Three out of 4 self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them. According to a new survey published Thursday, the same number also believes that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided "substantial support" to al Qaeda. But here is the truly astonishing part: as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago. In other words, more people believe the claims today -- after the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions. … "One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these (erroneous) beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them," notes Steven Kull, PIPA's director. … Remarkably, when asked whether the U.S. should have gone to war without evidence of a WMD program or support to al Qaeda, 58 percent of Bush supporters said no. Moreover, 61 percent said they assumed that Bush would also not have gone to war under those circumstances.

"To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq," Kull says.

He added that this "cognitive dissonance" could also help explain other remarkable findings in the survey. The poll also found a major gap between Bush's stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe Bush's position to be. A strong majority of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president supports a range of international treaties and institutions that the White House has vocally and publicly opposed. In particular, majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assume that he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent). In August, two-thirds of Bush supporters also believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although that figure dropped to a 53 percent majority in the PIPA poll, it's not much of a drop considering that Bush explicitly denounced the ICC in the first, most widely watched presidential debate in late September.

… In other words, Bush supporters choose to keep faith in their leader than face the truth either about their president or the world as it is.

''[T]he primary concern (about the ''ghosts'') must stem, first and foremost, from the acceptance of methods which are antithetical to a democracy and which betray the U.S.'s identity as a nation of law,'' it adds, noting that the 11 ''disappeared'' are reportedly members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group. … '' 'Disappearances' were a trademark abuse of Latin American military dictatorships in their 'dirty war' on alleged subversion,'' said Reed Brody, special counsel with HRW, in a news release. ''Now they have become a United States tactic in its conflict with al-Qaeda.''

… So long as American forces remain in Iraq, a significant number of them will undoubtedly spend their time guarding highly vulnerable pipelines, refineries, loading facilities, and other petroleum installations. With thousands of miles of pipeline and hundreds of major facilities at risk, this task will prove endlessly demanding - and unrelievedly hazardous. … Iraq is hardly the only country where American troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of Georgia, U.S. personnel are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission. American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact, the American military is increasingly being converted into a global oil-protection service.

… The use of American military personnel to help protect vulnerable oil installations in conflict-prone, chronically unstable countries is certain to expand given three critical factors: America's ever-increasing dependence on imported petroleum, a global shift in oil production from the developed to the developing world, and the growing militarization of our foreign energy policy.

… [In the developing world, o]il production itself usually acts as a further destabilizing influence. Sudden infusions of petroleum wealth in otherwise poor and underdeveloped countries tend to deepen divides between rich and poor that often fall along ethnic or religious lines, leading to persistent conflict over the distribution of petroleum revenues. To prevent such turbulence, ruling elites like the royal family in Saudi Arabia or the new oil potentates of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan restrict or prohibit public expressions of dissent and rely on the repressive machinery of state security forces to crush opposition movements. With legal, peaceful expressions of dissent foreclosed in this manner, opposition forces soon see no options but to engage in armed rebellion or terrorism. … Many of the emerging oil producers in the developing world were once colonies of and harbor deep hostility toward the former imperial powers of Europe. The United States is seen by many in these countries as the modern inheritor of this imperial tradition. …

… American leaders have responded to this systemic challenge to stability in oil-producing areas in a consistent fashion: by employing military means to guarantee the unhindered flow of petroleum. This approach was first adopted by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations after World War II, when Soviet adventurism in Iran and pan-Arab upheavals in the Middle East seemed to threaten the safety of Persian Gulf oil deliveries. It was given formal expression by President Carter in January 1980, when, in response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution in Iran, he announced that the secure flow of Persian Gulf oil was in "the vital interests of the United States of America," and that in protecting this interest we would use "any means necessary, including military force." Carter's principle of using force to protect the flow of oil was later cited by President Bush the elder to justify American intervention in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, and it provided the underlying strategic rationale for our recent invasion of Iraq.

We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been a great distortion in the terms of public debate on foreign and national security policy—an emphasis on speculation instead of facts, on mythology instead of calculation, and on misplaced moralizing over considerations of national interest.

In a bet that now looks either foolish or smart, most [companies in prior decades] put off paying higher salaries decades ago by offering generous pensions and health coverage down the road. That's an offer most now can't afford to fulfill. [So, as shown in other items, they are simply breaking their promises.]

What makes cuts to medical coverage so hard for many retirees to swallow is that they are often perfectly legal. Unlike pension plans, which are protected by federal law [ERISA], employers can cut health coverage at any time. A few retirees have successfully sued former employers for their benefits in recent years. But employment lawyers say that can happen only in rare cases where employers didn't specifically reserve the right to change their minds in writing or where workers can prove a company verbally promised the benefits were permanent. "Most company contracts have what we call 'weasel' clauses that protect them from any liability," says Norman Stein, a law professor who specializes in employee benefits at the University of Alabama. Stein says studies show few employees ever read the clauses anyway, which are often in fine print and in language that isn't always easy to understand.

1. Jesus Christ, as attested in Holy Scripture, knows no national boundaries. Those who confess his name are found throughout the earth. Our allegiance to Christ takes priority over national identity. Whenever Christianity compromises with empire, the gospel of Christ is discredited. We reject the false teaching that any nation-state can ever be described with the words, "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." These words, used in scripture, apply only to Christ. No political or religious leader has the right to twist them in the service of war.

2. Christ commits Christians to a strong presumption against war. The wanton destructiveness of modern warfare strengthens this obligation. Standing in the shadow of the Cross, Christians have a responsibility to count the cost, speak out for the victims, and explore every alternative before a nation goes to war. We are committed to international cooperation rather than unilateral policies. We reject the false teaching that a war on terrorism takes precedence over ethical and legal norms. Some things ought never be done - torture, the deliberate bombing of civilians, the use of indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction - regardless of the consequences.

3. Christ commands us to see not only the splinter in our adversary's eye, but also the beam in our own. The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart. We reject the false teaching that America is a "Christian nation," representing only virtue, while its adversaries are nothing but vicious. We reject the belief that America has nothing to repent of, even as we reject that it represents most of the world's evil. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).

4. Christ shows us that enemy-love is the heart of the gospel. While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8, 10). We are to show love to our enemies even as we believe God in Christ has shown love to us and the whole world. Enemy-love does not mean capitulating to hostile agendas or domination. It does mean refusing to demonize any human being created in God's image. We reject the false teaching that any human being can be defined as outside the law's protection. We reject the demonization of perceived enemies, which only paves the way to abuse; and we reject the mistreatment of prisoners, regardless of supposed benefits to their captors.

5. Christ teaches us that humility is the virtue befitting forgiven sinners. It tempers all political disagreements, and it allows that our own political perceptions, in a complex world, may be wrong. We reject the false teaching that those who are not for the United States politically are against it or that those who fundamentally question American policies must be with the "evil-doers." Such crude distinctions, especially when used by Christians, are expressions of the Manichaean heresy, in which the world is divided into forces of absolute good and absolute evil.

The Lord Jesus Christ is either authoritative for Christians, or he is not. His Lordship cannot be set aside by any earthly power. His words may not be distorted for propagandistic purposes. No nation-state may usurp the place of God.

Tax breaks for affluent people, which Mr. Bush's mostly were, theoretically lead to capital growth and higher productivity and, from there, to more jobs. But since Mr. Bush was facing a downturn, not the boom in which he formulated his tax plans, it would have been much wiser to adjust to reality and enact measures to increase consumption, which leads more directly to job and income growth. Fully 37 percent of the cost of Mr. Bush's fiscal policies went to cutting the top tax rates on income, estates, dividends and capital gains, a tactic that does little to spur consumption. Only 3 percent went to aid for state governments - widely believed to be one of the most effective economic stimuli available. So productivity growth, already strong, got the most support. The other economic drivers - consumption, job growth and income gains - got short shrift, and are now even weaker than they would otherwise have been. …

In the meantime, the tax cuts have blown a hole in the federal budget. Conventional wisdom holds that the deficit - now $415 billion - does not affect employment because its effects are too abstract to be factored into day-to-day hiring decisions. That's only half-true. Hiring reflects confidence, and financial markets certainly watch the deficit. As the job situation fails to improve and the deficit restricts the nation's ability to respond, the markets react. … True to the belief that tax cuts will eventually prove to be a cure-all, the administration has offered no meaningful relief to struggling Americans. …

[T]he 633-page bill that finally emerged from Congress includes hundreds of other business tax breaks, which are supposed to be paid for by shutting down certain kinds of tax shelters and imposing new customs duties. The numerous new provisions includes more than $20 billion in reductions over the next 10 years on foreign profits of multinational corporations. It would also provide a huge one-time windfall to technology companies like Oracle and Hewlett-Packard and pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly, allowing them to bring hundreds of billions of dollars in untaxed foreign profits back into the United States at about one-seventh of the normal tax rate. Other provisions would benefit oil companies, timber producers, movie studios, accounting firms, cruise ship operators, tobacco farmers and dozens of other groups. … One provision … would provide $231 billion [sic - probably an error] in tax breaks for special "green bonds" to finance four big shopping malls. … Other provisions benefit corn farmers with big incentives for ethanol production …. [There was also a] tax break for shipbuilders, worth $495 million over 10 years ….

"It's almost impossible to have a perfect tax bill," said Senator John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana, who was critical of many elements but supported provisions that favored oil producers and cruise ship operators. … "You have to take the good with the ugly," Mr. Breaux said. "You have to fight your fight, but in the end you need to get things done."

The U.S. property/casualty insurance industry’s net income after taxes reached a record $23.52 billion during the first six months of this year, according to data released Monday by the Insurance Services Office Inc. and the Property Casualty Insurers Assn. of America. The industry’s income, up more than 60% from the $14.5 billion registered during the first six months of 2003, reflected both positive underwriting and improved investment results. The results helped drive the property/casualty insurance industry’s surplus up 6.8% to $370.43 billion as of June 30, 2004, compared with $347.0 billion at the end of last year.

With the issue of medical malpractice and "tort reform" becoming an increasingly discussed topic this election year, Americans for Insurance Reform (AIR) announced the release of a new study of medical malpractice insurance around the country, based on the insurance industry's own data. Its findings may be startling to some:

Contrary to what the insurance and medical lobbies have alleged, the years 2002 and 2003 saw no "explosion" in medical malpractice insurer payouts to justify skyrocketing rate hikes. In fact, rather than exploding, inflation-adjusted payouts per doctor have dropped for the last two years. Payouts (in constant dollars) have been essentially flat or dropping since the mid-1980s.

Second, medical malpractice insurance premiums rose much faster in 2002 and 2003 than was justified by insurance payouts. These price hikes were not connected to actual payouts, jury verdicts or the legal system. Rather, they reflect dropping interest rates and losses experienced by the insurance industry's market investments.

Plaintiffs lawyers argue that reduced fees will make it economically impossible for them to take most medical malpractice cases, since they must assume the risk of funding the costly litigation. The ABA panel agreed. It found that "a medical malpractice claim must amount to $100-200,000 simply to break even. Anything less means that, at typical rates of return, the case will be refused. The economic barriers -- the investment of time and money to establish a valid claim -- are simply too high."

In addition to [task force chair] Lesser -- who practices construction law, and whose firm's medical negligence practice represents defendants -- the panel includes Miami personal injury attorney Edward Blumberg, of Deutsch & Blumberg, and other trial lawyers from around the nation. Three of the other trial lawyers are from plaintiff-oriented firms; one is from a firm that represents defendants and plaintiffs. But other panelists are from backgrounds that are defendant-oriented. One is a senior counsel for the McDonald's Corp.; two others are senior counsel at insurance giants AIG and Chubb & Son. The panel also includes three law professors.

… If [the Bush team] had imposed a new gasoline tax after 9/11, demand would have been dampened and gas today would probably still be $2 a gallon. But instead of the extra dollar going to Saudi Arabia - where it ends up with mullahs who build madrasas that preach intolerance - that dollar would have gone to our own Treasury to pay down our own deficit and finance our own schools. …

… [T]here is no war on terrorism that doesn't involve helping this region onto a more promising path for its huge population of young people - too many of whom are unemployed or unemployable because their oil-rich regimes are resistant to change and their religious leaders are resisting modernity. … The Bush team … has treated the Arab-Israeli issue with benign neglect, failed to find any way to communicate with the Arab world and adopted an energy policy that is supporting the worst Arab oil regimes and the worst trends. Phil Verleger, one of the nation's top energy consultants and a longtime advocate of a gas tax, puts it succinctly: "U.S. energy policy today is in support of terrorism - not the war on terrorism."

… Oil regimes do not have to modernize or govern well. They just buy off their people and their mullahs. Governments without oil have to reform to create jobs. People do not change when you tell them they should - they change when they tell themselves they must.

… This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so. We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all -- by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians -- be participating in its destruction? … How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing. … [T]his destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations. … Such damage is justified by its corporate perpetrators and their political abettors in the name of the "free market" and "free enterprise," but this is a freedom that makes greed the dominant economic virtue, and it destroys the freedom of other people along with their communities and livelihoods. There are such things as economic weapons of massive destruction. We have allowed them to be used against us, not just by public submission and regulatory malfeasance, but also by public subsidies, incentives, and sufferances impossible to justify.

… Because as individuals or even as communities we cannot protect ourselves against these aggressions, we need our state and national governments to protect us. As the poor deserve as much justice from our courts as the rich, so the small farmer and the small merchant deserve the same economic justice, the same freedom in the market, as big farmers and chain stores. They should not suffer ruin merely because their rich competitors can afford (for a while) to undersell them. … It is impossible to understand, let alone justify, a government's willingness to allow the human sources of necessary goods to be destroyed by the "freedom" of this corporate anarchy. It is equally impossible to understand how a government can permit, and even subsidize, the destruction of the land and the land's productivity. Somehow we have lost or discarded any controlling sense of the interdependence of the Earth and the human capacity to use it well. The governmental obligation to protect these economic resources, inseparably human and natural, is the same as the obligation to protect us from hunger or from foreign invaders. In result, there is no difference between a domestic threat to the sources of our life and a foreign one.

Antarctica also shows signs of a significant climate change. Three international studies reported by NASA on behalf of the various research teams show more ice loss and glacial movement than had been expected. While glaciers all over the world are losing ice, the release of vast water masses locked in Antarctic land-based ice would cause the biggest rise in sea level. [Disappearance of ice shelves yield the prospect of] a potential 39-inch rise in sea level all over the world.

Scientists are baffled why the quantity of the main greenhouse gas has leapt in a two-year period and are concerned that the Earth's natural systems are no longer able to absorb as much as in the past. … In recent decades CO2 increased on average by 1.5 parts per million (ppm) a year because of the amount of oil, coal and gas burnt, but has now jumped to more than 2 ppm in 2002 and 2003. … [T]he fear held by some scientists is that the greater than normal rises in C02 emissions mean that instead of decades to bring global warming under control we may have only a few years. At worst, the figures could be the first sign of the breakdown in the Earth's natural systems for absorbing the gas. That would herald the so-called "runaway greenhouse effect", where the planet's soaring temperature becomes impossible to contain. As the icecaps melt, less sunlight is refected back into space from ice and snow, and bare rocks begin to absorb more heat. This is already happening.

… David J Hofmann of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration centre, which also studies CO2, was more cautious. "I don't think an increase of 2 ppm for two years in a row is highly significant - there are climatic perturbations that can make this occur," he said. "But the absence of a known climatic event does make these years unusual. Based on those two years alone I would say it was too soon to say that a new trend has been established, but it warrants close scrutiny."

"It's a general healthcare crisis, I think, at this point in time," famed British drug scientist and psychiatrist David Healy said in an interview. "If the pharmaceutical companies in this area -- in the area of a hazard like a child being made suicidal by these drugs -- if they're prepared to sweep a thing like this under the carpet, then there isn't anyone taking any other drugs who can really be confident." …

The highly respected British medical journal, 'The Lancet', published a 1998 study by University of Toronto researchers showing that adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are "a leading cause of death." It noted the study examined "only ADRs attributed to drugs that were 'properly prescribed and administered'." The study's authors suggested, "many adverse reactions result from the use of drugs with unavoidably high toxicity," and that medicine "cannot expect to reduce this burden until drug-induced illness is actually defined as a problem."

In the May 1 2002 issue of the 'Journal of the American Medical Association' (JAMA), five physicians from Harvard Medical School reported adverse drug reactions "are believed to be a leading cause of death in the United States." The authors urged the FDA to raise "its threshold for approving new drugs when safe, effective therapies already exist, or when the new drug treats a benign condition", citing the "frequent introduction" of drugs where serious side-effects occur. And they emphatically advised that "clinicians should avoid using new drugs when older, similarly efficacious agents are available."

[Dr Joel Lexchin, professor in the School of Public Health Policy and Management at Toronto's York University], who consults on pharmaceutical policy for groups such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and governments including Australia and Canada, estimated that in the last five years, "biased research, suppression of negative studies, over-publication of positive studies and, all their (the pharmaceutical industry's) promotional activities, which includes their funding of continuing medical education," has meant, yearly, "one death per 1,500 people" in the general population. That translates into 6,670 deaths a year for every 10 million of a nation's populace. … [T]he 1998 'Lancet' article viewed it likely that adverse drug reactions "could account for more than 100,000 (in-hospital alone) deaths in the USA each year, making them the fourth commonest cause of death." The figures are likely "much the same" throughout the developed world, it added.

Psychiatric medications are leading drug industry money makers. Last year, U.S. sales of just the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs (including Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Seroxat) were reported at 10.9 billion dollars. In 2002 the Fortune 500's 10 drug companies' combined profits of 35.9 billion dollars surpassed the combined profits of the remaining 490 firms together, (33.7 billion dollars), according to MSNBC. … "There's a very powerful mythology out there that these drugs are used quite rarely, and that they're only used on people diagnosed schizophrenic," [Dr John Read, one of the Pacific's leading authorities on psychiatric medication] added. But, warned Read, the pharmaceutical companies have "actually pushed the market into younger people, ages five-10, into old-age facilities, to people who do not have the diagnosis of schizophrenia." Critics charge these drugs are often used as "chemical restraints," to subdue those who take them. Read added caustically: "And why wouldn't they do that (expand the market for their medications) -- the purpose of a company is to write a good return for their shareholders."

… In the seven years since the F.D.A. lifted longstanding strictures against such ads, prescription drug advertising has grown into a $3.8-billion-a-year business. … Nexium is typical of the brand-building trend. [Although it seems to work well], many medical experts say most patients would do just as well with various cheaper over-the-counter remedies for indigestion and heartburn, including AstraZeneca's own Prilosec - a chemically similar predecessor that no longer requires a prescription and sells for $40 a month or less. "Nexium is no more effective than Prilosec," said Dr. Sharon Levine, an executive with Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest health maintenance organization. "I'm surprised anyone has ever written a prescription for Nexium." … The research firm Nielsen Monitor-Plus estimates that AstraZeneca spent $257 million last year on consumer advertising for Nexium. … The spending helped raise Nexium's sales by 58 percent from a year earlier, moving to No. 7 among all prescription drugs sold in the United States, according to the research firm IMS Health.

… Dr. David A. Kessler, who was the F.D.A. commissioner from late 1990 through 1996 and left before the agency relaxed the advertising rules, said that … too many of the [ad] campaigns aimed at consumers are "about increasing use, which is about increasing sales[.]" … Many doctors are unlikely to say no to patients who come to them requesting a certain prescription drug by name, as long as it does not seem wholly inappropriate for the condition. Doctors either do not want to alienate patients who can take their business elsewhere, or are often too pressed for time under insurance payment rules to explore fully the alternative treatments.

… The role of insurance brokers is to get the proper insurance coverage at the best possible price for clients …. They receive commissions from the clients for arranging the coverage. But decades ago, the brokers also began collecting fees from the other side of the deal, the insurers[,] for steering a certain volume of business to an insurer or for arranging a particularly profitable form of coverage. … The suit says that at times the brokers and insurers carried out elaborate farces to fool clients into believing that several bids were being competitively submitted for their business when in fact Marsh determined in advance which company would get the sale, with other companies agreeing to provide false bids. …

Playing down the [hostile takeover] bid's effects, [the President of PeopleSoft] said: "I think people have lost interest in it. The last remaining customers whose business decisions were being delayed have actually completed their sales and completed their orders." In other words, not a disruptive factor, in Mr. Conway's view. [This false statement led investors to become more bullish on PeopleSoft. He then sold a lot of stock.] So what did the company do to correct the misstatement? It filed a corrected version of the meeting transcript with the Securities and Exchange Commission [buried in] a document identified as being related to the takeover offer and almost certain to be seen by no one[, with] this sentence at the top of the transcript, which does not appear until the last half of the document: "Certain statements in this transcript have been corrected to reflect the intended meaning of the speaker." [The transcript replaces the above quote with:] "Oracle's tactics have created concern among many users, and that's a problem for us. Fortunately we've been able to overcome much of it and we expect that we will continue to be able to do so." Words he never said at the meeting, but that the company said he meant to.

… So this is where we are now in corporate America. Even in the post-Enron era, some executives still think nothing of misleading investors, analysts and their customers. And when they get caught dissembling, their companies respond in a way that may provide legal protection but also allows the lie to live.

Last week, the government ended its case with its star witness, former Enron Treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. Dressed in an olive-green prison uniform, Mr. Glisan explained to jurors that he was serving five years in a federal prison after pleading guilty a year ago to "helping Enron appear to be financially stronger than it really was. In effect, I lied about the health of the company." … "I believed I was working for a strong, aggressive company that hired very smart people," he said, "some of the brightest minds around. And we solved extremely difficult problems." But increasingly, he said his time was consumed with "masking those issues." … [H]e calmly described how he increasingly saw the company manufacturing earnings in his years at Enron. … During the Nigerian barge deal, [CFO] Fastow "kind of giggled" when he asked his protιgι to buy the barges back with an off-balance sheet partnership that Fastow controlled[, saying that] it would help Enron and make him "look like a hero to Jeff Skilling."

The type of benefit that the Olean workers lost is known as an early retirement subsidy. It gives employees the right to retire early with the same, or nearly the same, benefit as if they had worked straight through to age 65. Many companies have put such provisions into their pension plans as a way of easing workers out the door before they pass their prime. As workers reach early retirement age, the subsidy becomes very valuable, accounting for as much as 60 percent of their total pension benefit. To keep companies from denying workers their benefits at this point, Congress amended the pension law in 1984, making it illegal to amend a plan to revoke early retirement subsidies when employees are close to claiming them.

But some companies have found a loophole in the law during mergers and spinoffs, pension advocates say. "The company cannot amend a plan to eliminate an early retirement subsidy," said Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center, a consumer group in Washington. But if the company sells a division, then an employee of that division is no longer protected when he or she reaches early retirement. The company has, in effect, "amended the work force," she said. "This is a glaring loophole in the law, and it is truly undercutting the retirement security of hundreds of thousands of people across the country." Norman Stein, a law professor at the University of Alabama who specializes in pension issues, said "hundreds and hundreds of companies" have taken advantage of divestitures to end their obligation to pay early retirement subsidies.

SmithKline Beecham Corp. has agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle an ERISA class action suit brought by workers who said they were improperly labeled "temporary" and therefore denied pension benefits despite working full time for months or even years. [The settlement would] provide payments to nearly 1,300 workers … . In the suit, the three lead plaintiffs alleged that SmithKline "created a shadow work force" of hundreds of employees who were denied benefits under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act because they were labeled "temporary" or "leased." … In reality, the suit alleged, the "temps" often worked side-by-side with full-time SmithKline workers, doing the same work for months on end, before they were offered positions as "regular" SmithKline workers.

… [L]ast year, more than 16 percent of subprime mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure. More than 76,000 families with subprime mortgages tumbled into foreclosure in the first quarter of 2004, and an additional 47,000 in the second quarter. … [T]he people who refinance for extra cash are as much as twice as likely to lose their homes through foreclosure than those who refinance for other reasons, according to statistics from the PMI Group, a major mortgage insurer.

… Subprime lenders charge higher-than-usual interest rates and can protect themselves by selling the loans to Wall Street, which in turn consolidates large numbers of loans into investment pools and markets them to investors worldwide in the form of asset-backed bonds.

… Experts estimate that fraud is at play in at least 20 percent of all loans that end up in foreclosure; inflated valuations are rampant, experts say, and appraisal trade groups say the system needs to be overhauled. Connie Wilson of AppIntell, a firm in Weldon Spring, Mo., that helps lenders avoid problem loans, said employees of the lender and others who profit from the loans are almost always involved in loans that later end up in foreclosure. Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned of a looming "epidemic" in mortgage fraud involving loan brokers, appraisers and lending officers. Its caseload of open fraud inquiries surged to 533 investigations in June from 102 in 2001.

It's official. President Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to face re-election with fewer people working than when he started. … [D]espite the stimulus from three rounds of tax cuts, a spectacular expansion of the federal budget deficit and enormous assistance from the Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates 13 times, the nation has at least 585,000 fewer jobs now than when Mr. Bush took office.

… [When Bush] was pushing Congress to approve its third round of tax cuts in early 2003[,] the White House Council of Economic Advisers predicted that the nation would add 306,000 jobs a month through the end of 2004, an annual pace of more than three million jobs. … But job creation over the last year has barely kept up with current population growth, much less overtaken the job losses from the recession and its aftermath.

The value of the 1997 increase in the federal minimum wage has been fully eroded. The real value of today's federal minimum wage is less than it has been in 46 out of the last 48 years. Moreover, the ratio of the minimum wage to the average hourly wage of non-supervisory workers is 33%, its lowest level in 55 years. This decline is causing hardship for low-wage workers and their families.

We … share the view the Council of Economic Advisers expressed in the 1999 Economic Report of the President that "the weight of the evidence suggests that modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment." While controversy about the precise employment effects of the minimum wage continues, research has shown that most of the beneficiaries are adults, most are female, and the vast majority are members of low-income working families.

As economists who are concerned about the problems facing low-wage workers, we believe the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2004's proposed phased-in increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.00 falls well within the range of options where the benefits to the labor market, workers, and the overall economy would be positive.

The data make clear that your policy of slashing taxes - primarily for those at the upper reaches of the income distribution - has not worked. The fiscal reversal that has taken place under your leadership is so extreme that it would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. … Your economic policies have played a significant role in driving this fiscal collapse. … These sorts of deficits crowd out private investment and are politically addictive. They also place a heavy burden on monetary policy - and create additional pressure for higher interest rates - by stoking inflationary expectations. If your economic advisers are telling you that these deficits can be defeated through further reductions in tax rates, then you need new advisers. … [N]early every one of your administration’s economic forecasts - both before and after 9-11 - has proved overly optimistic. …

We also urge you to consider the distributional consequences of your policies. … Some degree of inequality is inherent in any free market economy, creating positive incentives for economic and technological advancement. But when inequality becomes extreme, it can be socially corrosive and economically dysfunctional. … At the moment, the most commonly accepted measure of inequality - the so-called Gini coefficient - is far higher in the United States than in any other developed country and is continuing to move upward. We don’t know where the breakpoint is for the U.S., but we would rather not find out. … From a policy standpoint, the clear message is that more of the same won’t work. …