewell speech as an audience member, then gave all the negative reasons why the city is the way it is and that she's not coming back.
"You tried'' must be in her speech 10 times.
Even council loved her speech "as a wake-up call.''
Now how do you do that?
What she was saying is nobody pushed to get her ongoing neighborhood problem solved and she grew tired of asking and the code enforcement person ratted her out by walking up her driveway.
Now the landlord housing the problem, once a friend of hers, hates her.
But if the house was overcrowded with people, who cares what the landlord thinks?
It's his problem and he should have been checking on it.
All landlords should be checking their rentals for overcrowding.
It has to go one way or the other.
Either you don't care about overcrowding with mattresses on the floor because it's a way of life and not your way because you can afford your own house, but some people can't, or you send a message through the community that the city is cracking down.
Enforce the ordinance or throw it out.
Because, someday, there is going to be a fire in one of those overcrowded houses and a whole lot of people are going wonder why.
MY KIND OF TOWN: Where are we ready for the 24/7 Sunoco mini-mart opening Thursday or Friday only a block from the 24/7 fitness gym in Hopewell Township, the municipality that never closes.

subset: commoncrawl


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Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation (ABCF) welcomes you to its website. It was established in 1993 by four breast cancer survivors determined to take personal action in the fight against the disease. ABCF's mission is to end breast cancer by assisting patients, informing policymakers and expanding knowledge through education and community outreach. Over the ensuing years, its members have devoted countless hours of their time (over 17,000 hours last year) to breast cancer issues. ABCF is a 501(c)3, nonprofit volunteer organization located in San Antonio, TX.
PLEASE become a member of ABCF today to help us stop breast cancer.
Dual in the Pool
To Donate Click Here
Read More »
Action Alert
Contact Congress Today


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Deadline for submitting abstracts or proposals: September 30, 2009
Panel description: Many scholars have examined travel accounts and transcultural encounters between Westerners and non-Westerners (Edward Said, Stephen Greenblatt, Peter Hulme, Mary Louise Pratt, and Roxanne Euben); however, researchers have been reluctant to examine similar encounters that took place among non-Western cultures. Although some scholars have proposed moving away from Western hegemony in order to examine "places that seem most peripheral to the march of European history" (Dipesh Chakrabarty in Provincializing Europe, 35), researchers continue to privilege Western-subaltern encounters. Therefore, this panel will examine South Asian cultural encounters with the various parts of the East, a vast geographic area that includes the Middle East, South East Asia, and the Far East. The list of possible topics may include:
- South Asian travel accounts, memoirs, histories, and fictional narratives about the Orient (e.g. Vikram Seth's travels through Sinkiang and Tibet, Pico Iyer's reflections on Kyoto, Amitav Ghosh's experiences in Egypt, and the depiction of the East in Salman Rushdie's works and in Meena Alexander's short stories).
- The experiences of South Asians in the Gulf region: What are the experiences of South Asians in that region? How do they depict their lives there, and how do they negotiate their identity and the location of "home"?
- South Asians in the South East Asia and the Far East: How do South Asians depict their encounter with "other" Orientals? Do Western histories and narratives interfere with their interaction with the East? Do South Asians affiliate themselves with Eastern cultures, or do they uphold their own culture as superior?
- South Asian Diasporas in the East: What are the experiences of South Asians who have relocated to the East? How do they negotiate the concept of "home" and "homeland"? How do they interact with Eastern locals? How do Eastern cultures shape their ethnic, cultural, and political identity? How do South Asians, living in South Asia, regard those who have settled in the East? Are they treated in the same manner as South Asians living in the West?
- Role of race, caste, and ethnicity: To what extent does race, caste, or ethnicity play a role in depicting encounters with the East?
Please send 250-300 word proposals by July 30, 2009 to Suha Kudsieh at Trent University: email@example.com
Please include with the abstract the following info:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)
The panel welcomes papers that examine works published in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, and similar South Asian languages, in addition to works written in Anglophone; however, it is important to note that all papers must be delivered in English at the conference.
The 41st Annual Convention will feature approximately 350 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2010 Convention will be posted in June: www.nemla.org .


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Good Samaritan act
Protection for the physician from liability of a civil damage in emergency case. Emergency situations is defined by the state in which the assistant is employed.
Unique Indentifiers
National Health Plan ID
National Provider Identifier -NPI
National Individual Identifier (ON HOLD)
Involves the safe keeping of patient information by controlling access to hard copy and computerized records protecting information from alteration, destruction,tampering, or loss providing employees training in confidentiality of patient information and requiring employees to sign a confidentiality statement that details the consequences of not maintaining patient confidentiality.
Medical Practice acts
set of rules for obtaining a license explains who must be licensed to give health care covers the grounds on the licenses may be revoked
Demand Letter
is sent when Medicare administrative contractor determines that an overpayment was made
is an order of the court that requires a witness to appear at particular time and place to testify


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"In the year 2002 our mother was deported from the United States of America. Ever since that day our lives have been a rocky rollercoaster. As children who were not even developed enough to understand the situation at hand, we sat back and watched the only woman we knew and trusted be taken away from us."
These are the words of the Cisse sisters. Theirs is one of nine testimonies gathered by AFSC's Newark office as an educational tool aimed at policymakers and the public about the hardships of those families living under the threat of detention and deportation.
Many people speak passionately and publicly about U.S. immigration policies, including those who advocate for reform and those who oppose it. There are some voices, though, that you are less likely to have heard, though they are among the most profoundly affected by these policies—those of children. Some of their stories are told in our booklet, "Immigrant Detention and Family Separation."


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The 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, took Bay City's Doug Sharp on the ride of his life.
The former Bangor John Glenn and Purdue University track standout made the major jump into bobsledding and earned a spot as a pusher on USA II. Along with Brian Shimer, Mike Kohn and Dan Steele, he roared to a bronze medal finish in the four-man bobsled to end a 46-year medal drought by the Americans.
Now age 44 and a chiropractor in his hometown, he watches Team USA make another bid for glory in the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia. Sharp shared some insight on the sport of four-man bobsledding, leading up to this year's finals, set for Sunday, Feb. 22.
Finding a frame of mind
*"There are guys standing behind us, punching us in the ribs just to get the juices going. Sometimes we'd break a smelling salt in our face – that makes you mad quickly. Then it's 900 ccs of adrenaline."
*"As a push athlete, your job is to get that sucker off that hill with as much velocity as possible. You're pushing a 535-pound sled that starts at a dead-stop – ugggh! – and getting it up to 33 mph. Then you've got to get in this thing."
"You go from absolute chaos to the ride, where you have to be calm."
Moving at the speed of ice
*"You hit 90 mph, but I love speed, so bring it on."
*"Speed is picking up, picking up... this thing is coming down like a train."
*"TV does not do it justice. The people I've taken out there are always blown away. They're amazed at what's coming at you."
Not-so smooth sailing
*"If the driver hits a wall, it's no different than if you put a helmet on and I punched you in the head."
*"There is no suspension on those sleds, so you absorb the whole thing."
*"Some tracks you walk away from with a headache at the end of every run. Then there are some like Lake Placid where you just sit back and glide."
*"You're up, then you're down. It's the force of 5 Gs, and it's an instant G, so it can take the breath right out of you."
*"If you get in wrong, the next guy's spike might cut right into you – and you bleed the whole ride."
*"It's the original extreme sport. And it needs to be respected or, like other extreme sports, it will bite you."
Next: Brush with Glory


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Victory State Bank Points to Resources from Department of Veterans Affairs
- Details
- Category: Widget
- Published: Thursday, 07 November 2013 10:22
- Written by Super User
- Hits: 637
VVictory State Bank Points to Resources from Department of Veterans Affairs
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Victory State Bank wishes to help all of our patrons gain access to the resources they deserve. If you or a family member have served or are actively serving our country, the following information from The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) may be of interest.
The VA offers a variety of home loan programs for active duty servicemembers, veterans, and National Guard and Reserve members:
- Purchase Loans help purchase a home at a competitive interest rate often without requiring a downpayment or private mortgage insurance.
- Cash Out Refinance Loans take cash out of your home equity to pay off debt, fund school, or make home improvements.
- Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan can help you obtain a lower interest rate by refinancing an existing VA loan.
- Native American Direct Loans help eligible Native American veterans finance the purchase, construction, or improvement of homes on Federal Trust Land, or reduce the interest rate on a VA loan.
- Adapted Housing Grants help veterans with a permanent and total service-connected disability purchase or build an adapted home or to modify an existing home to account for their disability.
About Victory State Bank:
VSB Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSBN) is the one-bank holding company for Victory State Bank. As Staten Island, N.Y.'s only community-based commercial bank, Victory State Bank operates five full-service locations on the Island: The main office in the community of Great Kills, and branches in the communities of West Brighton, St. George, Dongan Hills and Rosebank. For additional information, Victory State Bank may be reached at 718-979-1100 or visited online http://www.victorystatebank.com. .
Media Inquiries:
Relevant Public Relations, LLC
Headquarters: 718 682 1509
Mobile: 917 715 8761


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On the menu for today: 5 hour hike, and a lot of climbing/running/jumping/lifting/carrying while I'm up there!
On the menu for today: 5 hour hike, and a lot of climbing/running/jumping/lifting/carrying while I'm up there!
Josh Vernier, CPT
My Journal
Evolution Revolution Fitness
"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
-Ayn Rand
Legs are pretty tender after the Pause Squats yesterday, so took it a little easy this morning:
Straight Ellyptical (elevation 11, Resistance 5, s/m 220) 20:00
Will probably try to hit kenpo tonight, but will be taking it easy so I can hit it harder tomorrow.
"Suffer no guilt yee who wield this in the name of Crom"
Quote on the Father's Sword
Jogged 1/2 mile to a steep 1/2 mile long hill and did three quick hill repeats then ran 1/2 mile to a park and did 3 circuits of 10 chin-ups, 50 roll and tuck sit-ups, 50 push-ups with minimal rest then jogged the 1/2 mile back to the house. Found it to be pretty intense.
Paleo Journey - Diary of my experience eating the Paleo Diet | Facebook
A nice half-hour swim (in an outdoor pool, so hopefully I'm not getting as many nasty chemicals that way). I'm a slow swimmer, but today I managed to swim continuously for the whole half-hour without stopping. I am proud of myself.
AM: Straight Ellyptical (Elevation 13, Resistance 6, s/m 220) 20:00
PM: Four Rounds:
TRX Rows x 10
Divebomber Push Ups x 10
Vee Ups x 10
Jump Rope x 50
Single Kettlebell Swings x 10 each side
Double Kettlebell Presses x 10
Ice Skater Jumps x 10 each side
Legs still a little tender, but moving foward anyway...
"Suffer no guilt yee who wield this in the name of Crom"
Quote on the Father's Sword
It is summer! And today I was in the pool with my kids throwing them and playing for two hours!! Didn't feel like working out at all, but I am fatigued. Not weak, I have energy, but aware that I was really active for 120 minutes!!!
Squatted 225 for 5 (5,4,4) for the first time. My weakest lift, so it was great to make that.
If you are new to the PB - please ignore ALL of this stuff, until you've read the book, or at least http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/ and this (personal fave): http://www.archevore.com/get-started/
Next I'll either put the bar on the floor and add a plate for a 1x5 (if I have enough left in me) deadlifts or keep it on the rack and lose a plate for a few sets of good mornings. I do like to be efficient in the squat rack.
Not sure what else. Depends on what equipment the AC Slaters aren't fouling up with their bare midriffs and overly scant tank tops. Definitely pull-ups. Been doing more transverse-plane rows lately (I think? Bent-over rows and inverted rows.). Man, I hate pull-ups.


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Obama seeks support for attacking Syria while pursuing diplomacy
By Tom Cohen CNN | 9/11/2013, 7:05 a.m.
In an instant poll of people who watched the speech Tuesday night, 61% favored Obama's approach compared to 37% who opposed it.
The CNN/ORC International survey showed almost two-thirds of respondents thought the Syria situation would be resolved through diplomatic efforts, while 47% said Obama made a convincing case for military action compared to 50% who said he didn't.
By CNN's best estimate, the sample of poll respondents -- 37% Democrats, 20% Republicans and 43% independents -- was about seven percentage points more Democratic than the general public.
Critics call the situation faced by Obama his own doing for a confused Syria policy that he has never fully explained.
"There's a degree of incoherence that I have never seen the likes of," veteran Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona told CNN on Tuesday.
In the most emotional part of the speech, Obama cited the videos his administration made public that showed victims of the Syrian sarin gas attack.
"The images from this massacre are sickening: men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk," the president said in emphasizing the horror of chemical weapons.
"The question now is what the United States of America and the international community is prepared to do about it, because what happened to those people -- to those children -- is not only a violation of international law, it's also a danger to our security," Obama added.
Directly addressing questions he received from members of Congress and letters from the public, the president insisted that any U.S. military strike would be limited in scope and mission.
No American boots on the ground
"I know that after the terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of any military action -- no matter how limited -- is not going to be popular," he said, later declaring: "I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective, deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad's capabilities."
At the same time, he rejected criticism that such a limited military response would prove meaningless, saying "the United States military doesn't do pin pricks."
"Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver," Obama said. "I don't think we should remove another dictator with force. We learned from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next. But a targeted strike can makes Assad -- or any other dictator -- think twice before using chemical weapons."
He described the U.S. role in the world as "doing more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them."
"The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world's a better place because we have borne them," Obama said before making a direct appeal to both sides of the political spectrum.


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Hello all, I recently lost my beloved vsonic VC-02 and i am looking for something to replace it with. In the past I have had the Sennheiser CX-200 which was my first step up from awful skullcandys. I currently listen to Porta pros at home and i like them, they are not the best but they are fun to listen to. I think I am looking for more bass than my VC-02 and have found some replacement options. Meelectronics A151, Astrotec AM-90 or vsonics GR-02 bass. I usually listen to classic rock and folk rock like Bob Dylan, but there are other times when I enjoy things like dubstep.
post #1 of 4
7/28/13 at 9:55pm
Thread Starter


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New research substantiates Video Games as key advertising vehicle
March 23, 2007 New media research and measurement firm Interpret's Gameasure report is likely to make a few marketing managers think about the most effective way to spend their precious budget. The report reinforces the significance of video games as a medium for marketers seeking to reach and influence key demographic groups, particularly young males. The report measures actual reach, frequency and demographic makeup of over 80 video game titles and shows that games reach well beyond reported retail sales figures.
"Retail sales capture only a portion of the total audience playing individual game titles, suggesting current in-game advertising deals, which are primarily tied to these sales figures, under-value the medium," Michael Dowling, CEO, Interpret, noted. "As Gameasure clearly shows, the impact of social game play, rental, used sales and pass-around is not inconsequential and can vary widely by game title/genre, so having a more comprehensive measure of game play activity is crucial for in-game advertising to be seriously considered."
As an example of video game's extensive reach, Activision's Call of Duty 3 sold 2 million units in the U.S. as of February 3, 2007, according to The NPD Group. However, the actual reach as reported by Gameasure is nearly 9 million gamers – over a 4 times multiple; EA's Madden NFL 2007 has sold over 6 million units, but 14 million have actually played the game – just over a 2 times multiple.
Another key aspect of Gameasure is that it quantifies, for the first time, the demographic profile of individuals playing specific titles. For example, 21% of all males between the ages of 18 to 34 have played Halo2; of the 6.8 million people who have played Guitar Hero 2, 56% are males 12 to 34 and 30% are females 12 to 34. "There is a paucity of credible data on who actually plays different video game titles and franchises," said Dowling. "Gameasure takes the guess work out of the equation and provides a credible third-party measure of game play activity for buyers and sellers."
Advertisers and agencies have been exploring opportunities to integrate or place their brands/products into video games as a way to reach the elusive male audience. To date, there has been no reliable source of information to evaluate the reach or duration impact of video games. Activision, a long-time proponent of integrating advertising into video games (dating back to 1999) is a charter client of Interpret's Gameasure, having assisted in the development of the product, along with select advertising agency stakeholders. "We've known for a long time that the secondary reach of video games is significant," said David Anderson, Senior Director of Business Development, Activision. "Having a third-party measurement will not only help validate video games as a viable alternative, but will properly value the medium."
Interpret's Gameasure data is available through several media planning software products that currently reside on agency desktops (e.g. eTELMAR Crosstabing and All Media Planner software). This will enable media planners and buyers to assess video games' unique reach against broadcast & cable television, print, etc.
About Gameasure
Interpret's Gameasure is a tracking report that provides videogame publishers, advertisers and agencies with a title measurement currency. The product measures title reach, frequency, duration, and demographics for both console and PC platforms. The data is also available through several media planning software products. The Q1 2007 report provides a measure of over 80 of the best selling games of the last year. The next report will be available in April 2007.
About Interpret
A leading new media market research firm, Interpret is focused on evaluating and measuring the intersections of content, advertising, technology and consumer behavior. Staffed by senior ex-Nielsen execs, the company provides consumer research and new media measurement solutions to the stakeholders of traditional and new media. With media consumption habits shifting radically, the company's unique insight into consumer attitudes and behavior – whether consumed on "traditional" media platforms like movie screens or TV or on "new" media platforms like video games, cell phones or digitally distributed content online – Interpret is the go-to source on new media.


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Star Tracks: Monday, May 16, 2016
42 years, 2,191 covers and 55,436 stories from PEOPLE magazine's history for you to enjoy
Aug 11, 1980
Vol. 14 No. 6
August 11, 1980
Cover Story
Pg. 62
Read It
Divided They Stand: A Portrait of Plains Bares the Roots of 'Billygate'
Pg. 22
What's Middle-Aged and Has Fifty Big, Floppy Ears? A Reunion of 25 Mouseketeers
Pg. 28
Two Gung-Ho Nuclear Engineers Brave the Unknown to Clean Up Three Mile Island
Pg. 30
Veteran Madam Brandy Baldwin Pays for Her Sins—in a Convent
Pg. 32
Is Television the Real Power at the Conventions? Hogwash, Says One of Its Best and Brashest, Dan Rather
Pg. 37
Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Know 'The Great Happiness of Living to Be Very Old and Together'
Pg. 51
Bill Barich Was a Genuine Risk as a Writer Until He Discovered the World Behind the $2 Window
Pg. 58
Femmy De Lyser's P.B.R. Classes Teach the ABC's of Keeping Fit While Having a Baby
Pg. 68
Israel's First Native-Born Reform Rabbi Challenges Rigidity and Sexism in His Faith
Pg. 77
Cowboy Gary Hemsted Is Heels Over Head—or Is It Vice Versa?—Nuts for the Rodeo
Pg. 80
Cancer Columnist Jory Graham Knows Her Subject Only Too Well: She's a Victim Herself
Pg. 82
Getting Married Puts John and Patty Donovan on a Slippery Slope Indeed
Pg. 91
Your Folks or Your Wife? Jermaine Jackson Quit the Family Five but Could Inherit Motown
Pg. 95
If Life Isn't a 3-Ring Circus in Peru, Ind., It's Only Because One Is Enough
Pg. 99
Also In This Issue
Pg. 4
Pg. 102
Browse All Covers
Photos From
See Photos
More On People.com
Watch It
Copyright © 2016 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


text:
VIP Access™ Hotel
We carefully hand-picked this hotel based on its dedication to service and excellent guest reviews.
Orbitz Platinum members receive free room upgrades and Platinum and Gold members get other perks upon availability at check-in.See details
Located in Georgetown within a short walk of Georgetown University, Georgetown Inn is within a mile (2 km) of other popular sights such as George Washington University. This 3.5-star hotel welcomes guests with 96 rooms and conveniences like free in-room WiFi, a fitness center, and a 24-hour business center. In the historical district, it's also near White House and Lincoln Memorial.
In addition to a meal at the onsite restaurant, you can also enjoy a drink at the bar/lounge. Satisfy your hunger from the comfort of your room with room service. Cooked-to-order breakfast is offered for a fee each morning from 6:30 AM to 10:30 AM.
All 96 individually decorated accommodations feature sitting areas. 42-inch flat-screen TVs are available for entertainment, and guests can stay connected with free WiFi. Pillowtop beds grant a restful night's sleep, and bathrooms offer hair dryers and designer toiletries. Coffee makers, free local calls, and free bottled water are also standard.
Property features
Guests of Georgetown Inn enjoy a fitness center, free WiFi in public areas, and conference space. Valet parking is available for USD 35 per night. Multilingual staff at the 24-hour front desk can assist with dry cleaning/laundry, concierge services, and luggage storage. Additional amenities include a 24-hour business center, coffee/tea in a common area, and a computer station.
- Walking distance to Georgetown University
- Free WiFi in rooms and public areas
- Onsite dining
- Fitness center
Georgetown Inn1310 Wisconsin Ave Nw Washington DC 20007
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
The 96 luxurious rooms of Washington, DC's Georgetown Inn feature upscale amenities such as plush beds, designer toiletries, and elegant décor. Guests can enjoy modern, American cuisine at the onsite restaurant, The Daily Grill. Guests can take advantage of business amenities that include a business center with complimentary high-speed WiFi. The nearby Washington Sports Club offers complimentary access to its fitness facilities to all guests of the Georgetown Inn.
This is a smoke-free property.
- 24-hour front desk
- Total number of rooms - 96
- Number of floors - 6
- Valet parking (surcharge)
- Bar/lounge
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Coffee/tea in common areas
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Concierge services
- Conference space
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Elevator/lift
- Fitness facilities
- Computer station
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Free WiFi
- Multilingual staff
- Porter/bellhop
- Luggage storage
- Restaurant
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- 24-hour business center
- Smoke-free property
- Spa services on site
- Free use of nearby fitness center
- Year Built 1962
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
Family Friendly Amenities
- Family Hotel
- Free Wi-Fi
- Bowling alley on site
- Refrigerator (on request)
- Cribs/infant beds (complimentary)
Available in all rooms: Free WiFi
Available in some public areas: Free WiFi
Valet parking (surcharge)
Room Amenities
- Separate sitting area
- Air conditioning
- In-room climate control (air conditioning)
- Free local calls
- Premium TV channels
- Free bottled water
- Refrigerator (on request)
- Coffee/tea maker
- Daily housekeeping
- Turndown service
- Designer toiletries
- In-room massage available
- Slippers
- Bathrobes
- Free toiletries
- Hair dryer
- Iron/ironing board
- Desk
- Pillowtop mattress
- Flat-panel TV
- Free WiFi
- Blackout drapes/curtains
- Shower only
- Room service (limited hours)
- Individually furnished
- Connecting/adjoining rooms available
- Free cribs/infant beds
- Rollaway/extra beds (surcharge)
- Individually decorated
Where to Eat
The Daily Grill - offers an extensive menu of modern, American cuisine and comfort food classics for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The warm ambiance is great for an intimate dinner for two or a casual meetup with friends over hand-crafted cocktails. The restaurant also offers event catering.
Room service - in-room dining available for limited hours.
Nearby Things to Do
The Georgetown Inn has a fitness room and allows complimentary access to a fitness facility nearby.
Washington's beautiful Rock Creek Park, six blocks from the hotel, offers cycling and running paths, horse riding, tennis courts, and other recreational facilities.
The recreational activities listed below are available either on site or near the hotel; fees may apply.
- Golfing nearby
- Hiking/biking trails nearby
- Bowling alley on site
Spa Services
- Deep tissue massage
- Swedish massage
- Thai massage
- Sports massage
- Massages
To make special requests for accessibility needs, please note them at check-out when you book your room.
- Roll-in shower
- Accessible bathroom
- In-room accessibility
Hotel Policies
Check-in time starts at 4 PM
Minimum check-in age is 21
Check-out time is noon
Payment types
- Pets not allowed
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on hotel policy.
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card or cash deposit are required at check-in for incidental charges.
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges. Special requests cannot be guaranteed.
- Deposit: USD 50 per day
Optional extras
- Breakfast fee: between USD 10.95 and USD 30 per person (approximately)
- Valet parking fee: USD 35 per night (in/out privileges)
- Refrigerator fee: USD 20 per day
- Rollaway bed fee: USD 30 per stay
Hotel Name
- Georgetown Inn
- Inn Georgetown
- Georgetown Hotel Washington Dc
We should mention
Up to 3 children 17 years old and younger stay free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding. The property has connecting/adjoining rooms, which are subject to availability and can be requested by contacting the property using the number on the booking confirmation.


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Leah Giraud arrived at the Poland Avenue distribution site just after 9 a.m., looking for a blue tarp to cover the holes Hurricane Isaac tore into her roof in Lakeview. Giraud has two leaks, one worse than the other, said Giraud, a spry 71-year-old who parked her car on Dauphine Street and walked a few blocks to the naval base's gate, where the Louisiana National Guard had worked into the night unloading truckloads of MREs, water, ice and other supplies.
A line of cars snaked a half mile along the Mississippi River from the gate and a New Orleans Police Department officer at the gate stopped Giraud, "No pedestrians," he said, advising her to get in the vehicle and join the line, which already stretched up to Congress Street by that time.
The Guardsmen on duty explained that five cars at a time were allowed through the gates; when they were loaded up, five more were allowed through.
On Friday, the Poland Avenue site was inundated early and ran out of supplies by around 10 a.m. At first, more deliveries were promised within the hour. But supply trucks were kept away by a traffic accident that blocked roads from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and so a line of parked cars waited for several hours before being chased away around 3 p.m. by police officers, who told those waiting that they could no longer park there and that the site was closed "indefinitely."
Other Orleans distribution sites, in Algiers and eastern New Orleans, didn't run out as early and were without supplies on Friday for much shorter periods, if at all.
The long-delayed supplies finally arrived at Poland Avenue by early evening on Friday and more arrived throughout the night, Guard officers said on Saturday morning, as they assured people in line that they were "fully stocked."
So much had arrived at Poland that two trucks left there on Saturday morning headed to the West Bank, said Maj. Elias Koniditsiotis, a New Orleanian Guardsman working at the naval base on Saturday.


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Timelinespremiered this weekend at thefidget space and was everything I always hoped it would be. Everyone I talked to after the show was really impressed. You can read a... Read more
Hi everyone!
Its hard to believe that Timelinespremieres this weekend!! David, Megan, Jon and I have been hard at work preparing for the show and we hope you will... Read more
Only 10 days left!
Thank you everyone who has donated to this project! Because of you, we are only $264 short of reaching our goal!
As you know, Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing fundraising campaign. I... Read more
Work in Progress
This weekend I had a showing of Timelinesat thefidget space. We wanted to see how the lighting, costume and movement looked with the projection. Over the summer we've been... Read more
Kickstarter Homepage
Today my project made it on Kickstarter's homepage. It's currently listed under the Popular category.
Thank you for believing in me and my project!


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Today is our 10 year wedding anniversary. We were married on January 16, 2004 in jeans at a county clerk in TN. We have always said that for our 10 yr we would have our wedding. Image my excitement last year when we decided to make that a reality.
There are so many great pictures I couldn't choose, but I did narrow them down. The day was magical and having our very special close family and friends made it even more special. I will get into more details coming up. I plan to go through and have a couple of DIY posts on the center pieces, boutiques and makeup looks.
I found a lovely bee under my dress moments before the ceremony! Luckily I am not allergic, it just hurt.
My beautiful cousin was our officiate.
Yes, we had five cakes! One for each family member. 5 designs, 5 flavors and they were delicious!
We were married at Vecoma at Yellow River
I wore Mori Lee 6726, with the WTOO Mimi flower both found at Formally Yours
Anthony Thurmond photography- a wonderful husband & wife team
Cakes- For Goodness Cakes (my BFF and matron of honor happens to be one of the talented decorators)
Suits- Tan rentals from Men's Warehouse
Bridesmaid dresses- Bill Levkoff – all were floor length chiffon, deep purple, sweet heart neckline and all slightly different
Bridal Jewelry- T's Studio -I wore the Carolyn bracelet and Kara stud earrings
Linking up with Lipgloss & Crayons
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Deputies say a 27-year-old man is dead after a police chase in Anderson County.
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conflicts between the normative prescriptions of different groups to which individuals belong.
CC perspective focuses on....
Concerned with....
conflicts between the normative prescriptions of different groups to which individuals belong.
Subcultures of violence
conflicts between the normative prescriptions of different groups to which individuals belong.
Thorstein Sellin
believed that crime was the result of conflicts between the norms of the different cultural groups.
The primary and secondary culture conflict approach believed that...
Believed that the norms of individual cultures and subcultures dictate individual desires, as well as the preferred methods of achieving them. (instrumental)
Primary Culture Conflict
occurs when the norms of the native culture are unacceptable in the new, dominant culture of the society in which a person lives.
Secondary Culture Conflict
occurs when the norms of one social grouping are defined as criminal by another social grouping within the same culture. (different segments within a single cultural group have contradictory norms governing a particular aspect of social behavior)
is when a society increases the size of its population by natural, internal means, and roles become more specialized.
Status politics
is the use of moral-legal questions to take and/ or hold symbolic and political power over another group.
Subcultural approach focuses on....
Focuses attention on the role played by membership in small and relatively intimate groups. (Gangs, clubs, etc.)
Subculture is based on...
differences between the social classes, and the conflicts that exist between them.
may be considered a type of subculture in which certain mainstream social norms are deliberately inverted.
Cohen (Ohlin)
believes that delinquent subcultures purposefully develop deviant norms for behavior that are in direct opposition to the larger adult culture.
Developed the concept of near group—a collection of individuals who remain in a state of partial organization over a fairly long period of time.
What are the six Lower Class Culture factors?
Trouble, Toughness, Smartness, Excitement, Fate, Autonomy (look at notes for detail)
Miller proposes that....
that lower-class cultural system exerts the most direct pressure on behavior.


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Hi! My name is Lily
I am a Turkish Angora from Plainwell, MI
Nicknames: We like to call her Pooters. my dad keeps saying she "poots" around.
Age: 15 years old
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My favorite tricks and treats are: catnip
Where I hang out: She loves the back of the couch. she loves to watch all the birds
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My pet peeves: She hates it when you pick her up!
What I love about my owners: she loves to pet me
My cat hobbies: Sleep
Pet motto: if people come other than my owners, RUN AWAY!
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our old cat die so we took care of my grandma and grandpa's cat while they we in florida. after we returned him, we went "kitten shopping" she was the last kitten and the cutest and the fluffyest. so we took her.
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Skidmore's homer helps Colts best Minutemaids
Lewis baseball team outlasts PB in 10 innings
April 8, 2014
PHILIPPI — Maddy Skidmore hit a solo home run Monday to help power Philip Barbour past Lewis County, 4-3, in Big 10 Conference action. Haelli Killen earned the victory for the Colt....
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Pupils from four East Riding schools will be the first in the country to try out a new teaching resource on the unique wildlife of The Galapagos Islands.
Children from Bishop Wilton, Newbald, and Warter primary schools and Woldgate College will take part in a workshop this week (June 26th & 27th) run by conservation experts from the London-based Galapagos Conservation Trust and organised by Thixendale wildlife artist Robert E Fuller.
The workshops are designed to teach students about the creatures that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and include photographs and video of waved albatross and blue footed boobies taken by Mr Fuller during a fact-finding tour commissioned by the Trust in May.
"I'm delighted to be able to provide the Galapagos Conservation Trust with footage of the way in which these unique species interact," said Mr Fuller.
"It is so important that children learn about how conservationists are supporting the wildlife of this very special region and about the importance of its continued survival."
The school workshops, which involve activities and games to demonstrate how species adapt and how food chains work, take place on Thursday June 26th and Friday June 27th.
They precede a new teaching resource due to be launched later this year. The international bilingual website, www.discoveringgalapagos.org.uk aims to provide a comprehensive resource for use by teachers, students and the general public.
Entitled Discovering Galapagos, it will be launched to teachers around the world at an official ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society London headquarters in October.
The interactive website been designed to fit in with next year's new nationwide curriculum requirements and also covers topics such as volcanoes and the history of Charles Darwin.
It is the result of a collaborative effort headed by the Galapagos Conservation Trust, the UK's only charity dedicated exclusively to the conservation and sustainability of the Galapagos Islands. Other partners include The Royal Geographical Society, Robert E Fuller and the literacy charity The Book Bus, which will assist in delivering the programme to schools in Ecuador.
Mr Fuller is to also host a family workshop run by the Galapagos Conservation Trust at his gallery in Thixendale on Saturday June 28 as part of his art exhibition on Galapagos wildlife, which runs until July 13th.


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What do responses to the Washington DC 20-week abortion ban tell us about the habits of the prochoice movement?
Last week the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation for women in Washington, DC. Organizational press releases and media coverage by friendly pundits decried this act by focusing either on a selected set of women's stories or on the unconstitutionality of the ban itself.
I believe these approaches do little to help the general public understand this complex issue. Rather, they tell us more about the habits of the prochoice movement—and why a new approach is needed that focuses on all women's need for resources, rights and respect to make reproductive decisions.
Over the last month, we have been reading a lot about the role of habits in people's lives (see Power of Habits, by Charles Duhigg). These readings have led my colleague Sujatha Jesudason and I to think about the habits of the prochoice movement. We believe that two of our habits are utilizing a narrative of "victimization" and focusing on the constitutionality of the issue rather than on its larger social value. These two habits lead us to choose stories of women that amplify their victimhood and elevate a legal solution.
These approaches to resisting abortion restrictions were once deliberate choices about what was politically expedient, but I believe that today they have simply become habits.
In the case of opposition to the DC 20-week ban, the selected stories are ones in which women are deserving of abortion because they are victims of a larger tragic tale. More than a few press releases focus on the story of a woman pregnant with a baby without a brain; others share the story of a young victim of sexual assault. Later abortions are justified because women either don't really want the abortions or because they were not at fault in the pregnancy.
I fully acknowledge that women who need abortions because of the health of the fetus or the violence that preceded the pregnancy may make more sympathetic protagonists for public storytelling. Indeed, the mobilizations of these stories may once have garnered public support for abortion rights. But as these later abortion bans sweep across the country and public support for abortions after the first trimester hovers at 25%, we have to question whether continuing to reinforce the idea that some women need abortions more than others does more harm than good. In other words, I do not believe we are served by continuing to resort to a familiar habit.
Indeed, the truth is that most of the women whose abortions will be banned in DC have far more complicated real-life stories. They include late discovery of pregnancy; difficulty making the decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy; conflict with the man involved in the pregnancy; inability to locate an abortion provider; and challenges in obtaining the money for the abortion, finding childcare, or getting the time off work. And most often, their stories are combinations of a lot of these factors.
While some women will need abortions because their wanted pregnancies "went wrong" or because they were victims of sexual assault, most women will need abortions because of the circumstances of their lives. We need to support all women's ability to decide to terminate a pregnancy and not demand that they tell us a story of victimhood in order to gain access to abortions. No matter the circumstances, women get to decide about their futures and the futures of their families; women in our stories should not be victims needing sympathy, but heroes of their own lives.
The second approach to critiquing the 20-week ban is to focus on its violation of the constitutional protection of Roe v Wade. This approach reflects a second habit of the prochoice movement—to focus on the belief that courts, not women, set the rules for abortion. As others have noted, women do not enter a clinic with the intent to exercise their constitutional rights. Rather, women have and have always had abortions because they are making decisions about their lives. Whether or not that act is "constitutional" is not the question they ask themselves.
The idea that what is wrong with an abortion restriction is that it is unconstitutional is an argument for the courts, not the public. What the public needs to understand is that women can and will terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks, as they have for centuries and across the globe, regardless of whether the courts say what they are doing is legal.
I do not write this to infer that abortion should be legal because women will revert to back alleys, rather to express that women have abortions because of the circumstances of their lives, not because it is a legal right. And it may well turn out that the Supreme Court decides that a 20-week ban is constitutional—after all, this Court found Citizens United to be constitutional, as well as Arizona's hostile immigration law SB1070. Supporters of women's decision-making need not rely on the Court to decide whether a ban on abortion after 20 weeks is unacceptable. Roe is not the standard for abortion; women's decision-making is. It deserves legal protection because it is a fact of women's existence; it is not a fact because it is legally protected.
Breaking habits requires risk-taking and learning to do things differently. Over the next year, we are likely to see many more efforts to ban abortions later in pregnancy—either by state legislatures or the federal government. This is a time for new ways of talking about the issue. Our approach should affirm that women have abortions after 20 weeks not because they are victims of a set of circumstances that makes their abortions justifiable or because abortion is a constitutional right, but because they are agents of their own lives.
Women face both horrendous and mundane circumstances in the context of later abortion. No matter the circumstances, all these women deserve to be respected in their decisions, to have the resources they need to enact those decisions, and the rights to do so without interference. The stories we tell should be of women as heroes, where it is their ability to act that deserves respect, not the circumstances that created the need for a decision. Twenty-week bans are wrong not because women are victims or because the Supreme Court said so in 1973, but because all women deserve the resources, rights and respect to make their own sexual and reproductive decisions.
Photo of House Judiciary Committee © Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News
Tracy, I agree with your analysis. It is a position I have always held with regard to the education gap and racism. Whenever these stories are portrayed it is always to hear a "success" story or to portray a person or family who are "caught in the system" through circumstances outside their control. Both of these position portray victims. It's almost as if as long as we can identify victims then there is something to fix. The much larger socioeconomic, societal institution of racsim and American caste system is far to large a concept for most to understand and accept, much less propose or be a part of a solution. It would require that we all sacrifice for the larger good and most, I think, are unwilling to do that. They are willing to help a victim but unwilling to help make lasting changes that would benefit all for fear this will change their lives.
The dialogue does need to change. How do we do that in a political climate that so quickly devolves to the lowest level of conversation?
After giving much thought to your article, I'm going to take a slightly different spin on what I think you are saying:
We are coming at this fight with the voice of the powerless. Instead of saying, "we are women and we deserve to have autonomy over our bodies and freedom over our fates, goddamnit." We are saying, "Please, oh please, we know you are basically going to strip us of this right, but please leave a loophole or two for these incredibly terrifying circumstances that surely even you can find an iota of pity in your heart to excuse." We are not coming at this as warriors. We are scrambling to hold onto whatever we can as they roll over us.
I happen to be one of the few women out there with such a terrifying story — I could perfectly represent the voice of the victim, as you put it. I don't feel like a victim, but I can understand the use of that word describing the discussion dynamics.
You've convinced me that we need to change these dynamics. But how?
How do you get women who have abortions for non-medical reasons to speak up? There is enough vitriol to keep me quiet, and I have my thin armor of tragic circumstances to hide behind. It would be even more terrifying to speak out in this culture without that.
How do you get people who have never had to make the choice think critically on this issue and join in the fight? Nobody thinks it will happen to her. We all live our lives avoiding the thought until we find ourselves pregnant when we shouldn't be. Denial is a huge hindrance to widespread acceptance.
How do you talk to people who don't care if women hand over a suitcase of cash only to bleed to death on some quack's kitchen table? How do you talk to people who have so little respect and love for women that they believe that end is what she deserves?
I agree that women deserve this unconditionally because freedom over our own bodies is the most basic and righteous of freedoms. I just don't know where to start in changing the power dynamic of this discussion.
I agree ,but where are the right to life people on the importance of the sanctity of a women's life if she dies during an illegal abortion why isn't her life valued by the pro life people as much as the fetus's right to live? Are they ok with letting a women die over the few hr,day month of a fertilized egg? That seems more immoral to me.Why is a fertilized egg superior to a live women? That is the issue here. I had an abortion because I could not afford to have another child and my birth control failed me.I think that is a right that should be upheld! I really think that is my business and not the governments.I think if you deny women the right over there own body then there should be laws regulating men from being irresponsible about not having some sort of birth control effort. Why lay this on only half of the equation ? Why should women be discriminated against and decision over her body taken away and not do the same to the man who fertilizes the egg?
Thanks for this piece. It resonates with me deeply as a provider of abortion care and as an "out" advocate of reproductive justice, the framework most cogent with your remarks but least known by people moved by this issue. To your point, when advocates have sought stories from me to make the case for abortion, it has always been a request for tragic circumstances, the stories felt to be the most likely ones to move opinion. The reality is that that is not the typical patient I see, as most women having abortions are not raped or are not carrying a lethally flawed fetus, and yet I have not identified a clear distinction between women I am willing to help and those I am not based on "acceptability" of circumstance. My requirements to proceed with an abortion when women present for care are ability to consent, absence of coercion, clarity of thought, and certitude about the decision. "Why" she is having the abortion, even as her physician, I choose to leave in the realm of her privacy where it can remain beyond even my ability to judge her. I have found that a reproductive justice framework, where all reproductive possibilities are weighed equally and placed within reach of individual to select, allows me to do that and I join you in your call for a shift in how we do advocacy and activism.
Tracy has articulated something that has bothered me for a long time. I suspect the only way to change the conversation is for women and men all over the country to get brave and say they've had an abortion, helped someone have one, or would, that they have no regrets. I'm continually appalled at the narrative in fictional media that requires trauma to either prompt or be the result of an abortion, and that colors the whole conflict.
But I understand that we have naturally responded to the emotional blackmail of the other side by trying to do the same. When someone calls you a "babykiller," etc. it's impossible to respond and they know that. Maybe there is room also for an offense as well as a defense — laws to delay all elective surgery for 20 weeks? Manadatory parental permission to use viagra? There must be something.