AP/Eric Gay

 

Originally published on Antiwar.com Nov. 10, 2009

Veterans Day arrives tomorrow, and with it, the anticipated harvest of heartbreaking anecdotes driving the press coverage and our ever wandering attention back to less desirable realities: the disfigured but persevering hero, the homeless warrior, the unemployable sergeant, the father or son or daughter who came home a stranger and cannot be reached.

Usually, there is nothing more powerful than a personal story to pound home the cost of eight years of war overseas, but I think today there is something even more disturbing to bear.

It’s the number 90,591 [.pdf].

As of Oct. 15, that’s how many American casualties there were in Iraq and Afghanistan since Oct. 7, 2001, when the Afghan war officially began. That includes a tire-screeching 74,782 dead, wounded-in-action, and medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and 15,809 and counting in Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

That it may sound incredible – even unreal – is understandable. Early attempts to effectively count casualties (outside of battlefield fatalities) had been in earnest, then erratic, but finally dead-ended, frustrated by the Department of Defense, which has always been loath to break down and publicize the data on a regular basis.

One stalwart has always been Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to advancing the health and readjustment of returning soldiers and veterans. They’ve been diligently aggregating the statistics over time, and thanks to their diligent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they can provide casualty reports at a level of detail not currently seen on the DOD’s publicly accessible Web site, DefenseLink.mil.

If we could access the data more easily, more people would know that 196 servicemembers took their own lives while serving in Iraq between March 2003 and Oct. 3, 2009, and there were 34 such suicides in Afghanistan. (These figures, of course, do not include the skyrocketing cases of suicides among all active-duty soldiers and veterans and cases of self-inflicted injury outside both war zones.)

More people would also know that 48,552 servicemembers had to be medically evacuated from the battlefield due to hostile and non-hostile injury, disease, and other medical issues since the beginning of the Iraq War [.pdf]. As of early October, 10,748 were evacuated for the same reasons from the war zone in Afghanistan [.pdf].

What the DOD does say, is that as of Nov. 4, there were 13,880 servicemembers wounded in action in Iraq who had not returned to duty, while 2,619 had left Afghanistan under the same conditions [.pdf]. That number is climbing faster. According to the Washington Post on Oct. 31, more than 1,000 were wounded in Afghanistan in the last three months, accounting for one-third of the total American casualties in OEF overall.

Thus, the troops are coming home, but in drastically varied degrees of wholeness. In Vietnam, there was one soldier killed for every 2.6 wounded. The vast majority of soldiers are surviving their injuries today (approximately one killed in action for every 11.5 wounded in action, according to current stats for Afghanistan and Iraq), thanks to advanced body armor, better medevac transport, and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. But in tens of thousands of cases, their journey has just begun.

No one should be surprised, then, to hear that some 454,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought medical care from the Veterans Administration (VA) when they came home. That’s 40 percent of the total OIF/OEF veteran population, which is a number that is of course in flux, considering that the war has no end and veterans have five years to apply for care after the end of their service.

As of this summer, of those veterans who sought healthcare at the VA, 45 percent were diagnosed with a mental health condition, according to VA statistics. Twenty-seven percent of these had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Based on available resources from the DOD and research by the RAND Corporation, VCS estimates that an estimated 370,000 (or 19.5 percent of) veterans have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) thanks to the high rate of accidents, roadside bombs, and other battlefield explosions and events – plus repeated deployments – in the war. VCS also estimates that some 18.5 percent of veterans come home with PTSD.

"This is very, very serious. The numbers are… bad, OK?" said Paul Sullivan, the bulldog director of VCS. "The good news is veterans are asking for care, and it’s good care. The bad news is there is 454,000 of them."

That’s tens of thousands of men and women and affected families and communities that are all but missing from the mainstream news any other time of the year. Sullivan said this is partly the military’s fault for obfuscating the statistics and working to keep the agony of sacrifice in the shadows.

"It’s still the policy of the United States to minimize concerns about postwar health," said Sullivan. Take the issue of soldiers coming home with chronic health problems allegedly caused by the toxic open-air burn pits in theater. One look at the online discussion boards and it’s clear something over there went awry. Vets are headed to VA facilities in droves with symptoms ranging from respiratory distress to sleep apnea and irregular heart conditions, but the Pentagon still refuses to admit a connection to their wartime exposures.

"They treat it as a public relations issue, not a health issue," Sullivan said. "In our view, we are tired of the government lying, and we’re done with the PR."

Larry Scott, who runs VAWatchdog.org, an invaluable daily monitor of ongoing issues affecting the 23.4 million living U.S veterans, said the 90,591 figure relating to OIF/OEF casualties is valid – and ultimately overwhelming. "People just forget, they don’t realize there is an ongoing cost of war. Whether you agree with the war or not is not the issue. We have to be ready to pay the price."

Looking at it in monetary terms – more numbers – may seem cold, but again, it puts the taxpayers’ burden into shocking perspective. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have identified two scenarios in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War (2008). One scenario estimates a long-term cost of $422 billion to the federal government for veterans’ health care and disability compensation (given 1.8 million men and women deployed and troop levels falling below 55,000 by 2012). In the other scenario, the U.S. stays in Iraq and Afghanistan another eight years and 2.1 million men and women are deployed, with a price tag of $717 billion

Sullivan estimates that there are about 450,000 disability claims already filed with the VA on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan vets, based on the official 405,000 figure announced back in February. He said there are approximately 80,000 new claims a month from veterans of all wars. As of Sept. 26, there were more than 951,217 pending claims by all veterans, including 200,679 claims pending appeal (the Veterans Benefits Administration recently reduced that number to 176,000, raising eyebrows at Sullivan’s group).

Rarely do we hear these figures over the din calling for even greater numbers of troops on the ground in Afghanistan. The generals want 40,000 or more, which would exceed the "surge" of 20,000 men and women into Iraq almost three years ago. Soldiers are finally withdrawing from that front only to be shifted to the other one for seemingly more hazardous duty.

"Where is the discussion about making sure that before we send any more troops overseas that we can take care of the veterans we already have and whether we can take care of another flood of them?" asked Sullivan.

Such discussions are indeed hard to come by. As Veterans Day nears, veterans are strangely absent, and for many of us, out of mind. Perhaps Sullivan’s question is best answered by Macy’s full-page Veterans Day sale advertisement in the Washington Post this week, featuring two well-dressed, shiny, happy, pretty people with a bugle and a drum. There are lots of numbers – 30% to 60% off storewide! – but not a veteran in sight.

 

 

Originally posted @TAC

I had always revered Rolling Thunder -- the romantic vision of a Band of Brothers, refugees from a South Asian hellhole whose common experience, really, was the only thing separating them from a certain reckless breed of motorcycle gang. Their annual sojourn to the National Mall for Memorial Day, emblazoned in leather with the simple demand, "Never Forget," insisted we remember the 58,000 who fell in Vietnam, how they got there and the countless others we pushed away from our consciousness when they came home.

This morning, as I hear the distant roar of their convoys traveling up Route 50 toward the nation's capital, I am not thinking, as I usually do on Memorial Day, of my uncles and friends who fought in Vietnam. I am mulling over instead the scars of our present war in the Middle East and Central Asia, and how Rolling Thunder disappointed me so, when a large swath of their riders became so patently pro-war under the thrall of rightwing provocateurs like Michelle Malkin, who fueled unfounded rumors that war protesters planned to urinate on The Wall, and deface other war memorials during a 2007 rally on Washington. They proceeded to revel in intimidating Americans who came to the Mall that weekend in peaceful resistance, allowing in effect, Bush Apologists and warmongers to interchange today's critics of the Iraq and Afghanistan operations with Jane Fonda, Cindy Sheehan and all manner of spitting hippies. Many became tools, wittingly or not, shedding the vestiges of their rebellious origins, for the sake of propping up the Republican Party at a time when most Americans had turned against the war. They allowed their honorable name to be dragged through the partisan muck.

I was at that protest, and watched as these burly guys -- and gals -- and their friends and followers lined up in menacing gauntlets outside of The Wall to intimidate activists, I was there when they waved the middle finger and screamed f--ck you! at protesters and told me personally, that it was not George W. Bush that got the country into such a mess, but weak-kneed lefties back home, badmouthing the war, not supporting the mission. Just like Vietnam.

Honestly, these guys always blamed Hanoi Jane, but I liked them better when they blamed Johnson and Nixon and McNamara too.

But I knew then, in 2007, that while the anger at hippies wasn't forgotten, the mistrust of the government was. Probably still is -- but I have a feeling, any problems with veterans and soldiers and future war policy, will certainly be blamed on President Barack Obama from now on.

That's fine, because this weekend is for remembering. And reminding. As for this war:

U.S casualties:

Iraq (since 2003) -- 4,300 deaths; 46,132 wounded (medical air transport only, doesn't include illnesses or minor injuries, that would take the number over 80,000)

Afghanistan (since 2002) -- 686 deaths; wounded -- not available

Number of men and women who have served in either theater since 2002: over 1.8 million

Number of servicemembers returning with depression or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: 18.5 percent:

Number of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans seeking care at a VA since 2002: 350,000+

Estimated number of soldiers from Iraq/Afghanistan who have suffered a brain injury :  360,000

Number of U.S soldiers still in Iraq: approximately 134,000

Number of U.S soldiers in Afghanistan: 38,000 and counting

* Above photo provided by the Associated Press

(First Published at @TAC -- www.AmConMag.com/blog)

"Poppy Palaces" -- sounds perversely lyrical, echoes of the Wizard of Oz, but in the land of Afghanistan, ancient and epic as it is, the witch is not dead and so far, the happy ending is nowhere in sight.

Poppy Palaces, or Poppy Houses -- cynically crafted in modern "narcotecture" -- inhabit the space (geographically, the hilltop neighborhood of Sherpur) now reserved for a filthy rich class of Kabul suburbanites who seem to have largely slipped past the sluggish lens of the western mainstream media. As consumers of neatly packaged images, we know all about the Afghan tribal warlord, the Afghan Taliban, the poor rural Afghan, the poor urban Afghan -- we hardly hear of the rising middle class Afghan. Particularly those nouveau riche with their garish indulgences a few miles away from what can only be described as the trans-generational wreckage of the Afghan soul.

But it is their very existence -- familiar to us or not -- that threatens to drain every single penny we have put into Afghanistan or are willing to commit to make that country whole again. They are the new landed gentry -- on property  seized after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban  -- occupying a gated community fashioned with the spoils of a drug trade that courses through the very heart of the central government, security forces, the parliament and emerging merchant class.

From Dexter Filkins, NYT, in January: "Nowhere is the scent of corruption so strong as in the Kabul neighborhood of Sherpur. Before 2001, it was a vacant patch of hillside that overlooked the stately neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan. Today it is the wealthiest enclave in the country, with gaudy, grandiose mansions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Afghans refer to them as “poppy houses.” Sherpur itself is often jokingly referred to as “Char-pur,” which literally means “City of Loot.”

Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about Sherpur is that many of the homeowners are government officials, whose annual salaries would not otherwise enable them to live here for more than a few days."

Discussions over the $4 billion drug trade in Afghanistan have largely revolved around its use as a cash cow for insurgents, particularly Taliban and Al Qaeda. Solving the problem has been fixed mostly on NATO-led military eradication efforts and helping poor Afghan farmers shift to (less lucrative) alternative crops like wheat and fruit. The latter is what  "Special Envoy" Richard Holbrooke was all about when he demanded a total "rethink" of the drug problem in a briefing with reporters in Brussels late last month. In his words, the $800 million investment in eradication so far has been a waste. We need to "re-program that money, about 160 million of it is for alternative livelihoods, and we would like to increase that."

Forget the Taliban for a moment. It is becoming clearer by the day that such eradication efforts -- whether it be arresting drug lords and the razing of crops, or the softer touch, giving out seeds and teaching farmers new ways -- are in sharp conflict with Afghanistan's powerful elite, its government and burgeoning bourgeoisie. Do we really expect our increased commitment to resourcing "alternative livelihoods" to get much farther than Kabul? And if so, have any lasting effect in this merciless social and political reality?

Sure, Holbrooke and company are not blind to Kabul's corruption. Everyone talks about it -- just not specifically. It becomes a squirmy subject, particularly when President Karzai, our key ally and client there, is sitting on top of it all, alternately fanning the flames and preventing them from swallowing the state entirely.

So, promising millions of dollars to farmers who are not only extorted by the Taliban, but under pressure now to maintain the new Kabul lifestyle at the expense of their own, seems tragically, like the real waste.

A fleet of Lexus Land Cruisers - hulking 4x4s with tinted windows, video entertainment systems and usually no licence plate - is de rigueur, as are gangly mansions in Sherpur, a new Kabul neighbourhood known for "narcotecture" - a gaudy style with sweeping balustrades, wedding-cake plasterwork and blue mirrored windows. The label may be unfair - some Sherpur residents surely earn their money honestly - but in a country in which drugs account for one third of gross domestic product, and the competing exports are carpets, fruit and nuts, many Afghans have a different idea. "The owners are the ones who killed our people and drank our blood," construction worker Hussain told me three years ago outside a mansion he was building. "But at least it is providing us with work."

So writes Declan Walsh for The Guardian back in August. Just last month, Margaret Warner of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, traveled to Afghanistan and brought back this story. Here might be the cautionary tale for those depending on the central government to help us fight the War on Poppy:

At the heart of this corruption is Afghanistan's leading export, drugs, the source of 93 percent of the world's heroin. This law enforcement video was provided by General Aminullah Amarkhel, the former commander of Kabul International Airport. During his 22 months on the job, he arrested some 100 drug couriers. He says that's why he's the former commander.

GEN. AMINULLAH AMARKHEL, former commander, Kabul International Airport (through translator): I was arresting all kinds of carriers, the small fish, the big fish of the whole mafia. They tried their best then to suspend me, to kill me, or to get rid of me. And the government did not support me. That's why I lost my job. Unfortunately, the law is only for poor people, not for big fish or big government officials.

ASHRAF GHANI: Narcotics, it's eating like a cancer through all aspects of our lives. It used to be roughly a network of 400,000 individuals; now it's a hierarchy, like the Colombian one, with 35 individuals sitting on top of it.

Warner describes the rest of Kabul as a nest of desperation -- men literally selling their bodies and souls as suicide bombers to feed their families, open sewers, a stunning lack of food and health care. As many activists report, but the mainstream usually glosses over, people are living on less than $1.00 a day, and it is quite normal to see children picking through trash in the street, while those in the swelling orphan houses dwell further in the shadows (and, to believe the best-selling novels of modern Afghanistan by author K'ahled Hosseini, suffer their own unthinkable horrors). It is impossible to do any business here -- whether its getting a job, transporting goods, getting a family member out of jail -- without being extorted or forced to pay a bribe. Violence is everywhere.

From Filkins: "Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country’s opium trade, now the world’s largest. In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold here that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift, or, in case you are a beggar, “harchee” — whatever you have in your pocket.

The corruption, publicly acknowledged by President Karzai, is contributing to the collapse of public confidence in his government and to the resurgence of the Taliban, whose fighters have moved to the outskirts of Kabul, the capital."

Last week, reports from the mainstream press elite -- notably the Washington Post's David Ignatius and TIME's Joe Klein -- started trickling in from a tag-a-long with Holbrooke and Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on their recent  "listening tour" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As ever, the story that emerged was crafted with the bold and broad, easily digestible strokes of our seasoned Beltway scribes. Klein even throws in flourishes about Mullen's aura of "common-sense-dispensing country doctor from downstate Illinois" and Holbrooke as "the David Petraeus of diplomats."

We are to believe then, that in this "U.S Military in the Age of Obama" as Klein pens, the Americans are in listening mode (and with an emphasis of soldier and diplomat working side-by-side), and what we are hearing is that Afghanistan is generally supportive of our presence there, and filled with people -- "a breathtaking parade of farmers, Afghan tribal leaders, women legislators, rule-of-law advocates, journalists, the local diplomatic corps, religious leaders" -- who have sound prescriptions for Afghan success. Now we are listening, goes the theme.

No doubt these Afghan actors have plenty to say about reform, with earnest intentions, guts and fortitude. I've talked to some of them on and off for the last nine years. Unfortunately, they aren't the players the former Bush Administration chose to work with from the beginning, and therefore do not have the authority and leverage the current leadership enjoys. Many of them will not be at the bargaining table when the real deals are struck.

So, while team Obama promotes the meme that its approach is refreshingly different than that of its cowboy predecessors, its own prescriptions are vague, particularly on corruption and how to help the reformers turn this monster on its head. On the upcoming election, where Karzai faces his first real challenge against a battery of opponents, American officials are withholding public support, but playing it cool. Knowing the first step in fighting this "cancer" is taking a knife to the tumor in Kabul, the Obama Administration has been diplomatically restrained and I dare guess hopeful that Karzai is ditched. Unfortunately, as the Poppy Palaces draw more power and authority from the unbridled drug trade, their inhabitants will not only have say in how the U.S tries to restrain it, but in who might ultimately replace the Karzai regime.

As always, it seems our hopes are an election away, to either being pinned under a house with our boots exposed or lifted homeward on a balloon. In the meantime, it is wise that the administration withhold our future financial committment until we truly know who will be handling our money and the fate of the Afghan people.

Introduced in George Orwell's 1984 as part of the Newspeak lexicon, "Victory Mansions" was the official name for the dirty, decaying apartment complex that was home to the grim and defiant novel's protagonist. Obviously the name itself didn't obscure what anyone could see with their own eyes, but in Orwell's future world, people were conditioned by The State to deny the truths that might somehow spark questions and dissent.

Here in 2009, an argument can be made there are more nuanced controls at work to channel the way we think and view the world.  Aided by our own ignorance, incuriousness and materialistic diversions, we surrender individuality to the corporate and political hive and we speak its language, often unquestioningly.

When "welfare reform," also known as the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act," was passed in 1996 by President Bill Clinton -- hand-held all the way by an aggressive Republican Majority Congress -- it was supposed to bring an end to the cycle of poverty and social deconstruction brought on, said proponents at the time, by years of mismanaged, abused and dead-end entitlements in the form of welfare. Like "Victory Mansions," "Welfare Reform" sounded pure, proactive, perceivably positive. With its emphasis on putting men and women to work, the bill ended federal welfare reform as we knew it, ultimately cutting billion of dollars in food stamps and federal cash assistance programs, and shifting to a state block grant process, which gave states lump sums to fund their new welfare-to-work programs.

I revisit all of this because of the disturbing issues raised by the deft reporting in "Brave New Welfare" by Stephanie Mencimer in this month's Mother Jones magazine. She attempts to force the lens of truth on what seems to have become another government "revolution" fallen victim to poor execution and greed, and now endangering the lives of the very people we were told it was supposed to help.

Not only that, "Brave New Welfare" offers us a window into how the very poor and meek -- including the smallest and most vulnerable among us today -- are in danger of being left behind, brutally and unceremoniously,  by the current economic crisis. It is rarely spoken of in today's debate over "economic stimulus" and bank industry bailouts, but it seems that some state authorities are actually plugging holes in their shrinking budgets by turning the needy away -- all while wearing the mantle of "reform." This cut-throat bureaucracy is only bound to get worse as state coffers continue to decline, while the jobless rate soars and the once solid retail and service industries begin to collapse.

Whatever one feels about the need for "entitlement reform," this story tells how the very concept was cruelly perverted. Thanks to real -- and rare -- compassionate journalism like this, we know the truth behind the Newspeak and realize, hopefully, our responsibility not to ignore it.

Some excerpts:

 

 

In 2006, the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence conducted a survey to figure out why so many women were suddenly failing to get tanf [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families] benefits. They discovered that caseworkers were actively talking women out of applying, often using inaccurate information. (Lying to applicants to deny them benefits is a violation of federal law, but the 1996 welfare reform legislation largely stripped the Department of Health and Human Services of its power to punish states for doing it. Meanwhile, county officials have tried to head off lawyers who might take up the issue by pressing applicants to sign waivers saying they voluntarily turned down benefits.) Allison Smith, the economic justice coordinator at the coalition, says the group has gotten reports of caseworkers telling tanf applicants they have to be surgically sterilized before they can apply. Disabled women have been told they can't apply because they can't meet the work requirement. Others have been warned that the state could take their children if they get benefits. Makita Perry, a 23-year-old mother of four who did manage to get on tanf for a year, told me caseworkers "ask you all sorts of personal questions, like when the last time you had sex was and with who." Elsewhere, women are being told to get a letter proving they've visited a family-planning doctor.

Simply landing an appointment with a caseworker is an ordeal that can take 45 days, according to some of the women I interviewed—and applicants must clear numerous other hurdles, including conducting a job search, before being approved. Few complete the process. One study found that in April 2006, caseworkers in Georgia green-lighted only 20 percent of tanf applications, down from 40 percent in 2004. The lucky few who are accepted must often work full time in "volunteer" jobs in exchange for their benefits, which max out at $280 a month for a family of three.

Even as it blocks potential applicants, Georgia is also pushing current tanf recipients off the rolls at a rapid clip. Sandy Bamford runs a federally funded family literacy program in Albany where single mothers can get their geds. tanf allows recipients to attend school, but Bamford says officials routinely tell her clients otherwise: In a single month, one caseworker informed three of her students (incorrectly) that because they had turned 20, they could no longer receive benefits while completing their degrees. One was about to become the first in her family to graduate from high school. She quit and took a job as a dishwasher. Students as young as 16 have been told they must go to work full time or lose benefits. The employee who threatened to drop the students, says Bamford, became "caseworker of the month" for getting so many people off tanf....

Georgia isn't the only state that's found that dropping people from tanf is the easiest and cheapest way to meet federal work requirements. Texas reduced its caseloads by outsourcing applications to a call center, which wrongfully denied some families and lost others' applications altogether. In Florida, one innovative region started requiring tanf applicants to attend 40 hours of classes before they could even apply. Clients trying to restore lost benefits had once been able to straighten out paperwork with the help of caseworkers. In 2005, officials assigned all such work to a single employee, available two hours a week. The area's tanf caseload fell by half in a year...

Whatever their philosophical convictions, officials have another incentive for paring the tanf rolls: money. That's because the Clinton-era welfare reform turned what had been an entitlement program like Social Security—the more people needed help, the more money was spent—into a block grant, a fixed amount of money given to the states, regardless of need. The money, $16.5 billion a year, came mostly unencumbered by regulation. States could divert the funds to any program vaguely related to serving the needy.

Not only did the block grant doom the program to a slow death by inflation (by 2010, it will have lost 27 percent of its value), it also encouraged states to deny benefits to families, since they'd get the same amount of federal funds regardless of how many people received assistance. Georgia's share of the federal grant is nearly $370 million a year. "Even if caseloads go to zero, they get the same amount of money," notes Robert Welsh of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.

Some states have used surplus tanf money to expand child care, job training, and transportation to help recipients find jobs. But Georgia didn't use the bulk of its money for those programs—instead, it cut spending on child care and put the money into child protective services in the wake of a lawsuit against the state over the mistreatment of children in foster care. "The feds are just fine with that," Walker insists. "We use our block grant to support other vulnerable families. That was the intent of the block grant."

Georgia is not alone in shifting its tanf money to other areas. The Government Accountability Office found in 2006 that many states were moving federal welfare funds away from cash assistance to the poor, or even "work supports" like child care, to plug holes in state budgets. Yet over the past 12 years, federal regulators have cited states only 11 times for misusing their tanf block grant, and only two suffered any financial penalty, according to Ken Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees the program. "As far as the federal government's concerned, it's not a big problem," he says.

 ***

 

 

 

 

 

Standing tough under stars and stripes
We can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear
The future looks bright
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

Get your ticket to that wheel in space
While there's time
The fix is in
You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
You know we've got to win
Here at home we'll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There'll be Spandex jackets one for everyone

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(More leisure for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young

What a beautiful world this'll be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this'll be
What a glorious time to be free

 

                    ------ "I.G.Y"

                                Donald Fagen 1982