Greenspan: cut social security

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Feb. 25 that Congress should weigh trimming future Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age and offering less generous adjustments to future payments.

The influential Fed. chief’s comments stirred political ripples, with Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry saying he would never curtail benefits and Capitol Hill Democrats saying Bush administration tax cuts were to blame.

President Bush said he would safeguard those at or near retirement — something that Greenspan suggested as well — but did not rule out reduced outlays in future.

Urging swift action on a spiraling budget deficit — forecast to hit a record $521 billion this year — Greenspan told the US House of Representatives Budget Committee that spending restraint was the best way to meet future commitments rather than raising taxes and endangering the economy.

Greenspan warned a major budget crunch looms as early as 2008 as tens of millions of baby boomers, born after World War II, begin to qualify for early retirement benefits.

Greenspan said if Congress were to opt to reduce social security benefits, it would be better to do so quickly to minimize the pain on Americans near retirement, and so others would have time to prepare for a smaller piece of the retirement pie. (Reuters)

Aging population faces economic crisis

A number of factors — including a sobered stock market, deficit pressures, and corporate cutbacks — may be putting the retirement security of baby boomers at greater threat than at any time in a quarter century. The provocative call on Feb. 25 by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan to scale back future Social Security benefits to help cover a growing federal budget deficit, is just part of the concern.

Evidence is mounting that the other two pillars of retirement security — private-sector pensions and personal savings — are no longer adequate to ensure that most Americans will have enough to live on when then retire.

From United Airlines to General Motors Corp., large companies are struggling to meet their obligations to retirees. The federal plan that guarantees these pensions is $11.2 billion in the red.

And even as the stock market recovers, experts say that 401(k)s and other personal savings aren’t nearly big enough. As many as 40 percent of Americans have saved almost nothing for retirement. At the problem’s root is a long-term shift that politicians are reluctant to face: with Americans living longer, the senior population is growing faster than the number of young workers to cover their needs. Benefit levels are getting harder to sustain.

It’s a calculus that is as challenging for corporate pension plans as it is for Medicare and Social Security programs. The defined retirement benefit, the pension that was once a standard perk in a big firm, is a rapidly disappearing option for many Americans. The number of Fortune 100 companies offering a fixed-benefit pension has dropped from 68 percent in 1998 to 50 percent in 2002, according to Watson Wyatt Worldwide. And federal data show a steady fall in private- sector workers who have pensions: from 38 percent in 1980 to 21 percent in 1998. (Christian Science Monitor)

New Paltz, NY mayor: ‘I’ll marry gay couples’

On Mar. 1, New Paltz, New York Mayor Jason West was charged with 19 criminal counts after performing 25 gay weddings last week. Mayor West was charged with solemnizing marriages for couples who had no licenses, a misdemeanor under the domestic relations law, according to Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams. Although West could face a maximum penalty of one year in jail, Williams said a jail term wasn’t being contemplated. The mayor said he would plead not guilty at his court hearing on Mar. 3 and that he would still go through with his plans to marry as many as two dozen gay couples on Saturday. He performed the ceremonies last week despite the town clerk’s refusal to issue marriage licenses to the couples. Absent jail, punishment could run from a $25 to $500 fine.

“The state constitution requires equal protection under the law,” West said in an interview Feb. 26, citing the same rationale that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom used in ordering that city officials provide wedding ceremonies and licenses for same-sex couples.

The state Health Department said that New York’s domestic relations law does not allow the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and that New York courts have recognized only marriages between men and women as valid. But West says state law actually does not require marriage licenses.

In New York, state law uses gender-neutral language and does not specifically prohibit same-sex marriages, according to many legal experts. However, the state, including the Pataki administration, has interpreted the law to bar gay couples from obtaining marriage licenses. (Newsday)

Ashcroft forms new intelligence council

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a new effort on Feb. 25 to harness and direct intelligence-gathering among key Justice Department agencies, including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, and Bureau of Prisons.

The purpose of the Joint Intelligence Coordinating Council, Ashcroft said, is to ensure thousands of law enforcement personnel worldwide are focused on collecting and analyzing intelligence useful in the war against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

The council will prevent law enforcement agencies from taking a more scattershot approach or pursuing their own agendas, he said. It also will provide direction to some 670,000 state and local law enforcement personnel.

Creation of the new council is the latest in a series of moves by the Bush administration to improve intelligence collection, analysis and information-sharing since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The FBI, CIA, and other agencies have been faulted repeatedly for intelligence and communications missteps that might have prevented those attacks.

Running the new Justice council will be Maureen Baginski, the FBI’s top intelligence official and a former veteran official at the National Security Agency. The council chairmanship will rotate among the various Justice law enforcement agencies.

Ashcroft said law enforcement has a unique ability to gather intelligence because it can prosecute people and threaten them with prison. Giving law enforcement agents unified marching orders could help exploit what he called “a mother lode of intelligence” that can be gleaned from criminal defendants and suspects. (Associated Press)

Scalia took trip set up by lawyer in two cases

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the guest of a Kansas law school two years ago and went pheasant hunting on a trip arranged by the school’s dean, all within weeks of hearing two cases in which the dean was a lead attorney.

The cases involved issues of public policy important to Kansas officials. Accompanying Scalia on the November 2001 hunting trip were the Kansas governor and the recently retired state Senate president, who flew with Scalia to the hunting camp aboard a state plane.

Two weeks before the trip, University of Kansas School of Law Dean Stephen R. McAllister, along with the state’s attorney general, had appeared before the Supreme Court to defend a Kansas law to confine sex offenders after they complete their prison terms.

Two weeks after the trip, the dean was before the high court to lead the state’s defense of a Kansas prison program for treating sex criminals.

Scalia was hosted by McAllister, who also served as Kansas state solicitor, when he visited the law school to speak to students. At Scalia’s request, McAllister arranged for the justice to go pheasant hunting after the law school event. And the dean enlisted then-Governor Bill Graves and former state Senate President Dick Bond, both Republicans, to go as well.

During the weekend of hunting in north-central Kansas, Graves and Bond said in separate interviews recently, they did not talk about the cases with Scalia, nor did they view the trip as a way to win his favor.

Scalia later sided with Kansas in both cases. (Los Angeles Times)

Supreme court upholds holding of secret trials

The US Supreme Court has given a green light for the government to conduct certain federal court cases in total secrecy.

In a case with major implications for public access to the courts, as well as the war on terror, the nation’s highest court said on Feb. 23 that it will not examine the circumstances surrounding a habeas corpus appeal filed by an Arab immigrant challenging his detention during the post-Sept. 11 investigation. The proceedings were conducted under a government secrecy request upheld by federal judges.

The Bush administration considers the issue so sensitive that its brief to the high court was filed under seal. The government took that unusual action even though the individual at the center of the case — an Algerian living in South Florida — has been free on a $10,000 bond for two years.

The case, M.K.B. v. Warden, was being closely followed by legal experts because it asked the high court to spell out whether there is a constitutional requirement that judicial proceedings in the federal courts be conducted in public — or at least noted somewhere on the public record.

The secret trial case involved the circumstances surrounding a habeas corpus appeal filed by Mohamed K. Bellahouel. Bellahouel, who is married to a US citizen, was detained for allegedly overstaying his visa. His detention was extended to permit the FBI to conduct an investigation of him and then question him about alleged links to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In declining to hear the case, the justices have set the stage for the government to use the same secrecy rules that now apply in certain immigration hearings to cases at the district, appeals court, and even US Supreme Court levels.

Administration officials say that public records and open court hearings involving terror suspects could provide al-Qaida a road map of US counterterror efforts.

Critics of this approach say the government has the ability to seal certain portions of court hearings for security reasons, but that it is a dangerous practice to allow the government to conduct certain cases in total secrecy. “We are moving toward an entire system of secret justice,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press. (Christian Science Monitor)