Is it rape? Five or 10 years ago most prosecutors wouldn’t have touched the case, even if they believed her. Today they would. That’s a major step forward. There’s just one problem. What if she’s lying?
There were no witnesses, of course. There were no bruises, no beatings. It’s a case of she says, he says. So how does John defend himself without destroying her? And how do we protect his right to defend himself without giving every man accused of rape the right to humiliate his truthful accuser?
Date rape, increasingly, is rightly being viewed as rape. The legal definition of rape turns on force and nonconsent, not on the relationship between the accuser and the accused. That doesn’t mean that all or nearly all heterosexual sex is rape–a straw man initially constructed by a few radical feminists and conveniently embraced by the media cave men and their neofeminist friends. Men are not expected to be mind readers, and regrets the next morning do not make sex rape. But men are expected to take no for an answer, and if they don’t, and overpower the woman instead, it’s no longer a defense that she was asking for it by going on a date or coming back for a drink. If deterrence works at all, dating should be safer today than it used to be. As for sexual harassment, while the lines remain fuzzy, there is a growing consensus that the more extreme forms of harassment that used to come with the job today come with a right to compensatory damages.
William Kennedy Smith’s lawyers and Clarence Thomas’s defenders did not argue, as they might have a few years before, that no means yes, or that sexual harassment is a trivial complaint. Instead they argued that Patty Bowman and Anita Hill were liars, and they sought every opportunity to portray them as sexually permissive and psychologically unstable.
Nuts and sluts is the new defense of choice in sexual-abuse cases because in many cases, it’s the only choice. If you can’t argue that date rape isn’t really rape, or that sexual harassment comes with the job, then you have to argue that the woman is lying. If culpability isn’t an issue, then credibility may be the only game in town.
But destroying the credibility of an adult woman is no easy task. In the old days you could argue that women lied about sexual abuse because they were ashamed of their sexual urges. Today, if you’re trying to destroy a woman’s credibility, you argue that she’s sexually permissive (so she consented) and unstable (so she bed about it). Why else would a grown woman consent to sex and then turn around and endure all of the difficulties of a rape prosecution?
The traditional feminist viewpoint is that the privacy of the woman must be protected, that rape shield laws prohibiting inquiries into a woman’s sexual past must be strictly construed. Which makes perfect sense if you put yourself in the shoes of a woman who really has been abused (or of her father or brother). Why should guilty men go free by humiliating their victims a second time? Why go back to the old days, when the victim was put on trial instead of the accused? No wonder many feminists see a disquieting trend in recent court decisions nibbling at, if not wholly eviscerating, protections once taken for granted.
They’re right, as long as you assume that all men accused of rape are guilty. That’s an assumption I can’t make.
No study has ever found that women lie about rape more often than men do about other crimes. Quite the contrary, the larger problem seems to be that women who really have been raped are understandably afraid to come forward. But even if it’s only one man in a thousand who is wrongly accused, our system demands that the innocent man has a right to defend himself. And how do you defend yourself in a credibility contest if you don’t have the tools to destroy the credibility of your opponent?
Two years ago the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that the defendant in a rape case had a right to examine the psychiatric records of his accuser. The particular case was full of the kind of troublesome facts that help explain the court’s unease: the man and woman were college friends; they remained close friends after the alleged attack, she even invited him to join her at her family’s home. Maybe she really was unstable. Maybe he really was an innocent man. The problem is that the court’s decision applies to everyone. Instead of a careful balance between the rights of accuser and accused, the court declared open season on all victims.
When I was raped, nearly 20 years ago, there was only one kind of rape. A stranger held a gun or a knife to your throat. The police were more likely to be persuaded if the stranger was black. That was rape. The rest was your fault. That’s changed, but sadly, it may be just as difficult today for the woman sitting in the back of the police car.
The challenge is to get the balance right: to protect innocent women and innocent men. But even in the best of situations, even with the best balancing, rape prosecutions will not be easy for women because, fortunately for all of us, we live in a system that prefers to free 10 guilty men rather than punish a single innocent one.
title: “Balancing Act” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-05” author: “Maureen Miller”
Here’s why. In fiscal 1997 (ending in September), the budget deficit is now estimated between $30 billion and $40 billion, and it might go lower. That would be about 0.5 percent of gross domestic product and less than 3 percent of the $1.6 trillion in annual federal spending. With modest spending cuts Congress and Clinton could easily have balanced the budget for 1998. Instead, budget deficits will probably grow for the next three years to between $60 billion and $90 billion. The deficits expand because, compared with present policies, the budget agreement cuts taxes ($95 billion over five years) and adds significant new spending (roughly $130 billion over five years). The balanced budget that theoretically occurs in 2002 optimistically assumes Congress will make future spending cuts.
The whole exercise exhibits an enormous contempt for the public’s intelligence and integrity. The budget agreement spends more and taxes less. To describe it as a balanced-budget deal violates normal - normal, that is, for most people - notions of honesty and candor. The bipartisan deceit presumes that so many people will benefit from the deal’s various handouts (from college-tuition tax breaks to more health insurance for children) that the public can be gulled into believing almost anything.
The main reason the budget is now approaching balance is an unexpected surge in tax revenues, reflecting a strong economy. For 1997, the Congressional Budget Office puts the extra tax revenues at $65 billion; between 1998 and 2002, the added tax take is reckoned to be at least $225 billion. With this bonanza, Clinton and Congress could have advanced the date for a balanced budget from 2002 - the target set in the Republicans’ ““Contract With America’’ in 1994. In practice, they devoted the windfall mostly to tax cuts and new spending. Their bitter bargaining focused on the windfall’s distribution: whose constituents would get the most?
A lack of integrity is not the budget agreement’s only failing. The other defects start with economic policy. This is the wrong time to stimulate the economy with higher deficits. We are in the seventh year of a business expansion. Unemployment hovers around 5 percent. Since year-end 1996, the stock market is up 27 percent. Why risk higher inflation by injecting more purchasing power into the economy through tax cuts and greater spending? ““You’ll get tax cuts before spending cuts - which is inappropriate given where the economy is,’’ says economist Bill Dudley of Goldman, Sachs. There may be other hidden dangers. Lower taxes on capital gains - profits on stocks and other assets - could accelerate selling pressures if the soaring stock market suddenly dropped.
Next, consider tax policy itself. The new tax bill may be the worst since World War II. It drowns the income-tax system in added complexity. For poorer families, the combination of a new child tax credit ($500 in 1999) and the earned-income credit may prove baffling. There will be five special rates on capital gains (28, 20, 18, 10 and 8 percent) and four different holdings periods (one year, 18 months and two separate periods of five years). The bill creates at least three types of new tax-free savings accounts. The college tax breaks come in two versions: a maximum $1,500 credit for the first two years and a $1,000 credit for later years.
““It’s very complicated even for average taxpayers,’’ says Gregory Jenner, head of national tax policy for Coopers & Lybrand. Most new tax breaks have different income limits and phaseouts. The child credit phases out for single parents with $75,000 and couples with $110,000; the college tax credits phase out for single taxpayers with $40,000 and couples with $80,000. Jenner expects taxpayer errors to rise: ““Targeted tax provisions with income limits and phaseouts [create] a system where mistakes are inevitable.’’ Cheating, too, will probably increase. Give people more chances to commit fraud, and more people will.
What about Social Security and Medicare? Everyone agrees they need to be overhauled to anticipate the baby boom’s retirement. But Clinton and Congress avoided hard choices. The Senate budget included two desirable changes in Medicare: a gradual rise in the eligibility age from 65 to 67 and higher premiums for wealthier recipients. It’s easy to justify both. A new study by economists Mark McClellan of Stanford and Jonathan Skinner of Dartmouth shows that - considering all taxes and benefits - Medicare is a transfer from the poorer young to the richer elderly. Even among the elderly, the wealthy benefit more than the poor because they live longer and use more health services. Why shouldn’t they pay more? But the budget dropped both Senate proposals.
The central virtue of a balanced budget is discipline. It compels politicians to choose between higher taxes and lower spending. Both Republicans and Democrats disdain such discipline. The only major effort to limit spending in the budget involves lower Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors, hospitals and managed-care groups. This accounts for most of the $115 billion of Medicare savings between 1998 and 2002. But these ““savings’’ merely slow the program’s growth and represent about 9 percent of its projected costs ($1.3 trillion) over the five years.
White House aides and congressional leaders talk as if their pledge to balance the budget by 2002 is the same as balancing it now. In their cheery view, this foray into ““bipartisanship’’ creates the climate for facing the long-term issues of Medicare and Social Security. Well, it could happen. A balanced budget could arrive even earlier than 2002 if Congress makes future spending cuts or has more luck (tax revenues exceed projections or health spending slows). Perhaps, too, Congress and Clinton will eagerly collaborate to prepare for an aging America.
But the happy talk is mostly wishful thinking packaged for public consumption. One obstacle to a balanced budget could be a recession. Although the economy now seems strong, an expansion that lasts until 2002 would become the longest (11 years) in U.S. history. If the White House and Congress were irrevocably committed to a balanced budget, they could have adopted tougher rules to enforce the new agreement. They didn’t. A proposal by Rep. Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, would have delayed tax cuts or required more spending cuts if tax revenues and spending depart adversely from budget forecasts. The White House opposed his proposal; so did the House GOP leadership. It lost 347 to 81.
As for the new bipartisan spirit, it is superficial and possibly fleeting. Each side merely allowed the other to embrace its fondest tax-cut or spending projects. There was no genuine meeting of minds that might herald a consensus on the hard issues of Social Security and Medicare. And Clinton’s ability to lead on this is dubious: he has repeatedly passed up opportunities to deal with these matters. In 1995 and 1996, he savagely attacked Republicans for their Medicare proposals. Republicans and Democrats alike who have confronted these issues have consistently been undercut by the president’s indifference or hostility. The result: there is no climate of trust.
What we got last week was good theater and bad policy. Once people better understand the budget agreement, they may like it less. When tax time arrives, they will see the added complexity and realize that many of them don’t qualify for new tax breaks. Some new programs will deliver less than promised. White House aides boast that the health insurance for children will cover ““up to 5 million,’’ but the CBO puts the added coverage at less than half that. And if the budget doesn’t balance, someone will have to explain why. ““Honesty may not be the best policy,’’ Richard Nixon once said, ““but it is worth trying once in a while.’’ On the budget, this Congress and this president decided otherwise.
The plan’s tax breaks affect millions of taxpayers. A look at some specific cuts and who can take advantage of them:
Capital gains. Filers in the top bracket will see taxes on long-term capital gains (those from assets held for more than 18 months) drop from 28 percent to 20.
Child credit. In 1998, families earning between $21,000 and $110,000 will be able to deduct $400 for each child. The deduction will climb to $500 in the future.
College credit. Families making $100,000 or less can get $1,500/year for a child’s first two college years and a 20 percent credit on the first $5,000 in costs thereafter.
Estate tax. Currently, estates valued at $600,000 or less are exempted from federal taxes. In the next 10 years the exemption amount will increase to $1 million.
Retirement accounts. Millions more Americans will be able to use three new IRA options. The largest new group to benefit will be nonworking spouses.
The balanced-budget deal actually increased the deficit in its first few years. Balance will come in 2002 only if cuts are made.
The president and the GOP agreed on $94 billion in net tax cuts. Families and big investors will benefit most from the plan, single people least. Breaking down the brackets:
Key to the Chart A HOUSEHOLD INCOME B TAX UNDER CURRENT AGREEMENT C TAX UNDER BUDGET LAW D DIFFERENCE FROM CURRENT E % DECREASE FROM CURRENT LAW A B C D E Single, $35,000 $4,692 $4,692 $0 0.00% no children 50,000 6,554 6,554 0 0.00 75,000 12,644 12,464 180 1.42 100,000 18,892 18,652 240 1.27 200,000 47,839 47,359 480 1.00 500,000* 115.062 95,062 20,000 17.38 1,000,000 310,693 308,293 2,400 0.77 Single, 35,000 3,150 2,150 1,000 31.75 two children 50,000 4,433 3,433 1,000 22.56 under 17 75,000 10,068 8,888 1,180 11.72 100,000 15,878 15,638 240 1.51 200,000 43,927 43,447 480 1.09 200,000* 40,954 32,954 8,000 19.53 1,000,000 308,155 305,755 2,400 0.78 Married, 35,000 3,420 3,420 0 0.00 no children 50,000 4,830 4,830 0 0.00 75,000 9,750 9,570 180 1.85 100,000 15,560 15,320 240 1.64 200,000 41,877 41,397 460 1.15 500,000** 110,360 90,360 20,000 18.12 1,000,000 305,991 303,591 2,400 0.78 Married 35,000 2,625 1,625 1,000 38.10 one child under 50,000 4,035 3,035 1,000 24.78 13, one child 75,000 8,266 7,086 1,180 14.28 under 17 100,000 14,076 12,836 1,240 8.81 200,000 40,289 39,809 480 1.19 200,000*** 38,733 30,733 8,000 20.65 1,000,000 305,991 303,591 2,400 0.78 Married 35,000 2,625 625 2,000 76.19 one child under 50,000 4,035 2,035 2,000 49.57 17, one child in 75,000 8,266 6,086 2,180 26.37 college 100,000 14,076 13,336 740 5.26 200,000 40,289 39,809 480 1.19 200,000*** 38,733 30,733 8,000 20.65 1,000,000 305,991 303,591 2,400 0.78 *THOSE WITH HIGHER CAPITAL GAINS **COUPLES WITH HIGHER CAPITAL GAINS ***FAMILIES WITH HIGHER CAPITAL GAINS SOURCE: CLINT STRETCH, DELOITTE & TOUCHE LLP
title: “Balancing Act” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-26” author: “Christine Kirkland”
title: “Balancing Act” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-13” author: “Javier Reynolds”
In one of their most recent exchanges–soon after the U.S. president’s Tuesday announcement that he was ending diplomatic efforts to solve the Iraq crisis–the Russian leader repeated his reasons for opposing military action. But he sent another message too: it was time, he said, for the two countries to resolve their differences and get back to business.
That ambivalence was underscored further today. Putin reacted strongly to last night’s attacks on Baghdad, saying that only Iraqis should decide whether they wanted a regime change and that “nothing can justify this military action.” Soon after that, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who has been notable for the harshness of some of his recent statements, adopted a more conciliatory note. “We remain partners, not opponents,” he said. “And we must continue dialogue with the United States so that the war does not bring negative consequences for everyone, including the United States itself.”
Will it really be that easy? In the wake of the past weeks’ diplomatic maneuverings, Russia’s threat to use its Security Council veto against any resolution authorizing the use of force has raised the possibility that Washington could resort to diplomatic payback. The U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Alexander Vershbow, made headlines in the Russian press last week when he suggested that Moscow’s stonewalling could set back Russian-U.S. cooperation in areas ranging from space to trade. “It will be a great pity if progress in these areas is halted or actually reversed because of serious disagreements over Iraq,” he warned in an interview with Izvestiya, a leading Russian daily paper.
There are plenty of Russians who would be happy to thumb their noses at Washington in return. In addition to public activism like the boycott of a Vladivostok burger restaurant, the lower house of the Russian parliament this week indefinitely postponed ratification of the Treaty of Moscow, the arms-control agreement approved by Putin and Bush at a summit meeting last year. The deputies, who are up for re-election later this year, are responding, in part, to public opinion against a war with Iraq. Recent polls show that well over 80 percent of Russians oppose military action. And when one survey asked whether the United States is “a threat to world peace and security,” 71 percent said yes. Small wonder that several parliamentary deputies have even vowed to take up arms for the Iraqis.
Still, there’s a host of reasons why it’s unlikely that Moscow and Washington will put their relations in a deep freeze once war has started. Few Russians have any particular affection for Saddam Hussein; many who oppose the war aren’t necessarily enemies of America. Lena Volodina, a 28-year-old Moscow office worker, seems fairly typical when she condemns U.S. policy in the strongest of terms–then quickly adds: “We don’t hate the whole country.” And as important as public emotions might be, Russia’s diplomatic opposition to American action against Iraq is entirely unsentimental–a stark contrast to the messy and usually inconsequential bluster of Yeltsin-era foreign policy. Mikhail Margelov, a member of the Russian senate and a foreign-policy adviser to President Putin, describes his country’s approach to Iraq as “very cold and pragmatic.” Russia, he says, knows that it needs good relations with the United States–but that doesn’t mean overriding Moscow’s own interests. “We have agreed that we can disagree and not be enemies,” he insists.
Events will soon show whether Margelov is just being optimistic. Putin now faces a difficult diplomatic balancing act–one that may be even trickier than the trials he’s just faced. One of his priorities will be preserving his long-term policy of “strategic cooperation” with Washington in areas ranging from trade to global security. To that end, he’ll be eager to demonstrate that his government’s refusal to approve a second U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force was a matter of high-minded principle, not a spiteful attempt to defy American dominance purely for the sake of defiance. (Look for some Russian officials to discreetly draw unflattering contrasts with the opportunistic French). At the same time, Putin will be doing his best to ensure that Russian economic interests in Iraq aren’t left by the wayside. And he’ll be working hard to pick up the pieces at the U.N.–one of the few places where a militarily and economically weakened Russia still retains a voice as a major player in international affairs.
On the face of things, Russia has emerged from the diplomatic brouhaha roughly where it wanted to be. Putin’s immediate goal over the past two months was to prevent the Security Council from voting on a second resolution that would authorize the use of force. A vote would have forced Russia to choose sides–inevitably leading to an open confrontation either with the United States (had Russia vetoed) or with Moscow’s new best friends in Europe, the French and Germans (had Russia abstained or sided with Washington). Still, Moscow’s sigh of relief at averting that mess is already giving way to a new round of apprehension as Russians worry about the future of the U.N. as war begins without explicit U.N. approval. “Bush is destroying the system of international order that exists in the world,” argues Mikhail Rostovsky, a journalist at the Moscow daily paper Moskovsky Komsomolets. “Now the world is returning to the 1930s, when the League of Nations took decisions and everyone ignored them. The world is going back to the law of the jungle instead of international law.” That particular fear may be overdrawn. But it points to the larger question of just what Russia will be able to do to restore the U.N.’s battered authority. One option: Moscow could lobby actively to participate in the postwar reconstruction effort in Iraq–which might well involve a broad range of U.N. institutions.
Whatever happens, Putin will face the challenge of squaring his campaign for boosting the U.N. with the brute reality that the U.S. remains Russia’s most important bilateral partner. Russia urgently needs U.S. support on a variety of fronts. As one European diplomat in Moscow puts it, “The Russians need Europe mainly for economic reasons, since most of their trade is with us. But they need the United States for a whole range of global security issues where the Europeans can’t really help.” Those overlapping interests range from the Korean peninsula to the Middle East. Perhaps most importantly, there’s the common war against terrorism throughout the “arc of crisis” extending along Russia’s southern border and through the oil-rich regions of Central Asia and the Caucasus. The list of common concerns is so long, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine why the White House would have any interests in scotching Kremlin efforts for joint cooperation.
What about Russia’s much-ballyhooed business interests in Iraq? That may be one front where the Russians are already throwing in the towel. Much of Russia’s trade with Iraq in recent years took place within the framework of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program–something which will end now that war has begun. Observers see little hope that Moscow will be able to recover any of its roughly $8 billion in debt from Baghdad after the conflict ends. As for the potentially lucrative contracts the Iraqis have signed with some of Russia’s big oil companies, some Moscow politicians are now talking about taking a post-Saddam Iraqi government to international arbitration court if the deals aren’t honored. Certainly Russians do not put much store in American promises of fair play once Saddam is gone. “Ten years have gone by since we supported the United States in the first gulf war,” says Yuri Shafranik, a leading lobbyist for the Russian oil industry. “Did we get anything out of it? Not really. So better to wash our hands of the whole business.” Now that Russia has done precisely that, the big question is whether Putin will be able to salvage any benefits for Russia from the ruins of war.
