Monday, February 02, 2004
But the news-cycle controversies have obscured the book's central, and important, thesis. It is the contention of O'Neill -- and of Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of ''A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey From the Inner City to the Ivy League'' -- that in this White House, evidence and argument have been routinely pushed aside when they got in the way of previously decided political outcomes. That we've heard before. What enriches ''The Price of Loyalty,'' aside from the accretion of persuasive detail, is its assertion that in this administration, a time-honored notion of public service has been deeply corrupted. -Michael Tomasky, review of The Price of Loyalty, Ron Suskind’s book on Paul O’Neill’s tenure in the Bush Administration http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/books/review/01TOMASKT.html
Liars and the Lying…
Whether they are misrepresentations, omissions, distortions or lies, they do it ‘as they breathe’.
The latest example is the Administration having long known that the lousy Medicare law would cost much more than the advertised $400 billion. From the Washington Post (Amy Goldstein)
The president's top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade -- one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November.
The higher forecast, coming less than two months after President Bush signed the landmark bill into law, has fueled conservative criticism of White House spending policies and prompted accusations that the administration deliberately withheld financial information as it pushed the bill through a divided Congress. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64627-2004Jan30?language=printer
Economic Debacle: Friedman chimes in
NY Times op ed columnist Tom Friedman remains steadfast in his support for the Invasion. But, he’s getting vehement re the economic performance of the Bush Administration.
The Bush team's real vulnerability is its B.M.D. — Budgets of Mass Destruction, which have recklessly imperiled the nation's future, with crazy tax-cutting and out-of-control spending. The latest report from the Congressional Budget Office says the deficit is expected to total some $2.4 trillion over the next decade — almost $1 trillion more than the prediction of just five months ago. That is a failure of intelligence and common sense that threatens to make us all insecure — and people also feel that in their guts.
That is the only way to expose what the shameful coalition of Karl Rove-led cynics, who care only about winning the next election; voodoo economists preaching supply-side economics; and libertarian nuts who think that by cutting tax revenues you'll shrink the government — when all you do is balloon the deficit — is doing to our future. And please don't tell me the tax cuts are working. Of course they're working! If you put this much stimulus into our economy — three tax cuts, loose monetary policy and out-of-control spending — it will produce a boom. Eat 10 chocolate bars at once and you'll also get a rush. But at what long-term cost?
This is so irresponsible and it will end in tears... If this isn't the election issue, I don't know what is. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/opinion/01FRIE.html
Tax System Skewed to Enrich the Very Wealthy: David Cay Johnston
The Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for the NY Times has made his case that the super rich are assuming a shrinking share of taxes while the middle class is bearing an increasing burden; less gently, Johnston talks of the rigging of the tax system for the rich at the expense of everyone else. His Perfectly Legal... is on the NY Times best-seller list, and is on On Point. http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2004/01/20040130_a_main.asp
From the NY Times review by James K. Galbraith:
As Johnston knows, the real scandal of our federal tax system isn't so much what the rich didn't pay. It's what the rest of us now have to -- particularly the middle and upper middle classes, with incomes from $50,000 to $500,000. This is the group Bush is squeezing, to benefit what Johnston aptly calls the ''political donor class.'' This truly shocking story emerges later on in ''Perfectly Legal.''
First we have the repeal of the estate tax, which shifts the tax burden downscale and from the dead to the living. Johnston, a business and financial reporter for The New York Times, explains how this tax, affecting only a handful of the very, very rich, fell victim to the arts of propaganda…
Next there is the Alternative Minimum Tax, the ''stealth tax,'' designed for the very rich but now set to overrun Middle America. In 2000 this tax hit just 1.3 million households; Treasury estimates held that it would affect 17.9 million by 2010. But the Bush tax cuts doubled this number to 35.6 million by design…
Then there is the payroll tax, a travesty ever since 1983, when Alan Greenspan sold the public on the myth of paying for Social Security in advance. And the difference between the amount brought in through the payroll tax and the amount needed to pay benefits underwrote Reagan's tax cuts for the rich… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/books/review/01GALBRAT.html
Kerry the Populist
We’ve been this route before (Gore, Summer, ’00); We in Massachusetts know that John is no populist, and we have other qualms. But, he’s (currently) looking strong and his message- “Fairness”- resonates.
Speaking of Kerry, the polls show him ahead in all upcoming states save South Carolina, while Dean has all but disappeared.
Newsweek finds Kerry in a statistical dead heat with Bush; And, Bush’s approval rating is at an all-time low (49%); A similar percentage do not want to see Bush re-elected. [And the same percentage [49%] still believe that Saddam was directly involved in 9/11.] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4120028/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Intelligence Inquiry:
Supposedly the Administration has decided to support an independent inquiry. But, as with other inquiries, it will seek to delay and control it, seeking a long process that goes well beyond the election and would focus on the intelligence community, and not on the Administration’s failures. The Sunday Washington Post report: (Dana Milbank, Dana Priest)
President Bush has agreed to support an independent inquiry into the prewar intelligence that he used to assert that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Republican and congressional sources said today.
The details about the commission are not yet firm, including how much authority it would have to investigate not just the intelligence gathering apparatus but also how the administration used the intelligence it was given.
By joining the effort to create the commission rather than allowing Congress to develop its framework on its own, Bush will likely have more leverage to keep the focus on the CIA and other intelligence organizations rather than on the White House. Democrats have asserted that Bush exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq to justify going war, a theory that was boosted by recent allegations from former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill that Bush had been contemplating the ouster of Hussein long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1723-2004Jan31.html?nav=hptop_tb
Monday’s NY Times (Douglas Jehl):
Others, including Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have made clear that they will seek to ensure that any inquiry takes the Bush administration to task for building what they call a flawed case that the United States needed to act quickly to wage war against Iraq.
But Mr. [Peter, Florida Republican] Goss and others will argue that an inquiry ought to lead Americans to understand that intelligence gathering and analysis is, at best, an imperfect science. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/international/middleeast/02ASSE.html?pagewanted=all
David Kay’s comments were helpful, but he had an unintentionally humorous note when he asserted that Bush was mis-led by Intelligence. The Administration consistently sought the most ominous interpretations of all existing intelligence; Cheney made regular trips to Langley; they weren’t social calls.
Too Many Casualties…
The last months have been the worst; the incidents are now fewer, but deadlier. 37 Americans killed this month, compared with 24 in December. http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1073281412068&p=1012571727088
As a result,
American commanders have ordered a dramatic reduction in their military presence in Baghdad, as they increasingly turn over to local forces the most visible role of policing the capital while American troops pull back to a ring of bases at the edge of the city, senior military officers announced today. (Thom Shanker) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/international/middleeast/01CND-ADMI.html
The Shiites Surge
David Reiff’s article in the NY Times magazine captures their power.
As a result, the Iraqi Shiite political culture is a mixture of grievance and thwarted patriotism it was a foregone conclusion that Sunni dominance of Iraq would end. It soon became clear that the Iraqi Shiite religious leadership had not only survived Hussein's repression with its morale and cohesion intact, but had also quickly established itself as one of the principal forces of order and patronage in post-Baathist Iraq. The failure of American forces to stop the systematic looting in the week after the fall of Baghdad left a vacuum that was filled by hastily improvised militias organized by the Shiite religious council, the Hawza Moderate voices, including some Iraqi exiles who lobbied hard for the American invasion, will tell you that it was the American decision not simply to liberate Iraq but to declare Iraq an occupied country that has turned the Shiites against the United States. Some radical clerics agree
When Sistani calls for a direct election, as opposed to the American plan for an indirect voting system based on regional caucuses, what resonates with ordinary Iraqis is their deep skepticism about American motives and their deep resentment of the American occupation. If ''one man, one vote'' is good enough for the Americans, why isn't it good enough for Iraqis?…
''You can get rid of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party,'' says Professor [Juan] Cole of the University of Michigan. ''But you can't get rid of the facts on the ground. And the Shiites are the most important of these facts.'' http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/magazine/01SHIITE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
-R
Liars and the Lying…
Whether they are misrepresentations, omissions, distortions or lies, they do it ‘as they breathe’.
The latest example is the Administration having long known that the lousy Medicare law would cost much more than the advertised $400 billion. From the Washington Post (Amy Goldstein)
The president's top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade -- one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November.
The higher forecast, coming less than two months after President Bush signed the landmark bill into law, has fueled conservative criticism of White House spending policies and prompted accusations that the administration deliberately withheld financial information as it pushed the bill through a divided Congress. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64627-2004Jan30?language=printer
Economic Debacle: Friedman chimes in
NY Times op ed columnist Tom Friedman remains steadfast in his support for the Invasion. But, he’s getting vehement re the economic performance of the Bush Administration.
The Bush team's real vulnerability is its B.M.D. — Budgets of Mass Destruction, which have recklessly imperiled the nation's future, with crazy tax-cutting and out-of-control spending. The latest report from the Congressional Budget Office says the deficit is expected to total some $2.4 trillion over the next decade — almost $1 trillion more than the prediction of just five months ago. That is a failure of intelligence and common sense that threatens to make us all insecure — and people also feel that in their guts.
That is the only way to expose what the shameful coalition of Karl Rove-led cynics, who care only about winning the next election; voodoo economists preaching supply-side economics; and libertarian nuts who think that by cutting tax revenues you'll shrink the government — when all you do is balloon the deficit — is doing to our future. And please don't tell me the tax cuts are working. Of course they're working! If you put this much stimulus into our economy — three tax cuts, loose monetary policy and out-of-control spending — it will produce a boom. Eat 10 chocolate bars at once and you'll also get a rush. But at what long-term cost?
This is so irresponsible and it will end in tears... If this isn't the election issue, I don't know what is. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/opinion/01FRIE.html
Tax System Skewed to Enrich the Very Wealthy: David Cay Johnston
The Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for the NY Times has made his case that the super rich are assuming a shrinking share of taxes while the middle class is bearing an increasing burden; less gently, Johnston talks of the rigging of the tax system for the rich at the expense of everyone else. His Perfectly Legal... is on the NY Times best-seller list, and is on On Point. http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2004/01/20040130_a_main.asp
From the NY Times review by James K. Galbraith:
As Johnston knows, the real scandal of our federal tax system isn't so much what the rich didn't pay. It's what the rest of us now have to -- particularly the middle and upper middle classes, with incomes from $50,000 to $500,000. This is the group Bush is squeezing, to benefit what Johnston aptly calls the ''political donor class.'' This truly shocking story emerges later on in ''Perfectly Legal.''
First we have the repeal of the estate tax, which shifts the tax burden downscale and from the dead to the living. Johnston, a business and financial reporter for The New York Times, explains how this tax, affecting only a handful of the very, very rich, fell victim to the arts of propaganda…
Next there is the Alternative Minimum Tax, the ''stealth tax,'' designed for the very rich but now set to overrun Middle America. In 2000 this tax hit just 1.3 million households; Treasury estimates held that it would affect 17.9 million by 2010. But the Bush tax cuts doubled this number to 35.6 million by design…
Then there is the payroll tax, a travesty ever since 1983, when Alan Greenspan sold the public on the myth of paying for Social Security in advance. And the difference between the amount brought in through the payroll tax and the amount needed to pay benefits underwrote Reagan's tax cuts for the rich… http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/books/review/01GALBRAT.html
Kerry the Populist
We’ve been this route before (Gore, Summer, ’00); We in Massachusetts know that John is no populist, and we have other qualms. But, he’s (currently) looking strong and his message- “Fairness”- resonates.
Speaking of Kerry, the polls show him ahead in all upcoming states save South Carolina, while Dean has all but disappeared.
Newsweek finds Kerry in a statistical dead heat with Bush; And, Bush’s approval rating is at an all-time low (49%); A similar percentage do not want to see Bush re-elected. [And the same percentage [49%] still believe that Saddam was directly involved in 9/11.] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4120028/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Intelligence Inquiry:
Supposedly the Administration has decided to support an independent inquiry. But, as with other inquiries, it will seek to delay and control it, seeking a long process that goes well beyond the election and would focus on the intelligence community, and not on the Administration’s failures. The Sunday Washington Post report: (Dana Milbank, Dana Priest)
President Bush has agreed to support an independent inquiry into the prewar intelligence that he used to assert that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Republican and congressional sources said today.
The details about the commission are not yet firm, including how much authority it would have to investigate not just the intelligence gathering apparatus but also how the administration used the intelligence it was given.
By joining the effort to create the commission rather than allowing Congress to develop its framework on its own, Bush will likely have more leverage to keep the focus on the CIA and other intelligence organizations rather than on the White House. Democrats have asserted that Bush exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq to justify going war, a theory that was boosted by recent allegations from former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill that Bush had been contemplating the ouster of Hussein long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1723-2004Jan31.html?nav=hptop_tb
Monday’s NY Times (Douglas Jehl):
Others, including Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have made clear that they will seek to ensure that any inquiry takes the Bush administration to task for building what they call a flawed case that the United States needed to act quickly to wage war against Iraq.
But Mr. [Peter, Florida Republican] Goss and others will argue that an inquiry ought to lead Americans to understand that intelligence gathering and analysis is, at best, an imperfect science. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/international/middleeast/02ASSE.html?pagewanted=all
David Kay’s comments were helpful, but he had an unintentionally humorous note when he asserted that Bush was mis-led by Intelligence. The Administration consistently sought the most ominous interpretations of all existing intelligence; Cheney made regular trips to Langley; they weren’t social calls.
Too Many Casualties…
The last months have been the worst; the incidents are now fewer, but deadlier. 37 Americans killed this month, compared with 24 in December. http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1073281412068&p=1012571727088
As a result,
American commanders have ordered a dramatic reduction in their military presence in Baghdad, as they increasingly turn over to local forces the most visible role of policing the capital while American troops pull back to a ring of bases at the edge of the city, senior military officers announced today. (Thom Shanker) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/international/middleeast/01CND-ADMI.html
The Shiites Surge
David Reiff’s article in the NY Times magazine captures their power.
As a result, the Iraqi Shiite political culture is a mixture of grievance and thwarted patriotism it was a foregone conclusion that Sunni dominance of Iraq would end. It soon became clear that the Iraqi Shiite religious leadership had not only survived Hussein's repression with its morale and cohesion intact, but had also quickly established itself as one of the principal forces of order and patronage in post-Baathist Iraq. The failure of American forces to stop the systematic looting in the week after the fall of Baghdad left a vacuum that was filled by hastily improvised militias organized by the Shiite religious council, the Hawza Moderate voices, including some Iraqi exiles who lobbied hard for the American invasion, will tell you that it was the American decision not simply to liberate Iraq but to declare Iraq an occupied country that has turned the Shiites against the United States. Some radical clerics agree
When Sistani calls for a direct election, as opposed to the American plan for an indirect voting system based on regional caucuses, what resonates with ordinary Iraqis is their deep skepticism about American motives and their deep resentment of the American occupation. If ''one man, one vote'' is good enough for the Americans, why isn't it good enough for Iraqis?…
''You can get rid of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party,'' says Professor [Juan] Cole of the University of Michigan. ''But you can't get rid of the facts on the ground. And the Shiites are the most important of these facts.'' http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/magazine/01SHIITE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
-R
