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There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions. The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits are breaking budgets nationwide. The have-nots are taxpayers who don’t have generous pensions. Their 401(k)s or individual retirement accounts have taken a real beating in recent years and are not guaranteed. And soon, many of those people will be paying higher taxes or getting fewer state services as their states put more money aside to cover those pension checks. At stake is at least $1 trillion. That’s trillion, with a “t,” as in titanic and terrifying. The figure comes from a study by the Pew Center on the States that came out in February. Pew estimated a $1 trillion gap as of fiscal 2008 between what states had promised workers in the way of retiree pension, health care and other benefits and the 传奇私服 money they currently had to pay for it all. And some economists say that Pew is too conservative and the problem is two or three times as large. So a question of extraordinary financial, political, legal and moral complexity emerges, something that every one of us will be taking into town meetings and voting booths for years to come: Given how wrong past pension projections were, who should pay to fill the 13-figure financing gap? Consider what’s going on in Colorado — and what is likely to unfold in other states and municipalities around the country. Earlier this year, in an act of rare political courage, a bipartisan coalition of state legislators passed a pension overhaul bill. Among other things, the bill reduced the raise that people who are already retired get in their pension checks each year. This sort of thing just isn’t done. States have asked current workers to contribute more, tweaked the formula for future hires or banned them from the pension plan altogether. But this was apparently the first time that state legislators had forced current retirees to share the pain. Sharing the burden seems to be the obvious solution so we don’t continue to kick the problem into the future. “We have to take this on, if there is any way of bringing fiscal sanity to our children,” said former Gov. Richard Lamm of Colorado, a Democrat. “The New Deal is demographically obsolete. You can’t fund the dream of the 1960s on the economy of 2010.” But in Colorado, some retirees and those eligible to retire still want to live that dream. So they sued the state to keep all of the annual cost-of-living increases they thought they would be getting in perpetuity. The state’s case turns, in part, on whether it is an “actuarial necessity” for the Legislature to make a change. To Meredith Williams, executive director of the Public Employees’ Retirement Association, the state’s pension fund, the answer is pretty simple. “If something didn’t change, we would have run out of money in the foreseeable future,” he said. “So no one would have been paid anything.” Meanwhile, Gary R. Justus, a former teacher who is one of the lead plaintiffs in the 冰火森林 case against the state, asks taxpayers in Colorado and elsewhere to consider an ethical question: Why is the state so quick to break its promises? After all, he and others like him served their neighbors dutifully for decades. And along the way, state employees made big decisions (and built lifelong financial plans) based on retiring with a full pension that was promised to them in a contract that they say has the force of the state and federal constitutions standing behind it. To them it is deferred compensation, and taking it away is akin to not paying a contractor for paving state highways. And actuarial necessity or not, Mr. Justus said he didn’t believe he should be responsible for past pension underfunding and the foolish risks that pension managers made with his money long after he retired in 2003. The changes the Legislature made don’t seem like much: there’s currently a 2 percent cap in retirees’ cost-of-living adjustment for their pension checks instead of the 3.5 percent raise that many of them received before. But Stephen Pincus, a lawyer for the retirees who have filed suit, estimates that the change will cost pensioners with 30 years of service an average of $165,000 each over the next 20 years. Mr. Justus, 62, who taught math for 29 years in the Denver public schools, says he thinks it could cost him half a million dollars if he lives another 30 years. He also notes that just about all state workers in Colorado do not (and cannot) pay into Social Security, so the pension is all retirees have to live on unless they have other savings. No one disputes these figures. Instead, they apologize. “All I can say is that I am sorry,” said Brandon Shaffer, a Democrat, the president of the Colorado State Senate, who helped lead the bipartisan coalition that pushed through the changes. (He also had to break the news to his mom, a retired teacher.) “I am tremendously sympathetic. But as a steward of the public trust, this is what we had to do to preserve the retirement fund.” Taxpayers, whose payments are also helping to restock Colorado’s pension fund, may not be as sympathetic, though. The average retiree in the fund stopped working at the sprightly age of 58 and deposits a check for $2,883 each month. Many of them also got a 人间大变 3.5 percent annual raise, no matter what inflation was, until the rules changed this year. Private sector retirees who want their own monthly $2,883 check for life, complete with inflation adjustments, would need an immediate fixed annuity if they don’t have a pension. A 58-year-old male shopping for one from an A-rated insurance company would have to hand over a minimum of $860,000, according to Craig Hemke of Buyapension.com. A woman would need at least $928,000, because of her longer life expectancy. Who among aspiring retirees has a nest egg that size, let alone people with the same moderate earning history as many state employees? And who wants to pay to top off someone else’s pile of money via increased income taxes or a radical decline in state services? If you find the argument of Colorado’s retirees wanting, let your local legislator know that you don’t want to be responsible for every last dollar necessary to cover pension guarantees gone horribly awry. After all, many government employee unions will be taking contrary positions and doing so rather loudly. If you work for a state or local government, start saving money outside of the pension plan if you haven’t already, because that plan may not last for as long as you need it. And if you’re a government retiree or getting close to the end of your career? Consider what it means to be a citizen in a community. And what it means to be civil instead of litigious, coming to the table and making a compromise before politicians shove it down your 意乱情迷（一） throat and you feel compelled to challenge them to a courthouse brawl. “We have to do what unions call givebacks,” said Mr. Lamm, the former Colorado governor. “That’s the only way to sanity. Any other alternative, therein lies dragons.”

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday found that a law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, ruling that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples. Judge Joseph L. Tauro of United States District Court in Boston sided with the plaintiffs in two separate cases brought by the state attorney general and a gay rights group. Although legal experts disagreed over how the rulings would fare on appeal, the judge’s decisions were nonetheless sure to further inflame the nationwide debate over same-sex marriage and gay rights. Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said federal officials were reviewing the decision and had no further comment. But lawyers for the plaintiffs said they fully expected the Obama administration to appeal. An appeal would be heard by the First Circuit, which also includes Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire. In the case brought by Attorney General Martha Coakley, Judge Tauro found that the 1996 law, known as the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, compels Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens in order to receive federal funds for certain programs. The other case, brought by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, focused more narrowly on equal protection as applied to a handful of federal benefits. In that case, Judge Tauro agreed that the federal law violated the equal protection clause of the constitution by denying benefits to one class of married couples — gay men and lesbians — but not others. “This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status,” Judge Tauro wrote. “The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state.” Proponents of gay rights embraced the rulings as legal victories. “Today the court simply affirmed that our country won’t tolerate second-class marriages,” said Mary Bonauto, civil rights project director for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, who argued the case. “This ruling will make a real difference for countless families in Massachusetts.” Massachusetts has allowed same-sex couples to marry since 2004, and while 传奇私服 more than 15,000 have done so, they are denied federal benefits like Social Security survivors’ payments, the right to file taxes jointly and guaranteed leave from work to care for a sick spouse. In the Coakley case, the judge held that that federal restrictions on funding for states that recognize same-sex marriage violates the 10th Amendment, the part of the Constitution that declares that rights not explicitly granted to the federal government, or denied to the states, belong to the states. Neither suit challenged a separate provision of the Defense of Marriage Act that says states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. But if the cases make their way to the Supreme Court and are upheld, same-sex couples around the country will be eligible for federal benefits that are now granted only to heterosexual married couples. Some constitutional scholars said they were surprised by Judge Tauro’s opinions in the two cases. “What an amazing set of opinions,” said Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School. “No chance they’ll be held up on appeal.” Professor Balkin, who supports the right to same-sex marriage, said the opinions ignored the federal government’s longstanding involvement in marriage issues in areas like welfare, tax policy, health care, Social Security and more. The opinion in the advocacy group’s case applies the Constitution to marriage rights, he said, undercutting the notion that the marriage is not a federal concern. “These two opinions are at war with themselves,” he said. The arguments concerning the 10th Amendment and the spending clause, if upheld, would “take down a wide swath of programs — you can’t even list the number of programs that would be affected,” he said. By citing the 10th Amendment and making what is essentially a states’ rights argument, Professor Balkin said that Judge Tauro was “attempting to hoist conservatives by their own petard, by saying, ‘You like the 10th Amendment? I’ll give you the 10th Amendment! I’ll strike down DOMA!’” Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, was more supportive of the logic of the two opinions, and said they worked together to establish a broad right of marriage for same-sex couples. “The key issue in this case, and in all litigation about marriage equality for gays and lesbians, is: ‘Does the government have a rational basis for treating same-sex couples differently from heterosexual couples?’ Here, the court says there is no rational basis for treating same-sex couples differently from homosexual couples. Therefore, DOMA is unconstitutional, and conditioning federal funding on compliance with DOMA is unconstitutional,” he said. A central issue in the fight over the constitutionality of California’s same-sex marriage ban is whether laws restricting gay rights should be held to a tougher standard of review than the “rational basis” test, and so Judge Tauro’s decision takes a different path that would eliminate the need for that line of argument, Professor Chemerinsky said. “There’s no need to get to higher scrutiny if it fails rational basis review,” he said. He also said that the 10th Amendment argument, while unusual, was not the key to the cases. “The 10th Amendment here is a reminder that Congress can act only if there’s constitutional authority, and as a reminder that states are the ones that 传奇sf generally regulate marriage,” he said. The key to the opinion he said, is this passage laying out the equal protection rights of gay people: “Accordingly, this court finds that DOMA induces the Commonwealth to violate the equal protection rights of its citizens. And so, as DOMA imposes an unconstitutional condition on the receipt of federal funding, this court finds that the statute contravenes a well-established restriction on the exercise of Congress’ spending power. Because the government insists that DOMA is founded in this federal power and no other, this court finds that Congress has exceeded the scope of its authority. Michael Boldin, the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, said he was gratified to see the Amendment get the support of the federal judiciary. He acknowledged that some of the socially conservative members of groups like the Tea Party, while supporting the notion of state’s rights, might be chagrined to see the logic used to support same-sex marriage.

   In late 2008, shortly after he had helped pull Iraq back from the brink of catastrophe, Gen. David H. Petraeus prepared to turn to that other American war. “I’ve always said that Afghanistan would be the tougher fight,” General Petraeus said at the time. Now the burden falls to him, at perhaps the decisive moment in President Obama’s campaign to reverse the deteriorating situation on the ground here and regain the momentum in this nine-year-old war. In many ways, General Petraeus is being summoned to 传奇私服 Afghanistan at a moment similar to the one he faced three years ago in Iraq, when the situation seemed hopeless to a growing number of Americans and their elected representatives as well. But there is a crucial difference: In Iraq, General Petraeus was called in to reverse a failed strategy put in place by previous commanders. In Afghanistan, General Petraeus was instrumental in developing and executing the strategy in partnership with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who carried it out on the ground. Now General Petraeus will be directly responsible for its success or failure, risking the reputation he built in Iraq. General Petraeus, 57, brings an extraordinary set of skills to his new job: a Boy Scout’s charm, penetrating intelligence and a ferocious will to succeed. At ease with the press and the public, and an adept negotiator, General Petraeus will probably distinguish himself from his predecessor with the political skills that carried him through the most difficult months of the counteroffensive in Iraq known as the surge. In those months of 2007, when American casualties were the heaviest of the war, General Petraeus not only prosecuted the strategy but also reassured his superiors, including President George W. Bush, in regular videoconferences from Baghdad. In Iraq, General Petraeus helped turn the tide not just by sending 30,000 more American troops into Baghdad, but also by fostering deals with insurgent leaders who had spent the previous four years killing Americans. As much as the surge, the movement in Iraq known as the Sunni Awakening helped set in motion the remarkable decline in violence there that has largely held to this day. By helping to pull Iraq back from the edge, General Petraeus won a reputation as a resourceful, unorthodox commander and has since been mentioned as a candidate for president. But Afghanistan is a very different war in a very different country. Where Iraq is an urban, oil-rich country with an educated middle class, Afghanistan is a shattered state whose social fabric and physical infrastructure has been ruined by three decades of war. In Iraq, the insurgency was in the cities; here, it is spread across the mountains and deserts of the country’s forbidding countryside. Indeed, to prevail in Afghanistan, General Petraeus will need all of his 传奇私服 skills — and a dose of good fortune at least as big as the one he received in Iraq. At the moment, every aspect of the war in Afghanistan is going badly: the military’s campaign in the strategic city of Kandahar has met with widespread resistance from the Afghan public; President Hamid Karzai is proving erratic and unpredictable; and the Taliban are resisting more tenaciously than ever. To turn the tide, General Petraeus will almost certainly continue the counterinsurgency strategy he devised with General McChrystal: protecting Afghan civilians, separating them from insurgents and winning public support. But he will also have to convince his own troops, who are increasingly angry about the restrictions on using firepower imposed to protect civilians. And General Petraeus will probably also try to employ some of the same novel tactics that worked so well in Iraq. Most notably, he will continue to coax Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with promises of jobs and security. And he may even try to strike deals with senior leaders of the Taliban as well as with the military and intelligence services in Pakistan. A former aide to General Petraeus in Iraq who is now in Afghanistan put it this way: “The policy is to make everyone feel safer, reconcile with those who are willing and kill the people you need to.” Perhaps General Petraeus’s toughest challenge will be to unify a fractious team of senior officials in the Obama administration who hold sharply differing views of how the war in Afghanistan should be fought. As the head of the United States Central Command, which oversees all military forces in the Middle East, General Petraeus has built a close relationship with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well with Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for the region. While his predecessor, General McChrystal, was on icy terms with the American ambassador here, Karl W. Eikenberry, General Petraeus forged a tight bond with his civilian counterpart during the Iraqi surge, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. General Petraeus and Ambassador Eikenberry, a former general himself, are old Army comrades. The one uncertain point in General Petraeus’s political constellation is the most 传奇私服 important one, President Obama. General Petraeus had bypassed his own senior leadership to become Mr. Bush’s favorite general. Mr. Obama made it clear that General Petraeus would no longer have a direct line to the Oval Office. The general accordingly assumed a lower profile. For all of his political shrewdness, however, General Petraeus dislikes the rough-and-tumble of Washington. His displeasure reached its peak in September 2007, when, during the Iraqi surge, he and Ambassador Crocker were called to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The violence had not yet dropped significantly, and both men were questioned mercilessly. General Petraeus, who suffers from a bad back, gulped Advil during the hearing. “The most miserable experience of my life,” he told a reporter afterward. General Petraeus prides himself on his athletic prowess. While in Iraq, he usually ran five miles six days a week, often besting the younger captains he took along with him. After the runs usually come a grueling regime of calisthenics; well into his 50s, General Petraeus could do 17 pull-ups. Recently, though, questions have arisen about his health. Last year, he underwent treatment for prostrate cancer; he said he was now cured. Only last week, while testifying before a Senate panel, General Petraeus fainted in his chair. He said he was dehydrated. General Petraeus will take command of the Afghanistan campaign six months into an 18-month-long strategy that will almost certainly have to show significant progress for Mr. Obama to continue. Even before then, in December, Mr. Obama and his advisers will conduct a “strategic assessment” that will serve as a major progress report. After that, it is anyone’s guess what Mr. Obama will do. Some members of General McChrystal’s staff were not so optimistic. When a 传奇私服 reporter recently suggested to a senior American officer here that he might, in the end, run out of time, he did not hesitate to answer. “I think you may be right,” the officer said.

North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday that his country’s military would respond forcefully to any Security Council condemnation over the sinking of a South Korean warship, warning that “our people and army will smash our aggressors.” In a rare news conference, the envoy, Sin Son-ho, called the South Korean 传奇私服 investigation carried out with a number of foreign experts, which concluded that a North Korean torpedo blew up the ship, “a complete fabrication from A to Z.” Mr. Sin demanded that a team from his country’s military be allowed to carry out its own investigation on the site where the ship, known as the Cheonan, exploded on March 26, killing 46 sailors. “If the Security Council releases any documents against us condemning or questioning us, then myself, as diplomat, I can do nothing,” Mr. Sin said, “but the follow-up measures will be carried out by our military forces.” Mr. Sin, while stating that he was there to clarify, not accuse, said that all the countries involved had ulterior motives that might have played a role in the crisis. The United States used the episode to overcome demands by Japan that it remove its military base from Okinawa, he argued, while the South Korean government sought to foment a crisis atmosphere in the prelude to provincial elections. He also questioned technical details of the investigation at length, calling the fact that a fisherman found the torpedo supposedly carrying North Korean markings after a naval search had yielded nothing something out of “Aesop’s fables.” He repeated 传奇私服 statements from his nation’s leaders that the ship might have run aground or exploded because of faulty mechanics. In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, rejected the accusations out of hand. “North Korea unfortunately has put together a string of provocative actions, from missile firings to a nuclear test to the sinking of the Cheonan,” he told reporters. “What is important for North Korea is to take stock of these provocative actions, cease this belligerent behavior, and if they do, we will respond appropriately.” At the United Nations, the United States and Japan were pushing ahead with what is likely to be a resolution condemning the attack, said Security Council diplomats. No member had staunchly opposed the move so far, so Council action could come either this week or next, diplomats said. Each Korea presented its case to the Council on Monday. Mr. Sin declined to discuss a number of issues, calling them irrelevant to the sinking. These included the possible succession of Kim Jong-un as leader because his father, Kim Jong-il, is ailing; the chances of North Korea’s returning to talks over its nuclear weapons program; and prospects for the North Korean team in the World Cup. Off topic, the only refrain he repeated was that North Korea’s main goal was to improve the living standard of its people. For the United Nations, the warship issue is more fraught than most in 传奇私服 trying to remain neutral, since Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, is a former South Korean foreign minister and has expressed his own emotional reaction to the attack. In marked contrast to Mr. Ban, who often struggles to express himself in English and can come across as stiff at news conferences, Mr. Sin appeared relaxed, bantering easily with correspondents shouting questions. Although North Korea’s motivations for its actions are often opaque, Mr. Sin gave one remarkably candid answer when asked about the potential fallout from Security Council condemnation. “I lose my job,” he said.

   It is the resurgent passion of the doomsday crowd, a bet that everything will go wrong. No matter what has you worried, they say, the answer is gold. Inflation, deflation, government borrowing or the plunging euro — you name it — the specter of these concerns has set off a dash to gold, driving the precious metal to new highs and illustrating how fears of economic turmoil have moved from the fringe to the mainstream. And gold bugs, often dismissed as crackpots who hoard gold bars in the basement, are finally having their day. “I just think you’re in a world where a lot of chickens are coming home to roost,” said John Hathaway, manager of the Tocqueville Gold fund. “Gold is an escape hatch.” The most visible new gold enthusiasts range from the Fox News 传奇私服 commentator Glenn Beck on the right to the financier George Soros on the left, with even some sober-minded Wall Street types developing a case of gold fever. While their language may differ, they share a fundamental view that the age-old refuge of gold is relevant again, especially as other assets like stocks and national currencies show signs of weakness. Now, individual investors are following their example around the world. The United States Mint is running short of gold coins, and the South African mint increased Krugerrand production by 50 percent late last month, to its highest level in 25 years, on brisk European demand. The debt crisis in Europe and the ensuing drop in the value of the euro are the most recent catalysts for gold’s spike last week to $1,254 an ounce, a record before adjusting for inflation, but the deeper concern is that even in the United States, government borrowing is unsustainable and the day of reckoning is at hand. Sales of American Eagle one-ounce gold coins tripled in May from the month before. If governments print more money to pay off their debts, the logic goes, inflation will destroy the value of the dollar, the euro and other paper currencies — thus enhancing the value of gold. What is more, with tax increases unlikely and with Europe on the brink, the unthinkable — a sovereign debt default or the collapse of the credit system — has suddenly become thinkable. To be sure, gold buyers have always been motivated by fear. What has changed is that some of the most respected investors on Wall Street are now among the fearful. “In recent years, we have gone from one bubble and bailout to the next,” David Einhorn, a New York money manager who was among the first to foretell the failure of Lehman Brothers, said in a speech last month. “Our gold position reflects our concern that our fiscal and monetary policies are not sufficiently geared toward heading off a possible crisis.” Since ancient times, gold has been deemed intrinsically valuable, holding its worth even as governments fell and currencies collapsed, while seemingly casting a spell on its owners. Still, gold can go down — sometimes sharply. After peaking in 传奇私服 1980 at more than $800 an ounce, gold sank over the next two decades, bottoming out at just over $250 an ounce in 1999. But unlike paper assets that can become worthless, gold always retains at least some value. These days, gold is also something of a political Rorschach test. On conservative talk radio, opposition to the Obama administration’s economic policies and warnings that huge budget deficits will set off runaway inflation have made gold a hot topic of on-air discussion — and lured gold companies as advertisers. Tongue only half in cheek, Glenn Beck advised his audience to consider “Gold, God and Guns,” while laying out three possible scenarios for the economy: recession, depression or collapse. One major advertiser on Mr. Beck’s show is Goldline, a huge California marketer of gold coins and bars that is also a sponsor of programs hosted by other prominent conservative commentators like Laura Ingraham and Mike Huckabee. Mr. Beck has said he “was a client of Goldline long before they were a client of mine,” adding: “I personally don’t buy gold as an investment. I buy it for protection.” Of course, the right hardly has a monopoly on gold. Mr. Soros, a prominent donor to liberal causes and candidates, holds more than $600 million in bullion and gold mining shares. Even as worries about the global economy have intensified, gold has become easier to buy. Although some people still regard bars of gold in a vault as the ultimate insurance policy, exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.’s, that hold gold have exploded in popularity in recent years. Gold E.T.F.’s, which trade like stocks but track the price of physical gold, account for 1,856 tons of gold, up from less than 500 tons in 2005, according to Credit Suisse. Besides luring individual investors, these funds have also made gold more appealing to hedge funds and other institutions, allowing them to own vast amounts of gold without the burden of having to store it. John A. Paulson, a top New York hedge fund manager who earned billions 传奇私服 betting against subprime mortgages, holds $3 billion worth of gold E.T.F.’s, making gold the largest single position in his $35 billion portfolio. Daniel J. Arbess, who manages more than $2 billion in Perella Weinberg’s Xerion fund, is another new gold lover. A few years ago, he said, he would not have taken a second look at gold as an investment. But now Mr. Arbess, a Harvard Law graduate and a generally conservative investor, is very serious about gold. Spiraling deficits in the United States, Japan and Britain are unsustainable, he said, and could eventually hurt confidence in what are called “fiat currencies” — paper money not backed by gold, including the United States dollar. “Indebted countries may soon be forced to choose among three politically difficult alternatives: sharp cuts in expenditures, debt default or printing money to pay off debt,” he said, with the last option the most likely outcome. Gold, he said, is a logical hedge against this risk, because firing up the printing presses ignites inflation. True believers note that gold has risen in each of the last nine years, and that while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is down 13 percent since 2001, gold is now worth nearly five times what it was then. For all its newfound respectability, gold still manages to bring out the inner survivalist in its adherents. Gold bugs like Peter Schiff of the investment firm Euro Pacific Capital in Westport, Conn., envision a black market arising in the United States, with merchants refusing paper money and insisting on gold instead, while Mr. Hathaway, the gold fund manager, says the credit system has entered “the end game.” “People probably still think I’m nuts,” Mr. Hathaway said. “But I’m 传奇私服 not talking to myself in an isolation chamber anymore. We’ve got company now.”