Tag: TMC Poltics

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the use of chemical weapons in the two year old conflict between the Syrian government and the Syrian rebels. This week, the Obama administration has concluded that Syrian regime of president Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against rebel fighters:

Congressional sources told CNN that investigators concluded that Syria has used chemical weapons multiple times.

In a statement released on Thursday, the White House says U.S. intelligence concluded that the Assad regime used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent Sarin, against rebel fighters in the last year. [..]

National Security Council deputy advisor Ben Rhodes said on Thursday that the President Obama reached a decision on what the new support for the Syrian opposition would look like. According to Buzzfeed, Rhodes said: “The president has made a decision “about what kind of additional support will be provided to the rebels. It will be “direct support to the SMC [Supreme Military Command] that includes military support.” Rhodes added that no decision has been made on the institution of a no-fly zone.

That’s correct the US is now going to arm Al Qaeda against the Hezbolah backed Assad government and no one, not even the press, is asking the hard questions. That is all but one member of the press. Al Jazeera White House correspondent goes there and asks, Where is the proof?

No one, not one person asked if the Obama administration would make public any of its “proof” that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons.

Think about that for a moment. An American administration is being allowed to say “trust us” on the issue of chemical weapons use and its consequences.

I’m not an expert, I don’t know what they have or if it would prove what they say. What I’m wondering is if they should have to share something.

I think it takes on an added importance when you hear the scepticism from other countries and what seem to be flaws in the US explanation. [..]

The allegations of chemical weapons being used and any kind of military response require a serious discussion, and questioning. I didn’t get a chance to ask – but if you look in the way back of the room – you’ll see my hand held high – I couldn’t get the White House’s attention that way, maybe this will work instead – couldn’t do that in grade school – we didn’t have the internet.

Patrick Coburn,  veteran foreign correspondent of The Independent, joined Amy Goodman and Juan González on Democarcy Now! to discuss this latest development in Syria’s civil war.

“There must be some doubts about this,” Cockburn says, adding that it “reminds me of what they were saying in 2002 and 2003 about Saddam [Hussein]’s weapons of mass destruction.” Cockburn warns U.S. involvement could escalate regional conflicts that could “go on for years,” and critiques the media’s lack of skepticism about White House claims.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. We all know where that got us the last time.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

There are some things that the right wingers say and do that make one pause and question their sanity, wondering why they have any credibility at all. The latest round of “you can’t make this stuff up” shenanigans involved the Tea Party group, Freedom Works and its chairman, former House majority leader, Dick Armey. Earlier this month, Armey announced his departure with an $8 million payout. That is where the story gets bizarre, that payout was actually a ransom demand. It seems back in September, just as the election season were heating up, Dick staged an armed coup. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is scratching his head over the revelation of the incident that occurred over four months ago and is just being reported in the Washington Post now.

The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone – with a promise of $8 million – and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations. [..]

The partnership came to a crashing end when Armey marched into FreedomWorks’s office Sept. 4 with his wife, Susan, executive assistant Jean Campbell and the unidentified man with the gun at his waist – who promptly escorted Kibbe and Brandon out of the building.

“This was two weeks after there had been a shooting at the Family Research Council,” said one junior staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. “So when a man with a gun who didn’t identify himself to me or other people on staff, and a woman I’d never seen before said there was an announcement, my first gut was, ‘Is FreedomWorks in danger?’ It was bizarre.'”

I always thought the name “Dick Armey” was weirdly appropriate for a gun loving Republican from Texas. It fits

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

On his show AC 360°, host Anderson Cooper interviewed Sophie Delaunay, the executive Director of Doctors Without Borders, on the organizations efforts to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy, especially in the Rockaways.

“We learned our lessons from Katrina when we thought the medical needs would be covered, and when we realized there were gaps it was too late for us to react,” says Sophie Delaunay.

She tells Anderson the most challenging place right now is the Rockaways in Queens where people who need help are homebound in high-rise apartment buildings and have had little contact with the outside world since they lost their electricity. The group is helping with a variety of needs, but 60% of the consultations are to assist with prescription refills.

Calls it a ‘nice little Christmas present’ but has no answers for residents still struggling two weeks after Hurricane Sandy

Public tenants without heat, hot water and power for weeks will still have cough up their full rent before getting a credit in January – a refund that NYCHA Chairman John Rhea called “a nice little Christmas present.”

Rhea made the Scrooge-esque comment Monday when he showed up at the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn, where tenants have lived in deplorable conditions since Hurricane Sandy hit Oct. 29.

He told one tenant, “Hang in there.” [..]

When Rhea showed up in Red Hook Monday, 4,015 residents there were still without heat and hot water and 2,125 were without power. Twenty-two of the project’s 32 buildings were either without heat and hot water or power. [..]

As of Monday, 4,400 NYCHA tenants in Red Hook, Coney Island and Far Rockaway, Queens, were still without power, while 18,000 residents in 14 developments in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan still had no hot water or heat.

NYCHA turned off elevators, hot water and heat two days before the storm hit in 26 low-lying developments near waterfronts and ordered tenants to evacuate.

The situation in public housing projects in Coney Island, Brooklyn remains a “humanitarian crisis” in which the government and the Red Cross have been nearly completely absent, according to Eric Moed, a volunteer aid worker with Occupy Sandy. [..]

The projects in Coney Island remain without power, and often without water and necessities in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Accounts of these conditions have been corroborated in the New York Daily News.

Moed says all of the supermarkets on Coney Island have been flooded or looted.

The result is what Moed describes as a “humanitarian crisis.” Sick or older people may be vulnerable to death without heat, or food and water.

Moed routinely meets elderly residents who have been trapped alone in their dark, cold apartments since the storm hit. The elevators often do not work, and residents willing to brave the stairwells face darkness, human waste, and even crime. [..]

Whatever response there has been from the government — city, state, or federal — or the Red Cross, Moed says their presence in and around the Coney Island projects is non-existent, inadequate, or counterproductive. FEMA has set up a solitary aid trailer on what Moed calls the “sexy area” of Coney Island — near the famous amusement park and Nathan’s — which was not hit very hard. It awaits people seeking help, when those who most need it are stranded in high-rise buildings a few blocks away.

Moed insists that he does not assume anything about the government and Red Cross’s lack of a response, but says their absence is indisputable. “They’re literally not there. It’s not a criticism, it’s literally a fact,” he said. “I’ve been on the ground here for four days. I’ve seen zero FEMA people. Occasionally a Red Cross truck will come through with hot meals. But there’ll be one truck for 15-20 buildings.” [..]

The absence of government or Red Cross presence has left a vacuum of authority and accountability at a time when stranded residents are seeking it most. “The projects have had nobody to talk to,” Moed says. “People literally have no power, no food, no water, no bathrooms–they’re defecating in buckets. And there is no one to answer to for it.” For lack of a higher-level city government presence, presidents of public housing blocks with few resources have been left to address residents’ grievances. [..]

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The 2012 term of the US Supreme Court traditionally begins on the first Monday in October. If the 2011 session is any indication, this term should be even more interesting as the court considers some of the most controversial issues facing this country from affirmative action to civil and voting rights.

When last we saw the chief justice of the United States on the bench, John Roberts was joining with the Supreme Court’s liberals in an unlikely lineup that upheld President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Progressives applauded Roberts’ statesmanship. Conservatives uttered cries of betrayal. [..]

Many people on both the left and right expect Roberts to return to the fold and side with the conservative justices in the new term’s big cases. If they’re right, the spotlight will be back on Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose vote typically is decisive in cases that otherwise split the court’s liberals and conservatives. But Roberts will be watched closely, following his health care vote, for fresh signs that he’s becoming less ideologically predictable. [..]

Cases involving voting rights and marriage equality are expected to eventually land before the court, the former most likely sooner than the latter:

Voting rights: Several challenges to the 1965 Voting Rights Act are moving through district and appellate courts, and the high court is expected to take up one or more.

At issue is Section 5 of the law, a landmark civil rights achievement that prohibits nine states and municipalities in seven others from changing their voting laws without approval from the Justice Department or a special federal court. [..]

Same-sex marriage: The big question as the term begins is whether the justices will accept one or more cases involving the rights of gays and lesbians to marry. If they do, it may offer the best chance for a landmark ruling.

There are two possibilities. The most likely is that the court will accept a challenge to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which has been declared unconstitutional in lower courts and which the Obama administration is refusing to defend. [..]

The other option is for the court to consider challenges to California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 referendum that overturned the state’s support for gay marriage. A broadly worded ruling against the referendum could pave the way for legalized gay marriage elsewhere, rather than just in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa. More likely is a narrowly worded decision that affects only California.

Even if the court declines to hear the Proposition 8 challenge, that decision would be important, because a lower court has ruled against the referendum. Without high court review, gays and lesbians soon could marry in the nation’s most-populous state.

The SCOTUS calendar begins with Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum a major case about corporate accountability for extreme violations of human rights. The case was argued last term on narrow grounds but not decided.

At issue in the Kiobel case is the proper interpretation of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which provides, in relevant part, that foreign citizens may bring civil suits in U.S. district courts for actions “committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”  Enacted as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the ATS lay almost forgotten

for nearly two hundred years.  But in 1980, in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit breathed life into the statute, holding that the ATS conferred jurisdiction over a lawsuit brought by one Paraguayan national against another Paraguayan national (residing in the United States) for torture that occurred in Paraguay.  Since then, victims of human rights violations that occurred overseas have sought to rely on the ATS to press their own claims in U.S. courts.

An affirmative action case that wound its way from Texas will be heard. Under consideration is the court’s previous decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the court will address how and perhaps whether the university can take race into account as a factor in student admissions. In a way, the case is a rehearing of a 2003 case (pdf) in which it ruled that the University of Michigan Law School could do so as part of assessing the whole of a candidate’s application. That decision seemed to reflect a national consensus that race, narrowly applied, could be used to ensure a diverse student body.

Two cases involving the Fourth Amendment involving unreasonable search ans seizure will also be heard:

In Florida v. Jardines, the issue is whether the police violated the Constitution by using a dog trained to smell for drugs to sniff at the door of a house where they suspected marijuana was being grown. Was the sniff test unreasonably intrusive because there was no hard information that illegal activity was probably occurring, as the Florida Supreme Court properly found, or was it not a search because it occurred outside the house?

Similarly, in Missouri v. McNeely, the issue is whether the police could order a blood test on a man suspected of drunken driving without obtaining a warrant because the delay in doing so would result in loss of evidence. The Missouri Supreme Court sensibly ruled otherwise: that the test constituted an unreasonable search because there was no accident to investigate and because there was plenty of time to get a warrant and test the driver’s blood before the alcohol in it dissipated.

Also, two cases that will rule on the right of the defendant to council

Ryan v. Gonzales raises the question of whether the defendant himself needs to be mentally capable of assisting his own attorney in challenging a death penalty conviction. [..]

Chaidez v. United States asks whether a 2010 ruling (pdf) of the court – that criminal defense lawyers must advise their noncitizen clients that a guilty plea carries the risk of deportation – applies to someone whose conviction became final before that ruling was announced.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Some regulators think LIBOR, the benchmark for short term interest rates that is fixed by a group of bankers in London, can be fixed. Others feel it is irreparably damaged and was a myth from the start.

Libor Rate ‘Needs A Complete Overhaul,’ But Not To Be Scrapped, British Officials Say

Britain’s top financial watchdog delivered a 10-point plan to fix Libor but stopped short of scrapping the benchmark interest rate in a much-awaited reform of a system plagued by scandal.

“The system is broken and needs a complete overhaul,” said Martin Wheatley, head of the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Wheatley acknowledged problems with London interbank offered rates, but said Libor is so deeply entrenched in the financial system that it cannot be easily replaced. [..]

CHARGES OF MANIPULATION

Multiple banks have been accused of trying to manipulate Libor, a series of rates set daily in London. Barclays in June agreed to pay $453 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle allegations that it tried to move Libor to help its trading positions.

Wheatley’s programme for reform includes auditing banks that contribute data used to calculate the rates, to ensure they are not submitting false rates to benefit trading positions. [..]

SHRINKING THE NUMBER OF RATES

Rates that are infrequently referenced in trades, such as Australian and Canadian dollar rates, will be phased out, Wheatley said. Maturities that are infrequently used, such as four, five, seven, eight, 10 and 11 months, will also be ended.

The reductions will shrink the current number of Libor rates set daily to 20 from 150. Rates that are rarely traded are easier to manipulate.

More banks will be required to submit their borrowing rates. [..]

The Myth of Fixing the Libor

There were two implicit assumptions in Libor. One was that banks were virtually risk-free, or at least that their risk was small and would not vary much over time. The other was that there was a way to actually calculate what the rate was. Both assumptions turned out to be wrong.

Libor rates are calculated each day by the British Bankers’ Association, a trade group that makes good money from licensing the use of Libor rates. [..]

The scandal made clear that those reports were faked before and during the financial crisis by at least some of the banks. But what is not as widely appreciated is that there is substantial evidence that the deception goes on. Banks continue to report figures that strain credulity, both in their level and in their lack of volatility from day to day or week to week. [..]

The bank regulators believed the fiction. Banks that owned AAA-rated floating rate assets needed to keep virtually no reserves on hand to back them.

We all know what happened. It turned out that risks were far greater than had been realized. Banks failed or were bailed out. Investors in AAA securities suffered major losses.

Libor was manipulated by bankers long before the financial crisis, and it is still based on calculations that have little basis in reality. Mr. Wheatley assures us that more regulation can deal with conflicts of interest. There will, he promises, be a “clear code of conduct” and “clear rules,” enforced by a regulator with “extensive powers.”

Pollyanna lives.

Some folks just cling to their myths.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

After the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on January 2010, the United Nations sent peace keeping troops from around the world to assist with keeping order during the recovery process, Unfortunately, some of those forces introduced a virulent strain of Cholera that was until October 2010 never seen in the Western Hemisphere. The faulty sanitation contaminated the Artibonite River, the longest and most important river in Haiti. The UN has refused to acknowledge its responsibility and has done little to help treat, prevent and control the disease.

The enormity of the epidemic is in the numbers that are increasing as this is written. Since October 2010, over 500,000 cases have been reported, including 7,000 deaths. In a New York Times Editorial on May 12, it was reported that this year’s toll could effect another 200,000 to 250,000 people:

Doctors Without Borders said this month that the country is unprepared for this spring’s expected resurgence of the disease. Nearly half the aid organizations that had been working in the rural Artibonite region, where this epidemic began and 20 percent of cases have been reported, have left, the organization said. “Additionally, health centers are short of drugs and some staff have not been paid since January.”

It gets worse: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report this month that cholera in Haiti was evolving into two strains, suggesting the disease would become much harder to uproot and that people who had already gotten sick and recovered would be vulnerable again.

From Doctors Without Borders press release:

While Haiti’s Ministry of Health and Populations claims to be in control of the situation, health facilities in many regions of the country remain incapable of responding to the seasonal fluctuations of the cholera epidemic. The surveillance system, which is supposed to monitor the situation and raise the alarm, is still dysfunctional, MSF said. The number of people treated by MSF alone in the capital, Port-au-Prince, has quadrupled in less than a month, reaching 1,600 cases in April. The organization has increased treatment capacity in the city and in the town of Léogâne, and is preparing to open additional treatment sites in the country. Nearly 200,000 cholera cases were reported during the rainy season last year, between May and October. [..]

An MSF study in the Artibonite region, where approximately 20 percent of cholera cases have been reported, has revealed a clear reduction of cholera prevention measures since 2011. More than half of the organizations working in the region last year are now gone. Additionally, health centers are short of drugs and some staff have not been paid since January. [..]

The majority of Haitians do not have access to latrines, and obtaining clean water is a daily challenge. Of the half-million survivors of the January, 2010 earthquake who continue to live in camps, less than one third are provided with clean drinking water and only one percent recently received soap, according to a April 2012 investigation by Haiti’s National Directorate of Water Supply and Sanitation.

The Center for Disease Control estimates that the cost of adequate water and sanitation systems will run from $800 million to $1.1 billion. That money is available from funds that were pledged from other nations.

Awareness needs to be raised. The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a human rights group, has sued the United Nations on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims and there is a Congressional letter to US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice urging UN authorities to play a central role in addressing the epidemic.

Just Foreign Policy has set up a petition pressing the UN to take formal responsibility for the epidemic and do more to alleviate the cholera epidemic:

The United Nations bears heavy responsibility for the ongoing cholera epidemic in Haiti-it has become widely accepted that UN troops introduced the disease into the country via the UN’s faulty sanitation system. Even a UN panel has conceded this point. Yet, the UN has done little to treat, prevent, and control the disease. Rep. John Conyers’ office is circulating a letter to Amb. Rice urging UN authorities to play a central role in addressing the ongoing cholera crisis in Haiti.

The effort to contain this epidemic needs support. There are lives to be saved.

Note: The photo by Frederik Matte is from the Doctors Without Borders web site of patients affected by cholera receive treatment at an MSF cholera treatment center in Port-au-Prince.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Greek, French and German voters went to the polls this past weekend and rejected pretty much told the European leaders they were very unhappy with the austerity measures that were being forced on them to bail out European banks. It took until yesterday for the world markets to react to this new reality with the Dow closing below its inflated 13,000 mark. Germany, the chief cheerleader for austerity, is not happy with France and very displeased with the new Greek leadership that blithely told Germany what to do with its austerity measures:

Alexis Tsipras, whose bloc came second in Sunday’s vote, said Greek voters had “clearly nullified the loan agreement”. [..]

The European Commission and Germany say countries must stick to budget cuts.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday: “What member states have to do is be consistent, implementing the policies that they have agreed.”  [..]

Mr Tsipras made his position clear to reporters in a five-point plan:

 

• Cancelling the bailout terms, notably laws that further cut wages and pensions
• Scrapping laws that abolish workers rights, particularly a law abolishing collective labour agreements due to come into effect on 15 May
• Promoting changes to deepen democracy and social justice
• Investigating Greece’s banking system which received almost 200bn euros of public money
• Setting up an international committee to find out the causes of Greece’s public deficit and putting on hold all debt servicing

It looks increasingly like the Greeks will be abandoning the Euro, it’s just a matter of when:

“Germans are now predominantly of the opinion that they would be better off if Greece left the euro zone,” said Carsten Hefeker, a professor of economics and an expert on the euro at the University of Siegen. “If the country really is continuing on the path they are taking now, it would be hard to justify keeping them in. How do you deal with a country that says we don’t want to keep any of the commitments we have made?” [..]

Perhaps the one card Greece has to play is the danger its exit could pose to other, much larger members like Spain and Italy, with far greater consequences. If Greece were pushed out, Mr. Hefeker said, the bond markets would start betting on the next country to be kicked out. “Then Spain or Italy would be put under pressure, and the danger would be of the whole euro zone collapsing,” he said.

There are few options are open for the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund which is holding most of Greece’s debt and easing the threat to the banks.

First, the so-called “troika” could release just enough funds to keep the government running until the political situation stabilizes;

The terms of the agreement could be renegotiated with the creditors:

Or, lastly, the “troika” could just refuse to give Greece any money, as the IMF did over 10 years ago when Argentina faced similar economic crisis. This actually turned out well for Argentina over a shorter recovery than is predicted for Greece under the current terms.

Perhaps it is past time for Greece to go it on its own and let the Eu continue the blood letting without them.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The pessimistic opinion of a looming second recession that has been expressed by economists who have gotten it right in the past is finally being recognized by the traditional media.

After a two-year rebound, recession risks rise

by Tom Petruno

The U.S. economy has officially been out of recession for two years, but fear of falling back into the abyss has dogged the recovery every step of the way.

Now, the prospect of recession no longer is a fringe view.

snip

The almost universal belief was that global growth would accelerate in the second half of the year. But that view has been fading fast this summer.

“We’re seeing a pattern of data that look very similar to what you see at a turning point in the economy,” said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners in Stamford, Conn. And he doesn’t mean a turning point to better times.

A key measure of U.S. consumer confidence has crashed to a 30-year low. Stock market volatility has become gut-wrenching. And prospects in the manufacturing sector, one of the few true bright spots of the recovery, have dimmed markedly.

snip

Of course, whether GDP growth contracts or is just slightly positive may feel exactly the same to many Americans, particularly the jobless, and to the country’s countless struggling small businesses.

The danger is that, if another recession becomes official, it could feed on itself as consumers and businesses that might otherwise have spent money decide not to, opting instead to hoard more cash.

“It can be a self-fulfilling phenomenon when households and businesses just stop in their tracks,” (MKM Partners chief economists, Michael) Darda said.

Dangerously Close to Recession

By Joachim Fels & Manoj Pradhan

US and Europe dangerously close to recession: Our revised forecasts show the US and the euro area hovering dangerously close to a recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction – over the next 6-12 months. The US growth disappointment in 1H11, when GDP advanced by an annual average rate of less than 1%, illustrates the brittleness of the US recovery in the face of external shocks (oil, Japan earthquake), despite ongoing QE2 and fiscal stimulus at the time. While the current quarter should still show some rebound in growth to around 3% from the very low bar in 1H, much of this rebound is likely due to temporary factors such as the ramping up of auto production as supply disruptions from the Japan situation ease. The most critical period for the US economy will likely be 4Q11, when we may see some fallout from the heightened volatility of risk markets, and 1Q12, when we get an automatic tightening fiscal policy if, as our US team currently assumes, this year’s fiscal stimulus measures will expire.

This from the economist who predicted the 1st recession before anyone else and was booed off the stage:

Roubini: Risks of global recession are greater than 50%

“In dealing with large debt, there should be a cutback on costs in both the public and private sectors, an attempt reduce overtime and adding to savings. Also, to avoid a second recession, banking requires more relaxed policies “says Roubini.

“There is too much debt, both in the government and in the private sector. The debt cannot be reduces except by saving, by strong economic growth or through the dangerous method of inflation, says Roubini. But if population and companies consumption do not restart, then you risk to remain in recession. ”

“Business does not help the economy, because there are risks. They aren’t investing because there is excess capacity,they are not hiring because there is insufficient demand. Here is the paradox. If you do not hire workers, there isn’t enough money for workers’ income, there isn’t enough consumer confidence and consumption is insufficient, “says Roubini.

To most Americans we never got out of the first recession as Atrios points out the linger unemployment rate at 9% is unacceptable:

The point is we never got out of the last recession, and whether GDP growth is barely positive or barely negative doesn’t matter all that much.

Cutting the Payroll tax again will not substantial increase the GDP or create jobs. It will hurt the Social Security fund by reducing the payroll contributions. Creating jobs that will rebuild and improve roads, schools and other crumbling infrastructure will. If private industry won’t do it, then the government must.