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Article Artículo

The Washington Post Wants to Cut Social Security and Medicare but Doesn't Have the Courage to Say It

It's hard not to have a certain attachment to the Post's longstanding crusade against Social Security and Medicare. After all, it has been pushing for cuts to these programs at least since I came to town in 1992. They did in the high deficit years of the early 1990s, the boom times of the late 1990s, the housing bubble years of the 2000s, and through the Great Recession. So the Post calling for cuts to these programs is pretty much as predictable as the sun coming up. So this morning's call for "reform" is a bit like the morning coffee, although somewhat less pleasant.

At the most basic level, you sort of have to love the Post criticizing politicians for not wanting to go on record for cuts to these programs even when the editorial writers, who don't have to run for office, are scared to say what they actually want and instead use the euphemism "reform" when they mean cuts. But, the substance is also a bit hard to take.

CEPR / March 19, 2018

Article Artículo

Robert Samuelson Gives Still More Evidence of the Skills Shortage

We all know about the skills shortage. Employers just can't find workers with the skills necessary for the jobs that are available. As a result, jobs go wanting and many workers remain unemployed.

Samuelson gives us yet another example of the skills shortage in his column titled, "Don't deny the link between poverty and single parenthood." Apparently, Samuelson was irked by a column in the NYT last month that told readers "Single mothers are not the problem."

The piece argues that there are not enough single mothers to explain child poverty. Therefore as Samuelson puts it:

"[...]let’s put the Times essay in context. Its policy agenda is candid. 'We should stop obsessing over how many single mothers there are and stop shaming them,' write sociologists David Brady of the University of California at Riverside, Ryan M. Finnigan of the University of California at Davis and Sabine Hübgen of WBZ Berlin Social Science Center."

Samuelson tells us:

CEPR / March 19, 2018

Article Artículo

Haiti

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Meet the New Haitian Military ? it’s Starting to Look a Lot Like the Old One

On March 13, President Jovenel Moise appointed six individuals to the high command of the recently reinstated Haitian armed forces (FAdH). All of the appointees, now in their sixties, were majors or colonels in the former FAdH, disbanded in 1995 after a long history of involvement in coups, violent repression, and drug trafficking. At least three of the officers appear to have held senior positions within the early-‘90s military coup regime. One of them is a convicted intellectual author of a civilian massacre, and another was a member of a committee that sought to cover it up.

FAdH command blog 1
Ministry of Defense press release from March 13, 2018 announcing the FAdH’s new senior leadership.

The makeup of the new leadership has raised concerns among human rights organizations over the trajectory of the new force and its commitment to the rule of law.

“The appointment confirms once again that the Haitian Armed Forces, remobilized by the [ruling Tét Kale party] is a militia whose hidden mission is to have the Haitian people relive the darkest hours of bloodthirsty Duvalierism,” wrote the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in a press release, referencing the illegal arrests, forced disappearances, assassinations, and other abuses that characterized the Duvalier dictatorship.

Haitian Defense Minister Herve Denis responded that the new high-command is “clean,” and that all were vetted for involvement in human rights abuses or drug trafficking.

In 1990, an outspoken liberation theologian priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected in the first democratic election in the country’s history. But within months, a group of Haitian military officers – backed by many of the country’s wealthiest families – overthrew the new government, imposing a military dictatorship that would last three years. It was later revealed that the CIA had supported certain military elements involved in the coup, and that leaders of a paramilitary group that waged a campaign of terror against Aristide supporters and other activists were on the CIA payroll.

The group, FRAPH, helped to prop up the coup regime of Lieutenant General Raoul Cédras, while also at times appearing to undermine and sabotage the official actions of Clinton administration to restore democratic government to Haiti. Thousands of Haitians were murdered under the coup regime and hundreds of thousands fled the country.

Colonel Jean-Robert Gabriel, the new FAdH’s assistant chief of staff, was the secretary of the general staff, and later a public spokesperson, for the Cédras regime.

Following the 1991 military coup, the US and the international community implemented sanctions against the regime, eventually instituting an embargo. After Bill Clinton became president in January 1993, and increasingly in 1994, the Congressional Black Caucus played a leading role in pushing for a more aggressive role against the dictatorship, and solidarity groups in the US and elsewhere also influenced policy.

In June of 1993, the Clinton administration announced individual targeted sanctions against those determined to be a part of the “de facto regime in Haiti.” The initial sanction list, published in July of 1993, named 83 individuals, including 29 military officers. Included in this initial list was Jean-Robert Gabriel.

Gabriel sanction list
Screenshot of the Federal Register from July 1993, listing Jean-Robert Gabriel as one of 29 military officers sanctioned for their participation in the coup regime.

In 1993, the UN mediated indirect negotiations between Cédras and Aristide (who had taken up residence in Washington, DC to lobby for his restoration to office). Known as the Governors Island negotiations for the location where they took place, the eventual accord did little to immediately overturn the bloody coup. According to official documents, Gabriel, as well as the newly appointed chief of the general staff, Sadrac Saintil, were members of the delegation, indicating their senior positions within the Cédras regime.  

Gov island delegation
List of members of Armed Forces delegation to Governors Island.

The US temporarily suspended some of the sanctions during the negotiations, but when it became clear that Cédras and his regime would not back down, the sanctions were expanded. In October 1993, the administration revoked US visas and froze the US assets of 41 officials who were determined to be thwarting a return to democratic rule and contributing to the violence in Haiti. Among the 41 individuals was Derby Guerrier, recently named as an assistant chief of staff in the reinstated armed forces ? and then a lieutenant colonel.

Guerrier held a US passport, and a New Jersey address was listed next to his name. According to press reports at the time, Guerrier was the head of the military’s anti-drug unit. Though there is little public information about Guerrier, drug trafficking took off under the military regime.

A 1997 federal indictment in Miami alleged that Joseph-Michel François, a former military officer who helped topple Aristide in 1991 and later become the police chief under Cédras, “placed the political and military structure of the Republic of Haiti under his control” in order to facilitate drug shipments from Colombia. François, by that time, was living in exile in Honduras and managed to avoid accountability.

Back in 1994, with the situation in Haiti continuing to deteriorate, and more and more Haitians fleeing the country, the US expanded its sanctions policy. Some 550 military officers were added to the sanctions list, including all of those recently appointed to the FAdH’s new high command.

In April that year, around the same time the new sanctions were levied, Haitian military and paramilitary forces descended on the neighborhood of Raboteau, where many opposition supporters were apparently seeking refuge. At least eight, and likely far more, were assassinated.

The next month a military-led commission of inquiry was tasked with investigating the allegations that a massacre had taken place in Raboteau. Cédras named Lieutenant Colonel Sadrac Saintil as one of four members, according to official documents made public as part of the Raboteau trial. Unsurprisingly, the commission found no evidence of a massacre and the FADH high command accepted the commission’s recommendation that nobody be punished.

Raboteau commission blog
Communique signed by Raoul Cédras, appointing Sadrac Saintil to a commission of inquiry looking into the Raboteau massacre.

But in 2000, in a landmark human rights trial supported by the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (the same organization now denouncing the new armed forces’ leadership), a Haitian court convicted 53 former officers and paramilitaries of involvement in the Raboteau massacre. Among the military officers convicted was Jean-Robert Gabriel. Though he was not implicated in direct involvement, he was charged under the theory of “command responsibility” due to his position within the top echelons of the Cédras regime.

“It’s the same type of case made against the Nazis and (Slobodan) Milosevic,” Brian Concannon, an American attorney who helped form the BAI in the early ‘90s and who worked the Raboteau case, told the St. Petersburg Times in 2002. Concannon is now the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a partner organization to the BAI.

The Haitian government has pushed back on Gabriel’s involvement in Raboteau. “What I can tell you in all honesty,” the defense minister told the press, “the candidates were subjected to vetting, including Colonel Gabriel. There is nothing negative against him in the vetting with regard to human rights.”

Jake Johnston / March 16, 2018

Article Artículo

Inequality

United States

Scott Walker, Foxconn, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

Foxconn Project

In late 2017, Foxconn, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker came to an agreement where Wisconsin will provide almost $4.5 billion in incentives and Foxconn will build a large manufacturing facility in Point Pleasant Wisconsin. Governor Walker has presented this agreement as a win for the people of Wisconsin that will generate billions of dollars of investment and thousands of high paying jobs. The incentives package is among the largest subsidies provided for a foreign based firm.

Foxconn is an electronics manufacturing company based in Taiwan and is associated with serious anti-worker management practices. The incentives package includes $2.85 billion in statewide tax incentives, $764 million in local government incentives, $139 million in state sales tax exemptions, and another $717 million in construction costs and grants. The deal also includes an expedited environmental permitting process and a dedicated liaison at the WEDC. In return, Foxconn must invest at least $9 billion in capital, and employ 10,200 people at an average compensation of $59,600, including benefits. Both Foxconn and Walker claim that overall 13,000 people will be employed and $10 billion will be invested. Foxconn has made similar promises in the past. In 2013 they claimed that they were going to build a $30 million plant and hire 500 people in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. Despite seeking incentives from Pennsylvania and already having a local office, the plant was never built. All said, Foxconn continues to make demands of the Wisconsin government as time progresses.

CEPR and Alex Provan / March 15, 2018