Monday, February 07, 2005
Middle East: Progress. A good sign. Hopefully the news won’t be at all sullied by the Bushies claiming it was their invasion of Iraq that was the key to movement. Or, is it because they knew Condi was visiting?
Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed a truce to end more than four years of fighting, both sides confirmed today.
Negotiators from both sides finalised the agreement during last-minute preparations for tomorrow's summit meeting between the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
"The most important thing at the summit will be a mutual declaration of cessation of violence against each other," said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator. An Israeli government official, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, confirmed the agreement, adding that the deal would also include an end to Palestinian incitement.http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1407656,00.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Plenty of death. The “election”, of course, didn’t end the occupation / resistance.
Hendrik Hertzberg reminds us that the trumpeted elections were Sistani’s idea, not Cheney-Wolfowitz’s.
Critics of the Bush Administration can take comfort in the fact that the apparent success of the Iraqi election can be celebrated without having to celebrate the supposed wisdom of the Administration. Like the Homeland Security Department and the 9/11 Commission, the Iraqi election was something Bush & Co. resisted and were finally maneuvered into accepting. It wasn’t their idea; it was an Iraqi idea—specifically, the idea of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Shiism’s most prominent cleric. In a way, it was a by-product of the same American ignorance and bungling that produced the unchallenged post-Saddam looting and the myriad mistakes of the Coalition Provisional Authority. But this time—for the first time—the bungling seems to have yielded something positive.
Iraq is still a very, very long way from democracy. And even if it gets there, the costs of the journey—the more than ten thousand (so far) American wounded and dead, the tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children killed, the hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from other purposes, the lies, the distraction from and gratuitous extension of the “war on terror,” the moral and political catastrophe of systematic torture, the draining of good will toward and sympathy for America—will not necessarily justify themselves. But, for the moment at least, one can marvel at the power of the democratic idea. It survived American slavery; it survived Stalinist coöptation (the “German Democratic Republic,” and so on); it survived Cold War horrors like America’s support of Spanish Falangism and Central American death squads. Perhaps it can even survive the fervent embrace of George W. Bush. http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?talk/050214ta_talk_hertzberg
More payola?
The U.S. Department of Defense plans to add more sites on the Internet to provide information to a global audience -- but critics question whether the Pentagon is violating President Bush's pledge not to pay journalists to promote his policies.
The Defense Department runs two Web sites overseas, one aimed at people in the Balkan region in Europe, the other for the Maghreb area of North Africa.
It is preparing another site, even as the Pentagon inspector general investigates whether the sites are appropriate. http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/04/web.us/index.html
U.S. Environment Sustainability: How We Rate
The Bush administration apparently doesn't care enough to feel humiliated, so ordinary Americans will have to cringe on the country's behalf over the United States' low ranking in the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index. In this annual evaluation of 146 nations and their relative success in keeping up air and water quality, supporting biodiversity, and working with other countries to solve environmental problems, the U.S. ranked a pathetic 45th.
There is scant hope the U.S. will do better next year, either, with Washington tied in knots by Republican maneuvers to gut the Clean Air Act and a Democratic struggle just to maintain the inadequate air-quality status quo.
Prepared by Columbia and Yale researchers for the World Economic Forum, the ESI is based on 75 measures, including greenhouse-gas emissions, over-fishing, water quality, and rate at which children die of respiratory diseases. Its designers admit that the ESI measuring devices are sometimes unfair. Russia comes in at a respectable number 33, but only because the hideous hash it has made of its environment is concentrated in the industrial West, and Russia's vast, pristine Asian wilderness is included in its ESI average. Still, the U.S. lags far behind such genuine environmental-quality pioneers as the Scandinavia countries, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Guyana, Uruguay, Japan, Botswana and Bhutan, among others. http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Stories/0,1413,101%7E6267%7E2694724,00.html#
Perpetual Deficits. Reasonable assessment by Edmund Andrews, but one that assumes the Bushies truly want to reduce the deficit. Of course they don’t; it was developed and must be maintained so as to justify ongoing cuts to non-military spending. Yet, all such would only save $15 billion, small change next to the military’s expansion and the ongoing Iraq/Afghanistan costs…which are “off budget”.
The economy is growing. Tax revenues are climbing. But can these factors rescue President Bush from a federal deficit that seems stuck above $400 billion?
The answer, unfortunately, is almost certainly no, analysts say.
Can’t believe the duplicity, eh?
The cornerstone of Mr. Bush's budget strategy is a belief that vigorous economic growth, spurred by supply-side tax cuts that were designed to provide incentives for upper-income Americans to produce more wealth, will generate big jumps in tax revenue that gradually reduce the deficit. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/business/07fiscal.html?ex=1265432400&en=f9e0a5a13fbea954&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Bush and Veterans: Robert Pear continues his coverage of the budget
President Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said Sunday. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/politics/07budget.html?oref=login
Bush Budget: Any Good News? Finally found some, though I should read further, I suspect.
Mr. Bush says he wants a community health center in every poor county. The budget would increase spending for such clinics by 17.5 percent, to $2 billion. Budget officials said these clinics would care for 16.4 million people next year, up from 14 million this year.
The president is also seeking $718 million for a new effort to enroll more children in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Millions of uninsured children are eligible but not enrolled.
But, then, there’s this:
Mr. Bush seeks a $38 million increase in programs promoting sexual abstinence, which would bring the total to $192.5 million in 2006, an increase of more than 50 percent since 2004.
Budget Math It’s b.s., of course.
The budget President Bush will present to Congress today will show the federal deficit cut in half by the time he leaves office in four years.At least technically it will.Achieving that goal relies on where the budget math starts and stops, how things get counted and what gets left out
It is the 2004 deficit that Bush is promising to cut in half, but he's not starting with the actual 2004 deficit of $412 billion.Instead, his benchmark is the projected $521-billion deficit that his Office of Management and Budget estimated a year ago, when the fiscal year was four months old. Using half of that figure, Bush's goal is to reach a deficit of $260.5 billion.If Bush were to start with the actual 2004 figure, his goal would be a deficit of $206 billion — $54.5 billion more.http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-budget7feb07,1,3484190,print.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
Bush Doesn’t understand what he is proposing. We know he’s generally ignorant, despite the new p.r. about his reading a mix of fiction/non-fiction.
From the White House site:
Q -- really understand how is it the new plan is going to fix that problem?
THE PRESIDENT: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised.
Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
Okay, better? I'll keep working on it. (Laughter.) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/print/20050204-13.html
But he claims to understand “frivolous asbestos lawsuits”
W.R. Grace and Co. and seven high-ranking employees knew a Montana mine was releasing cancer-causing asbestos into the air and tried to hide the danger to workers and townspeople, according to a federal indictment unsealed Monday. More than 1,200 people became ill, and some of them died, prosecutors said. The asbestos was naturally present in a vermiculite mine operated by Grace in the small town of Libby for nearly 30 years. http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2005/02/07/ap1810687.html
Vilification: That radical, Harry Reid, is up next
The Republican National Committee is set to begin a prolonged attack against newly installed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) aimed at weakening his support in his home state as well as on the national level.
Drawing on a blueprint used successfully against former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the RNC will send a 13-page research document today to roughly 1 million people — a group that includes journalists, donors and grass-roots activists — detailing Reid’s alleged obstructionism among other topics. “
This is the initial salvo in the upcoming discussion that we are going to be having with Sen. Reid,” said RNC Communications Director Brian Jones. RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman has already done a series of radio interviews in Nevada criticizing Reid. Other events, like a gathering of medical professionals in the Silver State to protest Reid’s stance on medical malpractice reform, are in the works.
“This is a national and local communications strategy that will look to strip the bark off the Senate Minority Leader,” Jones added.
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005432
-R
Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed a truce to end more than four years of fighting, both sides confirmed today.
Negotiators from both sides finalised the agreement during last-minute preparations for tomorrow's summit meeting between the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
"The most important thing at the summit will be a mutual declaration of cessation of violence against each other," said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator. An Israeli government official, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, confirmed the agreement, adding that the deal would also include an end to Palestinian incitement.http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1407656,00.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Plenty of death. The “election”, of course, didn’t end the occupation / resistance.
Hendrik Hertzberg reminds us that the trumpeted elections were Sistani’s idea, not Cheney-Wolfowitz’s.
Critics of the Bush Administration can take comfort in the fact that the apparent success of the Iraqi election can be celebrated without having to celebrate the supposed wisdom of the Administration. Like the Homeland Security Department and the 9/11 Commission, the Iraqi election was something Bush & Co. resisted and were finally maneuvered into accepting. It wasn’t their idea; it was an Iraqi idea—specifically, the idea of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Shiism’s most prominent cleric. In a way, it was a by-product of the same American ignorance and bungling that produced the unchallenged post-Saddam looting and the myriad mistakes of the Coalition Provisional Authority. But this time—for the first time—the bungling seems to have yielded something positive.
Iraq is still a very, very long way from democracy. And even if it gets there, the costs of the journey—the more than ten thousand (so far) American wounded and dead, the tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children killed, the hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from other purposes, the lies, the distraction from and gratuitous extension of the “war on terror,” the moral and political catastrophe of systematic torture, the draining of good will toward and sympathy for America—will not necessarily justify themselves. But, for the moment at least, one can marvel at the power of the democratic idea. It survived American slavery; it survived Stalinist coöptation (the “German Democratic Republic,” and so on); it survived Cold War horrors like America’s support of Spanish Falangism and Central American death squads. Perhaps it can even survive the fervent embrace of George W. Bush. http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?talk/050214ta_talk_hertzberg
More payola?
The U.S. Department of Defense plans to add more sites on the Internet to provide information to a global audience -- but critics question whether the Pentagon is violating President Bush's pledge not to pay journalists to promote his policies.
The Defense Department runs two Web sites overseas, one aimed at people in the Balkan region in Europe, the other for the Maghreb area of North Africa.
It is preparing another site, even as the Pentagon inspector general investigates whether the sites are appropriate. http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/04/web.us/index.html
U.S. Environment Sustainability: How We Rate
The Bush administration apparently doesn't care enough to feel humiliated, so ordinary Americans will have to cringe on the country's behalf over the United States' low ranking in the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index. In this annual evaluation of 146 nations and their relative success in keeping up air and water quality, supporting biodiversity, and working with other countries to solve environmental problems, the U.S. ranked a pathetic 45th.
There is scant hope the U.S. will do better next year, either, with Washington tied in knots by Republican maneuvers to gut the Clean Air Act and a Democratic struggle just to maintain the inadequate air-quality status quo.
Prepared by Columbia and Yale researchers for the World Economic Forum, the ESI is based on 75 measures, including greenhouse-gas emissions, over-fishing, water quality, and rate at which children die of respiratory diseases. Its designers admit that the ESI measuring devices are sometimes unfair. Russia comes in at a respectable number 33, but only because the hideous hash it has made of its environment is concentrated in the industrial West, and Russia's vast, pristine Asian wilderness is included in its ESI average. Still, the U.S. lags far behind such genuine environmental-quality pioneers as the Scandinavia countries, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Guyana, Uruguay, Japan, Botswana and Bhutan, among others. http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Stories/0,1413,101%7E6267%7E2694724,00.html#
Perpetual Deficits. Reasonable assessment by Edmund Andrews, but one that assumes the Bushies truly want to reduce the deficit. Of course they don’t; it was developed and must be maintained so as to justify ongoing cuts to non-military spending. Yet, all such would only save $15 billion, small change next to the military’s expansion and the ongoing Iraq/Afghanistan costs…which are “off budget”.
The economy is growing. Tax revenues are climbing. But can these factors rescue President Bush from a federal deficit that seems stuck above $400 billion?
The answer, unfortunately, is almost certainly no, analysts say.
Can’t believe the duplicity, eh?
The cornerstone of Mr. Bush's budget strategy is a belief that vigorous economic growth, spurred by supply-side tax cuts that were designed to provide incentives for upper-income Americans to produce more wealth, will generate big jumps in tax revenue that gradually reduce the deficit. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/business/07fiscal.html?ex=1265432400&en=f9e0a5a13fbea954&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Bush and Veterans: Robert Pear continues his coverage of the budget
President Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said Sunday. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/politics/07budget.html?oref=login
Bush Budget: Any Good News? Finally found some, though I should read further, I suspect.
Mr. Bush says he wants a community health center in every poor county. The budget would increase spending for such clinics by 17.5 percent, to $2 billion. Budget officials said these clinics would care for 16.4 million people next year, up from 14 million this year.
The president is also seeking $718 million for a new effort to enroll more children in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Millions of uninsured children are eligible but not enrolled.
But, then, there’s this:
Mr. Bush seeks a $38 million increase in programs promoting sexual abstinence, which would bring the total to $192.5 million in 2006, an increase of more than 50 percent since 2004.
Budget Math It’s b.s., of course.
The budget President Bush will present to Congress today will show the federal deficit cut in half by the time he leaves office in four years.At least technically it will.Achieving that goal relies on where the budget math starts and stops, how things get counted and what gets left out
It is the 2004 deficit that Bush is promising to cut in half, but he's not starting with the actual 2004 deficit of $412 billion.Instead, his benchmark is the projected $521-billion deficit that his Office of Management and Budget estimated a year ago, when the fiscal year was four months old. Using half of that figure, Bush's goal is to reach a deficit of $260.5 billion.If Bush were to start with the actual 2004 figure, his goal would be a deficit of $206 billion — $54.5 billion more.http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-budget7feb07,1,3484190,print.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
Bush Doesn’t understand what he is proposing. We know he’s generally ignorant, despite the new p.r. about his reading a mix of fiction/non-fiction.
From the White House site:
Q -- really understand how is it the new plan is going to fix that problem?
THE PRESIDENT: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised.
Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
Okay, better? I'll keep working on it. (Laughter.) http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/print/20050204-13.html
But he claims to understand “frivolous asbestos lawsuits”
W.R. Grace and Co. and seven high-ranking employees knew a Montana mine was releasing cancer-causing asbestos into the air and tried to hide the danger to workers and townspeople, according to a federal indictment unsealed Monday. More than 1,200 people became ill, and some of them died, prosecutors said. The asbestos was naturally present in a vermiculite mine operated by Grace in the small town of Libby for nearly 30 years. http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2005/02/07/ap1810687.html
Vilification: That radical, Harry Reid, is up next
The Republican National Committee is set to begin a prolonged attack against newly installed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) aimed at weakening his support in his home state as well as on the national level.
Drawing on a blueprint used successfully against former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the RNC will send a 13-page research document today to roughly 1 million people — a group that includes journalists, donors and grass-roots activists — detailing Reid’s alleged obstructionism among other topics. “
This is the initial salvo in the upcoming discussion that we are going to be having with Sen. Reid,” said RNC Communications Director Brian Jones. RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman has already done a series of radio interviews in Nevada criticizing Reid. Other events, like a gathering of medical professionals in the Silver State to protest Reid’s stance on medical malpractice reform, are in the works.
“This is a national and local communications strategy that will look to strip the bark off the Senate Minority Leader,” Jones added.
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005432
-R
