Thursday, March 10, 2005
Administration’s Next “Push”: While Bush and his opponents focus on Social Security…
The Bush administration is expected to launch a push for business-friendly regulation, possibly including streamlined and more flexible pollution standards, chemical-handling rules, and workers' medical-leave protections.
The stated aim is to improve the overall climate for U.S. manufacturing, a sector hammered by recession and overseas competition during much of President Bush's first term.
But Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a pro-consumer group that monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget, called the effort a new assault on anticompetitive rules that amounts to rewarding Mr. Bush's political supporters in the business world. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111033197854474215,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
U.S. Withdraws (again) from International Tribunal We took the marbles and went home, after a ruling that the International Court of Justice had jurisdiction over allegations that foreign nationals jailed here have been illegally denied access to diplomats from their countries.
The Bush administration has decided to pull out of an international agreement that opponents of the death penalty have used to fight the sentences of foreigners on death row in the United States, officials said yesterday.
In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969.
The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed. abroad.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21981-2005Mar9.html
Journalists in Iraq: Follow-up. Even Berlusconi is [acting] furious
The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said today the driver of the car in which an Italian agent was killed by US forces in Iraq last week had obeyed orders to stop.
Mr Berlusconi said the car, which was taking the freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport, pulled up immediately when American soldiers flashed a warning light at it.
The prime minister told the Italian senate that the intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, who received a state funeral in Rome on Monday, had US military authorisation for his operation to secure the release of Ms Sgrena. http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1433938,00.html
Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias notes how few journalists have lodged protests over the deaths of 73 colleagues who’ve been killed in Iraq.
You have to wonder what Eason Jordan thinks about last Friday's attack on the car that took Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena from her kidnapping ordeal to her close call at the Baghdad airport.
Jordan is the CNN news chief who in January made controversial remarks about U.S. troops targeting journalists, comments which led to his resigning "to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."
Alarming indeed: at least 73 and counting.
Never mind that, according to David Gergen, the Harvard professor and former presidential adviser, who moderated the Davos panel on which Jordan made his statements, Jordan was merely refuting the idea that the dead journalists were actually "collateral damage."
In the rush to hang Jordan, the right — and their willing news twinkies in the media — seem totally unperturbed that the only place reporters feel halfway safe in Iraq is either embedded in the belly of the U.S. military beast or on a Baghdad hotel roof, shielded by satellite dishes. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1110235811810&call_pageid=970599119419
Administration Defeat: Clear Skies Travesty Thwarted
President Bush's bid to rewrite the nation's air pollution laws ground to a halt in Congress today when Republicans were unable to overcome objections in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the bill would weaken central pillars of environmental protection.
The setback dealt a body blow to the administration's highly touted plan and handed a victory to environmental groups that viewed the "Clear Skies" bill as rolling back safeguards at the behest of industry interests.
Democrats, joined by Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.), said negotiations had been conducted in bad faith, that the initiative's pollution control targets were set too low, and that certain loopholes in the bill were irresponsible.
The 9-9 vote in the Senate committee followed weeks of postponements and months of anticipation, alternately marked by low-ball tactics and high drama. While neither side said the bill was doomed, the groups remained far apart on many issues, and future negotiations appeared to be jeopardized by mistrust and radical differences of opinion.
Republican House Budget: Priorities are crystal clear
Domestic programs, excluding benefits, would be cut by 0.8 percent. Such programs range from national parks to food safety protection, but final decisions on exactly where the cuts will fall will be made in later bills.
Defense spending would grow by 4.8 percent while spending on domestic security programs would grow by 2.3 percent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20348-2005Mar9.html
And, we’re supposed to celebrate that the Republican Right wants to cut back on proposed tax cuts. The extended tax breaks would be on capital gains and dividends… of course. Praise the Moderate Republicans!
President Bush's plan to extend his tax cuts over the next five years ran into resistance in the Senate on Wednesday as Republican leaders offered a budget for 2006 that would undo more than a fourth of the cuts that Mr. Bush has requested.
Uneasy about the potential impact on the ballooning federal deficit, the Senate Republicans called for $70.2 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, as opposed to the estimated $100 billion the White House is seeking. It does not specify which cuts will be extended or which taxes might be restored, but Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who is chairman of the Budget Committee, said his intent was to extend reductions on capital gains and dividend taxes, which are set to expire in 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/politics/10budget.html?hp&ex=1110517200&en=41cfa2a15543254a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Texas Budget Junior may be gone, but they know the script: Tax Cuts for the Very Wealthy!
Texas families earning less than $100,000 a year would pay about $1.1 billion more a year in state taxes, while higher-income residents would see a tax cut of $437 million under a House bill designed to cut school property taxes, a report said Tuesday. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/3075797
USANext Smear: Fighting Back
Remember USANext's smear job on AARP -- the internet-only ad that tried to marginalize the AARP out of the Social Security debate by suggesting that the group has something against American soldiers but loves gay marriage? Rick Raymen and Steve Hansen haven't forgotten. They're the Oregon couple shown kissing in the USANext ad. Today in Washington, they filed a $25 million lawsuit against USANext.
"Our privacy and personal integrity were violated when our wedding photo was stolen and used to portray us as treasonous, unpatriotic, and a threat to American troops," Raymen said in a statement released to the press today. "We have been harassed and humiliated by this hateful ad campaign and by the bigotry and anger it has generated against us nationwide." http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/09/usanext/index.html
India and Venezuela Oil Deal Chavez cruises for Axis of Evil status, as he forges what might be called a new nonaligned movement. Venezuela has the capacity to produce more oil than Iraq if provided with an infusion of capital [as from India], China is brokering deals with Venezuela, and Fidel is a friend. If this were 1973, Kissinger wouldn’t be hesitating to ‘do an Allende’.
The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation on Tuesday said it was likely to get 49 per cent equity in an oil bloc in Venezuela and was negotiating commercial terms of the project.
ONGC Chairman and Managing Director Subir Raha said the public sector unit would be entering the retail LPG market from the fiscal 2005-06.
"We can get 49 per cent of the share in the Venezuela oil bloc for which the MoU was signed last week," he said on the sidelines of Tata Steel organized 'Global Compact' Regional Conclave in Jamshedpur.
Raha said the commercial terms were being negotiated but did not give any time frame for starting drilling there. ONGC signed the MoU last week when Venezuela President Hugo Chavez was on a visit to India. http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2005/mar/08ongc1.htm
Arnold on the Defensive The honeymoon’s over; the future’s unclear. Bless those CNA nurses whose activism is model, legendary.
Everywhere Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger goes these days there's a crowd. But they're not looking for his autograph…
The core group consists of nurses upset about Schwarzenegger's attempt to scale back hospital staffing requirements and firefighters worried about pensions. They're getting support from out-of-state colleagues, who turned up at Schwarzenegger's East Coast events this week and heckled him fiercely.
"Screw Arnold!" protesters shouted from the street as the governor dined with donors Monday at the tony 21 Club in Manhattan.
Schwarzenegger had ducked into the establishment through a service entrance to escape about 100 demonstrators; New York Gov. George Pataki had gone in the front door. But there was no sanctuary for Schwarzenegger inside.
A Santa Clara firefighter had flown in for the appearance at his own expense, put on a coat and tie and reserved a table for dinner. He walked up to the reception on another floor and confronted Schwarzenegger about his plans to cut costs by converting the state retirement system to a 401(k)-style plan. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arnold9mar09,0,1251147,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
-R
The Bush administration is expected to launch a push for business-friendly regulation, possibly including streamlined and more flexible pollution standards, chemical-handling rules, and workers' medical-leave protections.
The stated aim is to improve the overall climate for U.S. manufacturing, a sector hammered by recession and overseas competition during much of President Bush's first term.
But Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a pro-consumer group that monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget, called the effort a new assault on anticompetitive rules that amounts to rewarding Mr. Bush's political supporters in the business world. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111033197854474215,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
U.S. Withdraws (again) from International Tribunal We took the marbles and went home, after a ruling that the International Court of Justice had jurisdiction over allegations that foreign nationals jailed here have been illegally denied access to diplomats from their countries.
The Bush administration has decided to pull out of an international agreement that opponents of the death penalty have used to fight the sentences of foreigners on death row in the United States, officials said yesterday.
In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969.
The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed. abroad.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21981-2005Mar9.html
Journalists in Iraq: Follow-up. Even Berlusconi is [acting] furious
The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said today the driver of the car in which an Italian agent was killed by US forces in Iraq last week had obeyed orders to stop.
Mr Berlusconi said the car, which was taking the freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport, pulled up immediately when American soldiers flashed a warning light at it.
The prime minister told the Italian senate that the intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, who received a state funeral in Rome on Monday, had US military authorisation for his operation to secure the release of Ms Sgrena. http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1433938,00.html
Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias notes how few journalists have lodged protests over the deaths of 73 colleagues who’ve been killed in Iraq.
You have to wonder what Eason Jordan thinks about last Friday's attack on the car that took Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena from her kidnapping ordeal to her close call at the Baghdad airport.
Jordan is the CNN news chief who in January made controversial remarks about U.S. troops targeting journalists, comments which led to his resigning "to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."
Alarming indeed: at least 73 and counting.
Never mind that, according to David Gergen, the Harvard professor and former presidential adviser, who moderated the Davos panel on which Jordan made his statements, Jordan was merely refuting the idea that the dead journalists were actually "collateral damage."
In the rush to hang Jordan, the right — and their willing news twinkies in the media — seem totally unperturbed that the only place reporters feel halfway safe in Iraq is either embedded in the belly of the U.S. military beast or on a Baghdad hotel roof, shielded by satellite dishes. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1110235811810&call_pageid=970599119419
Administration Defeat: Clear Skies Travesty Thwarted
President Bush's bid to rewrite the nation's air pollution laws ground to a halt in Congress today when Republicans were unable to overcome objections in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the bill would weaken central pillars of environmental protection.
The setback dealt a body blow to the administration's highly touted plan and handed a victory to environmental groups that viewed the "Clear Skies" bill as rolling back safeguards at the behest of industry interests.
Democrats, joined by Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.), said negotiations had been conducted in bad faith, that the initiative's pollution control targets were set too low, and that certain loopholes in the bill were irresponsible.
The 9-9 vote in the Senate committee followed weeks of postponements and months of anticipation, alternately marked by low-ball tactics and high drama. While neither side said the bill was doomed, the groups remained far apart on many issues, and future negotiations appeared to be jeopardized by mistrust and radical differences of opinion.
Republican House Budget: Priorities are crystal clear
Domestic programs, excluding benefits, would be cut by 0.8 percent. Such programs range from national parks to food safety protection, but final decisions on exactly where the cuts will fall will be made in later bills.
Defense spending would grow by 4.8 percent while spending on domestic security programs would grow by 2.3 percent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20348-2005Mar9.html
And, we’re supposed to celebrate that the Republican Right wants to cut back on proposed tax cuts. The extended tax breaks would be on capital gains and dividends… of course. Praise the Moderate Republicans!
President Bush's plan to extend his tax cuts over the next five years ran into resistance in the Senate on Wednesday as Republican leaders offered a budget for 2006 that would undo more than a fourth of the cuts that Mr. Bush has requested.
Uneasy about the potential impact on the ballooning federal deficit, the Senate Republicans called for $70.2 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, as opposed to the estimated $100 billion the White House is seeking. It does not specify which cuts will be extended or which taxes might be restored, but Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who is chairman of the Budget Committee, said his intent was to extend reductions on capital gains and dividend taxes, which are set to expire in 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/politics/10budget.html?hp&ex=1110517200&en=41cfa2a15543254a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Texas Budget Junior may be gone, but they know the script: Tax Cuts for the Very Wealthy!
Texas families earning less than $100,000 a year would pay about $1.1 billion more a year in state taxes, while higher-income residents would see a tax cut of $437 million under a House bill designed to cut school property taxes, a report said Tuesday. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/3075797
USANext Smear: Fighting Back
Remember USANext's smear job on AARP -- the internet-only ad that tried to marginalize the AARP out of the Social Security debate by suggesting that the group has something against American soldiers but loves gay marriage? Rick Raymen and Steve Hansen haven't forgotten. They're the Oregon couple shown kissing in the USANext ad. Today in Washington, they filed a $25 million lawsuit against USANext.
"Our privacy and personal integrity were violated when our wedding photo was stolen and used to portray us as treasonous, unpatriotic, and a threat to American troops," Raymen said in a statement released to the press today. "We have been harassed and humiliated by this hateful ad campaign and by the bigotry and anger it has generated against us nationwide." http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/09/usanext/index.html
India and Venezuela Oil Deal Chavez cruises for Axis of Evil status, as he forges what might be called a new nonaligned movement. Venezuela has the capacity to produce more oil than Iraq if provided with an infusion of capital [as from India], China is brokering deals with Venezuela, and Fidel is a friend. If this were 1973, Kissinger wouldn’t be hesitating to ‘do an Allende’.
The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation on Tuesday said it was likely to get 49 per cent equity in an oil bloc in Venezuela and was negotiating commercial terms of the project.
ONGC Chairman and Managing Director Subir Raha said the public sector unit would be entering the retail LPG market from the fiscal 2005-06.
"We can get 49 per cent of the share in the Venezuela oil bloc for which the MoU was signed last week," he said on the sidelines of Tata Steel organized 'Global Compact' Regional Conclave in Jamshedpur.
Raha said the commercial terms were being negotiated but did not give any time frame for starting drilling there. ONGC signed the MoU last week when Venezuela President Hugo Chavez was on a visit to India. http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2005/mar/08ongc1.htm
Arnold on the Defensive The honeymoon’s over; the future’s unclear. Bless those CNA nurses whose activism is model, legendary.
Everywhere Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger goes these days there's a crowd. But they're not looking for his autograph…
The core group consists of nurses upset about Schwarzenegger's attempt to scale back hospital staffing requirements and firefighters worried about pensions. They're getting support from out-of-state colleagues, who turned up at Schwarzenegger's East Coast events this week and heckled him fiercely.
"Screw Arnold!" protesters shouted from the street as the governor dined with donors Monday at the tony 21 Club in Manhattan.
Schwarzenegger had ducked into the establishment through a service entrance to escape about 100 demonstrators; New York Gov. George Pataki had gone in the front door. But there was no sanctuary for Schwarzenegger inside.
A Santa Clara firefighter had flown in for the appearance at his own expense, put on a coat and tie and reserved a table for dinner. He walked up to the reception on another floor and confronted Schwarzenegger about his plans to cut costs by converting the state retirement system to a 401(k)-style plan. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arnold9mar09,0,1251147,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
-R
