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Papa & Baby Doc's Crimes

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CAMBRIDGE, MA, Jun. 14, 2006 - These days, the words, state gross incompetence, are more than ever gaining in popularity in Haiti. But they are widely best understood when refer to de facto public and non-de facto public servants - from extreme violence-issued President Rene Preval, who was forced to withdraw from college, in Belgium, after most of the equivalent grades assigned to him were F (the more than embarrassing letter), to Congressmen, to Congresswomen and, yes, too, those at the lowest echelon of public office.

Regardless of the nation - except Somalia, which since 1991 has ceased to be so - the real meaning of the office of the Congressman, the Congresswoman, for example, as the intelligent visitors of this journal know, is to introduce legislation(s) and vote it or them into law, before the president ultimately affixes his or her signature at the bottom of the document of significant importance as a matter of confirmation.

Unfortunately, as heavily armed terrorists continue to kidnap citizens, in large numbers, and in broad daylight, for ransoms and political reasons, associated with former hell-sent dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the idea of introducing an anti-terrorist bill and doing his best to have his colleagues vote it into law, in an effort to help restore state authority, which has long been consigned to the archives of history in dirt-poor Haiti, seems to elude Haitian Congressman Dieujuste Arsene, as his desperate public appeal to authorities? to immediately address the long growing and severe problem of insecurity, in the aftermath of the Monday night attempted kidnapping (North of capital city of Port-au-Prince) of his badly injured colleague, Congressman Bien Aime Aodont, by terrorists largely believed to be living contentedly, and relatively openly, in North Port-au-Prince vast slum of Cite Soleil, suggests.

Yet plenty more awful things continue to define the daily lives of Haitians, including those in the upper upper class.

The worse is to be expected since the term "gross incompetence" is convincely will best help explain the slightly less than next five years a reduced number of Haitians hope de facto Preval, who in late 1990s personally detonated a bomb, during a public political event, in the Port-au-Prince wealthy suburb of Petion-Ville, will spend in the office of the lately diminished Haitian presidency.

Haiti will be a lot poorer as blanket terrorism (anticipated terrorism and much more) becomes the norm and democracy, contrary to what is envisaged by the international community, the exception.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jun. 8, 2006 (Reuters) - U.N. troops and gangs exchanged gunfire in Haiti's largest slum in the first such clash in months, and witnesses said on Thursday that three people were killed.

The shooting occurred late on Wednesday in Cite Soleil, the vast seaside slum on the northern edge of the capital that was the scene of routine gunfights between gangs and foreign troops last year, but had been relatively peaceful since before Haiti's February 7 presidential election.

A spokesman for the U.N. mission in Haiti, Lt. Col. Elamarti Abdesslam, said peacekeepers returned fire after gunmen shot at them, but could not confirm if anyone was killed.

"All I can say is that no one on our side was hurt, but we don't know if anyone was killed among the gang members," Abdesslam said.

Witnesses and gang members said at least three people were killed but it was not clear if all of them were shot when U.N. troops returned fire.

"I saw one young man killed after the foreign soldiers shot in our direction," said Marjorie, a 24-year-old woman who did not want to give her last name. "But there were other people with weapons too."

Cite Soleil, a bastion of support for former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was rife with violence after he was pushed from power by a bloody rebellion in February 2004.

The peacekeepers, now numbering about 8,700 soldiers and police, were sent to the poor Caribbean nation after Aristide's ouster to support a U.S.-backed interim government.

The violence in Cite Soleil diminished when Rene Preval, a one-time Aristide protege who was the favorite of Aristide's slum supporters, emerged as the front-runner for the presidency. Preval won the February election and took office in May.

Preval's prime minister, Jacques Edouard Alexis, and his coalition cabinet, were approved by Parliament this week and were scheduled to be sworn into office on Friday.

Black and Hispanic home buyers entering the fast-growing market for subprime mortgages tend to pay higher interest rates than whites with similar credit ratings, a statistical study by an advocacy group says.

The subprime industry makes loans at higher interest rates to people who cannot qualify for regular mortgages.

"When we compared borrowers with the same risk characteristics, African-Americans and Latinos were still more likely to get the higher-rate loans," said Debbie Gruenstein Bocian, a researcher at the group, the Center for Responsible Lending.

A spokesman for the mortgage banking industry challenged the conclusion, saying the report did not take into account all the legitimate questions about family wealth and debt, house appraisal and other factors that underwriters must consider when making a loan.

Racial disparities in mortgage lending have been studied and debated for decades, with the focus shifting in recent years from the practice of denying mortgages in certain minority neighborhoods, or redlining, and a lack of loans for minorities to the pitfalls of the subprime industry.

As many as one in five home loans are now subprime, totaling more than $500 billion a year, said Keith S. Ernst, an author of the report who is an analyst at the lending center, in Washington. Borrowers typically pay two percentage points higher than they would for conventional loans. Some, judged the riskiest cases, are charged higher rates, forcing them to pay hundreds of dollars extra a month.

The study, using federal and industry figures from 2004 to analyze a sample of 50,000 loans, found that among subprime borrowers with similar credit ratings, blacks and Hispanics were 30 percent more likely than whites to be charged the highest interest.

In response to earlier studies of racial disparities, the mortgage industry has argued that the varied financial backgrounds of borrowers and a tendency for minority buyers to offer lower down payments were mainly responsible.

The authors of the new report said they had, for the first time, taken credit scores and down payments into account, leaving an unexplained racial difference.

Doug Douglas, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, said in a telephone interview that although "the issue of disparities is very important," the new study still failed to capture the complexity of mortgage underwriting, especially in the subprime market, where borrowers do not have top credit ratings under traditional criteria.

The findings were endorsed by representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Council for La Raza. The authors said high-cost lenders appeared to focus on minority neighborhoods. They expressed concern about incentives that lending agencies give to mortgage brokers, saying the incentives reward brokers for steering customers to the most expensive loans.

Joe Falk, a board member of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, said brokers fully disclosed all fees and were unfairly castigated for offering consumers alternatives that fit their needs and preferences.

"We've expanded home ownership by going into neighborhoods not served by others," Mr. Falk said by telephone from Miami.