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The economy these days looks frightening for just about everyone. Who would want to be a retiree with little to no earning potential, or a young family grappling with mortgage and child care payments while facing the possibility, or reality, of job loss? But imagine trying to enter the labor force right now, making career choices that could affect your entire earning future. How are college graduates supposed to juggle student loan payments with the realities of an imploding job market and family members too caught up in their own financial turmoil to help out? With all the attention focused on failing banks and government bailouts, the very legitimate panic felt by such graduates risks getting lost in the shuffle.
"Most of the recent graduates I hear from are petrified," says Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice, an organization that fights for student loan reform, and author of an upcoming book about the student loan industry. "They have yet to find real jobs in their field, so they're out there slinging hash to make ends meet. And then their loan payments come due."
Graduates like Golden are right to feel petrified. According to a recent College Board report, about 60 percent of 2007 college graduates had student debt, each taking out an average of $22,700 in loans. Graduates are expected to begin repaying within six months, healthy job market or no. Loans can be deferred, but never erased (unless you die or are permanently disabled). And when those payments do come due, many will face the prospect of paying back not only fixed-rate federal loans but also high-interest private loans. The private loan industry is now responsible for 24 percent of student lending. Before the economic crisis hit, it was the fastest-growing sector of the student loan industry. And though the $700 billion bailout bill includes provisions to enable the U.S. Treasury to buy troubled assets, including private loans, from student loan providers, it provides no relief for the students who have taken out such high-interest loans.
The economy these days looks frightening for just about everyone. Who would want to be a retiree with little to no earning potential, or a young family grappling with mortgage and child care payments while facing the possibility, or reality, of job loss? But imagine trying to enter the labor force right now, making career choices that could affect your entire earning future. How are college graduates supposed to juggle student loan payments with the realities of an imploding job market and family members too caught up in their own financial turmoil to help out? With all the attention focused on failing banks and government bailouts, the very legitimate panic felt by such graduates risks getting lost in the shuffle.
"Most of the recent graduates I hear from are petrified," says Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice, an organization that fights for student loan reform, and author of an upcoming book about the student loan industry. "They have yet to find real jobs in their field, so they're out there slinging hash to make ends meet. And then their loan payments come due."
Graduates like Golden are right to feel petrified. According to a recent College Board report, about 60 percent of 2007 college graduates had student debt, each taking out an average of $22,700 in loans. Graduates are expected to begin repaying within six months, healthy job market or no. Loans can be deferred, but never erased (unless you die or are permanently disabled). And when those payments do come due, many will face the prospect of paying back not only fixed-rate federal loans but also high-interest private loans. The private loan industry is now responsible for 24 percent of student lending. Before the economic crisis hit, it was the fastest-growing sector of the student loan industry. And though the $700 billion bailout bill includes provisions to enable the U.S. Treasury to buy troubled assets, including private loans, from student loan providers, it provides no relief for the students who have taken out such high-interest loans.
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We are inheritors of this momentous victory, but it was not ours. The laurels properly belong to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the other martyrs who died for civil rights. And to millions more before them who struggled across centuries and fell short of winning their freedom. And to those rare politicians like Lyndon B. Johnson, who stood up bravely in a decisive time, knowing how much it would cost his political party for years to come. We owe all of them for this moment.
Whatever happens next, Barack Obama has already changed this nation profoundly. Like King before him, the man is a great and brave teacher. Obama developed out of his life experiences a different understanding of the country, and he had the courage to run for president by offering this vision.
For many Americans, it seemed too much to believe, yet he turned out to be right about us. Against all odds, he persuaded a majority of Americans to believe in their own better natures and, by electing him, the people helped make it true. There is mysterious music in democracy when people decide to believe in themselves.
We are inheritors of this momentous victory, but it was not ours. The laurels properly belong to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the other martyrs who died for civil rights. And to millions more before them who struggled across centuries and fell short of winning their freedom. And to those rare politicians like Lyndon B. Johnson, who stood up bravely in a decisive time, knowing how much it would cost his political party for years to come. We owe all of them for this moment.
Whatever happens next, Barack Obama has already changed this nation profoundly. Like King before him, the man is a great and brave teacher. Obama developed out of his life experiences a different understanding of the country, and he had the courage to run for president by offering this vision.
For many Americans, it seemed too much to believe, yet he turned out to be right about us. Against all odds, he persuaded a majority of Americans to believe in their own better natures and, by electing him, the people helped make it true. There is mysterious music in democracy when people decide to believe in themselves.
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DETROIT -- Kelly McMillen watched with teary-eyed pride as her son took the podium to deliver the commencement address at his recent graduation.
"When we leave here today, we take with us the dreams of tomorrow," Chris Martin, 22, told his fellow graduates, who stood tall in their blue caps and gowns. "This GED is our first step in turning things around."
The words were overwhelming for McMillen of Lake Orion, who had watched her son drop out of high school and land in the criminal justice system.
And though he will be in prison until at least 2013 for larceny, arson and criminal sexual conduct, McMillen couldn't be happier.
"I thought he was lost," she said. "Of all the places for him to find hope, it's in jail."
DETROIT -- Kelly McMillen watched with teary-eyed pride as her son took the podium to deliver the commencement address at his recent graduation.
"When we leave here today, we take with us the dreams of tomorrow," Chris Martin, 22, told his fellow graduates, who stood tall in their blue caps and gowns. "This GED is our first step in turning things around."
The words were overwhelming for McMillen of Lake Orion, who had watched her son drop out of high school and land in the criminal justice system.
And though he will be in prison until at least 2013 for larceny, arson and criminal sexual conduct, McMillen couldn't be happier.
"I thought he was lost," she said. "Of all the places for him to find hope, it's in jail."
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JACKSON, Georgia (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute reprieve to a Georgia man fewer than two hours before he was to be executed for the 1989 slaying of an off-duty police officer.
Troy Anthony Davis learned that his execution had been stayed when he saw it on television, he told CNN via telephone in his first interview after the stay was announced.
He said he was "thankful to God" for the news that came during an emergency session the U.S. Supreme Court convened.
Davis said "everyone should pray" for the slain officer's family.
The 39-year-old also said that he is "very grateful for everything that everyone is doing" for him and that he would "accept" whatever decision the Supreme Court rendered in the coming days about his case.
JACKSON, Georgia (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute reprieve to a Georgia man fewer than two hours before he was to be executed for the 1989 slaying of an off-duty police officer.
Troy Anthony Davis learned that his execution had been stayed when he saw it on television, he told CNN via telephone in his first interview after the stay was announced.
He said he was "thankful to God" for the news that came during an emergency session the U.S. Supreme Court convened.
Davis said "everyone should pray" for the slain officer's family.
The 39-year-old also said that he is "very grateful for everything that everyone is doing" for him and that he would "accept" whatever decision the Supreme Court rendered in the coming days about his case.
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In Jewel v. NSA, EFF is suing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records.
Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.
That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit filed by EFF in 2006 to stop the telecom giant’s participation in the illegal surveillance program. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law attempting to derail that case by unconstitutionally granting immunity to AT&T and other companies that took part in the dragnet. Hepting v. AT&T is now stalled in federal court while EFF argues with the government over whether the immunity is constitutional and applies in that case — litigation that is likely to continue well into 2009.
In addition to suing the government agencies involved in the domestic dragnet, the lawsuit also targets the individuals responsible for creating, authorizing, and implementing the illegal program, including President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.
In Jewel v. NSA, EFF is suing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records.
Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.
That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit filed by EFF in 2006 to stop the telecom giant’s participation in the illegal surveillance program. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law attempting to derail that case by unconstitutionally granting immunity to AT&T and other companies that took part in the dragnet. Hepting v. AT&T is now stalled in federal court while EFF argues with the government over whether the immunity is constitutional and applies in that case — litigation that is likely to continue well into 2009.
In addition to suing the government agencies involved in the domestic dragnet, the lawsuit also targets the individuals responsible for creating, authorizing, and implementing the illegal program, including President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.
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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called today on the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to reverse its decision to deny clemency to Troy Anthony Davis, convicted for an alleged murder of a Savannah police officer in 1991. "This case illustrates the deep flaws in the application of the death penalty in this country," said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. "Executing Troy Davis without a real examination of potentially exonerating evidence risks taking the life of an innocent man and would be a grave miscarriage of justice. The citizens of Georgia should demand the highest standards of proof when our legal system condemns on our behalf a man or woman to die."
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Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.
But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.
“One of our great exports used to be constitutional law,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. “We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had.”
From 1990 through 2002, for instance, the Canadian Supreme Court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court about a dozen times a year, an analysis by The New York Times found. In the six years since, the annual citation rate has fallen by half, to about six.
Australian state supreme courts cited American decisions 208 times in 1995, according to a recent study by Russell Smyth, an Australian economist. By 2005, the number had fallen to 72.
The story is similar around the globe, legal experts say, particularly in cases involving human rights. These days, foreign courts in developed democracies often cite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning equality, liberty and prohibitions against cruel treatment, said Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School. In those areas, Dean Koh said, “they tend not to look to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The rise of new and sophisticated constitutional courts elsewhere is one reason for the Supreme Court’s fading influence, legal experts said. The new courts are, moreover, generally more liberal than the Rehnquist and Roberts courts and for that reason more inclined to cite one another.
Another reason is the diminished reputation of the United States in some parts of the world, which experts here and abroad said is in part a consequence of the Bush administration’s unpopularity around the world. Foreign courts are less apt to justify their decisions with citations to cases from a nation unpopular with their domestic audience.
Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.
But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.
“One of our great exports used to be constitutional law,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. “We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had.”
From 1990 through 2002, for instance, the Canadian Supreme Court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court about a dozen times a year, an analysis by The New York Times found. In the six years since, the annual citation rate has fallen by half, to about six.
Australian state supreme courts cited American decisions 208 times in 1995, according to a recent study by Russell Smyth, an Australian economist. By 2005, the number had fallen to 72.
The story is similar around the globe, legal experts say, particularly in cases involving human rights. These days, foreign courts in developed democracies often cite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning equality, liberty and prohibitions against cruel treatment, said Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School. In those areas, Dean Koh said, “they tend not to look to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The rise of new and sophisticated constitutional courts elsewhere is one reason for the Supreme Court’s fading influence, legal experts said. The new courts are, moreover, generally more liberal than the Rehnquist and Roberts courts and for that reason more inclined to cite one another.
Another reason is the diminished reputation of the United States in some parts of the world, which experts here and abroad said is in part a consequence of the Bush administration’s unpopularity around the world. Foreign courts are less apt to justify their decisions with citations to cases from a nation unpopular with their domestic audience.
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What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.
But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.
What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.
But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.
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If marijuana were legal but taxed like alcohol and tobacco, how much money could it bring in to cash-strapped state governments?
One 2006 study called cannabis the top cash crop in the nation, worth more than corn and wheat combined. It was the leading crop in 12 states, outstripping grapes in California and tobacco in North Carolina, and one of the top three in 18 others, coming in just behind apples in Washington and cotton in Georgia. So with states facing massive deficits, could reefer revenues help?
The answer is unclear, but it could be lucrative for governments, especially when combined with the savings from ending prohibition. As the U.S. marijuana market is illegal, there are no sales figures. Estimates of its size range from $10.5 billion a year to $113 billion. But three studies done by economists and policy analysts say ganja taxes could bring in anywhere from $2.4 billion to $31.1 billion in revenue, depending on how big the sales really are. About one-third of that would go to the states.
"There's not enough really good data on it, so it's probably best to look at it in ballpark figures," says Jon Gettman, a Virginia policy analyst who has worked with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana Policy Project. "But there's a consensus that there's an awful lot of marijuana out there and that it's very valuable."
If marijuana were legal but taxed like alcohol and tobacco, how much money could it bring in to cash-strapped state governments?
One 2006 study called cannabis the top cash crop in the nation, worth more than corn and wheat combined. It was the leading crop in 12 states, outstripping grapes in California and tobacco in North Carolina, and one of the top three in 18 others, coming in just behind apples in Washington and cotton in Georgia. So with states facing massive deficits, could reefer revenues help?
The answer is unclear, but it could be lucrative for governments, especially when combined with the savings from ending prohibition. As the U.S. marijuana market is illegal, there are no sales figures. Estimates of its size range from $10.5 billion a year to $113 billion. But three studies done by economists and policy analysts say ganja taxes could bring in anywhere from $2.4 billion to $31.1 billion in revenue, depending on how big the sales really are. About one-third of that would go to the states.
"There's not enough really good data on it, so it's probably best to look at it in ballpark figures," says Jon Gettman, a Virginia policy analyst who has worked with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the Marijuana Policy Project. "But there's a consensus that there's an awful lot of marijuana out there and that it's very valuable."
