Category: Fall 2008 Newswire
The Tradition Continues: 10,000 Wreaths Laid on Graves at Arlington Cemetery
WREATHS
Bangor Daily News
Maite Jullian
Boston University Washington News Service
Dec. 13, 2008
ARLINGTON, Va. — Cindy DeCosta took her time to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery on the grave of Edmund S. Muskie, former Maine governor, U.S. secretary of state and U.S. senator. Her eyes were glossy with tears and her voice trembled as she thanked members of the Maine State Society for the opportunity they had given her.
For the first time Saturday, Cindy and her husband, Tim, who live in Windham, Maine, came to help place about 10,000 wreaths on the graves of fallen soldiers and veterans, a tradition that began 17 years ago.
“What better way is there to honor people who lost their lives for America?” she said. “The best part of it is to see people show their patriotism and take time out of their busy lives to lay a wreath. It is very emotional.”
Arlington was the last stop for the DeCostas, who left Harrington, Maine, last Sunday to accompany the two trucks carrying the wreaths given by the Worcester Wreath Co. Tim is a member of the Patriot Guard that escorted the convoy on its 750-mile trip.
“We cried all the way down here,” Cindy said.
On this cold but sunny Saturday morning, more than 3,000 people lined up under the McClellan red brick arch to get a wreath distributed from the back of the trucks. Families, veterans and couples slowly spread along the aisles of the cemetery.
Each picked a grave and laid a wreath. Some took pictures. Some had tears rolling down their cheeks. Other smiled. All kneeled down to write down the names of the soldier or veteran they honored on the stickers given for the occasion for the first time.
In two hours, the white graves of Section 12 of the cemetery were filled with wreaths with shiny red bows.
“This is a great, a wonderful thing to do,” Sylvia Wendt, from Rumford, and her three friends said in a chorus, with large smiles on their faces. “It is an honor to be here.”
Wendt has been coming to Arlinton for the past six years. On Saturday she was standing with her high school friends Susan Starr, from Scarborough, Cindy Flaherty of Saco and Gail Divine of Wallingford, Conn., who came for the first time.
They all went together to lay a wreath on a grave and then pay their respects to the veterans, spouses and children who also are buried at the national cemetery.
“You look at the names and dates,” Divine said.” It’s hard to explain, but you definitely make a connection.”
After all the wreaths were distributed, Wendt and her friends followed the group of Mainers to the grave of Muskie. Later on, they stopped at the Kennedy gravesites, the USS Maine Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns for a special ceremony.
What started as a small ceremony 17 years ago — when about 40 members of the Maine State Society, a Washington, D.C., organization that brings together Maine natives, laid about 4,000 wreaths — has become a national commemoration after a photograph of the wreaths, resting against gravestones on a snowy day, was e-mailed around the world three years ago.
Since then, the event has attracted many more volunteers. In 2005, there were 100. In 2006, 500. Last year, organizers estimate that around 3,000 people showed up. Some members of the Maine State Society said they thought there were even more volunteers on Saturday than last year.
Mary Beegle came from Dubois, Pa., with 35 other people for the first time.
“We have students in Iraq,” she said. “Our chaplain has just returned from Iraq. We all have connections and we are very privileged to be here to honor the people who did this for America.”
For the first time this year, Dec. 13 was officially “Wreaths Across America” day after the Senate unanimously passed a resolution this week introduced by Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to “recognize the hard work and generosity of all those involved in the project.”
The program prepared more than 105,000 wreaths to be placed on graves at 354 cemeteries and monuments across the country and 24 sites overseas, including four in Iraq.
Lew Pearson, a member of the Maine State Society, said that next year three trucks will come to Arlington as the society keeps receiving calls from all over the country and abroad.
“People want to participate for the purpose behind this or because they have a family member or a friend buried here,” he said. “It means a lot to a lot of people. It’s great.”
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Gulf War Veterans Find Vindication, but Not Much Else
GULFWAR
Norwalk Hour
Jordan Zappala
Boston University Washington News Service
December 12, 2008
WASHINGTON – U.S. Army veteran Donald Overton Jr. said he considers himself lucky that he was physically injured during the Persian Gulf War.
Having been left legally blind and missing a few fingers as a result of a Desert Storm blast, the Norwalk native and executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Veterans of Modern Warfare also suffers from symptoms of Gulf War Illness, such as hair loss, rashes, and muscle and joint pain. But without his physical injuries, Overton said, any attempt to receive disability compensation for the service-related illness would have been quashed by the years of bureaucratic red tape and government denial that Gulf War veterans have weathered.
“The [Gulf War] Illness leaves very little on the outside, but it can be debilitating,” said the 40-year-old, who feels like he is “going on 60-something” because of his injuries. “I had my physical injuries too, and I still fought for five years to get my benefits.”
The Persian Gulf War ended 17 years ago, but many veterans have been forced to continue fighting for their lives even after their return home to the U.S.
Finally there appears to be a ceasefire of sorts. Last month the congressionally mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses issued the validation so many of the nearly 700,000 veterans had been waiting for: there is, in fact, a Gulf War Illness, and at least one in four Gulf War veterans has it.
In Connecticut, that translates to roughly 9,000 veterans inflicted with a service-connected disease for which there is no effective treatment.
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense have long denied the existence of a Gulf War-related illness, despite their eventual acknowledgement of troop exposure to chemical agents.
Numerous congressional hearings, federal research programs and independent studies had previously produced inconclusive results – in large part because of the litany of symptoms these veterans display: persistent memory and concentration problems, chronic headaches, widespread muscle and joint pain, acute gastrointestinal problems, chronic fatigue and sleeplessness, respiratory problems, and skin rashes. The severity and concurrence of symptoms varies by patient, but in many cases, the result is a debilitating sickness that has the capacity to level even the most stalwart soldier.
The advisory committee’s conclusion – though hailed as a step in the right direction – is by no means the end of the war for these wounded warriors. Appointed in 2002 by the secretary of veterans affairs after a 1998 congressional order, the Research Advisory Committee is not itself a VA entity. James Peake, the current VA secretary, will have to formally accept the ailment before Gulf War Illness will fit into the department’s complicated disability grading system, and for that, the veterans will have to wait a little longer.
Peake said he has sent the report to the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine for additional review and recommendation.
“I appreciate the committee’s work on this report, and I am eager to see the results of further independent study into their findings,” Peake said in a prepared statement. “Of course, VA will continue to provide the care and benefits our Gulf War veterans have earned through their service, as we have for more than a decade.”
If the VA continues not to recognize the illness, sick veterans have little chance of claiming any disability compensation. The monthly benefits – ranging from $100 to $3,000 – can make all the difference in supporting a family or keeping a home when work becomes impossible.
Overton said Gulf War veterans have waited long enough for their benefits, and called Peake’s decision a “stall tactic.”
The lengthy process has too great a cost for veterans, he said, which is why his organization banded with the Vietnam Veterans of America and filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs last month aimed at expediting the disability claims process.
Though the claims are supposed to be answered quickly, the VA acknowledges it takes an average of six months to reach a decision, and some go unanswered for close to a year. The appeals process – which is successful more than 50 percent of the time, according to the Veterans of Modern Warfare – takes an average of four years. To remedy this, the lawsuit demands that the initial claim be answered in 90 days, with an appeal returned in 180 days. If this schedule is not met, the suit suggests, interim benefits should be granted at a rate of 30 percent disability, or roughly $350 a month, until the decision is reached.
Robert Cattanach, a partner at Dorsey and Whitney in Minneapolis and pro bono attorney for the veterans, said the consequences of the VA delays are “staggering” – citing homelessness, depression and hopelessness.
“The suit fits perfectly with the new [Gulf War Illness] report, because these veterans have already waited far too long for their benefits,” said the Navy veteran, whose son has served two tours in Iraq. “The report finally gives them legitimacy, and if we win, they’re not going to have to stand in line forever to get what they deserve.”
Gulf War veteran Mike Roley knows all about waiting. The 44-year-old U.S. Army and Gulf War veteran from Shelbyville, Ky., shows many symptoms of Gulf War Illness, has physical injuries from a training accident and was placed on 13 prescriptions in an attempt to regulate his many inflictions, but he still had to fight the VA for more than 10 years.
“At first, it was the cramps – so bad I couldn’t stand up straight,” said the married father of three. “I started to get rashes that would blow you away, and headaches. I was so tired all the time, but I could never sleep. When I could fall asleep, there were the night sweats. I have a wonderful wife, but I’m embarrassed to sleep with her – I soak the bed.”
Despite the fact that Roley received a disability rating of 240 percent – a number derived by totaling the disabling level of each injury – he said he was denied VA benefits multiple times before finally winning his claim in 2002. The victory was bittersweet for the family, who had lost their home and entire savings trying to stay afloat in 1999, after Roley was no longer able to work.
But still, Roley considers himself luckier than many. U.S. Army veteran Matt Letterman, of Willow Springs, Mo., is still waiting for his benefits – 17 years after his laundry list of symptoms surfaced. The 45-year-old married father of five has to sleep in a straight-backed chair to keep leg pain at bay and has only 37 percent of his lung capacity despite never having smoked a cigarette. Yet the VA denied his claim in 2007.
Letterman supports his family of seven with just the $1,400 a month he receives from the Social Security Administration, after also losing his home in 1999 when he could no longer keep a job.
Neither Letterman nor Roley holds out any hope that his disease will be understood, let alone treated.
Linda Schwartz, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Veterans’ Affairs and a retired U.S. Air Force flight nurse, said that with the new findings, Connecticut veterans denied benefits should try filing their claims again.
“The attitude of many people in the VA is that veterans are trying to milk them dry. It’s sad,” said Schwartz, who drew a parallel to the Vietnam-era denial of Agent Orange effects. “They’re supposed to be erring on the side of veterans. These denials devalue the meaning of the veterans’ sacrifice. I think the money is part of it, but it’s more the recognition that they are suffering because they served their country, and earning the respect they deserve. “
Gulf War veterans were exposed to a vast array of chemical and biological factors – a “toxic soup,” as Overton described it – making a single cause of the illness difficult to pinpoint. But the advisory committee for the first time zeroed in on two exposures “causally associated” with the illness: the pyridostigmine bromide pills troops were required to take to protect against nerve agents, and an overabundance of pesticides used to ward off bug-borne diseases – neither of which are used today, Department of Defense spokesman Ken Robinson told CNN.
At the time they were given to the troops – “handed out like candy,” Letterman said – the pills were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration as an anti-nerve gas agent, but the Defense Department signed a waiver to bypass the hurdle of informed consent. Both Letterman and Roley recall fellow soldiers having adverse reactions to the pills while in the desert – and Roley said he stopped taking them after his superiors stopped watching.
In addition, the committee identified other exposures that it said “cannot be ruled out” as potential causes of Gulf War Illness, including burning oil wells, multiple vaccines and low-level exposure to nerve agents such as those released by the U.S. demolition of a munitions dump near Khamisiyah, Iraq – to which at least 100,000 troops were potentially exposed, including Letterman. With thousands of troops currently stationed in the same desert, Overton said, research on chemical-related illness should be a serious priority.
The committee also noted that Gulf War veterans have significantly higher rates of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis than other veterans and that troops who were downwind from the Khamisiyah demolition have died from brain cancer at twice the rate of other Gulf War veterans.
“There are others out there that have probably had it worse than I have had it – and some that are no longer with us anymore,” Letterman said. “There are quite a few more that have been beat down by the system. A sick veteran doesn’t have the strength to fight the system when it’s working the way it’s working. The system will always win.”
For questions or help in filing a claim, call the Connecticut Department of Veterans’ Affairs at 866-928-8387.
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New U.S. Capitol Visitor Center Makes Trip Easier for Tourists
VISITORS SHORT
Rachel Kolokoff
Boston University Washington News Service
December 12, 2008
WASHINTON - For millions of annual visitors who have stood in line for hours waiting to tour the U.S. Capitol, convenience has finally arrived with the opening of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center.
The 580,000-square-foot underground addition, which took seven years and $621 million of taxpayer money to construct, opened in early December.
The idea of a visitor center dates back to the 1960s but was thrust forward in 1998 when a gunman breached Capitol security, opening fire and killing two Capitol police officers.
In 2002, construction began with a cost estimated at close to $360 million.
Tom Fontana, spokesman for the center, said the facility, built almost entirely underground on the east side of the Capitol, improves security by establishing a buffer zone between the Capitol and its visitors.
But the center, which is protected by the U.S. Capitol Police, does much more than shield the Capitol building, according to Mr. Fontana. At roughly three-quarters the size of the Capitol building itself, the center can hold up to 4,000 people and includes additional congressional office space, two theaters, exhibits, gift shops, a cafeteria and 26 restrooms.
Until the new center opened, tourists were forced to wait outside in hot and cold weather to go through security and were allowed to enter only in controlled numbers.
“People are now waiting minutes outside where it would have been hours before,” Fontana said.
People waiting for tours now can enjoy the center’s displays about the history of the Capitol and Congress in the new 16,500-square-foot exhibition space. Designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the dimly lit exhibition hall, in which photography is barred, has an 11-foot-tall model of the Capitol’s rotunda and dome, interactive, touch-screen kiosks with panoramic virtual tours of the Capitol and more.
Displayed artifacts on loan from the National Archives include the trowel used by President Washington to lay the Capitol cornerstone in 1793 and the American flag that was flying over the House on Sept. 11, 2001.
Also on display are the original 19-foot-tall, white plaster Statue of Freedom, cast in bronze in 1861, and more than 20 other statues from the National Statuary Hall Collection.
While waiting to tour the Capitol, visitors not admiring priceless artifacts and statues might watch a 13-minute orientation film on the history of Congress in one of two theaters accessible from Emancipation Hall.
But with the center’s advance reservation system in place, most visitors will not find themselves waiting for long, Fontana said. Using the center’s Web site, visitthecapitol.gov, visitors can book a tour with the Capitol Guide Service days or weeks in advance and plan accordingly. Tours led by congressional office staff members are still available and visitors can contact their member of Congress directly or through the Web site.
It costs nothing to enter or to reserve tickets for the theaters and tours. A limited number of tickets are available daily for people who have not made reservations.
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Barriers to Mental Health Care Access for Children Persist
MENTAL HEALTH
Bangor Daily News
Maite Jullian
Boston University Washington News Service
12/12/08
WASHINGTON – As the new U.S. Congress convenes next month, child advocates are putting their hopes in a bill Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said she will reintroduce to address a national issue: the barriers families face in accessing mental health care for emotionally or mentally disturbed children.
The goal of the Keep Family Together Act, first introduced in 2003, is to promote mental health treatment for children in a family and community setting instead of in a residential facility.
The bill would provide states with $55 million a year for five years to support and maintain systems of care focusing on community-based services. It is intended to help families to get state services that are now either insufficient or too expensive and allow them to care for their children at home.
“It’s an issue that doesn’t come to the attention of policymakers that often,” Collins said in an interview. “Families tend to suffer in silence. This happens all over the country, but individual families are struggling on their own.”
She said the bill would encourage states to create more cost-effective and innovative services. It also would establish a task force to make recommendations on how to improve mental health access and services in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.
“It is providing some funding resources for the kind of services that parents need,” Carol Carothers, executive director of the Maine National Alliance on Mental Illness, said. “Just people recognizing that it’s happening would help. There hasn’t been much progress so far.”
Collins said she is introducing the bill to help reduce the number of parents who relinquish custody of their children and place them in the child welfare system or the juvenile justice system as a way to provide them with care.
“I don’t think there is much difference in Maine,” Carothers said. “I don’t have a line of families calling, but it is still an issue. It is still really hard to get treatment.”
The issue was brought to light in a 2003 Government Accountability Office report, requested by Collins and Reps. Pete Stark, D-Calif., and Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., which showed that parents placed more than 12,700 children into the child welfare or juvenile justice systems in fiscal year 2001 so that they could receive mental health services.
Because 32 states didn’t provide the GAO with any data, the report concluded that “the number of children placed is likely to be higher.”
Since then, no new data have been compiled because states don’t track this practice, but Collins said she will request the GAO to update the report.
During hearings in 2003 before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Tammy Saltzer, then an attorney for the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a Washington-based advocacy organization, said that “when families are uninsured or have exhausted their private insurance benefits, both mental health providers and public child welfare agency staff often advise parents that relinquishing custody of their child to the state is the only way to obtain services.”
She also said that it resulted in children being placed in more expensive and less supportive residential placements.
Even if families’ relinquishing custody is more the exception than the rule, as Darcy Gruttadaro, director of the child and adolescent action center at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said, families still have difficulties getting mental health care for their children.
A 20-state survey the alliance conducted reported that “64 percent of families with children with special health care needs, including children with mental illnesses, are turning down jobs, raises and overtime so that they can remain in the income bracket that qualifies their child for Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid.”
Middle-class families are especially affected. Their salaries are too high to get Medicaid but too low to cover the cost of therapy and medication, outpatient visits or residential treatments – especially since insurance companies impose caps on costs and stop reimbursements after a period of time, said Lee Carty, spokeswoman for the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.
The GAO report said residential treatment facilities can cost up to $250,000 a year for one child. One outpatient therapy session can cost more than $100.
Since 2003, progress has been made, thanks to state and federal regulations adopted in the last few years.
The Family Opportunity Act, signed into law in February 2005, included one of the provisions in Sen. Collins’ bill that would expand Medicaid coverage to children with mental health disorders under the Katie Beckett waiver, which allows Medicaid eligibility for home care to be determined by the individual’s income and assets and not the income and assets of the family. In this way community-based services are available to eligible children who otherwise would be in residential treatment facilities.
The mental health parity law, attached to the economic bailout bill in October, was another welcome step. The law, which goes into effect in October 2009, requires companies with more than 50 employees to provide equal insurance coverage for physical and mental health services.
Maine, along with 41 other states, already has a parity law, but employers who self-insure didn’t have to follow it. Under the new federal law, they will have to.
Child advocates still think that more needs to be done, especially considering what happened recently in Nebraska, where more then 30 children were abandoned under the state’s safe haven law. Most were either waiting for mental health care or had been treated for mental illness.
“There are significant loopholes in the parity laws both in the states and at the federal level,” Carothers said. “In the small-group market there is no parity, so for many of the country’s citizens, there are significant limits on insurance coverage. And many states are putting additional limits on Katie Beckett these days because of the cuts to Medicaid and to mental health services in general.”
According to Carrie Horne, the assistant director of the Maine National Alliance on Mental Illness, the state recently implemented an annual premium for families receiving aid under the waiver and will soon double it, which drives families to choose to drop out of the program, she said.
The Bazelon Center’s Carty said that the recent parity law and the Family Opportunity Act help but that they are “still a drop in the bucket.”
“To make a real difference, we need a comprehensive mental health care reform,” Carty said.
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Sex Education Key to Solving New London’s Teen Pregnancy Problem, Experts Say
SEX-ED
New London Day
Dan Levy
Boston University Washington News Service
December 10 2008
WASHINGTON—In his sweeping speech at the Democratic National Convention last summer, President-elect Barack Obama may have touched upon the key to one of New London’s most vexing and heartbreaking problems.
“We may not agree on abortion,” then-Senator Obama said, “but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”
As the national teen pregnancy rate rises for the first time in 15 years, health experts, community workers and legislators from New London to Washington hope the “common ground” solution on which people on both sides of the abortion debate can agree is comprehensive sex education.
Advocates of comprehensive sex education—which covers contraception as well as abstinence—have gained ground in the last year. A long-awaited Congress-backed study found abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which the Bush administration supports, to be inadequate and ineffective. As a result, 17 states including Connecticut have refused money for the programs; now comprehensive sex education advocates are hoping the federal and state governments will show them the money.
In New London, the time couldn’t be more ripe. Teen pregnancy rates in the city are soaring, even as they’re declining across Connecticut. In 2004 births to teens accounted for roughly 14 percent of births in New London, more than double the statewide rate. In Groton, by contrast, births to teens accounted for only 7 percent. And those figures do not account for teen pregnancies that ended in abortions.
Perhaps the most disheartening fact: no one’s sure what the reason is.
“We’re still continuing to think about and wrestle with the why,” Laurel Holmes, who heads Lawrence and Memorial Hospital’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Task Force, said. “We’ve been focusing on how we can reverse this.”
Formed 10 years ago, the task force includes almost 60 members who range from health professionals and civil servants, to educators and religious leaders, Holmes said. In 2005 the group commissioned a study by sociologist Susan Philliber, whose findings were illuminating, if not entirely surprising.
Philliber discovered that most teen mothers in New London lived in “stressed neighborhoods” plagued by poverty, poorly performing schools and dysfunctional family situations. More than half were black or Hispanic, and most had not finished high school.
New London’s teen pregnancy plague is in part a demographic issue. Roughly 16 percent of the city’s residents live below the poverty line, compared with 9 percent in Groton and 8 percent statewide, according to the report.
The problem is also circular. Between 1991 and 2004, teen births in Connecticut cost taxpayers almost $2 billion, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. Most of these costs arose from the needs of children born to teen mothers, such as public health care, welfare, and incarceration, the group found.
But Philliber’s report identified another problem, one which the city could more easily fix. Teen pregnancies in New London were not driven only by poverty, the researcher found, but a lack of scientifically-accurate sex education in schools.
“Teachers in New London schools have not have been trained to offer sexuality education, have no standard curriculum in place, and there is confusion about policies related to such education,” Philliber wrote in the report.
So for the first time this fall New London High School introduced a comprehensive sex education curriculum in tenth grade health classes. The curriculum, called “Making Proud Choices!” covers decision-making skills and contraception techniques, including condom use and abstinence, according to Alison Ryan, supervisor of curriculum for New London Public Schools.
The teen pregnancy task force also spearheaded a variety of programs for teenagers offered outside the classroom. Many are funded by the Community Foundation of Southeastern Connecticut, which devoted nearly $50,000 of its $40 million endowment this year to combating teen pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections, according to program director Jennifer O’Brien.
For instance, the foundation’s grants fund “Teen Talk,” a series of sexual health discussions at New London’s Planned Parenthood center and “Real Life, Real Talk,” a program designed to teach parents and church leaders how to talk to youth about sex.
“We sort of have this modern myth that if we tell kids about sex they’ll go and do it,” said Kate Ott, associate director of the Westport-based Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing, who facilitated workshops for clergy members in New London last month. “That’s actually wrong.”
Other programs the foundation funds emphasize the opportunities teens would lose out on as a parent. The task force’s own youth group, “B Tru 2 U,” rarely talks about sex, according to organizer Rita Whitehead.
Whitehead’s “core group” consists of five boys who squeeze into her van and attend events across the community. They’ve marched in the Hope Week parade, attended a board of education meeting at City Hall and even toured a police station.
“The more involved in the community they are,” Whitehead explained, “the less likely they’ll do anything to harm the community.”
These projects are encouraging, but they reach a relatively small number of kids—many of whom are self-selected and not necessarily at risk of mothering or fathering a baby. That’s why many New London health experts are eager for comprehensive sex education to become a state and federal priority.
Here’s where Barack Obama and the abortion debate comes in.
It’s clear that unplanned pregnancies drive abortion rates. Roughly half of all pregnancies aren’t planned, and 40 to 50 percent of those result in an abortion, according to the National Campaign. But it’s less obvious that the hot-button abortion issue should influence efforts to reduce births to teens—after all, teenage mothers didn’t have abortions.
Yet, thanks to the ongoing political struggle between religious conservatives and secular progressives— the so-called culture wars— the two issues have become entangled.
In Connecticut a bill to fund “comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education to teenagers, teachers, or parent/guardian training programs” died in the education committee earlier this year. Among those who spoke at a press conference heralding the Healthy Teens Act were New London Mayor Kevin Cavanagh, school superintendent Chris Clouet and Rita Whitehead, the B Tru 2 U organizer.
The bill’s main opponent was the Family Institute of Connecticut, a group that favors abstinence-only until marriage programs, which was leery of a bill that had Planned Parenthood’s blessing.
“The first rule of thumb,” said Peter Wolfgang, the Family Institute’s executive director, “is that you don’t lower the pregnancy rate by working with the folks who profit through abortion and birth control.”
Proponents of the Healthy Teens Act point to a recent survey by National Public Radio, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care non-profit, which found overwhelming parental support for comprehensive sex education. The poll found that 88 percent of parents of junior high school students believe their kids should be taught how to use contraceptives.
“Most people understand this to be an absolutely middle-of-the-road common sense issue,” said Susan Yolen, vice-president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Connecticut. “If people don’t agree with abortion, this is what they’ve been advocating for.”
On a national level legislators who support sex education are making a point of bringing abortion rights opponents into their fold. The Prevention First Act, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the first day of the current Congress, would have funded school programs that teach contraception as well as abstinence. The bill, which stalled in committee, identified abortion reduction as one of its main goals.
In the House of Representatives, a similar bill was sponsored by Rep. Timothy Ryan, D-Ohio, an abortion rights opponent, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who supports abortion rights. Its name: The Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act. The bill will be re-introduced in the next session, a DeLauro aide said.
“Of all the important goals this initiative can help us reach,” said DeLauro, who represents Connecticut’s 3rd District, “perhaps the most important is that it helps move us all forward on this issue, beyond the question over the legality of abortion and toward actually reducing the need.”
Andrea Kane, the National Campaign’s policy director, said her organization is making a point these days of embracing abortion reduction in its platform.
“It wasn’t our primary driver, but it’s certainly one of the very compelling reasons to get more attention,” Kane said.
The national reproductive health community has asked the incoming Obama administration to spend at least $50 million per year on comprehensive sex education, according to William Smith, vice president for public policy for the Sexuality Education and Information Council of the United States, a research and lobbying group.
Smith said he knows where Congress can find the money—the Bush administration has spent nearly $180 million a year on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs which he expects the new government to abandon.
“This is a common ground issue,” Smith said. “We’ve overwhelmingly elected a president who wants to end the culture wars and I think comprehensive sex education can be a part of that.”
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New U.S. Capitol Visitor Center Makes Trip Easier for Tourists
VISITORS
Worcester Telegram and Gazette
Rachel Kolokoff
Boston University Washington News Service
December 10, 2008
WASHINGTON -- After 18 years as a history teacher at Forest Grove Middle School in Worcester, Fred King is no stranger to the U. S. Capitol building.
As a chaperone on the annual class trip to Washington, he has accompanied his students as they have toured its halls about a dozen times, witnessing history firsthand in the legislative chambers and viewing the paintings and sculptures as grand as the national ideals they reflect.
But despite his best efforts, Mr. King said, there is one thing he has yet to discover beneath the cast-iron Capitol dome, something his students have always, inevitably, needed – a bathroom. In fact, throughout the building, there are only five public bathrooms.
But for Mr. King, his students, and millions of annual visitors who have stood in line for hours waiting to tour the Capitol, convenience has finally arrived with the opening of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The 580,000-square-foot underground addition, which took seven years and $621 million of taxpayer money to construct, opened in early December. And it has 26 restrooms.
The idea of a visitor center dates back to the 1960s but was thrust forward in 1986 when a legislative committee began planning its construction and again in 1998 when a gunman breached Capitol security, opening fire and killing two Capitol police officers.
In 2002, after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City, construction began with a cost estimated at close to $360 million.
Tom Fontana, spokesman for the center, said the facility, built almost entirely underground on the east side of the Capitol, improves security by establishing a buffer zone between the Capitol and its visitors.
Truck services to the Capitol now also take place underground in a tunnel, the construction of which was partly responsible for the center’s delays and cost overrun. Previously all delivery trucks pulled up to the east front of the building.
“All that activity occurred right near the face of the building in the morning hours,” Mr. Fontana said, “and that’s not appropriate for any building, let alone the nation’s Capitol.”
But the center, which is protected by the U.S. Capitol Police, does much more than shield the Capitol building, according to Mr. Fontana. At roughly three-quarters the size of the Capitol building itself, the center can hold up to 4,000 people and includes additional congressional office space, two theaters, exhibits, gift shops, a cafeteria and the 26 restrooms.
More than 2,000 people per hour can be screened through the center’s entrance, a descending stairway on the Capitol’s east lawn, which some say mars a once unobstructed view of the Capitol building itself.
“People are now waiting minutes outside where it would have been hours before,” Fontana said.
U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, said that the more efficient entrance is a welcome way to keep people out of long lines and bad weather.
“People get heat stroke waiting to get into the Capitol in lines with hundreds and hundreds of people,” Mr. McGovern said. Until the new center opened, tourists would wait in line outside to go through security and were allowed to enter only in controlled numbers.
For people like Mr. King and David J. Twiss, a chorus director at Burncoat High School in Worcester who is taking his select chorus to Washington in January, the center offers not only shelter from the weather but also the chance for a hassle-free educational experience.
“Certainly when you’re trying to get on a bus with a time schedule, you’re going to appreciate 26 bathrooms,” Mr. Twiss said.
Mr. Twiss said he expects his students to enjoy the center’s displays about the history of the Capitol and Congress in the new 16,500-square-foot exhibition space. Designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the dimly lit exhibition hall, in which photography is barred, has an 11-foot-tall model of the Capitol’s rotunda and dome; models of Capitol Hill’s evolution from 1814 to present times; interactive, touch-screen kiosks with panoramic virtual tours of the Capitol and more.
Displayed artifacts on loan from the National Archives include the trowel used by President Washington to lay the Capitol cornerstone in 1793, the gavel used in the 1941 declaration of war against Germany and Italy and the American flag that was flying over the House on Sept. 11, 2001.
U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, said the exhibitions are important because they offer people a chance to better understand America’s history.
“I think the obligation here is clear,” Mr. Neal said, “and that’s to remind and better acquaint the citizenry with the marvel of the documents that help produce our democracy.”
Also on display are the original 19-foot-tall, white plaster Statue of Freedom, cast in bronze in 1861, and more than 20 other statues chosen carefully from the National Statuary Hall Collection to “represent the diversity of the country equitably,” according to Mr. Fontana.
“In the entire national statuary hall collection there are 100 statues, but only eight are women,” Mr. Fontana said. “We have five of those in our Emancipation Hall.”
Mr. Fontana said each statue was placed meticulously throughout the vast sandstone and marble-walled showroom, which boasts a 36-foot ceiling, two massive skylights and floor space large enough to contain five football fields.
The statue of King Kamehameha, who has an elevated status in Hawaii, must out of respect rest in a place where no one walks over his head, Mr. Fontana said. Sacagawea must face the West in honor of her westward journey with Lewis and Clark.
While waiting to tour the Capitol, visitors not admiring priceless artifacts and statues might watch a 13-minute orientation film on the history of Congress in one of two theaters accessible from Emancipation Hall.
But with the center’s advance reservation system in place, most visitors will not find themselves waiting for long, Fontana said. Using the center’s Web site, visitthecapitol.gov, visitors can book a tour with the Capitol Guide Service days or weeks in advance and plan accordingly. Tours led by congressional office staff members are still available and visitors can contact their member of Congress directly or through the Web site.
It costs nothing to enter or to reserve tickets for the theaters and tours. A limited number of tickets are available daily for people who have not made reservations.
Mr. McGovern said he thinks visitors will not be disappointed by the center, which he called a magnificent addition to the Capitol campus.
“From some vantage points, when you look up through the glass ceiling, you see that incredible view of the Capitol dome,” he said, “It’s breathtaking.”
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Student from Dartmouth, N.H., Spends Semester in Washington
HARTMAN
The New Bedford Standard-Times
Courtney Hime
Boston University Washington News Service
December 10, 2008
WASHINGTON –Dan Hartman had every intention of completing his senior year at Tufts University, just like his fellow classmates.
But last June, while interning at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Mr. Hartman applied to intern in the fall at the White House, a position he had unsuccessfully applied for in the spring. This time, however, he was accepted.
“It was somewhat of a surprise, and I had already been prepared to go back to Tufts for the fall semester and I immediately had to change gears,” he said. “I had to take a semester off.”
A semester away, perhaps, but not a semester off, says Jeffrey M. Berry, a political science professor at Tufts and Mr. Hartman’s adviser.
“I don’t feel like he really is taking a semester off. I think this is part of his education as a political science student,” he said. “He’s enriching his education in ways that we could never teach him at Tufts.”
While Mr. Hartman will have to take a few summer classes to complete his college courses, he will still be allowed to graduate with the rest of his class in June 2009.
“It’s been totally worth it,” he said. “The White House doesn’t call very often, and when it does, you have to take it.”
Mr. Hartman’s choice to intern at the White House shouldn’t come as a surprise. At Tufts, he is double majoring in political science and economics. He has been active in College Republicans, serving as president of the organization last year. He also helped out with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign from August 2007 until the campaign ended in February.
His political interests were apparent in high school as well when he was voted “Class Politician” and “Most Likely to Succeed” by Dartmouth High School’s 2005 class.
“He’s really, really psyched about political science and always been involved in political science since he was a kid,” said his mother, Debra Hartman. “That’s his passion in life, and I couldn’t see him doing anything other than this.”
The experience working at the White House, he said, has exceeded his expectations.
“I expected to be getting coffee and doing photocopies and what not, and it ended up being totally different than that,” Mr. Hartman said.
He worked why past tense? from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. every day and spent the day reading and analyzing the news as well as conducting research on issues that concern the president.
In addition to his daily routine, he has also had the opportunity to meet several higher-level White House staff, including Dana Perino, the presidential press secretary; Steve Preston, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and even President George W. Bush himself.
But some of the most meaningful experiences occurred away from the White House. During a tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with his fellow interns, Mr. Hartman was given the chance to hear a testimonial from a Holocaust survivor.
“Hearing her story of perseverance is just one of the most inspirational things you can ever think of,” he said. “It kind of taught me that a lot of people have been through much harder than what I’ve ever had to go through, and that if you keep fighting hard, you’re going to succeed in life.”
For the long-time Republican, the 2008 election didn’t turn out the way he had hoped, but he said he still values being in Washington for the excitement.
“Being in Washington in general during the election was an opportunity to really enjoy and to appreciate the democratic process,” he said.
Mr. Hartman said he plans to head back to New York City in July to work on Wall Street. However, his time in Washington has given him a taste of how government directly affects the financial sector.
“Getting to witness firsthand the rescue of the whole financial system after having just worked in the financial system over the summer was a real unique opportunity,” he said. “I think that kind of perspective, the policy side, the government side, will help strengthen my perspective when I go into finance and Wall Street.”
Even though Mr. Hartman’s post-collegiate plans do not immediately include a political run, those close to him say they wouldn’t count his White House internship as his last foray with politics.
“It really wouldn’t surprise me if he pushes to get that far,” his father, Mark Hartman, said of a future career in the political arena. “He definitely has the drive.”
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Government Intervention Best Bet to Reduce Foreclosures, N.H. Representatives Say
FORECLOSURE FINAL
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jenny Paul
Boston University Washington News Service
12/9/08
WASHINGTON, D.C.—John Skiff nearly lost his home to foreclosure two years ago. Now he’s close to losing it again.
The Nashua retiree missed monthly mortgage payments on his four-bedroom house for the first time in 2006, after gaining legal custody of his seven grandchildren. Skiff said he had to make a choice between paying the mortgage and feeding and clothing the children.
“It isn’t anything we wanted to happen,” he said. “We just fell behind. The kids, they grow, and you have to get out there and get clothes.”
With the help of a pro bono legal clinic, Skiff filed for bankruptcy to halt the foreclosure and resumed making his monthly payments while paying back the debt that had accrued.
This year, Skiff fell behind again, giving his mortgage company the right to foreclose on the house for a second time. His foreclosure date has been set for Jan. 14, leaving Skiff unsure whether he will have to split his family up and send the children to foster care next month.
“It drains you some, when the whole month you’re wondering if you’re going to be here the next month,” said Skiff, 66, a retired shuttle driver and warehouse employee who relies on welfare checks, Social Security benefits and a small monthly pension to make ends meet. He said he can’t go back to work because his wife, Judy, has health problems and needs help caring for the children.
Skiff, who has a fixed-rate mortgage, is waiting to see if his mortgage company will voluntarily modify it to reduce his monthly payment.
As the economy worsens and job losses increase, homeowners who hold fixed-rate mortgages, like Skiff, are becoming a more common presence at New Hampshire housing clinics. The foreclosure crisis is no longer confined to those with subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages, housing experts say.
There were 333 foreclosures in New Hampshire in October, up from 211 during the same month in 2007, according to data provided by the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority. The authority, which the state government established in 1981, predicts there will be more than 3,500 foreclosures in the state during 2008 – nearly 1,500 more than there were last year.
A push for help in Washington
The state’s two Democratic U.S. House members as well as housing experts say the foreclosure rate won’t slow unless the federal government moves to force lenders to restructure the terms of troubled mortgages.
“Folks in New Hampshire are kind of stoic,” Rep. Paul Hodes said. “We are used to being frugal and tightening our belts and helping each other, and at the same time, the statistics and the stories I’m hearing from folks in distress are telling the story.”
Hodes, along with Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, has pledged to push for legislation that would compel lenders to rewrite mortgages to make them more affordable for distressed homeowners.
Last month, Hodes introduced a bill that would do just that. It is unlikely that the bill will be considered during a lame-duck congressional session in December, but Hodes promised to reintroduce the proposal when a new Congress convenes in January.
“I think this plan is a good start to a solution,” he said. “We need to provide a menu of options for working out [the mortgages of] homeowners in distress.”
Hodes’ proposal would allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of debtors’ primary-residence mortgages. The provision would help people like Skiff, who file for bankruptcy to buy time to save their homes but end up defaulting again because they still cannot afford the amount of their monthly payments.
“When you just keep them locked into this same mortgage that they weren’t able to pay before they went into bankruptcy, how are they supposed to be able to pay it after bankruptcy plus the [debt from the missed payments]?” said Peter Wright, who is representing Skiff through a clinic at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord. “It ends up just being a foreordained result where they’re going to fail.”
Banking industry leaders argue the change would increase the number of bankruptcy filings and heighten the risks for investors in primary-residence mortgages, resulting in higher fees and interest rates for new homeowners. That could result in mortgage rate increases of at least 1 percent, cautioned Ralph Coppola, president of the Mortgage Bankers and Brokers Association of New Hampshire.
“Anyone that’s issuing mortgage funds, they’ll be further evaluating their costs and risk factors,” Coppola said. “We’d be concerned that it’s going to have an effect both on the cost to do a loan and the rate that the consumer is going to have…. I think it’s going to hurt the consumer and make the problem worse.”
Hodes dismissed the warning, saying an “unprecedented” economic crisis and an increasing number of foreclosures outweigh the concerns of industry leaders.
Hodes said he realizes that people who file for bankruptcy to save their homes face “serious consequences,” including blemished credit scores and financial limitations set by a budget issued by the bankruptcy court.
His bill, therefore, also calls for measures that are less damaging to homeowners, including a provision that would mandate lender participation in the government’s HOPE for Homeowners program, which was signed into law in July and took effect Oct. 1.
Borrowers who qualify for the program can refinance into fixed-rate, government-insured mortgages. The voluntary program, which had garnered fewer than 200 applications nationwide as of mid-November, has not been well-received by mortgage lenders, who must take a loss when they write down the principal of a loan as part of the program.
Although the government revised the program’s rules last month to entice more lenders to participate, Hodes said mandating lender participation is necessary to jump-start the program.
“The voluntary nature of it gives lenders and servicers an out,” he said. “I think we need to be more aggressive about it.”
A third option
Plans that force the hand of hesitant lenders aren’t the only foreclosure-reduction proposals that could come before Congress in January. Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is shopping a plan that would use about $25 billion of government money to entice lenders to modify mortgages voluntarily.
The plan is similar to one the FDIC is using to rework mortgages held by IndyMac Bank, which the FDIC took over this summer after the bank failed. It would allow lenders to modify mortgages, reducing payments to as low as 31 percent of borrowers’ income, by lowering interest rates, reducing the principal of the loan or extending the time a borrower has to repay the loan. The government would pay lenders $1,000 per modified mortgage and would absorb up to half of the losses on mortgages where borrowers default for the second time.
Hodes and Shea-Porter said they support the plan. Although Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said he wouldn’t use money from the bailout package to pay for the FDIC proposal, Shea-Porter said she thought it would be a good use of that money.
“What we wanted right from the beginning was to put this toward the person on Main Street who was having trouble paying the mortgage but could do it if they got it modified,” she said.
Even as the two lawmakers promise to push for the proposals’ passage, housing experts and political scientists aren’t sure the plans will win enough support in the new Congress, even though Democrats will control Congress and the White House.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said he will not support a bill identical to Hodes’ legislation that was filed in the Senate.
Jennifer Lucas, an assistant professor of politics at St. Anselm College, cautioned that Republicans still hold enough seats in the Senate to block legislation they oppose.
“Part of the issue is whether some of the moderate Republicans might be willing to cross over and vote with the Democrats on some of these issues,” Lucas said.
Rosemary Heard, president of CATCH Neighborhood Housing, a Concord-based organization that provides foreclosure counseling and other services, said she hoped Congress and Barack Obama’s administration would take action to reduce foreclosures. But she didn’t think Congress would be able to muster the political will to force mortgage companies to take big losses.
“The servicers have to be part of the solution, so it would require something on a national level that would require them to agree to write down their mortgages across the board,” Heard said. “I frankly can’t see that happening.”
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Push to Lower Drinking Age Faces Tough Climb Up Capitol Hill
DRINKING
The Keene Sentinel
Joe Vines
Boston University Washington News Service
December 8, 2008
WASHINGTON – The push to repeal the federal statute that strips 10 percent of federal highway aid from any state that has a legal drinking age lower than 21 seems to have fallen on deaf ears on Capitol Hill.
Choose Responsibility, a national organization based in Washington that promotes lowering the drinking age to 18, is seeking to have the issue debated in Congress next year, when the federal highway bill is scheduled to come up for reauthorization.
The group’s Web site argues that the age 21 restriction on drinking “has failed utterly at its goal of protecting young people from the dangers of excessive alcohol use.”
“Removing the 10 percent penalty will allow the states to debate this openly and put all options on the table,” said Michael Giuliani, executive director of Choose Responsibility. “Allowing the states to set their own policy, which is where the Constitution says alcohol regulation should be, is what our hope is.”
Giuliani said organization leaders have talked with members of Congress about sponsoring an amendment to the highway bill that would repeal the law, but declined to name those to whom the organization has spoken. So far no member of Congress has publicly favored amending the highway bill to do away with the penalty for states that lower the drinking age.
The issue has been widely discussed on the campus of Keene State College this semester, after college president Helen F. Giles-Gee was asked to sign the Amethyst Initiative, a national petition circulated among heads of colleges and universities calling for a national debate of the effectiveness of the current legal drinking age. Choose Responsibility provides staff support and is sponsoring the Amethyst Initiative.
Giles-Gee did not sign the initiative but supports a discussion of the issue, said Andrew Robinson, vice president of student affairs at Keene State.
“It called for a debate, but at some point [the initiative] said ‘21 is not working.’ So what the president decided is let’s have that debate without signing an initiative that would appear as though we were supporting lowering the drinking age,” Robinson said.
“The statement does not recommend the drinking age be 18 or 25,” Giuliani said. “It’s calling attention to the problem that is going on in America of excessive alcohol consumption and calling for an open and unimpeded debate about that topic.”
One Keene State freshman favors raising the driving age as a solution instead of lowering the drinking age. Tim, who declined to give his last name because of the sensitivity of the subject on campus, said, “You don’t hear of too many 26-year-olds who are really, really drunk, but you do hear of these really drunk high school students.”
Currently, a person must be at least 16 years old and complete a driver education course before obtaining a license, according to the New Hampshire Department of Safety’s Web site.
To date, the Amethyst Initiative petition has 134 signatories, including Southern New Hampshire University President Paul LeBlanc, who did not return repeated calls for comment for this story.
According to Choose Responsibility’s Web site, the current legal drinking age of 21 is not working and instead has resulted in the unintended consequence of creating a clandestine college culture of binge drinking that is often conducted off campus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines binge drinking as excessive alcohol use in a relatively short period—typically, five or more drinks for men, four or more for women in about two hours. Binge drinkers, the center says, usually are not considered to be alcohol-dependent.
The center reports that 90 percent of the alcohol consumed by those under 21 in the United States is during binge drinking. And binge drinking is most prevalent among people ages 18 to 20.
Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said in a press release issued by Mothers Against Drunk Driving that he “won’t consider any effort to repeal or weaken [the law] in any way.”
Oberstar’s opposition is a significant blow to advocates of repealing the statute since as the committee chairman he can simply refuse to entertain any amendment offered to change the law. However, Jim Berard, the committee’s communications director, said the issue could come up next year, though he couldn’t name any potential backers of changing the law.
Niel Wright, communications director for Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Wis., a 15-term lawmaker who sits on both the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Education and Labor Committee, said while the congressman believes that the drinking age should be left up to the states, he does not foresee offering legislation to change the law in the next Congress.
The statute was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 as an amendment to the Federal Aid Highway Act. In 1986, South Dakota brought suit in federal court contending that the law violated the 10th amendment, which reserves to the states powers not delegated to the federal government, and the 21st amendment, which repealed alcohol prohibition, In a 7-2 decision, the court decided that the law didn’t constitute prohibition. And because the statute did not ban the sale of alcohol to persons under the age of 21, it did not violate the 21st amendment.
Choose Responsibility advocates a national licensing program in which high school graduates, upon completion of a detailed curriculum, obtain a license that, according to the organization’s Web site, entitles “him or her to all the privileges and responsibilities of adult alcohol purchase, possession and consumption.”
However, the license would come with certain restrictions. “If you put restrictions and penalties on people who would receive this license – that if they violate the law in any way then that license is gone – they’re going to be less likely to do something if you give them comprehensive education,” Giuliani said.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a national organization founded to prevent drunk driving and underage drinking, contends the current law is working and saves lives.
“[T]here is no reason to go shooting in the dark for a solution and repealing a law that we know already saves lives with absolutely no evidence that it would be a benefit,” said Kelley Tway, media relations manager at the organization’s national office.
Tway also said that medical studies have shown that the brain of an 18-year-old is not fully developed and use of alcohol can stunt development in the final stages of growth “The 21 law saves lives, no matter how you slice it,” Tway said.
“If you all of the sudden lower [the law] down to age 18 without having an educational background with it, the problem may not necessarily get better, it may just transition to a different age-group of students,” said Dan Saucier, student body president at Keene State.
Saucier, a senior majoring in education and American studies from Rochester, N.H., said opinions among the student body on the issue are mixed, but he expressed concern that if the drinking age were lowered from 21 to 18, the problem would be taken out of the hands of college presidents and put into the hands of high school principals, a sentiment Giuliani takes issue with.
“Alcohol is a reality in public high schools now. Seventy-five percent of high school seniors, 60 percent of high school sophomores and 40 percent of eighth graders have consumed alcohol,” Giuliani said. “Since the age has been raised to 21, the age of first consumption of alcohol has dropped. It’s younger now than it has ever been.”
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More Job Losses are Expected in Maine as the Recession is Going On
JOBLOSSES
Bangor Daily News
Guanlei Ren
Boston University Washington News Service
December 08, 2008
WASHINGTON—For Michael Lynch, a junior at the University of Southern Maine, it’s a tough time to be looking for a job. But it could be worse if he lived in some state other than Maine.
As bad as the recession-driven employment picture is in Maine, it’s slightly better than in the nation as a whole—though that may not be much of a consolation for someone seeking a job.
Lynch is a full-time musical theater student. Starting this summer, when he transferred to the university’s Portland campus, he had been looking for part-time jobs. Until a month ago, he didn’t get one.
“It’s pretty hard to get jobs in Maine,” Lynch said. Because of the bad economy, several of his friends who are also students couldn’t find part-time jobs as well. He said that a lot of people in Maine spend two hours each way commuting to Boston to work.
Like Lynch, people find that it is getting harder to find either part-time or full-time jobs not only in Maine but also the whole country.
In November, the nation shed 533,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent, a 15-year high, up two-tenths of a percentage point from October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Dec. 5. The jobless rate is likely to peak at 8.5 to 9 percent sometime late next year, many economists have predicted.
For now, the picture is a little bit brighter in Maine, where the October jobless rate was 5.7 percent, better than the national rate but still the worst since September 1995.
“The national slowdown is definitely affecting folks in Maine,” said Adam Fisher, spokesman for the Maine Department of Labor. “We know that more people are losing their jobs.”
According to the department’s Center for Workforce Research and Information, Maine had a net loss of 5,600 nonfarm jobs through October since the current recession began a year ago.
“The unemployment rate is rising over the last year in virtually all the states,” said Glenn Mills, director of economic research at the center. “The downturn is affecting Maine as well as other regions.” Unemployment insurance claims have been up significantly in recent months.
According to Mills, the largest job losses in Maine since last December were in the construction, retail trade and accommodations and food services sectors, which lost 2,100, 2,100 and 1,600 job losses respectively.
Mills said job losses “were impacted by a range of factors, especially the housing crisis and high gas prices and poor weather in the summer, which moderated tourism from usual levels.”
A middle-high end restaurant owner who didn’t want to identify herself or her business said her customer loss was very significant and her profit was down roughly 30 percent. . People tended, she said, to flock to McDonald’s.
One of her customers, a building contractor, already has lost in December four contracts , the restaurant owner said.
“The economy is slowing down,” said assistant professor Karen Buhr at the University of Maine. “There is not as much of a demand for new things to build, new offices, new stores or new houses.”
“The housing crisis is hurting Maine uniquely,” Fisher said. “We produce a lot of the building materials.”
People are also having difficulty borrowing money in the face of the credit crunch, Buhr said. “If people don’t have a lot of extra money or they are less certain about how stable their jobs might be, they might be less likely to go out and buy a lot of extra things.” That, in turn, leads to more job losses in retail trade.
Freedom Power Equipment runs a sales and repair service for lawn and garden equipment in Bangor. Bob Cousins, the manager of the company, said “more people are fixing their older equipment to make it last than they are replacing them.” His company does a big repair business and, he said, it has been quite busy this year while sales of new equipment have slowed. Although the sales have been fair this year, “we could see a drop,” Cousins said.
“I think everything in the whole country is feeling [the recession,]” he said. “Our suppliers that we buy from have cut back on inventories that they keep.” As some plants closed their business and some manufacturers reduced their products, Cousins has found some things hard to get.
The six-employee company hasn’t had to lay off any workers so far, Cousins said, and he hopes there’ll be no layoffs in the future. “But we don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “What I think is happening is the cost of everything we deal with is making it very hard to make a profit.”
The Maine Consensus Economic Forecasting Commission recently revised its outlook for next year, predicting that the average unemployment rate in Maine is expected to climb to 6.1 percent and that 4,300 wage and salary jobs will be lost. Job losses will still be concentrated in the construction, manufacturing, trade and leisure and hospitality sectors, the commission said.
There are a few economic bright spots. From last December, 1,500 job gains were recorded in the professional and business sectors and 900 more in education and health services, according to the Center for Workforce Research and Information’s Mills. Those job gains are also expected to continue in the next year, according to the forecasting commission.
Compared with states with a “high concentration of industries that are doing poorly,” such as Michigan and Ohio, both heavily dependent on auto manufacturing, “we are not performing extremely well, but not as badly,” Mills said.
Piscataquis County, in central Maine, had the highest unemployment rate in the state in October, 9.1 percent, well above the national average. Other counties, such as Franklin, Oxford, Somerset and Washington, also have jobless rates greater than the national rate.
Mills explained that much of that region is sparsely populated, heavily forested and has a higher than average concentration of jobs in forest products industries – logging, paper manufacturing, sawmills – and other industries in decline or adversely affected by the falloff in construction and the general economic downturn.
As to the current recession, Buhr said: “I hope it’s shorter rather than longer. I really don’t know how long it will go.”
The recession and the rising jobless rate are challenges not only for the federal government but also for the state. Lowering taxes is probably a way to solve the problem, Buhr said. But that, she added, would mean less revenue for government to spend to meet these economic challenges.
“It’s a tradeoff,” Buhr said, and governments will have to find the right balance. “There isn’t a perfect answer.”
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