Saturday, March 05, 2005
News Summary: Bush lies re Social Security reform now being an ‘add on’ to the existing program; http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/03/20050304-9.html ; The Congressional Budget Office confirms that the budget is stuck in (huge) deficit for the foreseeable future. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050305/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_budget. American soldiers killed the intelligence agent who helped free the now wounded Italian journalist Giuliana Srgena. Her editor termed the incident “a tragic demonstration that everything that is happening in Iraq is completely senseless and mad.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/a1/ Bushies are piling on Syria, joining France, Russia and Saudi Arabia in “demanding” a complete withdrawal, The Syrians make sounds of removing their 15,000 troops, though some observed trenches being dug, a contrary sign. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/05/international/middleeast/05syria.html Finally, the Administration has actually appointed someone [Stephen L. Johnson] for the EPA who is praised by some environmentalists, though, of course, as with predecessors, all decision-making power remains in the White House. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6621-2005Mar4.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Drip, drip of casualties
Sergeant David Phillips, 23, sighed and patted his flak jacket. "I just want to stay alive and go home with all my body parts." He spoke for 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq.
Yesterday the number of US military deaths since the March 2003 invasion crept over 1,500.
There was no official acknowledgment of the milestone, just curt statements that three soldiers had died in two separate attacks on Wednesday. "Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin." The figure includes accidents.
The daily drip of US casualties passes almost unnoticed now, a footnote to the wider slaughter of Iraqis: five policemen killed in two car bombs yesterday, 13 soldiers killed on Wednesday, a judge on Tuesday, at least 115 police and army recruits and civilians on Monday. Some 18,000 civilians are estimated to have died.
Yesterday's headlines were about the renewal of Iraq's state of emergency, fresh attacks on oil pipelines, and deadlock between Shias and Kurds over forming a new government. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1430375,00.html
Chinese Decry U.S. Righteousness:
China accused the United States on Thursday of using a double standard to judge human rights in other countries, adding to a list of nations suggesting that the government that produced the Abu Ghraib prison abuses has no business commenting on what happens elsewhere.
"No country should exclude itself from the international human rights development process or view itself as the incarnation of human rights that can reign over other countries and give orders to the others," Premier Wen Jiabao's cabinet declared, three days after the State Department criticized China in its annual human rights report.
The Chinese retort, which contained a long list of what it labeled U.S. human rights abuses at home and abroad, came directly from Wen's cabinet, giving it more weight than a Foreign Ministry comment or editorial. In addition, it used unusually direct language -- for example, charging that the United States "frequently commits wanton slaughters during external invasions and military attacks." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3840-2005Mar3?language=printer
China and Iran: Good essay on the $70 billion gas deal that exemplifies the growing connection between Tehran and Beijing- “China’s presence seems to be everywhere in this sprawling capital of about 12 million people. Its official trade volume with Iran was about $7 billion last year, a fivefold increase since 1999.”
During the past few months that country has arrived in force in this oil-rich nation of 70 million, looking to solve a headache that will take a lot more than aspirin to overcome: a critical shortage of energy for its galloping industrial growth and for the millions of new cars on its roads.
After nearly a year of talks with Iranian oil officials, China's Sinopec Group is set to sign the biggest deal Iran has negotiated in a decade. Its ripple effects over the next few years are likely to extend far beyond Iran's balance sheet. The long-term alliance with the world's fastest-growing economy…(sign-up subscription required) http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,1025403,00.html
As the War on Terror morphs into the War on Tyranny… William Engdahl discusses how “Washington”- the military and energy conglomerates- have a flexible strategy to further their global domination. The target tyrants?: Condi listed many of them- “Cuba” (Venezuela), “Burma”, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Zimbabwe to which Engdahl says we should add Sudan, Algeria, Somalia, Yemen, Belarus.
As reckless as this seems given the Iraq quagmire, the fact that little open debate on such a broadened war has yet taken place indicates how extensive the consensus is within the Washington establishment for the war policy. According to the January 24 New Yorker report from Seymour Hersh, Washington already approved a war plan for the coming four years of Bush II, which targets 10 countries from the Middle East to East Asia. The Rice statement gives a clue to six of the 10. She also suggested Venezuela is high on the non-public target list.
The military infrastructure for dealing with such tyrant states seems to be shaping up as well. In the January 24 New Yorker magazine, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh cited Pentagon and CIA sources to claim that the position of Rumsfeld and the warhawks is even stronger today than before the Iraq war. Hersh reported that Bush signed an Executive Order last year, without fanfare, placing major CIA covert operations and strategic analysis into the hands of the Pentagon, sidestepping any congressional oversight. He added that plans for the widening of the "war on terror" under Rumsfeld were also agreed upon in the administration well before the election.
The Washington Post confirmed Hersh's allegation, reporting that Rumsfeld's Pentagon had created, by Presidential Order, and bypassing Congress, a new Strategic Support Branch, which co-opts traditional clandestine and other functions of the CIA. According to a report by US Army Colonel (retired) Dan Smith, in Foreign Policy in Focus last November, the new SSB unit includes the elite military special SEAL Team 6, Delta Force army squadrons, and potentially a paramilitary army of 50,000 available for "splendid little wars" outside congressional purview.
The list of emerging targets in a new "war on tyranny" is clearly fluid, provisional, and adaptable as developments change. It is clear that a breathtaking array of future military and economic offensives is in the works at the highest policy levels to transform the world. A world oil price of US$150 a barrel or more in the next few years would be joined by chokepoint control of the supply by one power if Washington has its way. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC03Dj02.html
Gingrich Returns: Elizabeth Drew. The veteran Washington observer’s essay on Gingrich’s return to public life, but also has this nugget- more re the real goal of Social Security “reform.”
Though Bush talks of his desire to set up private savings accounts as "partial privatization" of Social Security—a limited program allowing workers to put part of their Social Security payments into private accounts—Gingrich makes it clear that some influential conservatives want to completely privatize Social Security. He speaks of the supposed benefits of "shifting fundamentally all Social Security retirement benefits to the personal accounts over the long run." Among those who share this goal are Grover Norquist and some members of conservative think tanks, in particular the Cato Institute, which has long been arguing for privatization. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17864
-R
What’s Happening, Iraq: Drip, drip of casualties
Sergeant David Phillips, 23, sighed and patted his flak jacket. "I just want to stay alive and go home with all my body parts." He spoke for 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq.
Yesterday the number of US military deaths since the March 2003 invasion crept over 1,500.
There was no official acknowledgment of the milestone, just curt statements that three soldiers had died in two separate attacks on Wednesday. "Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin." The figure includes accidents.
The daily drip of US casualties passes almost unnoticed now, a footnote to the wider slaughter of Iraqis: five policemen killed in two car bombs yesterday, 13 soldiers killed on Wednesday, a judge on Tuesday, at least 115 police and army recruits and civilians on Monday. Some 18,000 civilians are estimated to have died.
Yesterday's headlines were about the renewal of Iraq's state of emergency, fresh attacks on oil pipelines, and deadlock between Shias and Kurds over forming a new government. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1430375,00.html
Chinese Decry U.S. Righteousness:
China accused the United States on Thursday of using a double standard to judge human rights in other countries, adding to a list of nations suggesting that the government that produced the Abu Ghraib prison abuses has no business commenting on what happens elsewhere.
"No country should exclude itself from the international human rights development process or view itself as the incarnation of human rights that can reign over other countries and give orders to the others," Premier Wen Jiabao's cabinet declared, three days after the State Department criticized China in its annual human rights report.
The Chinese retort, which contained a long list of what it labeled U.S. human rights abuses at home and abroad, came directly from Wen's cabinet, giving it more weight than a Foreign Ministry comment or editorial. In addition, it used unusually direct language -- for example, charging that the United States "frequently commits wanton slaughters during external invasions and military attacks." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3840-2005Mar3?language=printer
China and Iran: Good essay on the $70 billion gas deal that exemplifies the growing connection between Tehran and Beijing- “China’s presence seems to be everywhere in this sprawling capital of about 12 million people. Its official trade volume with Iran was about $7 billion last year, a fivefold increase since 1999.”
During the past few months that country has arrived in force in this oil-rich nation of 70 million, looking to solve a headache that will take a lot more than aspirin to overcome: a critical shortage of energy for its galloping industrial growth and for the millions of new cars on its roads.
After nearly a year of talks with Iranian oil officials, China's Sinopec Group is set to sign the biggest deal Iran has negotiated in a decade. Its ripple effects over the next few years are likely to extend far beyond Iran's balance sheet. The long-term alliance with the world's fastest-growing economy…(sign-up subscription required) http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,1025403,00.html
As the War on Terror morphs into the War on Tyranny… William Engdahl discusses how “Washington”- the military and energy conglomerates- have a flexible strategy to further their global domination. The target tyrants?: Condi listed many of them- “Cuba” (Venezuela), “Burma”, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Zimbabwe to which Engdahl says we should add Sudan, Algeria, Somalia, Yemen, Belarus.
As reckless as this seems given the Iraq quagmire, the fact that little open debate on such a broadened war has yet taken place indicates how extensive the consensus is within the Washington establishment for the war policy. According to the January 24 New Yorker report from Seymour Hersh, Washington already approved a war plan for the coming four years of Bush II, which targets 10 countries from the Middle East to East Asia. The Rice statement gives a clue to six of the 10. She also suggested Venezuela is high on the non-public target list.
The military infrastructure for dealing with such tyrant states seems to be shaping up as well. In the January 24 New Yorker magazine, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh cited Pentagon and CIA sources to claim that the position of Rumsfeld and the warhawks is even stronger today than before the Iraq war. Hersh reported that Bush signed an Executive Order last year, without fanfare, placing major CIA covert operations and strategic analysis into the hands of the Pentagon, sidestepping any congressional oversight. He added that plans for the widening of the "war on terror" under Rumsfeld were also agreed upon in the administration well before the election.
The Washington Post confirmed Hersh's allegation, reporting that Rumsfeld's Pentagon had created, by Presidential Order, and bypassing Congress, a new Strategic Support Branch, which co-opts traditional clandestine and other functions of the CIA. According to a report by US Army Colonel (retired) Dan Smith, in Foreign Policy in Focus last November, the new SSB unit includes the elite military special SEAL Team 6, Delta Force army squadrons, and potentially a paramilitary army of 50,000 available for "splendid little wars" outside congressional purview.
The list of emerging targets in a new "war on tyranny" is clearly fluid, provisional, and adaptable as developments change. It is clear that a breathtaking array of future military and economic offensives is in the works at the highest policy levels to transform the world. A world oil price of US$150 a barrel or more in the next few years would be joined by chokepoint control of the supply by one power if Washington has its way. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC03Dj02.html
Gingrich Returns: Elizabeth Drew. The veteran Washington observer’s essay on Gingrich’s return to public life, but also has this nugget- more re the real goal of Social Security “reform.”
Though Bush talks of his desire to set up private savings accounts as "partial privatization" of Social Security—a limited program allowing workers to put part of their Social Security payments into private accounts—Gingrich makes it clear that some influential conservatives want to completely privatize Social Security. He speaks of the supposed benefits of "shifting fundamentally all Social Security retirement benefits to the personal accounts over the long run." Among those who share this goal are Grover Norquist and some members of conservative think tanks, in particular the Cato Institute, which has long been arguing for privatization. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17864
-R
Friday, March 04, 2005
Social Security: Administration in Strategic Retreat?
They know they’re in trouble, that they need for time for effective propagandizing and to re-tool their message.
Andy Kohut reports how badly it’s gone:
President George W. Bush is losing ground with the public in his efforts to build support for private retirement accounts in Social Security. Despite Bush's intensive campaign to promote the idea, the percentage of Americans who say they favor private accounts has tumbled to 46% in Pew's latest nationwide survey, down from 54% in December and 58% in September. Support has declined as the public has become increasingly aware of the president's plan. More than four-in-ten (43%) say they have heard a lot about the proposal, nearly double the number who said that in December (23%).
The new poll indicates that the Social Security debate is packing a powerful political punch. It finds that just 29% of Americans approve of the way that Bush is handling the issue. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=238
The re-thinking includes “flexibility’:
Mr. Snow made it clear that Mr. Bush would prefer his approach, which is built on diverting a portion of a worker's payroll tax into a private investment account, and he predicted that the president's plan would win out in the end. And Mr. Snow cited what he said were shortcomings with the supplemental approach, which would require workers to make contributions into private accounts in addition to paying the existing payroll tax.
But his willingness to consider the alternative, known as an add-on account, suggested that the administration was intent on retaining as much flexibility as possible to overcome the political and substantive obstacles that have slowed Mr. Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/politics/03social.html
The campaign: Bill Frist had to eat his words and now declare that Social Security will be addressed in the current year. That fits the announcement of a 2 month offensive- “60 Stops in 60 Days”, where, according to spokesman Scott McClellan, “we are going to be blanketing the country talking with the American people and educating them.” Treasury Secretary Snow adds that “the scope and scale goes way beyond anything we have done.” http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050303/1a_lede03.art.htm
Wow. More lies than pre-invasion? No surprise that Bush brought up bin Laden on Thursday. Almost surprising that he didn’t (thus far) claim that bin Laden and Saddam support the Social Security status quo, or that Social Security “reform” will aid the so-called “war on terror.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3841-2005Mar3.html
Greenspan: Say wha? Really- It’s absurd to treat this guy as anything other than a shill. On Thursday he tentatively endorsed a national consumption tax, one that wouldn’t replace the income tax, but still doing Bush’s bidding.
Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned today that federal budget deficits are "unsustainable" and urged Congress to consider both spending cuts and tax increases as possible solutions.
In his gloomiest assessment yet about the government's budget outlook, Mr. Greenspan warned that annual shortfalls were "unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/business/02cnd-deficit.html?hp&ex=1109826000&en=075a371257cc6533&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Yet, he then insisted that he preferred spending cuts to tax increases.
Good to see that on Thursday, Harry Reid showed spine.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generally gets accolades for his public pronouncements. Yesterday he got a brickbat from Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who blasted Greenspan as "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington."
Reid ripped Greenspan during an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." He said the Fed chairman has given President Bush a pass on deficits that have built up in the past four years and should be challenging Republicans on their fiscal policies, rather than promoting Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts into Social Security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5396-2005Mar3.html
Bankruptcy Bill: It’s awful and will pass; the Republican discipline is holding.
The proposed law, by preventing many debtors from seeking bankruptcy protection, would compel financially insolvent borrowers to continue trying to pay off the old debts almost indefinitely.
"Until now, the principle in this country has been that people's future human capital is their own," said David A. Moss, an economic historian at Harvard University. "If a person gets on a financial treadmill, they can declare bankruptcy and have what can't be paid discharged. But that would change with this bill.
Credit card companies have done wonderfully, despite their propaganda.
In the eight years since they began pressing for the tough bankruptcy bill being debated in the Senate, America's big credit card companies have effectively inoculated themselves from many of the problems that sparked their call for the measure.
By charging customers different interest rates depending on how likely they are to repay their debts and by adding substantial fees for an array of items such as late payments and foreign currency transactions, the major card companies have managed to keep their profits rising steadily even as personal bankruptcies have soared, industry figures show.
"The idea that companies are losing their shirts on bankruptcies is a lot of bull," said one industry analyst. "With these rates and fees, the card industry is a gravy train right now." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bankruptcy4mar04,0,7113947.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Peace and the Middle East: Bush was Right (?)
Very uncomfortable hearing a wide range of pundits and commentators crediting Bush, that even if the invasion was built on lies, still, look what it’s encouraged! Mildly supportive statements ranging from the NY Times to Jon Stewart and Bill Maher remind one that credit accrues to those in office. Then again, the Democrats are weak and journalism is all but non-existent.
More on what’s left of “journalism”- Eric Boehlert and Frank Rich:
For the last four years the persistent story line about the White House's relationship with the press has focused on the administration's discipline, denial of access, and ability to stay on message. The Bush administration, according to this account, is expert at managing information, using secrecy, carrots and sticks, and carefully crafted talking points to control the news.
But in the wake of revelations about the aggressive and unprecedented tactics employed by the White House to manipulate the news, that relatively benign interpretation is being reexamined. Recent headlines about paid-off pundits, video press releases disguised as news telecasts, and the remarkable press access granted to a right-wing pseudo-journalist working under a phony name, have led some to conclude that the White House is not simply aggressively managing the news, but is out to sabotage the press corps from within, to undermine the integrity and reputation of journalism itself.
The White House and its media allies, echoing a deep-rooted conservative antagonism toward the so-called liberal media, say they are simply countering its bias. But critics charge that the White House, along with partners like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, organizations whose allegiance to the Republican Party outweighs their commitment to journalism, is actually trying to permanently weaken the press. Its motivation, they say, is twofold. Weakening the press weakens an institution that's structurally an adversary of the White House. And if the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate.
"Republicans have a clear, agreed-upon plan how to diminish the mainstream press," says Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was granted unique access inside the White House in 2002 to report on the administration's communication strategy. "For them, essentially the way to handle the press is the same as how to handle the federal government; you starve the beast. When it's in a weakened and undernourished condition, then you're able to effect a variety of subtle partisan and political attacks. Armstrong Williams and others are examples of that." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/02/media/print.html
What's missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America's Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America's anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.
In this environment, it's hard to know whom to root for. After the "60 Minutes" fiasco, Mr. Williams's boss, the NBC president Jeff Zucker, piously derided CBS for its screw-up, bragging of the reforms NBC News instituted after a producer staged a truck explosion for a "Dateline NBC" segment in 1992. "Nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level," Mr. Zucker said of the CBS National Guard story, "because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago." Good for him, but it's not as if a lot else has gotten through either. When was the last time Stone Phillips delivered a scoop, with real or even fake documents, on "Dateline"? Or that NBC News pulled off an investigative coup as stunning as the "60 Minutes II" report on Abu Ghraib? That, poignantly enough, was Mr. Rather's last hurrah before he, too, and through every fault of his own, became a neutered newsman. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/arts/06rich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Back to the Middle East:
A new narrative is spreading, that of a popular uprising against the status quo of oppressive regimes. It’s not pro-America, but at least is less focused on us as the problem. And, let’s remember that the ball started rolling when Ehud Barak withdrew the Israeli army from Lebanon almost 5 years ago. With the Israelis gone, the Syrian presence was no longer considered a balance to the Israelis and instead they became the foreign presence to be focused upon. And, again, the neocons and their Administration hadn’t talked up democratizing the Middle East until the other rationales for war/invasion were exposed as poppycock. They were more inclined to a friendly strongman type and only granted elections when they were demanded by Sistani.
But, hey, they grabbed onto the lingo and have run with it, and maybe it helps that they emphasize democracy and not repetitive invasions, axis of evil, etc.
What’s Happening, Iraq: TBI. Traumatic Brain Injury. USA Today focused on the proliferation of such, as body armor protects soldiers so that they survive, but suffer massive concussions. One survey of wounded at a Bethesda hospital found that 83% had symptoms of TBI. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
What’s Happening, Gannon: The Major Media continue to bury the story, so we have to depend on the smaller, the independent, the internet:
House Democrats say they will force a vote in the House Judiciary Committee to put the Republican majority on the record with regards to investigating discredited White House correspondent Jeff Gannon who allegedly had access to confidential information, including a memorandum naming CIA operative Valerie Plame, RAW STORY has learned.
The procedure, called a Resolution of Inquiry, will be directed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and departing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, senior House aides say. Ridge has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, which is responsible for presidential security; Gonzales oversees the FBI, whose databases are used for criminal background checks.
The resolution requests all documents on how Gannon was personally cleared and repeatedly allowed access to the White House, aides tell RAW STORY. It also calls for any information the departments have on White House policies about how an applicant would go about getting clearance in general.
Among those supporting the resolution include ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Rules Committee Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and ranking Government Reform Committee Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA). Other Judiciary Democrats are also expected to sign on. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=142
What’s Happening, Abuse: The incidents continue to roll in. But, it’s no longer “news”; it’s “old news” and, as with so many other transgressions and outrages, they will not be investigated by Congress.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is opposing a request by the panel's top Democrat to investigate possible misconduct by the C.I.A. in the treatment of terrorism suspects, Congressional officials said Tuesday.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, is insisting that any review be conducted only as part of the committee's standard oversight role, not a broader inquiry, an aide to Mr. Roberts said. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/politics/02intel.html
Oh, as to that evidence, there’s this report from the WaPost http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2.html and there was the ‘Brooklyn Abu Ghraib’ http://nydailynews.com/front/story/282716p-242172c.html
Armstrong Williams Gets A Radio Show Makes perfect sense to me
Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator embroiled in controversy after being paid to promote Bush administration policies, has signed a contract to be a co-host of a daily radio talk show in New York.
The three-hour show, "Drive Time Dialogue," will begin on March 15 on WWRL, 1600 AM. Broadcasting from a studio installed in his Capitol Hill offices, Mr. Williams will present the conservative point of view. He will be countered by Sam Greenfield, as the liberal voice, from New York.
Whether his tarred legitimacy as a journalist will affect his standing - for better or for worse - in a less rigorous radio format remains to be seen. "I think he's going to labor with a question mark about him, given this scandal," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
But, Mr. Kohut said: "In the realm of combative media it might even be a mark of distinction, who knows? This kind of political chat show is full of people with a lot of attitude and maybe even some baggage. It's not like he will be an anchor on CNN." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/arts/television/03arm.html
Republican Noise Machine There are examples every day. Really. A goodie from this week: Robert Novak distorts comments by Howard Dean, i.e. he didn’t say what Novak claims.
Howard Dean, the new leader of the DNC, has already bucked his party. According to a news report by Robert Novak, “Mad How” has admitted that Social Security is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Here’s the video from CNN’s Inside Politics (WMV file). Here’s the excerpt:
CNN‘S ROBERT NOVAK: ”[T]hey’ve got to really get Howard under control. He spoke at Cornell University last week, and the only paper that covered this was “The Cornell Daily” student paper, and he said, yes, Social Security has a big problem. Over the years it’s going to lose about 80 percent of the benefits. That, Judy, is not the Democratic line. The Democratic line is there is no problem.” http://www.socialsecuritychoice.org/archives/2005/03/the_first_step_1.php
They’re posted on the Republican National Committee web site, then they’re repeated by the CATO Institute and Rush Limbaugh. Eventually the RNC takes it off their site, but now millions know that the Screamer has purportedly yielded / assented on Social Security. They’re shameless.
The Public Speaks: Gallup Poll 1 in 4 say ‘nuke the terrorists’
More than one in four Americans would go so far as to utilize nuclear bombs if need be in the fight against terrorism, according to a national survey reported today by The Gallup Organization.
Gallup asked Americans whether they would be willing or not willing “to have the U.S. government do each of the following” and then listed an array of options.
For example, “assassinate known terrorists” drew the support of 65% of all adults. “Torture known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks in the U.S.” won the backing of 39%. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1000819252
Robert Reich on Wal-Mart and Us: For those who missed Monday’s op ed.
BOWING to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.
But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there.
Instead, Wal-Mart has lured customers with low prices. "We expect our suppliers to drive the costs out of the supply chain," a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said. "It's good for us and good for them."
Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are manufactured in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back-office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is "offshored" to India, so our dollars go even further.
Meanwhile, many of us pressure companies to give us even better bargains. I look on the Internet to find the lowest price I can and buy airline tickets, books, merchandise from just about anywhere with a click of a mouse. Don't you?
The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28reich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
-R
They know they’re in trouble, that they need for time for effective propagandizing and to re-tool their message.
Andy Kohut reports how badly it’s gone:
President George W. Bush is losing ground with the public in his efforts to build support for private retirement accounts in Social Security. Despite Bush's intensive campaign to promote the idea, the percentage of Americans who say they favor private accounts has tumbled to 46% in Pew's latest nationwide survey, down from 54% in December and 58% in September. Support has declined as the public has become increasingly aware of the president's plan. More than four-in-ten (43%) say they have heard a lot about the proposal, nearly double the number who said that in December (23%).
The new poll indicates that the Social Security debate is packing a powerful political punch. It finds that just 29% of Americans approve of the way that Bush is handling the issue. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=238
The re-thinking includes “flexibility’:
Mr. Snow made it clear that Mr. Bush would prefer his approach, which is built on diverting a portion of a worker's payroll tax into a private investment account, and he predicted that the president's plan would win out in the end. And Mr. Snow cited what he said were shortcomings with the supplemental approach, which would require workers to make contributions into private accounts in addition to paying the existing payroll tax.
But his willingness to consider the alternative, known as an add-on account, suggested that the administration was intent on retaining as much flexibility as possible to overcome the political and substantive obstacles that have slowed Mr. Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/politics/03social.html
The campaign: Bill Frist had to eat his words and now declare that Social Security will be addressed in the current year. That fits the announcement of a 2 month offensive- “60 Stops in 60 Days”, where, according to spokesman Scott McClellan, “we are going to be blanketing the country talking with the American people and educating them.” Treasury Secretary Snow adds that “the scope and scale goes way beyond anything we have done.” http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050303/1a_lede03.art.htm
Wow. More lies than pre-invasion? No surprise that Bush brought up bin Laden on Thursday. Almost surprising that he didn’t (thus far) claim that bin Laden and Saddam support the Social Security status quo, or that Social Security “reform” will aid the so-called “war on terror.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3841-2005Mar3.html
Greenspan: Say wha? Really- It’s absurd to treat this guy as anything other than a shill. On Thursday he tentatively endorsed a national consumption tax, one that wouldn’t replace the income tax, but still doing Bush’s bidding.
Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned today that federal budget deficits are "unsustainable" and urged Congress to consider both spending cuts and tax increases as possible solutions.
In his gloomiest assessment yet about the government's budget outlook, Mr. Greenspan warned that annual shortfalls were "unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/business/02cnd-deficit.html?hp&ex=1109826000&en=075a371257cc6533&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Yet, he then insisted that he preferred spending cuts to tax increases.
Good to see that on Thursday, Harry Reid showed spine.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generally gets accolades for his public pronouncements. Yesterday he got a brickbat from Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who blasted Greenspan as "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington."
Reid ripped Greenspan during an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." He said the Fed chairman has given President Bush a pass on deficits that have built up in the past four years and should be challenging Republicans on their fiscal policies, rather than promoting Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts into Social Security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5396-2005Mar3.html
Bankruptcy Bill: It’s awful and will pass; the Republican discipline is holding.
The proposed law, by preventing many debtors from seeking bankruptcy protection, would compel financially insolvent borrowers to continue trying to pay off the old debts almost indefinitely.
"Until now, the principle in this country has been that people's future human capital is their own," said David A. Moss, an economic historian at Harvard University. "If a person gets on a financial treadmill, they can declare bankruptcy and have what can't be paid discharged. But that would change with this bill.
Credit card companies have done wonderfully, despite their propaganda.
In the eight years since they began pressing for the tough bankruptcy bill being debated in the Senate, America's big credit card companies have effectively inoculated themselves from many of the problems that sparked their call for the measure.
By charging customers different interest rates depending on how likely they are to repay their debts and by adding substantial fees for an array of items such as late payments and foreign currency transactions, the major card companies have managed to keep their profits rising steadily even as personal bankruptcies have soared, industry figures show.
"The idea that companies are losing their shirts on bankruptcies is a lot of bull," said one industry analyst. "With these rates and fees, the card industry is a gravy train right now." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bankruptcy4mar04,0,7113947.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Peace and the Middle East: Bush was Right (?)
Very uncomfortable hearing a wide range of pundits and commentators crediting Bush, that even if the invasion was built on lies, still, look what it’s encouraged! Mildly supportive statements ranging from the NY Times to Jon Stewart and Bill Maher remind one that credit accrues to those in office. Then again, the Democrats are weak and journalism is all but non-existent.
More on what’s left of “journalism”- Eric Boehlert and Frank Rich:
For the last four years the persistent story line about the White House's relationship with the press has focused on the administration's discipline, denial of access, and ability to stay on message. The Bush administration, according to this account, is expert at managing information, using secrecy, carrots and sticks, and carefully crafted talking points to control the news.
But in the wake of revelations about the aggressive and unprecedented tactics employed by the White House to manipulate the news, that relatively benign interpretation is being reexamined. Recent headlines about paid-off pundits, video press releases disguised as news telecasts, and the remarkable press access granted to a right-wing pseudo-journalist working under a phony name, have led some to conclude that the White House is not simply aggressively managing the news, but is out to sabotage the press corps from within, to undermine the integrity and reputation of journalism itself.
The White House and its media allies, echoing a deep-rooted conservative antagonism toward the so-called liberal media, say they are simply countering its bias. But critics charge that the White House, along with partners like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, organizations whose allegiance to the Republican Party outweighs their commitment to journalism, is actually trying to permanently weaken the press. Its motivation, they say, is twofold. Weakening the press weakens an institution that's structurally an adversary of the White House. And if the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate.
"Republicans have a clear, agreed-upon plan how to diminish the mainstream press," says Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was granted unique access inside the White House in 2002 to report on the administration's communication strategy. "For them, essentially the way to handle the press is the same as how to handle the federal government; you starve the beast. When it's in a weakened and undernourished condition, then you're able to effect a variety of subtle partisan and political attacks. Armstrong Williams and others are examples of that." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/02/media/print.html
What's missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America's Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America's anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.
In this environment, it's hard to know whom to root for. After the "60 Minutes" fiasco, Mr. Williams's boss, the NBC president Jeff Zucker, piously derided CBS for its screw-up, bragging of the reforms NBC News instituted after a producer staged a truck explosion for a "Dateline NBC" segment in 1992. "Nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level," Mr. Zucker said of the CBS National Guard story, "because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago." Good for him, but it's not as if a lot else has gotten through either. When was the last time Stone Phillips delivered a scoop, with real or even fake documents, on "Dateline"? Or that NBC News pulled off an investigative coup as stunning as the "60 Minutes II" report on Abu Ghraib? That, poignantly enough, was Mr. Rather's last hurrah before he, too, and through every fault of his own, became a neutered newsman. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/arts/06rich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Back to the Middle East:
A new narrative is spreading, that of a popular uprising against the status quo of oppressive regimes. It’s not pro-America, but at least is less focused on us as the problem. And, let’s remember that the ball started rolling when Ehud Barak withdrew the Israeli army from Lebanon almost 5 years ago. With the Israelis gone, the Syrian presence was no longer considered a balance to the Israelis and instead they became the foreign presence to be focused upon. And, again, the neocons and their Administration hadn’t talked up democratizing the Middle East until the other rationales for war/invasion were exposed as poppycock. They were more inclined to a friendly strongman type and only granted elections when they were demanded by Sistani.
But, hey, they grabbed onto the lingo and have run with it, and maybe it helps that they emphasize democracy and not repetitive invasions, axis of evil, etc.
What’s Happening, Iraq: TBI. Traumatic Brain Injury. USA Today focused on the proliferation of such, as body armor protects soldiers so that they survive, but suffer massive concussions. One survey of wounded at a Bethesda hospital found that 83% had symptoms of TBI. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
What’s Happening, Gannon: The Major Media continue to bury the story, so we have to depend on the smaller, the independent, the internet:
House Democrats say they will force a vote in the House Judiciary Committee to put the Republican majority on the record with regards to investigating discredited White House correspondent Jeff Gannon who allegedly had access to confidential information, including a memorandum naming CIA operative Valerie Plame, RAW STORY has learned.
The procedure, called a Resolution of Inquiry, will be directed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and departing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, senior House aides say. Ridge has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, which is responsible for presidential security; Gonzales oversees the FBI, whose databases are used for criminal background checks.
The resolution requests all documents on how Gannon was personally cleared and repeatedly allowed access to the White House, aides tell RAW STORY. It also calls for any information the departments have on White House policies about how an applicant would go about getting clearance in general.
Among those supporting the resolution include ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Rules Committee Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and ranking Government Reform Committee Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA). Other Judiciary Democrats are also expected to sign on. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=142
What’s Happening, Abuse: The incidents continue to roll in. But, it’s no longer “news”; it’s “old news” and, as with so many other transgressions and outrages, they will not be investigated by Congress.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is opposing a request by the panel's top Democrat to investigate possible misconduct by the C.I.A. in the treatment of terrorism suspects, Congressional officials said Tuesday.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, is insisting that any review be conducted only as part of the committee's standard oversight role, not a broader inquiry, an aide to Mr. Roberts said. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/politics/02intel.html
Oh, as to that evidence, there’s this report from the WaPost http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2.html and there was the ‘Brooklyn Abu Ghraib’ http://nydailynews.com/front/story/282716p-242172c.html
Armstrong Williams Gets A Radio Show Makes perfect sense to me
Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator embroiled in controversy after being paid to promote Bush administration policies, has signed a contract to be a co-host of a daily radio talk show in New York.
The three-hour show, "Drive Time Dialogue," will begin on March 15 on WWRL, 1600 AM. Broadcasting from a studio installed in his Capitol Hill offices, Mr. Williams will present the conservative point of view. He will be countered by Sam Greenfield, as the liberal voice, from New York.
Whether his tarred legitimacy as a journalist will affect his standing - for better or for worse - in a less rigorous radio format remains to be seen. "I think he's going to labor with a question mark about him, given this scandal," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
But, Mr. Kohut said: "In the realm of combative media it might even be a mark of distinction, who knows? This kind of political chat show is full of people with a lot of attitude and maybe even some baggage. It's not like he will be an anchor on CNN." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/arts/television/03arm.html
Republican Noise Machine There are examples every day. Really. A goodie from this week: Robert Novak distorts comments by Howard Dean, i.e. he didn’t say what Novak claims.
Howard Dean, the new leader of the DNC, has already bucked his party. According to a news report by Robert Novak, “Mad How” has admitted that Social Security is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Here’s the video from CNN’s Inside Politics (WMV file). Here’s the excerpt:
CNN‘S ROBERT NOVAK: ”[T]hey’ve got to really get Howard under control. He spoke at Cornell University last week, and the only paper that covered this was “The Cornell Daily” student paper, and he said, yes, Social Security has a big problem. Over the years it’s going to lose about 80 percent of the benefits. That, Judy, is not the Democratic line. The Democratic line is there is no problem.” http://www.socialsecuritychoice.org/archives/2005/03/the_first_step_1.php
They’re posted on the Republican National Committee web site, then they’re repeated by the CATO Institute and Rush Limbaugh. Eventually the RNC takes it off their site, but now millions know that the Screamer has purportedly yielded / assented on Social Security. They’re shameless.
The Public Speaks: Gallup Poll 1 in 4 say ‘nuke the terrorists’
More than one in four Americans would go so far as to utilize nuclear bombs if need be in the fight against terrorism, according to a national survey reported today by The Gallup Organization.
Gallup asked Americans whether they would be willing or not willing “to have the U.S. government do each of the following” and then listed an array of options.
For example, “assassinate known terrorists” drew the support of 65% of all adults. “Torture known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks in the U.S.” won the backing of 39%. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1000819252
Robert Reich on Wal-Mart and Us: For those who missed Monday’s op ed.
BOWING to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.
But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there.
Instead, Wal-Mart has lured customers with low prices. "We expect our suppliers to drive the costs out of the supply chain," a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said. "It's good for us and good for them."
Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are manufactured in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back-office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is "offshored" to India, so our dollars go even further.
Meanwhile, many of us pressure companies to give us even better bargains. I look on the Internet to find the lowest price I can and buy airline tickets, books, merchandise from just about anywhere with a click of a mouse. Don't you?
The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28reich.html?pagewanted=print&position=
-R
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
The Kindly Media: The lengths they go to avoid saying 'lies' or 'lying'…ABC’s The Note on an Administration spokesperson:
White House communications czarina Nicolle Devenish is very upbeat in this story, but her words aren't necessarily backed up by metrics of which we know. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238
Halting Capitol Punishment for Teens Apparently only the U.S. and Somalia were executing juveniles. Good to see we’re joining the rest of the world.
"From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformd." -Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the court's majority opinion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/image/
Hope Kennedy is ready for attacks from the Right…
What’s Happening, Lebanon: Juan Cole on what it means in/for Lebanon and Israel:
If Lebanese people power can force a Syrian withdrawal, the public relations implications may be ambiguous for Tel Aviv. After the US withdrawal from Iraq, Israeli dominance of the West Bank and Gaza will be the last military occupation of major territory in the Middle East. People in the region, in Europe, and in the US itself may begin asking why, if Syria had to leave Lebanon, Israel should not have to leave the West Bank and Gaza.
I don't think Bush had anything much to do with the current Lebanese national movement except at the margins. Walid Jumblatt, the embittered son of Kamal whom the Syrians defeated in 1976 at the American behest, said he was inspired by the fall of Saddam. But this sort of statement from a Druze warlord strikes me as just as manipulative as the news conferences of Ahmad Chalabi, who is also inspired by Saddam's fall. Jumblatt has a long history of anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment that makes his sudden conversion to neoconism likely a mirage. He has wanted the Syrians back out since 1976, so it is not plausible that anything changed for him in 2003.
The Lebanese are still not entirely united on a Syrian military withdrawal. Supporters of outgoing PM Omar Karami rioted in Tripoli on Monday. Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah still supports the Syrians and has expressed anxieties about the Hariri assassination and its aftermath leading to renewed civil war (an argument for continued Syrian military presence). http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/lebanon-realignment-and-syria-it-is.html
Bankruptcy Bill: Another awful corporte bill making its way. E.J. Dionne captures the essence and warns Democrats they had best be united.
You could make a case for this bankruptcy bill if it were narrowly focused on those who truly abuse the system. Instead, the bill sweeps away protections for worthy and unworthy creditors alike. This will make it much tougher for those who fall on hard times to escape burdens they confront through little fault of their own.
Listen to Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and one of the most learned and powerful critics of the bill. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February, Warren argued that the proposal "assumes that everyone is in bankruptcy for the same reason -- too much unnecessary spending."
What does that mean in practice? "A family driven to bankruptcy by the increased costs of caring for an elderly parent with Alzheimer's disease is treated the same as someone who maxed out his credit cards at a casino," Warren said. "A person who had a heart attack is treated the same as someone who had a spending spree at the shopping mall. A mother who works two jobs and who cannot manage the prescription drugs needed for a child with diabetes is treated the same as someone who charged a bunch of credit cards with only a vague intent to repay." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61634-2005Feb28.html
Speaking of economics, the plight of the dollar (continued)
Asian central bank and finance officials met quietly here this week to discuss ways to stabilize foreign exchange markets as currencies around the region surged against the U.S. dollar, some to multi-year highs.
Officials of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as well as China, Japan and South Korea, agreed at Tuesday's closed-door meeting to set up the "Asian Bellagio Group", which will help coordinate policies and ideas among central banks, finance ministries and academics, a Thai finance ministry official told Dow Jones Newswires.
The group is unlikely to produce concerted monetary action by Asian authorities any time soon - but the decision to establish it does suggest the region's governments are increasingly concerned by global financial imbalances and the shaky U.S. dollar.
It also indicates emerging Asian economies are getting serious about pursuing close regional http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/050224/15/3qtq5.html
What’s Happening Iraq: Casualty / secrecy issues
U.S. officials have "declined to provide the exact number" of Iraqi security members killed in the insurgency. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/international/middleeast/01iraq.html?hp&ex=1109653200&en=e991b8570d6e1c01&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The WaPost discusses a related piece, that the Iraqi police are forbidding – and beating- journalists who try to enter hospitals to learn about bombing victims. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59240-2005Feb28.html
Agent Orange Been following this with Dutch friends from my visit last year to Vietnam. Steady sources has been Radio Netherlands and Ken Herrmann’s Danang/Quang Nam Fund which aids the poor of Central Vietnam and addresses the disabilities of 2 million Vietnamese who were exposed to Agent Orange. http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/northamerica/usa050301?view=Standard
http://www.danangquangnamfund.org/
Good to see the NY Times cover it this week:
The Justice Department is urging a federal judge in Brooklyn to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at forcing a re-examination of one of the most contentious issues of the Vietnam War, the use of the defoliant Agent Orange.
The civil suit, filed last year on behalf of millions of Vietnamese, claimed that American chemical companies committed war crimes by supplying the military with Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, a highly toxic substance.
The suit seeks what could be billions of dollars of damages from the companies and the environmental cleanup of Vietnam. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/nyregion/28orange.html
Attorneys representing major U.S. chemical companies defended them against charges on Monday that the companies committed war crimes by supplying the military with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
The lawyers asked a U.S. District Court judge in Brooklyn, New York, to dismiss a civil suit that seeks class action status claiming that up to 4 million Vietnamese people suffered from dioxin poisoning due to Agent Orange. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-crime-agentorange.html
Privatized Prison”Health Care” Criminal
In these two deaths, state investigators concluded, the culprit was a for-profit corporation, Prison Health Services. The company, based outside Nashville, Tenn., no longer works in most of those New York jails, but it hardly is out of work. It has amassed 86 contracts in 28 states -- including Indiana -- and now cares for 237,000 inmates, or about one in every 10 people behind bars.
Nearly 23,000 Indiana inmates are served by Prison Health, one of the top five largest regions served by the company that has sold its promise of lower costs and better care, and become the biggest for-profit company providing medical care in jails and prisons. Its enticing sales pitch: take the messy and expensive job of providing medical care from overmatched government officials, and give it to an experienced nationwide company that could recruit doctors, battle lawsuits and keep costs down.
A yearlong examination of Prison Health by The New York Times reveals repeated instances of flawed medical care that sometimes turns lethal. The company's performance around the nation has provoked criticism from judges and sheriffs, lawsuits from inmates' families and whistle-blowers, and condemnation by federal, state and local authorities. The company has paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements. http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/225857-3856-010.html
Social Security:
USAToday has a poll showing support for Bush on Social Security flagging, indeed falling. Just 35% of respondents support his Social Security "record," down eight points since three weeks ago and 14 points since he first took office. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-28-poll_x.htm
The WaPost notes that the White House has set a self-imposed six-week deadline to start turning public opinion on Social Security. As part of the effort, the Treasury Department has opened a "war room"- the “Social Security Information Center”- to "help coordinate and refine the administration's message on the issue." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61437-2005Feb28.html
Frist: Thumbs Down
The Senate's top Republican said yesterday that President Bush's bid to restructure Social Security may have to wait until next year and might not involve the individual accounts the White House has been pushing hard.
The comments of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), made as GOP lawmakers returned from a week of trying to sell the plan to voters, underscored the challenge facing the White House, especially in light of unbroken Democratic opposition. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64253-2005Mar1.html
Today’s NY Times is not quite so pessimistic
President Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security is in trouble, and while it is far too soon to declare it doomed, it faces obstacles on all sides.
After a week at home listening to constituents on the issue, Congressional leaders of Mr. Bush's own party have returned to Washington and immediately begun playing for time, suggesting that they may not meet his goal of passing legislation this year. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/politics/02social.html?hp&ex=1109826000&en=7e45d8b533d68616&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Wolfowitz to World Bank? Guardian:
In one of the most intriguing stories of the day, the Financial Times reports that Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defence and one of the chief hawks in the Bush administration, is on the short list to succeed James Wolfensohn as president of the World Bank.
The worldbankpresident blog describes the report as a bombshell as it would be a controversial choice. You can stay that again. Of course it would not be the first time that someone from the Pentagon has headed the world's leading development institution. That distinction belongs to Robert McNamara, who came to grief over the Vietnam war. He ran the Bank from 1968 to 1981, in what could be seen as a very public act of contrition for his conduct of the war. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/world_news/2005/03/01/wolfowitzs_world.html
-R
White House communications czarina Nicolle Devenish is very upbeat in this story, but her words aren't necessarily backed up by metrics of which we know. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238
Halting Capitol Punishment for Teens Apparently only the U.S. and Somalia were executing juveniles. Good to see we’re joining the rest of the world.
"From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformd." -Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the court's majority opinion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/image/
Hope Kennedy is ready for attacks from the Right…
What’s Happening, Lebanon: Juan Cole on what it means in/for Lebanon and Israel:
If Lebanese people power can force a Syrian withdrawal, the public relations implications may be ambiguous for Tel Aviv. After the US withdrawal from Iraq, Israeli dominance of the West Bank and Gaza will be the last military occupation of major territory in the Middle East. People in the region, in Europe, and in the US itself may begin asking why, if Syria had to leave Lebanon, Israel should not have to leave the West Bank and Gaza.
I don't think Bush had anything much to do with the current Lebanese national movement except at the margins. Walid Jumblatt, the embittered son of Kamal whom the Syrians defeated in 1976 at the American behest, said he was inspired by the fall of Saddam. But this sort of statement from a Druze warlord strikes me as just as manipulative as the news conferences of Ahmad Chalabi, who is also inspired by Saddam's fall. Jumblatt has a long history of anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment that makes his sudden conversion to neoconism likely a mirage. He has wanted the Syrians back out since 1976, so it is not plausible that anything changed for him in 2003.
The Lebanese are still not entirely united on a Syrian military withdrawal. Supporters of outgoing PM Omar Karami rioted in Tripoli on Monday. Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah still supports the Syrians and has expressed anxieties about the Hariri assassination and its aftermath leading to renewed civil war (an argument for continued Syrian military presence). http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/lebanon-realignment-and-syria-it-is.html
Bankruptcy Bill: Another awful corporte bill making its way. E.J. Dionne captures the essence and warns Democrats they had best be united.
You could make a case for this bankruptcy bill if it were narrowly focused on those who truly abuse the system. Instead, the bill sweeps away protections for worthy and unworthy creditors alike. This will make it much tougher for those who fall on hard times to escape burdens they confront through little fault of their own.
Listen to Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and one of the most learned and powerful critics of the bill. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February, Warren argued that the proposal "assumes that everyone is in bankruptcy for the same reason -- too much unnecessary spending."
What does that mean in practice? "A family driven to bankruptcy by the increased costs of caring for an elderly parent with Alzheimer's disease is treated the same as someone who maxed out his credit cards at a casino," Warren said. "A person who had a heart attack is treated the same as someone who had a spending spree at the shopping mall. A mother who works two jobs and who cannot manage the prescription drugs needed for a child with diabetes is treated the same as someone who charged a bunch of credit cards with only a vague intent to repay." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61634-2005Feb28.html
Speaking of economics, the plight of the dollar (continued)
Asian central bank and finance officials met quietly here this week to discuss ways to stabilize foreign exchange markets as currencies around the region surged against the U.S. dollar, some to multi-year highs.
Officials of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as well as China, Japan and South Korea, agreed at Tuesday's closed-door meeting to set up the "Asian Bellagio Group", which will help coordinate policies and ideas among central banks, finance ministries and academics, a Thai finance ministry official told Dow Jones Newswires.
The group is unlikely to produce concerted monetary action by Asian authorities any time soon - but the decision to establish it does suggest the region's governments are increasingly concerned by global financial imbalances and the shaky U.S. dollar.
It also indicates emerging Asian economies are getting serious about pursuing close regional http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/050224/15/3qtq5.html
What’s Happening Iraq: Casualty / secrecy issues
U.S. officials have "declined to provide the exact number" of Iraqi security members killed in the insurgency. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/international/middleeast/01iraq.html?hp&ex=1109653200&en=e991b8570d6e1c01&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The WaPost discusses a related piece, that the Iraqi police are forbidding – and beating- journalists who try to enter hospitals to learn about bombing victims. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59240-2005Feb28.html
Agent Orange Been following this with Dutch friends from my visit last year to Vietnam. Steady sources has been Radio Netherlands and Ken Herrmann’s Danang/Quang Nam Fund which aids the poor of Central Vietnam and addresses the disabilities of 2 million Vietnamese who were exposed to Agent Orange. http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/northamerica/usa050301?view=Standard
http://www.danangquangnamfund.org/
Good to see the NY Times cover it this week:
The Justice Department is urging a federal judge in Brooklyn to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at forcing a re-examination of one of the most contentious issues of the Vietnam War, the use of the defoliant Agent Orange.
The civil suit, filed last year on behalf of millions of Vietnamese, claimed that American chemical companies committed war crimes by supplying the military with Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, a highly toxic substance.
The suit seeks what could be billions of dollars of damages from the companies and the environmental cleanup of Vietnam. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/nyregion/28orange.html
Attorneys representing major U.S. chemical companies defended them against charges on Monday that the companies committed war crimes by supplying the military with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
The lawyers asked a U.S. District Court judge in Brooklyn, New York, to dismiss a civil suit that seeks class action status claiming that up to 4 million Vietnamese people suffered from dioxin poisoning due to Agent Orange. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-crime-agentorange.html
Privatized Prison”Health Care” Criminal
In these two deaths, state investigators concluded, the culprit was a for-profit corporation, Prison Health Services. The company, based outside Nashville, Tenn., no longer works in most of those New York jails, but it hardly is out of work. It has amassed 86 contracts in 28 states -- including Indiana -- and now cares for 237,000 inmates, or about one in every 10 people behind bars.
Nearly 23,000 Indiana inmates are served by Prison Health, one of the top five largest regions served by the company that has sold its promise of lower costs and better care, and become the biggest for-profit company providing medical care in jails and prisons. Its enticing sales pitch: take the messy and expensive job of providing medical care from overmatched government officials, and give it to an experienced nationwide company that could recruit doctors, battle lawsuits and keep costs down.
A yearlong examination of Prison Health by The New York Times reveals repeated instances of flawed medical care that sometimes turns lethal. The company's performance around the nation has provoked criticism from judges and sheriffs, lawsuits from inmates' families and whistle-blowers, and condemnation by federal, state and local authorities. The company has paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements. http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/225857-3856-010.html
Social Security:
USAToday has a poll showing support for Bush on Social Security flagging, indeed falling. Just 35% of respondents support his Social Security "record," down eight points since three weeks ago and 14 points since he first took office. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-28-poll_x.htm
The WaPost notes that the White House has set a self-imposed six-week deadline to start turning public opinion on Social Security. As part of the effort, the Treasury Department has opened a "war room"- the “Social Security Information Center”- to "help coordinate and refine the administration's message on the issue." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61437-2005Feb28.html
Frist: Thumbs Down
The Senate's top Republican said yesterday that President Bush's bid to restructure Social Security may have to wait until next year and might not involve the individual accounts the White House has been pushing hard.
The comments of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), made as GOP lawmakers returned from a week of trying to sell the plan to voters, underscored the challenge facing the White House, especially in light of unbroken Democratic opposition. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64253-2005Mar1.html
Today’s NY Times is not quite so pessimistic
President Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security is in trouble, and while it is far too soon to declare it doomed, it faces obstacles on all sides.
After a week at home listening to constituents on the issue, Congressional leaders of Mr. Bush's own party have returned to Washington and immediately begun playing for time, suggesting that they may not meet his goal of passing legislation this year. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/politics/02social.html?hp&ex=1109826000&en=7e45d8b533d68616&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Wolfowitz to World Bank? Guardian:
In one of the most intriguing stories of the day, the Financial Times reports that Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defence and one of the chief hawks in the Bush administration, is on the short list to succeed James Wolfensohn as president of the World Bank.
The worldbankpresident blog describes the report as a bombshell as it would be a controversial choice. You can stay that again. Of course it would not be the first time that someone from the Pentagon has headed the world's leading development institution. That distinction belongs to Robert McNamara, who came to grief over the Vietnam war. He ran the Bank from 1968 to 1981, in what could be seen as a very public act of contrition for his conduct of the war. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/world_news/2005/03/01/wolfowitzs_world.html
-R
Monday, February 28, 2005
What’s Happening, Lebanon: Impressive. The Bushies will want to claim it’s because of the invasion. One can only cite locals who say this is an indigenous movement, long in the making. But the Bush p.r. machine… Yet, strangely, thus far the Administration hasn’t been giddy. Maybe that’s because they don’t really care about spreading democracy. Again, what matters most is that this was a rare example of the public 'rising up' in the Arab world.
The Syrian-backed government of Lebanon stepped down Monday, collapsing under a groundswell of street protests, candlelight vigils and international pressure to end Damascus' domination of its neighbor.
While thousands of demonstrators thronged in the streets, Prime Minister Omar Karami, an ally of Syria, stood before parliament and announced that he would quit his job and dismantle his Cabinet. The decision was apparently spontaneous. Pro-Syrian lawmakers appeared stunned and members of the opposition rose to their feet in a standing ovation.
The resignation was a triumph for a swelling Lebanese opposition, which has been calling for Syria to withdraw its soldiers and disentangle its intelligence services from Lebanon's institutions. Tensions had been mounting since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which many blamed on Syria.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-lebanon1mar01,0,7734839,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
What’s Happening, Iraq: Even before the latest, massive bombing, few thought we were viewing that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
The insurgency in Iraq is not likely to be put down in a year or even two since history shows such uprisings can last a decade or more, the United States' top military commander said on Friday. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said that in the past century, insurgencies around the world have lasted anywhere from seven to 12 years, making a quick fix to the problem in Iraq unlikely http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&u=/nm/20050226/wl_nm/iraq_myers_dc&printer=1
But the voting- be it 70% or 58%, regardless if they voted for a theocratic leadership, didn’t that prove the invasion was justified? (No)
Iraqi Local Councils a Bust Interesting piece on the quiet disappearance of most neighborhood "governing councils" in Iraq, the establishment of which had been touted as a Bush administration achievement in Iraq. The members no longer meet and many are in hiding, for fear of assassination.
Two councils the Monitor has tracked since late 2004 - in middle-class Hay Somer and the poor Shiite neighborhood of Sheikh Maruf - no longer exist, and many of their former members are in hiding. The fate of the councils provides grim evidence of how difficult it is for democracy to take root in Iraq.
Hundreds of neighborhood councils, now a dead letter as the elite politicians who won seats in Iraq's national election squabble over the spoils, were set up across Iraq in 2003 by the US military and the Research Triangle Institute, based near Raleigh, N.C., was given a contract with up to $460 million to build local governance. The idea was to prime the pump of citizen participation and create a new culture that would make democracy work for citizens in a tangible way. But nearly two years later, the money and effort has yielded few visible gains.http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0225/p01s03-woiq.htm
Bulletin: The Iraq Invasion was settled on a year before it happened! Tony Blair in fresh trouble over this; but, anyone who reads and thinks knew this during the run-up to the invasion.
Fresh evidence has come to light suggesting that Tony Blair committed himself to war in Iraq nearly a year before the American and British assault in March 2003.
The news will heighten the pressure on the Prime Minister to reveal how Britain was drawn into the conflict, in a week when a leading QC has called into question the legal advice on which the Government went to war. Such anxiety is felt in official circles that Special Branch detectives had questioned MPs over leaks, it emerged this weekend. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=615232
Last September, highly embarrassing leaked documents showed that as early as March 2002, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, was assuring Condoleezza Rice of Mr Blair's unbudgeable support for "regime change". Days later, Sir Christopher Meyer, then British ambassador to the US, sent a dispatch to Downing Street detailing how he repeated the commitment to Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary. The ambassador added that Mr Blair would need a "cover" for any military action. "I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN Security Council resolutions." http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=615231
What’s Happening, Iran Iran forges ahead…with what?
Russia and Iran signed a deal Sunday that would deliver nuclear fuel to the Middle East country for the startup of its first reactor — a project the United States had for years pushed Moscow to drop, claiming Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050227/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear
Apparently, the Administration was hoping to use evidence of this and the allegations that Iran bought nulear designs and materials via the A.Q. Khan network to set up either a chastising of Iran at the UN or a proving that European failure to ‘tame’ the Islamic Republic… and thus control the agenda. But, once again, the intelligence is mixed, summarized by the conclusion that "there is no evidence the materials were assembled in a manner consistent with bomb-building." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56391-2005Feb26.html
Speaking of Khan, there is belated recognition of the fact that this dispensing of nuclear technology has been going on for a very long time.
Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-khan27feb27,0,2403259.story?coll=la-home-headlines
What’s Happening, Egypt: Democratizing?
A developing media consensus (?) that Mubarak’s proposed holding of multiparty presidential elections next year is the result of the momentum generated by the Iraq and Palestinian elections. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt27feb27,0,5950305.story?coll=la-home-headlines But, the NY Times notes, such an eventuality may be stalled by the Egyptian parliament which has the constitutional responsibility to author an amendment to get the ball rolling. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/middleeast/27egypt.html?hp&ex=1109566800&en=b4efbc57fd02e90b&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Bad Week for Bushies on Social Security
Mr. [Repub. Sen. Charles] Grassley, whose position as Senate finance chairman makes him the linchpin of any Social Security deal, said he still intended to negotiate a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. But he warned that lawmakers would not act unless there was pressure from voters, and he said voters would not put pressure on Congress unless the president persuaded them that private accounts are necessary.
"I think 90 percent of the lifting is with the president," he said. Mr. Grassley said, when asked if he was reaching out to Democrats, "That process is starting, but it's starting very slow because too many Republicans and Democrats - how would you say it? - don't have the confidence that this issue is ever going to come up." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/politics/27cong.html?position=&pagewanted=print&position=
But, then, there’s Joe Lieberman. ‘Rumors’ are that he’ll cut a deal with the White House (via Lindsey Graham (R-SC), providing the Administration with the claim of ‘bi-partisan support’.
Republican Heretics: Raising taxes, protecting Medicaid, etc. David Sirota, late of the Center for American Progress:
In the South, for instance, two GOP congressmen-turned-governors have abandoned their past willingness to gut Medicaid funding and are now raising hell about budget shortfalls. Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher told Fox News last month that he's "very concerned about any cuts" to the low-income health care program, apparently forgetting how his party tried to cut Medicaid repeatedly when he was a House member. Similarly, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a hard-core economic conservative in Congress, actually proposed raising cigarette taxes to increase Medicaid funding.
In two other "red" states, this same sort of reversal occurred on tax policy. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley last year ignored his votes in Congress for deficit-expanding tax cuts and instead pushed a referendum to raise taxes on his state's top income earners to deal with budget shortfalls.
In Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels is calling for an income tax increase on his state's top income earners. This is the same Mitch Daniels who, as President Bush's budget director from 2001 to 2003, attacked congressional Democrats who proposed doing the very same thing. http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk0MDAmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY2NTg5MjAmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNA==
Governor Arnold Tries the Propaganda Route He must be inspired by the White House efforts.
Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers.
The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes. Democrats have denounced it as propaganda. Snippets aired on as many as 18 stations earlier this month, the administration said.
The tape opens with text suggesting introductory comments to be read by a news anchor: "If approved, the changes would clear up uncertainty in the business community and create a better working environment throughout the state."
The video shows construction workers, waitresses, nurses, farmworkers and a forklift operator at their jobs, and includes interviews with a farmer and a restaurant manager. The narrator says the proposal would permit workers to "eat when they are hungry, and not when the government tells them."
The tape makes no mention that organized labor opposes the changes, or that workers would have a harder time suing employers over missed meal breaks. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-video28feb28,1,5929480,print.story
Christian Right Flex the Muscle:
A Broadway run of the musical Jerry Springer - The Opera has been scrapped in the fallout from a Christian fundamentalist group's campaign against the award-winning show.
It is the latest twist in an extraordinary few days, which has seen Christian Voice - believed to be little more than a "one-man band" led by Stephen Green - pressure a cancer charity into rejecting proceeds from a gala performance of the show in London. A question mark now hangs over a UK tour of Jerry Springer due to take place in the autumn, with one theatre having withdrawn and at least one other considering its position.http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=615201
-R
The Syrian-backed government of Lebanon stepped down Monday, collapsing under a groundswell of street protests, candlelight vigils and international pressure to end Damascus' domination of its neighbor.
While thousands of demonstrators thronged in the streets, Prime Minister Omar Karami, an ally of Syria, stood before parliament and announced that he would quit his job and dismantle his Cabinet. The decision was apparently spontaneous. Pro-Syrian lawmakers appeared stunned and members of the opposition rose to their feet in a standing ovation.
The resignation was a triumph for a swelling Lebanese opposition, which has been calling for Syria to withdraw its soldiers and disentangle its intelligence services from Lebanon's institutions. Tensions had been mounting since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which many blamed on Syria.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-lebanon1mar01,0,7734839,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
What’s Happening, Iraq: Even before the latest, massive bombing, few thought we were viewing that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
The insurgency in Iraq is not likely to be put down in a year or even two since history shows such uprisings can last a decade or more, the United States' top military commander said on Friday. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said that in the past century, insurgencies around the world have lasted anywhere from seven to 12 years, making a quick fix to the problem in Iraq unlikely http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&u=/nm/20050226/wl_nm/iraq_myers_dc&printer=1
But the voting- be it 70% or 58%, regardless if they voted for a theocratic leadership, didn’t that prove the invasion was justified? (No)
Iraqi Local Councils a Bust Interesting piece on the quiet disappearance of most neighborhood "governing councils" in Iraq, the establishment of which had been touted as a Bush administration achievement in Iraq. The members no longer meet and many are in hiding, for fear of assassination.
Two councils the Monitor has tracked since late 2004 - in middle-class Hay Somer and the poor Shiite neighborhood of Sheikh Maruf - no longer exist, and many of their former members are in hiding. The fate of the councils provides grim evidence of how difficult it is for democracy to take root in Iraq.
Hundreds of neighborhood councils, now a dead letter as the elite politicians who won seats in Iraq's national election squabble over the spoils, were set up across Iraq in 2003 by the US military and the Research Triangle Institute, based near Raleigh, N.C., was given a contract with up to $460 million to build local governance. The idea was to prime the pump of citizen participation and create a new culture that would make democracy work for citizens in a tangible way. But nearly two years later, the money and effort has yielded few visible gains.http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0225/p01s03-woiq.htm
Bulletin: The Iraq Invasion was settled on a year before it happened! Tony Blair in fresh trouble over this; but, anyone who reads and thinks knew this during the run-up to the invasion.
Fresh evidence has come to light suggesting that Tony Blair committed himself to war in Iraq nearly a year before the American and British assault in March 2003.
The news will heighten the pressure on the Prime Minister to reveal how Britain was drawn into the conflict, in a week when a leading QC has called into question the legal advice on which the Government went to war. Such anxiety is felt in official circles that Special Branch detectives had questioned MPs over leaks, it emerged this weekend. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=615232
Last September, highly embarrassing leaked documents showed that as early as March 2002, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, was assuring Condoleezza Rice of Mr Blair's unbudgeable support for "regime change". Days later, Sir Christopher Meyer, then British ambassador to the US, sent a dispatch to Downing Street detailing how he repeated the commitment to Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary. The ambassador added that Mr Blair would need a "cover" for any military action. "I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN Security Council resolutions." http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=615231
What’s Happening, Iran Iran forges ahead…with what?
Russia and Iran signed a deal Sunday that would deliver nuclear fuel to the Middle East country for the startup of its first reactor — a project the United States had for years pushed Moscow to drop, claiming Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050227/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear
Apparently, the Administration was hoping to use evidence of this and the allegations that Iran bought nulear designs and materials via the A.Q. Khan network to set up either a chastising of Iran at the UN or a proving that European failure to ‘tame’ the Islamic Republic… and thus control the agenda. But, once again, the intelligence is mixed, summarized by the conclusion that "there is no evidence the materials were assembled in a manner consistent with bomb-building." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56391-2005Feb26.html
Speaking of Khan, there is belated recognition of the fact that this dispensing of nuclear technology has been going on for a very long time.
Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-khan27feb27,0,2403259.story?coll=la-home-headlines
What’s Happening, Egypt: Democratizing?
A developing media consensus (?) that Mubarak’s proposed holding of multiparty presidential elections next year is the result of the momentum generated by the Iraq and Palestinian elections. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt27feb27,0,5950305.story?coll=la-home-headlines But, the NY Times notes, such an eventuality may be stalled by the Egyptian parliament which has the constitutional responsibility to author an amendment to get the ball rolling. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/middleeast/27egypt.html?hp&ex=1109566800&en=b4efbc57fd02e90b&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Bad Week for Bushies on Social Security
Mr. [Repub. Sen. Charles] Grassley, whose position as Senate finance chairman makes him the linchpin of any Social Security deal, said he still intended to negotiate a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. But he warned that lawmakers would not act unless there was pressure from voters, and he said voters would not put pressure on Congress unless the president persuaded them that private accounts are necessary.
"I think 90 percent of the lifting is with the president," he said. Mr. Grassley said, when asked if he was reaching out to Democrats, "That process is starting, but it's starting very slow because too many Republicans and Democrats - how would you say it? - don't have the confidence that this issue is ever going to come up." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/politics/27cong.html?position=&pagewanted=print&position=
But, then, there’s Joe Lieberman. ‘Rumors’ are that he’ll cut a deal with the White House (via Lindsey Graham (R-SC), providing the Administration with the claim of ‘bi-partisan support’.
Republican Heretics: Raising taxes, protecting Medicaid, etc. David Sirota, late of the Center for American Progress:
In the South, for instance, two GOP congressmen-turned-governors have abandoned their past willingness to gut Medicaid funding and are now raising hell about budget shortfalls. Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher told Fox News last month that he's "very concerned about any cuts" to the low-income health care program, apparently forgetting how his party tried to cut Medicaid repeatedly when he was a House member. Similarly, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a hard-core economic conservative in Congress, actually proposed raising cigarette taxes to increase Medicaid funding.
In two other "red" states, this same sort of reversal occurred on tax policy. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley last year ignored his votes in Congress for deficit-expanding tax cuts and instead pushed a referendum to raise taxes on his state's top income earners to deal with budget shortfalls.
In Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels is calling for an income tax increase on his state's top income earners. This is the same Mitch Daniels who, as President Bush's budget director from 2001 to 2003, attacked congressional Democrats who proposed doing the very same thing. http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk0MDAmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY2NTg5MjAmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNA==
Governor Arnold Tries the Propaganda Route He must be inspired by the White House efforts.
Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers.
The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes. Democrats have denounced it as propaganda. Snippets aired on as many as 18 stations earlier this month, the administration said.
The tape opens with text suggesting introductory comments to be read by a news anchor: "If approved, the changes would clear up uncertainty in the business community and create a better working environment throughout the state."
The video shows construction workers, waitresses, nurses, farmworkers and a forklift operator at their jobs, and includes interviews with a farmer and a restaurant manager. The narrator says the proposal would permit workers to "eat when they are hungry, and not when the government tells them."
The tape makes no mention that organized labor opposes the changes, or that workers would have a harder time suing employers over missed meal breaks. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-video28feb28,1,5929480,print.story
Christian Right Flex the Muscle:
A Broadway run of the musical Jerry Springer - The Opera has been scrapped in the fallout from a Christian fundamentalist group's campaign against the award-winning show.
It is the latest twist in an extraordinary few days, which has seen Christian Voice - believed to be little more than a "one-man band" led by Stephen Green - pressure a cancer charity into rejecting proceeds from a gala performance of the show in London. A question mark now hangs over a UK tour of Jerry Springer due to take place in the autumn, with one theatre having withdrawn and at least one other considering its position.http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=615201
-R
