Friday, January 09, 2004
The U.S. Economy: The International Monetary Fund Speaks Out
The New York Times (Elizabeth Becker and Edmund L. Andrews) had a front page story on the IMF’s considerable upset over the U.S. threat to the world-wide economic system.
With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund.
Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world.
The report warns that the United States' net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years — "an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country," according to the fund, that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.
The danger, according to the report, is that the United States' voracious appetite for borrowing could push up global interest rates and thus slow global investment and economic growth. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08FUND.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
The Economic Future: We know this Administration has no answers. Does anyone?
NY senator Charles Schumer and veteran reaganite Paul Craig Roberts had a startling piece earlier this week in the NY Times. They broached a subject that most run from- the exporting of a huge percentage of U.S. jobs.
We are concerned that the United States may be entering a new economic era in which American workers will face direct global competition at almost every job level — from the machinist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-face interaction is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid, equally skilled worker thousands of miles away. American jobs are being lost not to competition from foreign companies, but to multinational corporations, often with American roots, that are cutting costs by shifting operations to low-wage countries.
To call this a "jobless recovery" is inaccurate: lots of new jobs are being created, just not here in the United States.
In the past, we have supported free trade policies. But if the case for free trade is undermined by changes in the global economy, our policies should reflect the new realities. While some economists and elected officials suggest that all we need is a robust retraining effort for laid-off workers, we do not believe retraining alone is an answer, because almost the entire range of "knowledge jobs" can be done overseas. Likewise, we do not believe that offering tax incentives to companies that keep American jobs at home can compensate for the enormous wage differentials driving jobs offshore
America's trade agreements need to reflect the new reality. The first step is to begin an honest debate about where our economy really is and where we are headed as a nation. Old-fashioned protectionist measures are not the answer, but the new era will demand new thinking and new solutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/06SCHU.html
In their talk on C-Span this week, they were even bolder. Schumer reported that economists he talked with “had no good answers other than faith.” Roberts expressed the worry that the U.S. “will be a third world country in 20 years.”
Gads.
Our Distorted Tax System: By and For the Very Rich
Journalist David Cay Johnston was an informative subject on Terry Gross’s NPR show. Johnston explained how the IRS plays ‘trivial pursuit’ in targeting the income and deductions of the average taxpayer, while expending virtually no energy looking at the very wealthy and their corporations who organize their assets outside of government and manage to report little income. Essentially, he notes that most of the middle class will lose its measured tax cuts when the alternative minimum tax phases in later this decade while the super rich will continue to rake in huge sums/savings. Audio link: http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=01/07/2004
Taxes, part II- Taxes down, Fees Up
Governors often trumpet their tax cuts, then quietly institute “fees.” Romney wasn’t the first, nor the last. Now, Arnold has played the game. He loudly cancelled the car tax in California, but is now proposing a 10% increase for California students attending the state schools, up to a 40% increase for graduate students, and a cut in financial aid for “moderate” income students. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget8jan08,1,1792474.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Government tells employers how to avoid paying OT
That was a headline in the AP report (Leigh Strope) that reminded us that this Government certainly is not on the side of the worker.
The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.
The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms.
Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.
The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.
"We're not saying anybody should do any of this," said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/business/2337395
PetroPolitics:
A stunning 3-day conference just concluded in D.C. (a tad on C-Span), addressing “The extent to which the world's largest and arguably most destructive, industry influences and dictates policy and politics--particularly in the United States today.” This National Summit on Petropolitics summarized that ‘Oil is Greed, Oil is Dirty, Oil is Poverty, Oil is War, Oil is Fear, Oil is Addiction’.
Politicians and the American people know that oil is bad, but feel powerless to change things. Now more than ever, the barriers to a clean energy transition are political, not technical. Hybrid cars, greater energy efficiency, and wind power are economically viable technologies today; hydrogen-powered vehicles and solar energy have great potential to be competitive, if granted a fraction of the political support and subsidies Big Oil is routinely granted. And yet our politicians continue to use our tax money to subsidize Big Oil to the tune of billions of dollars every year. The first step in ending our collective addiction to oil is reducing oil's influence over our politicians and demanding political independence from Big Oil. http://www.petropolitics.org/agenda.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq: WMD- The Carnegie Report confirmed again that there was “systematic deception” in making the case for war. Colin Powell pathetically is still claiming that there were/are weapons, that “the game is still unfolding.”
The often excellent Barton Gellman of the Washington Post relays an interview with an Iraqi scientist who confirmed that Iraq had no WMDs. His headline: ”Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper: Since Gulf War, Non-conventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage” Again, there were “plans” to have weapons, on paper, but no weapons.
But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60340-2004Jan6?language=printer
Iraq’s Homeless:
The San Francisco Chronicle (Matthew B. Stannard) ran a startling piece on the degree of homelessness in Iraq – ‘Turmoil, neglect have millions homeless in Iraq…’ Seems like 1/3 to 1/2 of the country is homeless. Can that be?
Most of Iraq's problems are easy to see: shattered buildings, long lines for gas, bombs exploding in the streets. But one of its most critical challenges -- providing homes for those without them -- lurks in the shadows.
The issue has deep roots, going back at least 20 years into the regime of Saddam Hussein. Under his presidency, a mild housing shortage in 1980 became a serious problem in the 1990s and a full-blown crisis by 2000, according to the 2003 United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment…
Reliable numbers are almost impossible to come by, but the U.N./World Bank needs assessment says 1.4 million families fall into the category, a number Iraqi officials and the U.S.-led occupation authorities say is low. Some humanitarian groups believe the figure could be as high as 2.5 million….
With an average family size of five, the number commonly used here, the estimates extrapolate to between 7 million and more than 12.5 million Iraqis in need of homes -- a staggering figure for a nation of 25 million. sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/05/MNG2D43G851.DTL
The Wounded:
With 35 GIs wounded in one mortar attack, it was helpful to have NPR do a worthwhile, if not breakthrough piece on the underreporting of our seriously wounded (Wednesday’s All Things Considered). Unsurprisingly the correspondent was Danny Zwerdling, who’s had stellar reports on Bill Moyers’ NOW. Zwerdling found that we (naturally) have underestimated the number who have required evacuation for ‘serious injuries’- 9000, and looked at the difficulty determining this figure. Audio link: http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1587762
The Kurds: Talking autonomy, maybe civil disobedience. Bremer is frustrated. The Washington Post (Robin Wright, Alan Sipress) has some of the details. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1767-2004Jan8?language=printer
Forthcoming Books Haunt Bush. Al Hunt’s column in Friday’s Wall Street Journal:
The Bush White House is nervous about two forthcoming books by former insiders. Ex-Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill assails the president for a lack of interest in substantive policy in a book written by journalist Ron Suskind that will be trotted out with great fanfare on CBS's "60 Minutes" this weekend.
One Bush insider, however, ventures that no one really cares what a former Treasury secretary says. But, a book due out later by Richard Clarke, the White House's top terror expert under both President Clinton and President Bush, is another matter. Mr. Clarke is known to feel the Bush administration largely ignored the threat of terrorism and Osama bin Laden before 9-11, even after al Qaeda in June 2001 claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American soldiers.
-R
The New York Times (Elizabeth Becker and Edmund L. Andrews) had a front page story on the IMF’s considerable upset over the U.S. threat to the world-wide economic system.
With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund.
Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world.
The report warns that the United States' net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years — "an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country," according to the fund, that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.
The danger, according to the report, is that the United States' voracious appetite for borrowing could push up global interest rates and thus slow global investment and economic growth. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08FUND.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
The Economic Future: We know this Administration has no answers. Does anyone?
NY senator Charles Schumer and veteran reaganite Paul Craig Roberts had a startling piece earlier this week in the NY Times. They broached a subject that most run from- the exporting of a huge percentage of U.S. jobs.
We are concerned that the United States may be entering a new economic era in which American workers will face direct global competition at almost every job level — from the machinist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-face interaction is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid, equally skilled worker thousands of miles away. American jobs are being lost not to competition from foreign companies, but to multinational corporations, often with American roots, that are cutting costs by shifting operations to low-wage countries.
To call this a "jobless recovery" is inaccurate: lots of new jobs are being created, just not here in the United States.
In the past, we have supported free trade policies. But if the case for free trade is undermined by changes in the global economy, our policies should reflect the new realities. While some economists and elected officials suggest that all we need is a robust retraining effort for laid-off workers, we do not believe retraining alone is an answer, because almost the entire range of "knowledge jobs" can be done overseas. Likewise, we do not believe that offering tax incentives to companies that keep American jobs at home can compensate for the enormous wage differentials driving jobs offshore
America's trade agreements need to reflect the new reality. The first step is to begin an honest debate about where our economy really is and where we are headed as a nation. Old-fashioned protectionist measures are not the answer, but the new era will demand new thinking and new solutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/06SCHU.html
In their talk on C-Span this week, they were even bolder. Schumer reported that economists he talked with “had no good answers other than faith.” Roberts expressed the worry that the U.S. “will be a third world country in 20 years.”
Gads.
Our Distorted Tax System: By and For the Very Rich
Journalist David Cay Johnston was an informative subject on Terry Gross’s NPR show. Johnston explained how the IRS plays ‘trivial pursuit’ in targeting the income and deductions of the average taxpayer, while expending virtually no energy looking at the very wealthy and their corporations who organize their assets outside of government and manage to report little income. Essentially, he notes that most of the middle class will lose its measured tax cuts when the alternative minimum tax phases in later this decade while the super rich will continue to rake in huge sums/savings. Audio link: http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=01/07/2004
Taxes, part II- Taxes down, Fees Up
Governors often trumpet their tax cuts, then quietly institute “fees.” Romney wasn’t the first, nor the last. Now, Arnold has played the game. He loudly cancelled the car tax in California, but is now proposing a 10% increase for California students attending the state schools, up to a 40% increase for graduate students, and a cut in financial aid for “moderate” income students. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget8jan08,1,1792474.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Government tells employers how to avoid paying OT
That was a headline in the AP report (Leigh Strope) that reminded us that this Government certainly is not on the side of the worker.
The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.
The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms.
Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.
The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.
"We're not saying anybody should do any of this," said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/business/2337395
PetroPolitics:
A stunning 3-day conference just concluded in D.C. (a tad on C-Span), addressing “The extent to which the world's largest and arguably most destructive, industry influences and dictates policy and politics--particularly in the United States today.” This National Summit on Petropolitics summarized that ‘Oil is Greed, Oil is Dirty, Oil is Poverty, Oil is War, Oil is Fear, Oil is Addiction’.
Politicians and the American people know that oil is bad, but feel powerless to change things. Now more than ever, the barriers to a clean energy transition are political, not technical. Hybrid cars, greater energy efficiency, and wind power are economically viable technologies today; hydrogen-powered vehicles and solar energy have great potential to be competitive, if granted a fraction of the political support and subsidies Big Oil is routinely granted. And yet our politicians continue to use our tax money to subsidize Big Oil to the tune of billions of dollars every year. The first step in ending our collective addiction to oil is reducing oil's influence over our politicians and demanding political independence from Big Oil. http://www.petropolitics.org/agenda.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq: WMD- The Carnegie Report confirmed again that there was “systematic deception” in making the case for war. Colin Powell pathetically is still claiming that there were/are weapons, that “the game is still unfolding.”
The often excellent Barton Gellman of the Washington Post relays an interview with an Iraqi scientist who confirmed that Iraq had no WMDs. His headline: ”Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper: Since Gulf War, Non-conventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage” Again, there were “plans” to have weapons, on paper, but no weapons.
But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60340-2004Jan6?language=printer
Iraq’s Homeless:
The San Francisco Chronicle (Matthew B. Stannard) ran a startling piece on the degree of homelessness in Iraq – ‘Turmoil, neglect have millions homeless in Iraq…’ Seems like 1/3 to 1/2 of the country is homeless. Can that be?
Most of Iraq's problems are easy to see: shattered buildings, long lines for gas, bombs exploding in the streets. But one of its most critical challenges -- providing homes for those without them -- lurks in the shadows.
The issue has deep roots, going back at least 20 years into the regime of Saddam Hussein. Under his presidency, a mild housing shortage in 1980 became a serious problem in the 1990s and a full-blown crisis by 2000, according to the 2003 United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment…
Reliable numbers are almost impossible to come by, but the U.N./World Bank needs assessment says 1.4 million families fall into the category, a number Iraqi officials and the U.S.-led occupation authorities say is low. Some humanitarian groups believe the figure could be as high as 2.5 million….
With an average family size of five, the number commonly used here, the estimates extrapolate to between 7 million and more than 12.5 million Iraqis in need of homes -- a staggering figure for a nation of 25 million. sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/05/MNG2D43G851.DTL
The Wounded:
With 35 GIs wounded in one mortar attack, it was helpful to have NPR do a worthwhile, if not breakthrough piece on the underreporting of our seriously wounded (Wednesday’s All Things Considered). Unsurprisingly the correspondent was Danny Zwerdling, who’s had stellar reports on Bill Moyers’ NOW. Zwerdling found that we (naturally) have underestimated the number who have required evacuation for ‘serious injuries’- 9000, and looked at the difficulty determining this figure. Audio link: http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1587762
The Kurds: Talking autonomy, maybe civil disobedience. Bremer is frustrated. The Washington Post (Robin Wright, Alan Sipress) has some of the details. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1767-2004Jan8?language=printer
Forthcoming Books Haunt Bush. Al Hunt’s column in Friday’s Wall Street Journal:
The Bush White House is nervous about two forthcoming books by former insiders. Ex-Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill assails the president for a lack of interest in substantive policy in a book written by journalist Ron Suskind that will be trotted out with great fanfare on CBS's "60 Minutes" this weekend.
One Bush insider, however, ventures that no one really cares what a former Treasury secretary says. But, a book due out later by Richard Clarke, the White House's top terror expert under both President Clinton and President Bush, is another matter. Mr. Clarke is known to feel the Bush administration largely ignored the threat of terrorism and Osama bin Laden before 9-11, even after al Qaeda in June 2001 claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American soldiers.
-R
The U.S. Economy: The International Monetary Fund Speaks Out
The New York Times (Elizabeth Becker and Edmund L. Andrews) had a front page story on the IMF’s considerable upset over the U.S. threat to the world-wide economic system.
With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund.
Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world.
The report warns that the United States' net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years — "an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country," according to the fund, that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.
The danger, according to the report, is that the United States' voracious appetite for borrowing could push up global interest rates and thus slow global investment and economic growth. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08FUND.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
The Economic Future: We know this Administration has no answers. Does anyone?
NY senator Charles Schumer and veteran reaganite Paul Craig Roberts had a startling piece earlier this week in the NY Times. They broached a subject that most run from- the exporting of a huge percentage of U.S. jobs.
We are concerned that the United States may be entering a new economic era in which American workers will face direct global competition at almost every job level — from the machinist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-face interaction is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid, equally skilled worker thousands of miles away. American jobs are being lost not to competition from foreign companies, but to multinational corporations, often with American roots, that are cutting costs by shifting operations to low-wage countries.
To call this a "jobless recovery" is inaccurate: lots of new jobs are being created, just not here in the United States.
In the past, we have supported free trade policies. But if the case for free trade is undermined by changes in the global economy, our policies should reflect the new realities. While some economists and elected officials suggest that all we need is a robust retraining effort for laid-off workers, we do not believe retraining alone is an answer, because almost the entire range of "knowledge jobs" can be done overseas. Likewise, we do not believe that offering tax incentives to companies that keep American jobs at home can compensate for the enormous wage differentials driving jobs offshore
America's trade agreements need to reflect the new reality. The first step is to begin an honest debate about where our economy really is and where we are headed as a nation. Old-fashioned protectionist measures are not the answer, but the new era will demand new thinking and new solutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/06SCHU.html
In their talk on C-Span this week, they were even bolder. Schumer reported that economists he talked with “had no good answers other than faith.” Roberts expressed the worry that the U.S. “will be a third world country in 20 years.”
Gads.
Our Distorted Tax System: By and For the Very Rich
Journalist David Cay Johnston was an informative subject on Terry Gross’s NPR show. Johnston explained how the IRS plays ‘trivial pursuit’ in targeting the income and deductions of the average taxpayer, while expending virtually no energy looking at the very wealthy and their corporations who organize their assets outside of government and manage to report little income. Essentially, he notes that most of the middle class will lose its measured tax cuts when the alternative minimum tax phases in later this decade while the super rich will continue to rake in huge sums/savings. Audio link: http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=01/07/2004
Taxes, part II- Taxes down, Fees Up
Governors often trumpet their tax cuts, then quietly institute “fees.” Romney wasn’t the first, nor the last. Now, Arnold has played the game. He loudly cancelled the car tax in California, but is now proposing a 10% increase for California students attending the state schools, up to a 40% increase for graduate students, and a cut in financial aid for “moderate” income students. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget8jan08,1,1792474.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Government tells employers how to avoid paying OT That was a headline in the AP report (Leigh Strope) that reminded us that this Government certainly is not on the side of the worker.
The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.
The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms.
Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.
The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.
"We're not saying anybody should do any of this," said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/business/2337395
PetroPolitics:
A stunning 3-day conference just concluded in D.C. (a tad on C-Span), addressing “The extent to which the world's largest and arguably most destructive, industry influences and dictates policy and politics--particularly in the United States today.” This National Summit on Petropolitics summarized that ‘Oil is Greed, Oil is Dirty, Oil is Poverty, Oil is War, Oil is Fear, Oil is Addiction’.
Politicians and the American people know that oil is bad, but feel powerless to change things. Now more than ever, the barriers to a clean energy transition are political, not technical. Hybrid cars, greater energy efficiency, and wind power are economically viable technologies today; hydrogen-powered vehicles and solar energy have great potential to be competitive, if granted a fraction of the political support and subsidies Big Oil is routinely granted. And yet our politicians continue to use our tax money to subsidize Big Oil to the tune of billions of dollars every year. The first step in ending our collective addiction to oil is reducing oil's influence over our politicians and demanding political independence from Big Oil. http://www.petropolitics.org/agenda.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq: WMD- The Carnegie Report confirmed again that there was “systematic deception” in making the case for war. Colin Powell pathetically is still claiming that there were/are weapons, that “the game is still unfolding.”
The often excellent Barton Gellman of the Washington Post relays an interview with an Iraqi scientist who confirmed that Iraq had no WMDs. His headline: ”Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper: Since Gulf War, Non-conventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage” Again, there were “plans” to have weapons, on paper, but no weapons.
But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60340-2004Jan6?language=printer
Iraq’s Homeless:
The San Francisco Chronicle (Matthew B. Stannard) ran a startling piece on the degree of homelessness in Iraq – ‘Turmoil, neglect have millions homeless in Iraq…’ Seems like 1/3 to 1/2 of the country is homeless. Can that be?
Most of Iraq's problems are easy to see: shattered buildings, long lines for gas, bombs exploding in the streets. But one of its most critical challenges -- providing homes for those without them -- lurks in the shadows.
The issue has deep roots, going back at least 20 years into the regime of Saddam Hussein. Under his presidency, a mild housing shortage in 1980 became a serious problem in the 1990s and a full-blown crisis by 2000, according to the 2003 United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment…
Reliable numbers are almost impossible to come by, but the U.N./World Bank needs assessment says 1.4 million families fall into the category, a number Iraqi officials and the U.S.-led occupation authorities say is low. Some humanitarian groups believe the figure could be as high as 2.5 million….
With an average family size of five, the number commonly used here, the estimates extrapolate to between 7 million and more than 12.5 million Iraqis in need of homes -- a staggering figure for a nation of 25 million. sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/05/MNG2D43G851.DTL
The Wounded:
With 35 GIs wounded in one mortar attack, it was helpful to have NPR do a worthwhile, if not breakthrough piece on the underreporting of our seriously wounded (Wednesday’s All Things Considered). Unsurprisingly the correspondent was Danny Zwerdling, who’s had stellar reports on Bill Moyers’ NOW. Zwerdling found that we (naturally) have underestimated the number who have required evacuation for ‘serious injuries’- 9000, and looked at the difficulty determining this figure. Audio link: http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1587762
The Kurds: Talking autonomy, maybe civil disobedience. Bremer is frustrated. The Washington Post (Robin Wright, Alan Sipress) has some of the details. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1767-2004Jan8?language=printer
Forthcoming Books Haunt Bush. Al Hunt’s column in Friday’s Wall Street Journal:
The Bush White House is nervous about two forthcoming books by former insiders. Ex-Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill assails the president for a lack of interest in substantive policy in a book written by journalist Ron Suskind that will be trotted out with great fanfare on CBS's "60 Minutes" this weekend.
One Bush insider, however, ventures that no one really cares what a former Treasury secretary says. But, a book due out later by Richard Clarke, the White House's top terror expert under both President Clinton and President Bush, is another matter. Mr. Clarke is known to feel the Bush administration largely ignored the threat of terrorism and Osama bin Laden before 9-11, even after al Qaeda in June 2001 claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American soldiers.
-R
The New York Times (Elizabeth Becker and Edmund L. Andrews) had a front page story on the IMF’s considerable upset over the U.S. threat to the world-wide economic system.
With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund.
Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world.
The report warns that the United States' net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years — "an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country," according to the fund, that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.
The danger, according to the report, is that the United States' voracious appetite for borrowing could push up global interest rates and thus slow global investment and economic growth. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08FUND.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
The Economic Future: We know this Administration has no answers. Does anyone?
NY senator Charles Schumer and veteran reaganite Paul Craig Roberts had a startling piece earlier this week in the NY Times. They broached a subject that most run from- the exporting of a huge percentage of U.S. jobs.
We are concerned that the United States may be entering a new economic era in which American workers will face direct global competition at almost every job level — from the machinist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-face interaction is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid, equally skilled worker thousands of miles away. American jobs are being lost not to competition from foreign companies, but to multinational corporations, often with American roots, that are cutting costs by shifting operations to low-wage countries.
To call this a "jobless recovery" is inaccurate: lots of new jobs are being created, just not here in the United States.
In the past, we have supported free trade policies. But if the case for free trade is undermined by changes in the global economy, our policies should reflect the new realities. While some economists and elected officials suggest that all we need is a robust retraining effort for laid-off workers, we do not believe retraining alone is an answer, because almost the entire range of "knowledge jobs" can be done overseas. Likewise, we do not believe that offering tax incentives to companies that keep American jobs at home can compensate for the enormous wage differentials driving jobs offshore
America's trade agreements need to reflect the new reality. The first step is to begin an honest debate about where our economy really is and where we are headed as a nation. Old-fashioned protectionist measures are not the answer, but the new era will demand new thinking and new solutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/06SCHU.html
In their talk on C-Span this week, they were even bolder. Schumer reported that economists he talked with “had no good answers other than faith.” Roberts expressed the worry that the U.S. “will be a third world country in 20 years.”
Gads.
Our Distorted Tax System: By and For the Very Rich
Journalist David Cay Johnston was an informative subject on Terry Gross’s NPR show. Johnston explained how the IRS plays ‘trivial pursuit’ in targeting the income and deductions of the average taxpayer, while expending virtually no energy looking at the very wealthy and their corporations who organize their assets outside of government and manage to report little income. Essentially, he notes that most of the middle class will lose its measured tax cuts when the alternative minimum tax phases in later this decade while the super rich will continue to rake in huge sums/savings. Audio link: http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=01/07/2004
Taxes, part II- Taxes down, Fees Up
Governors often trumpet their tax cuts, then quietly institute “fees.” Romney wasn’t the first, nor the last. Now, Arnold has played the game. He loudly cancelled the car tax in California, but is now proposing a 10% increase for California students attending the state schools, up to a 40% increase for graduate students, and a cut in financial aid for “moderate” income students. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget8jan08,1,1792474.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Government tells employers how to avoid paying OT That was a headline in the AP report (Leigh Strope) that reminded us that this Government certainly is not on the side of the worker.
The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.
The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms.
Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.
The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.
"We're not saying anybody should do any of this," said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/business/2337395
PetroPolitics:
A stunning 3-day conference just concluded in D.C. (a tad on C-Span), addressing “The extent to which the world's largest and arguably most destructive, industry influences and dictates policy and politics--particularly in the United States today.” This National Summit on Petropolitics summarized that ‘Oil is Greed, Oil is Dirty, Oil is Poverty, Oil is War, Oil is Fear, Oil is Addiction’.
Politicians and the American people know that oil is bad, but feel powerless to change things. Now more than ever, the barriers to a clean energy transition are political, not technical. Hybrid cars, greater energy efficiency, and wind power are economically viable technologies today; hydrogen-powered vehicles and solar energy have great potential to be competitive, if granted a fraction of the political support and subsidies Big Oil is routinely granted. And yet our politicians continue to use our tax money to subsidize Big Oil to the tune of billions of dollars every year. The first step in ending our collective addiction to oil is reducing oil's influence over our politicians and demanding political independence from Big Oil. http://www.petropolitics.org/agenda.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq: WMD- The Carnegie Report confirmed again that there was “systematic deception” in making the case for war. Colin Powell pathetically is still claiming that there were/are weapons, that “the game is still unfolding.”
The often excellent Barton Gellman of the Washington Post relays an interview with an Iraqi scientist who confirmed that Iraq had no WMDs. His headline: ”Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper: Since Gulf War, Non-conventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage” Again, there were “plans” to have weapons, on paper, but no weapons.
But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60340-2004Jan6?language=printer
Iraq’s Homeless:
The San Francisco Chronicle (Matthew B. Stannard) ran a startling piece on the degree of homelessness in Iraq – ‘Turmoil, neglect have millions homeless in Iraq…’ Seems like 1/3 to 1/2 of the country is homeless. Can that be?
Most of Iraq's problems are easy to see: shattered buildings, long lines for gas, bombs exploding in the streets. But one of its most critical challenges -- providing homes for those without them -- lurks in the shadows.
The issue has deep roots, going back at least 20 years into the regime of Saddam Hussein. Under his presidency, a mild housing shortage in 1980 became a serious problem in the 1990s and a full-blown crisis by 2000, according to the 2003 United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment…
Reliable numbers are almost impossible to come by, but the U.N./World Bank needs assessment says 1.4 million families fall into the category, a number Iraqi officials and the U.S.-led occupation authorities say is low. Some humanitarian groups believe the figure could be as high as 2.5 million….
With an average family size of five, the number commonly used here, the estimates extrapolate to between 7 million and more than 12.5 million Iraqis in need of homes -- a staggering figure for a nation of 25 million. sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/05/MNG2D43G851.DTL
The Wounded:
With 35 GIs wounded in one mortar attack, it was helpful to have NPR do a worthwhile, if not breakthrough piece on the underreporting of our seriously wounded (Wednesday’s All Things Considered). Unsurprisingly the correspondent was Danny Zwerdling, who’s had stellar reports on Bill Moyers’ NOW. Zwerdling found that we (naturally) have underestimated the number who have required evacuation for ‘serious injuries’- 9000, and looked at the difficulty determining this figure. Audio link: http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1587762
The Kurds: Talking autonomy, maybe civil disobedience. Bremer is frustrated. The Washington Post (Robin Wright, Alan Sipress) has some of the details. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1767-2004Jan8?language=printer
Forthcoming Books Haunt Bush. Al Hunt’s column in Friday’s Wall Street Journal:
The Bush White House is nervous about two forthcoming books by former insiders. Ex-Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill assails the president for a lack of interest in substantive policy in a book written by journalist Ron Suskind that will be trotted out with great fanfare on CBS's "60 Minutes" this weekend.
One Bush insider, however, ventures that no one really cares what a former Treasury secretary says. But, a book due out later by Richard Clarke, the White House's top terror expert under both President Clinton and President Bush, is another matter. Mr. Clarke is known to feel the Bush administration largely ignored the threat of terrorism and Osama bin Laden before 9-11, even after al Qaeda in June 2001 claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American soldiers.
-R
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
What’s Happening, Iraq: General Sanchez says attacks are down- from 40 to approximately half that since Saddam’s capture. [This is the first admission of attacks being at that high a rate.] As the p.r. gets thicker, it’s hard to know what’s believable.
For instance, reports from local Iraqis or media of wounded and/or killed troops being picked up by helicopters clash with official statements which downplay or deny the incidents. One incident brought forth these comments as to “the usual conflict” between those “who witnessed the scene during the US cleanup and medical evacuations, and the figures given by CENTCOM and Combined Joint Task Force 7.”
The US military in Iraq has been under constant scrutiny for under-reporting US casualty figures from attacks throughout Iraq. The effect of this is to give the impression to both the media and people of Iraq, as well as people in the US that the degree of loss of life by US military personnel in Iraq is lower than it may actually be.
Thus, the sense of urgency the US military is faced with in Iraq isn't being conveyed to the public. For example, I just moments ago returned from a CIPIC press conference by General Kimmit where he stated there are 25 attacks per day on coalition forces. http://electroniciraq.net/news/1306.shtml
Incompetence:
Keep in mind that there was endless congressional testimony as to the likely conditions of postwar Iraq, the products of think tanks of all political persuasions. All of these reports agreed that an occupation / reconstruction would be protracted and expensive, and that goodwill toward the U.S. would be transient. So it was good to have James Fallows guest on NPR’s “On Point” and term the Occupation a fiasco comparable to the Bay of Pigs invasion. http://www.onpointradio.org/
Brainwashing:
That was the term that the Massachusetts’ governor’s father made in 1968 after he visited Vietnam. George Romney was convinced of the rightness of the Cause and, then had the common sense, but political foolhardiness, to confess that he realized to his having been “brainwashed”. We wish congressional visitors to Iraq would have such a reflective capacity!
From the Christian Science Monitor (Gail Russell Chaddock)
Unlike during Vietnam, when congressional visits often fueled lawmakers' opposition to the war, these tours of Iraq are tending, if anything, to blunt antiwar sentiment. In many cases, they are solidifying support in Congress for the military effort…
But so far, no members of Congress are coming back saying that the US should pull out of Iraq. Many going in with doubts return to vote with the White House. After a two-day visit in October, a delegation of GOP moderates voted to support the president on a key vote to send $20 billion to Iraq as a grant, rather than a loan. "One [US] general told us that money is ammunition. US troops will be a lot more secure when Iraqis have jobs," said Rep. Amo Houghton (R ) of New York, one of six House Republicans to vote in 2002 against the use of force in Iraq.
But critics say these highly restricted trips reflect a pattern of inadequate congressional oversight since the 2002 vote to authorize use of force in Iraq. "Members of Congress [in Iraq] are being led and briefed by the very people they are investigating, then they are whisked home. That's not oversight. It just underscores the total absence of critical thought," says Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and former Clinton administration official.http://www.csmonitortreeless.com?dmc=E35W191
9/11- A Reminder:
William Rivers Pitt, at truthout.org:
George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.
Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/010504A.shtml
Campaign, 2004 and the Media:
I was able to catch snippets of an Iowa debate and was more than mildly annoyed to read this description in the NY Times (David M. Halbfinger)
For sheer comedic appeal, the Democratic presidential debate on Sunday was short a Sharpton, though it had its moments. As when Howard Dean offhandedly promised to balance the budget "in the sixth or seventh year of my administration."
Someone howled, and the audience, noticeably short of Dean partisans, broke up at the presumptuousness. Dr. Dean seemed not to realize that he was the butt of the joke, and even his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, later said he thought the crowd was laughing with him.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/politics/campaigns/05IOWA.html
Gads. This is one heck of an opinionated take on what occurred. Dean was commenting as to how long it would take to re-balance the budget after the Bush profligacy. He didn’t handle it well by not clarifying the comment, perhaps stubbornly clinging to how it indeed made sense. But, there was no ‘butt of a joke”, there was no “sheer comedy.” Recalling 2000, no journalist commented as to the stumbling performances of Bush, no one opined in his column that Bush had his customary deer-in-the-headlights glazed look, etc.
The media will hopefully change when there is A Democratic candidate and A Republican candidate. Of course, our raising our voices makes that more possible.
Meanwhile, harkening back to my November 23rd blog, I commented on the NY Times editorial which recommend that
The Democrats need to find ways to attack Mr. Bush's stewardship without attacking his character; most Americans remember the president's firm resolve after 9/11 with admiration and do not want those memories challenged. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/opinion/23SUN1.html?ex=1073365200&en=44f4b5575973adc4&ei=5070
Really! Mustn’t challenge those distortions! Hopefully Dean (or whomever) will do so in a systematic, direct, albeit ‘gentle’ manner.
Dean Vulnerability:
He’s backed himself into a temporary corner with his comments on taxes. The Annenberg Public Policy Center analyzed Dean’s proposal repeal of the Bush tax cuts and concluded that more conservative critics are right, that Dean’s stand will play badly with the middle class.
An anti-tax group started running an attack ad Thursday Dec. 4 in Iowa and New Hampshire saying "Howard Dean says he'll raise taxes on the average family by more than nineteen hundred dollars a year," and suggesting he's in the mold of Democratic presidential losers including George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis.
Dean says he's responding with an ad of his own saying the conservative, anti-tax Club for Growth "falsely" attacks him.
But independent, nonpartisan calculations show that Dean's call to repeal the Bush tax cuts really would mean big tax increases, often exceeding $1,000 even for middle-income families. The increases would be especially severe for those with children under age 17.http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=113m
Clark: Moving up?; Tax Plan
Clark has caught Kerry in New Hampshire. It could make him the clear #2, the Dean Alternative. He has also put out his tax plan which, at first glance, is a good start. While revenue neutral, it is headed in a reasonable direction, as it begins to target the very wealthy. It eliminates federal income tax for all families with incomes under $50,000, reduces taxes for all families with incomes under $100,000, and increases the tax rate on income over $1 million per year by 5 percentage points. http://www.clark04.com/issues/familiesfirst/
Bush the Moderate
Here comes the predictable ‘moving to the center’. Notice that the tone has quieted, the gentle words for Libya. We’re about to see the emergence of Bush as exemplifying “peace through strength,” or, as the Guardian (Suzanne Goldenberg Simon Tisdall and Nicholas Watt) terms him, the “President for Peace.”
The White House has retreated from its doctrine of regime change and pre-emptive military action and is returning to traditional diplomacy in an effort to repackage George Bush as a president for peace…Analysts in Washington say the Bush administration has little choice if it is to fulfill a highly ambitious election year agenda that seeks to disarm "rogue states" such as North Korea while advancing towards a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, encouraging conflict resolution in Sudan, and achieving credible transformations in Afghanistan and Iraq. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1115313,00.html
Voting Machine Concern:
The fear has been that touch-screen voting will become the rule, and such machines are both easily tampered with and leave no paper trail and are thus impossible to check in case of irregularities and/or breakdown. From the Washington Times (Jim McElhatton)
A request that Maryland's new touch-screen voting network include printouts might have come too late because state officials already have signed a $55.6 million contract that includes no such backup system.
"That was not part of the contract price we negotiated with Maryland," said Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems Inc., a Diebold subsidiary. "The voter verification [paper trail] was not discussed." http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20040104-105438-5443r.htm
New Books:
Exemplary Conservative Kevin Phillips is the author of American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. A sample:
“Few have looked at the facts of the family's rise, but just as important, commentators have neglected the thread -- not the mere occasion -- of special interests, biases, scandals (especially those related to arms dealing), and blatant business cronyism. The evidence that accumulates over four generations [of the Bush family dynasty] is really quite damning.
Three generations of immersion in the culture of secrecy...deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks."
Eric Alterman, Mark Green: The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America. Sounds very thoughtful , a less populist, more scholarly work than the Moore and Franken books (due out in February).
-R
For instance, reports from local Iraqis or media of wounded and/or killed troops being picked up by helicopters clash with official statements which downplay or deny the incidents. One incident brought forth these comments as to “the usual conflict” between those “who witnessed the scene during the US cleanup and medical evacuations, and the figures given by CENTCOM and Combined Joint Task Force 7.”
The US military in Iraq has been under constant scrutiny for under-reporting US casualty figures from attacks throughout Iraq. The effect of this is to give the impression to both the media and people of Iraq, as well as people in the US that the degree of loss of life by US military personnel in Iraq is lower than it may actually be.
Thus, the sense of urgency the US military is faced with in Iraq isn't being conveyed to the public. For example, I just moments ago returned from a CIPIC press conference by General Kimmit where he stated there are 25 attacks per day on coalition forces. http://electroniciraq.net/news/1306.shtml
Incompetence:
Keep in mind that there was endless congressional testimony as to the likely conditions of postwar Iraq, the products of think tanks of all political persuasions. All of these reports agreed that an occupation / reconstruction would be protracted and expensive, and that goodwill toward the U.S. would be transient. So it was good to have James Fallows guest on NPR’s “On Point” and term the Occupation a fiasco comparable to the Bay of Pigs invasion. http://www.onpointradio.org/
Brainwashing:
That was the term that the Massachusetts’ governor’s father made in 1968 after he visited Vietnam. George Romney was convinced of the rightness of the Cause and, then had the common sense, but political foolhardiness, to confess that he realized to his having been “brainwashed”. We wish congressional visitors to Iraq would have such a reflective capacity!
From the Christian Science Monitor (Gail Russell Chaddock)
Unlike during Vietnam, when congressional visits often fueled lawmakers' opposition to the war, these tours of Iraq are tending, if anything, to blunt antiwar sentiment. In many cases, they are solidifying support in Congress for the military effort…
But so far, no members of Congress are coming back saying that the US should pull out of Iraq. Many going in with doubts return to vote with the White House. After a two-day visit in October, a delegation of GOP moderates voted to support the president on a key vote to send $20 billion to Iraq as a grant, rather than a loan. "One [US] general told us that money is ammunition. US troops will be a lot more secure when Iraqis have jobs," said Rep. Amo Houghton (R ) of New York, one of six House Republicans to vote in 2002 against the use of force in Iraq.
But critics say these highly restricted trips reflect a pattern of inadequate congressional oversight since the 2002 vote to authorize use of force in Iraq. "Members of Congress [in Iraq] are being led and briefed by the very people they are investigating, then they are whisked home. That's not oversight. It just underscores the total absence of critical thought," says Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and former Clinton administration official.http://www.csmonitortreeless.com?dmc=E35W191
9/11- A Reminder:
William Rivers Pitt, at truthout.org:
George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.
Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/010504A.shtml
Campaign, 2004 and the Media:
I was able to catch snippets of an Iowa debate and was more than mildly annoyed to read this description in the NY Times (David M. Halbfinger)
For sheer comedic appeal, the Democratic presidential debate on Sunday was short a Sharpton, though it had its moments. As when Howard Dean offhandedly promised to balance the budget "in the sixth or seventh year of my administration."
Someone howled, and the audience, noticeably short of Dean partisans, broke up at the presumptuousness. Dr. Dean seemed not to realize that he was the butt of the joke, and even his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, later said he thought the crowd was laughing with him.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/politics/campaigns/05IOWA.html
Gads. This is one heck of an opinionated take on what occurred. Dean was commenting as to how long it would take to re-balance the budget after the Bush profligacy. He didn’t handle it well by not clarifying the comment, perhaps stubbornly clinging to how it indeed made sense. But, there was no ‘butt of a joke”, there was no “sheer comedy.” Recalling 2000, no journalist commented as to the stumbling performances of Bush, no one opined in his column that Bush had his customary deer-in-the-headlights glazed look, etc.
The media will hopefully change when there is A Democratic candidate and A Republican candidate. Of course, our raising our voices makes that more possible.
Meanwhile, harkening back to my November 23rd blog, I commented on the NY Times editorial which recommend that
The Democrats need to find ways to attack Mr. Bush's stewardship without attacking his character; most Americans remember the president's firm resolve after 9/11 with admiration and do not want those memories challenged. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/opinion/23SUN1.html?ex=1073365200&en=44f4b5575973adc4&ei=5070
Really! Mustn’t challenge those distortions! Hopefully Dean (or whomever) will do so in a systematic, direct, albeit ‘gentle’ manner.
Dean Vulnerability:
He’s backed himself into a temporary corner with his comments on taxes. The Annenberg Public Policy Center analyzed Dean’s proposal repeal of the Bush tax cuts and concluded that more conservative critics are right, that Dean’s stand will play badly with the middle class.
An anti-tax group started running an attack ad Thursday Dec. 4 in Iowa and New Hampshire saying "Howard Dean says he'll raise taxes on the average family by more than nineteen hundred dollars a year," and suggesting he's in the mold of Democratic presidential losers including George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis.
Dean says he's responding with an ad of his own saying the conservative, anti-tax Club for Growth "falsely" attacks him.
But independent, nonpartisan calculations show that Dean's call to repeal the Bush tax cuts really would mean big tax increases, often exceeding $1,000 even for middle-income families. The increases would be especially severe for those with children under age 17.http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=113m
Clark: Moving up?; Tax Plan
Clark has caught Kerry in New Hampshire. It could make him the clear #2, the Dean Alternative. He has also put out his tax plan which, at first glance, is a good start. While revenue neutral, it is headed in a reasonable direction, as it begins to target the very wealthy. It eliminates federal income tax for all families with incomes under $50,000, reduces taxes for all families with incomes under $100,000, and increases the tax rate on income over $1 million per year by 5 percentage points. http://www.clark04.com/issues/familiesfirst/
Bush the Moderate
Here comes the predictable ‘moving to the center’. Notice that the tone has quieted, the gentle words for Libya. We’re about to see the emergence of Bush as exemplifying “peace through strength,” or, as the Guardian (Suzanne Goldenberg Simon Tisdall and Nicholas Watt) terms him, the “President for Peace.”
The White House has retreated from its doctrine of regime change and pre-emptive military action and is returning to traditional diplomacy in an effort to repackage George Bush as a president for peace…Analysts in Washington say the Bush administration has little choice if it is to fulfill a highly ambitious election year agenda that seeks to disarm "rogue states" such as North Korea while advancing towards a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, encouraging conflict resolution in Sudan, and achieving credible transformations in Afghanistan and Iraq. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1115313,00.html
Voting Machine Concern:
The fear has been that touch-screen voting will become the rule, and such machines are both easily tampered with and leave no paper trail and are thus impossible to check in case of irregularities and/or breakdown. From the Washington Times (Jim McElhatton)
A request that Maryland's new touch-screen voting network include printouts might have come too late because state officials already have signed a $55.6 million contract that includes no such backup system.
"That was not part of the contract price we negotiated with Maryland," said Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems Inc., a Diebold subsidiary. "The voter verification [paper trail] was not discussed." http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20040104-105438-5443r.htm
New Books:
Exemplary Conservative Kevin Phillips is the author of American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. A sample:
“Few have looked at the facts of the family's rise, but just as important, commentators have neglected the thread -- not the mere occasion -- of special interests, biases, scandals (especially those related to arms dealing), and blatant business cronyism. The evidence that accumulates over four generations [of the Bush family dynasty] is really quite damning.
Three generations of immersion in the culture of secrecy...deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks."
Eric Alterman, Mark Green: The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America. Sounds very thoughtful , a less populist, more scholarly work than the Moore and Franken books (due out in February).
-R
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Plame Scandal: So let's stop the charade. It's clear that from the very beginning the folks at the White House have known who did it. And the Bush Group could’ve exposed the perpetrator, but they, of course, see nothing wrong in what occurred.
The Ashcroft retreat? It’s probably due to “progress” being made, that the investigation is getting close to someone (Rove, hopefully) who is close to Ashcroft.
The Democrats? Should they not be all over this? As soon as the media stopped reporting it as news, they gave it up. Now, they’ve only applauded Ashcroft removing himself, and they certainly avoid relevant words like “criminal” or “treasonous”.
The Repubs stay busy. As Mike Allen reports in the Washington Post,
The Justice Department investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity could conclude that administration officials disclosed the woman's name and occupation to the media but still committed no crime because they did not know she was an undercover operative, a legal expert said this week.
"It could be embarrassing but not illegal," said Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when Congress passed the law protecting the identities of undercover agents.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 specifies that the revelation is a crime only if the accused leaker knew the person was a covert agent. The July column by Robert D. Novak that touched off the investigation did not specify that Valerie Plame was working undercover, but said she was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." That raises the possibility that the senior administration officials he quoted did not know Plame's status. . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47860-2004Jan1.html
Keep in mind that this “Victoria Toensing” who is cited is a Republican operative, so this is spin, not an objective legal opinion. Another low mark for journalism…
Bush Budget Plans:
Today’s NY Times Robert Pear) on the floated cuts, right on page 1. It’s the typical taking from the disempowered, such as ill veterans and the working poor and hurting us in ways that don’t immediately impact the budget, such as biomedical research, job training. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/politics/04BUDG.html?ei=5062&en=67f8901a2ea8bd35&ex=1073797200&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position
More support for the Troops! The specific screwing of our veterans:
The Bush administration is considering dramatic increases in the fees military retirees pay for prescription drugs, a step that would roll back a benefit extended 33 months ago and risk alienating an important Republican constituency at the dawn of the 2004 campaign season.
Pentagon budget documents indicate that retirees may be asked to pay $10 -- up from $3 -- for each 90-day generic prescription filled by mail through Tricare, the military's health insurance program. Tricare's current $9 co-pay for a three-month supply of each brand-name drug would jump to $20.
The proposal also would impose charges for drugs the retirees now receive free at military hospitals and clinics. There would be a $10 fee for each generic prescription and a $20 charge for brand-name drugs dispensed at those facilities.
A Pentagon spokesman declined Wednesday to comment on the drug plan, calling it "pre-decisional." http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2331523
That Orange-Level Threat:
Unsettling…for the wrong reasons. No one has been arrested and it turns out that flights were cancelled because of, uh, errors. Some of the embarrassing details from the NY Times (Eric Lichtblau).
The Wall Street Journal Europe reports that Air France cancelled three flights over Christmas because the FBI gave French police six passengers names and information indicating they were linked to al Qaeda and were planning to hijack an Air France jet.
One of names listed as the head of a Tunisian-based terror group was a child. Another "terrorist" was a Welsh insurance agent while a third was an elderly Chinese woman who once ran a restaurant in Paris. The other three on the list were French citizens.
And officials have acknowledged that even now, they are uncertain whether they have succeeded in foiling a terrorist plot.
"I don't think we know yet, and we may never know," a senior administration official said.
And, the flight cancellations over the holidays of several of the British Airways flights had nothing to do with U.S. air security, but were the result of BA pilots refusing to fly with armed marshals on board. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/03/national/03TERR.html?ei=5062&en=9f681213929ea54d&ex=1073710800&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position
Speaking of Security…and Incompetence
The Energy Department is conducting a widespread review of security at America's nuclear weapons laboratories after reports of hundreds of missing keys, some of which could allow access to sensitive areas.
The review follows reports last summer that a government facility known by its World War II code name "Y-12" had reported "a number" of keys missing.
In fact, 200 keys were missing…
The Energy Department's Inspector General investigated Livermore and recently determined the lab "did not immediately recognize the significant security implications … did not report the security incidents within the required timeframes," and "did not immediately assess the potential security risks."
During the Inspector General's review, Livermore officials admitted five more master keys were missing, some for years. The Inspector General says it will cost $1.7 million dollars to replace 100,000 locks at Livermore alone. The lab claims it won't cost nearly that much. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/01/national/printable591068.shtml
Faith- Based Parks:
Held off on noting this, till now…
In a series of recent decisions, the National Park Service has approved the display of religious symbols and Bible verses, as well as the sale of creationist books giving a non-evolutionary explanation for the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders within national parks, according to documents released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Also, under pressure from conservative groups, the Park Service has agreed to edit the videotape that has been shown at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995 to remove any image of gay and abortion rights demonstrations that occurred at the memorial.
“The Park Service leadership now caters exclusively to conservative Christian fundamentalist groups,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “The Bush Administration appears to be sponsoring a program of Faith-Based Parks.” http://www.peer.org/press/415.html
Environment: Surprise! Bush Strategy Does Zip
As if we’re surprised. The Washington Post (Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin) has the details for all to see…and remember…and cite.
Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.
At the heart of the president's strategy is "Climate Leaders," a program that recruits the nation's industrial polluters to voluntarily devise ways to curb their emissions by 10 percent or more in the coming decade. Scientists believe these greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, are contributing to a troubling rise in the earth's temperature that could disrupt weather patterns and cause flooding.
Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with pollution problems -- 50 in all -- have joined Climate Leaders, and of the companies that have signed up, only 14 have set goals. Many of the companies that are volunteering say they did so either because reducing emissions makes good economic sense or because they were being nudged by state and federal regulators.
Industry groups, meanwhile, have crafted their own programs under a Bush administration initiative called "Climate VISION," but none of the programs requires individual companies to either enlist in the program or set goals for emission reductions.
Many of the companies with the worst pollution records have shunned the voluntary programs because even a voluntary commitment would necessitate costly cleanups or possibly could set the stage for future government regulation, according to industry insiders. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46212-2003Dec31.html
Taxes: How long has it been? A reminder: It’s been 221 days since the Republicans excluded millions of modest or low income families from the increased child tax credit- i.e. the ones who really needed it- while bestowing more tax breaks for those who didn’t need them, as in reducing the tax on stock dividends. No corrective action has been forthcoming. It’s good to keep this one in the public consciousness/domain, The ongoing count is maintained at http://www.dscc.org/
Class Warfare: Too many of “us” are defensive on this one, fearing that if we dare to say that the very wealthy have been overly rewarded in the last years/decades and must give it back we’ll be attacked for “class warfare.” Chuck Palson and I in our efforts for Fairness in Taxes for Everyone (FITE, www.fairnessintaxes.org ) encounter this one on too many occasions. Yet, we clarify/counter that the warfare has been long waged by the very wealthy for their individual pocketbooks and their corporations and we’re merely labeling it and saying they must give it back
It has been relieving to find very similar sentiments elsewhere, Rosie’s Place, the Service founded by Kip Tiernan, called for significantly raising taxes on the wealthy in their newsletter. And, (very) similar sentiments from the veteran blog Left I on the news.
"Class warfare" isn't a verbal construct, it's a fact. Saying that the rich are getting richer isn't "class warfare," and the fact the right wants to trivialize the matter by claiming so should simply be ignored as ludicrous. The real class warfare is being conducted not by the mouths of the left, but by the actions of the rich, whose corporations and politicians continue to accelerate the transfer of money to themselves from working people. This is a deadly serious issue, not a laughing matter. http://lefti.blogspot.com/2003_12_01_lefti_archive.html#107031358087661278
Pat Robertson announced that God has told him that Bush will triumph in a landslide. Now, there’s someone (Robertson) with credibility…
"The Lord has just blessed him… It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him." http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-elect/2004/jan/02/010207952.html
Democratic Candidates: Kerry keeps sinking…in every way; Kucinich, sterling in the debates, continues to demonstrate the sanity and feasibility of single payer health care and other progressive positions, if they’re coupled with the rolling back of the wasteful, regressive tax cuts. And, the Dean camp reassures that the CNN/Time poll found their candidate only 5 points behind the incumbent, that this compares favorably with Clinton trailing incumbent Bush, Sr. by 20 points in April, 1992. http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/002928.html
Jimmy Breslin on the Democats:
Howard Dean then said that he was old-fashioned and he didn't think you could judge or punish Osama bin Laden until you had a trial and found him guilty.
Suddenly, politicians and the news industry shouted, What are you talking about innocent until found guilty? How can this man Dean say that bin Laden deserves a trial? They said that this was a perfect illustration of Dean talking without thought. And completely un-American, too.
In 1945, they had the Nuremburg trials for Nazis who had killed tens and tens of millions, and had judges, witnesses, evidence and defense counsels. Just the other week, one of the Democratic candidates, Wesley Clark, testified in the Hague at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.
Yet Joseph Lieberman, who is a peripheral candidate now and thus a nasty little man, said that because he relies on the Constitution, Dean is a weakling who would melt in the face of George Bush. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/ny-nybres043610286jan04,0,3511525.column
-R
The Ashcroft retreat? It’s probably due to “progress” being made, that the investigation is getting close to someone (Rove, hopefully) who is close to Ashcroft.
The Democrats? Should they not be all over this? As soon as the media stopped reporting it as news, they gave it up. Now, they’ve only applauded Ashcroft removing himself, and they certainly avoid relevant words like “criminal” or “treasonous”.
The Repubs stay busy. As Mike Allen reports in the Washington Post,
The Justice Department investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity could conclude that administration officials disclosed the woman's name and occupation to the media but still committed no crime because they did not know she was an undercover operative, a legal expert said this week.
"It could be embarrassing but not illegal," said Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when Congress passed the law protecting the identities of undercover agents.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 specifies that the revelation is a crime only if the accused leaker knew the person was a covert agent. The July column by Robert D. Novak that touched off the investigation did not specify that Valerie Plame was working undercover, but said she was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." That raises the possibility that the senior administration officials he quoted did not know Plame's status. . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47860-2004Jan1.html
Keep in mind that this “Victoria Toensing” who is cited is a Republican operative, so this is spin, not an objective legal opinion. Another low mark for journalism…
Bush Budget Plans:
Today’s NY Times Robert Pear) on the floated cuts, right on page 1. It’s the typical taking from the disempowered, such as ill veterans and the working poor and hurting us in ways that don’t immediately impact the budget, such as biomedical research, job training. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/politics/04BUDG.html?ei=5062&en=67f8901a2ea8bd35&ex=1073797200&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position
More support for the Troops! The specific screwing of our veterans:
The Bush administration is considering dramatic increases in the fees military retirees pay for prescription drugs, a step that would roll back a benefit extended 33 months ago and risk alienating an important Republican constituency at the dawn of the 2004 campaign season.
Pentagon budget documents indicate that retirees may be asked to pay $10 -- up from $3 -- for each 90-day generic prescription filled by mail through Tricare, the military's health insurance program. Tricare's current $9 co-pay for a three-month supply of each brand-name drug would jump to $20.
The proposal also would impose charges for drugs the retirees now receive free at military hospitals and clinics. There would be a $10 fee for each generic prescription and a $20 charge for brand-name drugs dispensed at those facilities.
A Pentagon spokesman declined Wednesday to comment on the drug plan, calling it "pre-decisional." http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2331523
That Orange-Level Threat:
Unsettling…for the wrong reasons. No one has been arrested and it turns out that flights were cancelled because of, uh, errors. Some of the embarrassing details from the NY Times (Eric Lichtblau).
The Wall Street Journal Europe reports that Air France cancelled three flights over Christmas because the FBI gave French police six passengers names and information indicating they were linked to al Qaeda and were planning to hijack an Air France jet.
One of names listed as the head of a Tunisian-based terror group was a child. Another "terrorist" was a Welsh insurance agent while a third was an elderly Chinese woman who once ran a restaurant in Paris. The other three on the list were French citizens.
And officials have acknowledged that even now, they are uncertain whether they have succeeded in foiling a terrorist plot.
"I don't think we know yet, and we may never know," a senior administration official said.
And, the flight cancellations over the holidays of several of the British Airways flights had nothing to do with U.S. air security, but were the result of BA pilots refusing to fly with armed marshals on board. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/03/national/03TERR.html?ei=5062&en=9f681213929ea54d&ex=1073710800&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position
Speaking of Security…and Incompetence
The Energy Department is conducting a widespread review of security at America's nuclear weapons laboratories after reports of hundreds of missing keys, some of which could allow access to sensitive areas.
The review follows reports last summer that a government facility known by its World War II code name "Y-12" had reported "a number" of keys missing.
In fact, 200 keys were missing…
The Energy Department's Inspector General investigated Livermore and recently determined the lab "did not immediately recognize the significant security implications … did not report the security incidents within the required timeframes," and "did not immediately assess the potential security risks."
During the Inspector General's review, Livermore officials admitted five more master keys were missing, some for years. The Inspector General says it will cost $1.7 million dollars to replace 100,000 locks at Livermore alone. The lab claims it won't cost nearly that much. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/01/national/printable591068.shtml
Faith- Based Parks:
Held off on noting this, till now…
In a series of recent decisions, the National Park Service has approved the display of religious symbols and Bible verses, as well as the sale of creationist books giving a non-evolutionary explanation for the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders within national parks, according to documents released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Also, under pressure from conservative groups, the Park Service has agreed to edit the videotape that has been shown at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995 to remove any image of gay and abortion rights demonstrations that occurred at the memorial.
“The Park Service leadership now caters exclusively to conservative Christian fundamentalist groups,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “The Bush Administration appears to be sponsoring a program of Faith-Based Parks.” http://www.peer.org/press/415.html
Environment: Surprise! Bush Strategy Does Zip
As if we’re surprised. The Washington Post (Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin) has the details for all to see…and remember…and cite.
Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.
At the heart of the president's strategy is "Climate Leaders," a program that recruits the nation's industrial polluters to voluntarily devise ways to curb their emissions by 10 percent or more in the coming decade. Scientists believe these greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, are contributing to a troubling rise in the earth's temperature that could disrupt weather patterns and cause flooding.
Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with pollution problems -- 50 in all -- have joined Climate Leaders, and of the companies that have signed up, only 14 have set goals. Many of the companies that are volunteering say they did so either because reducing emissions makes good economic sense or because they were being nudged by state and federal regulators.
Industry groups, meanwhile, have crafted their own programs under a Bush administration initiative called "Climate VISION," but none of the programs requires individual companies to either enlist in the program or set goals for emission reductions.
Many of the companies with the worst pollution records have shunned the voluntary programs because even a voluntary commitment would necessitate costly cleanups or possibly could set the stage for future government regulation, according to industry insiders. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46212-2003Dec31.html
Taxes: How long has it been? A reminder: It’s been 221 days since the Republicans excluded millions of modest or low income families from the increased child tax credit- i.e. the ones who really needed it- while bestowing more tax breaks for those who didn’t need them, as in reducing the tax on stock dividends. No corrective action has been forthcoming. It’s good to keep this one in the public consciousness/domain, The ongoing count is maintained at http://www.dscc.org/
Class Warfare: Too many of “us” are defensive on this one, fearing that if we dare to say that the very wealthy have been overly rewarded in the last years/decades and must give it back we’ll be attacked for “class warfare.” Chuck Palson and I in our efforts for Fairness in Taxes for Everyone (FITE, www.fairnessintaxes.org ) encounter this one on too many occasions. Yet, we clarify/counter that the warfare has been long waged by the very wealthy for their individual pocketbooks and their corporations and we’re merely labeling it and saying they must give it back
It has been relieving to find very similar sentiments elsewhere, Rosie’s Place, the Service founded by Kip Tiernan, called for significantly raising taxes on the wealthy in their newsletter. And, (very) similar sentiments from the veteran blog Left I on the news.
"Class warfare" isn't a verbal construct, it's a fact. Saying that the rich are getting richer isn't "class warfare," and the fact the right wants to trivialize the matter by claiming so should simply be ignored as ludicrous. The real class warfare is being conducted not by the mouths of the left, but by the actions of the rich, whose corporations and politicians continue to accelerate the transfer of money to themselves from working people. This is a deadly serious issue, not a laughing matter. http://lefti.blogspot.com/2003_12_01_lefti_archive.html#107031358087661278
Pat Robertson announced that God has told him that Bush will triumph in a landslide. Now, there’s someone (Robertson) with credibility…
"The Lord has just blessed him… It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him." http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-elect/2004/jan/02/010207952.html
Democratic Candidates: Kerry keeps sinking…in every way; Kucinich, sterling in the debates, continues to demonstrate the sanity and feasibility of single payer health care and other progressive positions, if they’re coupled with the rolling back of the wasteful, regressive tax cuts. And, the Dean camp reassures that the CNN/Time poll found their candidate only 5 points behind the incumbent, that this compares favorably with Clinton trailing incumbent Bush, Sr. by 20 points in April, 1992. http://blog.deanforamerica.com/archives/002928.html
Jimmy Breslin on the Democats:
Howard Dean then said that he was old-fashioned and he didn't think you could judge or punish Osama bin Laden until you had a trial and found him guilty.
Suddenly, politicians and the news industry shouted, What are you talking about innocent until found guilty? How can this man Dean say that bin Laden deserves a trial? They said that this was a perfect illustration of Dean talking without thought. And completely un-American, too.
In 1945, they had the Nuremburg trials for Nazis who had killed tens and tens of millions, and had judges, witnesses, evidence and defense counsels. Just the other week, one of the Democratic candidates, Wesley Clark, testified in the Hague at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.
Yet Joseph Lieberman, who is a peripheral candidate now and thus a nasty little man, said that because he relies on the Constitution, Dean is a weakling who would melt in the face of George Bush. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/ny-nybres043610286jan04,0,3511525.column
-R
