Sunday, January 02, 2005
South Asia: Another pathetic moment, as Colin Powell is put out there to insist “we are a generous people.” Well-spoken by the embarrassed fellas who announced $15 million in aid and were shamed to drastically elevate the figure. Now at least we’re pledging (hopefully giving) the equivalent of 38 hours of the Iraqi occupation.
Frank Rich: Our National Denial
So the soldiers soldier on, and we party on. As James Dao wrote in The New York Times, "support our troops" became a verbal touchstone in 2004, yet "only for a minuscule portion of the populace, mainly those with loved ones overseas, does it have anything to do with sacrifice." Quite the contrary: we have our tax cuts, and a president who promises to make them permanent. Such is the disconnect between the country and the war that there is no national outrage when the president awards the Medal of Freedom to the clowns who undermined the troops by bungling intelligence (George Tenet) and Iraqi support (Paul Bremer). Such is the disconnect that Washington and the news media react with slack-jawed shock when one of those good soldiers we support so much speaks up at a town hall meeting in Kuwait and asks the secretary of defense why vehicles that take him and his brothers into battle lack proper armor. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/arts/02rich.html?oref=login
Social Security: Two takes from writers of the Washington Post and NY Times.
Shill: Jonathan Weissman of the WaPost:
In just 14 years, the nation's Social Security system is projected to reach a day of reckoning: Retiree benefits will exceed payroll tax receipts, and to pay its bills the system will have to begin redeeming billions of dollars in special Treasury bonds that have piled up in its trust fund. To redeem those bonds, which represent money taken in years when Social Security ran a surplus and used for other government operations, the federal government would likely have to cut other programs, raise taxes or borrow more money.
To President Bush, this is a crisis, worth nothing short of dramatic structural changes to a social insurance system that since 1940 has lifted the elderly and disabled from poverty.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41423-2005Jan1.html
Edmund Andrews counters, noting the phony math and budget busting:
(1) To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security.
To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.
By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.
But White House budget planners are not stopping there. Administration officials are also invoking optimistic assumptions about rising tax revenue while excluding costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as trillions of dollars in costs that lie just outside Mr. Bush's five-year budget window. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/politics/02fiscal.html?pagewanted=print&position=
(2) Arguably, his agenda for revamping the income tax is also an effort to think ahead. Though he has yet to announce a specific plan, White House officials have made it clear their goal is a shift toward a system that essentially taxes consumption - the money people spend - and not the money they save or invest.
In principle, a consumption tax could be forward-looking. Administration officials argue that lower taxes on saving and investment would prompt Americans to increase savings from today's abysmally low level - barely above zero - and would provide more capital to finance growth.
But on closer inspection, much of the agenda follows a familiar path: borrowing today and leaving the bills for future generations to pay.
Start with Social Security. Mr. Bush regularly warns that the system will come up short in future decades, because the total amount paid out in benefits will soar as baby boomers reach retirement age. But the proposed solution often cited by White House officials would put none of the burden on today's taxpayers or retirees. Instead, it would fall on people who retire 40 or 50 or 60 years from now. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/business/02view.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Jeb to South Asia: He denies that this indicates his interest in a higher profile, i.e. the presidency. Maybe it is just a good p.r. move for the White House, as they’ve suffered (again) because of their slow response to the Disaster.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37916-2004Dec30.html
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/01/01/a5a_BUSH_0101.html
Changing Job Picture: …About future jobs being of less $ and fewer benefits. So, what’s new?
This new era requires that workers shoulder more responsibility and risk on the way to financial security, economists say. It also demands that they be nimble in an increasingly fluid job market. Those who don't obtain some combination of specialized skills, higher education and professional status that can be constantly adapted will be in danger of sliding down the economic ladder to low-paying service jobs, usually without benefits.
Meanwhile, those who secure the middle-class jobs of the 21st century will have to make $17 an hour stretch further than ever as they pay more for health care or risk doing without insurance and assume much or all of the burden for their retirement.
In the lively debate about the future of U.S. jobs, many economists and scholars acknowledge that the changes wrought by technology and global economic forces will be painful at first. But they say the new structure ultimately will create many kinds of jobs as yet unimagined, in fields such as education, health care and science.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37628-2004Dec30.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Many more deaths. And, demonstrations…in Fallujah. Apparently “thousands” demanded that the U.S. end the Occupation.
Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return…
Some of the placards announced that Fallujans refused to live under a military occupation. They presented a list of demands, which included the facilitation of their return to the city, speedy return of services, rebuilding of the devastated city, and monetary compensation to its inhabitants. They also protested the US military demand that returnees show identification papers. Many said that such papers got left behind in the city when they fled.Children marched with placards reading "Where is my Father?" or "Where is my house, you supposed Liberators?" http://www.juancole.com/
What’s Happening, Iran: Plane ‘Overflights’
We really shouldn’t provoke; we don’t have the muscle to back it up.
A US warplane has violated Iranian air space, this time a border edge near Afghanistan in the eastern province of Razavi Khorassan, in the latest spate of such overflights reported by the press.
According to the evening daily Kayhan, an American fighter entered Iranian air space Thursday night, flying over the southern border strip at Iran's Mousa-Abad region for several minutes.
The US warplane flew back to Afghanistan, from where it had entered the Iranian airspace, the paper added. http://www.payvand.com/news/05/jan/1004.html
-R
Frank Rich: Our National Denial
So the soldiers soldier on, and we party on. As James Dao wrote in The New York Times, "support our troops" became a verbal touchstone in 2004, yet "only for a minuscule portion of the populace, mainly those with loved ones overseas, does it have anything to do with sacrifice." Quite the contrary: we have our tax cuts, and a president who promises to make them permanent. Such is the disconnect between the country and the war that there is no national outrage when the president awards the Medal of Freedom to the clowns who undermined the troops by bungling intelligence (George Tenet) and Iraqi support (Paul Bremer). Such is the disconnect that Washington and the news media react with slack-jawed shock when one of those good soldiers we support so much speaks up at a town hall meeting in Kuwait and asks the secretary of defense why vehicles that take him and his brothers into battle lack proper armor. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/arts/02rich.html?oref=login
Social Security: Two takes from writers of the Washington Post and NY Times.
Shill: Jonathan Weissman of the WaPost:
In just 14 years, the nation's Social Security system is projected to reach a day of reckoning: Retiree benefits will exceed payroll tax receipts, and to pay its bills the system will have to begin redeeming billions of dollars in special Treasury bonds that have piled up in its trust fund. To redeem those bonds, which represent money taken in years when Social Security ran a surplus and used for other government operations, the federal government would likely have to cut other programs, raise taxes or borrow more money.
To President Bush, this is a crisis, worth nothing short of dramatic structural changes to a social insurance system that since 1940 has lifted the elderly and disabled from poverty.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41423-2005Jan1.html
Edmund Andrews counters, noting the phony math and budget busting:
(1) To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security.
To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.
By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.
But White House budget planners are not stopping there. Administration officials are also invoking optimistic assumptions about rising tax revenue while excluding costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as trillions of dollars in costs that lie just outside Mr. Bush's five-year budget window. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/politics/02fiscal.html?pagewanted=print&position=
(2) Arguably, his agenda for revamping the income tax is also an effort to think ahead. Though he has yet to announce a specific plan, White House officials have made it clear their goal is a shift toward a system that essentially taxes consumption - the money people spend - and not the money they save or invest.
In principle, a consumption tax could be forward-looking. Administration officials argue that lower taxes on saving and investment would prompt Americans to increase savings from today's abysmally low level - barely above zero - and would provide more capital to finance growth.
But on closer inspection, much of the agenda follows a familiar path: borrowing today and leaving the bills for future generations to pay.
Start with Social Security. Mr. Bush regularly warns that the system will come up short in future decades, because the total amount paid out in benefits will soar as baby boomers reach retirement age. But the proposed solution often cited by White House officials would put none of the burden on today's taxpayers or retirees. Instead, it would fall on people who retire 40 or 50 or 60 years from now. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/business/02view.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Jeb to South Asia: He denies that this indicates his interest in a higher profile, i.e. the presidency. Maybe it is just a good p.r. move for the White House, as they’ve suffered (again) because of their slow response to the Disaster.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37916-2004Dec30.html
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/01/01/a5a_BUSH_0101.html
Changing Job Picture: …About future jobs being of less $ and fewer benefits. So, what’s new?
This new era requires that workers shoulder more responsibility and risk on the way to financial security, economists say. It also demands that they be nimble in an increasingly fluid job market. Those who don't obtain some combination of specialized skills, higher education and professional status that can be constantly adapted will be in danger of sliding down the economic ladder to low-paying service jobs, usually without benefits.
Meanwhile, those who secure the middle-class jobs of the 21st century will have to make $17 an hour stretch further than ever as they pay more for health care or risk doing without insurance and assume much or all of the burden for their retirement.
In the lively debate about the future of U.S. jobs, many economists and scholars acknowledge that the changes wrought by technology and global economic forces will be painful at first. But they say the new structure ultimately will create many kinds of jobs as yet unimagined, in fields such as education, health care and science.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37628-2004Dec30.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Many more deaths. And, demonstrations…in Fallujah. Apparently “thousands” demanded that the U.S. end the Occupation.
Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return…
Some of the placards announced that Fallujans refused to live under a military occupation. They presented a list of demands, which included the facilitation of their return to the city, speedy return of services, rebuilding of the devastated city, and monetary compensation to its inhabitants. They also protested the US military demand that returnees show identification papers. Many said that such papers got left behind in the city when they fled.Children marched with placards reading "Where is my Father?" or "Where is my house, you supposed Liberators?" http://www.juancole.com/
What’s Happening, Iran: Plane ‘Overflights’
We really shouldn’t provoke; we don’t have the muscle to back it up.
A US warplane has violated Iranian air space, this time a border edge near Afghanistan in the eastern province of Razavi Khorassan, in the latest spate of such overflights reported by the press.
According to the evening daily Kayhan, an American fighter entered Iranian air space Thursday night, flying over the southern border strip at Iran's Mousa-Abad region for several minutes.
The US warplane flew back to Afghanistan, from where it had entered the Iranian airspace, the paper added. http://www.payvand.com/news/05/jan/1004.html
-R
