Monday, February 09, 2004
But David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world.
And I made the decision to go to the United Nations
Bush W/ Tim Russert on Meet the Press
The mass reaction, especially from conservatives, was that Bush seemed strikingly un-presidential. Only Cokie Roberts on NPR held a positive view of the performance, that Bush had ‘made his case’. Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan:
The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. He did not seem prepared. He seemed in some way disconnected from the event. When he was thrown the semisoftball question on his National Guard experience--he's been thrown this question for 10 years now--he spoke in a way that seemed detached. "It's politics." Well yes, we know that. Tell us more
Mr. Bush's supporters expect him to do well in speeches, and to inspire them in speeches. And he has in the past. The recent State of the Union was a good speech but not a great one, and because of that some Bush supporters were disappointed. They put the bar high for Mr. Bush in speeches, and he clears the bar. But his supporters don't really expect to be inspired by his interviews. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/
Krugman I (last Friday’s column) …Have We Finally Had Enough?
The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.
The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.
I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/opinion/06KRUG.html
You Can’t Make These Things Up:
The AP story:
President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins — the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=703&e=6&u=/ap/20040206/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ricin_bush
Russert Interview, II:
Several times during the exchange Bush said that he had released his military records back in 2000.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, absolutely.
We did so in 2000, by the way.
Bush never released those records. No one has disputes that.
Again, he lies as he breathes…
What’s Happening, Iraq: Slaughter of the Educated
A very unsettling account in the NY Times (Jeffrey Gettleman). What we hath wrought with our invasion by choice.
They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."
These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from — and in some ways more insidious than — the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.
But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/international/middleeast/07ASSA.html?ei=5062&en=f2848e5dfb0a2326&ex=1076734800&adxnnl=1&partner=GOOGLE&adxnnlx=1076156328-xcqmhKZ8n045KtdVUSBIYA
Krugman, II: On Kevin Phillips’ book, American Dynasty (the Bushes) and the Suskind/Paul O’Neill book, The Price of Loyalty [NY Review of Books]
Halliburton's reported expenses for transporting gasoline are, for some reason, much higher than anyone else's. But the real question is why Halliburton chose that particular supplier—a company with little experience in the oil business, mysteriously selected as the sole source of gasoline after what appears to have been a highly improper bidding procedure. Why did it get the job? We don't know. But it's interesting to note that the company appears to be closely connected with the al-Sabahs, Kuwait's royal family. And the al-Sabahs, in turn, have in the past had close business ties with the Bush family, in particular the President's brother Marvin.
In any previous administration—at least any administration of the past seventy years—this sort of incestuous relationship among foreign governments, private businesses, and the personal fortunes of people in or close to the US government would have been considered unusual and prima facie scandalous. What we learn from Kevin Phillips's new book, however, is that this kind of intertwining of public policy and personal self-interest has been standard operating procedure not just for George W. Bush, but for his entire family.
______
While the Kennedys and the Rockefellers may have a sense of entitlement, they also display a sense of noblesse oblige—what one might call an urge to repay, with charitable contributions and public service, their good fortune. The Bushes don't have that problem; there are no philanthropists or reformers in the clan. They seek public office but, if anything, they seem to feel that the public is there to serve them
Suskind:
Still, officials remained concerned about a sluggish economy. But what was the cause of that sluggishness? The President, according to his secretary of the Treasury, had a sim-ple answer: "SEC overreach." That is, those nasty regulators, in their attempt to crack down on corporate malfeasance, were making executives and investors nervous, depressing the economy. Here's how Suskind describes the moment:
O'Neill couldn't quite believe what he was hearing—SEC overreach? No wonder the White House had backed off from the toughest medicine for crooked executives and eventually ceded the corporate governance debate to Congress. How, though, could the President believe that the largely overwhelmed SEC had any significant effect on the vast US economy?
Kevin Phillips could, of course, have told him: Bush—whose own business career had involved some remarkably Enron-like moments—was revealing his instinctive, indeed inbred sympathy for corporate insiders, and his antipathy toward anyone who might try to enforce accountability.
Aside from the report of Bush's amazing outburst, what we learn from Suskind's description of that meeting is that, in private, top administration officials conceded the very points that they vehemently denied when responding to outside critics. They knew that they were being fiscally irresponsible. "The budget hole is getting deeper," warned budget director Mitch Daniels. "We are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." (And this was before the 2003 tax cut.)
They also knew that their policies heavily favored rich people—indeed, in an uncharacteristic moment Bush himself seemed uneasy over the tilt, asking, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" And when Bush asked, "What are we doing on compassion?," no one answered.
But what they said in public was the exact opposite. In private Bush might worry that his tax plan was too friendly to the rich; in public he insisted that "the vast majority of my tax cut goes to the bottom of the economic spectrum." In private Dick Cheney told O'Neill that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." In public he described himself as a "deficit hawk." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16911
Intelligence Commission:
McCain is there for credibility, the rest of the panel knows nothing about intelligence, the leading “jurist”, Laurence Silberman, is a Republican hack who’s pardoned Ollie North and played a role in the pre-election sabotage of the 1980 elections, the negotiation with the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages until after Reagan (hopefully) defeats Carter.
Finally, the executive order that authorized the commission doesn’t authorize subpoena power and leaves cooperation to be at the discretion of the department heads of the executive branch agencies, i.e. it’s a toothless commission that depends on the Administration’s voluntary cooperation. And, as we know, the Commission is not supposed to address what the Administration did with the intelligence.
And, as Walter Pincus and Dana Priest note in their report,
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed
In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday.
In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20194-2004Feb6.html
Wall Street Journal’s Albert Hunt on the Bush Budget
…the pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009 is even phonier. That's conceivable if the Bush, or another, administration accepts a whopping tax hike on the middle class; this budget assumes no action after this year on the alternative minimum tax. Or if the war on terrorism ends after this year; there's nothing budgeted beyond 2004. Or if draconian cuts in education and other popular domestic programs are enacted after the November election. There are gimmicks galore: a $65 billion health-care tax credit will be offset by other savings; none are specified.
More likely, the 2009 deficit will be closer to $500 billion than $237 billion. Moreover, after that the picture worsens as the baby boomers start retiring.
The president's priority obviously is tax cuts, disproportionately for the wealthy. These come at a price. There are budget cuts proposed for this year in low-income housing and environmental programs among others.
Important investments are brushed aside, the National Institutes of Health -- the gold standard of medical research in the world -- has flourished as its budget doubled over the last five years. President Bush proposes to end the priority for this medical research, with no increase in real spending this year and subsequent reductions. Funds for the Centers for Disease Control, the envy of the world, would be sliced. And for all the rhetoric about homeland security, funding for first responders, especially firefighters, would be cut. Firefighters, Mr. Rove reasons, are aligned with Democrats -- unless you're a Republican and your house is burning down.
When it comes to sacrifice, the Bush budget considers the rich conscientious objectors, but doesn't spare others. The authoritative Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group, calculates that by 2009 funding for domestic discretionary programs, outside of homeland security, will be cut more than 11% from the current level. That's education, law enforcement, national parks and firefighters.
Most outrageous are the proposed new budget rules: these would reinstate the old pay-as-you-go budgetary discipline for spending programs, including entitlements, but not for tax cuts. In short, any added benefits for Social Security or Medicare would have to be offset by accompanying spending reductions. But tax cuts would be a fiscal free-lunch under the Bush proposals. www.wsj.com
Republican Dirty Tricks:
They play to win. Rumors as to their “cooperating” with the Nader campaign in 2000 are now followed by more confirmed reports of their being overly friendly with the Sharpton campaign. From the Village Voice (Wayne Barrett) :
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.
Though Stone and Sharpton have tried to reduce their alliance to a curiosity, suggesting that all they do is talk occasionally, a Voice investigation has documented an extraordinary array of connections. Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton's pending application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical states from family members and political allies at odds with everything Sharpton represents. He's also helped stack the campaign with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who've worked for him in prior campaigns. He's even boasted about engineering six-figure loans to Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) and allowing Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN costs—neither of which he could legally do for the campaign. In a wide-ranging Voice interview Sunday, Stone confirmed his matching-fund and staffing roles, but refused to comment on the NAN subsidies.
Sharpton denounced the Voice's inquiries as "phony liberal paternalism," insisting that he'd "talk to anyone I want" and likening his use of Stone to Bill Clinton's reliance on pollster Dick Morris, saying he was "sick of these racist double standards." He did not dispute that Stone had helped generate matching contributions and staff the campaign. Asked about the Stone loans, he conceded that he "asked him to help NAN," but attributed the financial aid to his and Stone's joint "fight against the Rockefeller drug laws…
Recruited in 2000 by his friend James Baker, the former secretary of state, to spearhead the GOP street forces in Miami, Stone is apparently confident that he can use the Democrat-bashing preacher to damage the party's eventual nominee, just as Sharpton himself bragged he did in the New York mayoral campaign of 2001. In his 2002 book, Al on America, Sharpton wrote that he felt the city's Democratic Party "had to be taught a lesson" in 2001—insisting that Mark Green, who defeated the Sharpton-backed Fernando Ferrer in a bitter runoff, had disrespected him and minorities. Adding that the party "still has to be taught one nationally," he warned: "A lot of 2004 will be about what happened in New York in 2001. It's about dignity." In 2001, Sharpton engaged in a behind-the-scenes dialogue with campaign aides to Republican Mike Bloomberg while publicly disparaging Green. http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0405/barrett.php
More on Bush’s Support for the Troops:
Another comment from the South. It isn’t a lock…
Do you support our troops? If so, prepare to be outraged that our commander in chief does not.
The Bush Administration's 2004 budget proposed gutting Veterans Administration (VA) services, including health care funding. Proposed cuts included: denying at least 360,000 veterans access to health care; $250 annual premiums; increased pharmacy co-payments; a 30 percent increased primary care co-payments; and increased waiting time for a first medical appointment.
Because of budgetary shortfalls, the VA suspended the enrollment of veterans not injured in service earning between $24,450 and $38,100 annually. VFW officials estimated the administration's VA budget is at least $2 billion short of meeting the demand for quality health care.
The FY 2004 budget approved by Congress calls for reducing VA funding over a 10-year period by $6.2 billion. Cuts are in the areas of veterans' health care and disability benefits.
The cuts affect VA discretionary funding, which could mean discontinuation of burial benefits for veterans or delays in the cost-of-living adjustment for disability benefits.
Some veterans must pay a new $250 annual enrollment fee to join the VA healthcare system. The VA believes 1.25 million veterans nationwide, already under the VA healthcare plan, may no longer be able to participate because of the new fee.
Veterans who can remain under the VA health-care system will pay increased co-payments for physician benefits and prescription drug cost, amounting to an estimated increase in out-of-pocket expenses of $347 each year. http://www.usavanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/01/28/401970abb42d7
-R
And I made the decision to go to the United Nations
Bush W/ Tim Russert on Meet the Press
The mass reaction, especially from conservatives, was that Bush seemed strikingly un-presidential. Only Cokie Roberts on NPR held a positive view of the performance, that Bush had ‘made his case’. Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan:
The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. He did not seem prepared. He seemed in some way disconnected from the event. When he was thrown the semisoftball question on his National Guard experience--he's been thrown this question for 10 years now--he spoke in a way that seemed detached. "It's politics." Well yes, we know that. Tell us more
Mr. Bush's supporters expect him to do well in speeches, and to inspire them in speeches. And he has in the past. The recent State of the Union was a good speech but not a great one, and because of that some Bush supporters were disappointed. They put the bar high for Mr. Bush in speeches, and he clears the bar. But his supporters don't really expect to be inspired by his interviews. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/
Krugman I (last Friday’s column) …Have We Finally Had Enough?
The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.
The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.
I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/opinion/06KRUG.html
You Can’t Make These Things Up:
The AP story:
President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins — the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=703&e=6&u=/ap/20040206/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ricin_bush
Russert Interview, II:
Several times during the exchange Bush said that he had released his military records back in 2000.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, absolutely.
We did so in 2000, by the way.
Bush never released those records. No one has disputes that.
Again, he lies as he breathes…
What’s Happening, Iraq: Slaughter of the Educated
A very unsettling account in the NY Times (Jeffrey Gettleman). What we hath wrought with our invasion by choice.
They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."
These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from — and in some ways more insidious than — the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.
But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/international/middleeast/07ASSA.html?ei=5062&en=f2848e5dfb0a2326&ex=1076734800&adxnnl=1&partner=GOOGLE&adxnnlx=1076156328-xcqmhKZ8n045KtdVUSBIYA
Krugman, II: On Kevin Phillips’ book, American Dynasty (the Bushes) and the Suskind/Paul O’Neill book, The Price of Loyalty [NY Review of Books]
Halliburton's reported expenses for transporting gasoline are, for some reason, much higher than anyone else's. But the real question is why Halliburton chose that particular supplier—a company with little experience in the oil business, mysteriously selected as the sole source of gasoline after what appears to have been a highly improper bidding procedure. Why did it get the job? We don't know. But it's interesting to note that the company appears to be closely connected with the al-Sabahs, Kuwait's royal family. And the al-Sabahs, in turn, have in the past had close business ties with the Bush family, in particular the President's brother Marvin.
In any previous administration—at least any administration of the past seventy years—this sort of incestuous relationship among foreign governments, private businesses, and the personal fortunes of people in or close to the US government would have been considered unusual and prima facie scandalous. What we learn from Kevin Phillips's new book, however, is that this kind of intertwining of public policy and personal self-interest has been standard operating procedure not just for George W. Bush, but for his entire family.
______
While the Kennedys and the Rockefellers may have a sense of entitlement, they also display a sense of noblesse oblige—what one might call an urge to repay, with charitable contributions and public service, their good fortune. The Bushes don't have that problem; there are no philanthropists or reformers in the clan. They seek public office but, if anything, they seem to feel that the public is there to serve them
Suskind:
Still, officials remained concerned about a sluggish economy. But what was the cause of that sluggishness? The President, according to his secretary of the Treasury, had a sim-ple answer: "SEC overreach." That is, those nasty regulators, in their attempt to crack down on corporate malfeasance, were making executives and investors nervous, depressing the economy. Here's how Suskind describes the moment:
O'Neill couldn't quite believe what he was hearing—SEC overreach? No wonder the White House had backed off from the toughest medicine for crooked executives and eventually ceded the corporate governance debate to Congress. How, though, could the President believe that the largely overwhelmed SEC had any significant effect on the vast US economy?
Kevin Phillips could, of course, have told him: Bush—whose own business career had involved some remarkably Enron-like moments—was revealing his instinctive, indeed inbred sympathy for corporate insiders, and his antipathy toward anyone who might try to enforce accountability.
Aside from the report of Bush's amazing outburst, what we learn from Suskind's description of that meeting is that, in private, top administration officials conceded the very points that they vehemently denied when responding to outside critics. They knew that they were being fiscally irresponsible. "The budget hole is getting deeper," warned budget director Mitch Daniels. "We are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." (And this was before the 2003 tax cut.)
They also knew that their policies heavily favored rich people—indeed, in an uncharacteristic moment Bush himself seemed uneasy over the tilt, asking, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" And when Bush asked, "What are we doing on compassion?," no one answered.
But what they said in public was the exact opposite. In private Bush might worry that his tax plan was too friendly to the rich; in public he insisted that "the vast majority of my tax cut goes to the bottom of the economic spectrum." In private Dick Cheney told O'Neill that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." In public he described himself as a "deficit hawk." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16911
Intelligence Commission:
McCain is there for credibility, the rest of the panel knows nothing about intelligence, the leading “jurist”, Laurence Silberman, is a Republican hack who’s pardoned Ollie North and played a role in the pre-election sabotage of the 1980 elections, the negotiation with the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages until after Reagan (hopefully) defeats Carter.
Finally, the executive order that authorized the commission doesn’t authorize subpoena power and leaves cooperation to be at the discretion of the department heads of the executive branch agencies, i.e. it’s a toothless commission that depends on the Administration’s voluntary cooperation. And, as we know, the Commission is not supposed to address what the Administration did with the intelligence.
And, as Walter Pincus and Dana Priest note in their report,
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed
In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday.
In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20194-2004Feb6.html
Wall Street Journal’s Albert Hunt on the Bush Budget
…the pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009 is even phonier. That's conceivable if the Bush, or another, administration accepts a whopping tax hike on the middle class; this budget assumes no action after this year on the alternative minimum tax. Or if the war on terrorism ends after this year; there's nothing budgeted beyond 2004. Or if draconian cuts in education and other popular domestic programs are enacted after the November election. There are gimmicks galore: a $65 billion health-care tax credit will be offset by other savings; none are specified.
More likely, the 2009 deficit will be closer to $500 billion than $237 billion. Moreover, after that the picture worsens as the baby boomers start retiring.
The president's priority obviously is tax cuts, disproportionately for the wealthy. These come at a price. There are budget cuts proposed for this year in low-income housing and environmental programs among others.
Important investments are brushed aside, the National Institutes of Health -- the gold standard of medical research in the world -- has flourished as its budget doubled over the last five years. President Bush proposes to end the priority for this medical research, with no increase in real spending this year and subsequent reductions. Funds for the Centers for Disease Control, the envy of the world, would be sliced. And for all the rhetoric about homeland security, funding for first responders, especially firefighters, would be cut. Firefighters, Mr. Rove reasons, are aligned with Democrats -- unless you're a Republican and your house is burning down.
When it comes to sacrifice, the Bush budget considers the rich conscientious objectors, but doesn't spare others. The authoritative Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group, calculates that by 2009 funding for domestic discretionary programs, outside of homeland security, will be cut more than 11% from the current level. That's education, law enforcement, national parks and firefighters.
Most outrageous are the proposed new budget rules: these would reinstate the old pay-as-you-go budgetary discipline for spending programs, including entitlements, but not for tax cuts. In short, any added benefits for Social Security or Medicare would have to be offset by accompanying spending reductions. But tax cuts would be a fiscal free-lunch under the Bush proposals. www.wsj.com
Republican Dirty Tricks:
They play to win. Rumors as to their “cooperating” with the Nader campaign in 2000 are now followed by more confirmed reports of their being overly friendly with the Sharpton campaign. From the Village Voice (Wayne Barrett) :
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.
Though Stone and Sharpton have tried to reduce their alliance to a curiosity, suggesting that all they do is talk occasionally, a Voice investigation has documented an extraordinary array of connections. Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton's pending application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical states from family members and political allies at odds with everything Sharpton represents. He's also helped stack the campaign with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who've worked for him in prior campaigns. He's even boasted about engineering six-figure loans to Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) and allowing Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN costs—neither of which he could legally do for the campaign. In a wide-ranging Voice interview Sunday, Stone confirmed his matching-fund and staffing roles, but refused to comment on the NAN subsidies.
Sharpton denounced the Voice's inquiries as "phony liberal paternalism," insisting that he'd "talk to anyone I want" and likening his use of Stone to Bill Clinton's reliance on pollster Dick Morris, saying he was "sick of these racist double standards." He did not dispute that Stone had helped generate matching contributions and staff the campaign. Asked about the Stone loans, he conceded that he "asked him to help NAN," but attributed the financial aid to his and Stone's joint "fight against the Rockefeller drug laws…
Recruited in 2000 by his friend James Baker, the former secretary of state, to spearhead the GOP street forces in Miami, Stone is apparently confident that he can use the Democrat-bashing preacher to damage the party's eventual nominee, just as Sharpton himself bragged he did in the New York mayoral campaign of 2001. In his 2002 book, Al on America, Sharpton wrote that he felt the city's Democratic Party "had to be taught a lesson" in 2001—insisting that Mark Green, who defeated the Sharpton-backed Fernando Ferrer in a bitter runoff, had disrespected him and minorities. Adding that the party "still has to be taught one nationally," he warned: "A lot of 2004 will be about what happened in New York in 2001. It's about dignity." In 2001, Sharpton engaged in a behind-the-scenes dialogue with campaign aides to Republican Mike Bloomberg while publicly disparaging Green. http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0405/barrett.php
More on Bush’s Support for the Troops:
Another comment from the South. It isn’t a lock…
Do you support our troops? If so, prepare to be outraged that our commander in chief does not.
The Bush Administration's 2004 budget proposed gutting Veterans Administration (VA) services, including health care funding. Proposed cuts included: denying at least 360,000 veterans access to health care; $250 annual premiums; increased pharmacy co-payments; a 30 percent increased primary care co-payments; and increased waiting time for a first medical appointment.
Because of budgetary shortfalls, the VA suspended the enrollment of veterans not injured in service earning between $24,450 and $38,100 annually. VFW officials estimated the administration's VA budget is at least $2 billion short of meeting the demand for quality health care.
The FY 2004 budget approved by Congress calls for reducing VA funding over a 10-year period by $6.2 billion. Cuts are in the areas of veterans' health care and disability benefits.
The cuts affect VA discretionary funding, which could mean discontinuation of burial benefits for veterans or delays in the cost-of-living adjustment for disability benefits.
Some veterans must pay a new $250 annual enrollment fee to join the VA healthcare system. The VA believes 1.25 million veterans nationwide, already under the VA healthcare plan, may no longer be able to participate because of the new fee.
Veterans who can remain under the VA health-care system will pay increased co-payments for physician benefits and prescription drug cost, amounting to an estimated increase in out-of-pocket expenses of $347 each year. http://www.usavanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/01/28/401970abb42d7
-R
