28
ENGLISH SECTION
Año X • Jueves, Agosto 6 al 12, 2009 • No. 484
Editorial
L
Lawrence: The Vanishing City
awrence is possibly one of the most heterogeneous cities in the United States. The multiplicity of ethnic groups, the different social layers even within the same race and the dissimilar levels of instruction among its inhabitants make it unique, rich and diverse. But this city north of Boston also has many contradictions that require a more serious analysis: Considered a poor city, some of its public servants draw such fantastic salaries that could be the envy of employees in some other latitudes. Since it is a city considered a “neighborhood of poor people”, the volume of revenues produced by its businesspeople is such that the IRS in several occasions has focused its searching eyes on the income tax declaration of some of our entrepreneurs. On the other hand, an insignificant population not long ago influenced in a decisive way the state investigations regarding automobile insurance and medical insurance fraud and the real estate fraudulent maneuvers. But the contrasts go even beyond those simple cases we have pointed out. Between June and September, this small population celebrates about 7 festivals, including an International Book Fair. And, other latitudes where the Latino population is so influential would love to have the cocktail of Hispanic mayoral candidates that Lawrence can exhibit. But not all is as rosy as these words depict. Like any other modern society (even though Lawrence per se is not), that modernism carries with it the vices fitting the social transformations experienced by the people. And the same city we have described before already has“Modern Society-like”statistics. Although it is a city small and poor, it has school drop-out rates like a big city. Although it is poor, it has a drug traffic volume
comparable to a city ten times bigger. Although it is a community relatively small, the violent death rate is disproportionally high for its population density. Although we are a very small community, all in it is hyperbolic;
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all in it reach immeasurable proportions and the restaurants (euphemism to describe a glass case and three chickens kept warm by a light bulb), the barber shops, money transfer agencies, grocery stores, churches, the banks and mechanic shops multiply as plague. At present, with the lack of cultural organizations, and lacking a Hispanic bookstore (oh, God, why did you take Jose Balbuena?), we have in four blocks (from Essex Street with Union Street up to Essex with Broadway) 11 discotheques, which are houses from which customers leave at 2 in the morning, intoxicated in the best of cases, or in a violent mood, ready to knock anyone in their way down, ready to shoot their firearms in the air, to abuse their sentimental partners, or to vandalize private properties, and all happens in front of our indifferent authorities. This city has escaped from our hands. Every crime in which one of our youngsters die and other is imprisoned for half of his/ her life, is a clear warning that the time to act is passing fast and is almost gone. Each new girl that shows up on the streets victim of heroine or pregnant before her time; each boy that does not finish high school, is an alert sign that we are reaching the bottom of the tank and it is hard to see the light toward the exit door. At this accelerated pace amid the chaos and negligence, in no time at all, Lawrence will be remembered not as the city of immigrants that has always been; not as the home of textile workers and the alma mater of the poet Frost, but as a zone of criminal tolerance, as a scale model of some European neighborhoods, where people do not live, but wanders; do not dream, simple exist; do not triumph and is ready to give up. Perhaps we still have time, if we start looking for solutions… Today!
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Considers Remaking Health fund Mortgage Giants for jobless runs low WASHINGTON. The Obama administration is considering an overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would strip the mortgage finance giants of hundreds of billions of dollars in troubled loans and create a new structure to support the home-loan market, government officials said. The bad debts the firms own would be placed in new government financial institutions -- so-called bad banks -- that would take responsibility for collecting as much of the outstanding balance as possible. What would be left would be two healthy financial companies with a clean slate. The moves would represent one of the most dramatic reorderings of the badly shattered housing finance system since District-based Fannie Mae was created by Congress to support mortgage lending during the Great Depression. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, based in McLean, have government charters to
President Barack Obama. buy home loans from banks, which they then repackage and sell to investors. The banks can then use the proceeds to offer more loans to home buyers. The leviathans became emblematic of the financial crisis when they were effectively nationalized last September amid a market meltdown that revealed much of their holdings to be troubled. The government has since pledged more than $1.5 trillion, including $85
billion in direct aid, to keep the mortgage market working through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The proposal, which is preliminary and one of several under discussion, is scheduled to be taken up by the White House’s National Economic Council on Thursday, August 6th. “It should come as no surprise that the administration is thinking through” wholesale changes to these companies, said Andrew Williams, a Treasury Department spokesman. “We are in the preliminary stage of the process, the systematic development of options has not taken place, and no decisions have been made.” Internal discussions over the future of the companies began earlier this year during the regulatory reform planning process and now are entering a more serious phase. National Economic Council Director Lawrence H. Summers has long wanted to overhaul the companies.
BOSTON, MA. A unique
state program that helps pay most health insurance costs for 27,000 unemployed Massachusetts residents is on the cusp of going broke, setting off a debate between healthcare advocates and business leaders who say funding it is a burden on companies fighting for their survival. The state’s Medical Security Program, financed solely by a tax on employers, will run out of money in January because of the surge in unemployment over the past year, state officials said yesterday. The most logical way to maintain it, officials said, is to increase the per-employee tax, which hasn’t been raised since 1990. “In order to save the program, something has got to be done to get more revenue,’’ said Robb Smith, director of policy and planning at the Massachusetts office of Labor and Workforce Development, which oversees the program. But business leaders say that keeping the program afloat by hiking the tax on employers
- $16.80 per employee, per year - would hit hard on many companies already battered by higher costs across the board. “At some point we have to take a good look at the economy and employers’ ability to keep the doors open and decide whether we are maybe being too generous,’’ said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. The program’s rate of growth this year has been defying monthly calculations. Enrollment is up 186 percent since last summer, reaching more than 27,000 as of June. Not all of the state’s roughly 250,000 unemployment recipients qualify. A three-member board meets annually in November to monitor the program’s finances and will probably vote then to make changes, Smith said. No legislative approval is needed to raise or lower the employer tax. While the program had $49.2 million in reserves in June, it spent over $28 million in the most recent quarter. The monthly expendi-
tures surged 70 percent alone from April to June. “We think we’ll be OK until November, but it’s next year we are really concerned about,’’ Smith said. “With the trends we have now, we will probably run out of money [in January] unless something dramatically changes . . . or unless we see a really quick recovery, which I am not counting on.’’ Traditionally the state program has paid 80 percent of a qualified laid-off worker’s monthly health insurance premium for as long as the worker is collecting unemployment benefits. Because the federal government designated stimulus money earlier this year toward health insurance for the unemployed, most recipients are paying about 9 percent of their monthly premium. For those who can’t afford to keep their previous insurance, even with the subsidies, the state program provides basic health coverage and charges recipients modest copayments of about $15 for a doctor’s visit.