Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Posing an interesting challenge to the Democrats running for president, Treasury Secretary John Snow last week dusted off yet another package of tax cuts for the you-know-who that President Bush would love to make part of his reelection year agenda. So many highest-income shelters to create, so little time.
Coming after a third round of goodies last spring and an autumn crammed with corporate scams (from the oil and gas boys to health insurance companies), the next round is designed to slip through the back door a virtual exclusion of investment income from taxation.
The rhetoric will be all about promoting saving, but the reality will be something quite different -- part of a careful rearrangement of the tax burden, as Senator John Edwards likes to say, away from wealth and onto ordinary income (the kind you work for).- Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, 11/18
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/11/18/bush_readies_more_tax_breaks/
Medicare and AARP The Republican bill is awful. I’ll put aside recriminations about who helped this along in early stages (hint: same fellow who played ball with the Bushies on “Education Reform”). For now, let’s just focus on the destruction of Medicare that this bill would begin. They want to drain Medicare of healthier seniors, establish competition so as to encourage desertions to private plans, etc.
Consider:
Six million human lives times six. That’s how many members the “non-partisan” AARP has betrayed by backing the Bush-GOP prescription drug plan designed to help destabilize Medicare. Effectively, this is a drug pork bill that amounts to a $400 billion pass through from taxpayers to the US pharmaceutical industry, insurers and managed care operators. Employers will be provided with $70 billion in subsidies to jump start the program.
Earlier this year the AARP acknowledged how much damage the Bush-GOP drug plan would do to America's low income families and those living below the poverty line. But under intense political pressure from the White House and lobbyists the leaders of the organization flipped. http://www.bestoftheblogs.com/
A bit from E.J. Dionne:
The bipartisan proposal, crafted in cooperation with Sen. Ted Kennedy, was inadequate. Yet it was better than this bill. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly because it left the larger Medicare issues open for real debate later.
But House conservatives weren't willing to go that far. They want medical savings accounts, a tax cut for the wealthy in disguise, and they insisted on experiments with privatization.
But if privatization is such a good idea, why do the private insurance companies need such big subsidies to enter the Medicare market? The bill includes $12 billion for what Kennedy calls a "slush fund" to subsidize the private insurers. That's not capitalism or competition. It's corporate welfare. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54786-2003Nov17.html
And, let’s not forget:
"Critics say AARP, which formally unveiled its new headquarters building in downtown Washington last month, has softened its earlier militancy because it is preoccupied with its profit-making enterprises, including $100 million in earnings from the sale of insurance, mostly Medicare supplemental policies."
- Newsday, 10/21/2000
"AARP's receives more than $100 million in revenue from health insurers."
- Denver Post, 5/21/96
"Critics suggest that AARP's substantial profits from the sales of Medigap and other insurance policies, drug company advertising in its magazines, and investment schemes conflict with its interests on behalf of seniors...AARP President William Novelli acknowledged complaints from members that AARP has been too timid in the political battles to defend Medicare and Social Security. He conceded that AARP has pulled its punches since right-wing groups and members of Congress criticized it as too liberal."
- Newsday, 2/19/02
"AARP's pharmacy service is part of its insurance sales operation which generated $ 101 million in revenue last year - 17 percent of the organization's total budget."
- Capitol News Service, 8/15/02
"AARP receives millions of dollars from UnitedHealthcare, a national health insurance firm based in Minnesota."
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2/24
What’s Happening, Iraq:
The Lies, Reviewed/Revisited. Outstanding piece in the NY Review of Books. Thomas Powers makes the case that the role of intelligence is forever to be controlled by the integrity of the sitting president.
The problem is structural, not personal. Presidents can fire directors they don't like, and the CIA has no other customer. The big mistakes all come when presidents don't listen, or let it be known what they want to hear. The CIA is as serious, as prudent, as honest as the presidents for whom it works— never more. Directors deliver what is wanted, or depart.
He goes on to skewer Colin Powell, seizing on Powell’s February presentation to the UN.
Secretary of State Colin Powell's nose for deceit was sharper than the President's… “Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. My...purpose today," he said, "is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.... I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you...is deeply troubling."
Then seizing on the Kay Report which had to admit that no weapons of mass destruction were found and that no wmd program existed prior to the invasion, Powers continues.
It is the first part of that sentence which answers the question whether Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States —no weapons found. The rest of the report is full of interesting detail about Iraqi science, industry, and technology but it contains not a single clear and unambiguous confirmation of any claim made by Colin Powell in his speech to the UN. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16813
(2) Supporting the Iraqi Resistance?
A BBC report notes that a group of Italian anti-war militants is raising funds to support the armed Iraqi resistance, the BBC has learned. The discovery comes as Italy mourns 19 men killed in a suicide attack in Iraq last week. The "Antiimperialista" organisation's internet campaign asks people to send "10 Euros to the Iraqi resistance." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3277029.stm
(3) The U.S. “Gets Tough” -Those were the words we heard in the past days, as we now drop 500 pound bombs, blow up buildings and drive our tanks through the streets so as to “intimidate” the insurgents. But the residents appeared to be at least a tad confused by the message the new tactic was delivering. .
”I don't see how this is going to work. People who really want to attack the Americans are not going to stop because a building has been destroyed," said one who declined to give his name.
More at www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=13&o=33494
(4) And, there are reports of our committing assassinations. Chalmers Johnson writes
As the Iraqi resistance expands and perfects its attacks, the American military, like so many occupying armies before it, is turning to methods of warfare long outlawed by civilized nations — assassinations and reprisals against civilians. . . . "The new Special Operations organization," according to reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, "is designed to act with greater speed on intelligence tips about 'high-value targets' and not be contained within the borders where American conventional forces are operating in Iraq and Afghanistan." In other words, this death squad, composed of U.S. Army Special Forces troops, can run down its quarry in countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan but presumably also (if the occasion required it) in France, Germany, or even the United States itself.
The contradictions inherent in this plan are striking and tell us a great deal about what it means to be the lone planetary superpower. Although the Bush administration has refused to join the new International Criminal Court because it allegedly threatened our sovereignty, we now openly say that nobody else's sovereignty means anything to us at all. Without debate or oversight by elected officials, we are seemingly adopting a militarized version of globalization — sending "terminator" squads wherever we want to whenever we care to — whose operations will inevitably change the nature of our world, no matter how any individual attack may sort itself out. . . . (http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1070
9/11: Another report of slow going. From Robert Cohen of the Newark Star Ledger,
Last week's deal with the White House to gain access to highly classified presidential intelligence documents removed one major hurdle for the national commission investigating the 9/11 terror attacks, but more obstacles remain.
Already delayed by disputes with the Bush administration over access to sensitive information, the panel is confronting the daunting task of meeting a May 27 deadline to complete its huge undertaking.
Among the potential challenges: Possible roadblocks to gaining access to analysts who prepared intelligence reports; a looming battle with the White House over what information may be released to the public, and the possibility that partisan politics could intrude on the panel's work. tinyurl.com/vi49
From those “independent” conservatives: Since he gave large sums to progressive causes, George Soros has been under fierce attack from wealthy conservatives. This one takes an additional ‘tact.’
The fiction which is interdependency has a prolocutor in the congregation of Moloch. His name is George Soros. No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of Globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice. His public reputation as an astute currency speculator is generous, while his skills as a manipulator and procurer of pain and suffering is shrouded in the footnotes of the financial journals. Claiming to be a philanthropist, his record is literally one of being a patron for indentured enslavement. http://gopusa.com/sartre/sartre_1117.shtml
Dean and inevitability. With the unions, the money, the verve, the organization…establishment Democrats are worried. Electability will be pushed as a central problem, though Dean has some good answers on this one, how he could energize the electorate, the party, House races, etc. From the Christian Science Monitor (Linda Feldmann)
...there is a growing sense of inevitability among many political observers that, barring some unforeseen event or revelation, Dr. Dean will win the Democratic nomination" and this prospect has "sent some party members into paroxysms of private hand-wringing. Not only do they see him losing badly to Bush, they also see Dean hurting Democratic candidates further down on the ticket - rippling into congressional races, and possibly even boosting Republican control of the 100-seat Senate close to the crucial threshold of 60 seats, which would make it filibuster
In a memo last month, two Portland-based GOP pollsters warned that "Howard Dean can win because he believes in what he is saying, because he can semi-legitimately spin his record as governor into one of fiscal conservatism, and because he comes across as if he actually cares about people."
For Republicans, the nightmare is that voters think Dean will be so easy to defeat, they don't turn out in large enough numbers. The Portland pollsters, Hans Kaiser and Bob Moore, have constructed a chart that shows how Dean can win next year - even without winning Florida.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1118/p01s03-uspo.html
Powell and AIDS: Since I ‘targeted’ Colin earlier, let me add this piece about his contribution to the fight against AIDS: From the Independent (Hugh Macleod)
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, has made an admission reminiscent of Gladstone by revealing that he and his wife Alma help to educate girls in Washington about the virtues of sexual abstinence.
The Victorian-era British prime minister would scour the streets searching for prostitutes to rescue and rehabilitate. Meanwhile, Mr Powell has described in an interview how he and his wife warn girls about the dangers of Aids. "Abstinence is a good thing to teach young people before they're ready for the responsibilities of sexual activity," Mr Powell said. "Abstinence works. We know it works ... and it is a perfectly sensible strategy to take to young people."
Mr Powell was drawing on his personal experience as he defended plans to spend one third of the $15bn (£8.8bn) the US has pledged to the global fight against Aids on abstinence projects.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=464467
-R
Coming after a third round of goodies last spring and an autumn crammed with corporate scams (from the oil and gas boys to health insurance companies), the next round is designed to slip through the back door a virtual exclusion of investment income from taxation.
The rhetoric will be all about promoting saving, but the reality will be something quite different -- part of a careful rearrangement of the tax burden, as Senator John Edwards likes to say, away from wealth and onto ordinary income (the kind you work for).- Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, 11/18
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/11/18/bush_readies_more_tax_breaks/
Medicare and AARP The Republican bill is awful. I’ll put aside recriminations about who helped this along in early stages (hint: same fellow who played ball with the Bushies on “Education Reform”). For now, let’s just focus on the destruction of Medicare that this bill would begin. They want to drain Medicare of healthier seniors, establish competition so as to encourage desertions to private plans, etc.
Consider:
Six million human lives times six. That’s how many members the “non-partisan” AARP has betrayed by backing the Bush-GOP prescription drug plan designed to help destabilize Medicare. Effectively, this is a drug pork bill that amounts to a $400 billion pass through from taxpayers to the US pharmaceutical industry, insurers and managed care operators. Employers will be provided with $70 billion in subsidies to jump start the program.
Earlier this year the AARP acknowledged how much damage the Bush-GOP drug plan would do to America's low income families and those living below the poverty line. But under intense political pressure from the White House and lobbyists the leaders of the organization flipped. http://www.bestoftheblogs.com/
A bit from E.J. Dionne:
The bipartisan proposal, crafted in cooperation with Sen. Ted Kennedy, was inadequate. Yet it was better than this bill. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly because it left the larger Medicare issues open for real debate later.
But House conservatives weren't willing to go that far. They want medical savings accounts, a tax cut for the wealthy in disguise, and they insisted on experiments with privatization.
But if privatization is such a good idea, why do the private insurance companies need such big subsidies to enter the Medicare market? The bill includes $12 billion for what Kennedy calls a "slush fund" to subsidize the private insurers. That's not capitalism or competition. It's corporate welfare. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54786-2003Nov17.html
And, let’s not forget:
"Critics say AARP, which formally unveiled its new headquarters building in downtown Washington last month, has softened its earlier militancy because it is preoccupied with its profit-making enterprises, including $100 million in earnings from the sale of insurance, mostly Medicare supplemental policies."
- Newsday, 10/21/2000
"AARP's receives more than $100 million in revenue from health insurers."
- Denver Post, 5/21/96
"Critics suggest that AARP's substantial profits from the sales of Medigap and other insurance policies, drug company advertising in its magazines, and investment schemes conflict with its interests on behalf of seniors...AARP President William Novelli acknowledged complaints from members that AARP has been too timid in the political battles to defend Medicare and Social Security. He conceded that AARP has pulled its punches since right-wing groups and members of Congress criticized it as too liberal."
- Newsday, 2/19/02
"AARP's pharmacy service is part of its insurance sales operation which generated $ 101 million in revenue last year - 17 percent of the organization's total budget."
- Capitol News Service, 8/15/02
"AARP receives millions of dollars from UnitedHealthcare, a national health insurance firm based in Minnesota."
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2/24
What’s Happening, Iraq:
The Lies, Reviewed/Revisited. Outstanding piece in the NY Review of Books. Thomas Powers makes the case that the role of intelligence is forever to be controlled by the integrity of the sitting president.
The problem is structural, not personal. Presidents can fire directors they don't like, and the CIA has no other customer. The big mistakes all come when presidents don't listen, or let it be known what they want to hear. The CIA is as serious, as prudent, as honest as the presidents for whom it works— never more. Directors deliver what is wanted, or depart.
He goes on to skewer Colin Powell, seizing on Powell’s February presentation to the UN.
Secretary of State Colin Powell's nose for deceit was sharper than the President's… “Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. My...purpose today," he said, "is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.... I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you...is deeply troubling."
Then seizing on the Kay Report which had to admit that no weapons of mass destruction were found and that no wmd program existed prior to the invasion, Powers continues.
It is the first part of that sentence which answers the question whether Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States —no weapons found. The rest of the report is full of interesting detail about Iraqi science, industry, and technology but it contains not a single clear and unambiguous confirmation of any claim made by Colin Powell in his speech to the UN. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16813
(2) Supporting the Iraqi Resistance?
A BBC report notes that a group of Italian anti-war militants is raising funds to support the armed Iraqi resistance, the BBC has learned. The discovery comes as Italy mourns 19 men killed in a suicide attack in Iraq last week. The "Antiimperialista" organisation's internet campaign asks people to send "10 Euros to the Iraqi resistance." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3277029.stm
(3) The U.S. “Gets Tough” -Those were the words we heard in the past days, as we now drop 500 pound bombs, blow up buildings and drive our tanks through the streets so as to “intimidate” the insurgents. But the residents appeared to be at least a tad confused by the message the new tactic was delivering. .
”I don't see how this is going to work. People who really want to attack the Americans are not going to stop because a building has been destroyed," said one who declined to give his name.
More at www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=13&o=33494
(4) And, there are reports of our committing assassinations. Chalmers Johnson writes
As the Iraqi resistance expands and perfects its attacks, the American military, like so many occupying armies before it, is turning to methods of warfare long outlawed by civilized nations — assassinations and reprisals against civilians. . . . "The new Special Operations organization," according to reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, "is designed to act with greater speed on intelligence tips about 'high-value targets' and not be contained within the borders where American conventional forces are operating in Iraq and Afghanistan." In other words, this death squad, composed of U.S. Army Special Forces troops, can run down its quarry in countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan but presumably also (if the occasion required it) in France, Germany, or even the United States itself.
The contradictions inherent in this plan are striking and tell us a great deal about what it means to be the lone planetary superpower. Although the Bush administration has refused to join the new International Criminal Court because it allegedly threatened our sovereignty, we now openly say that nobody else's sovereignty means anything to us at all. Without debate or oversight by elected officials, we are seemingly adopting a militarized version of globalization — sending "terminator" squads wherever we want to whenever we care to — whose operations will inevitably change the nature of our world, no matter how any individual attack may sort itself out. . . . (http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1070
9/11: Another report of slow going. From Robert Cohen of the Newark Star Ledger,
Last week's deal with the White House to gain access to highly classified presidential intelligence documents removed one major hurdle for the national commission investigating the 9/11 terror attacks, but more obstacles remain.
Already delayed by disputes with the Bush administration over access to sensitive information, the panel is confronting the daunting task of meeting a May 27 deadline to complete its huge undertaking.
Among the potential challenges: Possible roadblocks to gaining access to analysts who prepared intelligence reports; a looming battle with the White House over what information may be released to the public, and the possibility that partisan politics could intrude on the panel's work. tinyurl.com/vi49
From those “independent” conservatives: Since he gave large sums to progressive causes, George Soros has been under fierce attack from wealthy conservatives. This one takes an additional ‘tact.’
The fiction which is interdependency has a prolocutor in the congregation of Moloch. His name is George Soros. No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of Globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice. His public reputation as an astute currency speculator is generous, while his skills as a manipulator and procurer of pain and suffering is shrouded in the footnotes of the financial journals. Claiming to be a philanthropist, his record is literally one of being a patron for indentured enslavement. http://gopusa.com/sartre/sartre_1117.shtml
Dean and inevitability. With the unions, the money, the verve, the organization…establishment Democrats are worried. Electability will be pushed as a central problem, though Dean has some good answers on this one, how he could energize the electorate, the party, House races, etc. From the Christian Science Monitor (Linda Feldmann)
...there is a growing sense of inevitability among many political observers that, barring some unforeseen event or revelation, Dr. Dean will win the Democratic nomination" and this prospect has "sent some party members into paroxysms of private hand-wringing. Not only do they see him losing badly to Bush, they also see Dean hurting Democratic candidates further down on the ticket - rippling into congressional races, and possibly even boosting Republican control of the 100-seat Senate close to the crucial threshold of 60 seats, which would make it filibuster
In a memo last month, two Portland-based GOP pollsters warned that "Howard Dean can win because he believes in what he is saying, because he can semi-legitimately spin his record as governor into one of fiscal conservatism, and because he comes across as if he actually cares about people."
For Republicans, the nightmare is that voters think Dean will be so easy to defeat, they don't turn out in large enough numbers. The Portland pollsters, Hans Kaiser and Bob Moore, have constructed a chart that shows how Dean can win next year - even without winning Florida.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1118/p01s03-uspo.html
Powell and AIDS: Since I ‘targeted’ Colin earlier, let me add this piece about his contribution to the fight against AIDS: From the Independent (Hugh Macleod)
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, has made an admission reminiscent of Gladstone by revealing that he and his wife Alma help to educate girls in Washington about the virtues of sexual abstinence.
The Victorian-era British prime minister would scour the streets searching for prostitutes to rescue and rehabilitate. Meanwhile, Mr Powell has described in an interview how he and his wife warn girls about the dangers of Aids. "Abstinence is a good thing to teach young people before they're ready for the responsibilities of sexual activity," Mr Powell said. "Abstinence works. We know it works ... and it is a perfectly sensible strategy to take to young people."
Mr Powell was drawing on his personal experience as he defended plans to spend one third of the $15bn (£8.8bn) the US has pledged to the global fight against Aids on abstinence projects.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=464467
-R
