[W]here civic accountability, the rule of law and democratic process are not firm, nations cannot handle the windfall. The very presence of oil turns citizens into thugs and pushes nations backward into chaos. [She cites the Biafran civil war in the 1960s as an example of evil, and the necessity of non-oil-laden countries such as Germany and Japan to develop through other means as a good.]

[O]il wealth relieves a nation of the pressure to tax (Saudi Arabia). The state therefore has no stake in the private-sector creation of wealth or citizens' day-to-day well-being. There is no need for a civic relationship — on either side. Property rights, contract law, reliable courts — to us, basics — seem dispensable. And the state is free to bully. Or to steal — remember the $4 billion in oil money that recently disappeared in Angola?

[T]he problems that are the basis of these articles - high and varying drug prices and incomplete disclosure of scientific research - are all predictable results of government-granted patent monopolies. If the government allowed prescription drugs to be sold in a competitive market, and used an alternative mechanism to support prescription drug research (such as increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health), these problems would not exist. Prescription drug prices would fall 70 to 80 percent in a competitive market, and there would be no incentive for concealing and distorting research findings.

The Post article includes a quote from President Bush in which he praises the government's new discount card program by saying, "one of the things I believe is that markets have got a fantastic way of rewarding people with better quality and better price." This would seem to be an extraordinary gaffe, since he is clearly referring to a non-market solution (a government authorized discount card in a market where the government grants firms monopolies). Given the importance of the issue of prescription drug prices, this gaffe deserved more attention than it received.

Edward N. Wolff, an economist at New York University who analyzed 18 years of household financial data collected by the Federal Reserve[,] found that the average net worth of an older household grew 44 percent, adjusted for inflation, from 1983 to 2001, to $673,000. But much of that growth was in the accounts of the richest households, which pushed the averages up. When Mr. Wolff looked at the net worth of the median older household - the one at the midpoint of the economic ladder, a better indicator of what is typical - the picture changed. That figure declined by 2.2 percent, or $4,000, during the period, to $199,900. For a generation to emerge from two bullish decades with less wealth than its parents had "is remarkable," Mr. Wolff said. Based on economic growth and market returns over those 18 years, he said, their wealth "should be up around 30 or 40 percent."

The Fed's household-finance data also show that when pensions were more common, they served as a social leveler. … The advent of self-directed retirement plans, by contrast, is giving rise to an elite minority who are well prepared for retirement, and a majority who are falling behind, the numbers show.

"It may be hard to understand why `tort reform' is even on the national agenda at a time when insurance industry profits are booming, tort filings are declining, only 2 percent of injured people sue for compensation, punitive damages are rarely awarded, liability insurance costs for businesses are minuscule, medical malpractice insurance and claims are both less than 1 percent of all health care costs in America, and premium-gouging underwriting practices of the insurance industry have been widely exposed."

What is needed is a nationwide crackdown on malpractice, not a campaign to roll back the rights of patients who are injured. This is another utterly typical example of the Bush administration going to bat for those who are economically and politically powerful against those who are economically and politically weak. … This is all about greed. What tort reform will lead to, not surprisingly, is an unwarranted burst of additional profits for the insurance industry, which is why the industry is sinking so much money into its unrelenting campaign for "reform."

The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy.

To bolster his argument Mr. Bush introduced a local doctor, Compton Girdharry, to an audience at Youngstown State University. Dr. Girdharry, an obstetrician/gynecologist, said he had been driven from a practice of 21 years by the high cost of malpractice insurance. … If Mr. Bush was looking for an example of a doctor who was victimized by frivolous lawsuits, Dr. Girdharry was not a great choice. Since the early 1990's, he has settled lawsuits and agreed to the payment of damages in a number of malpractice cases in which patients suffered horrible injuries.

[In one case, while the mother] was in the delivery room, however, the fetal monitoring strip was not properly checked and, she said, she was left alone and in pain for long periods. Dr. Girdharry stopped by around 6 p.m. and then went to dinner. No one noticed that the baby was in serious distress. Dr. Girdharry blamed the ensuing tragedy on the nurse. Ms. Vitale, he told me, "was being monitored by a nurse who was what they call a casual part-time nurse, who was not very well trained in reading fetal monitor strips." By the time he was called back from dinner, he said, it was "too late" to take the steps, including a Caesarean delivery, that might have prevented permanent injury.

[In another case, after the delivery,] a sponge with a cord and a ring attached to it was left inside. [In response to the patient's repeated cries of pain, the doctor told her only,] "Well, you just had major surgery. You've got to heal." [By the time the malpractice was discovered by others, the sponge] had adhered to her internal organs and her intestines were surrounding it. … [As a result,] part of her large and small intestines had [to be] removed, and … she probably would have died if the sponge had stayed inside her for another month.

Yesterday a White House spokesman said the president had not been aware of the problems in Dr. Girdharry's background. "Had this doctor provided that information," the spokesman said, "he would not have been at that event."

The House passed legislation on Thursday that would overhaul the corporate tax code and resolve a long-running trade dispute between the United States and Europe while offering $140 billion in tax breaks that affect almost every corner of industry. … [Both House and Senate] bills include scores of special-interest tax breaks, from $30 billion in tax reductions on foreign corporate profits to dozens of tax breaks for timber companies, oil and gas drillers, movie studios and wine distributors and manufacturers of bows and arrows. To attract Democrats in tobacco-producing states, Republican leaders also included a hotly disputed provision that would pay tobacco farmers $9.6 billion in exchange for giving up price supports and quotas. … Both the House and Senate bills would replace the existing tax break for exporters with a 10 percent tax reduction on profits from products made in the United States.

Medicare and most Medicaid programs base their drug reimbursement rates on what’s known as the average wholesale price, or AWP, which is set by the drug companies. Insurance companies and patients also pay doctors and pharmacies based on the AWP. But nearly 30 drug companies have been giving doctors deep discounts compared to the price that they bill Medicare. Drug makers use the profit margin between the AWP and what doctors can bill Medicare to manipulate physicians and health insurance companies to use their products for Medicare beneficiaries. … In one investigation, the [Office of Inspector General] OIG compared 1999 prices paid by Medicare, which used the AWP to set its provider reimbursements, with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which did not use the AWP and instead negotiated directly with the drug companies, and “concluded that Medicare and Medicare beneficiaries would have saved $1.6 billion if they had paid the same price for the 24 drugs that the VA paid.” The OIG’s analysis of the AWP list lead to the conclusion that “in the year 2000, Medicare paid at least $887 million more that the actual wholesale prices available.”

Employers with large underfunded pension plans had an aggregate funding shortfall of nearly $280 billion last year, a slight improvement over 2002 but up dramatically from just a few years ago, the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. reported Thursday. In 2003, 1,050 pension plans—each with at least $50 million in unfunded liabilities—were underfunded by a total of $278.6 billion. That compares with a funding deficit for 1,058 plans of $305.9 billion in 2002 and a funding shortfall of $18.4 billion for 166 plans in 1999, when a booming stock market significantly boosted the value of pension plan assets.

The lawyers … are calling for the creation of a trust that would be financed by the hospitals and would provide affordable medical care for those without insurance. Because the hospitals have tax-exempt status and other benefits as nonprofit organizations, the lawyers argue that they have an obligation to provide affordable care to the uninsured. … The lawyers also say the hospitals are sitting on large, untaxed sums that should help pay for care for the uninsured. Some hospitals are described in the suits as being among the most profitable hospital systems in the nation with hundreds of millions, even billions, in assets and revenue.

Insurance … doesn't move in logical lockstep with the economy's growth, like so many businesses do. Rather, insurers compete too hotly for years at a time, pricing policies cheaply because they want to collect premium dollars and invest them. Doctors don't complain as much during these periods. Years of that typically catch up with the industry. And, for some companies at least, the cost of paying claims—for car crashes, hurricane damage or doctors' errors—exceeds the premiums collected and investment gains realized on those premiums. That means losses, and a pulling back in the market. Some insurers exit the market. Premiums rise. And, typically, insurers become more profitable, their reserves fattened against future claims. A few years of that, of course, and they're slashing prices again to gain marketshare, and the whole cycle starts anew.

… Each year, ISMIE estimates against the policies it writes that year, the dollar amount of malpractice claims that will result in coming years, as lawsuits trickle in and are settled or tried over a decade. That initial estimate of future losses is then adjusted over time as actual claims against the policy year start to come in. Sometimes ISMIE guesses too high, sometimes too low. … It's hardly a science. Right now, ISMIE is expecting claims costs for policies written the past two years to increase, to $229.9 million for 2002 policies and $242.4 million for 2003 policies. … They're up from an estimated $183.1 million in claims costs for 2001 policies … .

The number of people living in the path of potentially devastating floods is set to double — from one to two billion — within two generations unless adequate preventative steps are taken, according to researchers at the United Nations University (UNU). The researchers blame climate change, deforestation, rising seas and population growth for the elevated risk of facing once-in-100-year flooding.

… Each year, 25,000 people are killed in floods worldwide, and many more are affected by resulting homelessness, disease and crop failures. … Each year, floods and weather-related disasters cost the global economy US$50-60 billion. According to [Janos Bogardi, founding director of the UNU Institute for Environment and Human Security], these losses could be reduced if current spending on flood prevention and prediction were increased. Whilst countries are generous with post-disaster relief, they are thrifty where preparedness is concerned, spending US$100 on relief for every US$1 that is spent on preparedness.

Corporate democracy in the United States is a little like democracy in the old Soviet Union. Soviet citizens were free to vote, but there was only one slate of candidates on the ballot. … The corporate CEO and his friends on board decide the slate of directors. There is almost never opposition. The outcome, shall we say, lacks suspense. … In theory …, the board of directors is the shareholders' watchdog in chief. In reality, corporate chief executives have held tremendous sway over the nomination of directors. The typical board meeting is a convocation of cronies.

… American capital markets basically function on trust. Investors must trust company financial statements, and that means trusting their managers. Without such trust, investors hold back, the cost of capital rises even for honest companies and the whole American economic engine starts wheezing. … Business opposition to the SEC's reforms shows that corporate leadership is still a rather cozy club that dislikes party-crashers sent by the shareholders. That alone is a good reason to crash the party. The SEC's Mr. Donaldson should stand firm.

The ranks of the working poor are swelling as more families slip into poverty, health benefits are lost and low-wage employees bear the brunt of many corporate cutbacks. That means more employees — many of them in service jobs that are essential to the economy — are working full-time, only to find they can barely support their families. They wait tables at restaurants where they can't afford to eat, wash cars but can only take the bus and care for children but don't make enough to hire a babysitter. About 35 million Americans lived in poverty in 2002, which is 1.7 million more people than in 2001, according to Census data.

… "This is a very interesting sociological change. We've created a new class of poor. There is this huge group of people who want to work, who are working, but it's a form of being indentured," [Philip] Coltoff [chief executive of the philanthropic Children's Aid Society] says. "America has always been built on the belief that you can do better, but we have shut down the ladder to the middle class."

"No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live a lifetime…They shall build houses and inhabit them: they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit: they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen will long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear their children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord….” (Isaiah 65:20-25)

1. We recognize that budgets are moral documents that reflect our values and priorities. All tax policies and spending proposals should be evaluated with a publicly available analysis of how they assist people in overcoming poverty and strengthening families and communities.

2. As a society we must commit to supporting all who work and those unable to work by providing:

- a living family income- quality healthcare

- affordable housing- adequate nutrition

- educational opportunity for their children with the goal of reducing the number of children in poverty by half in ten years.

3. We must commit to significantly reducing the number of people worldwide who experience extreme poverty, in cooperation with other nations, through a foreign policy that sees just trade, effective international aid, and reducing the debt of impoverished nations as central to our national and global security.

Model 2 of the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security proposes new individual accounts, certain benefit reductions for all beneficiaries, and certain benefit enhancements for selected low earners and survivors. According to our simulations, the combined effect could result in lower earners receving a greater share of all benefits than promised or funded under the current system if all workers invest in the same portfolio.

Rather than model account participation, we instead simulate benefits under two scenarios, one where all individuals participate and another scenario where no one participates. As a result, we do not capture any distributional effects that might result from account participation varying by earnings level. For instance, if lower earners are less likely to participate in the individual accounts, then our simulations may overstate their share of benefits, as account participation is likely to increase benefits.

Through clear writing and honest, careful marshaling of facts, he shows that people really do have good reason to complain about taxes, but not for the reasons they usually think. The real problem is that the richest people in America are using the tax system to make themselves ever richer, at everyone else's expense.

… The architect of America's great disinflation was Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman. In fact, Mr. Volcker began the process in 1979, when he adopted the tight monetary policy that caused that record unemployment rate. He was also mainly responsible for the recovery that followed: it was his decision to loosen up on the money supply in the summer of 1982 that set the stage for the rebound a few months later.

… Think about it: Mr. Reagan passed his big tax cut right at the beginning of his presidency, and mainly raised taxes thereafter. So we're supposed to believe that a tax cut passed in 1981 was somehow responsible for an economic miracle that didn't materialize until around 1997.

Many children needlessly die and huge amounts of money are wasted because of safety lapses in hospitals, according to the most comprehensive study done on the impact of the problem. More than 4,000 children died in 2000 because of lapses, which cost more than $1 billion in extra hospital charges from longer stays and follow-up care for the ill and injured. The study, published in the new issue of Pediatrics, found that the youngest and poorest patients were the most vulnerable. … The researchers did not analyze medication errors - one of the most common types of medical mistakes - which means that the overall impact of patient safety problems could be much greater. The statistics also apply only to care delivered in hospitals.

An owner, like Enron, that can earn the 10.5 percent profit on investment set by utility regulators and then pocket the tax money as well could earn more than 20 percent annually on its investment in a utility.

A research firm that the Bush administration commissioned to analyze its plan to lower emissions from coal-fired power plants compared the plan with two competing legislative proposals and concluded in a report released Wednesday that the administration's plan was the weakest. … [The report found that the Bush plan would] eliminat[e] 58 percent of deaths related to power plant emissions by 2020, the first year all the plans would be fully implemented, and the Jeffords bill [would] eliminat[e] nearly 90 percent. The report criticized Mr. Bush as backing off a campaign pledge in 2000 to establish reduction targets for four big pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide.

Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration. It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush's decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq. … What we have seen, topped by that legalistic treatise on torture, shows clearly that Mr. Bush set the tone for this dreadful situation by pasting a false "war on terrorism" label on the invasion of Iraq.

A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security. … [T]he prohibition against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority." … In addition, [a] memorandum, dated Feb. 2, 2002, noted that lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency had asked for an explicit understanding that the administration's public pledge to abide by the spirit of the conventions did not apply to its operatives.

The report also said that interrogators could justify breaching laws or treaties by invoking the doctrine of necessity. An interrogator using techniques that cause harm might be immune from liability if he "believed at the moment that his act is necessary and designed to avoid greater harm."

The March memorandum also contains a curious section in which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas.

Symbol Technologies Inc. agreed to pay a total of $138 million in settlements to resolve accounting fraud allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and to settle a class-action shareholder lawsuit. … The SEC's complaint alleged that Symbol and the 11 defendants -- who include former president and CEO Tomo Razmilovic and former CFO Kenneth Jaeggi, schemed for at least five years to inflate the company's revenue and earnings to meet Wall Street estimates by using accounting gimmicks such as "cookie jar reserves" and "channel stuffing." The SEC said the accounting scandal resulted in an impact of over $230 million on Symbol's reported revenue and over $530 million on its pre-tax earnings.

… HealthSouth released the findings of its internal review of the fraud, which has resulted in plea deals for 17 former HealthSouth executives and charges against fired CEO Richard Scrushy, who pleaded innocent. The company said its investigation found $2.75 billion in fraudulent entries and another $632 million in misstatements linked to improper accounting practices. … "The accounting fraud at HealthSouth was by any standard both enormous and complex. Its concealment over the course of nearly seven years required considerable effort and, in some cases, luck," the company said in its report.

Specifically, GSK conducted at least five studies on the use of Paxil in children and adolescents. However, GSK only published and disseminated one of these studies, which showed mixed results on efficacy. The lawsuit alleges that the company suppressed the negative results of the other studies, which failed to demonstrate that Paxil is effective and which suggested a possible increased risk of suicidal thinking and acts. GSK is also alleged to have failed to disclose this information in "Medical Information Letters" that it sent to physicians. … The company portrayed the drug as having "remarkable efficacy and safety in the treatment of adolescent depression."

[T]he firm's sophisticated, self-obsessed thieves considered [the public] easy prey[: Enron] "just (expletive) California... to the tune of a million bucks or two a day." … In one tape, after enduring a bit of ribbing about "how much money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California," a trader says, "Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to (expletive) vote on the butterfly ballot…" The first speaker responds, "Yeah, now she wants her (expletive) money back for all the power you've... jammed right up her (expletive) for (expletive) 250 dollars a megawatt-hour." Other tapes document traders' nefarious plans such as sending power away from areas that needed it, manufacturing grid congestion that Enron would later be paid to alleviate. They also capture the hope that then-candidate George W. Bush might someday appoint Ken Lay as U.S. energy secretary.

Yet his second term as president emphasized a different set of goals. I think he understood that it is the peacemakers, above all, who earn a place in history. … The dialogue that President Reagan and I started was difficult. To reach agreement, particularly on arms control and security, we had to overcome mistrust and the barriers of numerous problems and prejudices. … [W]hile adhering to his convictions, with which one could agree or disagree, he was not dogmatic; he was looking for negotiations and cooperation. … While addressing these vital tasks [of bilateral arms reduction], we changed the nature of relations between our two countries, moving step by step to build trust and to test it by concrete deeds. And in the process, we — and our views — were changing too. I believe it was not an accident that during his visit to Moscow in the summer of 1988 President Reagan said, in reply to a reporter's question, that he did not regard the perestroika-era Soviet Union as an evil empire.

I think that the main lesson of those years is the need for dialogue, which must not be broken off whatever the challenges and complications we have to face. Meeting with Ronald Reagan in subsequent years I saw that this was how he understood our legacy to the new generation of political leaders.

On average, the bottom four-fifths of households — households with income below about $76,400 — would lose more than they gain from the tax cuts once the necessary financing is taken into account. … Middle-income households would be worse off under both scenarios for financing the tax cuts, but would fare much worse if tax cuts are financed entirely on an equal dollar burden basis (such as could occur if the adjustment were largely or entirely undertaken through spending cuts). … Low-income households would be worse off under either scenario, but face potentially enormous costs if the tax cuts are financed entirely on an equal dollar burden basis. … Conversely, high-income households would be net winners, and the gains among the highest-income households would be large. …The net transfer in resources from low- and middle-income households to high-income households would be sizable. The overall transfer of income from the lower four-fifths of households with incomes of less than $76,400 to households with higher incomes would amount to $113 billion per year under the equal dollar scenario and $27 billion per year under the proportional financing scenario. The overall increase in the incomes of households whose incomes exceed $1 million a year would be $35 billion a year under the equal burden scenario and $15 billion a year under the proportional scenario.

… Under both of the financing scenarios, more than three out of every four households would ultimately lose more than they gain from the tax cuts.

Although more good jobs were created in the past three months, most of the expanding industries are still paying wages about 13 percent lower than before. That's because the hotel, restaurant, and temporary jobs are still growing faster than the manufacturing, financial services, and technology sectors. And while unemployment held steady at 5.6 percent last month, the average spell of unemployment rose to about five months. [M]ost US wages are still just keeping pace with inflation. "The fact remains [that] the benefits of the growing economy are still not being broadly shared, they're still flowing more to profits than they are to wages," says Mr. Bernstein.

Federal and state officials are expressing alarm about the proliferation of food stores that cater to low-income people but charge more than other grocery stores, thus driving up the cost of a major federal nutrition program. The program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or W.I.C., helps feed 7.7 million people each month by providing vouchers for infant formula, juice, eggs, milk, cheese, cereal and dried beans. Now a growing number of stores are selling only to W.I.C. families, accepting only the government vouchers, not cash, for payment. About 47 percent of all babies born in the United States each year participate in the program.

… State officials say the prices at W.I.C. specialty stores are typically 10 percent to 20 percent higher than those at supermarkets and other retail grocers. … Douglas A. Greenaway, executive director of the National W.I.C. Association, which represents state and local agencies providing nutrition services, said: "Normal market forces do not operate in W.I.C.-only stores because they do little if any business with price-sensitive customers. When W.I.C.-only stores charge the government more than other grocers, fewer people can be served."