A JIMMY CARTER ECONOMY AHEAD?

A JIMMY CARTER ECONOMY AHEAD?
Orange County Register: Perhaps it's fitting that former President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize last month, given that the nation's economic condition is starting to remind us, at least a little bit, of the malaise that gripped the nation during Carter's ill-fated presidency.
Unlike the Carter years, interest rates and inflation remain low, gasoline lines are nowhere to be seen and economic matters are still ostensibly going well. But Americans are starting to get the jitters. The stock market, viewed a few years ago as a surefire investment bet, keeps going three steps backward, one step forward.
Investors, including millions of Americans dependent on their 401(k) plans and mutual funds to pay for a comfortable retirement, are suffering historic losses. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out on Friday, many people avoid looking at the statements from their retirement plans to save themselves depressing news.
Unemployment is inching up. The housing situation remains strong, fueled by record-low interest rates and pent-up demand, but Realtors are predicting slower times. Furthermore, home prices are pushed upward as investors flee the stock market for the better-performing real estate market. High home prices have created a wealth effect, encouraging a spate of refinancing activity and cash-outs that prop up consumer spending. But if home prices stabilize or recede, that source of economic vitality will recede with it.
Consumer spending
Other trouble signs are appearing. "Weaker-than-expected sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., J.C. Penney Co. and Federated Department Stores Inc. suggest that consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the economy, is slowing, threatening the pace of recovery," reported Bloomberg financial news. "Auto sales dropped even as carmakers extended no-interest loans and other incentives to lure buyers into dealer showrooms."
The Public Policy Institute of California reports: "There has been a sharp increase in the proportion of Californians who are not satisfied with their job opportunities. They report being financially 'worse off' today."
Then there's a looming war with Iraq, which could cost the U.S. treasury $200 billion, according to some estimates in Congress. Governments at the state and federal levels continue to consume record levels of taxpayer dollars, resulting in massive deficits now that economic growth and capital gains have slowed. That means likely tax increases. More taxes mean a slower economy, as Americans must cut their spending so they can funnel more money to government.
We don't mean to sound bleak, but the polls showing that President Bush ought to spend more time tending to the economy than preparing for war have validity. He ought to look back at the Carter years and remember that the economy didn't get going again until Ronald Reagan slashed tax rates and cut regulations.
Why not give prosperity a chance?
THE CONSTITUTION ISN'T OPTIONAL
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: Yasser Esam Hamdi is a special American. So special, in fact, that the U.S. government has kept him locked up in a windowless cell for more than six months -- forbidden contact with anyone but his jailers. His pleas for a lawyer have been denied. Yet Hamdi hasn't been charged with any crime.
How can this be? Ask the White House, which argues that Hamdi is "by no means an everyday American." Born in Baton Rouge but raised largely in Saudi Arabia, the 22-year-old student was part of a Taliban unit captured in Afghanistan last year. The government deems him an "enemy combatant" who can be held incommunicado as long as the conflict -- the ongoing and potentially endless war on terror -- persists.
That this "war" could consume the rest of Hamdi's life ought to matter a little, but what should matter a lot is the government's disregard for constitutional principle. So said the public defender who represents Hamdi but has never been allowed to meet him, to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. If the White House argument prevails, Frank W. Dunham Jr. warned, government would enjoy "vast power to imprison American citizens" without court review.
Internment camps
Hamdi's plight recalls the days of the Japanese internment camps -- the shame of World War II. Back then, having the wrong ethnicity was enough to justify indefinite lockup. These days, it seems, being caught on the wrong battlefield is enough to scotch due process. Once citizen Hamdi was nabbed in Afghanistan, the government says, he lost all rights he once had.
But saying this doesn't make it so. As a throng of civil-liberties groups and law scholars have told the court, the White House can't legitimately bar judicial review of a citizen's rights merely by claiming he's an enemy combatant -- whatever that vague term may mean. If it could, citizens like Hamdi would enjoy even fewer rights than foreigners like Zacarias Moussaoui -- the so-called "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11 -- and others facing terrorism charges.
That's senseless, as is this business of fighting for U.S. freedom by squelching it. The Constitution, after all, isn't a sometime thing -- reserved for good Americans who stay home and out of trouble. Its protections were written to apply to the most and least ordinary of Americans -- to the innocent, and to those who may well be guilty.
If the United States has a case to make against citizen Hamdi, let it prosecute him in open court. Give him a chance to consult with a lawyer, confront his accusers and mount a defense.