I keep running into Republicans that tell me they can't vote for Bush this time around. Here's some of them.
CONSERVATIVES FOR KERRY
Friday, April 23, 2004
April 23, 2004
Environmentalists Challenge Bush's Earth Day Announcement
(Go to article to find links in story)
For Earth Day, President George W. Bush yesterday announced a new national wetlands policy to replace the "no net loss" goal adopted by his father, President George H.W. Bush, in 1988. President Bush announced a national goal to "go beyond 'no net loss'" of wetlands, saying his administration aims to achieve an overall increase in wetlands each year.
"For Earth Day, the President is trying to whitewash -- or 'greenwash' -- his anti-wetlands record because he knows the public wants clean water," Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice, told BushGreenwatch. "But trotting out a list of voluntary programs that already exist -- and calling them a new initiative while simultaneously dismantling the nation's most important wetlands protection law -- is not going to wash."
But environmental groups say the policies actually being implemented by the Bush Administration will result in more wetland destruction and water pollution, not less.
"The administration's current policies, including a directive removing protection from an estimated 20 million acres of wetlands under the Clean Water Act, virtually guarantee that our country will continue to lose both wetland function and acreage," said Julie Sibbing, wetlands policy specialist at the National Wildlife Federation.
According to a new report by NWF, America's Wetlands, Nowhere Near No-Net-Loss, the country's wetlands are in more trouble today than they have been in decades, because of policies set by the Bush Administration that increasingly expose these waters to pollution, dredging, and filling.[1]
Today there are approximately 110 million acres of wetlands in the continental U.S., according to the EPA. This is about half of the nation's original wetlands. Wetlands filter pollution from drinking water supplies, provide vital habitat for fish and wildlife, absorb floodwaters, and help maintain overall water quality.
In January, 2003, the Bush Administration issued a new policy directing EPA and Army Corps field staff to limit the kinds of wetlands and other waterways they protect under the Clean Water Act, thereby threatening about 20 percent of the lower 48 states' remaining wetlands with pollution or outright destruction.[2]
Other anti-wetlands policy initiated by the Bush Administration includes repealing the minimal requirement that every acre of wetlands filled or destroyed be replaced with at least one acre of new wetlands; and weakening the environmental standards for general permits to fill wetlands and streams.
"Given what we know about wetlands and their importance to both human and wildlife communities, we should expect much more from our government in terms of a plan to really achieve no-net-loss and to regain some of what has been lost in order to ensure a healthy future for generations to come," added Sibbing.
###
SOURCES:
[1] America's Wetlands, Nowhere Near No-Net-Loss, NWF.
[2] EPA/Army Corps Memo, Jan. 16, 2003.
_____________________________________________________________________
Environmentalists Challenge Bush's Earth Day Announcement
(Go to article to find links in story)
For Earth Day, President George W. Bush yesterday announced a new national wetlands policy to replace the "no net loss" goal adopted by his father, President George H.W. Bush, in 1988. President Bush announced a national goal to "go beyond 'no net loss'" of wetlands, saying his administration aims to achieve an overall increase in wetlands each year.
"For Earth Day, the President is trying to whitewash -- or 'greenwash' -- his anti-wetlands record because he knows the public wants clean water," Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice, told BushGreenwatch. "But trotting out a list of voluntary programs that already exist -- and calling them a new initiative while simultaneously dismantling the nation's most important wetlands protection law -- is not going to wash."
But environmental groups say the policies actually being implemented by the Bush Administration will result in more wetland destruction and water pollution, not less.
"The administration's current policies, including a directive removing protection from an estimated 20 million acres of wetlands under the Clean Water Act, virtually guarantee that our country will continue to lose both wetland function and acreage," said Julie Sibbing, wetlands policy specialist at the National Wildlife Federation.
According to a new report by NWF, America's Wetlands, Nowhere Near No-Net-Loss, the country's wetlands are in more trouble today than they have been in decades, because of policies set by the Bush Administration that increasingly expose these waters to pollution, dredging, and filling.[1]
Today there are approximately 110 million acres of wetlands in the continental U.S., according to the EPA. This is about half of the nation's original wetlands. Wetlands filter pollution from drinking water supplies, provide vital habitat for fish and wildlife, absorb floodwaters, and help maintain overall water quality.
In January, 2003, the Bush Administration issued a new policy directing EPA and Army Corps field staff to limit the kinds of wetlands and other waterways they protect under the Clean Water Act, thereby threatening about 20 percent of the lower 48 states' remaining wetlands with pollution or outright destruction.[2]
Other anti-wetlands policy initiated by the Bush Administration includes repealing the minimal requirement that every acre of wetlands filled or destroyed be replaced with at least one acre of new wetlands; and weakening the environmental standards for general permits to fill wetlands and streams.
"Given what we know about wetlands and their importance to both human and wildlife communities, we should expect much more from our government in terms of a plan to really achieve no-net-loss and to regain some of what has been lost in order to ensure a healthy future for generations to come," added Sibbing.
###
SOURCES:
[1] America's Wetlands, Nowhere Near No-Net-Loss, NWF.
[2] EPA/Army Corps Memo, Jan. 16, 2003.
_____________________________________________________________________
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power
US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 20, 2004
The Guardian
To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.
The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7,000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and near fist fights" began.
I don't know what the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered down significantly" as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism. Good to see that the extremists didn't prevail then.
But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.
In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.
What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.
The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be.
The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts. The antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi. The Wal-Mart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the Beast.
By clicking on www.raptureready.com , you can discover how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debat ing its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in the south Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the antichrist (both of which score only two).
We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings. A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of Republicans. The best-selling contemporary books in the US are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually described as a "fictionalised" account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from the other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to the rest of us. The people who believe all this don't believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.
And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the marvellously named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking".
So here we have a major political constituency - representing much of the current president's core vote - in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates" will be released "to slay the third part of men". They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as its support for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.
The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.
·George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New World Order is now published in paperback
________________________________________________________________________
US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 20, 2004
The Guardian
To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.
The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7,000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and near fist fights" began.
I don't know what the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered down significantly" as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism. Good to see that the extremists didn't prevail then.
But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.
In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.
What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.
The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be.
The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts. The antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi. The Wal-Mart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the Beast.
By clicking on www.raptureready.com , you can discover how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debat ing its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in the south Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the antichrist (both of which score only two).
We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings. A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of Republicans. The best-selling contemporary books in the US are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually described as a "fictionalised" account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from the other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to the rest of us. The people who believe all this don't believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.
And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the marvellously named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking".
So here we have a major political constituency - representing much of the current president's core vote - in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates" will be released "to slay the third part of men". They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as its support for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.
The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.
·George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New World Order is now published in paperback
________________________________________________________________________
So far we have no record that Bush ever showed up for National Guard duty in Alabama but we do have these records for Kerry.
April 22, 2004
Navy Records Show Positive Marks for Kerry
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON, April 21 — After days of being pressed by Republicans, Senator John Kerry on Wednesday released his military records, which showed uniformly positive evaluations from his commanders in Vietnam.
After balking Monday on a promise to release his full Navy record, Mr. Kerry posted more than 140 pages of documents on his campaign Web site, www.johnkerry.com, in a move that largely silenced critics on a part of his life that has been central to his presidential hopes.
The records depict many instances of bravery in the face of enemy fire and describe a young officer who is smart, articulate and decisive. For example, George M. Elliot, his commander in early 1969, wrote, "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed."
Mr. Elliot added, "His bearing and appearance are above reproach."
Even a commander who, 36 years after the fact, questioned a Purple Heart awarded to Mr. Kerry in 1968, recorded no reservations at the time. The officer, Grant W. Hibbard, a lieutenant commander during Mr. Kerry's five-month tour in Vietnam, told The Boston Globe last week that the wound for which Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart was no more than a small scratch.
But there was nothing negative about Mr. Kerry in an evaluation that Mr. Hibbard wrote two weeks after that incident.
For the most part, Mr. Hibbard wrote, Mr. Kerry was under his command for too short a time to evaluate him fully. Of 16 categories for rating, including professional knowledge, moral courage and loyalty, Mr. Hibbard checked "not observed" in 12. Mr. Hibbard gave Mr. Kerry the highest rating of "one of the top few" in three categories — initiative, cooperation and personal behavior. He gave Mr. Kerry the second-best rating, "above the majority," in military bearing. Reached Wednesday at his retirement home in Florida, Mr. Hibbard said he had no comment.
Mr. Kerry became a lightning rod for a number of Vietnam veterans after he became a prominent critic of the war and said American soldiers, including himself, had committed atrocities.
The military records offered no hint of atrocities, but repeatedly cited Mr. Kerry's initiative in battle and patrician manner.
When Mr. Kerry was an ensign on the Gridley on his first Vietnam tour in 1967, his commander described him as "intelligent, mature and rich in educational background and experience," as well as "polished, tactful and outgoing" and "a brilliant conversationalist."
"He uses the English language expertly, both orally and in writing," the commander wrote.
A few months later, another commander was similarly impressed.
"His division's morale is one of the best on the ship due to his dynamic leadership," the officer wrote. "He is a polished diplomat at ease in distinguished company" and "is impressive in appearance and always immaculate."
Months later, Mr. Kerry's bearing struck another reviewer. "He presents a very neat appearance and meets people well," that captain wrote. "For his age and experience, he writes and speaks exceedingly well."
The records include citations for medals like the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Hearts.
By Wednesday afternoon, accounts of Mr. Kerry's valor in combat were all over television.
Terry Holt, a spokesman for President Bush's campaign, said the issue was never Mr. Kerry's military service but what he said was Mr. Kerry's hypocrisy in calling for full disclosure of various aspects of Mr. Bush's presidency while Mr. Kerry had not released his own military records or the tax returns of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.
"What this reinforces is something very basic about John Kerry — that he only responds to political pressure," Mr. Holt said. "We're going to hold him accountable. But that doesn't mean that it's one of the main themes of the campaign."
A senior adviser to Mr. Kerry, Michael Meehan, said that much of the information had been released earlier to newspapers. Still unreleased are Mr. Kerry's medical records, which Mr. Meehan said the campaign was collecting. Asked whether the campaign intended to release those records, Mr. Meehan said: "You can't release what you don't have. Let us continue to collect the information from 35 to 40 years ago."
Lanny J. Davis, a Washington lawyer who worked on damage control for the Clinton White House and who supports Mr. Kerry, said the senator had no choice but to release the records.
"The public and the political process today will not countenance privacy issues, and that includes all aspects of your biography," said Mr. Davis, who wrote "Truth To Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself."
Mr. Davis said the question of Mrs. Heinz Kerry's tax returns was a "gray area" that the couple would have to decide for themselves.
Mr. Davis faulted Mr. Bush's campaign for criticizing Mr. Kerry, saying the move backfired because it led to obvious comparisons between Mr. Kerry's enlisting in the military while Mr. Bush was in the National Guard and avoided combat.
When Democrats accused Mr. Bush this year of being AWOL for part of his tour of duty, he released guard records. But the documents did not make clear how often Mr. Bush reported for duty.
__________________________________________________________________
April 22, 2004
Navy Records Show Positive Marks for Kerry
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON, April 21 — After days of being pressed by Republicans, Senator John Kerry on Wednesday released his military records, which showed uniformly positive evaluations from his commanders in Vietnam.
After balking Monday on a promise to release his full Navy record, Mr. Kerry posted more than 140 pages of documents on his campaign Web site, www.johnkerry.com, in a move that largely silenced critics on a part of his life that has been central to his presidential hopes.
The records depict many instances of bravery in the face of enemy fire and describe a young officer who is smart, articulate and decisive. For example, George M. Elliot, his commander in early 1969, wrote, "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed."
Mr. Elliot added, "His bearing and appearance are above reproach."
Even a commander who, 36 years after the fact, questioned a Purple Heart awarded to Mr. Kerry in 1968, recorded no reservations at the time. The officer, Grant W. Hibbard, a lieutenant commander during Mr. Kerry's five-month tour in Vietnam, told The Boston Globe last week that the wound for which Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart was no more than a small scratch.
But there was nothing negative about Mr. Kerry in an evaluation that Mr. Hibbard wrote two weeks after that incident.
For the most part, Mr. Hibbard wrote, Mr. Kerry was under his command for too short a time to evaluate him fully. Of 16 categories for rating, including professional knowledge, moral courage and loyalty, Mr. Hibbard checked "not observed" in 12. Mr. Hibbard gave Mr. Kerry the highest rating of "one of the top few" in three categories — initiative, cooperation and personal behavior. He gave Mr. Kerry the second-best rating, "above the majority," in military bearing. Reached Wednesday at his retirement home in Florida, Mr. Hibbard said he had no comment.
Mr. Kerry became a lightning rod for a number of Vietnam veterans after he became a prominent critic of the war and said American soldiers, including himself, had committed atrocities.
The military records offered no hint of atrocities, but repeatedly cited Mr. Kerry's initiative in battle and patrician manner.
When Mr. Kerry was an ensign on the Gridley on his first Vietnam tour in 1967, his commander described him as "intelligent, mature and rich in educational background and experience," as well as "polished, tactful and outgoing" and "a brilliant conversationalist."
"He uses the English language expertly, both orally and in writing," the commander wrote.
A few months later, another commander was similarly impressed.
"His division's morale is one of the best on the ship due to his dynamic leadership," the officer wrote. "He is a polished diplomat at ease in distinguished company" and "is impressive in appearance and always immaculate."
Months later, Mr. Kerry's bearing struck another reviewer. "He presents a very neat appearance and meets people well," that captain wrote. "For his age and experience, he writes and speaks exceedingly well."
The records include citations for medals like the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Hearts.
By Wednesday afternoon, accounts of Mr. Kerry's valor in combat were all over television.
Terry Holt, a spokesman for President Bush's campaign, said the issue was never Mr. Kerry's military service but what he said was Mr. Kerry's hypocrisy in calling for full disclosure of various aspects of Mr. Bush's presidency while Mr. Kerry had not released his own military records or the tax returns of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.
"What this reinforces is something very basic about John Kerry — that he only responds to political pressure," Mr. Holt said. "We're going to hold him accountable. But that doesn't mean that it's one of the main themes of the campaign."
A senior adviser to Mr. Kerry, Michael Meehan, said that much of the information had been released earlier to newspapers. Still unreleased are Mr. Kerry's medical records, which Mr. Meehan said the campaign was collecting. Asked whether the campaign intended to release those records, Mr. Meehan said: "You can't release what you don't have. Let us continue to collect the information from 35 to 40 years ago."
Lanny J. Davis, a Washington lawyer who worked on damage control for the Clinton White House and who supports Mr. Kerry, said the senator had no choice but to release the records.
"The public and the political process today will not countenance privacy issues, and that includes all aspects of your biography," said Mr. Davis, who wrote "Truth To Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself."
Mr. Davis said the question of Mrs. Heinz Kerry's tax returns was a "gray area" that the couple would have to decide for themselves.
Mr. Davis faulted Mr. Bush's campaign for criticizing Mr. Kerry, saying the move backfired because it led to obvious comparisons between Mr. Kerry's enlisting in the military while Mr. Bush was in the National Guard and avoided combat.
When Democrats accused Mr. Bush this year of being AWOL for part of his tour of duty, he released guard records. But the documents did not make clear how often Mr. Bush reported for duty.
__________________________________________________________________
(From uber-activist, Wayne Williams)
When tomorrow's papers and media talk about Bush acting to save 3000 wetlands during EarthDay today, remind them how hypocritical and blatantly weak his action is compared to all the damage Bush and the Republicans have been doing since taking control in 2000.
Here is a breakdown of just what we're dealing with in California as a result of Bush and Company.
WW
----------------------
GEORGE W. BUSH: ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIONS THAT THREATEN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES California
Toxic Waste: 96 Superfund Sites that Harm Public Health: In California, there are 96 Superfund sites endangering local public health and environment. These sites – located in our communities – are contaminated with toxic chemicals from PCBs to arsenic and are in urgent need of clean up. The Bush Administration refuses to make polluters pay for the clean up and is taking more time to complete the cleanups. [Source: Environmental Protection Agency, Superfund Information Systems]
Toxic Water: 13 Mercury Warnings Not to Eat Fish: Mercury exposure can harm the function and development of the central nervous system which puts unborn and young children at great risk of exposure. About 320,000 babies born every year are at risk of developmental problems because of prenatal mercury exposure. In 2002, there were 13 fish consumption advisories in California. President Bush is putting our families and environment at risk. [Source: US Public Interest Research Group, Fishing for Trouble, June, 2003]
Dirty Air: 262 Increased Deaths From Pollution: President Bush’s policies are not only bad for the environment, they place our families’ health at risk. Because Bush caved to the corporate special interests and has rolled back the Clean Air Act, California will experience 262 deaths. [Source: “The Particulate-Related Health Benefits of Reducing Power Plant Emissions,” ABT Associates October, 2000]
Dirty Water: 30,989,000 At Risk of Cancer Causing MTBE. MTBE is a possible cancer-causing agent. Instead of forcing polluters to pay to clean up the MTBE contamination of our drinking water systems, President Bush wants to let them off the hook. In California there are 127 public water systems that are contaminated by MTBE, placing the health of 30,989,000 in jeopardy. [Source: Environmental Working Group]
Dirty Water: $35,044,200 Less Funding for Clean Water. Clean, healthy water is a top priority for healthy families and the implementation and enforcement of the Clean Water Act will improve public health and ensure that our water is safe. President Bush proposed to slash funding for states to implement and enforce the clean water law. California would receive $35,044,200 less funding for clean water under the Bush budget. [Source: Office of the Minority Leader, House of Representatives]
Neglected Parks: 29 Endangered National Parks: Despite his campaign promises, President Bush has not provided adequate funding to address the maintenance backlog in our National Parks. In addition, Bush’s budget has endangered 29 of California’s national parks. Our National Parks are a symbol of our heritage and need to be preserved for future generations. [Source: Parks and Recreation, National Park Service, Department of the Interior]
EXAMPLES OF CALIFORNIA’S THREATENED ENVIRONMENT:
Two-Year Waiting List at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. At California’s Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, there is a two-year waiting list for local schools to participate in educational programs. Bush’s funding shortfalls for the National Parks Service are to blame. [Source: National Parks Conservation Association, “Endangered Rangers,” April, 2004]
California Tops the Smog Report. In a recently released report by the EPA, California ranked at the top of the list of counties that require cleanup for air pollution. The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Acting under court order, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified 474 counties in 31 states -- including the nine counties in the Bay Area -- as having air quality that falls short of the new health standard for smog. About 159 million people live in the affected areas. California topped the list, with 36 counties flunking the new standard. The smoggiest region of the country is Los Angeles, with 120 violations in 2003. Not far behind are the San Joaquin Valley and the Sacramento metropolitan area. The Bay Area, with only one violation over the last three years, has what the EPA calls marginal air quality.” [Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 4/16/04]
__________________________________________________________________
When tomorrow's papers and media talk about Bush acting to save 3000 wetlands during EarthDay today, remind them how hypocritical and blatantly weak his action is compared to all the damage Bush and the Republicans have been doing since taking control in 2000.
Here is a breakdown of just what we're dealing with in California as a result of Bush and Company.
WW
----------------------
GEORGE W. BUSH: ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIONS THAT THREATEN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES California
Toxic Waste: 96 Superfund Sites that Harm Public Health: In California, there are 96 Superfund sites endangering local public health and environment. These sites – located in our communities – are contaminated with toxic chemicals from PCBs to arsenic and are in urgent need of clean up. The Bush Administration refuses to make polluters pay for the clean up and is taking more time to complete the cleanups. [Source: Environmental Protection Agency, Superfund Information Systems]
Toxic Water: 13 Mercury Warnings Not to Eat Fish: Mercury exposure can harm the function and development of the central nervous system which puts unborn and young children at great risk of exposure. About 320,000 babies born every year are at risk of developmental problems because of prenatal mercury exposure. In 2002, there were 13 fish consumption advisories in California. President Bush is putting our families and environment at risk. [Source: US Public Interest Research Group, Fishing for Trouble, June, 2003]
Dirty Air: 262 Increased Deaths From Pollution: President Bush’s policies are not only bad for the environment, they place our families’ health at risk. Because Bush caved to the corporate special interests and has rolled back the Clean Air Act, California will experience 262 deaths. [Source: “The Particulate-Related Health Benefits of Reducing Power Plant Emissions,” ABT Associates October, 2000]
Dirty Water: 30,989,000 At Risk of Cancer Causing MTBE. MTBE is a possible cancer-causing agent. Instead of forcing polluters to pay to clean up the MTBE contamination of our drinking water systems, President Bush wants to let them off the hook. In California there are 127 public water systems that are contaminated by MTBE, placing the health of 30,989,000 in jeopardy. [Source: Environmental Working Group]
Dirty Water: $35,044,200 Less Funding for Clean Water. Clean, healthy water is a top priority for healthy families and the implementation and enforcement of the Clean Water Act will improve public health and ensure that our water is safe. President Bush proposed to slash funding for states to implement and enforce the clean water law. California would receive $35,044,200 less funding for clean water under the Bush budget. [Source: Office of the Minority Leader, House of Representatives]
Neglected Parks: 29 Endangered National Parks: Despite his campaign promises, President Bush has not provided adequate funding to address the maintenance backlog in our National Parks. In addition, Bush’s budget has endangered 29 of California’s national parks. Our National Parks are a symbol of our heritage and need to be preserved for future generations. [Source: Parks and Recreation, National Park Service, Department of the Interior]
EXAMPLES OF CALIFORNIA’S THREATENED ENVIRONMENT:
Two-Year Waiting List at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. At California’s Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, there is a two-year waiting list for local schools to participate in educational programs. Bush’s funding shortfalls for the National Parks Service are to blame. [Source: National Parks Conservation Association, “Endangered Rangers,” April, 2004]
California Tops the Smog Report. In a recently released report by the EPA, California ranked at the top of the list of counties that require cleanup for air pollution. The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Acting under court order, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified 474 counties in 31 states -- including the nine counties in the Bay Area -- as having air quality that falls short of the new health standard for smog. About 159 million people live in the affected areas. California topped the list, with 36 counties flunking the new standard. The smoggiest region of the country is Los Angeles, with 120 violations in 2003. Not far behind are the San Joaquin Valley and the Sacramento metropolitan area. The Bay Area, with only one violation over the last three years, has what the EPA calls marginal air quality.” [Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 4/16/04]
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Isn't it just like this administration and the GOP to attack a candidate on false pretenses about a spouse's dead ex-husband's stock in a company and then take money from the same company to fund those attacks! Just when you think these slime can sink no deeper in the mud and hypocrisy they find a new cave to slither into.
Heinz Co. Is Campaign Weapon for Bush
Tue Apr 20, 3:45 PM ET
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Though John Kerry's wife is an heir to the H.J. Heinz Co. fortune, the food company and its executives are providing President Bush with money and a campaign issue — jobs flowing overseas — in this year's election.
Members of the board of the Fortune 500 company and its corporate political action committee have donated thousands of dollars to Republicans in recent years, including contributions to the Bush campaign. The corporate PAC has given nothing to Kerry.
The Republicans are accepting the cash even as they criticize the Pittsburgh-based company's job cuts and overseas moves — part of an effort to taint the presumptive Democratic nominee with the conglomerate's business practices.
While Teresa Heinz Kerry gained much of her $500 million portfolio through her Heinz inheritance, she does not serve on the board and is not involved with the management of the company. Even her late husband, Sen. H. John Heinz III, R-Pa., did not serve on the board.
No Heinz family member has been employed by the company or served on its board since H.J. "Jack" Heinz II, its chairman, died in 1987.
Heinz Kerry, who heads the separate Heinz Family Foundation and the Howard Heinz Endowment, owns less than 4 percent of the company's stock. Major Heinz stockholders include the company's top executives, led by Chairman William R. Johnson, as well as beer magnate Peter Coors and former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and pro football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann.
During the campaign, Kerry has criticized companies that move jobs overseas or shift their tax status abroad to avoid federal taxes, calling them "Benedict Arnold" businesses. He has faulted the Bush administration for embracing a tax policy that rewards them.
Republicans, in response, have pointed to the Kerrys' ties to Heinz, calling the four-term Massachusetts senator a hypocrite for slamming policies that have poured millions into his wife's bank account.
Stuck in what it fears is a food fight is the Heinz Co., which is trying desperately to keep the campaign out of its ketchup sales. In the last few months, the company — which gets about 5,000 phone calls a month — has fielded 800 calls from consumers with questions or complaints about the company's connections to Kerry, his wife and the campaign, said spokeswoman Debbie Foster.
A look at the company's campaign donations shows a preference for Republicans. In the past six years, the Heinz company's political action committee gave more than $64,000 to GOP candidates, nearly three times the amount given to Democrats. It contributed $5,000 to Bush's campaign. It has shunned the Kerry campaign, but the PAC gave $5,000 to the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
Johnson also put his money on the GOP, giving more than $20,000 to Republican congressional committees and candidates since 1999. Other board members have also contributed to Republicans, giving money to Bush's campaign and Pennsylvania's two Republican senators, Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum.
Company spokesman Jack Kennedy said Heinz is nonpartisan and the PAC gives money to both parties. The heavy Republican totals, he said, may just be an indication of where corporate facilities are located.
Determined to make clear that it is not connected to the Kerry campaign, the Heinz company has issued statements about the relationship. "We want to make sure people buy our products on their merit. We're an equal-opportunity condiment," Kennedy said.
According to Kerry's financial disclosure report filed last May, Heinz Kerry owns more than $4 million worth of company stock. Heinz Kerry sold more than $14.8 million worth of Heinz stock in 2002.
"No, they don't run the company, but they still own a lot of stock. And Teresa has had a long relationship with the company," said James Glassman, a columnist and economic analyst at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. "I think it's absolutely legitimate to point to Heinz and say here's a company with a close association with Kerry that is doing exactly the thing Kerry is condemning."
Republican National Committee (news - web sites) spokeswoman Christine Iverson said the GOP is not going after the Heinz Co. but "will continue to point out John Kerry's hypocrisy when his record on the issues does not match his rhetoric."
Last month, the RNC issued a lengthy critique of the Heinz company, detailing hundreds of layoffs and plant closings in five states over the past nine years and pointing out jobs it created in other countries.
The multibillion-dollar Heinz Co. has about 38,900 workers worldwide, with 30 percent located in 27 factories scattered across 17 states. The other 70 percent work in facilities overseas.
About 60 percent of the company's sales are outside America, and the products sold in other countries are often made and marketed locally and in some cases are unique to that region. Tomatoes for ketchup sold in the United States are grown largely in the regions surrounding the major processing plants in Ohio, Iowa and California.
Besides its name brands, Heinz also makes and markets OreIda potatoes, Smart Ones frozen foods and Classico sauces. The company has 50 affiliates operating in 200 countries.
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Heinz Co. Is Campaign Weapon for Bush
Tue Apr 20, 3:45 PM ET
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Though John Kerry's wife is an heir to the H.J. Heinz Co. fortune, the food company and its executives are providing President Bush with money and a campaign issue — jobs flowing overseas — in this year's election.
Members of the board of the Fortune 500 company and its corporate political action committee have donated thousands of dollars to Republicans in recent years, including contributions to the Bush campaign. The corporate PAC has given nothing to Kerry.
The Republicans are accepting the cash even as they criticize the Pittsburgh-based company's job cuts and overseas moves — part of an effort to taint the presumptive Democratic nominee with the conglomerate's business practices.
While Teresa Heinz Kerry gained much of her $500 million portfolio through her Heinz inheritance, she does not serve on the board and is not involved with the management of the company. Even her late husband, Sen. H. John Heinz III, R-Pa., did not serve on the board.
No Heinz family member has been employed by the company or served on its board since H.J. "Jack" Heinz II, its chairman, died in 1987.
Heinz Kerry, who heads the separate Heinz Family Foundation and the Howard Heinz Endowment, owns less than 4 percent of the company's stock. Major Heinz stockholders include the company's top executives, led by Chairman William R. Johnson, as well as beer magnate Peter Coors and former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and pro football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann.
During the campaign, Kerry has criticized companies that move jobs overseas or shift their tax status abroad to avoid federal taxes, calling them "Benedict Arnold" businesses. He has faulted the Bush administration for embracing a tax policy that rewards them.
Republicans, in response, have pointed to the Kerrys' ties to Heinz, calling the four-term Massachusetts senator a hypocrite for slamming policies that have poured millions into his wife's bank account.
Stuck in what it fears is a food fight is the Heinz Co., which is trying desperately to keep the campaign out of its ketchup sales. In the last few months, the company — which gets about 5,000 phone calls a month — has fielded 800 calls from consumers with questions or complaints about the company's connections to Kerry, his wife and the campaign, said spokeswoman Debbie Foster.
A look at the company's campaign donations shows a preference for Republicans. In the past six years, the Heinz company's political action committee gave more than $64,000 to GOP candidates, nearly three times the amount given to Democrats. It contributed $5,000 to Bush's campaign. It has shunned the Kerry campaign, but the PAC gave $5,000 to the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
Johnson also put his money on the GOP, giving more than $20,000 to Republican congressional committees and candidates since 1999. Other board members have also contributed to Republicans, giving money to Bush's campaign and Pennsylvania's two Republican senators, Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum.
Company spokesman Jack Kennedy said Heinz is nonpartisan and the PAC gives money to both parties. The heavy Republican totals, he said, may just be an indication of where corporate facilities are located.
Determined to make clear that it is not connected to the Kerry campaign, the Heinz company has issued statements about the relationship. "We want to make sure people buy our products on their merit. We're an equal-opportunity condiment," Kennedy said.
According to Kerry's financial disclosure report filed last May, Heinz Kerry owns more than $4 million worth of company stock. Heinz Kerry sold more than $14.8 million worth of Heinz stock in 2002.
"No, they don't run the company, but they still own a lot of stock. And Teresa has had a long relationship with the company," said James Glassman, a columnist and economic analyst at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. "I think it's absolutely legitimate to point to Heinz and say here's a company with a close association with Kerry that is doing exactly the thing Kerry is condemning."
Republican National Committee (news - web sites) spokeswoman Christine Iverson said the GOP is not going after the Heinz Co. but "will continue to point out John Kerry's hypocrisy when his record on the issues does not match his rhetoric."
Last month, the RNC issued a lengthy critique of the Heinz company, detailing hundreds of layoffs and plant closings in five states over the past nine years and pointing out jobs it created in other countries.
The multibillion-dollar Heinz Co. has about 38,900 workers worldwide, with 30 percent located in 27 factories scattered across 17 states. The other 70 percent work in facilities overseas.
About 60 percent of the company's sales are outside America, and the products sold in other countries are often made and marketed locally and in some cases are unique to that region. Tomatoes for ketchup sold in the United States are grown largely in the regions surrounding the major processing plants in Ohio, Iowa and California.
Besides its name brands, Heinz also makes and markets OreIda potatoes, Smart Ones frozen foods and Classico sauces. The company has 50 affiliates operating in 200 countries.
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EARTH DAY
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Today is Earth Day and millions of Americans will celebrate by doing something to improve the environment – cleaning up trash in a local park, planting a tree, or making their home more energy efficient. Meanwhile, the Bush administration will celebrate Earth Day by inviting oil-industry officials to the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss a plan to relax pollution standards for gasoline. The plan would allow higher sulfur content gasoline to be sold during the summer months. According to Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Trust "because sulfur is a prime contributor to both urban smog and soot, it could also result in an increase in health problems." That is a large price to pay for a plan that would only temporarily "trim oil prices by as much as a nickel a gallon" – and not necessarily in all markets.
EXEMPTING MILITARY & CONTRACTORS FROM ENVIRO LAWS: Also on the Earth Day agenda: the administration is pushing to exempt the Defense Department from "the Clean Air Act and from hazardous waste laws at thousands of firing and bombing ranges nationwide." If Congress grants the exemption, "state and federal authorities would be helpless to prevent more perchlorate contamination in Southern California drinking water" and other locations across the nation. The move would also make it harder to purify water supplies after they became contaminated because it would "make it more difficult for local governments to obtain reimbursements either from the Pentagon or local defense contractors." As a result, cash-strapped states would have to try to scrape together cash for cleanups.
ARNOLD'S HUMMER BUMMER: While a candidate, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger responded to environmental critics by promising to retrofit one of his six "gas-swilling Hummers to run on eco-friendly hydrogen power." Seven months after the promise, "the high tech Hummer has yet to hit the road." David Caldwell, a Hummer spokesman, said the hydrogen Hummer is "not something that exists currently. It's not something you would expect to see in the near future." Caldwell added ominously: "we would never do a Hummer on any energy source that would not perform like a Hummer is supposed to perform." The latest version of the Hummer weighs 6400 pounds and gets 8 to 10 miles per gallon. Gov. Schwarzenegger has also yet to produce a strategy to meet his promise to reduce California air pollution by 50 percent. Meanwhile, the Bush administration pushed through a tax break actually giving consumers an incentive to buy bigger, more fuel-inefficient cars.
HERITAGE PRESIDENT – CARS HAVE CLEARED OUR AIR: Think you are not getting the straight story from the left? Just want the straight facts about the environment? Here's what you'll get from the right: Edwin J. Feulner, President of the Heritage Foundation, in a piece cleverly entitled "Down to Earth Day," comes to the stunning conclusion that cars "helped...clear our air." Feulner chides his readers "not [to] forget what autos replaced: horses." If not for cars, our streets would be "filled with manure." Also, "horses required tons of hay, which meant thousands of acres of farmland were needed to grow food for animal use, not human consumption." Another benefit: "cars enabled people to move out of crowded cities into suburbs where they are in closer contact with nature."
IRAQ
In Search Of A Plan
As violence erupts and security remains elusive, more American allies are signaling their concerns about the situation in Iraq. Following this week's removal of Spanish, Honduran and Dominican troops, Britain announced it would not send additional troops and Poland started to show cracks in its commitment. Reconstruction efforts are being suspended, and the administration is left to flip-flop on policy, with no solid strategy in place. (Stunningly, in the past two weeks, the only measure the White House has taken to prepare for the transfer of power on June 30 is the controversial naming of John Negroponte to be Ambassador.) Meanwhile, the pressure on U.S. troops is increasing as the highly-touted Iraqi security forces are not yet performing as promised: "About one in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces 'actually worked against' U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation."
NEEDED – MORE MONEY: The forces in Iraq need more money. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday "that the increased tempo of operations in Iraq and the extended deployment of 20,000 troops means there could be a $4 billion shortfall for this budget year, ending Sept. 30, slightly more than a month before the November elections." Any delay by President Bush to request more money – his administration has planned to put off asking for more funds until next January, after the election - could be deadly: "With the Congressional recess only months away," failure to authorize more money "would automatically delay passage of the funds until September at the earliest "forcing our troops to deal with potential resource shortfalls through what is likely to be a hot summer marked by continuing attacks.
RECONSTRUCTON EFFORTS DAMAGED: According to the NYT, two major contractors, General Electric and Siemens, have "suspend[ed] most of their operations there, raising new doubts about the American-led effort to rebuild the country as hostilities continue." These suspensions come at a time when the country was finally supposed to have a working electricity system: "Between the G.E. lockdown and the inability to get materials moved up the major supply routes, about everything is being affected in one way or another," said Jim Hicks, a senior adviser for electricity at the provisional authority. Originally expected by late April/early May, power plants now may not be operational until at least June. The work product of Halliburton has also been affected, with shipping having "been slowed down in terms of the number of routes and convoys they can run." The company is "having a difficult time hiring truck drivers to work in Iraq" and the overall number of Halliburton convoys is down an estimated 35%.
COMING TO GRIPS WITH REALITY: Contrary to previous assertions, U.S. officials have now started to explore including former Iraqi military officers and Baath Party officials in the new government. Previously, these Iraqis were prohibited from serving in top positions. But now many Iraqis, U.S. military field commanders and international officials believe the effort has gone too far, "depriving the new Iraqi government of needed skills and dangerously alienating the Sunni minority." Said one senior U.S. official, "The decisions made a year ago have bedeviled the situation on the ground ever since. Walking back these policies is a triumph of the view in the field over policies originally crafted in Washington."
A WHOLE SERIES OF FLIP-FLOPS: A review of the most recent series of flip-flops in Iraq: "First, Coalition Provisional Authority chief administrator L. Paul Bremer was adamant that U.S. troops were going to arrest firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. Now, they are not." Second, the administration was "adamant" that the United States wouldn't seek the support of the United Nations "at the expense of delegating any authority there." Now the president is going hat-in-hand to U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for assistance. Third, "in his 2002 State of the Union speech, Bush boldly condemned Iran along with Iraq as a fellow member of the so-called 'Axis of Evil.' Yet now, Bush is eagerly courting Iran as a key facilitator in negotiations with the Shiite rebels in Iraq."
HEALTH CARE
Drug Prices Take Center Stage
Facing a groundswell of support from local citizens, municipal and state governments, a bipartisan group of Senators yesterday agreed to introduce a bill permitting the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other industrialized nations. The FDA last month acknowledged that it would need just $58 million to set up a system to insure imported drugs are safe – a bargain compared to the potentially hundreds of millions of dollars U.S. consumers could save on drug prices. The Financial Times notes that the debate over reimportation "may prove a catalyst for changing federal drug-pricing policy" as "the issue has sparked a much wider debate over how drugs are priced in the U.S." American taxpayers currently fund up to one third of all prescription drug research and development for the pharmaceutical industry, yet are forced to pay the highest prices for medicines in the world. The problem has gotten so bad, that even Sen. Trent Lott, "a conservative friend to the pharmaceutical industry" said he could no longer defend drug prices to his elderly mother.
DON'T GET TOO EXCITED YET: Despite the bipartisan coalition pushing reimportation, the bill may have some very powerful opponents in Congress. The NYT notes that while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) agreed last month to work with pro-reimportation lawmakers, he "has been leery of such proposals, on the ground that they could endanger patients." But with the FDA unable to produce solid evidence that reimporting drugs from other industrialized countries is dangerous, Frist appears to be using the "safety" red-herring to shill for the drug industry, which opposes the legislation because it would cut into its profits. For his trouble, the pharmaceutical industry has showered Frist with more than $120,000 in campaign contributions since 2000. Similarly, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) who controls a committee overseeing health policy, plans to introduce an alternate bill after holding hearings next month. With Gregg's campaign pocketing more than $88,000 from the industry, drug companies may seek to use that alternative to water down more legitimate efforts to lower prices. Gregg, however, does face pressure at home: New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson, a conservative Republican like Gregg, is one of the leading proponents of reimportation.
PAWLENTY STANDS UP FOR CONSUMERS: The St. Paul Pioneer-Press reports that "Anyone doubting these are strange political times should consider: On Thursday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty - a tough-on-crime, pro-business, laissez-faire Republican who launched a Web site showing Minnesotans how to defy the federal government and import drugs from Canada - will tell a major corporation that it makes too much profit. Then, citing moral and economic grounds, he'll ask the company, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., to make less money." Pawlenty said, "It really torques me off that they are going to such lengths to try and suffocate our little modest efforts to allow reimportation from Canada." The governor will travel to Pfizer's annual shareholder's meeting in St. Louis on Thursday to speak in support of a religious group's shareholder resolution seeking to limit drug price increases to no more than the annual rate of inflation. For his ongoing efforts, the Progress Report recognized the conservative Pawlenty in its year-end awards edition.
DRUG INDUSTRY CHIEF STILL SPREADING LIES: Nervous that seniors' refusal to continue being fleeced might mean slightly lower profits for the wealthy drug companies, top drug industry lobbyist Alan Holmer has resorted to outright distortions in a campaign of fear and dishonesty. Writing in the Boston Globe, Holmer says consumers and local governments would save as "little as 1% of their total drug costs" from reimportation. But as a study from University of Minnesota Professor Steven Shondlemeyer indicates, American consumers could save up to $38 billion if the United States purchased medicines at Canadian and European prices. The city of Springfield, Massachusetts, alone reported saving $2 million in just nine months of its pilot program to purchase lower-priced drugs from Canada. Holmer instead says the real answer is to simply take the word of the drug companies or chain drug stores: he says consumers should take advantage of drug "company-sponsored discount card programs, or even shop around at different pharmacies" even though those are offered sporadically and without guarantee. He also says seniors will be able to rely on the new Medicare drug cards, even though those also offer no guarantee of lower prices or sustained coverage.
NEW STUDY REFUTES KEY INDUSTRY CLAIM: While the drug industry always claims that lower prices brought on by reimportation will mean less profits and less research and development on new drugs, a new study proves otherwise. According to top Boston University researchers, because reimportation would allow more people to buy drugs who don't buy them now, industry profits and R& D funding could actually rise. Reimportation "raises hope that it is possible to win affordable medications for all Americans at a low added cost—essentially the cost of manufacturing and distributing more pills—without harming drug makers' capacity to finance research, or even their profits. It therefore appears that what is politically popular may also be in the interests of patients, payers, and drug makers themselves."
RAIDING PRIVATE RYAN'S SAVINGS: In a veritable slap in the face, the House of Representatives yesterday voted to allow troops to tap into their retirement savings without penalty. Instead of giving financially strapped soldiers additional pay, interest free loans, or better benefits for their families, the legislation instead pushes troops to ravage their retirement savings accounts to make ends meet while fighting the war and losing income. Currently, many of the soldiers deployed to fight the war are in financial trouble: "employers are not required to make up lost pay for employees activated to duty, nor do they have to continue providing benefits like health insurance." Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) points out "withdrawals would still be taxed as income, and service members would have to withdraw more from their accounts than they actually need to pay for those taxes." Rep. George Miller (D-CA) "said National Guard and Reserve troops shouldn't be forced to undermine their own retirement security in order to pay their bills while serving their country."
RIGHT-WING – "STATING THE OBVIOUS" QUOTE OF THE DAY: ""I kind of like ducking questions." - President George W. Bush, speaking to a large gathering of newspaper editors, publishers and executives.
$700 MILLION – MORE HONESTY NEEDED: With pressure mounting to adequately fund the troops, Congress is also pushing for the White House to be more honest than they've been in the past about the cost of war. Case in point: the WSJ today reports, "The Pentagon acknowledged that in tandem with its secret planning for the Iraq war two years ago, it funded 21 military-related projects in the Mideast when the Bush administration had yet to seek a war resolution from Congress." The White House, which diverted $700 million from the war on terror, "was required to consult with lawmakers, and the military" and the administration was well aware at the time that Congress was sensitive to Iraq spending. "Just as the 21 projects were being funded in August and September 2002, for example, lawmakers were resisting demands by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a $10 billion reserve fund that lawmakers feared would be applied to Iraq."
VOTING REFORM – TROUBLE ON THE HORIZON: The WSJ reports "Four years after the muddled 2000 election...there is no guarantee that pregnant chads and other problems have been eliminated." While the "federal government tried to spur changes with the 2002 Help America Vote Act, or HAVA...delays in distributing its $3.9 billion in funds, among other problems, have election watchers worried." Specifically, "the Election Assistance Commission set up to distribute the funds wasn't confirmed until December 2003, nearly 10 months behind schedule." Even where money is available to finance new electronic voting systems they "bring the risk of new types of glitches." Problems with electronic voting have already had an impact – in "the 2002 primary race for Florida governor, electronic voting machines were shut down improperly, leaving some votes uncounted on election night. During the Florida presidential primary in March, some electronic ballots were improperly coded, forcing election workers to recount ballots by hand."
TECHNOLOGY – OUTSOURCING THE COMPETITIVE EDGE: In today's NYT Thomas Friedman voices the concerns of "high-tech entrepreneurs" in Silicon Valley, who are worried America is "losing its competitive edge vis-Ã -vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation." One reason America is losing its high-tech advantage: "the Department of Homeland Security is making it so hard for legitimate foreigners to get visas to study or work in America that many have given up the age-old dream of coming here. Instead, they are studying in England and other Western European nations, and even China." In addition, Friedman notes, "U.S. government investments are flagging in basic research in physics, chemistry and engineering…And what is the Bush strategy? Let's go to Mars. Hello?"
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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Today is Earth Day and millions of Americans will celebrate by doing something to improve the environment – cleaning up trash in a local park, planting a tree, or making their home more energy efficient. Meanwhile, the Bush administration will celebrate Earth Day by inviting oil-industry officials to the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss a plan to relax pollution standards for gasoline. The plan would allow higher sulfur content gasoline to be sold during the summer months. According to Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Trust "because sulfur is a prime contributor to both urban smog and soot, it could also result in an increase in health problems." That is a large price to pay for a plan that would only temporarily "trim oil prices by as much as a nickel a gallon" – and not necessarily in all markets.
EXEMPTING MILITARY & CONTRACTORS FROM ENVIRO LAWS: Also on the Earth Day agenda: the administration is pushing to exempt the Defense Department from "the Clean Air Act and from hazardous waste laws at thousands of firing and bombing ranges nationwide." If Congress grants the exemption, "state and federal authorities would be helpless to prevent more perchlorate contamination in Southern California drinking water" and other locations across the nation. The move would also make it harder to purify water supplies after they became contaminated because it would "make it more difficult for local governments to obtain reimbursements either from the Pentagon or local defense contractors." As a result, cash-strapped states would have to try to scrape together cash for cleanups.
ARNOLD'S HUMMER BUMMER: While a candidate, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger responded to environmental critics by promising to retrofit one of his six "gas-swilling Hummers to run on eco-friendly hydrogen power." Seven months after the promise, "the high tech Hummer has yet to hit the road." David Caldwell, a Hummer spokesman, said the hydrogen Hummer is "not something that exists currently. It's not something you would expect to see in the near future." Caldwell added ominously: "we would never do a Hummer on any energy source that would not perform like a Hummer is supposed to perform." The latest version of the Hummer weighs 6400 pounds and gets 8 to 10 miles per gallon. Gov. Schwarzenegger has also yet to produce a strategy to meet his promise to reduce California air pollution by 50 percent. Meanwhile, the Bush administration pushed through a tax break actually giving consumers an incentive to buy bigger, more fuel-inefficient cars.
HERITAGE PRESIDENT – CARS HAVE CLEARED OUR AIR: Think you are not getting the straight story from the left? Just want the straight facts about the environment? Here's what you'll get from the right: Edwin J. Feulner, President of the Heritage Foundation, in a piece cleverly entitled "Down to Earth Day," comes to the stunning conclusion that cars "helped...clear our air." Feulner chides his readers "not [to] forget what autos replaced: horses." If not for cars, our streets would be "filled with manure." Also, "horses required tons of hay, which meant thousands of acres of farmland were needed to grow food for animal use, not human consumption." Another benefit: "cars enabled people to move out of crowded cities into suburbs where they are in closer contact with nature."
IRAQ
In Search Of A Plan
As violence erupts and security remains elusive, more American allies are signaling their concerns about the situation in Iraq. Following this week's removal of Spanish, Honduran and Dominican troops, Britain announced it would not send additional troops and Poland started to show cracks in its commitment. Reconstruction efforts are being suspended, and the administration is left to flip-flop on policy, with no solid strategy in place. (Stunningly, in the past two weeks, the only measure the White House has taken to prepare for the transfer of power on June 30 is the controversial naming of John Negroponte to be Ambassador.) Meanwhile, the pressure on U.S. troops is increasing as the highly-touted Iraqi security forces are not yet performing as promised: "About one in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces 'actually worked against' U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation."
NEEDED – MORE MONEY: The forces in Iraq need more money. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday "that the increased tempo of operations in Iraq and the extended deployment of 20,000 troops means there could be a $4 billion shortfall for this budget year, ending Sept. 30, slightly more than a month before the November elections." Any delay by President Bush to request more money – his administration has planned to put off asking for more funds until next January, after the election - could be deadly: "With the Congressional recess only months away," failure to authorize more money "would automatically delay passage of the funds until September at the earliest "forcing our troops to deal with potential resource shortfalls through what is likely to be a hot summer marked by continuing attacks.
RECONSTRUCTON EFFORTS DAMAGED: According to the NYT, two major contractors, General Electric and Siemens, have "suspend[ed] most of their operations there, raising new doubts about the American-led effort to rebuild the country as hostilities continue." These suspensions come at a time when the country was finally supposed to have a working electricity system: "Between the G.E. lockdown and the inability to get materials moved up the major supply routes, about everything is being affected in one way or another," said Jim Hicks, a senior adviser for electricity at the provisional authority. Originally expected by late April/early May, power plants now may not be operational until at least June. The work product of Halliburton has also been affected, with shipping having "been slowed down in terms of the number of routes and convoys they can run." The company is "having a difficult time hiring truck drivers to work in Iraq" and the overall number of Halliburton convoys is down an estimated 35%.
COMING TO GRIPS WITH REALITY: Contrary to previous assertions, U.S. officials have now started to explore including former Iraqi military officers and Baath Party officials in the new government. Previously, these Iraqis were prohibited from serving in top positions. But now many Iraqis, U.S. military field commanders and international officials believe the effort has gone too far, "depriving the new Iraqi government of needed skills and dangerously alienating the Sunni minority." Said one senior U.S. official, "The decisions made a year ago have bedeviled the situation on the ground ever since. Walking back these policies is a triumph of the view in the field over policies originally crafted in Washington."
A WHOLE SERIES OF FLIP-FLOPS: A review of the most recent series of flip-flops in Iraq: "First, Coalition Provisional Authority chief administrator L. Paul Bremer was adamant that U.S. troops were going to arrest firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. Now, they are not." Second, the administration was "adamant" that the United States wouldn't seek the support of the United Nations "at the expense of delegating any authority there." Now the president is going hat-in-hand to U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for assistance. Third, "in his 2002 State of the Union speech, Bush boldly condemned Iran along with Iraq as a fellow member of the so-called 'Axis of Evil.' Yet now, Bush is eagerly courting Iran as a key facilitator in negotiations with the Shiite rebels in Iraq."
HEALTH CARE
Drug Prices Take Center Stage
Facing a groundswell of support from local citizens, municipal and state governments, a bipartisan group of Senators yesterday agreed to introduce a bill permitting the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other industrialized nations. The FDA last month acknowledged that it would need just $58 million to set up a system to insure imported drugs are safe – a bargain compared to the potentially hundreds of millions of dollars U.S. consumers could save on drug prices. The Financial Times notes that the debate over reimportation "may prove a catalyst for changing federal drug-pricing policy" as "the issue has sparked a much wider debate over how drugs are priced in the U.S." American taxpayers currently fund up to one third of all prescription drug research and development for the pharmaceutical industry, yet are forced to pay the highest prices for medicines in the world. The problem has gotten so bad, that even Sen. Trent Lott, "a conservative friend to the pharmaceutical industry" said he could no longer defend drug prices to his elderly mother.
DON'T GET TOO EXCITED YET: Despite the bipartisan coalition pushing reimportation, the bill may have some very powerful opponents in Congress. The NYT notes that while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) agreed last month to work with pro-reimportation lawmakers, he "has been leery of such proposals, on the ground that they could endanger patients." But with the FDA unable to produce solid evidence that reimporting drugs from other industrialized countries is dangerous, Frist appears to be using the "safety" red-herring to shill for the drug industry, which opposes the legislation because it would cut into its profits. For his trouble, the pharmaceutical industry has showered Frist with more than $120,000 in campaign contributions since 2000. Similarly, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) who controls a committee overseeing health policy, plans to introduce an alternate bill after holding hearings next month. With Gregg's campaign pocketing more than $88,000 from the industry, drug companies may seek to use that alternative to water down more legitimate efforts to lower prices. Gregg, however, does face pressure at home: New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson, a conservative Republican like Gregg, is one of the leading proponents of reimportation.
PAWLENTY STANDS UP FOR CONSUMERS: The St. Paul Pioneer-Press reports that "Anyone doubting these are strange political times should consider: On Thursday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty - a tough-on-crime, pro-business, laissez-faire Republican who launched a Web site showing Minnesotans how to defy the federal government and import drugs from Canada - will tell a major corporation that it makes too much profit. Then, citing moral and economic grounds, he'll ask the company, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., to make less money." Pawlenty said, "It really torques me off that they are going to such lengths to try and suffocate our little modest efforts to allow reimportation from Canada." The governor will travel to Pfizer's annual shareholder's meeting in St. Louis on Thursday to speak in support of a religious group's shareholder resolution seeking to limit drug price increases to no more than the annual rate of inflation. For his ongoing efforts, the Progress Report recognized the conservative Pawlenty in its year-end awards edition.
DRUG INDUSTRY CHIEF STILL SPREADING LIES: Nervous that seniors' refusal to continue being fleeced might mean slightly lower profits for the wealthy drug companies, top drug industry lobbyist Alan Holmer has resorted to outright distortions in a campaign of fear and dishonesty. Writing in the Boston Globe, Holmer says consumers and local governments would save as "little as 1% of their total drug costs" from reimportation. But as a study from University of Minnesota Professor Steven Shondlemeyer indicates, American consumers could save up to $38 billion if the United States purchased medicines at Canadian and European prices. The city of Springfield, Massachusetts, alone reported saving $2 million in just nine months of its pilot program to purchase lower-priced drugs from Canada. Holmer instead says the real answer is to simply take the word of the drug companies or chain drug stores: he says consumers should take advantage of drug "company-sponsored discount card programs, or even shop around at different pharmacies" even though those are offered sporadically and without guarantee. He also says seniors will be able to rely on the new Medicare drug cards, even though those also offer no guarantee of lower prices or sustained coverage.
NEW STUDY REFUTES KEY INDUSTRY CLAIM: While the drug industry always claims that lower prices brought on by reimportation will mean less profits and less research and development on new drugs, a new study proves otherwise. According to top Boston University researchers, because reimportation would allow more people to buy drugs who don't buy them now, industry profits and R& D funding could actually rise. Reimportation "raises hope that it is possible to win affordable medications for all Americans at a low added cost—essentially the cost of manufacturing and distributing more pills—without harming drug makers' capacity to finance research, or even their profits. It therefore appears that what is politically popular may also be in the interests of patients, payers, and drug makers themselves."
RAIDING PRIVATE RYAN'S SAVINGS: In a veritable slap in the face, the House of Representatives yesterday voted to allow troops to tap into their retirement savings without penalty. Instead of giving financially strapped soldiers additional pay, interest free loans, or better benefits for their families, the legislation instead pushes troops to ravage their retirement savings accounts to make ends meet while fighting the war and losing income. Currently, many of the soldiers deployed to fight the war are in financial trouble: "employers are not required to make up lost pay for employees activated to duty, nor do they have to continue providing benefits like health insurance." Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) points out "withdrawals would still be taxed as income, and service members would have to withdraw more from their accounts than they actually need to pay for those taxes." Rep. George Miller (D-CA) "said National Guard and Reserve troops shouldn't be forced to undermine their own retirement security in order to pay their bills while serving their country."
RIGHT-WING – "STATING THE OBVIOUS" QUOTE OF THE DAY: ""I kind of like ducking questions." - President George W. Bush, speaking to a large gathering of newspaper editors, publishers and executives.
$700 MILLION – MORE HONESTY NEEDED: With pressure mounting to adequately fund the troops, Congress is also pushing for the White House to be more honest than they've been in the past about the cost of war. Case in point: the WSJ today reports, "The Pentagon acknowledged that in tandem with its secret planning for the Iraq war two years ago, it funded 21 military-related projects in the Mideast when the Bush administration had yet to seek a war resolution from Congress." The White House, which diverted $700 million from the war on terror, "was required to consult with lawmakers, and the military" and the administration was well aware at the time that Congress was sensitive to Iraq spending. "Just as the 21 projects were being funded in August and September 2002, for example, lawmakers were resisting demands by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a $10 billion reserve fund that lawmakers feared would be applied to Iraq."
VOTING REFORM – TROUBLE ON THE HORIZON: The WSJ reports "Four years after the muddled 2000 election...there is no guarantee that pregnant chads and other problems have been eliminated." While the "federal government tried to spur changes with the 2002 Help America Vote Act, or HAVA...delays in distributing its $3.9 billion in funds, among other problems, have election watchers worried." Specifically, "the Election Assistance Commission set up to distribute the funds wasn't confirmed until December 2003, nearly 10 months behind schedule." Even where money is available to finance new electronic voting systems they "bring the risk of new types of glitches." Problems with electronic voting have already had an impact – in "the 2002 primary race for Florida governor, electronic voting machines were shut down improperly, leaving some votes uncounted on election night. During the Florida presidential primary in March, some electronic ballots were improperly coded, forcing election workers to recount ballots by hand."
TECHNOLOGY – OUTSOURCING THE COMPETITIVE EDGE: In today's NYT Thomas Friedman voices the concerns of "high-tech entrepreneurs" in Silicon Valley, who are worried America is "losing its competitive edge vis-Ã -vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation." One reason America is losing its high-tech advantage: "the Department of Homeland Security is making it so hard for legitimate foreigners to get visas to study or work in America that many have given up the age-old dream of coming here. Instead, they are studying in England and other Western European nations, and even China." In addition, Friedman notes, "U.S. government investments are flagging in basic research in physics, chemistry and engineering…And what is the Bush strategy? Let's go to Mars. Hello?"
________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
When FORTUNE magazine says vote for Kerry (by a former special assistant to Reagan!) you know that a rotten gang is in the White House ripping off taxpayers.
Fortune Magazine
From the May. 3, 2004 Issue
THE ECONOMY
A Conservative Case for Voting Democratic
Give either party complete control of government, and the vaults are quickly emptied.
By Doug Bandow
Republicans have long claimed to be fiscal tightwads and railed against deficit spending. But this year big-spending George W. Bush and the GOP Congress turned a budget surplus into a $477 billion deficit. There are few programs at which they have not thrown money: massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork-barrel projects, dubious homeland-security grants, expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, even new foreign-aid programs. Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."
Complaints about Republican profligacy have led the White House to promise to mend its ways. But Bush's latest budget combines accounting flim-flam with unenforceable promises. So how do we put Uncle Sam on a sounder fiscal basis?
Vote Democratic.
Democrats obviously are no pikers when it comes to spending. But the biggest impetus for higher spending is partisan uniformity, not partisan identity. Give either party complete control of government, and the Treasury vaults are quickly emptied. Neither Congress nor the President wants to tell the other no. Both are desperate to prove they can "govern"—which means creating new programs and spending more money. But share power between parties, and out of principle or malice they check each other. Even if a President Kerry proposed more spending than would a President Bush, a GOP Congress would appropriate less. That's one reason the Founders believed in the separation of powers.
Consider the record. William Niskanen, former acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, has put together a fascinating analysis of government spending since 1953. Real federal outlays grew fastest, 4.8% annually, in the Kennedy-Johnson years, with Congress under Democratic control. The second-fastest rise, 4.4%, occurred with George W. Bush during Republican rule. The third-biggest spending explosion, 3.7%, was during the Carter administration, a time of Democratic control. In contrast, the greatest fiscal stringency, 0.4%, occurred during the Eisenhower years. The second-best period of fiscal restraint, 0.9%, was in the Clinton era. Next came the Nixon-Ford years, at 2.5%, and Ronald Reagan's presidency, at 3.3%. All were years of shared partisan control.
Bush officials argue that it is unfair to count military spending, but Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan also faced international challenges that impeded their domestic plans. Moreover, if you do strip out military spending and consider only the domestic record, GOP chief executives emerge in an even worse light. In terms of real domestic discretionary outlays, which are most easily controlled, the biggest spender in the past 40 years is George W. Bush, with expenditure racing ahead 8.2% annually, according to Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth. No. 2 on the list is Gerald Ford, at 8%. No. 3 is Richard Nixon. At least the latter two, in contrast to Bush, faced hostile Congresses.
Given the generally woeful record of Republican Presidents, the best combination may be a Democratic chief executive and Republican legislature. It may also be the only combination that's feasible, since in 2004 at least, it will be difficult to overturn Republican congressional control: Redistricting has encouraged electoral stasis in the House, while far more Democrats face reelection in the Senate. Thus, the only way we can realistically keep Congress and the President in separate political hands is to vote for John Kerry in November.
Returning to divided government would yield another benefit as well: Greater opportunity for reform, whether of the budget process, tort liability, Medicare, Social Security, taxes, or almost anything else. Niskanen has observed that the prospects for change "will be dependent on more bipartisan support than now seems likely in a united Republican government." He points out that tax reform occurred in 1986, and agriculture, telecommunications, and welfare reform a decade later, all under divided government.
The deficit can be cut in half if Congress "is willing to make tough choices," says President Bush. But GOP legislators are likely to make tough choices only if he is replaced by a Democrat. History teaches us that divided government equals fiscal probity, so vote Democratic for President if you want responsible budgeting in Washington.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
____________________________________________________________________
Fortune Magazine
From the May. 3, 2004 Issue
THE ECONOMY
A Conservative Case for Voting Democratic
Give either party complete control of government, and the vaults are quickly emptied.
By Doug Bandow
Republicans have long claimed to be fiscal tightwads and railed against deficit spending. But this year big-spending George W. Bush and the GOP Congress turned a budget surplus into a $477 billion deficit. There are few programs at which they have not thrown money: massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork-barrel projects, dubious homeland-security grants, expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, even new foreign-aid programs. Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."
Complaints about Republican profligacy have led the White House to promise to mend its ways. But Bush's latest budget combines accounting flim-flam with unenforceable promises. So how do we put Uncle Sam on a sounder fiscal basis?
Vote Democratic.
Democrats obviously are no pikers when it comes to spending. But the biggest impetus for higher spending is partisan uniformity, not partisan identity. Give either party complete control of government, and the Treasury vaults are quickly emptied. Neither Congress nor the President wants to tell the other no. Both are desperate to prove they can "govern"—which means creating new programs and spending more money. But share power between parties, and out of principle or malice they check each other. Even if a President Kerry proposed more spending than would a President Bush, a GOP Congress would appropriate less. That's one reason the Founders believed in the separation of powers.
Consider the record. William Niskanen, former acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, has put together a fascinating analysis of government spending since 1953. Real federal outlays grew fastest, 4.8% annually, in the Kennedy-Johnson years, with Congress under Democratic control. The second-fastest rise, 4.4%, occurred with George W. Bush during Republican rule. The third-biggest spending explosion, 3.7%, was during the Carter administration, a time of Democratic control. In contrast, the greatest fiscal stringency, 0.4%, occurred during the Eisenhower years. The second-best period of fiscal restraint, 0.9%, was in the Clinton era. Next came the Nixon-Ford years, at 2.5%, and Ronald Reagan's presidency, at 3.3%. All were years of shared partisan control.
Bush officials argue that it is unfair to count military spending, but Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan also faced international challenges that impeded their domestic plans. Moreover, if you do strip out military spending and consider only the domestic record, GOP chief executives emerge in an even worse light. In terms of real domestic discretionary outlays, which are most easily controlled, the biggest spender in the past 40 years is George W. Bush, with expenditure racing ahead 8.2% annually, according to Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth. No. 2 on the list is Gerald Ford, at 8%. No. 3 is Richard Nixon. At least the latter two, in contrast to Bush, faced hostile Congresses.
Given the generally woeful record of Republican Presidents, the best combination may be a Democratic chief executive and Republican legislature. It may also be the only combination that's feasible, since in 2004 at least, it will be difficult to overturn Republican congressional control: Redistricting has encouraged electoral stasis in the House, while far more Democrats face reelection in the Senate. Thus, the only way we can realistically keep Congress and the President in separate political hands is to vote for John Kerry in November.
Returning to divided government would yield another benefit as well: Greater opportunity for reform, whether of the budget process, tort liability, Medicare, Social Security, taxes, or almost anything else. Niskanen has observed that the prospects for change "will be dependent on more bipartisan support than now seems likely in a united Republican government." He points out that tax reform occurred in 1986, and agriculture, telecommunications, and welfare reform a decade later, all under divided government.
The deficit can be cut in half if Congress "is willing to make tough choices," says President Bush. But GOP legislators are likely to make tough choices only if he is replaced by a Democrat. History teaches us that divided government equals fiscal probity, so vote Democratic for President if you want responsible budgeting in Washington.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
____________________________________________________________________
From TomPaine.com
4/19/04
Thomas R. Asher is a lawyer and president of The American Council, a policy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and Amherst, Mass. Until 1998, he was the board chair of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Losing Control
Echoes of Watergate fill the air: a president is charged with misdeeds. He is besieged by plans gone awry, betrayed by underlings blowing whistles, harassed by a once-compliant press and barraged by querulous demands for data, documents and testimony.
George W. Bush, who reveres power, is losing his own as events in Washington and Iraq, and their public portrayal, slip from his grasp. His predicaments are rooted less in Lord Acton's adage that "power corrupts" than its corollary that power seduces its holders into overestimating their strength and ignoring its limits. Bush has an inflated sense of several variants of power: bending others to one's will, be they subjects, messengers, adversaries or enemies; silencing dissent; protecting secrets; and building and preserving credibility. The latter is especially important in an election year.
The rising visibility of major White House miscalculations before and after 9/11, including the deteriorating situation in Iraq, have unleashed a skunky whiff of Watergate into Washington's springtime air. Bush's credibility is sinking as did Richard Nixon's when caught covering up the misdeeds of his "plumbers;" his clandestine re-election campaign crew that spied on Nixon's opponents. Bush faces a wider range of potential scandals, which include:
• Iraq: the rationale for, cost of, and occupation plans following America's conquest (DOS, DOD, CIA, FBI);
• Suppressed Medicare costs (HHS) and bioterrorism studies (DOD);
• Insufficient terrorism preparedness and prevention, domestic and international, before and after 9/11 (CIA, FBI, DOD, etc.);
• Mounting fiscal deficits and tax relief only for the wealthy (Treasury, OMB); and
• Skewed or suppressed scientific research and policies (NIH, HHS, FDA, EPA).
Furthermore, criminal jeopardy may lurk beneath headlines in the "outing" by senior White House officials of a CIA spy (Valerie Plame) married to an Iraq-issue defector (former Ambassador Joseph Wilson III). In that case, any Bush-Ashcroft effort to delay or derail the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, will evoke memories of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" when he fired a prosecutor who was closing in on him.
Nascent scandals also lie in energy policy (including the vice president's list of advisors, on the Supreme Court's current docket), the environment (relaxing arsenic and mercury rules), frayed relations with allies and the United Nations, and on and on . . . In each trouble spot are current and former officials with information and documents that will, almost surely, further tarnish Mr. Bush and his closest advisors.
With so many problems and news from Iraq growing steadily more grisly, Mr. Bush's presidency, like Nixon's, is developing a troubled aura. This will likely beget further difficulties because, as a president's power wanes, the loyalty and obedience of his inner circle and lower-level public employees tends to shrink apace, with each major leak leading to more and larger spurts, like when pressure increases within a frayed hose.
With so many problems, no wonder Watergate references are escalating. Veteran journalist Daniel Schorr suggests that Richard Clarke's evidence of administration laxity toward terrorism has "exploded" Mr. Bush's control of his destiny, as did "former White House counsel John Dean, who started President Nixon down the road to ruin." Mr. Dean himself, meanwhile, just published a litany of Bush abuses of power titled Worse than Watergate. And Sen. Ted Kennedy now calls Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," charging that "this president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon."
A newspaper editorial about Shiite-Sunni collaborations in Iraq is headlined: "U.S. enemies list grows in Iraq." Those who remember Nixon's chicanery recall his "enemies list" of critics, and how he abused the IRS and other government agencies to harass them. Given the Bush administration's fierce assaults against its critics, from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to Ambassador Wilson to Bush's own former terrorism "czar" Clarke, it would be no surprise to find that he, like the paranoiac Nixon, keeps a similar list, which is likely to grow as his aura of invincibility fades.
The president and his administration, in Watergate mode, already find themselves focusing more on damage control than new initiatives, both in Washington and Baghdad. They spend time with lawyers and spinmeisters, rather than policy advisors, and are bogged down in old problems, which prevents them from focusing on the cascade of new ones. Their power to "embed" or bully the skeptical media is diminishing. And Mr. Bush's re-election campaign is increasingly shrill, scattered, partisan and reactive—not the image of serene confidence and control he hoped to project.
Watergate words like "credibility gap," "cover-up," "stonewall," and "crisis" abound. As for Iraq, we now hear Vietnam echoes like "chaos," "quagmire" and "nightmare" instead of "liberation," "freedom" and "democracy."
As Clarke and others before him warned, the Iraq "liberation" is proving a double blunder, creating more problems than it solved, while diverting resources needed to capture and shut down Al Qaeda's leadership and give Afghanistan and its people the recovery, hope, security and democracy America promised them. The Iraq invasion was launched and celebrated on mighty words and gestures ("liberation," "national security," "Mission Accomplished"). However, reality was quite different, largely because the ideological Mr. Bush confused words with facts and also confused two types of power: the military might to kill and conquer with the very different strengths needed to rebuild a shattered society, establish order and security, and impose democracy upon its mutually mistrustful citizens.
So, as Iraq continues to spew bad news and Watergate mode prevails in Washington, Mr. Bush will face a growing chorus of highly credentialed detractors, revealers, accusers and questioners. For example, the Defense Department now concedes that it may require many more troops to "pacify" Iraq. There are new reports of prewar warnings by skeptical generals who were pushed around or pushed aside by Donald Rumsfeld. Nothing has been heard for many months from General Edward Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff sidelined by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for maintaining before the Iraq invasion, quite correctly, that many more U.S. troops than were allocated were needed to maintain control after Saddam was dispatched.
Mr. Bush's multiple misrepresentations and misjudgments put him in position to break a key Watergate speed record. From the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1971 to Nixon's resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, it took some 38 months. In between, Nixon managed to keep the tawdry facts and circumstances under sufficient control to win re-election in 1972. In contrast, from the first "new product" announcement of the Iraq invasion in early September, 2002, to election day November 2, 2004, is a mere 26 months, which would beat Nixon's record by 33 percent.
Iraq also may eclipse the presidential war blowback record set by Vietnam. Of course, no civilized exit strategy for American hegemony and troops currently exists and the likelihood of an international takeover is diminished because of (a) little support among our NATO allies, (b) a timorous United Nations, further weakened by the Bush administration's lack of respect and support, and (c) Bush's continued refusal to relinquish effective control. It took six years, from 1962 to 1968, for Vietnam to undo a president, Lyndon Johnson; five years if you count only his time as president. In contrast, the Iraq war began in March, 2003, fewer than 19 months before Election Day 2004.
So, Mr. Bush, ever precocious in his reach for and use of power, is being quickly undone, in part, by chronically miscalculating its potency and limits. Call it hubris, the blind pride and arrogance that often precipitates a fall from power. Mr. Bush sees himself as Ronald Reagan's heir—the cheerful and Teflon-coated conservative. Instead, he may find deeper and stickier genetic ancestry in the dark and ultimately disgraced Nixon.
____________________________________________________________________
4/19/04
Thomas R. Asher is a lawyer and president of The American Council, a policy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and Amherst, Mass. Until 1998, he was the board chair of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Losing Control
Echoes of Watergate fill the air: a president is charged with misdeeds. He is besieged by plans gone awry, betrayed by underlings blowing whistles, harassed by a once-compliant press and barraged by querulous demands for data, documents and testimony.
George W. Bush, who reveres power, is losing his own as events in Washington and Iraq, and their public portrayal, slip from his grasp. His predicaments are rooted less in Lord Acton's adage that "power corrupts" than its corollary that power seduces its holders into overestimating their strength and ignoring its limits. Bush has an inflated sense of several variants of power: bending others to one's will, be they subjects, messengers, adversaries or enemies; silencing dissent; protecting secrets; and building and preserving credibility. The latter is especially important in an election year.
The rising visibility of major White House miscalculations before and after 9/11, including the deteriorating situation in Iraq, have unleashed a skunky whiff of Watergate into Washington's springtime air. Bush's credibility is sinking as did Richard Nixon's when caught covering up the misdeeds of his "plumbers;" his clandestine re-election campaign crew that spied on Nixon's opponents. Bush faces a wider range of potential scandals, which include:
• Iraq: the rationale for, cost of, and occupation plans following America's conquest (DOS, DOD, CIA, FBI);
• Suppressed Medicare costs (HHS) and bioterrorism studies (DOD);
• Insufficient terrorism preparedness and prevention, domestic and international, before and after 9/11 (CIA, FBI, DOD, etc.);
• Mounting fiscal deficits and tax relief only for the wealthy (Treasury, OMB); and
• Skewed or suppressed scientific research and policies (NIH, HHS, FDA, EPA).
Furthermore, criminal jeopardy may lurk beneath headlines in the "outing" by senior White House officials of a CIA spy (Valerie Plame) married to an Iraq-issue defector (former Ambassador Joseph Wilson III). In that case, any Bush-Ashcroft effort to delay or derail the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, will evoke memories of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" when he fired a prosecutor who was closing in on him.
Nascent scandals also lie in energy policy (including the vice president's list of advisors, on the Supreme Court's current docket), the environment (relaxing arsenic and mercury rules), frayed relations with allies and the United Nations, and on and on . . . In each trouble spot are current and former officials with information and documents that will, almost surely, further tarnish Mr. Bush and his closest advisors.
With so many problems and news from Iraq growing steadily more grisly, Mr. Bush's presidency, like Nixon's, is developing a troubled aura. This will likely beget further difficulties because, as a president's power wanes, the loyalty and obedience of his inner circle and lower-level public employees tends to shrink apace, with each major leak leading to more and larger spurts, like when pressure increases within a frayed hose.
With so many problems, no wonder Watergate references are escalating. Veteran journalist Daniel Schorr suggests that Richard Clarke's evidence of administration laxity toward terrorism has "exploded" Mr. Bush's control of his destiny, as did "former White House counsel John Dean, who started President Nixon down the road to ruin." Mr. Dean himself, meanwhile, just published a litany of Bush abuses of power titled Worse than Watergate. And Sen. Ted Kennedy now calls Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," charging that "this president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon."
A newspaper editorial about Shiite-Sunni collaborations in Iraq is headlined: "U.S. enemies list grows in Iraq." Those who remember Nixon's chicanery recall his "enemies list" of critics, and how he abused the IRS and other government agencies to harass them. Given the Bush administration's fierce assaults against its critics, from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to Ambassador Wilson to Bush's own former terrorism "czar" Clarke, it would be no surprise to find that he, like the paranoiac Nixon, keeps a similar list, which is likely to grow as his aura of invincibility fades.
The president and his administration, in Watergate mode, already find themselves focusing more on damage control than new initiatives, both in Washington and Baghdad. They spend time with lawyers and spinmeisters, rather than policy advisors, and are bogged down in old problems, which prevents them from focusing on the cascade of new ones. Their power to "embed" or bully the skeptical media is diminishing. And Mr. Bush's re-election campaign is increasingly shrill, scattered, partisan and reactive—not the image of serene confidence and control he hoped to project.
Watergate words like "credibility gap," "cover-up," "stonewall," and "crisis" abound. As for Iraq, we now hear Vietnam echoes like "chaos," "quagmire" and "nightmare" instead of "liberation," "freedom" and "democracy."
As Clarke and others before him warned, the Iraq "liberation" is proving a double blunder, creating more problems than it solved, while diverting resources needed to capture and shut down Al Qaeda's leadership and give Afghanistan and its people the recovery, hope, security and democracy America promised them. The Iraq invasion was launched and celebrated on mighty words and gestures ("liberation," "national security," "Mission Accomplished"). However, reality was quite different, largely because the ideological Mr. Bush confused words with facts and also confused two types of power: the military might to kill and conquer with the very different strengths needed to rebuild a shattered society, establish order and security, and impose democracy upon its mutually mistrustful citizens.
So, as Iraq continues to spew bad news and Watergate mode prevails in Washington, Mr. Bush will face a growing chorus of highly credentialed detractors, revealers, accusers and questioners. For example, the Defense Department now concedes that it may require many more troops to "pacify" Iraq. There are new reports of prewar warnings by skeptical generals who were pushed around or pushed aside by Donald Rumsfeld. Nothing has been heard for many months from General Edward Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff sidelined by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for maintaining before the Iraq invasion, quite correctly, that many more U.S. troops than were allocated were needed to maintain control after Saddam was dispatched.
Mr. Bush's multiple misrepresentations and misjudgments put him in position to break a key Watergate speed record. From the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1971 to Nixon's resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, it took some 38 months. In between, Nixon managed to keep the tawdry facts and circumstances under sufficient control to win re-election in 1972. In contrast, from the first "new product" announcement of the Iraq invasion in early September, 2002, to election day November 2, 2004, is a mere 26 months, which would beat Nixon's record by 33 percent.
Iraq also may eclipse the presidential war blowback record set by Vietnam. Of course, no civilized exit strategy for American hegemony and troops currently exists and the likelihood of an international takeover is diminished because of (a) little support among our NATO allies, (b) a timorous United Nations, further weakened by the Bush administration's lack of respect and support, and (c) Bush's continued refusal to relinquish effective control. It took six years, from 1962 to 1968, for Vietnam to undo a president, Lyndon Johnson; five years if you count only his time as president. In contrast, the Iraq war began in March, 2003, fewer than 19 months before Election Day 2004.
So, Mr. Bush, ever precocious in his reach for and use of power, is being quickly undone, in part, by chronically miscalculating its potency and limits. Call it hubris, the blind pride and arrogance that often precipitates a fall from power. Mr. Bush sees himself as Ronald Reagan's heir—the cheerful and Teflon-coated conservative. Instead, he may find deeper and stickier genetic ancestry in the dark and ultimately disgraced Nixon.
____________________________________________________________________
Bill Press, Progressive Pundit and Author of the Upcoming "Bush Must Go! -- Top Ten Reasons Why George W. Bush Doesn’t Deserve A Second Term."
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW with BILL PRESS
Bill Press has for many years now, worked to un-spin the right-wing attack machine. Press is one of the few progressive pundits on cable television news who is foremost on the side of the truth, and who believes that being a political pundit should still carry with it the responsibility to be credible, accurate, and honest. In short, Bill Press has an integrity unseen in many of the faces that dot cable news. He has the thankless task of correcting misinformation with facts, balancing shrill rhetoric from the right with thoughtful perspective, and focusing attention on important stories that have been drowned out or ignored by the media. His next book will be published by Dutton in June 2004, Bush Must Go! – Top Ten Reasons Why George W. Bush Doesn’t Deserve A Second Term . Press is also a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, whose weekly column is distributed by Tribune Media Services to newspapers across the country.
Bill is the former co-host with Pat Buchanan of MSNBC’s Buchanan and Press , a lively debate show on current issues. Prior to joining MSNBC, Press was co-host of Crossfire , CNN’s dynamic political debate program, for six years. At CNN, he also co-hosted The Spin Room with Tucker Carlson.
Press is the author of "Spin This!" in which he explores the culture of spin. He investigates exactly what spin is, who does it and why, and the impact it has on American society.
In addition, Press is an award-winning radio talk show host and television commentator. He began his career as political commentator on KABC-TV and later on KCOP-TV, both in Los Angeles. He hosted Bill Press: True American on KFI-AM, Southern California’s number one AM radio station.
Press has received numerous awards for his work, including four Emmys and a Golden Mike Award. He was named "Best Commentator of the Year" by the Associated Press in 1992.
Bill Press is a native of Delaware, still keeps a home in California and now lives in Washington, D.C. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Niagara University and a Bachelor’s in Theology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Bill and his wife Carol have two sons, Mark and David.
* * *
BuzzFlash: I thought of a possible theme for the Kerry campaign against Bush, echoing the political genius of James Carville’s strategy to elect Clinton back in ’92. "It’s the credibility, stupid."
You’ve written a lot about Bush’s lack of credibility, so let me ask you: What do feel are the most glaring instances of Bush’s pattern of willful deception to the American people?
Bill Press: I think credibility is the central issue, or should be the central issue in this campaign. I hope Kerry makes it the central issue in this campaign, because I think it is where George Bush is most vulnerable. I compare Bush to Baghdad Bob. If we remember when the bombs were falling on Iraq, Baghdad Bob was out there saying, "We have crushed them! We have destroyed the Americans!" And he said that the missiles were all just Hollywood special effects. You know, I think Baghdad George has as much credibility as Baghdad Bob.
Let’s start on Iraq. The list is so long. Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where are the unmanned drones? Where are the mobile weapons labs? Where are the terrorist training camps? Where are the people who were going to run out and greet us as liberators? All of it proved to be just lies. Look at the domestic front. Where are the 5.5 million new jobs that George Bush promised? Where is the balanced budget that he promised? Where is the fiscal responsibility he promised to bring to Washington? And speaking of bringing things to Washington, where is the new tone of civility that he was going to introduce into American politics? I think the biggest evidence of Bush’s credibility gap of all may be his failed campaign promise, "I’m a uniter, not a divider." Bush has proven to be the most divisive President in modern history.
If it comes down to credibility, "bring it on" is what I would say. I think George Bush has a credibility gap big enough to drive a Humvee through.
BuzzFlash: You have this new book coming out in June, "Bush Must Go: Top Ten Reasons Why George Bush Doesn’t Deserve a Second Term." What do you think are the most important reasons why George W. Bush should be fired?
Bill Press: One of them is certainly the credibility gap. Another is the unwise and unnecessary war in Iraq. But one of the most important ones I think we have to talk about is the war on terror. I really believe that when you look at what George Bush has actually done, as opposed to what he’s said, that he has left us more vulnerable to terrorism. He has made us less safe, not more safe.
BuzzFlash: One of the most recent examples of Bush’s lack of credibility is the recent Medicare bill scandal. It’s become clear that the Bush administration not only knew the actual cost of the Medicare bill -- that it was going to cost $550 billion over 10 years, not $400 billion -- but incredulously, the Bush administration withheld the truth and intimidated actuaries and policy analysts from telling the truth to the American people. It has become painfully clear that Bush’s modus operandi is to deceive the public, the media and the voters.
Bill Press: Exactly. Credibility should be the theme. It should be the theme of this campaign because it is the theme of the Bush administration, which is just one lie after another, thinking that they can hoodwink the American people.
Medicare is a great example. First of all, they lied about the fact that this was going to increase the benefits to senior citizens when it actually increases the benefits to the pharmaceutical companies, and it results in seniors getting less protection and paying more for it. The Bush administration deliberately lied to Congress about the price tag. And they threatened to fire the auditor of the Department of Health and Human Services who was well aware of what the full cost was and wanted to tell Congress. And the Bush administration said: "If you tell Congress, we’ll fire you." I think that’s almost criminal.
There are just so many examples across the board. I don’t think you can believe a word that Baghdad George says. You can’t believe him when he talks about his military record. The only thing the White House can prove is that he showed up in Montgomery, Ala., one day for a dental appointment. My take on that is the only drill George Bush saw in Alabama was a dentist’s.
BuzzFlash: This is where it gets difficult -- when Bush continues to lie about his past lies. How do you begin to unravel his persistent untruths?
Bill Press: I think you unravel it by exposing it. And that’s where I think John Kerry is already off to a great start. Kerry is a fighter. Kerry responds to every attack, or anticipates every attack. And I think you have to expose these people for the frauds that they are.
Let’s talk about the latest attacks. Dick Cheney has the audacity to question John Kerry’s credentials to be commander in chief, right? First, I remind everybody that Bush and Cheney have no war record. None. Zero war record. John Kerry on the other hand took three bullets in Vietnam, won three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and a Presidential Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism. Now contrast Kerry and Bush. You tell me which one has the experience necessary to be commander in chief.
Then Cheney says Kerry is soft on defense because he voted against the Apache helicopter. The fact is, when he was Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney killed the Apache helicopter. These guys are complete hypocrites. The record shows that Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, boasted to Congress that he had killed 81 different weapons programs. And then Cheney attacks Kerry for voting against the Apache helicopter. We can’t let them get away with these lies. We have to expose every one of them. And I think the American people will see the truth and appreciate the truth.
BuzzFlash: Incredibly, Bush has gone on the offensive and attacked Kerry’s credibility. Kerry seems to be doing a fairly good job of handling the smear campaign. What do you think Kerry needs to do to shake off the attacks? As we constantly say on BuzzFlash, define the debate or face being defined by your opponent.
Bill Press: Here’s what I believe Kerry has to do. He has to make this election a referendum on George Bush’s record. To me, that is most important. And by the way, this is not like rocket science. It’s important to remember that in every reelection campaign for every President, it’s not about the challenger. It’s about the incumbent and the record. Basically you ask the question: This guy’s been there for four years, so what has he done? Does he deserve another four years? And when you look at George Bush’s record the answer is no, no, no, and no. So I’d say Kerry has got to make Bush defend his record on jobs, on the economy, on health care, on education, on Iraq, and on the war on terror. I think what we’re seeing is that the Bush campaign knows they can’t defend their record, so they’re attacking Kerry and trying to make Kerry the issue. Kerry has to make Bush the issue.
BuzzFlash: You have a shameless job being a liberal voice and pundit, predominantly on cable news programs. How did you find yourself in that position? You are part of a small group of people that’s dominated by right-wing media, that’s full of distortion and conjecture. How do you cope with that environment, and what do you see as your role as a liberal voice on TV?
Bill Press: First of all, I’ve always been a Democrat, I’ve always been a liberal, and I’ve always loved debating the issues. Similar to Clinton, I love the intersection between policy and politics. And frankly, politics is how you get things done. I started out debating the issues on television and radio in Los Angeles, and I just got a lucky break. When Michael Kinsley left "Crossfire," I applied for the position and was hired. I went from "Crossfire" on to "The Spin Room," also at CNN, and then "Buchanan and Press" at MSNBC. Now Pat and I continue to be political commentators at MSNBC, and I’m hoping that someday soon we’ll get our show back.
As to your second part of the question, I love it because I have a microphone. I have a forum, I get paid for expressing my opinion, and I get paid for trying to keep these people honest. I’m just grateful to have that opportunity. And believe me, as long as I have it, I will use it to the max.
BuzzFlash: Right-wing pundits have become the surrogates for Republican campaigns and candidates. They attack and demonize not only Democrats, but also bigger issues -- such as the role of government in society -- or they frame taxes and social programs as the quintessential evil. What has been the evolution of the role of pundits in the media from when you first started to what it is today?
Bill Press: One reality I think we have to face is that conservatives have been much smarter than liberals in building the kind of permanent institutions that give them power. I’m not talking just about political power in elected office. Even when conservatives were down and out, they started a whole set of think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, and they started media operations with rapid response media spokespersons and public relations outfits. They also started dominating talk radio. And they tied it all together, so they have an incredible network for getting their ideas out and getting their attacks out.
Until recently we -- meaning liberals -- had nothing. It wasn’t that we just had a weak operation compared to their strong operation; we had no operation. And now I’m very excited because that’s starting to change. You’ve got the Center for American Progress that John Podesta started. David Brock is starting a rapid response media watch operation. Harold Ickes has his media fund. Ellen Malcolm has this organization called America Coming Together, which is a grassroots operation. There are two liberal radio networks starting up. So we’re finally starting to build those kinds of institutions that the right-wing has. That’s going to give us an opportunity to make this a level playing field.
Secondly, cable news and talk radio have changed the role of political commentators from people who give their opinion to people who are carrying water for the Republican Party. I just think we have to accept that’s who they are. I mean, they get the talking points and run with them. They feel they have a mission to go out and deliver not so much their own point of view as the party point of view. I think that’s regrettable and lamentable, and I must tell you, even though I express my liberal opinions, I don’t consider myself there to shill for the Democratic Party.
I think right-wing pundits have surrendered their independence. They’re no longer telling you what they think, they’re telling you what they think they’re supposed to say because they’re conservatives, and they repeat what the conservative mantra is. One of the things I respect about Pat Buchanan is that he’ll take on George Bush when he disagrees with him, and he’ll take on his fellow conservatives when he disagrees with them, like on this silly invasion of Iraq.
BuzzFlash: Defining the terms of the debate is so important in the world of politics. This is largely your job as a pundit. What advice do you have for would-be pundits, progressive thinkers or candidates about defining the debate and the issues?
Bill Press: First of all, you have to start with your own set of values, which I think you develop from a whole variety of sources from your parents, to school, to your own life experience. For me it boils down to the role of government is to help people who need help the most, and not to comfort the already comfortable. Then you have to know your facts and do your homework, and do your research. Lastly, I think you have to have the courage to speak your mind, in season and out of season. Stick to your beliefs, and not just follow the herd. And let me just say that my goal is not to convince the multitudes. My goal is just to stand up for what I believe, and if people hear my argument and are swayed, so be it. I don’t feel that I have to go out there and say what people expect me to say, or what’s popular just so I’ll be loved and appreciated.
BuzzFlash: Bill Press, thank you for speaking with us.
Bill Press: My pleasure.
________________________________________________________________
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW with BILL PRESS
Bill Press has for many years now, worked to un-spin the right-wing attack machine. Press is one of the few progressive pundits on cable television news who is foremost on the side of the truth, and who believes that being a political pundit should still carry with it the responsibility to be credible, accurate, and honest. In short, Bill Press has an integrity unseen in many of the faces that dot cable news. He has the thankless task of correcting misinformation with facts, balancing shrill rhetoric from the right with thoughtful perspective, and focusing attention on important stories that have been drowned out or ignored by the media. His next book will be published by Dutton in June 2004, Bush Must Go! – Top Ten Reasons Why George W. Bush Doesn’t Deserve A Second Term . Press is also a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, whose weekly column is distributed by Tribune Media Services to newspapers across the country.
Bill is the former co-host with Pat Buchanan of MSNBC’s Buchanan and Press , a lively debate show on current issues. Prior to joining MSNBC, Press was co-host of Crossfire , CNN’s dynamic political debate program, for six years. At CNN, he also co-hosted The Spin Room with Tucker Carlson.
Press is the author of "Spin This!" in which he explores the culture of spin. He investigates exactly what spin is, who does it and why, and the impact it has on American society.
In addition, Press is an award-winning radio talk show host and television commentator. He began his career as political commentator on KABC-TV and later on KCOP-TV, both in Los Angeles. He hosted Bill Press: True American on KFI-AM, Southern California’s number one AM radio station.
Press has received numerous awards for his work, including four Emmys and a Golden Mike Award. He was named "Best Commentator of the Year" by the Associated Press in 1992.
Bill Press is a native of Delaware, still keeps a home in California and now lives in Washington, D.C. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Niagara University and a Bachelor’s in Theology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Bill and his wife Carol have two sons, Mark and David.
* * *
BuzzFlash: I thought of a possible theme for the Kerry campaign against Bush, echoing the political genius of James Carville’s strategy to elect Clinton back in ’92. "It’s the credibility, stupid."
You’ve written a lot about Bush’s lack of credibility, so let me ask you: What do feel are the most glaring instances of Bush’s pattern of willful deception to the American people?
Bill Press: I think credibility is the central issue, or should be the central issue in this campaign. I hope Kerry makes it the central issue in this campaign, because I think it is where George Bush is most vulnerable. I compare Bush to Baghdad Bob. If we remember when the bombs were falling on Iraq, Baghdad Bob was out there saying, "We have crushed them! We have destroyed the Americans!" And he said that the missiles were all just Hollywood special effects. You know, I think Baghdad George has as much credibility as Baghdad Bob.
Let’s start on Iraq. The list is so long. Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where are the unmanned drones? Where are the mobile weapons labs? Where are the terrorist training camps? Where are the people who were going to run out and greet us as liberators? All of it proved to be just lies. Look at the domestic front. Where are the 5.5 million new jobs that George Bush promised? Where is the balanced budget that he promised? Where is the fiscal responsibility he promised to bring to Washington? And speaking of bringing things to Washington, where is the new tone of civility that he was going to introduce into American politics? I think the biggest evidence of Bush’s credibility gap of all may be his failed campaign promise, "I’m a uniter, not a divider." Bush has proven to be the most divisive President in modern history.
If it comes down to credibility, "bring it on" is what I would say. I think George Bush has a credibility gap big enough to drive a Humvee through.
BuzzFlash: You have this new book coming out in June, "Bush Must Go: Top Ten Reasons Why George Bush Doesn’t Deserve a Second Term." What do you think are the most important reasons why George W. Bush should be fired?
Bill Press: One of them is certainly the credibility gap. Another is the unwise and unnecessary war in Iraq. But one of the most important ones I think we have to talk about is the war on terror. I really believe that when you look at what George Bush has actually done, as opposed to what he’s said, that he has left us more vulnerable to terrorism. He has made us less safe, not more safe.
BuzzFlash: One of the most recent examples of Bush’s lack of credibility is the recent Medicare bill scandal. It’s become clear that the Bush administration not only knew the actual cost of the Medicare bill -- that it was going to cost $550 billion over 10 years, not $400 billion -- but incredulously, the Bush administration withheld the truth and intimidated actuaries and policy analysts from telling the truth to the American people. It has become painfully clear that Bush’s modus operandi is to deceive the public, the media and the voters.
Bill Press: Exactly. Credibility should be the theme. It should be the theme of this campaign because it is the theme of the Bush administration, which is just one lie after another, thinking that they can hoodwink the American people.
Medicare is a great example. First of all, they lied about the fact that this was going to increase the benefits to senior citizens when it actually increases the benefits to the pharmaceutical companies, and it results in seniors getting less protection and paying more for it. The Bush administration deliberately lied to Congress about the price tag. And they threatened to fire the auditor of the Department of Health and Human Services who was well aware of what the full cost was and wanted to tell Congress. And the Bush administration said: "If you tell Congress, we’ll fire you." I think that’s almost criminal.
There are just so many examples across the board. I don’t think you can believe a word that Baghdad George says. You can’t believe him when he talks about his military record. The only thing the White House can prove is that he showed up in Montgomery, Ala., one day for a dental appointment. My take on that is the only drill George Bush saw in Alabama was a dentist’s.
BuzzFlash: This is where it gets difficult -- when Bush continues to lie about his past lies. How do you begin to unravel his persistent untruths?
Bill Press: I think you unravel it by exposing it. And that’s where I think John Kerry is already off to a great start. Kerry is a fighter. Kerry responds to every attack, or anticipates every attack. And I think you have to expose these people for the frauds that they are.
Let’s talk about the latest attacks. Dick Cheney has the audacity to question John Kerry’s credentials to be commander in chief, right? First, I remind everybody that Bush and Cheney have no war record. None. Zero war record. John Kerry on the other hand took three bullets in Vietnam, won three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and a Presidential Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism. Now contrast Kerry and Bush. You tell me which one has the experience necessary to be commander in chief.
Then Cheney says Kerry is soft on defense because he voted against the Apache helicopter. The fact is, when he was Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney killed the Apache helicopter. These guys are complete hypocrites. The record shows that Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, boasted to Congress that he had killed 81 different weapons programs. And then Cheney attacks Kerry for voting against the Apache helicopter. We can’t let them get away with these lies. We have to expose every one of them. And I think the American people will see the truth and appreciate the truth.
BuzzFlash: Incredibly, Bush has gone on the offensive and attacked Kerry’s credibility. Kerry seems to be doing a fairly good job of handling the smear campaign. What do you think Kerry needs to do to shake off the attacks? As we constantly say on BuzzFlash, define the debate or face being defined by your opponent.
Bill Press: Here’s what I believe Kerry has to do. He has to make this election a referendum on George Bush’s record. To me, that is most important. And by the way, this is not like rocket science. It’s important to remember that in every reelection campaign for every President, it’s not about the challenger. It’s about the incumbent and the record. Basically you ask the question: This guy’s been there for four years, so what has he done? Does he deserve another four years? And when you look at George Bush’s record the answer is no, no, no, and no. So I’d say Kerry has got to make Bush defend his record on jobs, on the economy, on health care, on education, on Iraq, and on the war on terror. I think what we’re seeing is that the Bush campaign knows they can’t defend their record, so they’re attacking Kerry and trying to make Kerry the issue. Kerry has to make Bush the issue.
BuzzFlash: You have a shameless job being a liberal voice and pundit, predominantly on cable news programs. How did you find yourself in that position? You are part of a small group of people that’s dominated by right-wing media, that’s full of distortion and conjecture. How do you cope with that environment, and what do you see as your role as a liberal voice on TV?
Bill Press: First of all, I’ve always been a Democrat, I’ve always been a liberal, and I’ve always loved debating the issues. Similar to Clinton, I love the intersection between policy and politics. And frankly, politics is how you get things done. I started out debating the issues on television and radio in Los Angeles, and I just got a lucky break. When Michael Kinsley left "Crossfire," I applied for the position and was hired. I went from "Crossfire" on to "The Spin Room," also at CNN, and then "Buchanan and Press" at MSNBC. Now Pat and I continue to be political commentators at MSNBC, and I’m hoping that someday soon we’ll get our show back.
As to your second part of the question, I love it because I have a microphone. I have a forum, I get paid for expressing my opinion, and I get paid for trying to keep these people honest. I’m just grateful to have that opportunity. And believe me, as long as I have it, I will use it to the max.
BuzzFlash: Right-wing pundits have become the surrogates for Republican campaigns and candidates. They attack and demonize not only Democrats, but also bigger issues -- such as the role of government in society -- or they frame taxes and social programs as the quintessential evil. What has been the evolution of the role of pundits in the media from when you first started to what it is today?
Bill Press: One reality I think we have to face is that conservatives have been much smarter than liberals in building the kind of permanent institutions that give them power. I’m not talking just about political power in elected office. Even when conservatives were down and out, they started a whole set of think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, and they started media operations with rapid response media spokespersons and public relations outfits. They also started dominating talk radio. And they tied it all together, so they have an incredible network for getting their ideas out and getting their attacks out.
Until recently we -- meaning liberals -- had nothing. It wasn’t that we just had a weak operation compared to their strong operation; we had no operation. And now I’m very excited because that’s starting to change. You’ve got the Center for American Progress that John Podesta started. David Brock is starting a rapid response media watch operation. Harold Ickes has his media fund. Ellen Malcolm has this organization called America Coming Together, which is a grassroots operation. There are two liberal radio networks starting up. So we’re finally starting to build those kinds of institutions that the right-wing has. That’s going to give us an opportunity to make this a level playing field.
Secondly, cable news and talk radio have changed the role of political commentators from people who give their opinion to people who are carrying water for the Republican Party. I just think we have to accept that’s who they are. I mean, they get the talking points and run with them. They feel they have a mission to go out and deliver not so much their own point of view as the party point of view. I think that’s regrettable and lamentable, and I must tell you, even though I express my liberal opinions, I don’t consider myself there to shill for the Democratic Party.
I think right-wing pundits have surrendered their independence. They’re no longer telling you what they think, they’re telling you what they think they’re supposed to say because they’re conservatives, and they repeat what the conservative mantra is. One of the things I respect about Pat Buchanan is that he’ll take on George Bush when he disagrees with him, and he’ll take on his fellow conservatives when he disagrees with them, like on this silly invasion of Iraq.
BuzzFlash: Defining the terms of the debate is so important in the world of politics. This is largely your job as a pundit. What advice do you have for would-be pundits, progressive thinkers or candidates about defining the debate and the issues?
Bill Press: First of all, you have to start with your own set of values, which I think you develop from a whole variety of sources from your parents, to school, to your own life experience. For me it boils down to the role of government is to help people who need help the most, and not to comfort the already comfortable. Then you have to know your facts and do your homework, and do your research. Lastly, I think you have to have the courage to speak your mind, in season and out of season. Stick to your beliefs, and not just follow the herd. And let me just say that my goal is not to convince the multitudes. My goal is just to stand up for what I believe, and if people hear my argument and are swayed, so be it. I don’t feel that I have to go out there and say what people expect me to say, or what’s popular just so I’ll be loved and appreciated.
BuzzFlash: Bill Press, thank you for speaking with us.
Bill Press: My pleasure.
________________________________________________________________
DICK CHENEY BY THE NUMBERS... (the man is not just named Dick, he IS a dick!)
From 1979 - 1988, former Congressman Dick Cheney frequently sided with a small group of right-wingers in opposing common sense legislation. Here is a look at Dick Cheny by the numbers:
WORST EXAMPLE:
Cheney Was One of Only 4 House Members to Vote Against Banning Terrorist Guns in 1988.
SENIORS:
One of Only 12 House Members to Oppose Older Americans Act Amendments in 1984.
One of Only 39 House Members to Back Capping Social Security COLAs in 1985.
One of Only 8 House Members to Oppose Renewing the Older Americans Act Providing Nutrition and Support Services for Elderly People in 1987.
One of Only 7 House Members to Oppose Renewing the Conference Report on the Older Americans Act in 1987.
EDUCATION / CHILDREN:
One of Only 33 House Members to Vote Against Reauthorization of Head Start Plan in 1986.
One of Only 27 House Members to Oppose Funding for Head Start in 1986.
One of Only 25 House Members to Vote Against a Bill to Reauthorize College Student Aid in 1986.
One of Only 8 Members to Vote Against Reauthorizing Both the National Health Service Corps and the Federal Immunization Program in 1987.
CRIME & GUNS:
One of Only 16 House Members to Oppose 1983 Crime Bill Designed to Help States Fight Crime.
One of Only 31 House Members to Oppose Family Violence Prevention Program in 1984.
One of Only 21 House Members to Oppose Ban on Armor Piercing Bullets in 1985.
ENVIRONMENT:
One of Only 18 House Members to Oppose Reauthorizing "Federal Water Pollution Act" in 1981.
One of Only 9 House Members to Oppose EPA Research and Development in 1984.
One of Only 33 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of "Superfund" in 1985.
One of Only 27 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Superfund in 1986.
One of Only 21 House Members to Oppose Refunding "Safe Drinking Water Act" in 1986.
One of Only 8 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Clean Water Act in 1987.
One of Only 26 House Members to Support Reagan's Veto of Reauthorization of Clean Water Act in 1987.
One of Only 16 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Endangered Species Act in 1987.
LABOR & WORKING FAMILIES:
One of Only 33 House Members to Oppose Guaranteeing Death Benefits for Firefighters and Cop Widows in 1983.
One of Only 9 Members to Vote Against Allowing Federal Employees to Take Time Off for Sick Family Members in 1988.
CIVIL RIGHTS:
One of Only 29 House Members to Oppose Collection of Hate Crime Data in 1988.
FAMILY ASSISTANCE:
One of Only 16 House Members to Vote Against Support for Nutrition Programs in 1983.
One of Only 39 House Members to Vote Against Hunger Relief Plan in 1984.
__________________________________________________________________
From 1979 - 1988, former Congressman Dick Cheney frequently sided with a small group of right-wingers in opposing common sense legislation. Here is a look at Dick Cheny by the numbers:
WORST EXAMPLE:
Cheney Was One of Only 4 House Members to Vote Against Banning Terrorist Guns in 1988.
SENIORS:
One of Only 12 House Members to Oppose Older Americans Act Amendments in 1984.
One of Only 39 House Members to Back Capping Social Security COLAs in 1985.
One of Only 8 House Members to Oppose Renewing the Older Americans Act Providing Nutrition and Support Services for Elderly People in 1987.
One of Only 7 House Members to Oppose Renewing the Conference Report on the Older Americans Act in 1987.
EDUCATION / CHILDREN:
One of Only 33 House Members to Vote Against Reauthorization of Head Start Plan in 1986.
One of Only 27 House Members to Oppose Funding for Head Start in 1986.
One of Only 25 House Members to Vote Against a Bill to Reauthorize College Student Aid in 1986.
One of Only 8 Members to Vote Against Reauthorizing Both the National Health Service Corps and the Federal Immunization Program in 1987.
CRIME & GUNS:
One of Only 16 House Members to Oppose 1983 Crime Bill Designed to Help States Fight Crime.
One of Only 31 House Members to Oppose Family Violence Prevention Program in 1984.
One of Only 21 House Members to Oppose Ban on Armor Piercing Bullets in 1985.
ENVIRONMENT:
One of Only 18 House Members to Oppose Reauthorizing "Federal Water Pollution Act" in 1981.
One of Only 9 House Members to Oppose EPA Research and Development in 1984.
One of Only 33 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of "Superfund" in 1985.
One of Only 27 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Superfund in 1986.
One of Only 21 House Members to Oppose Refunding "Safe Drinking Water Act" in 1986.
One of Only 8 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Clean Water Act in 1987.
One of Only 26 House Members to Support Reagan's Veto of Reauthorization of Clean Water Act in 1987.
One of Only 16 House Members to Oppose Reauthorization of Endangered Species Act in 1987.
LABOR & WORKING FAMILIES:
One of Only 33 House Members to Oppose Guaranteeing Death Benefits for Firefighters and Cop Widows in 1983.
One of Only 9 Members to Vote Against Allowing Federal Employees to Take Time Off for Sick Family Members in 1988.
CIVIL RIGHTS:
One of Only 29 House Members to Oppose Collection of Hate Crime Data in 1988.
FAMILY ASSISTANCE:
One of Only 16 House Members to Vote Against Support for Nutrition Programs in 1983.
One of Only 39 House Members to Vote Against Hunger Relief Plan in 1984.
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Can you fathom the gall of the GOP that questioned Kerry's military record and service? This from men who RAN from the draft and used rich-boy connections to stay out of it while other Americans were wounded under fire or killed. People like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney and of course, our Commander In Thief.
Kerry Highly Praised in Military Records
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Records of John Kerry ( news -web sites )'s Vietnam War service released Wednesday show a highly praised naval officer who volunteered for a dangerous assignment and at one point was "unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
With conservative critics questioning his service, the Democratic presidential candidate posted more than 120 pages of military records on his campaign Web site. Several describe him as a gutsy commander and detail some of the actions that won him three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
Kerry's most harrowing experience came during the nearly five months when he commanded a swiftboat along Vietnam's Mekong Delta. The future Massachusetts senator was commended for gallantry, heroism and valor during the tour, which was cut short when Kerry was wounded three times and sent back to the United States.
"He frequently exhibited a high sense of imagination and judgment in planning operations against the enemy in the Mekong Delta," wrote Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "Involved in several enemy initiated fire fights, including an ambush during the Christmas truce, he effectively suppressed enemy fire and is unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
Talk radio conservatives and some veterans have questioned whether Kerry was wounded severely enough to leave combat, but Democratic National Committee ( news -web sites ) Chairman Terry McAuliffe said he is eager to compare Kerry's record to President Bush ( news -web sites )'s. McAuliffe accused Bush of using family connections to avoid service overseas and failing to show up for duty while in the National Guard.
"Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of cashed-in connections and evasion," McAuliffe said in a statement Wednesday.
Republican National Committee ( news -web sites ) spokeswoman Christine Iverson said, "Like so many of Terry McAuliffe's comments, this one is not worthy of the dignity of a response."
Kerry's medical records from the Navy were not included in the materials released. Campaign spokesman Michael Meehan did not return telephone messages left Wednesday for comment.
Kerry's records show that throughout his four years of active duty, superiors gave him glowing evaluations, citing his maturity, intelligence and immaculate appearance. He was recommended for early promotion, and when he left the Navy in 1970 to run for Congress, his commanding officer said it was the Navy's loss.
The lowest marks Kerry earned were the equivalent of average — in military bearing, reliability and initiative. But narrative comments from his commanding officers said he was diplomatic, charismatic, decisive and well-liked by his men.
The records cited Kerry's education at Swiss boarding school, his speaking and debating awards and his role as class orator at Yale University's commencement. He lettered in varsity soccer and lacrosse, fenced, had a private pilot's license and had experience sailing and ocean racing.
Kerry traveled throughout Europe in his youth and spoke fluent French and some German. His supervising officer later commended him for taking it upon himself to learn Vietnamese.
Kerry cited his sailing experience before the Navy when he volunteered to command a swiftboat, a 50-foot-long craft that could operate at high speeds in the rough waters of Vietnam's rivers and tributaries.
Some critics have questioned whether Kerry's injuries were severe enough to warrant reassignment to the United States. His records briefly describe shrapnel wounds to his arm and thigh for the first two Purple Hearts, but they don't detail the severity of the wounds.
According to a naval instruction document provided by Kerry's campaign, anyone serving in Vietnam who was wounded three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or treatment required, "will not be ordered to service in Vietnam and contiguous waters."
On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's and two other boats came under heavy fire from the riverbanks. Kerry ordered his units to turn into the ambush and sent men ashore to charge the enemy. According to the records, an enemy soldier holding a loaded rocket launcher sprang up within 10 feet of Kerry's boat and fled. Kerry leapt ashore, chased and killed the man.
Kerry and his men chased or killed all enemy soldiers in the area, captured enemy weapons and then returned to the boat only to come under fire from the opposite bank as they began to pull away. Kerry again beached his boat and led a party ashore to pursue the enemy, and they successfully silenced the shooting. Later, with the boats again under fire, Kerry initiated a heavy response that killed 10 Viet Cong and wounded another with no casualties to his own men.
He won the Silver Star "for gallantry and intrepidity in action" that day. Two weeks later, another fire fight led to a Bronze Star for heroic achievement and the third Purple Heart that would result in his reassignment out of Vietnam.
Kerry was commanding one of five boats on patrol on March 13, 1969, when two mines detonated almost simultaneously — one beneath another boat and one near Kerry's craft. Shrapnel hit Kerry's buttocks, and his right arm was bleeding from contusions, but he rescued a boatmate who had been thrown overboard by the blast and was under sniper fire from both banks. Kerry then directed his crew to return to the other damaged craft and tow it to safety.
In April 1969, Kerry was sent stateside to the Military Sea Transportation Service, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, in Brooklyn, N.Y. On Nov. 21, 1969, Kerry requested that he be released from his commitment to serve actively until August 1970 so he could run for Congress.
He was promoted to full lieutenant on Jan. 1, 1970, and soon after was discharged from active duty and became a reservist.
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Kerry Highly Praised in Military Records
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Records of John Kerry ( news -web sites )'s Vietnam War service released Wednesday show a highly praised naval officer who volunteered for a dangerous assignment and at one point was "unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
With conservative critics questioning his service, the Democratic presidential candidate posted more than 120 pages of military records on his campaign Web site. Several describe him as a gutsy commander and detail some of the actions that won him three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.
Kerry's most harrowing experience came during the nearly five months when he commanded a swiftboat along Vietnam's Mekong Delta. The future Massachusetts senator was commended for gallantry, heroism and valor during the tour, which was cut short when Kerry was wounded three times and sent back to the United States.
"He frequently exhibited a high sense of imagination and judgment in planning operations against the enemy in the Mekong Delta," wrote Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. "Involved in several enemy initiated fire fights, including an ambush during the Christmas truce, he effectively suppressed enemy fire and is unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action."
Talk radio conservatives and some veterans have questioned whether Kerry was wounded severely enough to leave combat, but Democratic National Committee ( news -web sites ) Chairman Terry McAuliffe said he is eager to compare Kerry's record to President Bush ( news -web sites )'s. McAuliffe accused Bush of using family connections to avoid service overseas and failing to show up for duty while in the National Guard.
"Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of cashed-in connections and evasion," McAuliffe said in a statement Wednesday.
Republican National Committee ( news -web sites ) spokeswoman Christine Iverson said, "Like so many of Terry McAuliffe's comments, this one is not worthy of the dignity of a response."
Kerry's medical records from the Navy were not included in the materials released. Campaign spokesman Michael Meehan did not return telephone messages left Wednesday for comment.
Kerry's records show that throughout his four years of active duty, superiors gave him glowing evaluations, citing his maturity, intelligence and immaculate appearance. He was recommended for early promotion, and when he left the Navy in 1970 to run for Congress, his commanding officer said it was the Navy's loss.
The lowest marks Kerry earned were the equivalent of average — in military bearing, reliability and initiative. But narrative comments from his commanding officers said he was diplomatic, charismatic, decisive and well-liked by his men.
The records cited Kerry's education at Swiss boarding school, his speaking and debating awards and his role as class orator at Yale University's commencement. He lettered in varsity soccer and lacrosse, fenced, had a private pilot's license and had experience sailing and ocean racing.
Kerry traveled throughout Europe in his youth and spoke fluent French and some German. His supervising officer later commended him for taking it upon himself to learn Vietnamese.
Kerry cited his sailing experience before the Navy when he volunteered to command a swiftboat, a 50-foot-long craft that could operate at high speeds in the rough waters of Vietnam's rivers and tributaries.
Some critics have questioned whether Kerry's injuries were severe enough to warrant reassignment to the United States. His records briefly describe shrapnel wounds to his arm and thigh for the first two Purple Hearts, but they don't detail the severity of the wounds.
According to a naval instruction document provided by Kerry's campaign, anyone serving in Vietnam who was wounded three times, regardless of the nature of the wound or treatment required, "will not be ordered to service in Vietnam and contiguous waters."
On Feb. 28, 1969, Kerry's and two other boats came under heavy fire from the riverbanks. Kerry ordered his units to turn into the ambush and sent men ashore to charge the enemy. According to the records, an enemy soldier holding a loaded rocket launcher sprang up within 10 feet of Kerry's boat and fled. Kerry leapt ashore, chased and killed the man.
Kerry and his men chased or killed all enemy soldiers in the area, captured enemy weapons and then returned to the boat only to come under fire from the opposite bank as they began to pull away. Kerry again beached his boat and led a party ashore to pursue the enemy, and they successfully silenced the shooting. Later, with the boats again under fire, Kerry initiated a heavy response that killed 10 Viet Cong and wounded another with no casualties to his own men.
He won the Silver Star "for gallantry and intrepidity in action" that day. Two weeks later, another fire fight led to a Bronze Star for heroic achievement and the third Purple Heart that would result in his reassignment out of Vietnam.
Kerry was commanding one of five boats on patrol on March 13, 1969, when two mines detonated almost simultaneously — one beneath another boat and one near Kerry's craft. Shrapnel hit Kerry's buttocks, and his right arm was bleeding from contusions, but he rescued a boatmate who had been thrown overboard by the blast and was under sniper fire from both banks. Kerry then directed his crew to return to the other damaged craft and tow it to safety.
In April 1969, Kerry was sent stateside to the Military Sea Transportation Service, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, in Brooklyn, N.Y. On Nov. 21, 1969, Kerry requested that he be released from his commitment to serve actively until August 1970 so he could run for Congress.
He was promoted to full lieutenant on Jan. 1, 1970, and soon after was discharged from active duty and became a reservist.
__________________________________________________________________
So do you really think the Bush administration really cares for YOU over its Big Business supporters?
Vote for John Kerry in November and kick this @#%% out of the White House so we can have DECENT leadership looking out for you, your children, your family and your friends' best interests.
2004 Los Angeles Times
COMMENTARY
Entrepreneurship Gets Slaughtered
An innovative meatpacker has a beef with the Bush team's regulators.
By Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington Law School.
Creekstone Farms is a little slaughterhouse in Kansas with an idea that would have had Adam Smith's mouth watering. Faced with consumers who remain skittish over mad cow disease — especially in Japan — Creekstone decided that all its beef would be tested for mad cow, a radical departure from the random testing done by other companies. It was a case study in free-market meatpacking entrepreneurship. That is, until the Bush administration's Department of Agriculture blocked the enterprise, apparently at the behest of Creekstone's competitors.
According to the Washington Post, Creekstone invested $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in a U.S. slaughterhouse and hired chemists and biologists to staff the operation. The only thing it needed was testing kits. That's where the company ran into trouble. By law, the Department of Agriculture controls the sale of the kits, and it refused to sell Creekstone enough to test all of its cows. The USDA said that allowing even a small meatpacking company like Creekstone to test every cow it slaughtered would undermine the agency's official position that random testing was scientifically adequate to assure safety.
What it didn't say was that the rest of the meatpacking industry was adamantly opposed to such testing, which is expensive, and had no desire to compete with Creekstone's fully certified beef. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone … ," the president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. told the Post, "we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too."
The Agriculture Department's Creekstone decision reveals the best thinking of Soviet central planning: The government shoots the innovator to preserve market stability. Though President Bush invokes free-market principles when it comes to industry downsizing, "outsourcing" jobs, media mergers and energy deregulation, those principles apparently have their limits when a company seeks to become an industry leader in consumer protection.
Located in the small town of Arkansas City, Creekstone is a model operation in an industry that often seems medieval. It traces the origins of its high-quality Black Angus beef to reduce the use of animals that have been given antibiotics. It pays high wages, employs humane slaughtering techniques (they make for better-tasting beef) and maintains a slow enough production line to guarantee worker safety and to ensure that animals are dead before they are butchered. Although the largest U.S. meatpacking companies have fought regulations that would force such practices, Creekstone — which has been in business since 1995 — has proved that some consumers will pay more for such corporate policies and the premium product that results.
The appearance of mad cow disease in the U.S. herd hit Creekstone's small operation hard. Much of its market was in Japan, where all cows are tested for the disease and where U.S. beef is banned because American meatpackers don't follow the same policy. So Creekstone's chief operating officer, Bill Fielding, announced that he would voluntarily test the 300,000 cows his company slaughters annually, to satisfy customers willing to pay the cost. Absent the test, Fielding says Creekstone may face bankruptcy and have to lay off its 790 workers.
The Department of Agriculture seems to have only one purpose in preventing Creekstone from testing — appeasing the big slaughterhouses. The USDA has a long history of doing the bidding of the meatpacking industry at the expense of the public. Indeed, in many academic studies, the department is presented as a textbook example of the problem of "agency capture," wherein an agency becomes so identified with the companies it regulates that it becomes an extension of those companies.
The allegations of agency capture have been magnified in the Bush administration, in which former industry executives hold key regulatory positions — Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has a chief of staff who was the head lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. and a senior advisor who was the association's associate director for food policy.
When mad cow disease appeared in the United States, the department again took the industry line and resisted calls for added testing. Only after worldwide criticism did it reluctantly make such modest rule changes as requiring slaughterhouses to discard "downed" animals — cows so sick that they had to be dragged into slaughterhouses to be butchered. Most Americans were surprised to learn that the department had ever allowed such animals into the food supply in the first place.
The administration may be correct that testing every animal in the U.S. is unnecessary and not cost-effective. But why not let Creekstone find out what the market will bear? The position of the administration is an affront to anyone who believes in the free market. It's as if the Department of Transportation refused to allow Volvo to add air bags just to keep the pressure off other carmakers.
Congress should step in and end the department's monopoly over testing kits. It should also call for the removal of the officials involved in the decision.
As for the self-described free-marketeers in the Bush administration, Creekstone Farms may not offer them an appealing meal but at least it doesn't come with a heaping side order of hypocrisy.
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Vote for John Kerry in November and kick this @#%% out of the White House so we can have DECENT leadership looking out for you, your children, your family and your friends' best interests.
2004 Los Angeles Times
COMMENTARY
Entrepreneurship Gets Slaughtered
An innovative meatpacker has a beef with the Bush team's regulators.
By Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington Law School.
Creekstone Farms is a little slaughterhouse in Kansas with an idea that would have had Adam Smith's mouth watering. Faced with consumers who remain skittish over mad cow disease — especially in Japan — Creekstone decided that all its beef would be tested for mad cow, a radical departure from the random testing done by other companies. It was a case study in free-market meatpacking entrepreneurship. That is, until the Bush administration's Department of Agriculture blocked the enterprise, apparently at the behest of Creekstone's competitors.
According to the Washington Post, Creekstone invested $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in a U.S. slaughterhouse and hired chemists and biologists to staff the operation. The only thing it needed was testing kits. That's where the company ran into trouble. By law, the Department of Agriculture controls the sale of the kits, and it refused to sell Creekstone enough to test all of its cows. The USDA said that allowing even a small meatpacking company like Creekstone to test every cow it slaughtered would undermine the agency's official position that random testing was scientifically adequate to assure safety.
What it didn't say was that the rest of the meatpacking industry was adamantly opposed to such testing, which is expensive, and had no desire to compete with Creekstone's fully certified beef. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone … ," the president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. told the Post, "we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too."
The Agriculture Department's Creekstone decision reveals the best thinking of Soviet central planning: The government shoots the innovator to preserve market stability. Though President Bush invokes free-market principles when it comes to industry downsizing, "outsourcing" jobs, media mergers and energy deregulation, those principles apparently have their limits when a company seeks to become an industry leader in consumer protection.
Located in the small town of Arkansas City, Creekstone is a model operation in an industry that often seems medieval. It traces the origins of its high-quality Black Angus beef to reduce the use of animals that have been given antibiotics. It pays high wages, employs humane slaughtering techniques (they make for better-tasting beef) and maintains a slow enough production line to guarantee worker safety and to ensure that animals are dead before they are butchered. Although the largest U.S. meatpacking companies have fought regulations that would force such practices, Creekstone — which has been in business since 1995 — has proved that some consumers will pay more for such corporate policies and the premium product that results.
The appearance of mad cow disease in the U.S. herd hit Creekstone's small operation hard. Much of its market was in Japan, where all cows are tested for the disease and where U.S. beef is banned because American meatpackers don't follow the same policy. So Creekstone's chief operating officer, Bill Fielding, announced that he would voluntarily test the 300,000 cows his company slaughters annually, to satisfy customers willing to pay the cost. Absent the test, Fielding says Creekstone may face bankruptcy and have to lay off its 790 workers.
The Department of Agriculture seems to have only one purpose in preventing Creekstone from testing — appeasing the big slaughterhouses. The USDA has a long history of doing the bidding of the meatpacking industry at the expense of the public. Indeed, in many academic studies, the department is presented as a textbook example of the problem of "agency capture," wherein an agency becomes so identified with the companies it regulates that it becomes an extension of those companies.
The allegations of agency capture have been magnified in the Bush administration, in which former industry executives hold key regulatory positions — Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has a chief of staff who was the head lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. and a senior advisor who was the association's associate director for food policy.
When mad cow disease appeared in the United States, the department again took the industry line and resisted calls for added testing. Only after worldwide criticism did it reluctantly make such modest rule changes as requiring slaughterhouses to discard "downed" animals — cows so sick that they had to be dragged into slaughterhouses to be butchered. Most Americans were surprised to learn that the department had ever allowed such animals into the food supply in the first place.
The administration may be correct that testing every animal in the U.S. is unnecessary and not cost-effective. But why not let Creekstone find out what the market will bear? The position of the administration is an affront to anyone who believes in the free market. It's as if the Department of Transportation refused to allow Volvo to add air bags just to keep the pressure off other carmakers.
Congress should step in and end the department's monopoly over testing kits. It should also call for the removal of the officials involved in the decision.
As for the self-described free-marketeers in the Bush administration, Creekstone Farms may not offer them an appealing meal but at least it doesn't come with a heaping side order of hypocrisy.
____________________________________________________________
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
IRAQ
Called Onto the Carpet
The Senate Foreign Relations Committees, concerned with the rising death toll and mounting questions "that the United States lacks an effective plan for success in Iraq," will hold hearings beginning today "in which some hope to talk about how America got into the dangerous predicament and how it will get out." Concern about the situation crosses party lines, especially with Spain's announcement that it will be removing its troops from Iraq. But while there are many, many unanswered questions, the administration has been slow to commit its members to appear before the committee. The Senate and House armed services committees also `will hear about current Iraq operations from top administration officials. As of yesterday, however, the Pentagon had not agreed to testify at a hearing Thursday "on how it intends to transfer political power June 30 to an as-yet unnamed Iraqi government." The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had hoped to hear from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers on the issue; "Pentagon officials acknowledged Monday that Wolfowitz and Myers would not go to that hearing, but had no immediate comment on why." American Progress' Lawrence J. Korb discusses five steps the United States can take to ensure a more stable Iraq.
FACING THE MUSIC: According to AP, some of the criticisms the administration faces in the Iraq hearings include: "too few troops sent over in the first place; a lack of planning for postwar operations; unilateral action that has left the United States bearing the bulk of the financial and human toll; and overly optimistic predictions on what it would take to oust Saddam Hussein and build a new democratic government in his place."
CASUALTIES OF WAR: According to Newsweek, "Soldiers killed in Iraq are announced, incident by incident, in terse press releases that give the scantest of details." Also, "in addition to the minimalist announcements, the military avoids keeping any sort of running tallies, particularly when things are going badly. The Pentagon has also studiously refused to release estimates of enemy casualties, although these are indeed detailed in every after-action report." In this week's issue, in an attempt to keep Americans informed, Newsweek calculates the numbers. For example, "150,000: The estimated number of all coalition forces in Iraq, of which about 124,000 are Americans and 26,000 are others. A total of 35 countries contribute forces, but most number less than 1,000. Some, like Mongolia, are in the low two digits." Other numbers Newsweek calculated: "3,466: The total of American soldiers wounded in action in Iraq through April 17, 2004; 793: Total coalition soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began. 20, 70, 50: The numbers of daily resistance attacks against coalition forces in Iraq a month ago, a week ago, and on April 17 respectively."
LOSING THE COALITION: At a time when the United States is attempting to shore up international support as the clock for the transfer of power in Iraq ticks down, pieces of the international coalition are instead withdrawing support and troops. The new leader of Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, announced Spanish troops would be removed from Iraq "in the shortest possible time." The withdrawal has escalated fears in the United States that other coalition members could follow suit. Already, the announcement triggered a similar one by the leader of Honduras, President Ricardo Maduro, that his country would also remove its deployment from Iraq as soon as possible instead of waiting until the previously scheduled July end date. (Honduran troops are currently under Spanish command in Iraq.) Yesterday, Thailand announced it also will withdraw its medical and engineering troops from Iraq if they are attacked.
BURDEN ON THE TROOPS: Unless the White House steps up efforts to bring in additional troops from other countries – increasingly challenging as the situation grows more tumultuous and dangerous – the lack of international support could place an added burden on U.S. troops. Recently, about 20,000 American soldiers "who had been due to return from Iraq to their home bases this month and next will have their tours extended." The decision to keep them in place "breaks a Pentagon commitment last autumn to limit troop assignments in Iraq to 12 months."
ROAD TO RUIN: The LA Times writes, "Of all the sudden changes in Iraq during the last month, control of the roads is among the most striking. The U.S.-led coalition has been unable to hold on to all of its supply and communication lines on vital routes leading from the capital. Insurgents have blown up key bridges, rocketed fuel convoys and seized hostages." Over the weekend, in an attempt to get the ongoing violence under control, the Coalition Provisional Authority announced it would close two of the main Iraqi highways; the chaos has disrupted the transport of necessary military supplies, food and medicine. According to a senior analyst at Jane's Consulting, it's indicative of a larger problem: "It's a good measure of how the coalition is doing when you can get in a car and drive to the Jordanian border and down to Najaf [two of the routes that are occasionally under insurgent control] without worrying about it." The fact that one cannot take those roads "is not a good sign."
IRAQ
Echoes of Iran-Contra
Imagine that the U.S. administration deliberately hid money from Congress to invest in a war in the Middle East, potentially crafted secret deals with an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that has ties to terrorism, and appointed ideologues to be the key diplomatic emissaries to a war-torn region. Think you are back in the 1980s living through the Iran-Contra scandal? Think again. Over the last two days, new revelations by journalist Bob Woodward and actions by President Bush have evoked memories of a previous scandal and an old foreign policy/national security strategy gone wrong. Yesterday, new details emerged about the Bush administration's deliberate circumvention of Congress to divert $700 million into a secret war plan, and about the potential manipulation of U.S. elections by the Saudi Arabian government. Meanwhile, President Bush nominated key Iran-Contra figure John Negroponte as the new Ambassador to Iraq.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES - HIDING MONEY FROM CONGRESS: U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) became the first lawmaker to "demand to know whether the Bush administration transferred $700 million to Iraq war planning efforts out of counterterrorism funds without informing Capitol Hill." According to Woodward, the $700 million came out of a supplemental Appropriations bill meant for Afghanistan operations. And a close look at the two supplemental Appropriations bills that passed between 9/11 and July 2002 when the secret transfer took place shows that both bills mandate the White House to inform Congress if money is moved. The Emergency Supplemental Act passed on 9/14/01 specifically instructs the president to "consult with the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Committees on Appropriations prior to the transfer" of any funds. The president actually told the American public that the money would be used for those purposes, saying the bill would be used "to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military" in its operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said nothing about Iraq. Similarly, while the summer 2002 supplemental bill allows the administration to transfer "up to $275 million" in unused money within the Pentagon budget, it requires the president to notify Congress within 15 days of moving money. So far, the administration has not produced a shred of evidence that it followed these laws and informed Congress. As Woodward said, "Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – LYING TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT MILITARY FOCUS: According to a new AP report, "Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch." "I'm right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan," Bush told reporters after talks on Dec. 28, 2001, with top aides and generals.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – SECRET DEALS WITH COUNTRY TIED TO TERROR?: The Saudi Arabian government, which has ties to terrorism yet maintains close ties to the Bush administration, continued to deny Woodward's charges that its U.S. Ambassador Prince Bandar promised an increase in oil supplies to coincide with the November presidential election to help President Bush's campaign. Mounting a Saudi defense, Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir deflected the questions by claiming, "Over the past 30 years, the kingdom has sought to ensure adequate supplies of crude at moderate price levels." Of course, al-Jubeir did not explain why the Saudis had led the recent charge within OPEC to reduce oil supplies and artificially inflate the price of gasoline in the U.S. to record levels. Woodward remained steadfast in his reporting, saying the Saudi's definitely made a "pledge." He said, "over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." Author Craig Unger points to a possible motive for the alleged Saudi pledge. In his book "House of Bush, House of Saud," he says Bush presidencies "strengthen Bandar's position in Saudi Arabia. During the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush era, Bandar had enjoyed unique powers - partly because of his close relationship to Bush...But during the Clinton era, Bandar had lost clout. [He was] never an insider in the Clinton White House."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – THE IMPORTANCE OF NEGROPONTE'S RECORD: Negroponte, who has no prior experience in the Middle East and does not speak Arabic, is sure to face new questions about his Iran-Contra past, given the circumstances of his Iraqi post. As the LA Times reports, human rights advocates charged that during his tenure as Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, "Negroponte underplayed human rights abuses by death squads to ensure that the country would continue to serve as a base for U.S.-backed Contras." Negroponte denies this, but according declassified documents, "U.S. officials knew what was happening in Honduras and engaged in a willful deception to avoid confronting Congress with the truth." As Molly Ivins notes, this record is important because Negroponte was a key player in a "plot that sold U.S. arms to Iran" in its war against Iraq. That means "our first ambassador will be a man who armed Iraq's enemy" – a fact that might not be lost on local Iraqis with whom he must work closely. Negroponte will also be charged with convincing U.S. allies to desist from removing troops from Iraq. The problem is some of these key allies are from Central America, where Negroponte's sordid record is well-known and where his name might not be well-received. In fact, just yesterday Honduras – the country where Negroponte made his most indelible mark – said it was planning to remove its troops from Iraq. Finally, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights watch notes the "serious unanswered questions about Negroponte's complicity with the atrocities in Honduras" are important as the issue of "U.S.-sponsored forces avoiding complicity in atrocities" could arise in Baghdad.
PATRIOT ACT
Show Us the Facts
Portions of the Patriot Act, passed in the chaotic days after 9/11, are scheduled to expire in 2005. President Bush hit the road yesterday and grossly distorted the reason some of the provisions are scheduled to "sunset." Bush said that Congress designed some provisions to expire in 2005 because of the belief that "maybe the war on terror won't go on very long." The truth: "Lawmakers of both parties...said at the time the Patriot Acts passed that the sunset provision would allow Congress to ensure that the administration did not abuse its new power." Meanwhile, even as the president asks Congress to make all provisions in the Patriot Act permanent, Attorney General John Ashcroft has failed to disclose critical information necessary to evaluate how the government uses the law.
ROVING FROM THE TRUTH: President Bush touted the use of roving wiretaps, authorized by Section 206 of the Patriot Act, as an "essential tool" for locking up terrorists. Roving wiretaps allow the government to tap not just an individual phone number but any phone that they believe the target of their surveillance might use. The provision raises serious privacy concerns. As explained in an American Progress report, "Section 206 does nothing to require that, as the wiretap 'roves,' the subject is actually present, or even likely to be present at the new location." So if "the location of the surveillance is, for example, a public computer terminal, [roving wire taps] could expose hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people to clandestine surveillance." But last year, when James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) asked the Justice Department how roving wiretaps had been used, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jamie Brown responded that the information was classified. How is Congress supposed to decide whether or not to make the roving wiretap provision permanent if it doesn't even know how it is being used?
DELAYED NOTIFICATION OF THE FACTS: President Bush also praised the effectiveness of "delayed notification search warrants," which are authorized by Section 213 of the Patriot Act. A delayed notification search warrant allows the government to search a home or office and not inform the owner as long as the government believes that doing so would have an "adverse result." The president's comments on this topic are somewhat of a red herring because Section 213 is not scheduled to sunset. Nevertheless, serious concerns about the provision persist as the government could argue that disclosing that a search has taken place could have an "adverse result" in nearly every case. The provision has been used hundreds of times – but as of May 13, 2003, it has never been used to combat terrorism.
SO ESSENTIAL IT HAS NEVER BEEN USED: Bush also urged the extension of one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act – Section 215, which permits the government to more easily obtain "any tangible thing" – a classification so broad it includes "books, records, papers, documents, and other items." That Bush would single this provision out as essential to the war on terrorism is puzzling since, on September 18, 2003 – after insisting for two years the information was classified – John Ashcroft said that the provision had never been used. The Justice Department is now equivocating, saying that Ashcroft's denial only applies to the period before September 18, 2003. But, before Congress decides to make Section 215 a permanent part of the law, it should know if and how it has been used.
ASKING FOR AN END RUN AROUND THE CONSTITUTION: Bush not only asked for a rubber-stamp approval of all expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, he also asked for certain authorities to be further expanded. His proposal to expand "administrative subpoenas," which allow the government to obtain records and interrogate any witness without any court review. The president claims the government needs this extraordinary power to speed terrorism investigations. But the Department of Justice could not even cite a single instance where the existing rules slowed down their efforts against terrorism. Eliminating the judiciary from its fundamental role as a check on executive branch power runs squarely against the Constitution while doing nothing to further the fight against terrorism.
SECRECY – TOP SECRET T-BALL: The WP reports, "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent than the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy." After a recent phone conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Putin, the Kremlin disclosed, "The presidents exchanged ideas on the situations in the crisis areas of the world: Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, etc. They expressed serious concerns about the lack of progress in the settlement of regional problems and the escalation of the situation in these areas." Meanwhile, the White House refused to comment on the conversation. But the White House's reticence on releasing information extends far beyond presidential conversations with foreign leaders. For example, in April 2002, the Orlando Sentinel reported "that the Apopka Little League team of 11- and 12-year-olds would visit the White House on May 5 to watch a T-ball game." The paper's source was the children's parents – according to the Sentinel "the White House would not confirm the invitation."
SECRECY – HUSH HUSH ARCHIVIST: The NYT reports, "President Bush's nominee to be archivist of the United States — an ordinarily low-profile job that includes overseeing the release of government documents, including presidential papers — is generating an intense controversy among historians, some of whom accuse the White House of trying to push through a candidate who is prone to secrecy." The nominee, Allen Weinstein, has a track record of refusing to share notes and information. One important issue: The papers of Mr. Bush's father, the 41st president, are scheduled for release in January. "Critics of Mr. Weinstein say they fear that he could restrict or delay access to those and other important documents." So far, "nine groups, including the Society of American Archivists, have raised concerns about the selection." According to Timothy A. Slavin, president of the Council of State Historical Records Coordinators, "It's the equivalent of the administration's thumbing its nose at the nation's history."
LEGAL – TAXPAYER MONEY FOR PARTISAN PURPOSES: The IRS is using taxpayer money to promote partisan propaganda. Recently, the Department of Treasury appended the following message to IRS press releases: "America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation." Earlier, the "Treasury Department was criticized after its analysis of a tax plan similar to one proposed by Senator John Kerry was used to attack Mr. Kerry."
HEALTH CARE – GRANITE STATE BATTLES OVER KIDS: In a move that could have potentially harmful ramifications for kids in the state, New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen is pushing to "privatize Healthy Kids, an insurance program that covers more than 7,000 poor New Hampshire children." The hugely successful program currently "provides low-cost health insurance and dental care to children whose families don't qualify for Medicaid but can't otherwise afford insurance." Privatizing could force some children out of the program. Lawmakers say Stephen has no right: Healthy Kids and the nonprofit corporation that runs it were established by state statute and cannot be put out for a bid without the Legislature's approval.
Read more at CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS.
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Called Onto the Carpet
The Senate Foreign Relations Committees, concerned with the rising death toll and mounting questions "that the United States lacks an effective plan for success in Iraq," will hold hearings beginning today "in which some hope to talk about how America got into the dangerous predicament and how it will get out." Concern about the situation crosses party lines, especially with Spain's announcement that it will be removing its troops from Iraq. But while there are many, many unanswered questions, the administration has been slow to commit its members to appear before the committee. The Senate and House armed services committees also `will hear about current Iraq operations from top administration officials. As of yesterday, however, the Pentagon had not agreed to testify at a hearing Thursday "on how it intends to transfer political power June 30 to an as-yet unnamed Iraqi government." The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had hoped to hear from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers on the issue; "Pentagon officials acknowledged Monday that Wolfowitz and Myers would not go to that hearing, but had no immediate comment on why." American Progress' Lawrence J. Korb discusses five steps the United States can take to ensure a more stable Iraq.
FACING THE MUSIC: According to AP, some of the criticisms the administration faces in the Iraq hearings include: "too few troops sent over in the first place; a lack of planning for postwar operations; unilateral action that has left the United States bearing the bulk of the financial and human toll; and overly optimistic predictions on what it would take to oust Saddam Hussein and build a new democratic government in his place."
CASUALTIES OF WAR: According to Newsweek, "Soldiers killed in Iraq are announced, incident by incident, in terse press releases that give the scantest of details." Also, "in addition to the minimalist announcements, the military avoids keeping any sort of running tallies, particularly when things are going badly. The Pentagon has also studiously refused to release estimates of enemy casualties, although these are indeed detailed in every after-action report." In this week's issue, in an attempt to keep Americans informed, Newsweek calculates the numbers. For example, "150,000: The estimated number of all coalition forces in Iraq, of which about 124,000 are Americans and 26,000 are others. A total of 35 countries contribute forces, but most number less than 1,000. Some, like Mongolia, are in the low two digits." Other numbers Newsweek calculated: "3,466: The total of American soldiers wounded in action in Iraq through April 17, 2004; 793: Total coalition soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began. 20, 70, 50: The numbers of daily resistance attacks against coalition forces in Iraq a month ago, a week ago, and on April 17 respectively."
LOSING THE COALITION: At a time when the United States is attempting to shore up international support as the clock for the transfer of power in Iraq ticks down, pieces of the international coalition are instead withdrawing support and troops. The new leader of Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, announced Spanish troops would be removed from Iraq "in the shortest possible time." The withdrawal has escalated fears in the United States that other coalition members could follow suit. Already, the announcement triggered a similar one by the leader of Honduras, President Ricardo Maduro, that his country would also remove its deployment from Iraq as soon as possible instead of waiting until the previously scheduled July end date. (Honduran troops are currently under Spanish command in Iraq.) Yesterday, Thailand announced it also will withdraw its medical and engineering troops from Iraq if they are attacked.
BURDEN ON THE TROOPS: Unless the White House steps up efforts to bring in additional troops from other countries – increasingly challenging as the situation grows more tumultuous and dangerous – the lack of international support could place an added burden on U.S. troops. Recently, about 20,000 American soldiers "who had been due to return from Iraq to their home bases this month and next will have their tours extended." The decision to keep them in place "breaks a Pentagon commitment last autumn to limit troop assignments in Iraq to 12 months."
ROAD TO RUIN: The LA Times writes, "Of all the sudden changes in Iraq during the last month, control of the roads is among the most striking. The U.S.-led coalition has been unable to hold on to all of its supply and communication lines on vital routes leading from the capital. Insurgents have blown up key bridges, rocketed fuel convoys and seized hostages." Over the weekend, in an attempt to get the ongoing violence under control, the Coalition Provisional Authority announced it would close two of the main Iraqi highways; the chaos has disrupted the transport of necessary military supplies, food and medicine. According to a senior analyst at Jane's Consulting, it's indicative of a larger problem: "It's a good measure of how the coalition is doing when you can get in a car and drive to the Jordanian border and down to Najaf [two of the routes that are occasionally under insurgent control] without worrying about it." The fact that one cannot take those roads "is not a good sign."
IRAQ
Echoes of Iran-Contra
Imagine that the U.S. administration deliberately hid money from Congress to invest in a war in the Middle East, potentially crafted secret deals with an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that has ties to terrorism, and appointed ideologues to be the key diplomatic emissaries to a war-torn region. Think you are back in the 1980s living through the Iran-Contra scandal? Think again. Over the last two days, new revelations by journalist Bob Woodward and actions by President Bush have evoked memories of a previous scandal and an old foreign policy/national security strategy gone wrong. Yesterday, new details emerged about the Bush administration's deliberate circumvention of Congress to divert $700 million into a secret war plan, and about the potential manipulation of U.S. elections by the Saudi Arabian government. Meanwhile, President Bush nominated key Iran-Contra figure John Negroponte as the new Ambassador to Iraq.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES - HIDING MONEY FROM CONGRESS: U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI) became the first lawmaker to "demand to know whether the Bush administration transferred $700 million to Iraq war planning efforts out of counterterrorism funds without informing Capitol Hill." According to Woodward, the $700 million came out of a supplemental Appropriations bill meant for Afghanistan operations. And a close look at the two supplemental Appropriations bills that passed between 9/11 and July 2002 when the secret transfer took place shows that both bills mandate the White House to inform Congress if money is moved. The Emergency Supplemental Act passed on 9/14/01 specifically instructs the president to "consult with the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Committees on Appropriations prior to the transfer" of any funds. The president actually told the American public that the money would be used for those purposes, saying the bill would be used "to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military" in its operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said nothing about Iraq. Similarly, while the summer 2002 supplemental bill allows the administration to transfer "up to $275 million" in unused money within the Pentagon budget, it requires the president to notify Congress within 15 days of moving money. So far, the administration has not produced a shred of evidence that it followed these laws and informed Congress. As Woodward said, "Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – LYING TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT MILITARY FOCUS: According to a new AP report, "Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch." "I'm right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan," Bush told reporters after talks on Dec. 28, 2001, with top aides and generals.
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – SECRET DEALS WITH COUNTRY TIED TO TERROR?: The Saudi Arabian government, which has ties to terrorism yet maintains close ties to the Bush administration, continued to deny Woodward's charges that its U.S. Ambassador Prince Bandar promised an increase in oil supplies to coincide with the November presidential election to help President Bush's campaign. Mounting a Saudi defense, Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir deflected the questions by claiming, "Over the past 30 years, the kingdom has sought to ensure adequate supplies of crude at moderate price levels." Of course, al-Jubeir did not explain why the Saudis had led the recent charge within OPEC to reduce oil supplies and artificially inflate the price of gasoline in the U.S. to record levels. Woodward remained steadfast in his reporting, saying the Saudi's definitely made a "pledge." He said, "over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." Author Craig Unger points to a possible motive for the alleged Saudi pledge. In his book "House of Bush, House of Saud," he says Bush presidencies "strengthen Bandar's position in Saudi Arabia. During the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush era, Bandar had enjoyed unique powers - partly because of his close relationship to Bush...But during the Clinton era, Bandar had lost clout. [He was] never an insider in the Clinton White House."
IRAN-CONTRA ECHOES – THE IMPORTANCE OF NEGROPONTE'S RECORD: Negroponte, who has no prior experience in the Middle East and does not speak Arabic, is sure to face new questions about his Iran-Contra past, given the circumstances of his Iraqi post. As the LA Times reports, human rights advocates charged that during his tenure as Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, "Negroponte underplayed human rights abuses by death squads to ensure that the country would continue to serve as a base for U.S.-backed Contras." Negroponte denies this, but according declassified documents, "U.S. officials knew what was happening in Honduras and engaged in a willful deception to avoid confronting Congress with the truth." As Molly Ivins notes, this record is important because Negroponte was a key player in a "plot that sold U.S. arms to Iran" in its war against Iraq. That means "our first ambassador will be a man who armed Iraq's enemy" – a fact that might not be lost on local Iraqis with whom he must work closely. Negroponte will also be charged with convincing U.S. allies to desist from removing troops from Iraq. The problem is some of these key allies are from Central America, where Negroponte's sordid record is well-known and where his name might not be well-received. In fact, just yesterday Honduras – the country where Negroponte made his most indelible mark – said it was planning to remove its troops from Iraq. Finally, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights watch notes the "serious unanswered questions about Negroponte's complicity with the atrocities in Honduras" are important as the issue of "U.S.-sponsored forces avoiding complicity in atrocities" could arise in Baghdad.
PATRIOT ACT
Show Us the Facts
Portions of the Patriot Act, passed in the chaotic days after 9/11, are scheduled to expire in 2005. President Bush hit the road yesterday and grossly distorted the reason some of the provisions are scheduled to "sunset." Bush said that Congress designed some provisions to expire in 2005 because of the belief that "maybe the war on terror won't go on very long." The truth: "Lawmakers of both parties...said at the time the Patriot Acts passed that the sunset provision would allow Congress to ensure that the administration did not abuse its new power." Meanwhile, even as the president asks Congress to make all provisions in the Patriot Act permanent, Attorney General John Ashcroft has failed to disclose critical information necessary to evaluate how the government uses the law.
ROVING FROM THE TRUTH: President Bush touted the use of roving wiretaps, authorized by Section 206 of the Patriot Act, as an "essential tool" for locking up terrorists. Roving wiretaps allow the government to tap not just an individual phone number but any phone that they believe the target of their surveillance might use. The provision raises serious privacy concerns. As explained in an American Progress report, "Section 206 does nothing to require that, as the wiretap 'roves,' the subject is actually present, or even likely to be present at the new location." So if "the location of the surveillance is, for example, a public computer terminal, [roving wire taps] could expose hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people to clandestine surveillance." But last year, when James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) asked the Justice Department how roving wiretaps had been used, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jamie Brown responded that the information was classified. How is Congress supposed to decide whether or not to make the roving wiretap provision permanent if it doesn't even know how it is being used?
DELAYED NOTIFICATION OF THE FACTS: President Bush also praised the effectiveness of "delayed notification search warrants," which are authorized by Section 213 of the Patriot Act. A delayed notification search warrant allows the government to search a home or office and not inform the owner as long as the government believes that doing so would have an "adverse result." The president's comments on this topic are somewhat of a red herring because Section 213 is not scheduled to sunset. Nevertheless, serious concerns about the provision persist as the government could argue that disclosing that a search has taken place could have an "adverse result" in nearly every case. The provision has been used hundreds of times – but as of May 13, 2003, it has never been used to combat terrorism.
SO ESSENTIAL IT HAS NEVER BEEN USED: Bush also urged the extension of one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act – Section 215, which permits the government to more easily obtain "any tangible thing" – a classification so broad it includes "books, records, papers, documents, and other items." That Bush would single this provision out as essential to the war on terrorism is puzzling since, on September 18, 2003 – after insisting for two years the information was classified – John Ashcroft said that the provision had never been used. The Justice Department is now equivocating, saying that Ashcroft's denial only applies to the period before September 18, 2003. But, before Congress decides to make Section 215 a permanent part of the law, it should know if and how it has been used.
ASKING FOR AN END RUN AROUND THE CONSTITUTION: Bush not only asked for a rubber-stamp approval of all expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, he also asked for certain authorities to be further expanded. His proposal to expand "administrative subpoenas," which allow the government to obtain records and interrogate any witness without any court review. The president claims the government needs this extraordinary power to speed terrorism investigations. But the Department of Justice could not even cite a single instance where the existing rules slowed down their efforts against terrorism. Eliminating the judiciary from its fundamental role as a check on executive branch power runs squarely against the Constitution while doing nothing to further the fight against terrorism.
SECRECY – TOP SECRET T-BALL: The WP reports, "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent than the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy." After a recent phone conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Putin, the Kremlin disclosed, "The presidents exchanged ideas on the situations in the crisis areas of the world: Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, etc. They expressed serious concerns about the lack of progress in the settlement of regional problems and the escalation of the situation in these areas." Meanwhile, the White House refused to comment on the conversation. But the White House's reticence on releasing information extends far beyond presidential conversations with foreign leaders. For example, in April 2002, the Orlando Sentinel reported "that the Apopka Little League team of 11- and 12-year-olds would visit the White House on May 5 to watch a T-ball game." The paper's source was the children's parents – according to the Sentinel "the White House would not confirm the invitation."
SECRECY – HUSH HUSH ARCHIVIST: The NYT reports, "President Bush's nominee to be archivist of the United States — an ordinarily low-profile job that includes overseeing the release of government documents, including presidential papers — is generating an intense controversy among historians, some of whom accuse the White House of trying to push through a candidate who is prone to secrecy." The nominee, Allen Weinstein, has a track record of refusing to share notes and information. One important issue: The papers of Mr. Bush's father, the 41st president, are scheduled for release in January. "Critics of Mr. Weinstein say they fear that he could restrict or delay access to those and other important documents." So far, "nine groups, including the Society of American Archivists, have raised concerns about the selection." According to Timothy A. Slavin, president of the Council of State Historical Records Coordinators, "It's the equivalent of the administration's thumbing its nose at the nation's history."
LEGAL – TAXPAYER MONEY FOR PARTISAN PURPOSES: The IRS is using taxpayer money to promote partisan propaganda. Recently, the Department of Treasury appended the following message to IRS press releases: "America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation." Earlier, the "Treasury Department was criticized after its analysis of a tax plan similar to one proposed by Senator John Kerry was used to attack Mr. Kerry."
HEALTH CARE – GRANITE STATE BATTLES OVER KIDS: In a move that could have potentially harmful ramifications for kids in the state, New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen is pushing to "privatize Healthy Kids, an insurance program that covers more than 7,000 poor New Hampshire children." The hugely successful program currently "provides low-cost health insurance and dental care to children whose families don't qualify for Medicaid but can't otherwise afford insurance." Privatizing could force some children out of the program. Lawmakers say Stephen has no right: Healthy Kids and the nonprofit corporation that runs it were established by state statute and cannot be put out for a bid without the Legislature's approval.
Read more at CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS.
_______________________________________________________
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