Friday, February 27, 2004
"Steady Leadership in Times of Change."- Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign theme
Bugging
Several stories of American-British eavesdropping, capturing the Blair-Bush collusion in marginalizing the UN in the rush to invade Iraq. A focal point is Katharine Gun, the 29 year ld Briton who worked for British electronic intelligence center. She had leaked a memo a year ago that revealing the bugging of UN delegations during efforts to broker a compromise so as to avoid war. She was charged under the Official Secrets Act, was scheduled to go on trial, but has now had charges dropped. Gun told the AP she had leaked the document because it "exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. government." The Observer reported that the revelations revealed that despite the US agreeing to more time to find a resolution, it secretly used intelligence from spying on those negotiations to kill the last hope of a UN resolution."
But so little coverage here, at least till now.
From the New York Times (Patrick Tyler)
In a sudden reversal, Britain said Wednesday that it would not prosecute a 29-year-old government linguist who admitted leaking a top secret American request for assistance in bugging United Nations diplomats.
The request was made by the United States National Security Agency during the debate over the Iraq war a year ago, according to the linguist, Katharine Gun, and her lawyers. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/international/europe/26BRIT.html
Guardian reports: (George Wright, Martin Nicholls and Matthew Tempest/ Mark Oliver)
Former minister Clare Short's claim that Britain spied on the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, ahead of the Iraq war, have been described as "deeply irresponsible" by the prime minister, Tony Blair.
The UN responded to Ms Short's claim that, during her time in government, she had read transcripts of some of Mr Annan's telephone calls, by saying that any such spying would be illegal.
Mr Blair refused to confirm or deny the claim, but insisted that intelligence officers always acted within the bounds of national and international law. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4867304-111381,00.html
Ms Gun, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had been accused of disclosing a request allegedly from a US national security agency official for help from British intelligence to tap the telephones of UN security council delegates during the period of fraught diplomacy before the war.
She argued the alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war". http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1155681,00.html
Trashing of Dean: A report (Ciro Scotti)
In the background, the Democratic powerbrokers shivered and quivered, and huddled together -- much like the Republicans in 1992, when the Buchanan Brigade momentarily threatened the GOP status quo. The man had to be stopped.
As The Washington Post reported on Feb. 11, a group called Americans for Jobs & Healthcare spent $500,000 on ads attacking Dean in the run-up to the primaries. The Post said the group was headed by David Jones, a longtime adviser to Gephardt. It said the group's spokesman was Robert Gibbs, who had previously been working for the Kerry campaign. And where did the money come from? According to the Post, disgraced former Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, a Kerry supporter, gave $50,000..…
Other money, according to the Post, came from Alan Patricof, a Clark fund-raiser, and Bernard Schwartz, chairman of Loral Corp. Schwartz is a longtime moneybag for the Democratic Establishment who had close ties to the Clinton Administration. One ad the group ran questioned Dean's foreign policy expertise and used an image of Osama bin Laden.
By the time the Iowa caucuses arrived, the attacks and the spendthrift Mr. Trippi had taken their toll. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4371381/
Marriage Amendment:
The hoped for distraction may not pan out for Bush. As supermajorities in both house are required, eight Republicans have made that seem impossible to attain.
9/11 The charade is that Bush wants to grant the Commission an extension to finish its work, and Speaker Hastert has not cooperated with the White House in refusing the extension. Please. Since when does Denny Hastert call the shots?
Greenspan:
Wrote on this before, but for emphasis, I again mention his call for cutting Social security payments to bring down the deficit the Administration created. Kerry did well by immediately saying ‘not if I’m president; instead we’ll cancel the tax cuts for the wealthy.’
Pentagon’s Climate Disaster Report Hits (Some) U.S. Newspapers (not the Times/Globe)
Knight Ridder papers are noting it (Seth Borenstein), if more reservedly.
U.S.: Climate change could cause global woe
A dramatic climate change could suddenly become a global security nightmare, warns a worst-case scenario assembled by professional futurists at the behest of the Pentagon.
In a report released to Knight Ridder on Monday, they write that while a drastic climate change is unlikely, it ''would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately.'' The ''plausible'' consequences include famine in Europe and nuclear showdowns over who controls what's left of the world's water, the futurists concluded.
The report, commissioned by the Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment, its internal think tank, reflects the Pentagon's policy of planning for the worst, said author and long-time Pentagon consultant Peter Schwartz.
Schwartz said in a Knight Ridder interview that while the climate change envisioned is drastic, it's as worthy of advance planning as several other ''high-impact scenarios'' that came true, such as planning in 1983 for the end of the Soviet Union or in 1995 for the possibility that terrorists might crash planes into the World Trade Center/
While the Bush administration generally has not considered global warming much of an immediate threat, ''I did not write an impossible scenario,'' Schwartz said. It could play out, he said, in the next five to 15 years. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/8025845.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Ronnie Dugger on Kucinich : The Texas populist, in The Nation:
Social Security must not be privatized, Kucinich vows. He would retain the estate tax. He would repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and put that money into universal public education, age 3 through college. "Investing $500 billion to rebuild schools, roads, bridges, ports and sewage, water and environmental systems," he says, "will do more to stimulate our economy than tax breaks for the wealthy." He would cut the military budget 15 percent, $60 billion a year, and invest that money in universal childcare. He has an ingenious plan to use one-sixth of Treasury securities, $50 billion, to make zero-interest loans to localities for infrastructure projects, cutting the cost of those projects in half for the taxpayers of the cities and towns of the country. Kucinich is the only candidate who sued Bush to stop him from attacking Iraq without a declaration of war. He is the only one who voted against the Patriot Act. The only one who will withdraw the United States from NAFTA and the WTO. The only one who has spoken out against the takeover of our water supply by multinational corporations. The only one pledged to lead the country to 20 percent renewable energy in six years. The only one with major New Deal-like investment programs for schools, roads, ports, sewage, water and environmental systems. The only one with a 98 percent lifetime pro-union voting record. The only one who has introduced legislation to repeal the federal death penalty. In short, Kucinich is the only one who is proposing a profound reconsideration of our governmental priorities and the rejection of our degeneration into imperial warmaking. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040301&s=dugger
James Ridgeway (Village Voice) on Nader:
It's been Nader and his groups, not the Democrats, who've spearheaded universal health care ever since Hillary Clinton botched the chance for health reform in the early 90s. It's been Nader and his troops who've kept the searchlight on corporate crime, who raised the hue and cry on Enron, when Democrats were smoothing the counterpane for Lay in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Just as Michael Moore ignited the issue of Bush's National Guard service with his "deserter" joke at a Wesley Clark rally in New Hampshire last month, Nader could bring attention to bear on another damaging angle: On Sunday, during his Meet the Press interview, he raised the question of whether Bush should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors—lying the nation into war in Iraq.
From both within and outside a presidential run, Nader has the ability to push issues into the limelight when they are ignored by other politicians. For example: Universal health care has been spearheaded by the Nader groups since Hillary Clinton made her famous flop. Likewise corporate crime—it was the Nader groups in Washington and their allies in California who were most responsible for exposing Enron. It wasn't anybody in the Democratic Party, that's for sure.
The mainstream Democratic insiders in Washington, maintaining camaraderie with Republicans who are shredding the Constitution, have attacked Nader over the past four years as the man who cost Al Gore the election. Meanwhile, Nader has been developing and handing them the real political issues for the campaign. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/mondo1.php
-R
Bugging
Several stories of American-British eavesdropping, capturing the Blair-Bush collusion in marginalizing the UN in the rush to invade Iraq. A focal point is Katharine Gun, the 29 year ld Briton who worked for British electronic intelligence center. She had leaked a memo a year ago that revealing the bugging of UN delegations during efforts to broker a compromise so as to avoid war. She was charged under the Official Secrets Act, was scheduled to go on trial, but has now had charges dropped. Gun told the AP she had leaked the document because it "exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. government." The Observer reported that the revelations revealed that despite the US agreeing to more time to find a resolution, it secretly used intelligence from spying on those negotiations to kill the last hope of a UN resolution."
But so little coverage here, at least till now.
From the New York Times (Patrick Tyler)
In a sudden reversal, Britain said Wednesday that it would not prosecute a 29-year-old government linguist who admitted leaking a top secret American request for assistance in bugging United Nations diplomats.
The request was made by the United States National Security Agency during the debate over the Iraq war a year ago, according to the linguist, Katharine Gun, and her lawyers. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/international/europe/26BRIT.html
Guardian reports: (George Wright, Martin Nicholls and Matthew Tempest/ Mark Oliver)
Former minister Clare Short's claim that Britain spied on the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, ahead of the Iraq war, have been described as "deeply irresponsible" by the prime minister, Tony Blair.
The UN responded to Ms Short's claim that, during her time in government, she had read transcripts of some of Mr Annan's telephone calls, by saying that any such spying would be illegal.
Mr Blair refused to confirm or deny the claim, but insisted that intelligence officers always acted within the bounds of national and international law. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4867304-111381,00.html
Ms Gun, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had been accused of disclosing a request allegedly from a US national security agency official for help from British intelligence to tap the telephones of UN security council delegates during the period of fraught diplomacy before the war.
She argued the alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war". http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1155681,00.html
Trashing of Dean: A report (Ciro Scotti)
In the background, the Democratic powerbrokers shivered and quivered, and huddled together -- much like the Republicans in 1992, when the Buchanan Brigade momentarily threatened the GOP status quo. The man had to be stopped.
As The Washington Post reported on Feb. 11, a group called Americans for Jobs & Healthcare spent $500,000 on ads attacking Dean in the run-up to the primaries. The Post said the group was headed by David Jones, a longtime adviser to Gephardt. It said the group's spokesman was Robert Gibbs, who had previously been working for the Kerry campaign. And where did the money come from? According to the Post, disgraced former Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, a Kerry supporter, gave $50,000..…
Other money, according to the Post, came from Alan Patricof, a Clark fund-raiser, and Bernard Schwartz, chairman of Loral Corp. Schwartz is a longtime moneybag for the Democratic Establishment who had close ties to the Clinton Administration. One ad the group ran questioned Dean's foreign policy expertise and used an image of Osama bin Laden.
By the time the Iowa caucuses arrived, the attacks and the spendthrift Mr. Trippi had taken their toll. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4371381/
Marriage Amendment:
The hoped for distraction may not pan out for Bush. As supermajorities in both house are required, eight Republicans have made that seem impossible to attain.
9/11 The charade is that Bush wants to grant the Commission an extension to finish its work, and Speaker Hastert has not cooperated with the White House in refusing the extension. Please. Since when does Denny Hastert call the shots?
Greenspan:
Wrote on this before, but for emphasis, I again mention his call for cutting Social security payments to bring down the deficit the Administration created. Kerry did well by immediately saying ‘not if I’m president; instead we’ll cancel the tax cuts for the wealthy.’
Pentagon’s Climate Disaster Report Hits (Some) U.S. Newspapers (not the Times/Globe)
Knight Ridder papers are noting it (Seth Borenstein), if more reservedly.
U.S.: Climate change could cause global woe
A dramatic climate change could suddenly become a global security nightmare, warns a worst-case scenario assembled by professional futurists at the behest of the Pentagon.
In a report released to Knight Ridder on Monday, they write that while a drastic climate change is unlikely, it ''would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately.'' The ''plausible'' consequences include famine in Europe and nuclear showdowns over who controls what's left of the world's water, the futurists concluded.
The report, commissioned by the Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment, its internal think tank, reflects the Pentagon's policy of planning for the worst, said author and long-time Pentagon consultant Peter Schwartz.
Schwartz said in a Knight Ridder interview that while the climate change envisioned is drastic, it's as worthy of advance planning as several other ''high-impact scenarios'' that came true, such as planning in 1983 for the end of the Soviet Union or in 1995 for the possibility that terrorists might crash planes into the World Trade Center/
While the Bush administration generally has not considered global warming much of an immediate threat, ''I did not write an impossible scenario,'' Schwartz said. It could play out, he said, in the next five to 15 years. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/8025845.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Ronnie Dugger on Kucinich : The Texas populist, in The Nation:
Social Security must not be privatized, Kucinich vows. He would retain the estate tax. He would repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and put that money into universal public education, age 3 through college. "Investing $500 billion to rebuild schools, roads, bridges, ports and sewage, water and environmental systems," he says, "will do more to stimulate our economy than tax breaks for the wealthy." He would cut the military budget 15 percent, $60 billion a year, and invest that money in universal childcare. He has an ingenious plan to use one-sixth of Treasury securities, $50 billion, to make zero-interest loans to localities for infrastructure projects, cutting the cost of those projects in half for the taxpayers of the cities and towns of the country. Kucinich is the only candidate who sued Bush to stop him from attacking Iraq without a declaration of war. He is the only one who voted against the Patriot Act. The only one who will withdraw the United States from NAFTA and the WTO. The only one who has spoken out against the takeover of our water supply by multinational corporations. The only one pledged to lead the country to 20 percent renewable energy in six years. The only one with major New Deal-like investment programs for schools, roads, ports, sewage, water and environmental systems. The only one with a 98 percent lifetime pro-union voting record. The only one who has introduced legislation to repeal the federal death penalty. In short, Kucinich is the only one who is proposing a profound reconsideration of our governmental priorities and the rejection of our degeneration into imperial warmaking. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040301&s=dugger
James Ridgeway (Village Voice) on Nader:
It's been Nader and his groups, not the Democrats, who've spearheaded universal health care ever since Hillary Clinton botched the chance for health reform in the early 90s. It's been Nader and his troops who've kept the searchlight on corporate crime, who raised the hue and cry on Enron, when Democrats were smoothing the counterpane for Lay in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Just as Michael Moore ignited the issue of Bush's National Guard service with his "deserter" joke at a Wesley Clark rally in New Hampshire last month, Nader could bring attention to bear on another damaging angle: On Sunday, during his Meet the Press interview, he raised the question of whether Bush should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors—lying the nation into war in Iraq.
From both within and outside a presidential run, Nader has the ability to push issues into the limelight when they are ignored by other politicians. For example: Universal health care has been spearheaded by the Nader groups since Hillary Clinton made her famous flop. Likewise corporate crime—it was the Nader groups in Washington and their allies in California who were most responsible for exposing Enron. It wasn't anybody in the Democratic Party, that's for sure.
The mainstream Democratic insiders in Washington, maintaining camaraderie with Republicans who are shredding the Constitution, have attacked Nader over the past four years as the man who cost Al Gore the election. Meanwhile, Nader has been developing and handing them the real political issues for the campaign. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/mondo1.php
-R
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
2000: Nader’s the Problem?; 2004: Nader’s the Problem?
That’s a common spin, which helps us not look at the Democrats as the problem. Aside from the miserable Gore campaign, let’s look at Tom Daschle, the Democratic “leader” in the Senate. For MONTHS following 9/11/01 Daschle’s web site (and home page) had a picture of him hugging Bush. Now, South Dakota’s Rapid City Journal reports that Daschle told constituents in Pierre, SD that he is satisfied with the Rove-Wolfowitz “War on Terror.” The following was posted on the Bush web site. http://www.georgewbush.com/blog/archives/2004_02.html#000607
Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., on Thursday praised the Bush administration's war and nation-building work in Iraq and said he has no serious concerns about the lack of weapons of mass destruction.
Daschle told state chamber of commerce representatives meeting in the South Dakota capital that he is satisfied with the way things are going in Iraq.
"I give the effort overall real credit," Daschle said. "It is a good thing Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. It is a good thing we are democratizing the country."
He said he is not upset about the debate over pre-war intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, an issue that has dogged President Bush as Democratic presidential contenders have slogged through the primary season.
"We can argue about the WMD and what we should have known," Daschle, the Senate minority leader, said…
Daschle also praised South Dakota's National Guard troops and their employers Thursday.
The state has the nation's highest per-capita enrollment in the National Guard, something that has been significant as troops have been called up and rotated into active duty during fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We ought to be proud of that, and I think we all are," Daschle said.
And, to give Ralph his due, unlike everyone else, he’s addressed the issue of impeachment:
"If there's any better definition of high crimes and misdemeanors in our Constitution, than misleading or fabricating the basis for going to war, as the press has documented ad infinitum, I don't know any cause of impeachment that's worse.
Re-packaging Bush:
Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot, interviewed by Juan Williams on NPR, was asked about the president's Air National Guard service. He responded that the president's and John Kerry's service "compare very favorably... He (i.e. the president) signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn’t selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well …"
Excuse Me? Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam? Hardly. When he signed up for the National Guard, Bush had to note a check box asking if he wanted to volunteer for “overseas service.” Bush checked “do not volunteer.”
They lie as they breathe. More, from the July 29, 1999 Washington Post article
It was May 27, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. Bush was 12 days away from losing his student deferment from the draft at a time when Americans were dying in combat at the rate of 350 a week. The unit Bush wanted to join offered him the chance to fulfill his military commitment at a base in Texas. It was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age, and usually had a long waiting list.
Bush had scored only 25 percent on a "pilot aptitude" test, the lowest acceptable grade. But his father was then a congressman from Houston, and the commanders of the Texas Guard clearly had an appreciation of politics.
Bush was sworn in as an airman the same day he applied.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072899.htm
Follow-up: Whither the Pentagon Study on Ecological Disaster:
The major media continue to avoid the Pentagon report. The Guardian report I noted in the last blog was actually preceded by a story in the January 26 Fortune magazine (David Stipp).
Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,582584,00.html
Washington Post straight talking
The Post is getting more pointed; Three reports that capture the spirit, Generally the press is maintaining a more critical tone.
White House Forecasts Often Miss The Mark (Dana Milbank)
President Bush last week caused a stir when he declined to endorse a projection, made by his own Council of Economic Advisers, that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year. But that forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years.
Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion.
These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why.
http://64.4.16.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=f38b840108822ca9792fbfcd5f1fa7a4&lat=1077634098&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW1RH05C9112384672B7593E4FC409
For News Hounds, TGIF (Dana Milbank)
The White House is moving swiftly to establish the administration's place in history as the Friday Night Presidency…
It was on a Friday, for example, that the administration disclosed its long-awaited decision that it would eliminate requirements that thousands of the nation's dirtiest coal-fired power plants and refineries make anti-pollution improvements as they upgrade facilities. On another Friday, the administration announced new rules giving new rights to fetuses. Yet another Friday brought an announcement virtually ensuring that Republicans would prevail in a dispute over the 2000 census count.
Resignations often see daylight on Fridays. The ouster of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and of Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey came on a Friday, as did the resignation of Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron Corp. executive, announced on a Friday.
Speaking of Enron, the Justice Department chose a Friday night for directing administration officials to preserve papers related to Enron. Likewise, the White House selected Friday as the day to oppose a probe of discussions Karl Rove had with companies in which he held stock. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A491-2004Feb23.html
Bush Assertion on Tax Cuts Is at Odds With IRS Data (Jonathan Weisman)
President Bush defended his tax cuts yesterday as economic fuel for the small-business sector in response to mounting criticism from Democratic presidential candidates that the cuts chiefly benefited the wealthiest Americans.
But the president's contention that upper-income tax cuts primarily benefit entrepreneurs conflicts with some of the government's own data.
Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.) have pledged to restore the top two income tax rates to a maximum of 39.6 percent if elected president, but Bush and Republican allies say such a move would disproportionately punish small businesses, most of which pay individual income tax rates on their profits.
"If you're worried about job growth, it seems like it makes sense to give a little fuel to those who create jobs, the small-business sector," Bush told a gathering of the nation's governors at the White House. "So I'll vigorously defend the permanency of the tax cuts, not only for the sake of the economy, but for the sake of the entrepreneurial spirit."
Internal Revenue Service statistics cited by a Democratic senator this month show that the vast majority of small businesses do not earn nearly enough money to fall into the highest income tax bracket. According to IRS data from the 2001 tax year, 3.8 percent of the 18.2 million business tax returns filed that year reported taxable income of $200,000 or more. The top tax bracket last year kicked in at $311,950 of taxable income.
In contrast, 62 percent of business filers reported incomes of less than $50,000, putting them at most in the 15 percent tax bracket, the second lowest. Nearly 88 percent of business filers reported income of less than $100,000, keeping them comfortably below the top two tax brackets of 33 percent and 35 percent, which Kerry and Edwards propose to raise. http://64.4.16.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=f049f2f461da9575f26b366ba98efcba&lat=1077634098&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW1RH05C91153B4672B7593E4FC409
What’s Happening: Middle East Oil
A noteworthy article in Tuesday’s NY Times (Jeff Gerth), noting (without spelling out of the ramifications) as to the declining production from Saudi Arabia’s fields.
For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of the global energy markets.
But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.
Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the global energy supply. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/business/24OIL.html?pagewanted=print&position
What’s Happening, Iraq: Depleted Uranium
Old issue, still no coverage here. But, the British government is releasing a warning to its military about the dangers of depleted uranium weapons. It’s reported here by the Traprock Peace Center.
Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, manager of the Oncology Center in Basrah, Iraq, has exposed the health effects of wars on Iraq. He has presented the results of cancer studies in Iraq at the World Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg and the recent Japan Peace Conference, Naha, Okinawa January 29 - February 1, 2004.
He reveals that cancer mortality has increased 19 fold since Gulf War I in Basra, and the occurrence of unusual phenomena, such as familial clusterings of cancers, double and triple cancers in one patient, and cancers usually associated with elderly patients occurring in the young. Rates of cancer and radiation activity have both shown sharp increases since Gulf War I, when about 340 tons of uranium munitions were expended in Iraq, much of this in the Basrah area. (The US refuses to disclose how much tonnage of uranium weapons it used I Iraq during Gulf War II. Estimates have ranged from over 100 tons up to 2000 tons.) http://www.traprockpeace.org/jawad_al-ali_iraq.html
Economic Indicator: The public is not confident
The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index, which had improved last month, weakened significantly in February. The Index now stands at 87.3 (1985=100), down from 96.4 in January. The Expectations Index fell to 96.8 from 107.8. The Present Situation Index declined to 73.1 from 79.4. “Consumers began the year on a high note, but their optimism has quickly given way to caution,” says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center. “Consumers remain disheartened with current economic conditions, and at the core of their disenchantment is the labor market. While the current expansion has generated jobs over the past several months, the pace of creation remains too tepid to generate a sustainable turnaround in consumers’ confidence.
http://www.conference-board.org/economics/consumerConfidence.cfm
What’s Happening, Iraq: False Intelligence
So, the Pentagon is still paying millions to the Iraqi National Congress even though it’s been reported that the Iraqi defectors “exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales or were coached by others on what to say.” In other words, Ahmad Chalabi and crew sold a war (remember the wild inflammatory tales in 1991 as to alleged atrocities in Kuwait), duping the ‘please dupe me’ Wolfowitz and crew. Chalabi himself doesn’t mind echoing the Administration as to the past lies, that “what was said then doesn’t matter.”
One of the Knight Ridder reports (Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel, John Walcott)
Officials: U.S. still paying millions to group that provided false Iraqi intelligence
The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war.
The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence programs are classified.
The continuing support for the INC comes amid seven separate investigations into pre-war intelligence that Iraq was hiding illicit weapons and had links to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. A probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee is now examining the INC's role. http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/8010308.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Rod Paige:
We know that he cooked the books in Houston, selling “progress” in the Texas schools. Now he terms public school teachers to be terrorists. Should not the Education chief be ousted?
-R
That’s a common spin, which helps us not look at the Democrats as the problem. Aside from the miserable Gore campaign, let’s look at Tom Daschle, the Democratic “leader” in the Senate. For MONTHS following 9/11/01 Daschle’s web site (and home page) had a picture of him hugging Bush. Now, South Dakota’s Rapid City Journal reports that Daschle told constituents in Pierre, SD that he is satisfied with the Rove-Wolfowitz “War on Terror.” The following was posted on the Bush web site. http://www.georgewbush.com/blog/archives/2004_02.html#000607
Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., on Thursday praised the Bush administration's war and nation-building work in Iraq and said he has no serious concerns about the lack of weapons of mass destruction.
Daschle told state chamber of commerce representatives meeting in the South Dakota capital that he is satisfied with the way things are going in Iraq.
"I give the effort overall real credit," Daschle said. "It is a good thing Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. It is a good thing we are democratizing the country."
He said he is not upset about the debate over pre-war intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, an issue that has dogged President Bush as Democratic presidential contenders have slogged through the primary season.
"We can argue about the WMD and what we should have known," Daschle, the Senate minority leader, said…
Daschle also praised South Dakota's National Guard troops and their employers Thursday.
The state has the nation's highest per-capita enrollment in the National Guard, something that has been significant as troops have been called up and rotated into active duty during fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We ought to be proud of that, and I think we all are," Daschle said.
And, to give Ralph his due, unlike everyone else, he’s addressed the issue of impeachment:
"If there's any better definition of high crimes and misdemeanors in our Constitution, than misleading or fabricating the basis for going to war, as the press has documented ad infinitum, I don't know any cause of impeachment that's worse.
Re-packaging Bush:
Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot, interviewed by Juan Williams on NPR, was asked about the president's Air National Guard service. He responded that the president's and John Kerry's service "compare very favorably... He (i.e. the president) signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn’t selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well …"
Excuse Me? Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam? Hardly. When he signed up for the National Guard, Bush had to note a check box asking if he wanted to volunteer for “overseas service.” Bush checked “do not volunteer.”
They lie as they breathe. More, from the July 29, 1999 Washington Post article
It was May 27, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. Bush was 12 days away from losing his student deferment from the draft at a time when Americans were dying in combat at the rate of 350 a week. The unit Bush wanted to join offered him the chance to fulfill his military commitment at a base in Texas. It was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age, and usually had a long waiting list.
Bush had scored only 25 percent on a "pilot aptitude" test, the lowest acceptable grade. But his father was then a congressman from Houston, and the commanders of the Texas Guard clearly had an appreciation of politics.
Bush was sworn in as an airman the same day he applied.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072899.htm
Follow-up: Whither the Pentagon Study on Ecological Disaster:
The major media continue to avoid the Pentagon report. The Guardian report I noted in the last blog was actually preceded by a story in the January 26 Fortune magazine (David Stipp).
Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,582584,00.html
Washington Post straight talking
The Post is getting more pointed; Three reports that capture the spirit, Generally the press is maintaining a more critical tone.
White House Forecasts Often Miss The Mark (Dana Milbank)
President Bush last week caused a stir when he declined to endorse a projection, made by his own Council of Economic Advisers, that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year. But that forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years.
Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion.
These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why.
http://64.4.16.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=f38b840108822ca9792fbfcd5f1fa7a4&lat=1077634098&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW1RH05C9112384672B7593E4FC409
For News Hounds, TGIF (Dana Milbank)
The White House is moving swiftly to establish the administration's place in history as the Friday Night Presidency…
It was on a Friday, for example, that the administration disclosed its long-awaited decision that it would eliminate requirements that thousands of the nation's dirtiest coal-fired power plants and refineries make anti-pollution improvements as they upgrade facilities. On another Friday, the administration announced new rules giving new rights to fetuses. Yet another Friday brought an announcement virtually ensuring that Republicans would prevail in a dispute over the 2000 census count.
Resignations often see daylight on Fridays. The ouster of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and of Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey came on a Friday, as did the resignation of Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron Corp. executive, announced on a Friday.
Speaking of Enron, the Justice Department chose a Friday night for directing administration officials to preserve papers related to Enron. Likewise, the White House selected Friday as the day to oppose a probe of discussions Karl Rove had with companies in which he held stock. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A491-2004Feb23.html
Bush Assertion on Tax Cuts Is at Odds With IRS Data (Jonathan Weisman)
President Bush defended his tax cuts yesterday as economic fuel for the small-business sector in response to mounting criticism from Democratic presidential candidates that the cuts chiefly benefited the wealthiest Americans.
But the president's contention that upper-income tax cuts primarily benefit entrepreneurs conflicts with some of the government's own data.
Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.) have pledged to restore the top two income tax rates to a maximum of 39.6 percent if elected president, but Bush and Republican allies say such a move would disproportionately punish small businesses, most of which pay individual income tax rates on their profits.
"If you're worried about job growth, it seems like it makes sense to give a little fuel to those who create jobs, the small-business sector," Bush told a gathering of the nation's governors at the White House. "So I'll vigorously defend the permanency of the tax cuts, not only for the sake of the economy, but for the sake of the entrepreneurial spirit."
Internal Revenue Service statistics cited by a Democratic senator this month show that the vast majority of small businesses do not earn nearly enough money to fall into the highest income tax bracket. According to IRS data from the 2001 tax year, 3.8 percent of the 18.2 million business tax returns filed that year reported taxable income of $200,000 or more. The top tax bracket last year kicked in at $311,950 of taxable income.
In contrast, 62 percent of business filers reported incomes of less than $50,000, putting them at most in the 15 percent tax bracket, the second lowest. Nearly 88 percent of business filers reported income of less than $100,000, keeping them comfortably below the top two tax brackets of 33 percent and 35 percent, which Kerry and Edwards propose to raise. http://64.4.16.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=f049f2f461da9575f26b366ba98efcba&lat=1077634098&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW1RH05C91153B4672B7593E4FC409
What’s Happening: Middle East Oil
A noteworthy article in Tuesday’s NY Times (Jeff Gerth), noting (without spelling out of the ramifications) as to the declining production from Saudi Arabia’s fields.
For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of the global energy markets.
But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.
Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the global energy supply. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/business/24OIL.html?pagewanted=print&position
What’s Happening, Iraq: Depleted Uranium
Old issue, still no coverage here. But, the British government is releasing a warning to its military about the dangers of depleted uranium weapons. It’s reported here by the Traprock Peace Center.
Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, manager of the Oncology Center in Basrah, Iraq, has exposed the health effects of wars on Iraq. He has presented the results of cancer studies in Iraq at the World Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg and the recent Japan Peace Conference, Naha, Okinawa January 29 - February 1, 2004.
He reveals that cancer mortality has increased 19 fold since Gulf War I in Basra, and the occurrence of unusual phenomena, such as familial clusterings of cancers, double and triple cancers in one patient, and cancers usually associated with elderly patients occurring in the young. Rates of cancer and radiation activity have both shown sharp increases since Gulf War I, when about 340 tons of uranium munitions were expended in Iraq, much of this in the Basrah area. (The US refuses to disclose how much tonnage of uranium weapons it used I Iraq during Gulf War II. Estimates have ranged from over 100 tons up to 2000 tons.) http://www.traprockpeace.org/jawad_al-ali_iraq.html
Economic Indicator: The public is not confident
The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index, which had improved last month, weakened significantly in February. The Index now stands at 87.3 (1985=100), down from 96.4 in January. The Expectations Index fell to 96.8 from 107.8. The Present Situation Index declined to 73.1 from 79.4. “Consumers began the year on a high note, but their optimism has quickly given way to caution,” says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center. “Consumers remain disheartened with current economic conditions, and at the core of their disenchantment is the labor market. While the current expansion has generated jobs over the past several months, the pace of creation remains too tepid to generate a sustainable turnaround in consumers’ confidence.
http://www.conference-board.org/economics/consumerConfidence.cfm
What’s Happening, Iraq: False Intelligence
So, the Pentagon is still paying millions to the Iraqi National Congress even though it’s been reported that the Iraqi defectors “exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales or were coached by others on what to say.” In other words, Ahmad Chalabi and crew sold a war (remember the wild inflammatory tales in 1991 as to alleged atrocities in Kuwait), duping the ‘please dupe me’ Wolfowitz and crew. Chalabi himself doesn’t mind echoing the Administration as to the past lies, that “what was said then doesn’t matter.”
One of the Knight Ridder reports (Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel, John Walcott)
Officials: U.S. still paying millions to group that provided false Iraqi intelligence
The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war.
The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence programs are classified.
The continuing support for the INC comes amid seven separate investigations into pre-war intelligence that Iraq was hiding illicit weapons and had links to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. A probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee is now examining the INC's role. http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/8010308.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Rod Paige:
We know that he cooked the books in Houston, selling “progress” in the Texas schools. Now he terms public school teachers to be terrorists. Should not the Education chief be ousted?
-R
Sunday, February 22, 2004
"For Saxby Chambliss, who got out of going to Vietnam because of a trick knee, to attack John Kerry as weak on the defense of our nation is like a mackerel in the moonlight that both shines and stinks." -Max Cleland
Outsourcing Jobs: NY Times Letters to the Editor
Re "Political Timing, Outsourced" (editorial, Feb. 17):
You say shifting call center jobs and other presumably higher-end professions of the information age to, say, India, is "freeing up American capital, labor and other resources for more efficient, high-value uses."
So an American company saves X dollars on its labor costs and uses those savings — for what? New investments overseas? Higher benefits for its executives? Greater profits for its stockholders?
So an American worker laid off to produce those savings uses his newly bestowed free time — for what? Getting a Ph.D. in molecular biology? Becoming one of those high-paid, ever-lower-taxed executives himself? Working at Wal-Mart for minimum pay and minimum benefits?
The new economic pyramid: all top and no bottom.
J. PETER FLEMMING
Brooklyn
Political Timing, Outsourced" (editorial, Feb. 17):
Both sides in the debate over outsourcing frequently miss the point. Those against it are often resisting the development of safe, comparatively well-paying jobs in developing countries. On the other hand, those who support it have little to say about the damage done to local communities as business operations move offshore.
Since outsourcing and productivity gains have become such a gold mine for American businesses, surely the answer is to start sharing the spoils with the rest of the community.
By increasing taxation on corporate profits, we can transform a worrying trend into a means of funding education, retraining and the creation of better jobs at home. At the same time, strictly enforced labor and environmental standards can help prevent exploitation and unfair competition abroad.
JAMES SLEZAK
Ithaca, N.Y.
Inequality, Taxes: Virginia makes an attempt to raise taxes on the rich
Virginia is the latest economically-stressed state to attempt to return more progressivity to the tax code: Democratic ‘moderate’ Mark Warner is seeking to raise taxes on the wealthy. A Wall Street Journal take:
There's an effort under way in the Commonwealth of Virginia to raise taxes to record levels, and our guess is that John Kerry is paying close attention to how it plays out.
It's bad enough that Democratic Governor Mark Warner is trying to raise taxes by more than $1 billion. What's worse is that a GOP-controlled legislature that rose to power on an anti-tax agenda now wants to raise them even higher. If Republican Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Chichester gets his way, Virginians are looking at $4 billion in new taxes over the next two years.
Governor Warner was elected in 2001 on a promise not to raise taxes, but this is his third attempt since taking office to do just that. Like voters in Oregon and Alabama, Virginians recently shot down two referendums calling for tax hikes. The problem is that Virginia's political class won't take no for an answer. They've tried targeting taxes specifically for roads, and other popular things, but that didn't work. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107715241558433482,00.html?mod=todays%5Fus%5Fopinion%5Fhs
Tax Enforcement: last week’s Frontline looked at corporate tax fraud http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/and NOW’s interview with David Cay Johnston last week touched on the problem of enforcement, that the IRS has focused its energies on low and moderate income taxpayers, and cut its examining of the returns of the wealthy. My organization, Fairness in Taxes for Everyone (FITE), addressed the latter issue in its last newsletter:
Here are some of the rules imposed on our tax police:
* Don’t examine the tax returns of the super rich or even the very wealthy. Anyone violating these rules is either fired or demoted.
* Focus mostly on the poorest taxpayers even though. most of their violations are honest errors and little is recovered.
* Only rarely investigate the tax returns of small businesses worth $1 to $5 million. This is a group well known to cheat a lot.
* Do not investigate people who publicly announce in big newspaper ads that they will no longer pay taxes. Many thousands of citizens over the past several years have joined them, and NOT ONE of them has been investigated
* Don’t penalize corporations that violate tax laws. Ten years ago, the IRS penalized 2,400 corporations. Today it’s 20.
The cost to all of us is absolutely staggering. If the IRS took action, they could use the recovered funds to exempt half of all Americans earning less than $500 from paying taxes, and cut $4000 off the average tax bill of the rest of us. Count up all the losses, and it’s enough to set the federal budget right again.
More at http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/pages/howthemegarich.html
Pentagon Report warns of Environmental Catastrophe
The Guardian/Observer (Mark Townsend and Paul Harris) report on Sunday is hair-raising. Hopefully the U.S. media won’t blanche at the prospect of disseminating such dire news.
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.
The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4864237-110970,00.html
“Highlights” at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153547,00.html
More Science-based Condemning of the Administration
Mark Green and Eric Alterman’s book, The Book on Bush, has an excerpt in the current Nation
Scientific panels and committees have proven especially susceptible to political manipulation by the White House. In one revealing case, Bush & Co. intervened at the precise moment that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was set to consider once again lowering acceptable blood-lead levels in response to new scientific evidence. The Administration rejected nominee Bruce Lanphear and dumped panel member Michael Weitzman, both of whom previously advocated lowering the legal limit. Instead, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson appointed William Banner--who had testified on behalf of lead companies in poison-related litigation
Science magazine published an editorial signed by ten prominent US scientists railing against Bush's appropriation of the nation's scientific advisory committees and panels for political purposes. One of those scientists, Dr. Lynn Goldman at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, sees an eroding relationship between federal science agencies and the scientific community and fears that eventually scientific professionals will no longer trust crucial information gleaned from government research. Unlike previous administrations, the Bush White House, Goldman believes, has a "to the victor goes the spoils" approach to scientific research. She adds that "what they don't understand is that everybody hasn't done it that way. Science isn't 'the spoils.' Science isn't something to be politicized based on who's elected." But if there's one thing that's been obvious over the past three years of the Bush Administration, it's that nothing is out of bounds when Bush's electoral bases are involved. The federal government funds a quarter of the scientific research in this country. When a President starts appointing scientists as he does campaign staffers, we risk an era of Lysenkoism in America--when Soviet citizens were told (among other things) that acquired traits can be inherited. While Bush's supporters may giddily profit from such changes, it's the rest of us who lose out when science becomes another avenue for propaganda. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040308&s=green
The Fate of bin Laden:
Rumors of his being already captured have now become reports as to how the additional U.S. troops allegedly being assigned to track him should result in his capture or death. This should be anticipated. Hopefully the Democrats and the media won’t lower the bar on this issue, as they’ve done for the past 3 years. Their tact should be that it is no major accomplishment to take 2 ½ to 3 years to capture bin Laden; that if there had been no invasion of Iraq it likely would have been accomplished much sooner.
The reports from the Sunday Telegraph (England) and Asia Times online:
A BRITISH Sunday newspaper is claiming Osama bin Laden has been found and is surrounded by US special forces in an area of land bordering north-west Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Sunday Express, known for its sometimes colourful scoops, claims the al-Qaeda leader has been "sighted" for the first time since 2001 and is being monitored by satellite.
The paper claims he is in a mountainous area to the north of the Pakistani city of Quetta. The region is said to be peopled with bin Laden supporters and the terrorist leader is estimated to also have 50 of his fanatical bodyguards with him.
The claim is attributed to "a well-placed intelligence source" in Washington, who is quoted as saying: "He (bin Laden) is boxed in." http://www.sundaytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,9353,8752173-28778,00.html
Bin Laden between a hammer and a hard place
(Syed Saleem Shahzad)
After taking a dramatic, and suspect, deviation into Iraq, the United States' "war on terror" is right back where it began, in Afghanistan, once again in hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden.
"The hunt has been intense," said US General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "There are areas where The sand in their hourglass is running out. The troops are re-energized," confirmed the US commanding officer in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David Barno. "Their day has ended and this year will decisively sound the death knell of their movements in Afghanistan," Barno was quoted as telling journalists in Kabul about bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. "We have unfinished business in this part of the world."
This part of the world, in the latest US initiative to hunt down the al-Qaeda leader - code-named Hammer and Anvil - is the rugged, inhospitable territory on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the Pakistan side, the area includes the semi-autonomous tribal areas, particularly South and North Waziristan. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FB21Ag01.html
Nader Declares:
It will matter less this time, and, of course, will again not be a factor in Massachusetts, NY, California where Nader could get 10–15% and the Democrat would still win. Aside from the emotion (Ralph, No!), it’s helpful to note his reasoning.
Do the Democrats need a spillover vote produced by an independent candidate? Some top Democrats have said they would welcome this part of the strategy. (Also see The Hill, January 29, 2000, for what Congressional Democrats secretly hope for.) If they need reinforcement they can ask Senator Maria Cantwell how the very large Green spillover vote in 2000 helped elect her by a narrow margin of 2300 votes over her incumbent opponent.
So, in summary, our approach can help defeat Bush, strengthen the progressive forces inside the Democratic Party by successfully amplifying ways to end this regime, while simultaneously furthering the longer range expansion of the forces of peace, justice and democracy in future elections and nourishing a more vigorous civic movement as well. http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=4
Hamburger dispensing a manufacturing job?
Two reports, from the Times (David Cay Johnston) and CBS News on whether “cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun (is)a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles?”
That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the United States economy.
The latest edition, sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers. No answers were offered…
"When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" the report asks.
"Sometimes, seemingly subtle differences can determine whether an industry is classified as manufacturing. For example, mixing water and concentrate to produce soft drinks is classified as manufacturing. However, if that activity is performed at a snack bar, it is considered a service."
The report notes that the Census Bureau's North American Industry Classification System defines manufacturing as covering enterprises "engaged in the mechanical, physical or chemical transformation of materials, substances or components into new products."
Classifications matter, the report says, because among other things, they can affect which businesses receive tax relief. "Suppose it was decided to offer tax relief to manufacturing firms," the report said. "Because the manufacturing category is not well defined, firms would have an incentive to characterize themselves as in manufacturing. Administering the tax relief could be difficult, and the tax relief may not extend to the firms for which it was enacted."
David Huether, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, said he had heard that some economists wanted to count hamburger flipping as manufacturing, which he noted would produce statistics showing more jobs in what has been a declining sector of the economy. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/business/20jobs.html?pagewanted=print&position=
But reclassifying fast food workers as manufacturing employees could have other advantages for the administration.
It would offset somewhat the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs in national employment statistics. Since the month President Bush was inaugurated, the economy has lost about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That continues a long-term trend.
And the move would make the growth in service sector jobs, some of which pay low wages, more appealing. According to government figures, since January 2001 the economy has generated more than 600,000 new service-providing jobs. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/20/politics/main601336.shtml
“Liberal Radio” Status Report: A posting, i.e. it’s getting there:
THE O’FRANKEN FACTOR, hosted by Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher, will broadcast three hours of political satire and progressive, fact-based political analysis each weekday starting March 31. In the spirit of the 14-member Team Franken that researched Al Franken’s _Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right_, the show is building a research team to monitor national and international news, the 2004 campaign, politics generally—and the media, particularly the right-wing media. The show will run nationally on Air America Radio, a new network dedicated to fearless political comedy.
Brief job description:
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES sought for new radio show. Monitor and analyze news and commentary, uncover lies and distortion, propose and fact-check radio segments. Gather audio clips for show; post information and links to website; prepare multiple daily briefings on topics and guests for pitching to show hosts. Candidates should be able to produce clear, concise written materials while working long hours in an intense, unpredictable environment as part of a diverse team. Must be a news junkie dedicated to factual accuracy and progressive politics. Proficiency with computers required; training on specific software package will be provided. Experience in radio production, print or online journalism, politics or advocacy a strong plus. Air America Radio is an equal opportunity employer.
The show will be broadcast from New York City. Compensation includes medical and dental benefits.
-R
Outsourcing Jobs: NY Times Letters to the Editor
Re "Political Timing, Outsourced" (editorial, Feb. 17):
You say shifting call center jobs and other presumably higher-end professions of the information age to, say, India, is "freeing up American capital, labor and other resources for more efficient, high-value uses."
So an American company saves X dollars on its labor costs and uses those savings — for what? New investments overseas? Higher benefits for its executives? Greater profits for its stockholders?
So an American worker laid off to produce those savings uses his newly bestowed free time — for what? Getting a Ph.D. in molecular biology? Becoming one of those high-paid, ever-lower-taxed executives himself? Working at Wal-Mart for minimum pay and minimum benefits?
The new economic pyramid: all top and no bottom.
J. PETER FLEMMING
Brooklyn
Political Timing, Outsourced" (editorial, Feb. 17):
Both sides in the debate over outsourcing frequently miss the point. Those against it are often resisting the development of safe, comparatively well-paying jobs in developing countries. On the other hand, those who support it have little to say about the damage done to local communities as business operations move offshore.
Since outsourcing and productivity gains have become such a gold mine for American businesses, surely the answer is to start sharing the spoils with the rest of the community.
By increasing taxation on corporate profits, we can transform a worrying trend into a means of funding education, retraining and the creation of better jobs at home. At the same time, strictly enforced labor and environmental standards can help prevent exploitation and unfair competition abroad.
JAMES SLEZAK
Ithaca, N.Y.
Inequality, Taxes: Virginia makes an attempt to raise taxes on the rich
Virginia is the latest economically-stressed state to attempt to return more progressivity to the tax code: Democratic ‘moderate’ Mark Warner is seeking to raise taxes on the wealthy. A Wall Street Journal take:
There's an effort under way in the Commonwealth of Virginia to raise taxes to record levels, and our guess is that John Kerry is paying close attention to how it plays out.
It's bad enough that Democratic Governor Mark Warner is trying to raise taxes by more than $1 billion. What's worse is that a GOP-controlled legislature that rose to power on an anti-tax agenda now wants to raise them even higher. If Republican Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Chichester gets his way, Virginians are looking at $4 billion in new taxes over the next two years.
Governor Warner was elected in 2001 on a promise not to raise taxes, but this is his third attempt since taking office to do just that. Like voters in Oregon and Alabama, Virginians recently shot down two referendums calling for tax hikes. The problem is that Virginia's political class won't take no for an answer. They've tried targeting taxes specifically for roads, and other popular things, but that didn't work. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107715241558433482,00.html?mod=todays%5Fus%5Fopinion%5Fhs
Tax Enforcement: last week’s Frontline looked at corporate tax fraud http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/and NOW’s interview with David Cay Johnston last week touched on the problem of enforcement, that the IRS has focused its energies on low and moderate income taxpayers, and cut its examining of the returns of the wealthy. My organization, Fairness in Taxes for Everyone (FITE), addressed the latter issue in its last newsletter:
Here are some of the rules imposed on our tax police:
* Don’t examine the tax returns of the super rich or even the very wealthy. Anyone violating these rules is either fired or demoted.
* Focus mostly on the poorest taxpayers even though. most of their violations are honest errors and little is recovered.
* Only rarely investigate the tax returns of small businesses worth $1 to $5 million. This is a group well known to cheat a lot.
* Do not investigate people who publicly announce in big newspaper ads that they will no longer pay taxes. Many thousands of citizens over the past several years have joined them, and NOT ONE of them has been investigated
* Don’t penalize corporations that violate tax laws. Ten years ago, the IRS penalized 2,400 corporations. Today it’s 20.
The cost to all of us is absolutely staggering. If the IRS took action, they could use the recovered funds to exempt half of all Americans earning less than $500 from paying taxes, and cut $4000 off the average tax bill of the rest of us. Count up all the losses, and it’s enough to set the federal budget right again.
More at http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/pages/howthemegarich.html
Pentagon Report warns of Environmental Catastrophe
The Guardian/Observer (Mark Townsend and Paul Harris) report on Sunday is hair-raising. Hopefully the U.S. media won’t blanche at the prospect of disseminating such dire news.
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.
The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4864237-110970,00.html
“Highlights” at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153547,00.html
More Science-based Condemning of the Administration
Mark Green and Eric Alterman’s book, The Book on Bush, has an excerpt in the current Nation
Scientific panels and committees have proven especially susceptible to political manipulation by the White House. In one revealing case, Bush & Co. intervened at the precise moment that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was set to consider once again lowering acceptable blood-lead levels in response to new scientific evidence. The Administration rejected nominee Bruce Lanphear and dumped panel member Michael Weitzman, both of whom previously advocated lowering the legal limit. Instead, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson appointed William Banner--who had testified on behalf of lead companies in poison-related litigation
Science magazine published an editorial signed by ten prominent US scientists railing against Bush's appropriation of the nation's scientific advisory committees and panels for political purposes. One of those scientists, Dr. Lynn Goldman at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, sees an eroding relationship between federal science agencies and the scientific community and fears that eventually scientific professionals will no longer trust crucial information gleaned from government research. Unlike previous administrations, the Bush White House, Goldman believes, has a "to the victor goes the spoils" approach to scientific research. She adds that "what they don't understand is that everybody hasn't done it that way. Science isn't 'the spoils.' Science isn't something to be politicized based on who's elected." But if there's one thing that's been obvious over the past three years of the Bush Administration, it's that nothing is out of bounds when Bush's electoral bases are involved. The federal government funds a quarter of the scientific research in this country. When a President starts appointing scientists as he does campaign staffers, we risk an era of Lysenkoism in America--when Soviet citizens were told (among other things) that acquired traits can be inherited. While Bush's supporters may giddily profit from such changes, it's the rest of us who lose out when science becomes another avenue for propaganda. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040308&s=green
The Fate of bin Laden:
Rumors of his being already captured have now become reports as to how the additional U.S. troops allegedly being assigned to track him should result in his capture or death. This should be anticipated. Hopefully the Democrats and the media won’t lower the bar on this issue, as they’ve done for the past 3 years. Their tact should be that it is no major accomplishment to take 2 ½ to 3 years to capture bin Laden; that if there had been no invasion of Iraq it likely would have been accomplished much sooner.
The reports from the Sunday Telegraph (England) and Asia Times online:
A BRITISH Sunday newspaper is claiming Osama bin Laden has been found and is surrounded by US special forces in an area of land bordering north-west Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Sunday Express, known for its sometimes colourful scoops, claims the al-Qaeda leader has been "sighted" for the first time since 2001 and is being monitored by satellite.
The paper claims he is in a mountainous area to the north of the Pakistani city of Quetta. The region is said to be peopled with bin Laden supporters and the terrorist leader is estimated to also have 50 of his fanatical bodyguards with him.
The claim is attributed to "a well-placed intelligence source" in Washington, who is quoted as saying: "He (bin Laden) is boxed in." http://www.sundaytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,9353,8752173-28778,00.html
Bin Laden between a hammer and a hard place
(Syed Saleem Shahzad)
After taking a dramatic, and suspect, deviation into Iraq, the United States' "war on terror" is right back where it began, in Afghanistan, once again in hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden.
"The hunt has been intense," said US General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "There are areas where The sand in their hourglass is running out. The troops are re-energized," confirmed the US commanding officer in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David Barno. "Their day has ended and this year will decisively sound the death knell of their movements in Afghanistan," Barno was quoted as telling journalists in Kabul about bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. "We have unfinished business in this part of the world."
This part of the world, in the latest US initiative to hunt down the al-Qaeda leader - code-named Hammer and Anvil - is the rugged, inhospitable territory on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the Pakistan side, the area includes the semi-autonomous tribal areas, particularly South and North Waziristan. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FB21Ag01.html
Nader Declares:
It will matter less this time, and, of course, will again not be a factor in Massachusetts, NY, California where Nader could get 10–15% and the Democrat would still win. Aside from the emotion (Ralph, No!), it’s helpful to note his reasoning.
Do the Democrats need a spillover vote produced by an independent candidate? Some top Democrats have said they would welcome this part of the strategy. (Also see The Hill, January 29, 2000, for what Congressional Democrats secretly hope for.) If they need reinforcement they can ask Senator Maria Cantwell how the very large Green spillover vote in 2000 helped elect her by a narrow margin of 2300 votes over her incumbent opponent.
So, in summary, our approach can help defeat Bush, strengthen the progressive forces inside the Democratic Party by successfully amplifying ways to end this regime, while simultaneously furthering the longer range expansion of the forces of peace, justice and democracy in future elections and nourishing a more vigorous civic movement as well. http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=4
Hamburger dispensing a manufacturing job?
Two reports, from the Times (David Cay Johnston) and CBS News on whether “cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun (is)a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles?”
That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the United States economy.
The latest edition, sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers. No answers were offered…
"When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" the report asks.
"Sometimes, seemingly subtle differences can determine whether an industry is classified as manufacturing. For example, mixing water and concentrate to produce soft drinks is classified as manufacturing. However, if that activity is performed at a snack bar, it is considered a service."
The report notes that the Census Bureau's North American Industry Classification System defines manufacturing as covering enterprises "engaged in the mechanical, physical or chemical transformation of materials, substances or components into new products."
Classifications matter, the report says, because among other things, they can affect which businesses receive tax relief. "Suppose it was decided to offer tax relief to manufacturing firms," the report said. "Because the manufacturing category is not well defined, firms would have an incentive to characterize themselves as in manufacturing. Administering the tax relief could be difficult, and the tax relief may not extend to the firms for which it was enacted."
David Huether, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, said he had heard that some economists wanted to count hamburger flipping as manufacturing, which he noted would produce statistics showing more jobs in what has been a declining sector of the economy. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/business/20jobs.html?pagewanted=print&position=
But reclassifying fast food workers as manufacturing employees could have other advantages for the administration.
It would offset somewhat the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs in national employment statistics. Since the month President Bush was inaugurated, the economy has lost about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That continues a long-term trend.
And the move would make the growth in service sector jobs, some of which pay low wages, more appealing. According to government figures, since January 2001 the economy has generated more than 600,000 new service-providing jobs. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/20/politics/main601336.shtml
“Liberal Radio” Status Report: A posting, i.e. it’s getting there:
THE O’FRANKEN FACTOR, hosted by Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher, will broadcast three hours of political satire and progressive, fact-based political analysis each weekday starting March 31. In the spirit of the 14-member Team Franken that researched Al Franken’s _Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right_, the show is building a research team to monitor national and international news, the 2004 campaign, politics generally—and the media, particularly the right-wing media. The show will run nationally on Air America Radio, a new network dedicated to fearless political comedy.
Brief job description:
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES sought for new radio show. Monitor and analyze news and commentary, uncover lies and distortion, propose and fact-check radio segments. Gather audio clips for show; post information and links to website; prepare multiple daily briefings on topics and guests for pitching to show hosts. Candidates should be able to produce clear, concise written materials while working long hours in an intense, unpredictable environment as part of a diverse team. Must be a news junkie dedicated to factual accuracy and progressive politics. Proficiency with computers required; training on specific software package will be provided. Experience in radio production, print or online journalism, politics or advocacy a strong plus. Air America Radio is an equal opportunity employer.
The show will be broadcast from New York City. Compensation includes medical and dental benefits.
-R
