Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

The erratic reporting is a problem to which gun-control advocates, law enforcement officials and others have sought to draw attention for years.

“We’ve had these wake-up calls for years, and all we ever do is push the snooze button,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The federal system, in fact, contained only about 235,000 mental health records as of January 2006, even though it is estimated that as many as 2.7 million people have been involuntarily institutionalized nationwide.

“The biggest impediment is privacy relating to mental health records,” said Joey Hixenbaugh, a unit chief in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal justice information systems division.

In 1998, Russell Weston barged into the United States Capitol and fatally shot two police officers. Mr. Weston had been involuntarily committed in Montana as a paranoid schizophrenic, but the authorities in Illinois, where he bought the gun, were unaware of that because privacy laws bar Montana from reporting those records to federal authorities.

Several years later, Peter Troy, who was twice admitted to a mental hospital, killed a priest and a parishioner at a Long Island church with a .22-caliber rifle he bought.

In the case of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, a special justice declared in late 2005 that Mr. Cho was mentally ill and a danger to himself, ordering him to outpatient treatment after two women complained that he was harassing them. The finding should have disqualified him from buying a gun under federal law, which says that any court ruling that a person is a “danger to himself or others” because of mental illness is adjudicated as a mental defective.

But because Virginia reported only involuntary commitments to mental health facilities, Mr. Cho’s information was not reported to the state police and federal authorities.

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia issued an executive order this week to try to close the gap between state and federal law by requiring that commitments for outpatient treatment be reported, as well.

The bill being pushed by Representative Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Charles E. Schumer, both New York Democrats, takes a carrot-and-stick approach that offers money to states to automate records and speed their transmission to the federal database. It also withholds part of federal financing for a crime-prevention program from states that do not comply.

The measure is co-sponsored by Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who is a former board member of the National Rifle Association and a longtime opponent of gun control. Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho, a current member of the association board, said he supported the thrust of the bill.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the N.R.A., said it was mainly mental health groups that had stood in the way of similar legislation in the past.

“We are not an obstacle,” Mr. LaPierre said. “We’re strongly in support of putting those records in the system.”

But Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said his group was fighting the bill.

“Our biggest concern is this is being done as a denial of a civil liberty, and it’s being done without due process,” Mr. Pratt said.

Mental health advocates also opposed the measure, arguing that reporting these records to a federal database contributed to the stigmatization of mental illness.

David L. Shern, chief executive of Mental Health America, said the bill did not take into account how treatment could cure people.

“This is a classic example of a well-intentioned effort that’s going to have almost no effect and, in fact, is going to do harm,” Mr. Shern said.

The Supreme Court put up another hurdle to having states report records to federal authorities with a controversial ruling in 1997. In a lawsuit financed by the N.R.A.’s civil defense fund, the court struck down an earlier provision of the Brady bill that governs the background checks on gun purchases and ruled that state workers could not be ordered to carry out a federal regulatory program. States can be encouraged to share their information voluntarily, but in many cases they would have to amend their privacy laws to do so, an uphill battle in many states.

In North Carolina, gun-control groups tried in 2002 to require the reporting of additional mental health records but were stymied by both mental health and pro-gun groups.

Robin Peyson of the Texas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said she would oppose efforts to change privacy laws in her state.

“Its unintended consequence will be to discourage people from seeking treatment when they need it most,” Ms. Peyson said.

Virginia Ends a Loophole in Gun Laws

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia closed a loophole Monday in the state’s gun laws that allowed a mentally disturbed Virginia Tech student to buy the guns used in a shooting rampage that left 33 dead at the university on April 16.

The governor issued an executive order intended to prohibit the sale of guns to anyone found to be dangerous and forced to undergo involuntary mental health treatment. Under the order, their names would be included a database of people banned from buying guns.

In December 2005, a Virginia judge directed Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman in the massacre, to undergo outpatient treatment. But because Mr. Cho was treated as an outpatient, Virginia did not send his name to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal database. Federal gun laws depend on the states for enforcement, and the failure of Virginia to flag Mr. Cho has raised growing questions about the adequacy of background checks to scrutinize potential gun buyers.

The governor said the database “should include any determination that someone is mentally ill and so dangerous to himself or others as to warrant involuntary treatment.”

The governor also instructed the State Police to request orders for involuntary inpatient care and involuntary outpatient care from district courts and to include that information in the database.

“We realized that this is something we can fix right now and that we needn’t wait to fix it,” Mr. Kaine said in a news conference.

He added that he hoped his move would encourage other states to tighten their mental health restrictions on gun buyers.

“We were all very surprised to find that despite a federal prohibition on purchase of weapons by the mentally ill that dates back to the 1960s,” Mr. Kaine said, “the majority of states report no data on mental health adjudications in the national database.”

Even in states with these stricter mental health restrictions, gun buyers can sidestep background checks by obtaining firearms from a private seller or at a gun show from a “private” individual or “collector.”

Those purchases account for about half of the guns sold in the United States each year. Efforts by Virginia lawmakers to close this gun-show loophole have been repeatedly blocked by gun-rights advocates.

Hooked On Violence

BYLINE: By BOB HERBERT

BODY:

Two days after the massacre at Virginia Tech, a mentally disturbed man with a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun opened fire in a house in Queens, killing his mother, his mother's disabled companion and the disabled man's health care aide. The gunman then killed himself.

Sixteen months ago, in the basement of a private home in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, four aspiring rappers, aged 19 to 22, were summarily executed in a barrage of semiautomatic gunfire. Two teenagers were arrested five months later, and one was charged as the gunman.

I had coffee the other day with Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, and she mentioned that since the murders of Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, well over a million Americans have been killed by firearms in the United States. That's more than the combined U.S. combat deaths in all the wars in all of American history.

''We're losing eight children and teenagers a day to gun violence,'' she said. ''As far as young people are concerned, we lose the equivalent of the massacre at Virginia Tech about every four days.''

The first step in overcoming an addiction is to acknowledge it. Americans are addicted to violence, specifically gun violence. We profess to be appalled at every gruesome outbreak of mass murder (it's no big deal when just two, three or four people are killed at a time), but there's no evidence that we have the will to pull the guns out of circulation, or even to register the weapons and properly screen and train their owners.

On the day after Christmas in 2000, an employee of Edgewater Technology, a private company in Wakefield, Mass., showed up at work with an assault rifle and a .12-gauge shotgun. Around 11 a.m. he began methodically killing co-workers. He didn't stop until seven were dead.

An employee who had not been at work that day spoke movingly to a reporter from The Boston Globe about the men and women who lost their lives. ''They were some of the sweetest, smartest people I've ever had the chance to work with,'' he said. ''The cream of the crop.''

The continuing carnage has roused at least one group of public officials to action: mayors. ''We see the violence that is happening in America today,'' said Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston. ''Illegal guns are rampant. Go into almost any classroom in Boston -- sixth and seventh grade, eighth grade, high school -- and 50 percent of those kids know somebody who had a gun.''

The mayor noted that since the beginning of the year, more than 100 people have already been killed in Philadelphia, and nearly 80 in Baltimore. Most of the victims were shot to death.

Last year Mayor Menino and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, at a meeting they hosted at Gracie Mansion, organized a group of mayors committed to fighting against illegal firearms in the U.S. ''It is time for national leadership in the war on gun violence,'' Mr. Bloomberg said at the time. ''And if that leadership won't come from Congress or come from the White House, then it has to come from us.''

The campaign has grown. There were 15 mayors at that first gathering. Now more than 200 mayors from cities in 46 states have signed on.

When asked why Mayor Bloomberg had become so militant about the gun issue, John Feinblatt, the city's criminal justice coordinator, mentioned the ''human element.'' He said: ''I think it's because he's watched eight police officers be shot. And because, like all mayors, he's the one who gets awakened, along with the police commissioner, at 3 in the morning and 4 in the morning, and has to rush to the hospital and break the news that can break somebody's heart.''

Those who are interested in the safety and well-being of children should keep in mind that only motor vehicle accidents and cancer kill more children in the U.S. than firearms. A study released a few years ago by the Harvard School of Public Health compared firearm mortality rates among youngsters 5 to 14 years old in the five states with the highest rates of gun ownership with those in the five states with the lowest rates.

The results were chilling. Children in the states with the highest rates of gun ownership were 16 times as likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound, nearly seven times as likely to commit suicide with a gun, and more than three times as likely to be murdered with a firearm.

Only a lunatic could seriously believe that more guns in more homes is good for America's children.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: April 26, 2007

Guns and More Guns

By now, the logic is almost automatic. A shooter takes innocent lives, and someone says that if the victims had been armed, this wouldn’t have happened. The only solution to a gun in the wrong hands, it seems, is a gun in the hands of everyone.

That’s the state of the debate over gun control today. The National Rifle Association and the gun lobby have silenced every legislature in this country. Instead of stricter laws, tighter controls and better background checks, the gun lobby proposes more guns. And what the gun lobby proposes, lawmakers deliver.

Seung-Hui Cho bought his guns illegally, though with the appearance of legality. He slipped through a loophole, through a disconnect between the way Virginia defines a disqualifying mental incapacity and the way the federal government does. After the fact, the loophole is self-evident, and it’s tempting to believe that now political leaders will work harder to keep people who are dangers to themselves from becoming dangers to others by buying guns. But the laws are as fragile and imperfect as they are because that is how the gun lobby wants them — and it is paying good money to keep them that way.

Those gun advocates who believe that the Second Amendment confers the right to carry a gun in public are quick to point out that they are law-abiding, decent citizens trying to protect themselves and their families in a world gone mad. But, of course, the guns can’t tell the difference. Arming more people would be a recipe for disaster.

True safety lies in the civility of society, in laws that publicly protect all of our rights and in having law-enforcement officers who are trained in the use of deadly force, then authorized to apply it in rationally defined situations. It is the gun lobby’s incessant efforts to weaken the gun laws that makes a tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech possible.

U.S. Rules Made Killer Ineligible to Purchase Gun

Under federal law, the Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a state official and several legal experts said Friday.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun.

The special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform.

A spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also said that if Mr. Cho had been found mentally defective by a court, he should have been denied the right to purchase a gun.

The federal law defines adjudication as a mental defective to include “determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority” that as a result of mental illness, the person is a “danger to himself or others.”

Mr. Cho’s ability to buy two guns despite his history has brought new attention to the adequacy of background checks that scrutinize potential gun buyers. And since federal gun laws depend on states for enforcement, the failure of Virginia to flag Mr. Cho highlights the often incomplete information provided by states to federal authorities.

Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the federal check system, the statement said.

Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was “involuntarily committed” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”

“It’s clear we have an imperfect connection between state law and the application of the federal prohibition,” Mr. Bonnie said. The commission he leads was created by the state last year to examine the state’s mental health laws.

Mr. Bonnie, the director of the University of Virginia Institute on Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, said his panel would look into the matter. “We are going to fix this,” he said.

“I’m sure that the misfit exists in states across the country and the underreporting exists,” he said.

After two female Virginia Tech students complained about Mr. Cho’s behavior in 2005, he was sent to a psychiatric unit for evaluation and then ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, which would not qualify as an involuntary commitment under Virginia law, Mr. Bonnie said.

“What they did was use the terms that fit Virginia law,” he said. “They weren’t thinking about the federal. I suspect nobody even knew about these federal regulations.”

But Christopher Slobogin, a law professor at the University of Florida who is an expert on mental health, said that under his reading of Virginia law, outpatient treatment could qualify as involuntary commitment, meaning Virginia law should have barred Mr. Cho from buying a weapon as well. Mr. Bonnie said he and the state’s attorney general disagreed with that interpretation.

Mr. Slobogin added that the federal statute “on the plain face of the language, it would definitely apply to Cho.”

A spokesman for the Virginia attorney general’s office declined to comment on Friday, saying only that various agencies were “reviewing this situation.”

Richard Marianos, a spokesman for the federal firearms agency, said Friday that federal and state officials were looking into the question, studying the court proceedings and testimony.

But Mr. Marianos added, “If he was adjudicated as a mental defective by a court, he should have been disqualified.”

Dennis Henigan, legal director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the oversight on the federal law in Virginia had probably been occurring for some time.

“They may have been doing this for years, just basically assuming, if the guy’s not disqualified under state law, then we don’t have to send anything to the state police,” Mr. Henigan said. “It’s a failure to recognize the independent obligation to the federal law.”

Most states do not follow the letter of the federal law when it comes to the mental health provisions, said Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group.

“I suspect if we look at all the requirements that exist for the states, there’s probably a whole lot of them that don’t implement them,” Mr. Honberg said, explaining that the gap often comes from a lack of resources but also because no one is enforcing the requirements.

“When something like this happens, then people start to pay attention to this,” he said.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, has been pushing a bill to require states to automate their criminal history records so computer databases used to conduct background checks on gun buyers are more complete.

The bill would also require states to submit their mental health records to their background check systems and give them money to allow them to do so.

According to gun control advocates, the mental health information currently submitted to the national check system is often spotty and incomplete, something Ms. McCarthy’s bill is designed to address.

Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and a former member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, is co-sponsoring the bill, which has twice passed the House only to stall in the Senate. Congressional aides say Mr. Dingell is negotiating with pro-gun groups to come up with language acceptable to them.

“The N.R.A. doesn’t have objections,” Mr. Dingell said in an interview. “There are other gun organizations on this that are problems.”

A spokesman for the rifle association declined to comment Friday on the legislation, but Mr. Dingell said the measure could prevent future tragedies.

“It resolves some serious problems in terms of preventing the wrong people from getting firearms,” he said.

Cho’s Mental Illness Should Have Blocked Gun Sale

Under federal law, the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from purchasing a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a government official and several legal experts said Friday.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from purchasing a gun.

A special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also said if that if found mentally defective by a court, Mr. Cho should have been denied a gun.

The federal law defines adjudication as a mental defective to include “determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority” that as a result of mental illness, the person is a “danger to himself or others.”

Mr. Cho’s ability to purchase two guns despite his history of mental illness has cast new attention on Virginia’s relatively lax gun laws. And since states are supposed to enforce federal gun laws, the sales raise questions about whether Virgina — and other states — fully comply with the federal restrictions.

Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. As a result, the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification only addresses the state criteria, which lists two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police — someone who was “involuntarily committed,” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”

“It’s clear we have an imperfect connection between state law and the application of the federal prohibition,” said Mr. Bonnie. The commission he chairs was created by the state last year to examine the state’s mental health laws.

Mr. Bonnie, the director of the University of Virginia Institute on Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, said his panel would look into the matter: “We are going to fix this.”

He also said he believed similar problems likely exist elsewhere in the country.

“I’m sure that the mis-fit exists in states across the country, and the underreporting exists,” he said.

After a pair of female students complained about his behavior in 2005, Mr. Cho was sent to a psychiatric unit for evaluation and then ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, which would not qualify as an involuntary commitment under Virginia law, Mr. Bonnie said.

“What they did was use the terms that fit Virginia law,” he said. “They weren’t thinking about the federal. I suspect nobody even knew about these federal regulations.”

But Christopher Slobogin, a professor of law at the University of Florida who is an expert on mental health issues, said that under his reading of the Virginia law, outpatient treatment could also qualify as involuntary commitment, meaning Virginia state law should have barred him from buying a weapon as well, an interpretation Mr. Bonnie said he and the state’s attorney general disagree with.

Mr. Slobogin added that the federal statute “on the plain face of the language, it would definitely apply to Cho.”

A spokesman for the Virginia state attorney general’s office declined to comment today, saying only that various agencies are “reviewing this situation.”

Richard Marianos, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would only say today that federal and state officials were looking into the question, studying the court proceedings and testimony.

But he added: “If he was adjudicated as a mental defective by a court, he should have been disqualified.”

Federal authorities apparently have not noticed Virginia’s failure to comply with federal guidelines restricting gun sales to the mentally ill. Dennis Henigan, legal director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the oversight on the federal law in Virginia has probably been occurring for some time.

“They may have been doing this for years, just basically assuming, if the guy’s not disqualified under state law, then we don’t have to send anything to the state police,” he said. “It’s a failure to recognize the independent obligation to the federal law.”

Most states do not follow the letter of the federal law when it comes to the mental health provisions, said Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group.

“I suspect if we look at all the requirements that exist for the states, there’s probably a whole lot of them that don’t implement them,” he said, explaining the gap often comes from a lack of resources but also because no one is enforcing them. “When something like this happens, then people start to pay attention to this.”

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat, has been pushing a bill that would require states to automate their criminal history records so that computer databases used to conduct background checks on gun buyers are more complete. The bill would also require states to submit their mental health records to their background check systems and give them money to allow them to do so.

Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the NICS system, the statement said.

According to gun control advocates, however, the mental health information submitted is often spotty and incomplete, something Ms. McCarthy’s bill is designed to address.

Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat and former member of the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, is co-sponsoring the bill, which has twice passed the House only to stall in the Senate, with Ms. McCarthy. According to congressional aides, he is negotiating with pro-gun groups to come up with language acceptable to them.

“The NRA doesn’t have objections,” he said in an interview. “There are other gun organizations on this that are problems.”

A spokesman for the NRA declined to comment Friday on the legislation, but Mr. Dingell said the measure could prevent future tragedies: “It resolves some serious problems in terms of preventing the wrong people from getting firearms.”

Nobody Neets this lazy lot any more

The Neets, the idle young, are a huge drain on welfare and with immigrants keen to do the jobs they won’t, they will remain so, says David Smith
This week Channel 4 will begin a new series of Shameless, the series set around the Gallaghers, described by the producers as “the UK’s most dysfunctional family”, on the fictional Chatsworth Estate.
The father figure, Frank Gallagher, is an ageing “Neet” — the government’s own acronym for those of working age who are not in employment, education or training. The surprise, and this is perhaps why the series is fictional, is that his children are hard working although they are mostly still at school. In real life they would almost certainly end up as Neets.
If so they would join more than a million others. The number of young people aged 16 to 24 in Britain who are classified as Neets stands at 1.24m. The number of young male Neets has risen by 27% to 575,000 since the spring of 1997, while the number of young female Neets is also up but by only 6% to 669,000.
Other countries have Neets although only in Britain, and curiously Japan, is the problem considered significant enough for the term to be widely used.
The Neets are the yobs hanging around off-licences late into the night. They are the graffiti artists who cannot spell and the drug-dealing pit-bull owners. They are also the Vicky Pollard types who become single mothers. Not all Neets fit the caricature. A young mother in a stable relationship bringing up children at home would be classified as a Neet. So could somebody temporarily out of work, such as a university graduate looking for their first job.
In many cases, however, Neets do fit the caricature and are responsible for much more than their fair share of crime and antisocial behaviour.
A study by the Department for Education and Skills in 2005 found that the proportion of Neets among 16 to 18-year-olds “has remained stubbornly persistent” over the past decade at about 10%.
Research assembled by Reform, the think tank, shows that on the government’s own figures, each new entrant to the Neet class will cost the public £97,000 over their lifetime, with the worst examples weighing in at more than £300,000.
The same study also analysed their social impact. Drug use among 16 to 18-year-olds is higher, with 71% admitting to having used illegal drugs, compared with 45% of non-Neets. This and other factors had an impact on their health: 15% of male and 25% of female Neets were in poor health by age 21 (compared with 10% and 15% respectively of non-Neets).
Neets are also more likely to have children earlier — potentially disrupting their education. Some 60% of Neet women have had children by the age of 21, compared with only 10% of the non-Neet population. They are also more likely to drift into crime.
The same study found that 29% of male and 8% of female young Neets were involved in crime, three times the rate among all young people. It estimated that the cost to society of the Neet class in terms of crime, public health and antisocial behaviour was so high that a single 157,000-strong cohort of 16 to 18-year-old Neets would cost the country £15 billion by the time they died (prematurely) in about 2060.
David Willetts, the Tory shadow education secretary, says the problem is down to educational failings. Neets tend to do badly at primary school, leaving without being able to read or write properly, and then getting stuck in the slow lane at secondary school. Children who have neither parent working, like the Gallaghers, or a single parent who does not work, are much more likely to end up as Neets.
The rising number of Neets also reflects another governent failing. When he introduced the “New Deal” for young people in 1998, Gordon Brown insisted that there would be “no fifth option” beyond work, training, education or starting a business. But the New Deal, for many, has proved to be a revolving door back to unemployment. And the Neets have discovered that there is indeed a fifth option. Most continue to claim benefit while happily ignoring the strictures of our future prime minister.
“The New Deal is very effective, by international standards, at what it does — getting young long-term unemployed benefit claimants into jobs — but its focus on unemployed benefit claimants has meant less was provided to the majority of 18-24 Neets,” says Paul Bivand, head of analysis at Inclusion, a non-profit organisation which promotes social justice.
The Neets are part of a wider problem identified by Nicholas Boys Smith, a welfare expert. Welfare, he says, has become the forgotten problem, largely because of government propaganda which implies that the benefits bill is now trivial and that most spending goes on health and education.
In fact, as he points out, spending on social security in 2005-6 was £79 billion, excluding pensions, £6 billion more than was spent on education and not that far below the health budget of £96 billion.
The number of working age people dependent on benefits, 5.4m, or 14% of the age group, has stayed high, as has the tendency for them to be benefit “lifers”. More than 70% of claimants remain on benefits for over a year.
For the Neets, and for others on the margins of the workforce, there is a particular problem now that was barely on the radar screen when Brown was talking so bullishly about his New Deal in 1998 — immigration.
In a speech last week David Blanchflower, one of the members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, said it was wrong to blame immigration for the rise in unemployment over the past year or so; it would probably have occurred anyway. The government’s own research has come to similar conclusions.

However, there is no doubt that the arrival of skilled and enthusiastic immigrants from eastern Europe has raised the bar for Neets. Those willing to work face tougher competition than their predecessors.
In many cases they offer no competition. Sir Digby Jones, appointed as the government’s skills “czar” last month, gives the example of a Scottish employer who offered jobs to unemployed young people. On the first day some of them did not turn up; by the end of the week none did. The Polish workers he employed instead, in contrast, have yet to take a day off.
The Neets are going to be with us for a very long time.

plz click the title to see related news on xinhua

Europe, a Moment to Ponder

IT is not easy to think of Spain as Poland. Stroll around this southern city at dusk, beneath the palms, beside the handsome bridges on the Guadalquivir River, past the chic boutiques and the Häagen-Dazs outlet, the Gothic cathedral and the Moorish palace, and it is scarcely Warsaw that comes to mind.
But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It no longer is. We will see the same results in Poland.”
If history is prologue, Mr. Michnik is likely to be right. The European Union, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding treaty this weekend, is more often associated with Brussels bureaucrats setting the maximum curvature of cucumbers than with transformational power. But step by step, stipulation by stipulation, Europe has been remade.
What began in limited fashion in 1957 as a drive to remove tariff barriers and promote commercial exchange has ended by banishing war from Europe, enriching it beyond measure, and producing what Mr. Michnik called “the first revolution that has been absolutely positive.”
Asia, still beset by nationalisms and open World War II wounds, can only envy Europe’s conjuring away agonizing history, a process that involved a voluntary dilution of national sovereignty unthinkable in the United States.
But it is a celebration in uncertainty. A bigger union, expanded to include the ex-Communist states of Central Europe, has proved largely ungovernable. A constitution designed to streamline its governance was rejected in 2005. Integration has been a European triumph, but not always of those who are part of large-scale Muslim immigration. The founding treaty, signed by the six founding members on March 25, 1957, rested on creative ambiguity. It called for an “ever closer union among the European peoples”; behind it lay dreams of a United States of Europe.
Still, the ambiguity persisted; it has proved divisive. Economic power has been built more effectively than political or strategic unity. Military power has lagged.

Nonetheless, “autopilot” in the union still amounts to a lot.
It will ensure, for example, that over $100 billion is sent to Poland from now to 2013 to upgrade its infrastructure and agriculture, a sum that dwarfs American aid. Similarly, more than $190 billion has been devoted to Spain since it joined the union in 1986, 11 years after the end of Franco’s dictatorship.
The result has been Spain’s extraordinary transition from a country whose per capita output was 71 percent of the European average in 1985, 90 percent in 2004, and now 100.7 percent of the median of the 27 members. Spain has moved into the club of the well off. Dictatorship seems utterly remote.
“The E.U. slashes political risk,” said Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat member of the British Parliament. “It also exercises a soft power on its periphery that has far more transformational impact than the American neocon agenda in the Middle East. Countries in the Balkans wanting to come into the European democratic family have to adapt.”
That adaptation is economic as well as political. The creation of something approximating an American single market has been powerful in ending cartels and monopolies, introducing competition, pushing privatization and generally promoting the market over heavily managed capitalism.
Indeed, defense of what is called the European social model, with universal health care and extensive unemployment benefits, has become a tenet of European identity. How far that identity, as opposed to national identities, exists today is a matter of dispute. Only 2 percent of European Union inhabitants of working age live in member states other than their own.
But a survey in the French daily Le Figaro showed that 71 percent of French people now feel some pride in a European identity.
It is also open politically: How much of a federation should Europe be?
Germany has been utterly remade by an integrating Europe to the point that more people worry today about German pacifism than expansionism. But Poland is just entering that transformational process; under Lech Kaczynski’s conservative presidency its wariness of the pooling of sovereignty inherent in the union has been clear.
“The E.U. is an unfinished project, but so what?” Mr. Voigt said. “Why be nervous? We have time.”

U.S. and North Korea Resolve Bank Standoff

The United States and North Korea have resolved a standoff over North Korean funds frozen in a bank account in Macao, clearing the way for talks to focus on implementing a nuclear disarmament accord, Chinese and American officials said today.
An 18-month investigation into the bank ended last week, putting responsibility for returning the funds to North Korea in the hands of the authorities in Macao. But funds connected to illegal activities, like money laundering, counterfeiting, and narcotics and weapons trafficking, are not supposed to be returned.
The United States, North Korea, China, Russia, South Korea and Russia reached an initial agreement on Feb. 13 that gave North Korea 60 days to shut down its facility for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons at Yongbyon in return for aid and security pledges.
Bush administration officials initially raised allegations that the North had a clandestine uranium program underway in 2002, citing intelligence from Pakistan, which American officials said may have sold equipment for enriching uranium to North Korea.
Pyongyang has denied that it has sought to build bombs using highly enriched uranium, but North Korean officials have said recently that they are willing to discuss the matter with the United States.

The Right to Ban Arms

A federal appeals court panel in Washington has marched blithely past a longstanding Supreme Court precedent, the language of the Constitution and the pressing needs of public safety to strike down Washington’s law barring residents from keeping handguns in their homes.
The ruling, approved 2 to 1 last week by the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was the first from a federal appeals court to hold a gun control law unconstitutional on Second Amendment grounds. It cries out for prompt reversal by the full circuit, and ultimate rejection by the Supreme Court.
The district’s strict gun-control law bars all handguns unless they were registered before 1976. The law was challenged by a guard at the Federal Judicial Center, who was permitted to carry a gun on duty and said he wanted to keep one at home.
The outcome turned on an interpretation of the Second Amendment, which says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The new decision jeopardizes sound legal precedent and the district’s law. It would imperil needed gun controls in place in jurisdictions around the country at a time when violent crime in many places is once again on the rise. It must be overturned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/opinion/14wed2.html?ex=1331524800&en=658f79e92cf09bb2&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

From Mexico Also, the Message to Bush Is Immigration

As President Bush tried to mend frayed relations with Mexico, the Mexican president gave him a cool reception on Tuesday, calling on Mr. Bush to live up to his longtime promise to make Mexico a priority and criticizing American plans to build a 700-mile fence along the border.
President Felipe Calderón warned that the only way to stem illegal migration and ensure regional security was to raise the standard of living here.
Mr. Bush took the slight chastising in stride and promised, as he has in the past, to push for an immigration bill that would allow more guest workers and provide a path to citizenship for many Mexicans living in the United States illegally.
On Monday, President Óscar Berger of Guatemala complained about the forced deportations of his countrymen who enter the United States illegally.
At nearly every turn, the American president has been faced with anger over what is perceived as the United States’ neglect of the region and frustration with its tougher border-security policies in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
On immigration, the Mexican leader raised objections, as he has in the past, to the construction of a 700-mile wall along parts of the border, saying that building roads in Mexico would be more useful.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/world/americas/14prexy.html?ex=1331524800&en=6b7841e56f8f0504&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss