The amendment said abortion could not be included in the “essential benefits package” to be defined by the government. Further, it said insurers would not be required or forbidden to cover abortion. But, it says, in every part of the country, the government must ensure that there is at least one plan that covers abortion and at least one that does not.
Under the bill, health plans would receive federal subsidies to help pay premiums for low-income people. But under the amendment, subsidies could not be used to pay for abortions.
Democrats described the amendment as a compromise. But Representative Phil Gingrey, Republican of Georgia, who opposed the amendment, said, “We don’t compromise on the use of taxpayer funds for the destruction of human life.”
The average cost of defending a trial in a federal death case is $620,932, about 8 times that of a federal murder case in which the death penalty is not sought.
[...]
A New Jersey Policy Perspectives report concluded that the state's death penalty has cost taxpayers $253 million since 1983, a figure that is over and above the costs that would have been incurred had the state utilized a sentence of life without parole instead of death.
[...]
Florida would save $51 million each year by punishing all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole, according to estimates by the Palm Beach Post. Based on the 44 executions Florida has carried out since 1976, that amounts to an approximate cost of $24 million for each execution.
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
In the 1980s, Nancy Reagan told Americans to “Just Say No” to recreational drugs.
Now a handful of legislators are just saying no to TV commercials for prescription drugs. The politicians are taking aim at the 60-second spots that have made viewers familiar with maladies like male urinary urgency and deficient eyelashes — not to mention side effects like four-hour erections.
Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia, is sponsoring a House bill that would ban ads for prescription sexual aids like Viagra and Levitra from prime-time television, on decency grounds.
The comedy factor seems remarkably high.
I'll pay shipping to take it off your hands.
twig | 06.30.09 - 9:39 am | #
He may not be the reason that Dearborn is the Muslim capital of the US; however, he is turning the Gitmo guys out as fast as he can. There soon will be many Dearborn’s if he keeps going the way he is. If the auto industry started this in Dearborn, hang on, because Obama just gave General Motors to the auto unions and the Government. I detest this man and refuse to call him my president. Maybe you approve of socialized medicine and healthcare; however, I had a taste of controlled healthcare, Workers Comp, and I almost was not able to use might right arm again. I had to take matters into my own hands and work around the system to find a competent doctor and have another surgery to fix what the first incompetent doctor did.
Now, he wants Congress to pass his healthcare before they go home for their break and hear what their constituents really want, which is not what the Messiah wants. He is the most arrogant and incompetent President that we have ever had. He has lied about everything he said during the campaign except the part about CHANGE. He just lied about what that change would be. Go back and read up on Hitler and see how he got started. There are so many similarities that it hurts.
Folks have also forgotten that the democrats have had control of things for a long time (even when Bush was in office). They have caused all of this to happen. Yes, George Bush was not right to start the Stimulus Plan and Obama is wrong to continue it.
In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort. Claiming to not know the father's identity is not a viable excuse, according to the proposed legislation.
So otherwise, a rape survivor would need to find her rapist and see if he's willing to sign off on the whole deal. Jesus H. Christ.
In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel.
They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.
But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.
[...]
The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.
Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.
“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.
[...]
State Senator Joe Simitian of California, who tried from 2001 to 2005 to pass a hands-free cellphone law over objections of the cellphone industry, said the unpublished research would have helped him convince his colleagues that cellphones cause serious — deadly — distraction.
“Years went by when lives could have been saved,” said Mr. Simitian, who in 2006 finally pushed through a hands-free law that took effect last year.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), shortly before the vote, noted that national guard members from his state are not asking for more F-22s but for more body armor and boots. Continuing the program "defies common sense," he said, while health care requirements and other economic needs are more imminent.
[...]
F-22 supporters included lawmakers from many of the other states where the plane's components are manufactured, such as California, Texas, and Georgia. Senators Patty Murray (Wash.) and Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and other Democrats argued that killing the program would undermine the nation's defense by idling highly trained engineers and mechanics.
Delete. In the name of all that is right, delete. Sorry Ronnie, get some help. TV doesn't make white people look stupid. WHITE PEOPLE make white people look stupid. I've said this all along.
Ronnie Walker:Well Win,they only show really goofy fuckers on TV.Are you a goofy fucker?No you're not.Im with you on the gay issues but don't think Im a dipshit because I'm white or from the south.Us white folks better stick together or we're gonna be gone.
Charlotte Shafer:Pat Buchanan and Sarah Palin make white people look stupid on TV. Comments like this make white people look stupid on FB. Sorry Ronnie I'm with Win.
Larry Parcell:Charlotte What do you do? I can't wait to hear what state that you govern
Larry Parcell:Win you're a pethetic idiot!!!!!!!!!! What other race, you stupid fuck has done shit for humanity!!!!!! Name one ?????Blacks,Asians,Arabs You need to shut the fuck up. Go spit on a white soldier who keeps you safe at night. My blood is boiling
Larry Parcell:Please don't try to respond with some profound liberal horseshit. I think you should leave this country. By force!!!!!!!!!! And go live in some countyr where you think people are nice and smart.
Larry Parcell:And not white!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Charlotte Shafer:Ronnie, Win may have de-friended you but I am not going to de-friend you, because I want a chance to hear from you that you didn't really mean it, you were drunk and/or maybe thinking you were being funny and just parodying a racist, because up until this point it's not something I would have ever expected from you. And as for that Larry Parcell guy he can kiss my big fat white ass.
Kim Evans:Amen
This guy, Larry Parcell, is the lead guitarist and songwriter for a band in Houston named "Honky Tonk Heroes". I can tell you that MY honky-tonk heroes, some of whom are named on Mr. Parcell's MySpace page, would NOT approve of his so-called opinions. I strongly urge you to boycott him and his band, should you ever have the opportunity to see or hear them, and if you should be so inclined to let others know, feel free to spread the word.
Mr. Hill, a diligent student with a reputation for helping neighbors, also took pride in his clean driving record. “Not a speeding ticket, not a fender bender, nothing,” he said.
Until last Sept. 3. Mr. Hill, then 20, left the parking lot of a Goodwill store where he had spotted a dresser he thought might interest a neighbor. He dialed her to pass along news of the find.
Mr. Hill was so engrossed in the call that he ran a red light and didn’t notice Linda Doyle’s small sport utility vehicle until the last second. He hit her going 45 miles per hour. She was pronounced dead shortly after.
Later, a policeman asked Mr. Hill what color the light had been. “I never saw it,” he answered.
Extensive research shows the dangers of distracted driving. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, and the likelihood that they will crash is equal to that of someone with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, the point at which drivers are generally considered intoxicated. Research also shows that hands-free devices do not eliminate the risks, and may worsen them by suggesting that the behavior is safe.
A 2003 Harvard study estimated that cellphone distractions caused 2,600 traffic deaths every year, and 330,000 accidents that result in moderate or severe injuries.
Yet Americans have largely ignored that research. Instead, they increasingly use phones, navigation devices and even laptops to turn their cars into mobile offices, chat rooms and entertainment centers, making roads more dangerous.
Police in almost half of all states make no attempt to gather data on the problem. They are not required to ask drivers who cause accidents whether they were distracted by a phone or other device. Even when officers do ask, some drivers are not forthcoming.
The federal government warns against talking on a cellphone while driving, but no state legislature has banned it. This year, state legislators introduced about 170 bills to address distracted driving, but passed fewer than 10.
Scientists are grappling, too, with perhaps the broadest question hanging over the phenomenon of distracted driving: Why do people, knowing the risk, continue to talk while driving? The answer, they say, is partly the intense social pressures to stay in touch and always be available to friends and colleagues. And there also is the neurological response of multitaskers. They show signs of addiction — to their gadgets.
John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and a specialist on the science of attention, explained that when people use digital devices, they get a quick burst of adrenaline, “a dopamine squirt.” Without it, people grow bored with simpler activities like driving. Mr. Ratey said the modern brain is being rewired to crave stimulation, a condition he calls acquired attention deficit disorder.
“We need that constant pizzazz, the reward, the intensity,” he said. He largely dismisses the argument that people need the time in the car to be productive. “The justification for doing work is just that — a justification to be engaged,” he said.
Some of you may remember when I canceled my subscription to the New York Times a few months ago. It felt strange for the first 2 or 3 days not having a reason to walk out to the street to fetch it.
He was so widely known that in Sweden anchormen were once called Cronkiters.
Yet he was a reluctant star. He was genuinely perplexed when people rushed to see him rather than the politicians he was covering, and even more astonished by the repeated suggestions that he run for office himself. He saw himself as an old-fashioned newsman — his title was managing editor of the “CBS Evening News” — and so did his audience.
"Make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America," said Obama, who was greeted with cheers and extended applause. "By African American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights."
New Hampshire resident Josh Muszynski bought a pack of cigarettes at a local gas station for what he thought would be a few bucks but his bank account indicated he actually spent $23 quadrillion instead.
Expecting to see a few hundred dollars of charges when he logged online to check his debit account, Muszynski was amazed to see the 17-digit figure of $23,148,855,308,184,500.
For many parents, allowing a child to run around naked at home is perfectly natural, an expression of physical freedom that represents the essence of childhood, especially in the summer. But for others, unclad bodies are an affront to civility, a source of discomfort and a potentially dangerous attraction for pedophiles. These clashing sensibilities can create conflict, even when the nudity in question takes place at home.
Aly Mandel, 41, a school psychologist and mother of five in Highland Park, N.J., said she, too, felt ire from extended family members for allowing her daughter Ava, now 6, to roam naked in and around the house when she was younger.
“My mother, it used to drive her crazy how naked Ava was,” Ms. Mandel said, explaining that the girl abhorred clothes. “My mother-in-law also, they both felt it crossed the line of what was appropriate. My mother-in-law would come in and automatically say, ‘Ava, put on your clothes. Put on your underwear.’ ”
Gloria Schwartz, Ms. Mandel’s mother-in-law, says she didn’t have a problem with the nudity when Ava and her twin sister, Emily, were very young. But “when they got to be 3 years old, it bothered me,” said Ms. Schwartz, 65, a real estate agent. “I would pull up to the house and the girls were running around naked. It felt inappropriate for them to be standing on the street in front of their house naked.”
[...]
Robert Kohlbrenner thought nothing of it last summer when his grandchildren, two boys, ages 4 and 10, and a girl, 6, asked if they could skinny-dip by the dock on a very hot day at his home on Oneida Lake in upstate New York.
“I think it’s fun for them,” said Dr. Kohlbrenner, 58, a psychologist in private practice, who found out later that his son did not approve. “If you can’t do it when you’re a kid, when can you do it, you know?”
Dr. Kohlbrenner’s son, Justin, 30, said he and his wife felt that their oldest son was too old to be naked. “He was getting a little too big to be doing it, you know, especially in front of his brother and sister,” he said.
Phyllis Halper, a fourth-grade teacher on Long Island, will not permit her 3-year-old son, Gavin, to get completely undressed at home, not because she thinks it’s inappropriate, but because she is concerned that it might influence the behavior of her daughter, Jordyn, 5. “I expect her, especially as a girl, to be more modest,” Ms. Halper said.
How silly. Its amazing how confused and conflicted Americans are about the human body. The only country in the world that could be concerned about naked 6 year olds. They're kids. Leave them alone. Otherwise they'll end up making a national stink about Janet Jacksons nipple just like their screwy parents did. I agree the kid who pees in the yard needs some clear instructions about when and where that's appropriate. But the rest of the instances described?....leave them alone. They'll figure it out when they want to.
"I frequently use sarcasm and satire in my humor," Pryor told listeners this morning. "The first mistake I made is using the term. It's a highly offensive and outdated term that should never be used."
Pryor began using the word during a discussion about the terminology used to describe people who are in the country illegally.
"Whatever happened to the good old word 'wetback' "? he asked.
[...]
Later during the discussion, Pryor said he was merely trying to come up "with a more efficient way of saying it, that's all, and just bring back a little of good ol' classic Americana."
The Pentagon would rather buy unmanned aircraft to gather intelligence in Afghanistan and accelerate the testing for the F-35, a new plane designed to attack ground targets. Pentagon officials say the F-22 is hard to maintain and costs $44,000 to operate for an hour, compared with $30,000 for older planes.
But many Republicans in Congress say more F-22s, which were designed for aerial combat, are needed as a hedge against countries like China.
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee, said Wednesday that he intends to meet in the coming days with Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) and Rep. Bill Young (Fla.), Murtha’s GOP counterpart on the Defense subcommittee, to discuss lifting the export ban on the F-22.
The key player in that briefing will be Obey, who in 1998 wrote the legislation that bans the exports of the F-22 mainly to keep secret the aircraft’s radar-evading stealth technology. Obey has not budged since, and it’s unclear whether he is willing to relent.
Murtha, who is willing to work with Inouye on facilitating the sale of the F-22 to the Japanese, admitted it is an expensive proposition that also depends on whether Lockheed Martin’s Marietta, Ga., production line will stay open for several more years. That production line in turn depends on U.S. domestic orders for the plane. The Obama administration did not ask for money for the production of the fighter jet in fiscal 2010 and is adamant about halting production after the 187th airplane is delivered to the Air Force.
Murtha said that he would like to be able to purchase another 20 aircraft in 2010, but that he is uncertain whether that would be possible, considering the total price tag for those planes is $3.2 billion. Murtha also said that he is concerned about the high cost of operating and maintaining the existing planes.
For the F-22 to end up in Japan, Lockheed Martin would have to spend a considerable amount of time — several years — demilitarizing the plane. That essentially means stripping the jet of sensitive technologies employed by the U.S. military. That could be costly. By Murtha’s calculations the research and development to remove those capabilities would cost at least $1 billion and could go much higher, and it is unclear whether the Japanese would be able to pay such a steep price.
Meth labs in homes across the US are a big problem. And the health issues are not limited to the meth users. This story came as a bit of a surprise to me -- that toxic residue from meth labs in homes can linger for years, and have very negative consequences for new owners of the home. Federal data on meth lab seizures suggest that there are tens of thousands of contaminated residences in the United States. The victims include low-income elderly people whose homes are surreptitiously used by relatives or in-laws to make meth, and landlords whose tenants leave them with a toxic mess.
Some states have tried to fix the problem by requiring cleanup and, at the time of sale, disclosure of the house’s history. But the high cost of cleaning — $5,000 to $100,000, depending on the size of the home, the stringency of the requirements and the degree of contamination — has left hundreds of properties vacant and quarantined, particularly in Western and Southern states afflicted with meth use.
“The meth lab home problem is only going to grow,” said Dawn Turner, who started a Web site, www.methlabhomes.com, after her son lost thousands of dollars when he bought a foreclosed home in Sweetwater, Tenn., that turned out to be contaminated.
Meth contamination can bring financial ruin to families like that of Francisca Rodriguez. The family dog began having seizures nine days after the Rodriguezes moved into their home in Grapevine, Tex., near Dallas, and their 6-year-old son developed a breathing problem similar to asthma, said Ms. Rodriguez, 35, a stay-at-home mother of three.
After learning from neighbors that the three-bedroom ranch-style home had been a known “drug house,” the family had it tested. The air ducts had meth levels more than 100 times higher than the most commonly cited limit beyond which cleanup is typically required.
The former owner had marked “no” on a disclosure form asking whether the house had ever been a meth lab, Ms. Rodriguez said. But because he is now in prison for meth possession, among other things, the Rodriguezes decided there was nothing to gain by suing him. They moved out, throwing away most of their possessions because they could not be cleaned, and are letting the house go into foreclosure.
“It makes you crazy,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Our credit is ruined, we won’t be able to buy another house, somebody exposed my kids to meth, and my dog died.”
About 20 states have passed laws requiring meth contamination cleanup, and they use widely varied standards. Virtually all the laws hold the property owner financially responsible; Colorado appears to be the only state that allots federal grant money to help innocent property owners faced with unexpected cleanup jobs.
A Staten Island teen trying to text while walking fell into an open manhole - and city officials have launched an investigation.
Alexa Longueira, 15, was walking with a friend along Victory Blvd. on Wednesday when she suddenly dropped underground.
"She's all scraped up on her back, under her arms and her shoulders," her mother, Kim Longueira, said
Cash-strapped states are increasingly turning to alternative sentencing methods and to streamlined probation and parole as a way to keep low-level offenders out of prison and in their communities.
[...]
The measures include drug courts, which allow low-level drug offenders to avoid prison time through treatment and intense, personal, weekly intervention by a judge, and at least 500 courts for people arrested for driving while intoxicated. Drivers avoid jail by attending regular alcohol-treatment classes and by submitting to random tests.
States have also begun to shorten probation and to reduce the number of people sent to prison for technical violations, such as missing appointments.
[...]
These trends are showing up almost everywhere as a direct response to governors and state legislatures looking with alarm at prison costs eating up increasing shares of their budgets. According to Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project for the Pew Center on the States, more than half the states and the District are trying to reduce the growth in their prison populations through alternative sentencing and through new probation and parole procedures.
But what is striking, experts say, is how some states with reputations for being tough on crime are most rapidly embracing these policies, which might have once been dismissed as the product of liberal think tanks and soft-on-crime leniency.
Texas is a case in point. From 1978 to 2004, the inmate population rose 573 percent and the state's population increased 67 percent. With hard sentencing laws and some conservative judges, Texas built a "lock 'em up" reputation. The state has more than 155,00 inmates and leads the nation in putting prisoners to death.
But two years ago, Texas officials were faced with an alarming projection: By 2012, the state would need 17,000 more beds, which would mean building eight prisons at a cost of nearly $1 billion.
State Rep. Jerry Madden, a self-described conservative Republican, had just taken over as chairman of the Texas House committee on corrections. "I started asking questions," he said in a phone interview. To avoid building more beds for more prisoners, Madden said, "You either got to slow 'em going in, or speed 'em going out. And Texas is not a state that says, 'Speed 'em up going out.' "
[...]
The changes, implemented in the 2007 legislative session, included more funding for drug and DWI courts. New rules shortened the average probation time from 10 years to five. With about 445,000 people on probation, the system had become "the Number One feeder to the prison system," said Ana Yáñez-Correa, executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, a progressive group.
The state also ordered the parole board to raise its parole rate to an earlier number of 31 percent; the proportion of eligible inmates granted parole had slipped to 26 percent.
With those changes in place, prison population growth slowed to a trickle. From January 2007 until December 2008, Texas added 529 inmates to its total, a tenth of what was projected.
The looming political battle is about how to respond, and three camps are forming. The first includes the White House and most Democratic leaders in Congress, who champion a wait-and-see approach until more of the stimulus money hits the streets.
White House officials estimate that the government has committed $158 billion for spending around the country, but only about one-third of that has been spent. Temporary tax cuts have totaled about $43 billion thus far, according to White House estimates.
A second camp, consisting of nervous Democrats and some economists, argues that the government must spur the economy with another round of spending, tax cuts or a mixture of both.
The third camp is led by Republicans, many of whom argue that the spending program was wrong from the start and that the government should focus on tax cuts.
According to an analysis by The New York Times of 5,274 transportation projects approved so far — the most complete look yet at how states plan to spend their stimulus money — the 100 largest metropolitan areas are getting less than half the money from the biggest pot of transportation stimulus money. In many cases, they have lost a tug of war with state lawmakers that urban advocates say could hurt the nation’s economic engines.
The stimulus law provided $26.6 billion for highways, bridges and other transportation projects, but left the decision on how to spend most of it to the states, which have a long history of giving short shrift to major metropolitan areas when it comes to dividing federal transportation money. Now that all 50 states have beat a June 30 deadline by winning approval for projects that will use more than half of that transportation money, worth $16.4 billion, it is clear that the stimulus program will continue that pattern of spending disproportionately on rural areas.
“If we’re trying to recover the nation’s economy, we should be focusing where the economy is, which is in these large areas,” said Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, which advocates more targeted spending. “But states take this peanut-butter approach, taking the dollars and spreading them around very thinly, rather than taking the dollars and concentrating them where the most complex transportation problems are.”
[...]
Seattle found itself shut out when lawmakers in the State of Washington divided the first pot of stimulus money. Missouri has directed nearly half its money to 89 small counties which, together, make up only a quarter of the state’s population. The United States Conference of Mayors, which did its own analysis of different data last month, concluded that the nation’s metropolitan areas were being “shortchanged.”
“We have a long history of shortchanging cities and metropolitan areas and allocating transportation money to places where few people live,” said Owen D. Gutfreund, an assistant professor of urban planning at the City University of New York who wrote “20th Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape” (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Professor Gutfreund said that in some states the distribution was driven by statehouse politics, with money spread to the districts of as many lawmakers as possible, or given out as political favors. In others, he said, the money is distributed by formulas that favor rural areas or that give priority to state-owned roads, often found far outside of urban areas.
Obama administration officials, who have called for ending sprawl and making sure that federal transportation spending is cost-effective, say they are looking at how states are spending the money from the stimulus law, officially called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the current system.
“The transparency that comes with Recovery Act funds is letting us see what’s happening in real time, and that’s a good thing,” said Roy Kienitz, an under secretary of transportation for policy. “Understanding where recovery dollars go and why will help us determine how to shape long-term transportation policies with the goal of getting the most benefit for every dollar.”
The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.
[...]
The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.
The push has reunited many who worked together in government on health-care reform, but are now employed as advocates for pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
“We are out of cash now,” said Carlos Flores, the executive director of the San Diego Regional Center, which provides services to Californians with developmental disabilities. The center is awaiting a $12 million warrant. “I can pay my staff next paycheck, and that’s it,” Mr. Flores said.
Other state contractors who provide services to the disabled had similar stories. Mark Berger, the chief executive of Partnerships With Industry, which offers job placement and training for the same type of clients, said he, too, had yet to get a warrant. “I haven’t heard of anybody who has received one,” Mr. Berger said.
The majority of banks have been clear that they will not take the warrants after July 10. Banks “do not wish to facilitate the lack of resolution of the budget deficit by basically providing this accommodation for an extended period of time,” said Rod Brown, chief executive of the California Bankers Association. “California must become more fiscally responsible.”
[...]
People expecting money from the state who do not get a warrant by Friday have three choices. They can try to find an alternative bank or credit union willing to deal with someone who is not a customer, they can hold the warrant until it matures and collect the interest, or they can try their luck in secondary markets, where some people are already seeking to buy i.o.u.’s at a discount.
Of seven United States soldiers killed Monday, said Capt. Jon Stock, an American military spokesman, four died along with two Afghan bystanders in a roadside bomb explosion in the northern Kunduz Province, and two American soldiers were killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan.
