What They Said

NYT: Curveball The Goofball

2005-04-03T15:41:00.000-04:00

always stunned that Team W was able to get away with what they did, AND that nobody within suffered from the intel misfires. And, amazed that the media gave them a free pass. Assume it's about Rove & Co heavy-handing the media in exchange for access...

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Curveball the Goofball
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON
I had an editor once whose wife was in the Audubon Society. There were a lot of articles about birds in that newspaper.
I had an editor once who loved fishing. There were a lot of articles about fish in that newspaper.
Organizations organically respond to please the boss. Bosses naturally surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear.

When King Lear's favorite daughter spoke frankly to him, and refused to fawn like her sisters, she was instantly banished. Insincerity pays.

It is absurd to have yet another investigation into the chuckleheaded assessments on Saddam's phantom W.M.D. that intentionally skirts how the $40 billion-a-year intelligence was molded and manufactured to fit the ideological schemes of those running the White House and Pentagon.

As the commission's co-chairman, Laurence Silberman, put it: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policy makers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

Huh? That's like an investigation into steroids in baseball that looks only at the drug companies, not the players who muscled up.

We don't need a 14-month inquiry producing 601 pages at a cost of $10 million to tell us the data on arms in Iraq was flawed. We know that. When we got over there, we didn't find any.
This is the fourth exhaustive investigation that has not answered the basic question: How did the White House and Pentagon spin the information and why has no one gotten in trouble for it? If your kid lied and hid stuff from you to do something he thought would be great, then wouldn't admit it and blamed someone else, he'd be punished - even if his adventure worked out all right for him.

When the "values" president and his aides do it, they're rewarded. Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state. Stephen Hadley, Condi's old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser. Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey into the State of the Union address, is becoming an under secretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup, will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. when Al Qaeda attacked and when Saddam's mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom.
Then the president appoints a compliant Democrat and a complicit conservative judge to head an inquiry set up to let the president off the hook.

Please, no more pantomime investigations. We all know what happened. Dick Cheney and the neocons had a fever to sack Saddam. Mr. Cheney and Rummy persuaded W., "the Man," that it was the manly thing to do. Everybody feigned a 9/11 connection. Ahmad Chalabi conned his neocon pals, thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun it needed to sell the war.

Suddenly Curveball appeared, the relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, to become the lone C.I.A. source with the news that Iraq was cooking up biological agents in mobile facilities hidden from arms inspectors and Western spies. Curveball's obviously sketchy assertions ended up in Mr. Tenet's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and Colin Powell's U.N. speech in February 2003, laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq.

Curveball's information was used to justify the war even though it was clear Curveball was a goofball. As the commission report notes, a Defense Department employee at the C.I.A. met with him and "was concerned by Curveball's apparent 'hangover' during their meeting" and suspicious that Curveball spoke excellent English, even though the Foreign Service had told U.S. intelligence officials that Curveball did not speak English.

By early 2001, the C.I.A. was receiving messages from our Foreign Service, reporting that Curveball was "out of control" and off the radar. A foreign intelligence service also warned the C.I.A. in April 2002 that it had "doubts about Curveball's reliability" and that elements of the tippling tipster's behavior "strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess as fabricators."

But Curveball's crazy assertions had traction because they were what the White House wanted to hear.

The report warns the president to watch out for the "headstrong" intelligence agencies. If only the commission had concerned itself with headstrong officials at a higher level. Then its 601 pages would be worth reading.

NYT: Curveball the Goofball

2005-04-03T15:36:00.000-04:00

yes, i too am amazed all the war/intel stuff has been glazed over/push aside with no major fallout within Team W. And the media has no outrage, instead bending to Rove & Co so to maintain access to WH.... sad... here's Dowd's piece which touches some of the issues...

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Curveball the Goofball
By MAUREEN DOWD

ASHINGTON
I had an editor once whose wife was in the Audubon Society. There were a lot of articles about birds in that newspaper.

I had an editor once who loved fishing. There were a lot of articles about fish in that newspaper.
Organizations organically respond to please the boss. Bosses naturally surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear.

When King Lear's favorite daughter spoke frankly to him, and refused to fawn like her sisters, she was instantly banished. Insincerity pays.

It is absurd to have yet another investigation into the chuckleheaded assessments on Saddam's phantom W.M.D. that intentionally skirts how the $40 billion-a-year intelligence was molded and manufactured to fit the ideological schemes of those running the White House and Pentagon.
As the commission's co-chairman, Laurence Silberman, put it: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policy makers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

Huh? That's like an investigation into steroids in baseball that looks only at the drug companies, not the players who muscled up.

We don't need a 14-month inquiry producing 601 pages at a cost of $10 million to tell us the data on arms in Iraq was flawed. We know that. When we got over there, we didn't find any.
This is the fourth exhaustive investigation that has not answered the basic question: How did the White House and Pentagon spin the information and why has no one gotten in trouble for it? If your kid lied and hid stuff from you to do something he thought would be great, then wouldn't admit it and blamed someone else, he'd be punished - even if his adventure worked out all right for him.

When the "values" president and his aides do it, they're rewarded. Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state. Stephen Hadley, Condi's old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser. Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey into the State of the Union address, is becoming an under secretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup, will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. when Al Qaeda attacked and when Saddam's mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom.
Then the president appoints a compliant Democrat and a complicit conservative judge to head an inquiry set up to let the president off the hook.

Please, no more pantomime investigations. We all know what happened. Dick Cheney and the neocons had a fever to sack Saddam. Mr. Cheney and Rummy persuaded W., "the Man," that it was the manly thing to do. Everybody feigned a 9/11 connection. Ahmad Chalabi conned his neocon pals, thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun it needed to sell the war.

Suddenly Curveball appeared, the relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, to become the lone C.I.A. source with the news that Iraq was cooking up biological agents in mobile facilities hidden from arms inspectors and Western spies. Curveball's obviously sketchy assertions ended up in Mr. Tenet's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and Colin Powell's U.N. speech in February 2003, laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq.

Curveball's information was used to justify the war even though it was clear Curveball was a goofball. As the commission report notes, a Defense Department employee at the C.I.A. met with him and "was concerned by Curveball's apparent 'hangover' during their meeting" and suspicious that Curveball spoke excellent English, even though the Foreign Service had told U.S. intelligence officials that Curveball did not speak English.

By early 2001, the C.I.A. was receiving messages from our Foreign Service, reporting that Curveball was "out of control" and off the radar. A foreign intelligence service also warned the C.I.A. in April 2002 that it had "doubts about Curveball's reliability" and that elements of the tippling tipster's behavior "strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess as fabricators."

But Curveball's crazy assertions had traction because they were what the White House wanted to hear.

The report warns the president to watch out for the "headstrong" intelligence agencies. If only the commission had concerned itself with headstrong officials at a higher level. Then its 601 pages would be worth reading.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

"Curveball" blamed in U.S. intel failure

2005-03-31T13:35:00.000-05:00

some people feel that the war was the right war at the right time, BUT I feel they wanted to go in regardless, and would twist any info to fit their case they were pumping to the public. the "imminent threat" garbage, "mushroom cloud" etc. And here is the one-way and un-vetted piece about "curve-ball" which has been written about in the past with some skepticism.

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(RSF) 14:32 Source "Curveball" blamed in U.S. intel failure
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) - In building its case for the Iraq war, the Bush administration relied on bogus intelligence from a mysterious Iraqi chemical engineer
code-named "Curveball," whose dramatic tips about mobile germ labs made their way to top policymakers with little vetting.

In its final report issued on Thursday, the presidential commission that investigated intelligence failures in Iraq cast Curveball as the "pivotal" source behind the intelligence community's escalating warnings about Iraq's biological weapons programs before the invasion.
Assertions that Iraq was cooking up biological agents in mobile labs to elude international inspectors and Western intelligence services -- based almost exclusively on Curveball's information -- became what the report called one of the "most important and alarming" assessments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate cited by President George
W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in justifying the war.

The intelligence commission, in its report, said it found no evidence that Bush, Cheney and other administration officials put political pressure on intelligence analysts to skew any of their judgments about Iraq's weapons programs. Despite Curveball's mysterious background and internal doubts about his reliability, his assertions appeared in more than 100 government reports and shaped then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 2003 address to the United Nations detailing Iraq's weapons programs. The commission faulted intelligence officials within the CIA for failing to raise these doubts, which emerged after the October 2002 intelligence estimate was published but before Powell's speech at the U.N.

Only in May 2004, more than a year after the invasion, did the CIA formally deem Curveball's reporting "fabricated." The commission blamed the breakdown on Defense Department
intelligence "collectors" for abdicating their responsibility to vet a critical source.
The commission also accused CIA analysts of placing "undue emphasis" on Curveball's information "because the tales he told were consistent with what they already believed."
But ultimately, the commission said, blame rests with U.S. intelligence chiefs for failing to tell White House policymakers about Curveball's "flaws" in the weeks before the war.

The commission said Curveball was not the only bad source the intelligence community relied upon. Another asylum seeker reporting through Defense channels provided one report in June 2001 that Iraq had transportable facilities for the production of biological weapons. He
recanted in October 2003. Another source on the mobile labs was brought to the attention of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Washington-based representatives of the Iraqi National
Congress. The CIA's Directorate of Operations later judged him to be "a fabricator."
((Editing by Giles Elgood; Reuters Messaging:
adam.entous.reuters.com@reuters.net; +1 202-898-8300))

NYT: With Bush Re-elected, Rove Turns to Policy

2005-03-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

Pay attention to the man behind-the-screens....from today's NY Times..."All roads lead to Karl"
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With Bush Re-elected, Rove Turns to PolicyBy RICHARD W. STEVENSON
ASHINGTON, March 27 - Jack Kemp was causing problems for President Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security, and it naturally fell to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's strategist, enforcer and closet policy expert, to take him on.

Mr. Kemp, the 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee and a founder of a conservative
advocacy group, was publicly attacking an idea floated by the White House to cut benefits in the retirement system and was rallying support for an alternative approach that, on paper, would be pain free. Mr. Kemp's statements exposed a split among Republicans and complicated the administration's efforts to prepare the public for possible benefit cuts.

After a ceremony several months ago in the White House East Room that Mr. Kemp attended, Mr. Rove sought him out, associates of the two men said. But their exchange was less a scolding by Mr. Rove, they said, than an assertive, detailed argument against Mr. Kemp's favored approach. Mr. Rove, they said, went through a point-by-point critique of the plan and left Mr. Kemp with the message that he considered it unworkable.

As Mr. Bush pushes doggedly ahead with his battle to add investment accounts to Social Security, he is betting heavily on Mr. Rove's well-chronicled political skills to build public support, hold Republicans together and overcome intense Democratic opposition.

But as the confrontation with Mr. Kemp suggests, Mr. Rove is assuming a more expansive role, bringing the same intensity to the big issues in Mr. Bush's second-term agenda that he brought to the president's re-election campaign. In naming Mr. Rove deputy White House chief of staff for policy last month, on top of his continuing catch-all title of senior adviser, the president formally recognized Mr. Rove's affinity for the nitty-gritty of governance and publicly acknowledged his influence over whatever deal might emerge on Social Security, his No. 1 domestic priority.

"All roads lead to Karl," said Kenneth J. Duberstein, a Republican lobbyist who was the White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan and is now part of Mr. Rove's vast network of informal advisers and intelligence gatherers.

Under one of his hats, Mr. Rove is running a sophisticated campaign on behalf of the president's Social Security proposals, employing all the components of the national political machine built to re-elect Mr. Bush. Under the other, he is overseeing policy meetings where the administration's senior officials analyze the competing Social Security proposals, bone up on arcane economic concepts and plot how to hit back at the substantive arguments made by people on the other side of the issue.

Other presidents have had powerful advisers with a hand in both politics and policy. The most-cited model in recent times is James A. Baker III, who had a wide-ranging portfolio in the administrations of Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush's father, and went from political operative to treasury secretary, to secretary of state, then back to overseeing a presidential campaign.

But the intensity of Mr. Rove's involvement in politics and policy makes his current status unusual and gives him remarkably broad authority inside the White House and out. And in giving Mr. Rove his new title, Mr. Bush, freed from the need to think about re-election, seemed to acknowledge what everyone in Washington knows: that in this administration, as in all others, politics and policy are inextricably intertwined.

"Karl Rove is the crossing guard at the intersection of policy and politics," said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, who previously observed Mr. Rove for years as an aide to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and as legislative director of the Christian Coalition.

"He blends political hack and propeller head in a way no one has ever achieved," Mr. Wittmann said. "No one is going to question his political expertise or his policy expertise. The question for him is always one of hubris."

The most concrete change stemming from Mr. Rove's additional title may be that he has moved to a prime piece of real estate on the first floor, down the hall from the Oval Office, from a small office on the second floor of the West Wing. Beyond that, at least as administration officials tell it, nothing fundamental has changed in his power or his role, and his additional title does not portend a more aggressive melding of political and policy concerns. Mr. Rove declined to be quoted for this article.

To outsiders, it is hard to know exactly what to make of Mr. Rove's new role as one of two deputy chiefs of staff (the other, Joe Hagin, is little known outside the White House but is also close to Mr. Bush). After years at Mr. Bush's side - they met in the 1970's and have worked together closely since before Mr. Bush first ran for governor of Texas in 1994 - Mr. Rove does not really need a new title to convey his power, especially after guiding the president to a convincing re-election last year. In retaining his title as senior adviser, he in any case has a job broadly defined enough to weigh in on big decisions whenever he wants.

But on the organization chart, the new post leaves him - or the half of him that is purely policy - beneath Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff and one of only two people in the White House (Vice President Dick Cheney being the other) whose power and reach are in the same league as Mr. Rove's.

"I count on him to keep me well informed and have me get engaged at the right time to help drive policy recommendations to maturity so the president can consider them," Mr. Card said.
Beyond his new bureaucratic chores, like allocating time on Mr. Bush's schedule for policy discussions, helping set the president's travel schedule and keeping track of daily policy developments for Mr. Bush and Mr. Card, Mr. Rove participates in a separate set of meetings devoted to Social Security. Twice a week he sits down to plot legislative strategy, and roughly as often participates in high-level meetings about the substantive issues in play.

The talk runs from what the latest public polls show to the latest proposals being floated in Congress, participants said. From time to time, they said, Charles P. Blahous, the White House economic team's resident expert on Social Security, gets so detailed and arcane in his presentations that only Mr. Rove can follow him.

"He can talk the specifics even with Chuck Blahous," Mr. Card said. "I've never actually seen him correct Chuck, but I have heard him tell Chuck how to explain what he's saying so the rest of us can understand."

But while Mr. Rove's policy acumen has helped him expand his portfolio, his influence is derived in large part from the political apparatus he has built up.

He plays an important role in deciding where Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other administration officials go as they crisscross the country trying to win public support. He is overseeing an intelligence-gathering effort that closely tracks the positions of every Republican in Congress and makes sure they get phone calls, invitations to the White House, rides on Air Force One or other expressions of support if they come under pressure from the forces battling Mr. Bush over Social Security.

The work done inside the White House is augmented by the Republican National Committee, now run by Ken Mehlman, who managed Mr. Bush's re-election campaign under Mr. Rove. The committee holds a nationwide databank on Bush supporters that Mr. Rove's team amassed during the election, a treasure trove that Republicans said would be used to mobilize public pressure on Congress when Social Security legislation is taken up.

Additionally, Mr. Rove is calling on a handful of outside groups to play a substantial, loosely coordinated role in the effort.

Every Friday the Republican National Committee holds a meeting on Social Security that is often attended by Barry Jackson, Mr. Rove's deputy in his senior adviser role, who handles much of the day-to-day oversight of the Social Security campaign. Also in attendance are representatives of Progress for America, an advocacy group that is running television commercials supporting Mr. Bush's call for individual accounts in Social Security, and Compass, a business-backed group that is running a grass-roots campaign on behalf of the initiative.

Although those groups operate independently of the White House, they have close ties to the administration and to Mr. Rove. Compass's campaign is being run by Terry Nelson, who was one of Mr. Rove's top aides as political director of Mr. Bush's re-election campaign. Compass is an offshoot of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, which was once run by Mr. Blahous, the Social Security expert. Progress for America recently adopted an advertising strategy used by the Bush campaign, sponsoring traffic reports on radio stations in cities around the country.
Many Democrats say Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove have reached too far on Social Security and are headed for the first big defeat of their partnership. Republicans have yet to settle their own differences; Mr. Kemp, for one, continues to publicly support the approach Mr. Rove objected to, which is embodied in legislation sponsored by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire.

And there is grumbling among some Republicans that Mr. Rove has mishandled the Social Security campaign. But Mr. Rove's allies and fans say that he anticipated the difficulties of moving the Social Security debate forward and that he and Mr. Bush remain convinced that they will win in the end.

"Anyone who thinks otherwise," said Charlie Black, a veteran Republican strategist, "they're underestimating Karl and they're underestimating the president."

DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads

2005-03-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

from the LA Times....
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay27mar27,0,7102439,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

amazing how GOP people re-invent themselves for the situation..
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THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads

Family of the lawmaker involved in the Schiavo case decided in '88 to let his comatose father die.By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe VerhovekTimes Staff WritersMarch 27, 2005

CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention in the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through Congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die."There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do not resuscitate."On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family in attendance.""The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely different than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the majority leader, who declined requests for an interview."The only thing keeping her alive is the food and water we all need to survive.

His father was on a ventilator and other machines to sustain him," said Dan Allen, DeLay's press aide.There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were severely brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared from being kept alive by artificial means. And neither of them had a living will.This previously unpublished account of the majority leader's personal brush with life-ending decisions was assembled from court files, medical records and interviews with family members.

Bush Approval Rating Slides To New Low...

2005-03-28T19:47:00.000-05:00

Blame it on Oil? The Social Security flim-flam? Not sure which it is, but this is worth watching in coming months -- historically correlates with falling consumer confidence and/or stocks...
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By Kim Chipman March 25 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush's approval rating has slipped to 45 percent, the lowest of his presidency, USA Today reported, citing a poll conducted earlier this week. The results from the USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey of 1,010 adults Monday through Wednesday show a decline from 52 percent in a poll taken last week. Bush's previous lowest approval rating of 46 percent was recorded last May, the newspaper said.

The dip could reflect opposition to the White House and Congress getting involved in the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case, the newspaper said, citing independent political analysts. The latest poll showed the biggest drop for Bush came among men who describe themselves as churchgoers and conservatives. Bush's handling of the economy also seems to have contributed to the decline, USA Today said. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

NYT. Brooks: The Do-Nothing Conspiracy

2005-03-19T12:06:00.000-05:00

very good piece by the NYT's GOP-leaner about the challenges faced...
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OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Do-Nothing ConspiracyBy DAVID BROOKS
If you want an image that captures what American politics will be like over the next few decades, imagine two waves crashing down upon us simultaneously, each magnifying the damage caused by the other.

The first wave is the exploding cost of the entitlement programs. The second wave is the ever-increasing polarization of the political class. The polarization will make it impossible to reach an agreement on how to fix the entitlements problem. Meanwhile the vicious choices forced on us by entitlement costs will make the polarization even worse.

The realities of the first wave - the looming fiscal crisis - are pretty well known. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will consume 14 percent of national output in 2030 and 21 percent in 2075 - up from about 8 percent today. Partly as a result, the federal government will have to come up with an extra $50 trillion just to pay for the promises it's made as of today.

To cover these costs, federal officials will have several options, all of them horrible. If they acted immediately, according to the economists Kent Smetters and Jagadeesh Gokhale, they could increase federal income taxes by 78 percent; they could double payroll taxes; they could cut Social Security and Medicare in half; or they could do some combination.

Tax increases on that scale would decimate the economy. Benefit cuts would cause pain. Doing nothing would lead to enormous deficits, an immobilized government and stratospheric interest rates. It would mean the end of the United States as a great economic power.

The realities of the second destructive wave - polarization - are also widely recognized. They can be measured by the increase in party-line voting in Congress, the bitter political atmosphere in Washington, the political segmentation of media outlets and the emergence of rigid donor and activist bases in each party that use their power to inflict Stalinist party-line orthodoxy on potentially independent leaders.

We're seeing polarization in action in the Social Security debate. It's a straightforward problem compared with Medicare, but Congress is deadlocked. We see polarization in action in the looming fight over judges, which is producing talk about nuclear options and threats to shut down the Senate. A political class that can't make a deal on a few judges is not going to be able to cooperate when it comes to filling a $50 trillion hole.

Over the next several years, the parties will differ violently over what to do about the entitlement problem while doing very little to actually address it. This past Thursday the Senate even rejected a proposal that would have made a sliver of a trim in the growth of Medicaid.

But over time, the entitlements crisis will begin to transform politics. The parties will grow less cohesive. The Democrats are held together by the common goal of passing domestic programs that address national needs - like covering the uninsured. But with all the money going to cover entitlements, there will be no way to afford new proposals. Republicans, meanwhile, owe their recent victories to the popularity of tax cuts. But those will be impossible, too. Both parties will lose a core reason for being.

At the same time, Americans will grow even more disenchanted with the political status quo. Not only will there be a general distaste for the hyperpartisan style, but people will also begin to see how partisan brawling threatens the nation's prosperity. They'll read more books like "The Coming Generational Storm" by Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns and "Running on Empty" by Peter Peterson. They will be more aware of the looming disaster. As the situation gets worse, the prospects of change get better, because Americans will not slide noiselessly into oblivion.

The party alignments have been pretty stable over the past few generations, but there's no reason to think they will be in the future. The Whig Party died. The Progressive movement arose because the parties seemed stagnant a century ago. I wouldn't be surprised if some anti-politician emerged - of the Schwarzenegger or Perot varieties - to crash through the current alignments and bust heads.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of today's politicians decided to reorient their careers. I meet too many who are quietly alarmed by the looming fiscal catastrophe and who know that if their party doesn't tackle this problem, it simply won't be relevant to the issue that will dominate politics for years to come.

E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com

NYT: Senate Budget Shows Signs of G.O.P. Strain With Bush

2005-03-19T12:04:00.000-05:00

NY Times today, reminds that Bush may be pushing his own team too far..
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Senate Budget Shows Signs of G.O.P. Strain With BushBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, March 18 - In its last-minute flurry of votes before approving a budget Thursday night, the Senate added $5.4 billion in education spending for 2006 - just one more sign, members of both parties said on Friday, that President Bush could not get all he wanted on Capitol Hill despite the strengthened Republican majority.

Mr. Bush had sought to impose strict spending restraints on lawmakers, and the weeklong budget debate was a test of his strength on Capitol Hill. The $2.57 trillion Senate budget resolution, which differs sharply from the budget passed by the House, gave Mr. Bush much of what he asked for: tax cut extensions, a provision allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, cuts in farm subsidies and reductions in the growth of some entitlement programs.

But on some key votes, enough Senate Republicans joined Democrats to defy the president. In a blow to Mr. Bush, the Senate stripped from the budget all $14 billion in proposed spending cuts in Medicaid. Senators also restored $2 billion in cuts to a popular urban renewal program and approved the extra money for education, to help middle-class families pay for college.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who offered the education amendment, said the vote, coupled with the Senate's decision on Medicaid, indicated that Republicans were uneasy about cutting social programs too deeply.
"On issues in education and health and investment, there is a concern that the administration is going too far," Mr. Kennedy said.

But a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was pleased over all. In a statement released Thursday night, President Bush praised the House's budget, which closely resembles his own. On Friday, the administration official said that in the Senate, "there were some good developments, the most important being that they passed the budget resolution."

This official added: "We've demonstrated that we have the votes or are within a couple of votes of what we need. If you have only one or two votes to make up, that's not a bad place to be."
The competing budgets passed by the House and Senate raised questions about whether the two versions could be reconciled into one document that both chambers would approve. In an interview Friday, Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who is chairman of the Budget Committee, seemed reluctant to make any predictions.

"Clearly, there's some fairly significant differences to resolve," Mr. Gregg said, "but we're all on the same team, hopefully."

The budget resolution sets tax and spending guidelines, but Congress has been unable to pass a budget for two of the last three years. This year, passing one is essential for the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. With the federal deficit at a record high, President Bush and Republicans have campaigned on a theme of fiscal responsibility, and failure to pass a budget resolution would be an embarrassment to the White House and Congress.

At the same time, there will be real consequences for the Republican agenda. The budget provides procedural protections that enable lawmakers to adopt the tax-cut extensions, reduce entitlement spending and open the Arctic refuge to oil drilling without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate. If the budget does not pass, those measures are all but doomed.
Finally, the budget sets limits on spending that cannot be exceeded without a 60-vote majority in the Senate. The last time Congress passed a budget, for 2004, it included caps for two years.

Now the caps are about to expire; the 2006 budget will renew them for three years.
One of the debate's most surprising twists came when the Senate, by a vote of 55 to 45, approved $64 billion in added tax cuts, a measure intended to repeal a 1993 law taxing 85 percent of Social Security benefits for individuals who earn more than $34,000 and couples earning more than $44,000. Afterward, some senators seemed confused about what they had voted on.

Mr. Gregg said the repeal of the Social Security tax was not likely to survive the House-Senate conference. He said senators regarded it as "a message amendment," intended to signal that they oppose the tax.

Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota was among the Republicans supporting Democrats on some issues. He backed Mr. Kennedy's education amendment, led the effort to restore urban development money and opposed drilling in the refuge. But he voted for the final budget.
"In the end," Mr. Coleman said, "the most important vote is the last vote."

ECONOMIST; FAKE NEWS> Don't worry. It's only Little Brother

2005-03-17T19:29:00.000-05:00

from today's Economist
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Don't worry. It's only Little Brother
Is it appropriate for the government to put out its own “news” broadcasts?

THE televised interview with John Walters, the White House drug tsar, ran on hundreds of local stations before the 2004 Super Bowl. “Many parents admit they're still not taking the drug [marijuana] seriously,” explained the news anchor. “Mike Morris has more.” It ended with the usual sign-off: “This is Mike Morris reporting.” It looked like a news report, and quacked like a news report. But it was not one. The segment had been produced by Mr Walters's Office of National Drug Control Policy. The apparently independent Mr Morris was on contract to the government.

Bogus television reporting like this is, alas, an established part of American “news management”. It is the video equivalent of issuing a press release. It will not disappear overnight. But at least you might have hoped, when government departments are caught doing it, they might feel a bit sheepish. When word of this particular episode leaked out last year, officials at the drug-control office promised not to do it again.

That was then. This week the White House spokesman said that, in promoting fake news, the administration was doing nothing wrong, and that the General Accounting Office (GAO), which had called it illegal “covert propaganda”, was talking through its hat.

Legally, the administration has a case. The government is not forcing anyone to broadcast these segments. The government should not be in the business of advocacy (there are laws against that), but it may use public money to provide information. The question is, who decides which is which? The GAO is Congress's watchdog arm. It may think (as here) that fake news is propaganda and that the money to make these broadcasts has been used improperly. It may even be right. But the legal rulings that federal agencies are supposed to follow come not from the GAO but from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel—which claims this is legitimate information.

Anyway, it is not the government's fault if news programmes fail to identify a government agency as the originator of the material they are running. That is the broadcasters' responsibility. And it is no excuse that they are short of cash and correspondents (though they are) and no excuse that government departments—as in the interview with Mr Walters—go out of their way to make the footage look like a ready-to-roll news report.

So is the Bush administration in the clear? Not really. It is on record as saying that there is nothing special about the press: it is just another interest group. As Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, has put it, the administration does not think that the press has “a check-and-balance function”. This is a fundamental change of attitude compared with previous administrations and makes this one's use of fake news different.

If there is nothing special about the press, then there is nothing special about what it does. News can be anything—including dressed-up government video footage. And anyone can provide it, including the White House, which, through local networks, can become a news distributor in its own right. Given the proliferation of media outlets and the eroding of boundaries between news, comment and punditry, someone will use government-provided information as news. In short, the traditional notion that the media play a special role in informing people is breaking down.
Behind all this lies a shift in the balance of power in the news business. Power is moving away from old-fashioned networks and newspapers; it is swinging towards, on the one hand, smaller news providers (in the case of blogs, towards individuals) and, on the other, to the institutions of government, which have got into the business of providing news more or less directly. Eventually, perhaps, the new world of blogs will provide as much public scrutiny as newspapers and broadcasters once did. But for the moment the shifting balance of power is helping the government behemoth.

NYT: U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide

2005-03-16T20:01:00.000-05:00

from today's NYT.. You knew this was coming, and it was out there pre-Election, but buried by the WH..
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U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, March 15 - At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials.

The number of confirmed or suspected cases is much higher than any accounting the military has previously reported. A Pentagon report sent to Congress last week cited only six prisoner deaths caused by abuse, but that partial tally was limited to what the author, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III of the Navy, called "closed, substantiated abuse cases" as of last September.
The new figure of 26 was provided by the Army and Navy this week after repeated inquiries. In 18 cases reviewed by the Army and Navy, investigators have now closed their inquiries and have recommended them for prosecution or referred them to other agencies for action, Army and Navy officials said. Eight cases are still under investigation but are listed by the Army as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides, the officials said.

Only one of the deaths occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, officials said, showing how broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing was confined to a handful of members of the military police on the prison's night shift.

Among the cases are at least four involving Central Intelligence Agency employees that are being reviewed by the Justice Department for possible prosecution. They include a killing in Afghanistan in June 2003 for which David Passaro, a contract worker for the C.I.A., is now facing trial in federal court in North Carolina.

Human rights groups expressed dismay at the number of criminal homicides and renewed their call for a Sept. 11-style inquiry into detention operations and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This number to me is quite astounding," said James D. Ross, senior legal adviser for Human Rights Watch in New York. "This just reflects an overall failure to take seriously the abuses that have occurred."

Pentagon and Army officials rebutted that accusation. Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said that he was not aware that the Defense Department had previously accounted publicly for criminal homicides among the detainee deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, but insisted that military authorities were vigorously pursuing each case.

"I have not seen the numbers collected in the way you described them, but obviously one criminal homicide is one too many," said Mr. Di Rita, who noted that American forces had held more than 50,000 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past three years.
Army officials said the killings took place both inside and outside detention areas, including at the point of capture in often violent battlefield conditions. "The Army will investigate every detainee death both inside and outside detention facilities," said Col. Joseph Curtin, a senior Army spokesman. "Simply put, detainee abuse is not tolerated, and the Army will hold soldiers accountable. We are taking action to prosecute those suspected of abuse while taking steps now to train soldiers how to avoid such situations in the future."

In his report last week, Admiral Church concluded that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan had been the result primarily of a breakdown of discipline, not flawed policies or misguided direction from commanders or Pentagon officials. But he cautioned that his conclusions were "based primarily on the information available to us as of Sept. 30, 2004," and added, "Should additional information become available, our conclusions would have to be considered in light of that information."

In addition to the criminal homicides, 11 cases involving prisoner deaths at the hands of American troops are now listed as justifiable homicides that should not be prosecuted, Army officials said. Those cases included killings caused by soldiers in suppressing prisoner riots in Iraq, they said. Other prisoners have died in captivity of natural causes, the military has found.
An accounting by The New York Times in May 2004, based on reports from military officials and a review of Army documents, identified 16 cases of confirmed or suspected homicide involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. At that time, however, just five were listed as confirmed homicides, with 11 of the cases still under investigation.

The Army defines a homicide as "a death that results from the intentional (explicit or implied) or grossly reckless behavior of another person or persons."

"Homicide is not synonymous with murder (a legal determination) and includes both criminal actions and excusable incidents (i.e., self-defense, law enforcement, combat)," according to an Army statement.

The new total of 26 cases involving prisoner deaths confirmed or suspected of being criminal homicides includes 24 cases investigated by the Army and two by the Navy, spokesmen for those services said. Two of the Army cases have since been referred to the Navy, and one to the Justice Department. The Navy said each case included a single prisoner death, but the Army said it was possible that at least some of the cases investigated by the service involved the death of more than one prisoner.

The Marine Corps said that nine Iraqi detainees had died in Marine custody, but that none of the deaths were homicides. It is unclear if this number includes the death of an Iraqi captive shot by a marine in a mosque in Falluja last November, an incident filmed by a television crew.
Neither the Army nor the Navy would provide a precise accounting of all of the cases now regarded as confirmed or suspected homicide.

At least eight Army soldiers have now been convicted of crimes in the deaths of prisoners in American custody, including a lieutenant who pleaded guilty at Fort Hood, Tex., this month to charges that included aggravated assault and battery, obstruction of justice and dereliction of duty. A charge of involuntary manslaughter in that case was dropped.

>ends

Bloomberg: Greenspan Was Wrong On Tax Cuts

2005-03-15T20:03:00.000-05:00

from Bloomberg. Greenspan was duped. We knew it was a bad idea to endorse Bush tax cuts in 2001, and now he admits it.....

By Craig Torres March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told a Congressional committee that he was ``wrong'' about budget projections that led him to advocate tax cuts in 2001. Responding to questions from Senator Hillary Clinton, however, Greenspan said that he would make the same recommendation again if the government ever returned to large surpluses.

In early 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected a $5.6 trillion surplus in the first decade of the century, and Greenspan said in January of that year tax cuts would prevent the government from having to buy private assets, such as stocks. Congress went on to pass a $1.6 trillion, 10-year package of tax cuts proposed by President George W. Bush. ``I argued back then that excessive budget deficits and excessive on-budget surpluses distorted the private system and we should try and eliminate that,'' Greenspan said in a question and answer period following testimony today to the Senate Special Committee on Aging. ``It turns out we were all wrong.''

Greenspan's comments came after Clinton, 57, said that the Fed chairman's 2001 testimony ``helped blow the lid off'' budgetary discipline, and the budget has been ``in a freefall ever since.'' In defending his testimony four years ago, Greenspan noted he had at the time called for ``some form of trigger'' that would have scaled back or eliminated tax cuts if deficits reappeared.
`Fooling Ourselves'

``I also indicated that there was the possibility -- indeed the language is fairly strong in some cases -- that we may be fooling ourselves that in fact deficits are coming back,'' he said. ``We underestimated how (the surplus) would erode,'' he said today. The exchange between Greenspan and Clinton comes at a time when legacy issues are of mounting importance for the Fed chairman. Greenspan, who turned 79 this month, is expected to leave the Fed when his non-renewable term as a governor expires in January. Greenspan has spoken about long-term fiscal challenges with unusual frequency this year, appearing on five occasions since February before various Congressional committees and a presidential tax reform panel. ``We just saw a historic moment,'' Clinton, a New York Democrat, said in an interview after the hearing. ``I've never heard Chairman Greenspan admit being wrong before. It is long overdue and welcome.''

No Change

While he declined at the time to endorse Bush's specific tax plans, Greenspan said in his 2001 remarks that ``having a tax cut in place may, in fact, do noticeable good.'' Today, the Fed chairman said that was good advice given the circumstances at the time. ``I look back and I would say to you, if confronted with the same evidence we had back then, I would recommend exactly what I recommended then.''

As he has previously, Greenspan today said he supports private accounts within the Social Security program, while advising that Congress should make changes slowly to judge market reaction to effect on the deficit.

Because of his earlier support for tax cuts, though, some members of Congress say Greenspan's ability to affect debate has been damaged. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, last week called the Fed chairman a ``political hack.''
Budget Discipline

Today, Representative John Tanner, a Tennessee Democrat, said members of his party view Greenspan as an advocate for Bush policies. ``I must say that his credibility has been questioned a little bit for the first time in my memory because of some of the statements made that appear to be more biased toward the administration policy,'' Tanner said in an interview. The U.S. budget was in surplus from 1998 to 2001, largely as a result of spending restraints, a strong economy and a soaring stock market. The budget surplus peaked in that period at $236 billion in 2000.

One reason that happened, Greenspan said again today, was a requirement Congress offset additional spending or tax cuts. He called on lawmakers to restore budget disciplined by renewing so- called pay-go rules. ``So in all tax cuts and all expenditure increases, I have held the position that we have to pay for them one way or another, or we're creating serious problems,'' Greenspan told Clinton. Thirty-five percent of Americans say they approve of Bush's handling of his push to restructure Social Security, down from 38 percent in mid December, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found. ``The big news is sort of the unusual feature of the chairman of the Federal Reserve interjecting himself into this debate,'' said Barry Bosworth, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said in an interview. ``I doubt they will come to agreeing on anything this year.''

Cynical Me....

2005-03-13T20:09:00.000-05:00

Oil has nearly doubled (in forward futures markets) since the Iraq conflict was largely over....didnt we go in there to get the price of Oil down??

NYT: Bush Stealth Tax Increase

2005-03-13T15:39:00.000-05:00

From today's NYT... well the editorial team wants to blame the AMT on Bush, BUT it's not his fault. This has been around a long time, and will get more chatter in coming years as it swallows up more taxpayers. That said, Bush could choose to do something about the AMT, but he wont.

**
Mr. Bush's Stealthy Tax Increase
President Bush is presiding over a big middle-class tax hike.

As recently as 2000, only about one million taxpayers owed the alternative minimum tax, created by a provision in the federal tax code that is supposed to prevent multimillionaires from using loopholes to avoid paying their fair share. But by the time Americans file their 2005 taxes, some 3 million taxpayers will owe the alternative tax and by 2010, nearly 30 million taxpayers will be hit - among them, a staggering 94 percent of married filers who have children and make $75,000 to $100,000.

Big families in high-tax states - New York, New Jersey, California and Massachusetts - will bear the heaviest burden, largely because the alternative tax increasingly disallows write-offs for dependents, state income taxes and local property taxes. On average, by 2010, people who make under $100,000 and owe the alternative tax will pay an additional $1,321 in federal income taxes, while alternative tax payers who make between $100,000 and $200,000 will owe an additional $2,592.

Meanwhile, and most outrageous, only 35 percent of taxpayers who earn $1 million or more will owe the alternative tax.
•
Why does the alternative tax increasingly afflict middle-rung taxpayers for whom it was never intended, while largely ignoring the highest-end taxpayers it is meant for?
First, the alternative tax is not adjusted for inflation, so over time, more and more middle-income taxpayers find themselves owing it.

Second, and crucially important, is the interplay of the alternative tax and Mr. Bush's first-term tax cuts. When the tax cuts were enacted, no long-term corresponding changes were made to the alternative tax system - even though the administration was well aware that was a recipe for disaster. Not only will many families that thought they were in for lower income taxes wind up feeling shortchanged, some will find that the Bush tax cuts have done nothing at all to cut their taxes.

Here's why: The alternative tax applies to people whose income tax bills are low relative to their income. So as tax cuts reduce the liability on a filer's Form 1040, the alternative tax kicks in. In effect, it claws back all or part of the supposed savings from the Bush tax cuts. By 2010, the Bush tax cuts alone will cause an additional 17 million taxpayers to owe the alternative tax. By 2014, assuming the Bush tax cuts are made permanent, 40 million taxpayers will owe the alternative tax, nearly half of whom would never have faced it but for the tax cuts.

Meanwhile, the people who should be paying the alternative tax do not. Mr. Bush's administration, more than any other, has bestowed tax breaks on wealthy investors in the form of superlow rates on capital gains and dividends. But the alternative tax system - which regards deductions for property taxes or state income taxes as a kind of tax shelter - does not recognize this preferential treatment of investment income. That is a huge loophole. The alternative tax, whose very purpose is to prevent excessive sheltering, ignores the biggest tax breaks of all: special, low rates on capital gains and dividends that allow investors to avoid paying tens of billions of dollars in taxes every year.

Ever since the first round of Bush tax cuts were enacted, Congress has passed temporary relief measures to keep most middle-income taxpayers from owing the alternative tax, but the problem is becoming too big, too fast, for stopgaps to keep working. Mr. Bush, for his part, says that he wants to shield the middle class from the alternative tax and that his tax reform commission will recommend a solution when it makes its report in July.
•
But Mr. Bush needs the alternative tax - he relies on its projected revenue to mask the debilitating cost of making his tax cuts permanent. Congressional estimates say that extending them permanently will cost $281 billion in 2014. But that estimate assumes that nothing will be done to prevent the alternative tax from further burdening the middle class. If the middle class is fully protected, the cost of extending the tax cuts will mushroom to $356 billion - 27 percent higher than the official estimate. The federal budget deficit would explode.

The obvious answer is to restore the alternative tax to its true antisheltering purpose, by making inflation adjustments that will exempt the middle class once and for all and by fully taxing capital gains and dividends under the alternative system. But Congress and the administration are currently heading in precisely the wrong direction. The Bush tax breaks for investment income are scheduled to expire in 2008, but both the president and Congressional leaders are calling for extending them, at least through 2010, while proposing no corresponding long-term change in the alternative tax.
•
Bush administration officials and their antitax allies seem to believe that if taxpayers become angry enough at having to pay the alternative tax, they will throw their support behind any tax reform plan the administration puts forth. That is fomenting a crisis in order to appear to solve it. Is it too much to ask not to put the country through that kind of cynical exercise yet again?

Wash Post/ Give Bush Credit....

2005-03-08T15:41:00.000-05:00

Give Bush credit, some of his vision thing is working... from 3/8/2005 Wash Post
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Mideast Strides Lift Bush, But Challenges Remain By Peter BakerWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, March 8, 2005; Page A01 A powerful confluence of events in the Middle East in recent weeks has infused President Bush's drive to spread democracy with a burst of momentum, according to supporters and critics alike, and the president now faces the challenge of figuring out how to capitalize on it in a region long resistant to change.

Successful elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories in January have been followed by tentative changes in Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and a popular street uprising in Lebanon that toppled an unpopular government. With the encouragement of the American president, reformers across the region are applying escalating pressure on regimes to loosen their grip over autocratic societies.

The rapid pace of developments has surprised even Bush advisers and silenced or even converted some skeptics in Washington less than two months after the president opened his second term with an inaugural address setting the goal of "ending tyranny in our world." As he prepares to give another major speech today to mark the progress, Bush has been in a buoyant mood, aides said, seeing the recent moves as vindicating his expansive vision. "He feels validation," said one aide.

How much the president influenced events driven by indigenous forces on the ground remains a point of debate here and in the region. Some diplomats, analysts and intelligence officers with long experience in the region worry that the Bush team is celebrating too soon and overestimating its ability to steer the change it is helping to set loose. Reforms have been announced in the Middle East in the past only to prove hollow in reality. And the U.S. government has rarely built the sort of sustained effort that many believe will be required to ensure that genuine change takes root.

"What's happening in the Middle East is both hopeful and precarious," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who was national security adviser to President Bill Clinton. Homegrown pressure for change combined with the purple-fingered success of the Iraqi elections "have raised the heartbeat of reform in the region. It's still a very tenuous situation. There's obviously both hope and danger."

But the White House sees a chance to seize a rare opportunity, and aides said Bush plans to use today's address at the National Defense University to highlight the progress, offer praise for the steps taken so far, and gently prod Cairo and Riyadh in particular to move further to liberalize their countries.

"There is an element of snowball effect here," said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "There's now some momentum, and I think we . . . and democracies all around the world are now pushing this a little bit harder. There's a kind of virtuous cycle here, because with each success more and more people want to join, and secondly more people in the democratic world want to join the project."

The cascading images of democracy in the region have made these particularly heady days for Bush, who began talking about Middle East democracy in his first term with little evident success. Aides were thrilled with a Newsweek cover story on Lebanon's so-called Cedar Revolution headlined "People Power," followed by a secondary headline that said "Where Bush Was Right."

The debate in Washington has shifted as well. Jon Stewart, a liberal talk show host on Comedy Central, raised the idea last week that maybe Bush was right. "This is the most difficult thing for me, because I don't care for the tactics," he said, "but I've got to say I've never seen results like this ever in that region."

His guest, former Clinton national security aide Nancy Soderberg, author of a new book critical of Bush policy, generally agreed: "There is a wave of change going on, and if we can help ride it in the second term of the Bush administration, more power to them."

Still, the changes of the past few weeks will be meaningful only if they lead to more, analysts said. Saudi Arabia permitted voting by men for some seats on municipal councils, but women were barred from casting ballots and real power remains in the hands of the royal family. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would open up his reelection this year to candidates of other parties, but his government controls which parties are allowed to participate.
"We're getting ahead of ourselves," said Mara Rudman, senior vice president for strategic planning at the Center for American Progress. And the more Bush takes credit, she added, the more counterproductive it will be to genuine popular movements that do not want to be associated with Americans. "Frankly, if we really care about helping the forces of reform in the region, the best way to do it is without our fingerprints."
Lebanon remains a potent study in the complexity of the situation. Last week's popular uprising stemmed from the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, widely blamed on Syria, which occupies Lebanon. While Lebanese protesters succeeded in toppling the country's pro-Syrian government, Bush remained unsatisfied with Syrian President Bashar Assad's subsequent announcement of a gradual pullback of 15,000 troops. Aides said Bush will use today's speech to renew his demand for an immediate withdrawal of all Syrian forces and intelligence units from Lebanon.
Even if Assad were to comply, many diplomats and intelligence officers worry about what would come next. Lebanon is a complex society of multiple sects with a shaky order that could unravel in the vacuum left by a Syrian withdrawal. Various players pursue conflicting goals.
"If Bush fails to comprehend those subtle nuances, and makes the fatal mistake of arrogantly portraying a Syrian withdrawal in Lebanon as a personal triumph for himself in his 'War on Terror' and his 'Spreading Democracy' campaign -- the fruits may turn out to be very bitter indeed," Ray Close, a former CIA officer who served in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East, wrote in an analysis sent to colleagues. "We are again tampering here with a very fragile structure."

Similarly, many current and former U.S. policymakers remain wary of what would eventually replace Mubarak or the Saud family, who have been close U.S. allies over the years. Genuine democratic governments might be dominated by anti-American extremists. "This is going to take a great deal of intelligent handling," said Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and assistant secretary of state for the Near East. "We want the march to freedom to happen in the Middle East but we don't want unintended consequences where in these changes the wrong people come to power. . . . That is not a formula for stasis. On the contrary, we should continue to encourage vigorously political and economic change."

WSJ: Democrats Find Capital in Budget Deficit

2005-03-01T20:39:00.000-05:00

Democrats Find Capital in Budget Deficit
Virginia Governor Warner Sees Political GainIn Portraying Party as Fiscally Responsible
By JOHN HARWOOD and SARAH LUECK Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNALMarch 1, 2005; Page A4

RICHMOND, Va. -- The nation's governors and President Bush began hashing out their disagreements over financing Medicaid. But their chairman, Gov. Mark Warner, is looking beyond details of cost-shifting and accounting rules.

The Virginia Democrat, who heads the National Governors Association, sees the Medicaid fight as just part of a broader dollars-and-cents debate that could carry his party back to power. By presiding over a shift to record budget deficits from record surpluses, Mr. Bush has given Democrats an opportunity to make headway with a message of fiscal responsibility and straight talk, Mr. Warner says.

Democrats "have to build the case that the country's in need of a serious dose of reality," says Mr. Warner, who was at the governors' White House session with Mr. Bush yesterday. As one of several Democrats contemplating a 2008 presidential bid, Mr. Warner may try to build that case himself.

Mr. Bush's fiscal 2006 budget aims to save $60 billion over 10 years in the federal-state health-care program for the poor, in part by cracking down on state accounting procedures that he contends improperly inflate the federal share. But governors in both parties reiterated their opposition to parts of the proposal at the association's meeting in Washington.

Discussions continue today, when Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt addresses the association. But among other objections, the governors expressed doubt that the proposals would save as much money as the Bush budget advertises.

"We don't want to agree on some principles and then find out we're billions of dollars short," said Gov. Warner, who backs a bipartisan effort to overhaul Medicaid. "We want to use this window ... to do real Medicaid reform that ought not be driven by two or three weeks of the budget-reconciliation process."

Since the November elections, which gave Republicans continued control over both Congress and the White House, Democrats have focused largely on issues such as national security and values -- subjects that the opposition emphasized during the campaign.

But many Democrats say Mr. Bush's fiscal record gives them an issue on which to play offense. Though deficits have been fueled partly by the recession and war costs, Mr. Bush's tax cuts and spending have also contributed. Two years after backing a prescription-drug benefit under Medicare, the president wants to borrow about $754 billion over 10 years to finance private Social Security accounts.

Democrats don't have a track record of exploiting deficits for political gain. Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis wielded the issue unsuccessfully against Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1980s. John Kerry last year said President Bush's tough fiscal talk was "like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order." Yet on Election Day, exit polls showed, voters were slightly more inclined to trust Mr. Bush than his challenger on the economy.
Mr. Warner may be better positioned than most to make the argument. His Republican predecessor, James Gilmore, was elected on a promise to cut a Virginia automobile tax. But amid the 2001 recession, Virginia faced a budget gap exceeding $1 billion. Last year, some Republican legislators joined Mr. Warner in backing a "tax reform" plan to shore up state finances by raising about $1.5 billion in additional revenue.

The deal preserved the state's triple-A credit rating without wrecking the popularity of Mr. Warner, a former executive in the cellular-telephone industry. With Virginia the only state that still prohibits governors from seeking re-election, the end of Mr. Warner's tenure next year has him looking toward a broader audience.

He says he sees an opportunity to strike the same chord over deficits that Ross Perot did in 1992, and possibly bolster Democrats' weak support among men, who were disproportionately drawn to the charts and graphs that become Mr. Perot's trademark.

After a 2004 in which the economy grew 4.4%, the White House says that fiscal-responsibility attacks won't get Democrats far. "For a Democrat to assert that is to assert we've got to raise taxes," says Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser. He notes that Mr. Bush's adversaries lack credibility in any case, adding, "Show me a Democrat who wants to spend less."

In fact, says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, the populism that favored Mr. Perot's candidacy will more likely influence the 2008 Republican presidential primaries. Already, an online effort touting South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford says, "In the face of soaring deficits and skyrocketing federal spending, America needs a leader who can say 'No!' to Washington tax-and-spenders."

Still, Mr. Warner's Virginia was alone among the 50 states in winning an "A" rating in each of five budgeting and management categories in a recent analysis published by Governing magazine. "If [Republicans] think they have a corner on the market of fiscal responsibility they haven't studied Virginia history," says Ward Armstrong, a Democratic legislator representing south-central Virginia. Mr. Armstrong wasn't hurt by backing Mr. Warner's tax increase, he says, because "People realize you have to have your fiscal house in order."

Governors in both parties lately have sought tax increases to balance budgets pressured by Medicaid and other factors. Among them is Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who was Mr. Bush's budget director before his election in November.

Mr. Warner's work on Medicaid as NGA chairman could add a national dimension to his fiscal credentials. But the appeal of a responsibility message in 2008, Mr. Warner's pollster Geoff Garin says, will also turn on whether Mr. Bush can achieve his pledge of halving the deficit in his second term.

The governor says the administration proposed a lean federal budget for 2006, and adds "I give them credit for that." Yet he says the administration's overall performance has raised a "values" problem by failing to reconcile the costs of government services with the means to pay for them.
"It's time for somebody to be straight," the governor says. "You can't have it all for nothing."

NYT Feb 27: Republicans Are Chastened About Social Security Plan

2005-02-28T19:50:00.000-05:00

This piece, and one similar in Wash Post, talk about how the GOP didnt have a lot of success on recess at home pushing Social Security reform, private accounts, and/or spending cuts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/politics/27cong.html

one key segment...

The story was much the same throughout the country, as Republicans - some already skittish over Mr. Bush's plan - spent the week trying to assuage nervous constituents. Instead of building support for Mr. Bush's proposal to allow younger workers to divert payroll taxes into private retirement accounts, some of the events turned into fractious gripe sessions and others did not go nearly as well as their hosts had hoped.

Those listening sessions also forced Republicans to confront another reality: opposition to the spending cuts outlined in Mr. Bush's 2006 budget. The $2.57 trillion budget will dominate the Congressional agenda for the next three weeks. But instead of fighting Democrats, Republicans - many of whom campaigned on slashing spending and cutting the federal deficit - are at odds with themselves over which programs to cut and which to spare.

the Wash Post piece (i dont have link) talked about how a few key GOP people are on the verge of bending and looking for deep concessions, something Bush possibly will alude to in coming days.....

Bush Has Gov's Over Barrel

2005-02-28T19:47:00.000-05:00

from Feb 28 NYT. Bush has the govs over the barrel. Ife he makes these cuts, states may have to raise taxes. watched Sen Santorum from PA (GOP) on Meet The Press yesterday saying he'd fight Bush on this...
**********

Bush Tries to Reassure Governors on Medicaid CostsBy DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 - President Bush sought today to calm governors worried about soaring Medicaid costs, telling them that he empathizes with them and wants to work with them to find solutions.

"We want Medicaid to work," Mr. Bush told the National Governors Association at the White House. "We also recognize that the system needs to be reformed, and we want to work with you to do so."

Alluding to his days as governor of Texas, Mr. Bush said, "The governors are on the front line of Medicaid, I know full well."

The governors, in Washington for their association's winter meeting, have said they welcome the president's proposals to give states wide discretion on who gets what benefits. But they have insisted that the states cannot afford the budget cuts sought by the White House and Republican leaders in Congress.

Mr. Bush envisions cutting federal Medicaid spending by about 2 percent, or $60 billion, over the next decade. The program is financed jointly by the federal government and the states, at a cost of more than $300 billion a year. More than 50 million people with lower incomes rely upon Medicaid.

Governors and state legislators, already forced to cut back on Medicaid benefits and tighten eligibility standards, have said they need every federal dollar they can get. The states' opposition to Medicaid cutbacks has been voiced by Republicans and Democrats alike. For instance, Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican and the vice chairman of the governors association, said over the weekend that "simply cutting the Medicaid budget is unacceptable."

The governors are especially angered by President Bush's proposal to cut federal payments to the states for administrative costs of Medicaid, costs that will soon increase as a result of the new Medicare drug law, which directs the states to help the federal government identify low-income people who qualify for extra assistance with their drug costs.

Mr. Bush offered no new specifics in speaking to the governors today. Instead, he pledged to work with them on changes in Social Security, which he has put high on his agenda, as well as changed in Medicaid and Medicare.

"I'm excited about the next four years," he said. "And I know it can't be done without cooperation with the governors."

WSJ - Government Is Likely to Pay 49%Of All U.S. Health Costs by 2014

2005-02-25T19:58:00.000-05:00

from WSJ on Feb 24...

Government Is Likely to Pay 49%Of All U.S. Health Costs by 2014
By SARAH LUECK Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALFebruary 24, 2005; Page A4

Growth in health-care spending will continue to slow, but federal, state and local governments will be picking up nearly half of all U.S. health costs within a decade, a shift that largely reflects Medicare's new prescription-drug coverage, federal analysts forecast.

Government will pay 49% of health costs by 2014, up from 46% currently, according to the agency that runs Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled. The government's portion has been rising steadily, from 43% in 1980 and 38% in 1970.

"The public sector will feel more deeply the financial burden associated with supplying health-care benefits to Medicare and Medicaid enrollees," the federal analysts wrote in an article published by the journal Health Affairs.

The data underscore the strain on the nation's health-care system at a time when government officials, especially Republicans, are eager to rein in spending on public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor. Meanwhile, employers are complaining about the high cost of providing health care to workers, and individuals are paying a growing share of their own medical costs without seeing a comparable increase in their wages.
If nothing changes, "we as a society collectively might not be able to get the health care we really want," said Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

When the Medicare drug benefit begins in 2006, an estimated $67 billion in drug spending will shift to Medicare from other payers, such as private insurers and Medicaid, which now provides medications to some poor beneficiaries of Medicare. States will pay a portion of the drug costs incurred by beneficiaries who are eligible for both programs, and the federal government will pick up the tab as more Medicare beneficiaries who have been paying out-of-pocket for their medicines sign up for the new federal benefit.

Overall, the Medicare study predicts that the growth in health-care spending will continue to slow. It projected that last year's growth in health-care spending -- final numbers aren't yet available -- will increase 7.5%, down from 7.7% in 2003. By 2014 the increase is projected to be 6.7%, a much slower clip than the 9.3% peak seen between 2001 and 2002. Still, health-care spending will outpace growth in the overall economy, and by 2014, health care's share of gross domestic product is projected to be nearly 19%, up from 15% in 2003.

On the private side, health-care spending is projected to slow to 7.4% between 2003 and 2004 from a peak of 9% between 2001 and 2002. The government analysts attribute the slowdown in part to a "quiet reimposition" of managed-care tools that tamp down use of medical care, such as increased cost-sharing for patients. Private health-insurance premium growth is also expected to slow, to 7.7% in 2004 from 9.9% in 2003.

However, the strain remains for private health spending, especially in the employer-based system that covers most insured Americans. The government projects that premium growth will outpace disposable personal-income growth by 1.4 percentage points from 2004 to 2014.
The Medicare analysts emphasized that their numbers aren't certain, in part because it's difficult to predict the impact of the new Medicare drug coverage. In addition, the data are based on current law, not possible future policy changes.

The analysts say the drug benefit will cause an initial jump in prescription-drug use by Medicare beneficiaries and a minor rise in spending on medications. But the impact will be largely offset by lower drug prices, they said. The analysis assumes that savings on drugs will be 15% off retail prices when the drug benefit starts and will grow to 25% off retail over time. In 2006, the first year of the Medicare drug benefit, total spending on prescriptions is expected to grow nearly 12%. Drug-price growth, including the Medicare drug benefit, will account for 2.4 percentage points of that surge, the analysis said.

Spending on drugs is expected to represent the largest share of total out-of-pocket spending -- 24% in 2004. That means the public's attention on drug prices will likely continue. Marilyn Moon, an economist and Medicare expert at the American Institutes for Research, said that Medicare beneficiaries will see a growing share of their Social Security checks going toward Medicare premiums and deductibles. "In the long run the only way to save this program ... is to put a crowbar in our wallets and pay for it," she said.

Already, members of Congress are proposing legislation that would legalize importation of prescription drugs from other countries and give the government power to negotiate with drug makers for lower prices in Medicare.

But the problems with the health system appear bigger than those proposals. Government programs like Medicaid have been a refuge for people losing coverage from their employers. Baby boomers are going to begin entering Medicare within the next decade, and an aging population is expected to cause a rise in Medicaid's nursing-home costs. But it's unclear how the nation will proceed. "The spending spree is over, and we're going to have to face up to the cost of government one way or another," said Eugene Steuerle, a tax-policy expert at the Urban Institute.

Wash Post - Samuelson - Journalistic Malpractice

2005-02-23T19:42:00.000-05:00

good piece in Wash Post about Boomer drain..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45578-2005Feb22.html

Journalistic Malpractice
By Robert J. SamuelsonWednesday, February 23, 2005; Page A19
It's always necessary to do the math. By this I mean that journalists need to measure politicians' promises against underlying realities, as represented by numbers. But many reporters detest math. This math phobia partly explains why the media did such an abysmal job covering the debate over the Medicare drug benefit -- ignoring the program's long-term costs -- and why they're committing a similar blunder with President Bush's Social Security plan. They're missing the obvious: The plan doesn't address baby boomers' retirement costs.

Our central budget problem, as I've noted in earlier columns, is the coming spending explosion in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, driven by aging baby boomers and rising health spending. In 2004 these programs cost $965 billion, or 8.4 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2030 their costs will rise to 14 percent of GDP, or more than $1.6 trillion in today's dollars. Avoiding a (nearly) $700 billion annual increase in taxes or deficits would require comparable spending cuts in other government programs. It won't happen. The projected increase in retirement spending nearly equals all federal "discretionary spending" -- a category that includes defense, homeland security, environmental programs, national parks, scientific research and much more. We're not going to eliminate all these programs.

Once you've done this math, you recognize that benefit cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are inevitable. They're the only other way to limit massive tax increases or immense budget deficits. Moreover, the benefit cuts have to affect baby boomers, because they will be the people on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The critical period occurs from 2011 to 2029, when all baby boomers (people born from 1946 to 1964) hit 65. That's when budgetary pressures intensify. So, does the Bush Social Security plan improve the budget outlook? From all indications, the answer is "no."

Bush hasn't yet offered a detailed proposal, but he is expected to build on "Plan 2" of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, issued in December 2001. Workers could divert as much as $1,000 annually of their payroll taxes into "personal accounts" invested in stocks and bonds. Now, the CBO has evaluated Plan 2. In 2025 Plan 2 would reduce projected Social Security spending from 5.71 percent of gross domestic product to 5.27 percent of GDP, the agency estimates. This is a trivial cut of the combined spending of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The effects of switching to personal accounts and diminishing "traditional" Social Security benefits are gradual. Indeed, because Bush plans to borrow to pay for personal accounts, his plan would probably raise federal spending in 2025.

Judged by this arithmetic, Bush's Social Security program is a hoax. He's claiming to make Social Security sustainable. In 40 to 50 years, Bush's approach might work. But in the next 25 years -- when the real budget problem occurs -- it does little. Bush wants it both ways: He wants to appeal to younger voters by offering personal accounts; and he doesn't want to offend older voters (including baby boomers) by cutting their benefits. This may be smart politics, but it's lousy policy.

The public is understandably confused, and the media feed the confusion. Tackling Social Security's long-run sustainability sounds like dealing with the baby boom -- but it isn't. Generally, the media overlook the distinction. Most stories dwell on Social Security's politics and on the advantages and disadvantages of personal accounts. Journalists echo Democratic criticisms, but that's not balanced or clarifying, because the Democrats, like Bush, aren't acknowledging the unpopular choices posed by an aging baby boom generation. Reporters have to reach independent judgments, but this founders on math phobia.

The debate over the Medicare drug benefit in 2003 revealed the same failing. Bush's drug proposal had to cost a lot. In February 2003 the CBO estimated that all drug spending on people 65 and older would total $1.8 trillion from 2004 to 2013. Covering any significant share of that would raise Medicare spending sharply. Later, the CBO's director testified that the program's second decade would be much costlier than the first, because (among other reasons) more retirees would use it.

I wrote some columns reporting that the huge costs were probably underestimated. But the mainstream media mainly ignored the long-term costs. To confirm that, I reviewed stories in The Post and the New York Times, because these papers influence other media. Their emphasis was on (a) congressional politics, (b) whether Bush's benefit was too stingy and (c) whether the benefit would unduly enrich the drug companies (these last two themes reflected Democratic criticisms).

Call this journalistic malpractice. Recently both the Times and Post ran front-page stories reporting -- in tones of shock -- that the costs of the Medicare drug benefit were rising rapidly. The stories were misleading; all that had changed about the estimates is that two early years (with little spending) had been dropped and two later years (with lots of spending) had been added. If the media had reported accurately two years ago, there would be no shock today.
The malpractice continues. The disagreeable reality is that the baby boom's sheer weight will sooner or later force cuts in Social Security and Medicare. We ought to be debating them now and giving people warning. But almost everyone has a stake in denial, and the media are complicit. Personal accounts -- like them or not -- don't solve the real problem. If journalists were doing their jobs, everyone would know that.

Bush Press Conf, Includes Social Sec Questions

2005-02-18T19:39:00.000-05:00

Bush press conf Feb 17. touches on Social Security
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/print/20050217-2.html

Q Mr. President, you've made clear that Social Security reform is your top legislative priority. The top Republican leader in the House has said you cannot jam change down people's throats. And in your interviews with the regional newspapers, you made very clear that you would not rule out raising the cap on payroll taxes. If you were to do that, why would that not be seen as going back on your pledge not to raise taxes?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I -- a couple of questions there. One, I agree, you can't cram an issue down people's throats. As a matter of fact, the best way to get this issue addressed in the halls of Congress is for the American people to say, why don't we come together and do something. And so the first priority of mine is to convince the people we have a problem. And I'm going to do that a lot. As a matter of fact, I enjoy traveling the country, and I hope you do, too, because I'm going to be doing a lot of it. I fully understand, Norah, that nothing will happen if the members of Congress don't believe there's a problem that needs to be solved. And so you'll see a lot of travel.
And the problem is plain to me: You've got baby boomers getting ready to retire -- they've been promised greater benefits than the current generation, they're living longer, and there's fewer people paying into the system. And the system goes negative starting in 2018 and continues to do so. There's the problem. Nothing will happen, I repeat, unless the Congress thinks there's a problem.

Once the Congress -- once the people say to Congress, there's a problem, fix it, then I have a duty to say to members of Congress, bring forth your ideas. And I clarified a variety of ideas that people should be encouraged to bring forth, without political retribution. It used to be, in the past, people would step and say, well, here's an interesting idea, and then they would take that idea and clobber the person politically.

What I'm saying to members of Congress is that we have a problem -- come together and let's fix it, and bring your ideas forward, and I'm willing to discuss them with you. And so that's why I said what I said, and will continue to say it. And it's not -- I've got some ideas of my own. Obviously, I think personal accounts are an important part of the mix and want to continue working with members of Congress to understand the wisdom of why personal accounts makes sense for the long-term, to be a part of a long-term solution for Social Security.

Bush Draws A Line On Medicare.. Facing GOP Revolt

2005-02-13T22:57:00.000-05:00

delightful to see Bush facing GOP heat on Medicare fudging they did a year or so back -- lowered the numbers when the knew they were higher to bully GOP to pass! The below from the Feb 12 LA Times...
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Bush Draws a Line on Medicare
Sat Feb 12, 7:55 AM ET
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — In a threat aimed at preventing a Republican revolt over Medicare, President Bush warned Friday that he would veto any attempt to scale back the program's prescription drug benefit, whose costs were estimated to be much higher than many lawmakers had assumed when they approved it two years ago.

"I signed Medicare reform proudly," Bush said during a swearing-in ceremony for Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, "and any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto."

The disclosure that the Medicare drug benefit will cost taxpayers $724 billion over 10 years — not the $400 billion many lawmakers had thought — has led Republican fiscal conservatives to talk of limiting drug coverage to low-income elderly, or even of repealing the benefit before it goes into effect in 2006.

Bush's veto threat will not stop them from trying, said Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.), who is among those seeking repeal of the drug benefit. "In many respects, that kind of language is like waving a red flag in front of the bull," Gutknecht said. "On issues like prescription drugs and the budget, the bulls are running." With Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress during most of his tenure, Bush has yet to veto a bill, and he seldom issues such direct admonishments.
But Gutknecht predicted a fight over Medicare during congressional budget deliberations and a series of confrontations with the White House throughout the year over other bills that aim to make prescription drugs more affordable.

"We have got to deal with the cost of drugs," Gutknecht said. "We have got to force the drug companies to play by some set of rules that is fair to everybody." Elderly and disabled Medicare beneficiaries are supposed to begin signing up for prescription drug coverage this fall. They will get their medications through private insurance plans, but the government will subsidize the premiums.

Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers who support the drug benefit are moving ahead with two pieces of legislation that they say would help reduce costs. One would allow Medicare to negotiate bulk discounts for medications, and the other would lift restrictions on importing lower-cost drugs from Canada and other industrialized nations. Some of these countries have government controls on drug prices.

The Bush administration is opposed to both bills. The White House says private plans would be more efficient than Medicare at negotiating discounts, a conclusion shared by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. And the president has said he is concerned about the safety of drugs from abroad. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush's warning had been intended as a "general statement." "There are some who would like to undermine the reforms we've put in place to expand benefits for America's seniors and make healthcare more affordable," McClellan said. "The president was making very clear to America's seniors that we stand with you, we made a promise to you, and we're going to keep that promise."

Bush is also trying to prevent reopening a contentious Medicare debate at a time when he is trying to enact a controversial Social Security overhaul. A fight over Medicare "would torpedo any chances to do Social Security," said John Rother, the top lobbyist for the AARP, the seniors organization. "No good outcome could come from that kind of debate."

The AARP helped Bush win hard-fought passage of the Medicare prescription benefit, but it opposes his plan for private accounts under Social Security. "I think the president has a strong preference to see first how the [prescription drug] program plays out as designed, and then to make a judgment" over whether there is a need to go further to manage costs, Rother said.

McClellan said top Republican leaders would back the president. "The congressional leadership, I think, recognizes the importance of putting these reforms in place," he said of the drug benefit. The prospect of a Republican rebellion against one of Bush's top domestic policy accomplishments has arisen partly because of the awkward manner in which the administration released the Medicare numbers.

Bush's budget only hinted at the new cost estimates, and the full figures were released after media and congressional inquiries.

The main reason for what seemed like an alarming increase in costs was that the original 10-year estimate of $400 billion included two years in which the program was not yet operating, and so there were no costs for those years. The new estimate of $724 billion includes 10 years of full costs. But that explanation got lost in the outcry.

"The way in which the information was presented was confusing to people," said health
economist Marilyn Moon of the American Institutes for Research. "It looked like something had changed dramatically, and they had a credibility problem left over from the debate on the original legislation."

During the 2003 congressional debate over the Medicare drug benefit, the administration held back internal estimates that pegged the cost as higher than what congressional economists projected.

Gutknecht said the $724-billion figure shocked his colleagues in Congress: "I think every member looked at this price tag and said, 'Oh my God, what have we done?' "

GOP's Frist Says Bush's Got Work To Do....

2005-02-13T22:51:00.000-05:00

Thank goodness a GOP leader comes out and says that Bush's attempt to create a Social Security crisis with (or on) the American people isnt working...

from Bloomberg today...Feb 13, 2005
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Frist Says Bush's Social Security Proposal Has `Long Way to Go'
Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Leader Republican Bill Frist said President George W. Bush still has ``a long way to go,'' to win public backing for his proposal to revamp the Social Security program.

``I agree wholeheartedly you can't jam change down the throat of the American people,'' Frist said on ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``We need to first make sure the American people understand there's a problem, engage the American people.''

Frist is the second Republican congressional leader to suggest the president still hasn't sold the public on the idea of letting younger workers divert some of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts invested in stocks and bonds. House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois told the Chicago Tribune in an interview published yesterday that the voters won't accept the change ``unless they perceive there really is a problem.''

Bush traveled to eight states in the past two weeks -- Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Nebraska, North Dakota and Pennsylvania -- to rally support for his proposal and to argue the Social Security system faces a crisis.

Frist said that while he supports Bush's plan for personal investment account, that it is not the only way to change the program.

``There's a lot of focus on it, I believe in them, but it's not the only answer,'' Frist said.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada has led his party's critics of Bush's plan, saying it would weaken Social Security while increasing the federal deficit. Establishing private accounts will cost the government $1 trillion to $2 trillion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Bush administration said guaranteed benefits would be trimmed if the private accounts bring bigger returns.

Dramatic Changes
``Many are pushing these dramatic changes'' because the ``don't like Social Security,'' Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, said on CBS's ``Face the Nation.'' ``They want to see it come to an end as we know it.''

Democratic Representative Charles Rangel of New York said Bush doomed any chance of Social Security improvements by not working more closely with Democrats. ``Social Security reform by the president is dead and he killed it,'' Rangel said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Bush is doing what must be done by ``having a seminar with the American people'' on Social Security.

Benefit Cuts, Tax Increases
The president knows that there's problems beyond, and he knows that personal accounts will not solve the problem,'' he said on the NBC program. Grassley said he expects the final legislation will include private accounts, some benefit reductions and tax increases.

Republican Senator Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, said that the president made his case and convinced 75 percent of Americans there were problems with Social Security. ``For $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion we can save up to $11 trillion in long-term liabilities,'' Santorum said on ``Face the Nation.'' ``That's a good investment.'' According to Bush, Social Security faces a $200 billion shortfall by 2027 and bankruptcy by 2042. The entitlement program was designed in the Great Depression to provide retired workers with financial security.

Republican lawmakers considered other Social Security reforms today besides the private accounts, including raising the minimum retirement age.

See This? 'Fake" Reporter....

2005-02-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

Just another case of GOP media rigging....from CNN website the other day...
link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/09/white.house.reporter/

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White House reporter's credentials questioned.
Man worked for Web site owned by Republican activist

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A New York congresswoman asked the White House to explain Wednesday why a man who worked for a news Web site owned by a GOP activist was able to obtain White House press credentials under an assumed name.

James Guckert, who reported from the White House for the Talon News Service under the name "Jeff Gannon," announced he was quitting the business "in consideration of the welfare of me and my family."

"Because of the attention being paid to me, I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News," he said in a statement posted Wednesday on his Web site.
In a letter to President Bush, Rep. Louise Slaughter, a Democrat, questioned why Guckert routinely received credentials for White House news briefings.

Slaughter linked Guckert's case to recent revelations that two conservative columnists who supported Bush administration policies had received government money. "It appears that 'Mr. Gannon's' presence in the White House press corps was merely as a tool of propaganda for your administration," Slaughter wrote. The White House had no comment.

The House and Senate press galleries declined Guckert's request for credentials in 2003.
Julie Davis, chairwoman of the Senate press gallery's executive committee, said Guckert could not demonstrate any separation between Talon News and GOPUSA, a Republican consulting group.

Both organizations are run by Bobby Eberle, a Texas GOP activist. Many Talon News articles also appeared as news releases on the GOPUSA Web site, said Davis, a reporter for The Sun newspaper of Baltimore, Maryland. In a statement on the Talon Web site, Eberle referred to "Gannon's" resignation and said, "I understand and support Jeff's decision." Slaughter said she was writing at the request of senior editors of the Niagara Falls Reporter in her Buffalo-area district.

The newspaper ran an open letter questioning "how a partisan political organization and an individual with no credentials as a reporter -- and apparently operating under an assumed name -- landed a coveted spot in the White House press corps."

During White House press secretary Scott McClellan's regular briefings, Guckert routinely offered administration-friendly questions. He became the focus of liberal and media Web sites after Bush called on him during his news conference January 26.

Guckert asked Bush how he could deal with Democratic congressional leaders "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

Guckert told The Washington Post in an article published Tuesday that his political leanings were "admittedly" conservative "and that point of view is not represented in the briefing room at all." "Call me partisan, fine, but don't let my colleagues off the hook," he said. "They're partisan too, but they don't admit it." Slaughter said ideology had nothing to do with the dispute. "It doesn't matter whether he's a conservative reporter. The question is, is he a reporter?" she said.

She told CNN that she believed the White House gave Guckert credentials to get a friendly questioner into the room during White House briefings. "I don't want to be fed propaganda from this White House," she said. "I don't want people to be paid to give it to me. We deserve the facts, or this democracy will suffer."

Last month, conservative commentator Armstrong Williams apologized for not disclosing that his company had received $240,000 from a public relations agency hired by the Department of Education to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind education overhaul.

Syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher also apologized to her readers for not disclosing a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help create materials used to promote Bush's $300 million initiative encouraging marriage to strengthen families.

At the January 26 news conference, Bush said he disapproved of such practices and wanted them to stop. "There needs to be independence," he said.

"All our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying ... commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet," Bush said. (Full story)
HHS later disclosed that a third conservative columnist, Mike McManus, had received $10,000 to promote Bush's marriage initiative, according to an Associated Press report. His weekly column appears in about 50 newspapers.

Several congressional Democrats have introduced a bill to stop what they termed taxpayer-funded "covert propaganda campaigns" that violate a provision included in annual appropriation acts since 1951.

Under the new bill, dubbed the Federal Propaganda Prohibition Act of 2005, the prohibition on propaganda would become a permanent part of federal law.

Federal agencies would also have to notify Congress about public relations, advertising and polling contracts, and the funding sources of all federally funded public relations materials would have to be disclosed.

Outsourcing Torture. Torture, American Style

2005-02-13T22:38:00.000-05:00

In the current issue of the New Yorker, Jane Mayer writes "Outsourcing torture. The battle over “extraordinary rendition". An excellent piece about how the US dodged the Geneva Conven torture guidelines after 9/11. I dont have that piece electronically, but the piece on this week from NY Times Bob Herbert does a good job capturing a key segment. I've argued with some right-wing friends about the torture stuff, and they see it like a non-event. Amazing, and they also have gulped down the Gonzalez/Yoo stuff that after 9/11 the rules changed. I hear, but I dont agree with them. I, like others, have been amazed that this topic (and the stuff at Gitmo and ABU GHRAIB) didnt get more traction in media. Bullied by the WH to stay away? Un patriotic to question a sitting president ("at war".....)? Baffling......
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Torture, American Style
By BOB HERBERT
aher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was in the process of changing planes.
Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane Mayer tells us in a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, he "was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet."

In an instant, Mr. Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare, courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with him from Kennedy "flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan."
Any rights Mr. Arar might have thought he had, either as a Canadian citizen or a human being, had been left behind. At times during the trip, Mr. Arar heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of "the Special Removal Unit." He was being taken, on the orders of the U.S. government, to Syria, where he would be tortured.

The title of Ms. Mayer's article is "Outsourcing Torture." It's a detailed account of the frightening and extremely secretive U.S. program known as "extraordinary rendition."
This is one of the great euphemisms of our time. Extraordinary rendition is the name that's been given to the policy of seizing individuals without even the semblance of due process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to practice torture. In terms of bad behavior, it stands side by side with contract killings.

Our henchmen in places like Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Jordan are torturing terror suspects at the behest of a nation - the United States - that just went through a national election in which the issue of moral values was supposed to have been decisive. How in the world did we become a country in which gays' getting married is considered an abomination, but torture is O.K.?

As Ms. Mayer pointed out: "Terrorism suspects in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East have often been abducted by hooded or masked American agents, then forced onto a Gulfstream V jet, like the one described by Arar. ... Upon arriving in foreign countries, rendered suspects often vanish. Detainees are not provided with lawyers, and many families are not informed of their whereabouts."

Mr. Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist.
"Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say," Ms. Mayer wrote.

The confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported back to the United States that they could find no links between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being charged and is now back in Canada.

Barbara Olshansky is the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Mr. Arar in a lawsuit against the U.S. I asked her to describe Mr. Arar's physical and emotional state following his release from custody.

She sounded shaken by the memory. "He's not a big guy," she said. "He had lost more than 40 pounds. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes were sunken. He looked like someone who was kind of dead inside."

Any government that commits, condones, promotes or fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to raise their voices against something as clearly evil as torture are enablers, if not collaborators.

There is a widespread but mistaken notion in the U.S. that everybody seized by the government in its so-called war on terror is in fact somehow connected to terrorist activity. That is just wildly wrong.

Tony Blair knows a little about that sort of thing. Just two days ago the British prime minister formally apologized to 11 people who were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for bombings in England by the Irish Republican Army three decades ago.

Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It's wrong. And nothing good can come from it.

The Revolution That Wasn't

2005-02-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

really good piece in today's NYT reminding about how the GOP is for ever expanding government bodies, monies, budgets, and that WH hasnt vetoed a thing. Far cry from what Newt and crew were up to in 1994....I like how Newt has called W to the mat a few times in recent months, which may be part ploy around his new book, or a 2008 run. Either way, it's nice to hear a Republican sound off.. And yes, you too Pat Buchanan get a prize too...

link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/weekinreview/13stolb.html
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CUT SHORT
The Revolution That Wasn't
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — If the history of the Republican revolution were being written today, a single overarching question would have to be answered: Whatever happened to the promise of smaller government?

That question was asked again last week, when President Bush unveiled a $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, the largest in the nation's history. The cuts he called for, in areas like veterans' medical care, farm subsidies and vocational training, were met in Washington with doubts that they would ever get through the Republican Congress. "Republicans have lost their way," lamented Newt Gingrich, the government-slashing firebrand of a decade ago.

In 1995, a band of 73 freshman Republicans swept into the House of Representatives, with Mr. Gingrich as their speaker. Flush with ideological zeal and determined to get government off the backs of the people, as Ronald Reagan would say, they pushed through a budget resolution that called for eliminating scores of programs and three federal departments. Their fervor was so politically potent that in 1996, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, declared, "The era of big government is over."

Yet government has only grown. The Cato Institute, a libertarian research institution, says overall federal spending has increased twice as fast under Mr. Bush as under Mr. Clinton. At the same time, the federal deficit is projected to hit a record high of $427 billion this year.
These trends seem likely to continue. The White House estimated last week that the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries, originally projected at $400 billion from 2004 to 2013, would, in fact, be $724 billion from 2006 to 2015. Republicans called for scaling back the benefit, but on Friday, Mr. Bush said no and vowed to veto any changes to the Medicare bill.
"The era of big government being over is over," declared Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist Democratic research organization. That would certainly seem to be borne out in the record of the Republican revolutionaries, known as the "Class of 1994" for the year they were elected. Of the 30 who are still in the House of Representatives, 28 hsponsored bills in the last Congress that would have increased government spending overall, according to the National Taxpayers Union, an antitax group.

Some of the expansion in government was beyond their control. One big reason for the rise in spending is the growth of mandatory entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Another is the administration's "war on terror"; the government has added an entire new agency, the Department of Homeland Security, since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has spent many billions in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Those were legitimate reasons for more expansive spending," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota. "But we can no longer hide behind that."

Republicans like Mr. Thune say they are pleased that Mr. Bush's budget calls for cutting or eliminating 150 programs, and they applaud his promise to cut the deficit in half within five years. Yet the old Gingrich revolutionaries have lowered their battle cry to a whimper; instead of demanding that federal agencies be put out of business, they are fighting among themselves over small-bore questions of what to cut and what to keep. "The Gingrich revolution was about system change," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a member of the Class of 1994. "Now we're in the weeds of government, this program and that program, and we've lost the big picture."

To most Americans, the federal budget, more than 2,000 pages of fine print, is hard to grasp; it isn't easy to summon a mental image of $2.57 trillion. One way to look at it is to consider how much the government spends per household. In the 1990's, the figure held steady at about $18,000, according to Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst for the Heritage Foundation. But last year, it exceeded $20,000, adjusted for inflation, the highest amount since World War II. But the government only takes in $17,000 for each household. "So right there," Mr. Reidl said, "we're borrowing $3,000 per household."

Mr. Riedl says the Republicans lost their zeal for spending cuts after 1995, when Congress forced a government shutdown over a budget impasse with President Clinton. The effort came off as mean-spirited and petty, and Republicans took the blame.

For Mr. Gingrich, the architect of the shutdown, the costs were especially high. He left government soon after, a reminder of how much easier it is to be a revolutionary than to govern. "Ever since the government shutdown was determined to be a political loser for Republicans," Mr. Riedl said, "they have been tentative to take on spending." By 1998, they didn't have to. That was the year Mr. Clinton and Congress balanced the budget. Without a deficit to rail against, conservatives had little reason to call for spending cuts. And with the budget in surplus, they learned what the Democrats, who had ruled the House for 40 years without interruption, had long known: constituents reward lawmakers who bring federal money home.

"Too many people started to believe that the surest path to re-election is to spend money rather than cut government," says Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican. "The material that comes from the Republican caucus is not to call for the elimination of this program or that, it's to brag that we have increased the budget for education by 144 percent."

That is not surprising, says Mr. Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council. "Yesterday's revolutionaries are today's pragmatic politicians," he said. "It's a classic tale of any revolution. They start out as revolutionaries wanting to storm the Bastille and the end up as 'All the King's Men.' " There are still revolutionaries out there. Mr. Gingrich, for one, still advocates "very large-scale change."

Mr. Bush's budget, for instance, proposes cuts only in so-called nondefense discretionary spending. A very small slice of the budget pie, roughly one-sixth of the total, is devoted neither to the military nor to the entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Until Congress overhauls these and other entitlements, Mr. Gingrich says, spending will never be brought into line, and many of his former disciples agree. "We need to be braver when it comes to putting the reforms of entitlements on the table," said Mr. Graham, the South Carolina senator. The Medicare prescription drug bill, Mr. Graham said, "was a reform that included new goodies. We need to put some reforms on the table that require sacrifice. That's the Republican Party I miss."

With President Bush asking Congress to overhaul another entitlement program - Social Security - it may be difficult for lawmakers to find the energy and time to do as Mr. Graham suggests.

Still, Republicans say they sense a new budget-cutting fervor on Capitol Hill. Some conservatives whose arms were twisted by their leaders to vote in favor of the Medicare prescription drug bill are vowing, "Never again."

Last week, Representative Jim Nussle, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, warned that Mr. Bush should be prepared to use his veto power, something he has not done since he became president, to enforce spending limits.

To former Gingrich revolutionaries like Representative Sue Myrick, Republican of South Carolina, that was good news.

"We haven't given up," said Ms. Myrick, who is one of the two representatives from the Class of 1994 who has continued to sponsor bills that would result in lower government spending (the other is Steve Chabot of Ohio). "I'm more encouraged this year than I've been since 1994."
Mr. Flake, the Arizona Congressman, said the future of his party hinges on the revolution's revival. "If voters want bigger government," he warned, "then sooner or later they'll return to the genuine article, and that's the Democrats."

No Mullah Left Behind...The president's priorities are totally nuts.

2005-02-13T22:28:00.000-05:00

excellent piece from Friedman today..
link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/opinion/13friedman.html?

OP-ED COLUMNIST
No Mullah Left Behind By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The Wall Street Journal ran a very, very alarming article from Iran on its front page last Tuesday. The article explained how the mullahs in Tehran - who are now swimming in cash thanks to soaring oil prices - rather than begging foreign investors to come into Iran, are now shunning some of them. The article related how a Turkish mobile-phone operator, which had signed a deal with the Iranian government to launch Iran's first privately owned cellphone network, had the contract frozen by the mullahs in the Iranian Parliament because they were worried it might help the Turks and their foreign partners spy on Iran.

The Journal quoted Ali Ansari, an Iran specialist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, as saying that for 10 years analysts had been writing about Iran's need for economic reform. "In actual fact, the scenario is worse now," said Mr. Ansari. "They have all this money with the high oil price, and they don't need to do anything about reforming the economy." Indeed, The Journal added, the conservative mullahs are feeling even more emboldened to argue that with high oil prices, Iran doesn't need Western investment capital and should feel "free to pursue its nuclear power program without interference."

This is a perfect example of the Bush energy policy at work, and the Bush energy policy is: "No Mullah Left Behind."

By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax on American drivers, or to demand increased mileage from Detroit's automakers, or to develop a crash program for renewable sources of energy, the Bush team is - as others have noted - financing both sides of the war on terrorism. We are financing the U.S. armed forces with our tax dollars, and, through our profligate use of energy, we are generating huge windfall profits for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, where the cash is used to insulate the regimes from any pressure to open up their economies, liberate their women or modernize their schools, and where it ends up instead financing madrassas, mosques and militants fundamentally opposed to the progressive, pluralistic agenda America is trying to promote. Now how smart is that?

The neocon strategy may have been necessary to trigger reform in Iraq and the wider Arab world, but it will not be sufficient unless it is followed up by what I call a "geo-green" strategy.
As a geo-green, I believe that combining environmentalism and geopolitics is the most moral and realistic strategy the U.S. could pursue today. Imagine if President Bush used his bully pulpit and political capital to focus the nation on sharply lowering energy consumption and embracing a gasoline tax.

What would that buy? It would buy reform in some of the worst regimes in the world, from Tehran to Moscow. It would reduce the chances that the U.S. and China are going to have a global struggle over oil - which is where we are heading. It would help us to strengthen the dollar and reduce the current account deficit by importing less crude. It would reduce climate change more than anything in Kyoto. It would significantly improve America's standing in the world by making us good global citizens. It would shrink the budget deficit. It would reduce our dependence on the Saudis so we could tell them the truth. (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.) And it would pull China away from its drift into supporting some of the worst governments in the world, like Sudan's, because it needs their oil. Most important, making energy independence our generation's moon shot could help inspire more young people to go into science and engineering, which we desperately need.

Sadly, the Bush team won't even consider this. It prefers cruise missiles to cruise controls. We need a grass-roots movement. Where are college kids these days? I would like to see every campus in America demand that its board of trustees disinvest from every U.S. auto company until they improve their mileage standards. Every college town needs to declare itself a "Hummer-free zone." You want to drive a gas-guzzling Humvee? Go to Iraq, not our campus. And an idea from my wife, Ann: free parking anywhere in America for anyone driving a hybrid car.

But no, President Bush has a better project: borrowing another trillion dollars, which will make us that much more dependent on countries like China and Saudi Arabia that hold our debt - so that you might, if you do everything right and live long enough, get a few more bucks out of your Social Security account.

The president's priorities are totally nuts.

Sorry ;-(

2005-02-13T22:12:00.000-05:00

Sorry for not updating past few weeks. Been traveling and sick, and hence not reading as much as much as I've should. Main themes from the WH of late have been the State of the Union (zzzz...), the Budget (largest in history, cuts on domestic spending, not revenue hikes), no comment yet about the "outsourcing of terror" (New Yorker piece, also summed in NY Times by Hebert), Social Security Reform, Tax Reform, the Bush Medicare no-waver (he wont waver despite the cost estimate the fudged in 2004 to get it passed).... etc... anyway, plenty of material and I will try to post some later... -Peter

Some Thoughts Re Social Security

2005-01-23T20:55:00.000-05:00

I for one get confused with some of things going on in the Social Security Reform battle. I understand, but don't agree with, the anti-New Deal approach of the Bush Admin and to their effort to push the "ownership society". I too agree that the need is there to reform this AND OTHER entitlement programs, but how?

Social Security is not an immediate disaster as the Bush camp portrays -- I agree with the analogy out there that they are playing this like the Iraq pre-war. Create a crisis, push forward. But Social Security has more cash than expenses for quite some time into the futures. Everyone knows that, BUT Bush camp doesnt want that message out. Ditto with the possible solutions; raise the ceiling on payroll tax, cut benefits, indexing wages/benefits. Nope, Bush camp doesnt want to raise taxes or cut expenses.

Fine. So is the answer to "privatize" and create personal accounts? Some say that personal accounts (ie Bill Thomas, House Ways & Means, a Republican powerman) will not solve the problem. I think personal accounts are a great idea -- we need to get savings up in America, altho based on the numbers of people who use/max out their 401ks, maybe we just cant get people to save for the long-term.

So why link Social Security with private accounts? I'm not sure. Wrestling with this...

ECONOMIST: Lexington. The return of the Newt

2005-01-21T18:49:00.000-05:00

Also from this week's Economist, a piece which shows how lots of conservatives are irked with how Bush has backpedaled from some of the things Newt Gingrich pushed. Here's a quote:

"But if conservatives are inspired by Mr Bush's second-term agenda, they are also dismayed by what has been happening to their party. Mr Gingrich rose to power promising smaller government and a cleaner Congress. In his first term, Mr Bush delivered bigger, dirtier government, spending more money than Mr Clinton did. The Department of Education (which Mr Gingrich promised to abolish) has so much cash swilling around that it can afford to pay a conservative pundit, Armstrong Williams, $240,000 to promote an education bill that he would have promoted for nothing. And the Republicans are every bit as corrupt and pork-addicted as the Democrats they replaced. They even contemplated weakening Congress's ethics code in order to protect their ethically-challenged leader, Tom DeLay. "

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3577171

ECONOMIST: Seeking freedom, at home and abroad

2005-01-21T18:47:00.000-05:00

from this week's economist magazine

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3594021
GEORGE BUSH’S favourite word is not hard to guess. “Free” or “freedom” appeared 34 times in his 15-minute second inaugural speech on Thursday January 20th. Most of the instances were devoted to Mr Bush's goal of expanding freedom around the world as a means of fighting the desperation that leads to terrorism. But the president also has a vision of completing “the unfinished work of American freedom”. For him, this means a society that gives every citizen “a stake in the promise and future of our country”. It sounds like anodyne stuff, but it has a very specific meaning. In his second term, the president will attempt a radical transformation of some of the mainstays of the American economy, in particular the tax code and the pension system.

American presidents’ second terms tend to end up tarred by scandal: think of Richard Nixon and Watergate, Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. It is not obvious which kind of scandal, if any, might befall George Bush in his second stint as leader of the free world. But nor does this mean it will be easy. Second-termers, despite nominally having four years to get the job done, actually have little time to push through their agenda—within a year, Congress is looking to its mid-term elections, knowing that presidential coat-tails can no longer carry them. This could make the legislature less pliable to Mr Bush’s will than it was in his first term, when he had little trouble passing his bills and saw fit to veto not a single one emanating from Capitol Hill. A new prescription-drug benefit for Medicare, the health-care plan for pensioners, was especially costly.

And that forbearance with the veto has given Mr Bush a second problem. His inability or unwillingness to scrap a spending programme here or there helped push the budget deficit to an estimated $422 billion in 2004, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The war in Iraq remains a big drain on the public coffers, and administration officials—including Condoleezza Rice, the incoming secretary of state, in her confirmation hearings this week—have steadfastly refused to offer any timetable for pulling out American forces. But September 11th and the war in Iraq do not give Mr Bush a blanket excuse for the red ink: discretionary spending on things other than defence grew faster in his first years as president than it had in Mr Clinton’s last years in office.

So the fiscal squeeze will make it hard for Mr Bush to achieve his two biggest goals: reforming the tax code and introducing private accounts into Social Security, the federal pensions programme. Overhauling Social Security will incur big transition costs, even if the move to private accounts is eventually successful. Reforming the tax system need not, in principle, make the deficit worse. But if Mr Bush simplifies the tax code (which is politically popular) he will also have to broaden the tax base (which is not).

The prospects for Social Security reform depend on who wins the communications war. The president and his allies have sought to portray the pensions scheme as being in crisis, running soon into pools of red ink that will force a rise in the retirement age or cuts in benefits. This has meant exaggerating the immediacy of the problem—the system’s inflows will not fall short of its payments until 2018. But Mr Bush is right to point out that the programme is on an unsustainable path. To balance the scary talk of a crisis, his team has come up with the sunny phrase “ownership society”. Giving Americans a personal account in which they can invest part of their own payroll taxes will give them a sense of control over their retirement.

The Democrats will have their own communications strategy. In particular, they will raise the spectre of cuts in guaranteed benefits: if the contributions of the young are siphoned off into private accounts, there is no way to promise current levels of benefits to the old without actually making the deficit worse. And the Democrats have experience in demagoguery on entitlement cuts. In the late 1990s, they successfully painted the Republican Congress’s plans to slow Medicare growth as throwing Granny out of her wheelchair. Now, the Democrats will say, the Republicans want to snatch the pension from her purse, too.

Despite the risks, Mr Bush will move early and forcefully on Social Security. Less clear are the prospects for reform of the tax code. Breathless conservatives around him want to increase America’s dismal savings rate by shifting the tax burden from investment income to consumption. But such a radical overhaul is unlikely, especially if Mr Bush has already expended a great deal of political capital on Social Security.

Instead, the president is likely to focus on making his first-term tax cuts permanent and introducing some other changes at the margin. One would be to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), originally devised to keep the rich from finding too many loopholes, but now hitting many upper-middle income families. Killing the AMT will require finding money elsewhere. Mr Bush says he wants to cut other deductions and loopholes—such as the deduction of state income taxes from federally taxable income. But each loophole has a vocal constituency, both in Congress and among voters.

Mr Bush may feel a wind at his back thanks to his re-election. But he has set himself mammoth tasks. He begins his second term with the lowest approval rating of any re-elected president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1957. Blood is still being shed in Iraq, and America could find itself confronting serious new threats in Iran and elsewhere (see article). To make a Reaganesque mark on domestic policy, Mr Bush will need more than political capital. He will need a great deal of luck.

Peggy Noonan. Way Too Much God

2005-01-21T10:33:00.000-05:00

still digesting the Inauguration reading, but if Peggy Noonan can complain in WSJ today, then clearly W went a bit too far? Here is exerpt from Noonan piece.:
**************
The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.

A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.

No one will remember what the president said about domestic policy, which was the subject of the last third of the text. This may prove to have been a miscalculation.
It was a foreign-policy speech. To the extent our foreign policy is marked by a division that has been (crudely but serviceably) defined as a division between moralists and realists--the moralists taken with a romantic longing to carry democracy and justice to foreign fields, the realists motivated by what might be called cynicism and an acknowledgment of the limits of governmental power--President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise. But he did it in a way that left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance.

The administration's approach to history is at odds with what has been described by a communications adviser to the president as the "reality-based community." A dumb phrase, but not a dumb thought: He meant that the administration sees history as dynamic and changeable, not static and impervious to redirection or improvement. That is the Bush administration way, and it happens to be realistic: History is dynamic and changeable. On the other hand, some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government.

This world is not heaven.
The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."

It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people."

The speech did not deal with specifics--9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."
Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

There were moments of eloquence: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery." And, to the young people of our country, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." They have, since 9/11, seen exactly that.

And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

Bush Inaugural Address, Jan 20, 2005

2005-01-20T22:44:00.000-05:00

lot's made of this speech. no mention of iraq, lots of dwelling on God, and domestic policy plans lost a bit amidst the foreign policy mission. ambitious for sure. lots to chew on.

President Sworn-In to Second Term
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050120-1.html

NYT. Rich. All The President's Newsmen

2005-01-18T22:47:00.000-05:00

surprised? this isnt totally comforting....

*************
FRANK RICH
All the President's Newsmen
ONE day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.
This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.

I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.

On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.

But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."

"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn't have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host's disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."

Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose - until others in the press called him on it - that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans' anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery's owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak's "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.

That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television's self-proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.

Mr. Williams has repeatedly said in his damage-control press appearances that he was being paid the $240,000 only to promote No Child Left Behind. He also routinely says that he made the mistake of taking the payola because he wasn't part of the "media elite" and therefore didn't know "the rules and guidelines" of journalistic conflict-of-interest. His own public record tells us another story entirely. While on the administration payroll he was not only a cheerleader for No Child Left Behind but also for President Bush's Iraq policy and his performance in the presidential debates. And for a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.

He took to CNN last October to give his own critique of the CBS News scandal, pointing out that the producer of the Bush-National Guard story, Mary Mapes, was guilty of a conflict of interest because she introduced her source, the anti-Bush partisan Bill Burkett, to a Kerry campaign operative, Joe Lockhart. In this Mr. Williams's judgment was correct, but grave as Ms. Mapes's infraction was, it isn't quite in the same league as receiving $240,000 from the United States Treasury to propagandize for the Bush campaign on camera. Mr. Williams also appeared with Alan Murray on CNBC to trash Kitty Kelley's book on the Bush family, on CNN to accuse the media of being Michael Moore's "p.r. machine" and on Tina Brown's CNBC talk show to lambaste Mr. Stewart for doing a "puff interview" with John Kerry on "The Daily Show" (which Mr. Williams, unsurprisingly, seems to think is a real, not a fake, news program).

But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."

This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.)

Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.
Ever since Mr. Williams was exposed by USA Today, he has been stonewalling all questions about what the Bush administration knew of his activities and when it knew it. In his account, he was merely a lowly "subcontractor" of the education department. "Never was the White House ever mentioned anytime during this," he told NBC's Campbell Brown, as if that were enough to deflect Ms. Brown's observation that "the Department of Education works for the White House."

For its part, the White House is saying that the whole affair is, in the words of the press secretary, Scott McClellan, "a contracting matter" and "a decision by the Department of Education." In other words, the buck stops (or started) with Rod Paige, the elusive outgoing education secretary who often appeared with Mr. Williams in his pay-for-play propaganda.
But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration's Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers' money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.

Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire - it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.

If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source

More on Social Security. New Yorker

2005-01-18T22:43:00.000-05:00

Not bad piece from New Yorker, on how W & co are working to scare up crisis on Social Security. I have to say, that I'm still sorting through the whole debate, but found this of help.

COMMENT
UNSOCIAL INSECURITY
by Hendrik Hertzberg
Issue of 2005-01-24Posted 2005-01-17
The Administration’s campaign to do something about, or to, Social Security will get its prime-time launch next month in the State of the Union extravaganza, but President Bush is already busy softening up the battlefield. Last week, he granted his first newspaper interview since the election, to the Wall Street Journal, the parish bulletin of the nonevangelical wing of his political base. The first question was about his agenda for Social Security, and whether he would just be laying out general principles and leaving the details to Congress. “No, not necessarily so,” he said, adding:

That’s part of—that’s part of the advice my new National Economic Council head will be giving me as to whether or not we need to—here is the plan, or here is an idea for a plan, or why don’t you just fix it. I suspect given my nature, I’ll want to be—the White House will be very much involved with—I have an obligation to lead on this issue—I think this will be an administrative-driven idea—to take it on. And therefore, that that be the case, I have the responsibility to provide the political cover necessary for members, I have the responsibility to make the case if there is a problem, and I have the responsibility to lay out potential solutions. Now, to the specificity of which, we’ll find out—you’ll find out with time.

Even a professional actuary might have trouble parsing that one. But the initial thrust of the Bush approach—as laid out in his own comments, in speeches and memos by various assistants, and in material put out by groups such as the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security—is clear enough. It has two big themes. First, Social Security is in crisis, running out of money, about to go bankrupt unless something drastic is done. Second, privatization—eliminating part of Social Security and replacing it with a system of individual private investment accounts financed from a portion of workers’ payroll taxes—is somehow the key to avoiding the catastrophe, and is also a fine thing in its own right.

“This is one of my charges, is to explain to Congress as clearly as I can: the crisis is now,” Bush proclaimed at an “economic summit” a month ago. He does indeed have some ’splaining to do. This year, the Social Security system—the payroll tax, which brings money in, and the pension program, which sends money out—will bring in about $180 billion more than it sends out. It will go on bringing in more than it sends out until 2028, at which point it will begin to draw on the $3.5 trillion surplus it will by then have accumulated. The surplus runs out in 2042, right around the time George W. Bush turns ninety-six. After that, even if nothing has changed, the system’s income will continue to cover seventy-three per cent of its outgo.

That’s using the Social Security Administration’s economic and demographic assumptions, which are habitually pessimistic. Using the assumptions of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the surplus runs out in 2052. And if one uses the economic growth assumptions that Bush’s own budget office uses when it calculates the effects of his own tax cuts, the surplus runs out in—er, maybe never.

The “crisis,” therefore, is not “now.” It’s as bogus as the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security—which, in reality, is an “astroturf,” or fake-grassroots, front for the National Association of Manufacturers. There is no Social Security crisis, and there is not likely to be one. At some point over the next couple of decades, of course, some adjustments will have to be made. There are many reasonable possibilities: a modest rise in the retirement age, to reflect increases in health and longevity; a rise in the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax, which now cuts out at ninety thousand dollars a year; adding a bit to the progressivity of the benefits. One can even imagine a national decision to devote a larger proportion of national resources to the care of the old, given that a larger proportion of the population will be old—preferably to be paid for by taxing something we’d like to see less of (like fossil-fuel consumption) instead of something we’d like to see more of (like jobs).

Administration spokesmen have been suggesting that privatization will solve Social Security’s future financing problems. They’re fibbing, though. The much-hyped “crisis” looks suspiciously like the Social Security equivalent of W.M.D.s. This time, though, we have better intelligence. “White House officials privately concede,” the Times reported last week, “that the centerpiece of Mr. Bush’s approach to Social Security—letting people invest some of their payroll taxes in private accounts—would do nothing in itself to eliminate the long-term gap.” The Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker, agrees. “The creation of private accounts for Social Security,” he said in a speech last month, “will not deal with the solvency and sustainability of the Social Security fund.” The solvency and sustainability of Social Security, when and if it requires shoring up, will have to be dealt with the old-fashioned way: by increasing revenue and/or reducing guaranteed benefits.

The cynical, or maybe just the political, interpretation of the rush to privatization is that private accounts would, as David Brooks, the Times’ freshman columnist, wrote the other day, “create Republicans. People who have them will start thinking like investors.” (They won’t actually be investors, not in any meaningful sense—they’ll still be workers for hire. But, come election time, they’ll take their cue from the Dow, not from wage scales or income gaps or the unemployment rate.) The really cynical explanation is that privatization is a nice, clean way to transfer gigantic sums to Wall Street brokerage houses.

A third explanation—and, who knows, maybe a more accurate one—is that the true impetus to privatization is ideological. To say that is not to say, “How awful!” It’s actually a compliment. Ideology is less depraved than crude self-interest, even when it gets you to the same place. And one person’s ideology is another person’s “values.” The values behind Social Security privatization are not terrible. It is good to save. It is good to be self-reliant. It is good to plan ahead. It is good to be the little pig who builds his house of brick rather than straw.

But it’s not as if these values were not being taught in hundreds of other ways in our lives. And there are other values, too—values that are suggested by the words “social” and “security.” Yes, self-reliance is good; but solidarity is good, too. Looking after yourself is good, but making a firm social decision to banish indigence among the old is also good. Market discipline is good, but it is also good for there to be places where the tyranny of winning and losing does not dominate. Individual choice is good. But making the well-being of the old dependent on the luck or skill of their stock picks or mutual-fund choices is not so good. The idea behind Social Security is not just that old folks should be entitled to comfort regardless of their personal merits. It is that none of us, of any age, should be obliged to live in a society where minimal dignity and the minimal decencies are denied to any of our fellow-citizens at the end of life. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house”—that’s a good admonition to keep in mind when making social policy. But so is “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

Economist/Bush 2005. Radical And Must Follow Through

2005-01-14T08:40:00.000-05:00

** not a bad piece from today's Economist, reminding how aggressive the Bush team is and how much work they have to do.

***********

NEXT week, a familiar ceremony will take place in Washington, DC: a crowded Mall, a huddle of grey overcoats, the oath of office, idealistic promises fluttering through the frosty air—while, off-stage, those bold words are undermined by the first compromises between the new administration and congressional power-brokers. Inaugurations represent both the summit of American politics and the moment when every presidency starts to lose its magic. With second-term presidencies, the collision with reality is often rapid. Congress's mind is already half on the mid-term elections in two years' time—and after that the president is a lame duck.

George Bush deserves credit for his determination to buck this trend. In an era when most politicians pursue office for the office's sake, America—and by extension the world—is led by a man who genuinely wants to change things. After a momentous first term, which saw, among other things, one of the largest tax cuts in history, the biggest shake up of American schools for a generation, a foreign-policy revolution, the transformation of the armed forces, two wars and the re-consolidation of executive power, Mr Bush wants more. Much more.

This time, the main focus of change is supposed to be at home (see article). The noisiest battle probably awaits a vacancy on the Supreme Court: with several justices ailing, Mr Bush has the chance to “conservatise” the nation's highest court. But Mr Bush is also embarking on a Republican New Deal: he wants to privatise a part of the pensions system (and ultimately part of the health-care system too), simplify the tax system and create what he calls an “ownership society”. Oh, and he also has courageous ideas to reform America's much-abused tort system and to deal with illegal immigration.

As if this were not enough, there is foreign policy to consider. It is not just a question of the elections in Iraq, essential though it is for those to go ahead on time (see article); throughout the campaign, Mr Bush never wavered from his commitment to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. He will spend much of this year trying to bully the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel's Ariel Sharon towards peace. There are fences to build with Europe, which he is visiting in February; nuclear difficulties with Iran and North Korea; renewed concerns about both Russia and China; the possibility of reform at the United Nations. And that is before you consider the unexpected, like September 11th 2001.

Three questions spring from this list: is Mr Bush trying to do the right things? Is he going about them the right way? And is he trying to do too much? In general, this newspaper shares most of
Mr Bush's more radical goals. (One obvious exception would be any attempt to create a theocratic Supreme Court—which still seems unlikely.) When it comes to the most revolutionary part of his domestic programme, we have long urged some form of pensions reform before the huge baby-boom generation begins to retire. Overseas, too, the administration has principle on its side in most of its squabbles with Europe—for instance, over the paramount need to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons or the necessity of continuing the arms embargo on China.
Our doubts with Mr Bush come with his means, not his aims. The president has a radical's talent for spotting the big opportunity and grasping it rapidly. But too often, the follow-through has been shambolic and unnecessarily risky. For such a determined revolutionary, Mr Bush has been oddly indulgent of failure among his staff. And for a man so committed to changing the world, he has often been curiously uncommitted to winning over the hearts and minds of doubters, especially abroad.

Thus, in his first term, the White House pushed through tax cuts, but did nothing to rein in spending; the resulting budget deficit makes both Social-Security and tax reform more difficult. A good education bill has teething problems that Mr Bush has ignored. The admirable ideal of countering terror with democracy has been undermined by America's civil-liberties record—and by Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. With Iraq, Mr Bush fought a war of choice (a good one in our view), but that cause, not to mention peoples' lives, has been imperilled by incompetence. Mr Bush recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—America's highest civilian honour—to the man who said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and another man responsible for disbanding the Iraqi army. Heaven knows what honour he has reserved for Donald Rumsfeld, the apparently unsackable defence secretary.

Hard choices ahead
Mr Bush has given signs that he wants to tighten up his act. He seems bent on taking a tougher line on congressional pork (vetoing something soon would help). He has replaced much of his cabinet. Putting Condoleezza Rice in charge of the State Department should bring more co-ordination to foreign policy. Less welcome is the decision to promote Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel who commissioned an infamous memo justifying torture, to attorney-general.

However, even with fresh personnel and greater discipline, Mr Bush faces choices. More tax cuts are less important than tax reform, and that has already been delayed. The main priority should be Social Security—crucial because it opens the door to reforming other entitlement programmes. Pensions reform is complicated, since the immediate transition costs can be big and the true gain may not be seen for generations. To stick, it also needs support from doubting Democrats. Concentrating on getting that and tort reform through (and doing them well) would be a powerful domestic legacy.

From a foreign-policy viewpoint, the danger could well be attempting too little, not too much. As domestic policy sucks in Mr Bush, he may pull in his horns overseas. The first test may come after the Iraqi election: the temptation to leave before a new government has established itself, declaring that America has delivered democracy, will be big, especially if American troops are still dying at the present rate. That temptation should be firmly resisted. A radical who runs away from his own revolution is merely a vandal.

Breaking News.. No WMD....

2005-01-12T17:14:00.000-05:00

I thot OJ's search for the killer would end earlier....oh well, lost that bet...
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 5:10 PM
(RSF) 17:09 DJ WHITE HOUSE WATCH: WMD Search Over In Iraq
DJ WHITE HOUSE WATCH: WMD Search Over In Iraq
By Alex Keto
A Dow Jones Newswires Analysis
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The Bush administration confirmed Wednesday that shortly before Christmas it shutdown its efforts to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. White House spokesman Scott McClellan gave no explanation for why the administration delayed announcing the news until after The Washington Post reported the end of the search.
Instead, McClellan said a report by Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, that was issued last autumn will serve as the final word on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons arsenal. "Charles Duelfer has made it pretty clear, and it's my understanding that the comprehensive report he issued last year is essentially the completion of his work," McClellan said.

While McClellan indicated the U.S. military stands ready to investigate any reports it may receive on weapons of mass destruction, it won't be looking for them unless it gets a tip.
In his previous report, Duelfer concluded Saddam didn't possess an arsenal of deadly weapons but was pursuing the ability to build weapons of mass destruction. He also said given the deterioration of the regime before the invasion, there was an increasing danger of those capabilties falling into the hands of terrorists. Despite the failure to turn up such weapons, McClellan insisted the decision to invade Iraq was the correct one and President
DJ WHITE HOUSE WATCH: WMD Search Over In Iraq

Good Piece On Social Security Reform

2005-01-08T09:01:00.000-05:00

I think this is a very good piece. Lays out some of the key issues at hand, in a format that people should be able to understand, and hence a way that Social Security Reform should be sold. Forget all the flaming worries of the Dems and the NY Times libs; Brooks nails it when he says Dems are worried that giving private accounts will create more Republicans. Look, changes need to be made, and what's not being said among many things -- benefits for current old people are NOT going to be cut, and the private accounsts will currently (could change) only intend to replace like 1/5th or 1/6th of Social Security someone gets. How it get fund? Mix of borriwing or benefits cuts? or as Brooks reminds, maybe a blend of tax reform. All in, i'm not sure whether it all makes a big dent, but its an effort in a situation which needs to be addressed.

**********

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Let Congress LeadBy DAVID BROOKS

Here are five observations about the politics of Social Security reform:

First, many Republicans will be loathe to back a bill that has no Democratic support. They don't want to transform a big, popular program without bipartisan cover.

Second, it will be hard to get Democratic votes for a bill that includes personal accounts. Democrats oppose them for the same reason that Republicans support them: because they think the accounts will create Republicans. People who have them will start thinking like investors.

Third, any compromises that win you Democratic votes in the Senate, lose you Republican votes in the House. For example, if Senate Republicans raise the payroll tax caps, they might get some Democrats. But they will lose House Republicans by the dozens. This is the cruel logic we are going to come across again and again this Congress. Changes that build majorities in one house destroy majorities in the other.

Fourth, even if Republicans try to go it alone, they probably will not agree among themselves. If the White House comes out with a bill that cuts benefits, the Democrats won't have to go into opposition. Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes will already be there. On the other hand, if there are no benefit cuts, the financial markets may go ballistic. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is working on a Third Way approach to please both sides. If he can do it, he's a magician.

Fifth, the administration is doing a poor job of communicating with members. Republicans, except at the top, feel isolated. They doubt that John Snow or anybody else in the administration has enough skill and authority to guide this through Congress.
All of this adds up to big trouble. Does that mean you walk away from Social Security reform?

No. It makes sense to preserve and modernize New Deal and Great Society programs so they fit tomorrow's world. But it does mean you stop and look for alternate routes before you hit the roadblock.

What to do? This is the moment for the White House to seize the Reagan Rule - you can get a lot done in Washington as long as you don't get credit. The president should follow Senator Chuck Grassley's advice and let Congress take the lead in drafting a bill. That would go a long way to depolarizing the issue.

Next, it would be useful to broaden the frame of discussion. All the talk so far revolves around Option 2 from the president's 2001 commission. Why limit ourselves? There are dozens of creative reform ideas out there. Many include getting rid of the regressive and job-crushing payroll tax and replacing it with something else. In this week's Weekly Standard, Irwin Stelzer recommends a tax on pollution and imported oil. Others suggest a consumption tax.

Politically, blending Social Security reform with tax reform gives you more moving parts. There are more opportunities for negotiation and compromise.

The president's role - at the Inauguration and the State of the Union address and after - will be to educate the country about the problem and lay out some parameters. He doesn't need to say what the legislation should look like. That's too wonky. He should talk about what the country should look like. Social Security is more than accounting; it's values.
Here are some of the values he might endorse:

First, Social Security reform should liberate our kids, not shackle them. It should eliminate the fiscal overhang so they have the money to tackle the problems that will arise in their own day.

Second, the reform should be transparent, so that people can see what kind of return they are getting on the money they put into the system. People should have information about their own lives.

Third, it should enhance people's control over their own retirement. In a self-governing democracy, citizens should do for themselves what they can do for themselves.
Fourth, people should be encouraged to work longer. In an age in which many live into their 90's, we should be making better use of people in their 70's and 80's.
Fifth, we need a savings revolution. The plan should encourage the nation to save more, to create more capital for America's future greatness.

This is a time to trust the legislative process. Social Security has a better chance of passage if Congress leads. It's also time to think big. Social Security reform plus tax reform go a long way toward getting you to an ownership society.

Flip Flop. Cave. Whatever. Progress....

2005-01-05T16:14:00.000-05:00

Boy, these guys in WH really want to shove the Social Security Reforms (which I want too!) down in the system. The reversed course on changing Ethics Rules, and now Mr Torture (who also wants to be on the SC) says he will abide by non-torture policies and the international treaties if he is confirmed. Nice graceful flip flop....

Gonzales will follow non-torture policies
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:06 p.m. ET Jan. 5, 2005
WASHINGTON - Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales plans to promise to abide by the government’s non-torture policies and international treaties if he is confirmed by the Senate, The Associated Press learned Wednesday.

Gonzales, who had a hand in much of the White House’s post-9/11 terrorism policies as President Bush’s top lawyer, faces condemnation from Democrats at a hearing Thursday over his January 2002 memo arguing that the war on terrorism “renders obsolete” the Geneva Convention’s strict prohibitions against torture.

A month later, Bush signed an order declaring he has the authority to circumvent the Geneva accords and reserving the right to do so “in this or future conflicts.” The order also says the Geneva treaty’s treatment of prisoners of war do not apply to al-Qaida or “unlawful combatants” from the Taliban.

Gonzales’ critics say that decision and Gonzales’ memo justifying it led to the torture scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and prisoner abuses in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a prepared statement obtained by The Associated Press, Gonzales plans to promise the Senate Judiciary Committee to abide by all of the United States’ treaty obligations if he is confirmed as the first Hispanic U.S. attorney general.

Bush already has made clear that the government will defend Americans from terrorists “in a manner consistent with our nation’s values and applicable law, including our treaty obligations,” Gonzales says in his prepared testimony. “I pledge that, if I am confirmed as attorney general, I will abide by those commitments.”

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Let The Budget Games Begin....

2005-01-02T10:29:00.000-05:00

congress back on Tuesday. below is piece on how WH budget playing games with what's called an expense/cost for budget purposes and what's not -- ie. dont count wars or reform to Social Security. Good thing the CBO and private sector is onto this stuff... dont know if this sort of accounting is kosher or not...and allow that article written by NYT.... but it smells....
***********
January 2, 2005

In Plan to Reduce Deficit, White House Turns to Old ProjectionsBy EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security. To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.

By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.
But White House budget planners are not stopping there. Administration officials are also invoking optimistic assumptions about rising tax revenue while excluding costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as trillions of dollars in costs that lie just outside Mr. Bush's five-year budget window. The five-year plan, due in February, is likely to reaffirm previous predictions of a $217 billion surge in tax revenues in 2005, the biggest one-year jump on record, and almost $800 billion a year by 2009.

"We still believe we will see new economic growth, with revenues increasing as a share of G.D.P.," said Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, referring to the gross domestic product. "I think our numbers are very realistic because they are consistent with the best estimates of Wall Street and of the Congressional Budget Office."

As in past years, the budget will exclude costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could reach $100 billion in 2005 and are likely to remain high for years to come. The budget is also expected to exclude Mr. Bush's goal to replace Social Security in part with a system of private savings accounts, even though administration officials concede that such a plan could require the government to borrow $2 trillion over the next decade or two.

Among the costs that are expected in the five years after 2009 are nearly $1 trillion to make Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, nearly $500 billion for the new Medicare prescription drug program and at least $400 billion to address widely acknowledged problems with the so-called alternative minimum tax.

Many analysts are dubious about the long-term plan. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that deficits will remain well above $300 billion if Mr. Bush's tax cuts are made permanent and if Iraq war costs taper off gradually. On Wall Street, analysts at Goldman Sachs predict that budget deficits will total about $5 trillion over the next 10 years.

"I've been watching this more than 30 years, and I have never seen anything quite this egregious," said Stanley Collender, a longtime author on budget issues and a senior vice president at Financial Dynamics, a communications firm in Washington. "They are cutting the deficit from a number they never believed in the beginning," Mr. Collender said, referring to the decision to measure progress against the unrealized $521 billion deficit projection. "What if they had forecast that the deficit would be $800 billion last year? Would they take credit for having cut it by half?" White House officials are making several budgeting decisions that make their tax revenues look higher and their spending look lower than many analysts think is realistic.

The first is to exclude a wide range of future costs for proposals, like those for military operations in Iraq, that White House officials say are impossible to predict. Mr. Bush has consistently refused to include Iraq costs in his annual budget request, seeking money through a supplemental appropriations bill that lies outside the official budget. The White

House asked for and received $87 billion for the last fiscal year, as well as another $25 billion to cover the first few months of the 2005 fiscal year. The administration is expecting to ask for as much as $80 billion more in the next few months, but it will not include any cost estimates in Mr. Bush's budget for the 2006 fiscal year.

"My own preference is to wait until the last possible moment, in order to have the best idea of how much will be needed," said Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a recent meeting with reporters. Administration officials are omitting a second big group of costs for goals Mr. Bush has identified but not formally proposed. By far the biggest of these is his plan to privatize Social Security in part and let people divert some of their payroll taxes to private accounts.

Republican and Democratic analysts alike say the proposal would require the government to incur "transition costs" of $2 trillion or more over the next decade or two. That is because payroll tax revenue would immediately plunge, while benefits owed to retirees would decline only gradually.

Administration officials say any such transition costs should be treated separately from the regular budget, because they would eventually be recouped as benefits decline sharply over the next 75 years.

But the issue poses a ticklish problem for the administration, because it is already using surplus revenues in the Social Security trust fund to cover part of the annual budget deficit. The Social Security and Medicare trust funds took in about $146 billion more than they paid out in benefits in the last fiscal year, which reduced the government's overall deficit to $413 billion from about $560 billion.

One idea to prevent private savings accounts from causing an abrupt rise in annual deficits is to treat deposits into private savings accounts as a "transfer" within the government. Another idea is to include all the borrowing for transition costs in an account that would be separate from the government's operating budget.

White House officials say it is reasonable to treat the expected transition costs separately, because they will eventually be repaid as the government's obligation to pay benefits declines sharply after 30 or 40 years. "These aren't costs, they are savings," said Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's spokesman, at a recent news conference.

Another major cost that will be excluded from Mr. Bush's budget stems from the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax that was originally created to prevent wealthy taxpayers from taking too much advantage of sophisticated tax breaks. Because the alternative minimum tax is not indexed for inflation, it will engulf more than 20 million additional families by 2009 - a prospect that Republicans and Democrats alike have pledged to prevent.

But repealing the tax would reduce projected tax revenues by $87 billion in 2009 alone and more than $500 billion by the end of 2014. Almost none of that expense is expected to be in Mr. Bush's coming budget. Mr. Bolten and other officials now suggest they will include a proposal for the alternative minimum tax in Mr. Bush's broader plan to overhaul the tax code.

But that plan will not be ready until late in 2005 and possibly not until 2006. Thus far, Mr. Bush's plan to reduce the deficit has heavily rested on the assumption that tax revenues will rise as economic growth accelerates. In a twist, the White House budget for last year significantly underestimated tax revenue for 2004. Officials predicted that tax revenues would inch up only $16 billion, when they actually rose 5.5 percent, or about $100 billion.

Administration officials are expected to project a record surge of at least $200 billion for 2005. That would be an increase of more than 10 percent, twice as big as the jump in 2004, and it would be followed by additional big jumps for the next five years.

White House officials declined to spell out their revenue forecasts. But their forecast last summer showed a jump of more than $200 billion, and White House officials say they continue to expect tax revenues will climb faster than the economy for the next few years. The underlying forecast for economic growth is essentially unchanged. But analysts say the administration expectations may prove optimistic.

Even though the economy grew at a rapid pace of 4 percent in 2004, and corporate profits soared at double-digit rates, federal tax revenues were only 16.2 percent of the gross domestic product last year, the lowest level since the early 1950's. Despite a $100 billion increase in 2004, tax revenues were still lower then than they were when Mr. Bush took office in 2001.
White House officials say they expect that trend to reverse sharply, with tax revenues to climb back to almost 18 percent of gross domestic product by 2009. If the administration adheres to its earlier forecasts, that would translate to a surge in tax revenues to more than $2.7 trillion in five years, from $1.87 trillion.

If that proves accurate, Mr. Bush will have a good chance of cutting his budget deficit in half. But that could still leave big and rising costs for Medicare and tax cuts that will sink in only after he has left office.

"Drunk On Their Own Power"....

2005-01-01T22:33:00.000-05:00

From today's LA Times....Rehnquist make a few worthy comments. DeLay's name is often circulated as criticizing judges.. He's quoted here in article...DeLay has often criticized judges when he thinks they have overstepped their authority."Many of these judges begin to grow drunk on their own power. Why shouldn't the people have a right to impeach these out-of-control judges?" DeLay said in one 1997 statement.

Ok..isn't DeLay sometimes "drunk on his own power"? And see a few posts from other day about how the GOP/House is trying to re-shape ethics rules.. geez

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Rehnquist Sees Threat to JudiciaryBy David G. SavageTimes Staff WriterJanuary 1, 2005WASHINGTON — Ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said today that judges must be protected from political threats, including from conservative Republicans who maintain that "judicial activists" should be impeached and removed from office.

"The Constitution protects judicial independence not to benefit judges, but to promote the rule of law: Judges are expected to administer the law fairly, without regard to public reaction," the chief justice, whose future on the court is subject to wide speculation, said in his traditional year-end report on the federal courts. The public, the press and politicians are certainly free to criticize judges, Rehnquist said, but politicians cross the line when they try to punish or impeach judges for decisions they do not agree with.

His comments come as the new Congress faces what many predict will be a contentious battle over President Bush's nominees to the federal bench. And if Rehnquist's health forces him to announce his retirement, there would be more partisan wrangling over his successor.The 80-year-old chief justice has been absent from the Supreme Court since he disclosed in late October that he was being treated for thyroid cancer. Since 2000, when Republicans took control of the White House and Congress, many conservative critics have focused their ire on "judicial activists" on the bench.

In his report, the chief justice did not name names, but instead spoke of his concern for the "mounting criticism of judges for engaging in what is often referred to as 'judicial activism.' " House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), for example, has repeatedly threatened to impeach liberal-leaning judges for their rulings, such as the ban on school-sponsored prayers."A judge's judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment. Any other rule would destroy judicial independence," Rehnquist said. "Instead of trying to apply the law fairly, regardless of public opinion, judges would be concerned about inflaming any group that might be able to muster the votes in Congress to impeach and convict them." As the chief justice of the United States, Rehnquist leads the federal judicial system as well as the Supreme Court. Since taking office in 1986, he often has used his year-end report to set forth his views on controversies affecting the judicial system. The controversy over political leanings of judges and their rulings is one of them. And despite Rehnquist's reputation for conservatism, he has been just as willing to fault Republicans as Democrats when their actions and ideas threaten the courts. In the late 1990s, for example, he faulted Senate Republicans for blocking votes on the judicial nominees of President Clinton. More recently, he faulted Senate Democrats for blocking votes on Bush's judicial nominees.In both instances, he said the nominees deserved a hearing and an up-or-down vote.

DeLay has often criticized judges when he thinks they have overstepped their authority."Many of these judges begin to grow drunk on their own power. Why shouldn't the people have a right to impeach these out-of-control judges?" DeLay said in one 1997 statement.Last year, DeLay called for Congress to enact legislation that would remove certain issues, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, from the jurisdiction of the federal courts.DeLay was reacting to the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that held that Congress' inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance used daily in the nation's schools amounted to an unconstitutional official endorsement of religion. The Supreme Court, though divided on its reasons, later set aside that ruling.

Although Rehnquist and DeLay may agree on the preferred outcome on these issues, the chief justice said the proper way to challenge a misguided ruling is to appeal it to a higher court. "The appellate process provides a remedy" for those who believe a judge has erred, he said. And over time, the public can change the courts, he said, by electing presidents and senators who reflect their views. Rehnquist is fond of citing the example of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. In his first term, a conservative Supreme Court struck down many of Roosevelt's New Deal laws. After winning a landslide reelection in 1936, Roosevelt struck back and proposed to change and expand the membership of the Supreme Court. Although his "court packing" plan failed, Roosevelt succeeded nonetheless, Rehnquist noted. "President Roosevelt lost this battle in Congress, but he eventually won the war to change the judicial philosophy of the Supreme Court. He won it the way our Constitution envisions such wars being won — by the gradual process of changing the federal judiciary through the appointment process," he wrote.During his second term, Roosevelt replaced five retiring conservative justices with New Deal liberals and transformed the high court for the next generation. Though the 18-page report issued today includes passages that blandly recite statistics, much of it expresses the distinctive ideas and writing style of the chief justice. An amateur historian, Rehnquist has written four books as chief justice, including "Grand Inquests," a study of the impeachment trials of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1805 and of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. He concluded that those failed impeachments strengthened the independence of both justices and presidents. Impeachment should not be used as a partisan and political weapon, he wrote, but instead should be reserved for instances of high-level corruption. By coincidence, shortly after his book appeared, Rehnquist as chief justice was called upon to preside over the Senate impeachment trial of Clinton in 1999. At its conclusion, he announced Clinton's acquittal on all the charges.

Rehnquist made only a brief reference to his illness in his year-end report."On a personal note, I also want to thank all of those who have sent their good wishes on my speedy recovery," he wrote.Court officials said he has continued to work at home. And to the surprise of some, he also has announced that he plans to give the oath of office to Bush at his second inauguration on Jan. 20.

Pentagon Cuts SOME Spending....

2004-12-31T20:07:00.000-05:00

one thing which has bothered me past 4 years is that Bush NEVER vetoed a single spending bill. reckless spending, not the least of which the 200+bn in Iraq. the attached piece, WSJ reports as did NYT and others, shows some belt tigtening. really just slowing the pace of spending, not reversing it. NO, I'm not advocating cutting spending, reversing. there are challenges in this world and we are also blowing money and weapons in the Middle East. Against many aspects of the conflict(s) Bush has created, I still favor spending dough for the boys.

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Pentagon Prepares to ReduceWeapons Budget by $60 Billion

By ANNE MARIE SQUEO Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALDecember 31, 2004; Page A2

Under orders from President Bush to tighten its belt amid the escalating cost of the war in Iraq, the Pentagon is poised to make significant cuts to its budget for buying new weapons systems, aiming to trim some $60 billion over the next six years, industry and government officials said.
The Navy and the Air Force are expected to be among the hardest hit, given the number of big-ticket weapons in their budgets. On the list of possible programs that could see funding delayed or scaled back is the Air Force's F/A-22 fighter jet and the Navy's newest DDX destroyer, as well as aircraft carriers and auxiliary ships, industry and government officials said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office is finishing a budget that is expected to be sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget shortly. Top Pentagon officials are looking to cut about $10 billion from their budget for fiscal 2006, which begins next October, as well as in each of the following five years. The proposed cuts were reported yesterday in the New York Times.

Such cuts aren't a complete surprise. Pentagon and military officials have warned for years about a "bow wave" of funding requirements in 2008 when the bills for a number of new weapons programs begin to come due. As it happens, that wave is arriving just as the Pentagon budget is under extra pressure from the cost of the Iraq occupation and a federal deficit that now totals about $413 billion.

Within the last week, Mr. Rumsfeld called Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican and head of the Armed Services Committee, to outline the general thrust of the budget cuts being considered, confirmed John Ullyot, a committee spokesman. "It is clear that the Department of Defense will not be exempt from budget cutting this year," said Mr. Ullyot.

He said Mr. Warner is reserving judgment about possible cuts to the Navy's shipbuilding budget, which the senator has strongly supported because of the amount of work done in Virginia shipyards. Industry officials said the Navy could decommission its two non-nuclear aircraft carriers, the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS John F. Kennedy, and scale back plans for its next-generation version, the CVN-21.

Also being considered is scaling back a joint Navy-Marine Corps program of transport ships called LPD, which could be cut to nine vessels from the currently planned 12. Northrop Grumman Corp., based in Los Angeles, is the maker of both the aircraft carriers and the LPD ships. The Navy's next-generation DDX destroyer is still in development, though rising costs in the program could lead the service to pare the planned funding of eight of these ships in the next five years, a Navy official said.

The F/A-22, a $60 billion program, has been a frequent target for attack in recent years. Originally developed to fight the Soviets, the fighter jet has been in development for more than 20 years, and its procurement numbers already have been severely reduced.
In 1991, the Air Force expected to produce 750 of the supersonic aircraft made by Lockheed Martin Corp., of Bethesda, Md., and Chicago-based Boeing Co. The service recently planned to buy 276, but under current discussions, production could slip to 160 aircraft, with reductions largely taking effect after 2008, industry officials said. That would cause the price per aircraft to skyrocket, making the plane an even bigger target in a race to cut budgets, industry analysts said.

For now, the biggest Pentagon program, the $250 billion Joint Strike Fighter being developed by Lockheed, appears to have escaped cuts.

The Army's marquee development program -- a comprehensive revamping of armor, surveillance, communications and howitzers dubbed Future Combat System -- has been bracing for significant cuts since the summer. Led by Boeing and carrying a projected price tag of more than $100 billion, FCS already has been slowed down to save money. Now, senior Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress are looking to further stretch out development. FCS could face as much as $10 billion in cuts through the end of the decade, according to one Senate aide.

Revamp Of Torture Policy...

2004-12-31T15:51:00.000-05:00

WSJ 12/31/2004. Get this stuff out in the news cycle when nobobdy paying attention.. Great...
Orginal stuff from 2002 drafted by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who has now been nominated to replace Ashroft as AG and who is many feel is using the AG spot as stepping stone to the Supreme Court... geez. Great choice, great mop up job...

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U.S. RevampsPolicy on TortureOf War Prisoners
Legal Guidance CriticizesAggressiveness of Old Rules,Redefines 'Severe Pain'
By JESS BRAVIN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALDecember 31, 2004; Page A1

The Bush administration issued a new definition of what constitutes torture of an enemy prisoner during interrogation, sharply scaling back its previous legal position that inflicting pain approaching that of organ failure or death was lawful, and retreating from earlier assertions that the president can authorize torture.

The 17-page memorandum issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department unit that provides definitive legal guidance for the executive branch, replaces a 50-page opinion issued in August 2002 that offered a legal framework to justify inflicting agony on prisoners and contended President Bush could set aside laws and treaties prohibiting torture.
The new document also concludes that the 2002 memo was wrong when it found that only "excruciating and agonizing pain" constituted torture, and that prosecution for committing torture was only possible if the defendant's goal was simply to inflict pain, rather than to extract information. "There is no exception under the statute permitting torture to be used for a 'good reason,' " the new memo concludes, even if the aim is "to protect national security."

Read the full text1 of the Justice Department's 17-page memo on torture. (Adobe Acrobat2 required)

Still, the memo concludes that even under its wider definition of torture, none of the interrogation methods previously approved by the Justice Department would be illegal.
The 2002 memo was incorporated into Defense Department interrogation policies approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, although administration officials say neither he nor the president actually authorized torture and say that subsequent incidents of prisoner abuse reported in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were aberrations.

But administration officials moved to revise their legal views after The Wall Street Journal published a draft of the Pentagon's interrogation policies, which were predicated on the more aggressive view of torture, in June. Subsequent disclosures of confidential legal memoranda led White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to disavow the August 2002 memo, which administration officials said would be replaced within weeks with a new memo ruling out torture. That effort stalled amid interagency disagreements, and was only completed after Deputy Attorney General James Comey, the Justice Department's No. 2 official, ordered it released by year end.

A senior Justice Department official said the memo's delay -- it originally was planned for completion by August -- derived from differences among agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense and State departments and the White House.
Some apparently small semantic points occupied much of the internal debate over the memo, the official said. In particular, lawyers wrestled with whether "severe physical suffering" was something apart from "severe physical pain," and whether each could independently be defined as torture.

CHANGING THE POLICY
A new Justice Department memo scales back the Bush administration's previous legal conclusions on interrogation methods that constitute torture. In points where the new opinion differs from previous policy, it establishes that:

• "Severe" pain is no longer narrowly limited to the intensity of pain "accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or even death." • Severe physical "suffering" can be distinct from severe physical "pain." • In order to be classified as "prolonged" mental harm, conduct does not have to last for "months or even years." • Infliction of severe pain or suffering does not have to be the defendant's "precise objective" in order to prosecute for war crimes. Source: Justice Department

"If you induced nausea in someone, day after day for weeks," how would it be classified, the official said, by way of example. "It's not severe pain, it's not mental as it's a sensation," the official said. But over a prolonged period it could be considered physical suffering, and the Justice Department ultimately concluded it could constitute torture.

The new document comes less than a week before Mr. Gonzales, nominated to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general, faces a Senate confirmation hearing where Judiciary Committee members plan to grill him on his role in formulating interrogation policies. The White House declined to comment on the new memo.

The new document focuses on the main federal law prohibiting torture, enacted to enforce the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the U.S. ratified in 1994. The opinion was principally drafted by acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin, who heads the legal counsel office, and his predecessor, Jack Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard Law School. Addressed to Mr. Comey, it acknowledges that "questions have since been raised" about the prior memo's legal analysis, particularly its claims that the president held the power to set aside anti-torture laws and that even if he didn't, such laws only prohibited pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death."

The Justice Department now believes that analysis of the president's authority to order torture, or to immunize subordinates from prosecution for committing torture, is "unnecessary" because of Mr. Bush's "unequivocal directive that U.S. personnel not engage in torture."
Although the new memo has been publicly released, several related opinions that apply its conclusions to specific interrogation methods remain classified, the senior Justice official said.
The new memo is "a step forward from a very dark cave, but it certainly doesn't solve everything," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. He noted that while expanding the previous definition of torture, the memo still seeks to distinguish torture from lesser forms of abuse also prohibited by the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

"It would have been more clear and constructive had they pointed out that these other things which may not amount to torture under the law are still illegal," Mr. Malinowski said.
John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who worked on the 2002 memo, said the revision would be of little help to agencies charged with fighting the war on terror. "This memo muddies the water because it makes it difficult to figure out how the torture statute applies to specific interrogation methods," said Mr. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "It removed all the clear lines but didn't change the basic analysis."

While the White House has said that President Bush, in a February 2002 directive, required that prisoners be treated humanely, critics have claimed that earlier confidential memoranda on interrogation policies trickled down to the field, and contributed to cases of abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and most notoriously, in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Moreover, critics observed, the president's directive suggested that the detainees had no legal right to humane treatment, but would receive it only as a matter of his policy.

After the earlier memos were drafted, dozens of prisoner-abuse cases have emerged.

Changing The Ethics Rules...

2004-12-30T11:49:00.000-05:00

how are we helped by this??? from 12/30/04 WSJ....
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Hastert's Challenge. House Speaker EndeavorsTo Advance Party's AgendaAs Spotlight Turns to Ethics

By DAVID ROGERS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALDecember 30, 2004; Page A4
WASHINGTON -- After 10 years in power, House Republicans have accumulated a growing set of ethics problems that threaten to disrupt the new Congress and test Speaker Dennis Hastert's leadership.

When Congress convenes Tuesday, Mr. Hastert plans to emphasize homeland security by establishing a permanent House committee to focus on the issue. But with two senior members of his party under fire, the Illinois Republican risks blurring that message if he presses ahead at the same time with proposed rules and personnel changes that critics argue will reduce the independence of the Ethics Committee.

Months after the bipartisan panel issued a series of three admonishments of Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Mr. Hastert is considering a plan not to extend the tenure of its chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley of Colorado. And Republican leadership aides are drafting rules changes that would narrow the ethics panel's discretion in judging whether a member's conduct failed to meet the standard of reflecting "creditably on the House of Representatives."

That discretion was fundamental to the findings against Mr. DeLay during the autumn -- and could be again in a separate controversy involving House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Ney of Ohio. Proponents argue that the changes seek to protect only the due-process rights of accused lawmakers to defend themselves. But the new language has been developed thus far without input from Democrats and appears designed to protect Republicans in anticipation of renewed challenges over ethics.

"They have adopted a shoot-the-messenger approach to legitimate claims and bipartisan Ethics Committee findings of ethical violations," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit political-watchdog group in Washington. Congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution calls it "a high-risk approach that could backfire," and more-conservative voices, such as New York Times columnist David Brooks and the Weekly Standard magazine, have joined in lamenting the erosion of the reformist posture Republicans once adopted against the Democratic majority's excesses.

The accusations haven't touched Mr. Hastert. The risk for the speaker is that he may be seen -- as Democratic Speaker Thomas Foley was during the 1990s -- as failing to deal more aggressively with ethics problems. Mr. Hastert's advisers argue that much of the ethics controversy is motivated by partisanship among House Democrats, frustrated by their minority status. But critics say Republicans are displaying the same arrogance that cost Democrats in the 1994 elections.

Power is almost synonymous with Mr. DeLay, the second-ranking House Republican. In three cases, the ethics panel concluded, the Texan improperly used his power to pressure a colleague on a House vote, employ federal resources to track a private plane for partisan reasons, and raise political funds from an energy company with an interest in pending legislation. Mr. DeLay scoffs at the admonishments as a punishment outside the House rules and maintains he committed no wrongdoing.

But another prominent Republican, Mr. Ney, has been ensnared in a separate controversy swirling around Mr. DeLay's longtime political supporter, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In a joint committee hearing last month, the Senate Commerce and Indian Affairs panels investigated allegations that Mr. Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay aide, bilked Indian tribes of millions of dollars by charging excessive lobbying and consulting fees.
Testimony at the hearing indicated that Mr. Ney was recruited by Mr. Abramoff to help convince a Texas tribe that the lobbyist was working to help reopen its casino. In turn, Mr. Abramoff helped steer tens of thousands of dollars from the tribe to Mr. Ney's political action committee.

Mr. Ney insists he was duped by Mr. Abramoff. His office says much of the tribe's donation ended up being distributed to Ohio charities or the state Republican Party. A Ney spokesman confirmed that the lawmaker has been asked by Mr. Hefley and the ranking Ethics Committee Democrat, Rep, Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, to come in and discuss the case, and that Mr. Ney would do so willingly.

The Justice Department is conducting its own inquiry into Mr. Abramoff's activities, but the huge sums involved -- and e-mail exchanges in which the two consultants boasted of their income while disparaging their tribal clients -- is already an embarrassment for the party. Mr. Mann of the Brookings Institution says of the Republican dilemma: "They just seem to have lost their moorings. I really believe they are shaken by the Abramoff revelations and have adopted almost a bunker mentality."

Efforts to reach Mr. Hefley through his Colorado Springs office this week weren't successful. The 69-year-old lawmaker has already served his maximum four terms on the committee -- two as chairman -- according to the House parliamentarian's office and would need a waiver to be extended. But such accommodations aren't unusual, and Mr. Hefley has indicated in the past that he is prepared to serve another two years as chairman. And though his style can rankle some Republicans, his willingness to rebuke Mr. DeLay also makes it harder for Democrats to attack him as a shill for the leadership.

Mr. Hefley appears to have developed a good working relationship with Mr. Mollohan. The two men announced Tuesday that they had established an investigative committee to look into a Republican ethics complaint against Washington state Democrat Rep. Jim McDermott. At issue is Mr. McDermott's role in passing to the news media the contents of an illegally intercepted telephone conversation in 1997 in which Republicans were discussing an ethics investigation of Newt Gingrich, who at the time was speaker.

The complaints on both sides illustrate the stubborness of House ethics wars. As a Texas grand jury investigates allegations of campaign-finance violations by DeLay associates -- there is no indication yet that Mr. DeLay himself is a target -- Democrats are poised to force an opening-day floor vote whether the House should require members to step down from leadership posts if indicted of an offense punishable by at least two years in prison.

That had been the House Republicans' standard for leaders since the early 1990s, but it was weakened last month under a change engineered by Texas allies of Mr. DeLay. Adopted by voice vote in a closed-door meeting of the Republican conference, the modification spurred lengthy and contentious debate, according to people present at the meeting. And if Republican opponents of the change join Democrats in supporting a tougher standard next week, it would amount to a major rebuke for the leadership.

But opponents who spoke out then are reluctant to say much about the storm ahead. Asked to comment, Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, said his opposition to allowing members who have been indicted to stay in the leadership already had been "thoroughly reported."

I Don't Think "To Woo" Is In Their Vocabulary...

2004-12-22T08:11:00.000-05:00

Bush and Rove & Co "woo"? With control of House/Senate? No chance! Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Likewise, Bush seems to be having some trouble with House GOP too. The pieces below from 12/22/2004 WSJ...

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Bush Needs to Woo Democrats
Bipartisan Support For Social Security Plan May Be Difficult to Win
By SHAILAGH MURRAY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

>> President Bush needs Democratic allies to push his plan for Social Security private accounts because the issue is so controversial with voters that Republicans are unwilling to take such a huge political risk alone. "Members of both parties have to get together to work on this," the president told business leaders last week. Yet Mr. Bush hasn't begun reaching across the aisle, and so far there are no obvious signs that Democrats are flocking to him on their own. "I can't really think of anyone" in the Senate who would join the White House ranks, says Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee.

>> Mr. Baucus says Mr. Bush's ability to recruit Democrats "comes down to whether it's an honest proposal." The president has yet to lay out specific ideas for changing the entitlement program; he and his aides are focused first on selling the idea of change. "For a while, I think it's important for me to continue to work with members of both parties to explain the problem," he said in a Monday news conference.

>> For their part, Democrats are skeptical. They remember how Mr. Bush decried partisanship when he was running in 2000, then spent much of his first term seeking Democratic votes as a last resort. The only major piece of domestic legislation that drew significant Democratic support was the No Child Left Behind education bill. If the White House tries the hardball approach that marked most first-term legislative efforts -- on tax cuts and legal reform, for example -- "it's going to be difficult," Mr. Baucus says.

>> Mr. Conrad says that while he had heard nothing from the White House before the holiday recess, he has been talking over ideas with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a pro-reform Republican who has called it "irresponsible" to borrow the entire transition cost. The two senators collaborated on an opinion piece addressing Social Security scheduled to be published today in USA Today. Mr. Graham, who supports a temporary increase in payroll-tax contributions, said Dec. 12 on "Fox News Sunday," "What I'm asking of the president, when it comes to the transition costs: Be flexible." Sen. Conrad calls borrowing "an absolute nonstarter. I'm very open to things that are real, because we have a real problem. But I'm very strongly opposed to financial make-believe," he says.

>> Another challenge for Mr. Bush will be overcoming squeamishness among House Republicans, who usually are willing to help the president reach his policy goals. Republican leaders in that chamber hope the Senate acts first, crafting a bipartisan deal that they can then sell in the House.

Time Person Of The Year.... W

2004-12-20T13:56:00.000-05:00

For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year. Link to article: http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2004/story.html.

I certainly don't see the reason to salute W for what's happened, but oh well. By the way, this is a repeat for George W Bush, for he won in 2000 as well. Anyway, I would have thought Karl Rove should have received the award, and not W.

Observed by a colleague that being Time "Person Of The Year" may not be all it's cut up to be..... or in his words... "it aint all a church choir..".... here are a few of the notable also to make the list....

Hitler (1938), Stalin (1939 and 1942), Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), Krushcheve (1957), Pierre Laval (1932, French PM later executed for war crimes,treason, collaboration in 1945)

http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/archive/stories/

Battlefield Earth. Rapture Index

2004-12-20T13:51:00.000-05:00

this was brought to my attention today by a colleague. wow. Bill Moyers does a good job at tying together some of the faith-based stuff going on in politics. this paragraph got me:

"It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts."

full article below...

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Battlefield Earth By Bill Moyers, AlterNetPosted on December 8, 2004,
Printed on December 20, 2004 http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/

Reign Him Back In. USA Today Piece...

2004-12-20T07:44:00.000-05:00

Conservatives to challenge Bush
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Emboldened conservatives in Congress say they will oppose the White House next year on at least a half-dozen issues where they say President Bush has strayed from Republican values. (Story: Conservatives welcome 'new day')

Conservatives increased their numbers in the Senate and House of Representatives last month and claim a mandate to push their views. Now that Bush has been re-elected, they plan to take a harder line on issues such as federal spending and prescription drug coverage for seniors. "This White House will have a more difficult time convincing conservative members to vote for more government," says Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the new chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee. That could pose a problem for Bush, who wants to overhaul Social Security, the tax code and the legal liability system. Conservatives support those goals but may try to swap votes for other concessions.

"They are calling in their chips," says Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker. Even so, Baker expects conservatives to have a tough time. White House legislative liaison David Hobbs says Bush has the "political capital" he needs to advance his agenda. Pence's group claims about 100 members, compared with 40 in the late 1990s. Many were dismayed when the federal budget surplus turned into a $422 billion deficit in Bush's first term, but they stood by him. No more. Now, "Congress needs to assert itself more," says Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.

The points of contention conservatives plan battles over:

•Immigration. Hard-liners oppose Bush's plan to give guest-worker status to illegal immigrants. They prefer to see amnesty laws tightened.

•Abortion. Conservatives such as Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., say they'll oppose Supreme Court nominees friendly to abortion rights. Bush opposes a "litmus test" on nominees.
•Spending. Conservatives will seek deeper cuts in non-defense spending than Bush is expected to request.

•Education. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., says Congress "must undo" Bush's signature No Child Left Behind Act, which sets national standards for education. He says Washington should stay out of schools.

•Political money. Conservatives want to repeal limits on political fundraising that Bush signed into law in 2002.

•Prescription drugs. Fiscal conservatives such as Pence want to limit the new Medicare benefit to poor seniors and those without coverage before the program starts in 2006. Bush opposes such a move

NYT: Good-Will Is Low for Social Security Talks

2004-12-19T22:30:00.000-05:00

oh oh, W says it again...."I have a responsibility to reach out to members of both political parties and I will meet that responsibility."

...the context is in the linked piece (below) of how the two parties will need to work together on Social Security, BUT well noted is that both sides are pretty far apart.. a few notes from piece.... "In fact, some political scientists say that Congress has not been this ideologically polarized for a hundred years, based on voting studies that show growing divisions between the parties. "Certainly, the early 20th century is the last time it was anything like this," said Eric Schickler, a professor of government at Harvard.

remember "framing" from our friend George Lakoff? well, this article touches it again, reminding how the GOP is much better at the word game... here's the example from this piece..."If we allow them to frame it that way - that there is a crisis, therefore we must go to private accounts - if we allow them to frame it that way, the fact is, we've perpetrated a huge fraud," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee.

here's link for some of the reading on "framing"
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/people/lakoff

i'm not completely well-versed on how I want this Social Security mess to be cleaned up, BUT W sure wants to make this the focal point of his State of Union Address, and barring some sort of bend on spending cuts, will try to ram this home in typical no-bend W style.
HERE'S today's NY T piece...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/politics/19memo.html?oref=login

WPost: How Iran Is Winning Iraq

2004-12-18T20:44:00.000-05:00

good piece, summed up at end by: "But future historians will wonder how it happened that the United States came halfway around the world, suffered more than 1,200 dead and spent $200 billion to help install an Iraqi government whose key leaders were trained in Iran. Our Iraq policy may be full of good intentions, but in terms of strategy, it is a riderless horse."

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How Iran Is Winning Iraq
By David IgnatiusFriday, December 17, 2004; Page A33

If you had asked an intelligence analyst two years ago to describe the worst possible political outcome following an American invasion of Iraq, he might well have answered that it would be a regime dominated by conservative Shiite Muslim clerics with links to neighboring Iran. But just such a regime now seems likely to emerge after Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.

Iran is about to hit the jackpot in Iraq, wagering the blood and treasure of the United States. Last week an alliance of Iraqi Shiite leaders announced that its list of candidates will be headed by Abdul Aziz Hakim, the clerical leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. This Shiite list, backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, is likely to be the favorite of Iraq's 60 percent Shiite majority and win the largest share of votes next month.

Wary of trusting Iraqi Shiites to manage the campaign, the Iranian intelligence service has been pumping millions of dollars and hundreds of operatives into the country. The Iranians have also recruited assassination squads to kill potential Iraqi rivals, according to several Iraqi officials. One Iraqi Shiite tells me the Iranians view the hit teams as a kind of "insurance policy" to make sure they prevail, even if the U.S.-backed election process should fail.

Iraqis who aren't part of the Shiite religious juggernaut are frightened by what's happening. The Iraqi interim defense minister, Hazim Shalan, this week described the Shiite political alliance as an "Iranian list" created by those who wanted "turbaned clerics to rule" in Iraq. Shalan is no saint himself -- like interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, he was once part of Saddam Hussein's Baathist network. But he and Allawi speak for many millions of Iraqis who don't want to see an Iran-leaning clerical government but are powerless to stop it.

Senior U.S. commanders in Iraq had hoped Allawi's slate would win in January, but they are beginning to assess the consequences of Shiite victory. Not only would it empower the mullahs, it would alienate Iraq's 20 percent Sunni Arab population, who mostly won't be able to vote next month because of the continuing wave of terrorism in Sunni areas. As sectarian tensions increase, post-election, so will the danger of a real civil war. What will become of the U.S. military mission in Iraq? Will we really arm one group of Iraqis in a sectarian conflict against another?

Given the stakes for the United States in these elections, you might think we would quietly be trying to influence the outcome. But I am told that congressional insistence that the Iraqi elections be "democratic" has blocked any covert efforts to help America's allies. That may make sense to ethicists in San Francisco, but how about to the U.S. troops on the ground?
I talked by telephone this week to a Sunni tribal leader from Ramadi who, in a more rational world, would be one of the building blocks of a new Iraq. His name is Talal Gaaod, and his father is a leading sheik in the Duleim tribe, which has power in what has become known as the Sunni Triangle, west of Baghdad. Gaaod, who earned his undergraduate and master's degrees at the University of Southern California, has tried various ways to help stabilize his area. He proposed a tribal security force in Anbar province earlier this year that was backed by local Marine commanders but later vetoed in Baghdad. Encouraged by Jordan, he brought about 50 Iraqi Sunni leaders to Amman in November to discuss Iraq's problems. But the Jordanians canceled the meeting after the U.S. offensive in Fallujah began. He wants to believe the United States can create a better Iraq, but he's losing hope.

"It is a miserable situation," Gaaod told me. "My people feel that Iraq is going into a deep hole. Things are not improving but getting worse. A lot of good people are leaving the country -- I'm talking about technocrats, tribal leaders, the middle class. I blame the United States for giving the clergy a front to lead events in Iraq. I am sure you will regret this one day. It will not work. One hundred years from now, it will not work."

Iraq's Shiite majority deserves its day in the sun, after decades of oppression, and the January elections should endorse the reality of majority rule. But future historians will wonder how it happened that the United States came halfway around the world, suffered more than 1,200 dead and spent $200 billion to help install an Iraqi government whose key leaders were trained in Iran. Our Iraq policy may be full of good intentions, but in terms of strategy, it is a riderless horse.

Fiddling As Iraq Burns...

2004-12-17T20:47:00.000-05:00

Im not a big fan of Herbert stuff, far too left leaning for me, BUT he nails this one..

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Fiddling as Iraq Burns By BOB HERBERT

he White House seems to have slipped the bonds of simple denial and escaped into the disturbing realm of utter delusion. On Tuesday, there was President Bush hanging the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on George Tenet, the former C.I.A. director who slept through the run-up to Sept. 11 and then did the president and the nation the great disservice of declaring that it was a "slam-dunk" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

It was a fatal misjudgment.

Another Medal of Freedom was given to Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator of the American occupation, who made the heavily criticized decision to disband the defeated Iraqi Army and presided over an ever-worsening security situation. Thousands upon thousands have died in this unnecessary and incompetently conducted war, yet here was the president handing out medals as if some kind of triumph had been achieved. If these guys could get the highest civilian award, what honor is left for someone who actually does a good job?

A third medal was given to Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq, which Mr. Bush, in his peculiar way, has characterized as a "catastrophic success." It's an interesting term. Some people have applied it to the president's run for re-election.

By anyone's standards, terrible things are happening in Iraq, and no amount of self-congratulation in Washington can take the edge off the horror being endured by American troops or the unrelenting agony of the Iraqi people. The disconnect between the White House's fantasyland and the world of war in Iraq could hardly have been illustrated more starkly than by a pair of front-page articles in The New York Times on Dec. 10. The story at the top of the page carried the headline: "It's Inauguration Time Again, and Access Still Has Its Price - $250,000 Buys Lunch With President and More." The headline on the story beneath it said: "Armor Scarce for Heavy Trucks Transporting U.S. Cargo in Iraq."

This administration has many things on its mind besides the welfare of overstretched, ill-equipped G.I.'s dodging bombers and snipers in Iraq. In addition to the inauguration, which will cost tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Bush is busy with his obsessive campaign against "junk and frivolous lawsuits," his effort to further lighten the tax load on the nation's wealthiest individuals and corporations, and his campaign to cut the legs from under the proudest achievement of the New Deal, Social Security.

So much for America's wartime priorities.
Even domestic security gets short shrift. During the Republican convention, Mr. Bush said, "I wake up every morning thinking about how to better protect our country." Try squaring that with the Bernard Kerik fiasco, in which the administration's background check of its candidate for the nation's ultimate domestic security post was handled with the same calamitous incompetence as the intelligence effort that led to the war in Iraq.

Mr. Bush's pick (at Rudy Giuliani's urging) for homeland security secretary turned out to be a slick character who had once ducked a required F.B.I. clearance, had a social relationship with the owner of a company suspected of business ties to organized crime figures and had rented a love nest that overlooked the ruins of the World Trade Center.

"I'm Not Perfect," said a headline next to Mr. Kerik's picture in Tuesday's New York Post.
You wonder, with so much at stake, where to look in the Bush constellation for the care and competence that the times call for. Colin Powell is heading toward the exit, to be replaced by Condoleezza Rice, who did her best to petrify the nation with loose talk about mushroom clouds. Dick Cheney would still have us believe in a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The man who took the lead in vetting Bernie Kerik, the White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, was also the point person in the administration's bid to duck the constraints of the Geneva Conventions, and even to justify torture. Mr. Gonzales is a favorite of the president, who has nominated him to be attorney general and may someday appoint him to the Supreme Court.

Medals anyone? The president may actually believe that this crowd is the best and brightest America has to offer. Which is disturbing.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

NYT: Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception In Broad Arena....

2004-12-13T16:39:00.000-05:00

...yea, if you want to learn some deception skills, just start with the WH.... ;-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/politics/13info.html?oref=login

WSJ: Blue State Tax Burden...

2004-12-13T09:34:00.000-05:00

like someone in the NYT wrote after election day, people in Red states vote for policies which help those in Blue states. amazing... and yes, Blue State taxes fund the Reds...anyway, bring on the flat tax!

today's WSJ..
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Of all the Democratic complaints about the presidential election, the most interesting and ironic came from Lawrence O'Donnell, a leading party strategist and former aide to Sen. Pat Moynihan. He complained on MSNBC that, "The segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government." Mr. O'Donnell added for good measure, "Ninety percent of the red states are welfare client states of the federal government."

It hardly seems either consistent or politically "on message" for Democrats to talk about "welfare client states" when describing Social Security checks received by Floridians and Black Lung benefits received by West Virginians. Redistribution has been the sine qua non of Democratic economic policy for 70 years.

Of course, many conservative Republicans have a similar complaint on the tax side of the ledger, noting that the top 1% of taxpayers pay 37% of the federal income tax while the bottom 50% pay just 6%. Of course, both points are related. Rich people pay disproportionately more taxes than do other people. Blue states have higher average incomes, more rich people, and therefore pay higher taxes, than do red states.

Consider deep blue Connecticut and vivid red Oklahoma. Both have roughly the same number of people, five Congressmen and seven electoral votes. Last year, 1.66 million Connecticut tax filers paid $19.1 billion in personal taxes on $107 billion of adjusted gross income. That makes for an average tax rate of 17.9% in Connecticut. In the same year, 1.5 million Oklahoma tax filers paid $6.6 billion in personal taxes on $54 billion in adjusted gross income; an average tax rate of 12.2%.

Mr. O'Donnell's complaint seems to be that blue states like Connecticut pay a much higher average tax rate than do red states like Oklahoma, making them carry a disproportionate share of the federal tax burden. If that is so, enacting John Kerry's proposed tax hike on high-income earners would only have made things worse. Using the Kerry campaign's $200,000 income cutoff, four times as many Connecticut residents would have seen their taxes go up as Oklahoma residents. Connecticut residents would have paid $1.5 billion more in taxes, taking their average rate up 1.3 points to 19.2%, while Oklahoma residents would have paid $300 million more in taxes, taking their average rate up half a point to 12.7%.

Democrats like Mr. O'Donnell seem to want the rich to pay more in taxes, but not for rich states with rich people to pay more taxes. It's unclear how one accomplishes this mathematically. The "fair" amount of tax is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there is one somewhat more sophisticated point that supports the case that blue-state residents are overtaxed, even if one does believe that higher-income people should pay a higher share of their income in taxes.

The cost of living in Connecticut is much higher than in Oklahoma. One index of cost of living differentials shows that an income of $130,000 in Connecticut is equivalent to $90,000 in Oklahoma. That means families at those incomes are equally well-off and under standard tax theories about fairness should pay the same share of their income in taxes. Currently, a family of four making $130,000 pays $20,450 in income taxes, or 15.7%, while the family making $90,000 pays $8,450, or 9.4%. If both families were taxed at the Oklahoma rate, the Connecticut family would pay $8,200 less.

What to do? One obvious point is that if you have a federal income tax, you can't have tax rates that vary by state. However, this leads inescapably to the mathematical fact that flat taxes are not only simpler by most measures, they are also the only way to deal with the type of unfairness that Mr. O'Donnell complains about. Flatter is fairer. Flat rates coupled with lump-sum credits, for children for example, are a lot closer to producing a "fair" result by what seem to be Mr. O'Donnell's standards than the current multi-bracketed system he has been schooled to think of as "fair."

But this "blue-state tax blues" problem is much more than just an issue of fairness. It also contributes to a pernicious economic and fiscal cycle for the Northeast and other high-cost, high-tax regions. If a family can live as well on $90,000 in Oklahoma as they can on $130,000 in Connecticut, they obviously would require more money from their employer to live and work in a high-tax state. There may be quality-of-life reasons that might induce them not to demand the whole differential, but they would certainly require more. And, of course, if they must pay an additional $8,200 in federal income taxes for the privilege of living in a high-cost area, this would also fit into their calculations.

But from an employer's point of view, it is quite difficult to justify these kinds of differentials, particularly when they are exacerbated by tax differences. As higher-wage jobs leave the overtaxed, higher-cost areas, both the local economy and the state's tax base decline. This often creates a need to raise state and local taxes still further, making those states and regions still less competitive.

The result is that even though most of the taxes are still paid in high-cost states as a legacy of their industrial past, most of the economic growth in the U.S. has taken place in lower-cost, lower-tax states. For example, between 1977 and 2001, real gross state product in New York rose 2.6% annually, 10% below the national average; but it rose 3.6% per year in Texas, 20% faster than the rest. Importantly, this occurred over a period of time in which the real price of oil fell sharply, much to the disadvantage of Texas; it responded by diversifying its industrial base by offering an attractive business environment.

Perhaps some in the red states might enjoy a federal-tax playing field that is tipped in their direction. But this can only offer short-run satisfaction, since in the long run everyone pays for the distortions and slower growth caused by overtaxing high-cost regions. Red-state politicians tend to understand these dynamic economic effects better than their blue-state counterparts, so this should not be an obstacle.

Ironically, the federal-tax playing field is tipped against the blue states because of the past political preferences of blue-state voters. Here, an ideological change is needed, and perhaps Mr. O'Donnell's complaint is the beginning of such a change in view. The best answer in the long run for red states and blue states alike is the kind of level playing field that only a flatter federal-tax structure can provide.

Mr. Sumerlin is managing director of The Lindsey Group.

Brooks "misses" whole story with "Real Reform for Social Security" 12/11/2004

2004-12-11T20:46:00.000-05:00

I think he's right that Dems & GOP can get together on something done re Social Security, BUT... Brooks be drinking the wrong kool-aid.. people are skeptical of Bush and so are the markets. It's not like Bush proposed Social Security reform in 2001? NO. He blew apart the deficit from then to now and has YET to VETO a single spending bill. Brooks seems to be willing to overlook the fiscal challenges, and not willing to take Bush-to-task for tax cuts/spending of past few years... shame on him...

his email is: dabrooks@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/11/opinion/11brooks.html

Real Reform for Social SecurityBy DAVID BROOKS

Before we get lost in the policy details, let's be clear about what this Social Security reform debate is really about. It's about the market. People who instinctively trust the markets support the Bush reform ideas, and people who are suspicious oppose them.

The people setting the tone for the opposition to the Bush Social Security effort depict the financial markets as huge, organized scams where the rich prey upon the weak. Their phrases are already familiar: a risky scheme, Enron accounting, a gift to the securities industry, greedy speculators preying upon Grandma's pension.

Gone is the day when President Clinton could propose another plan diverting 15 percent of Social Security reserves into the stock market. Now the Democratic Party's tone is much more populist and even antibusiness. Harry Reid has begun his tenure as Senate minority leader by doing his best imitation of Huey Long: "They are trying to destroy Social Security by giving this money to the fat cats on Wall Street, and I think it's wrong!"

What you hear these days is not liberalism. It's conspiracyism. It's the belief that the Bushite corporate cabal is going to do to domestic programs what the Bushite neocon cabal did in the realm of foreign affairs. It's the belief in malevolent and shadowy forces that will grab everything for their own greedy ends. This is Michael Moore-ism applied to domestic affairs, and it will leave the Democrats only deeper in the hole.

I don't deny that many business and Wall Street types would like to capture the system for their own benefit. As Theodore Roosevelt observed, every new social arrangement begets its own kind of sin, which has to be punished by law. But as Roosevelt and his great hero Alexander Hamilton understood, corruption is the price we pay for economic freedom, and the benefits of that freedom vastly outweigh the costs.

Hamilton and Roosevelt championed markets because they arouse energies, channel information, allocate resources and create enormous wealth. Plans to create private Social Security accounts aren't sops to the securities industry. They use the power of the market to solve an otherwise intractable problem.

The outline of the problem is clear. When the Social Security program was created, there were 42 workers for each retiree. Now there are about three workers per retiree, and in 2030 there will be two.

The White House is heading toward a reform plan that would tie the benefit levels to prices rather than wages, which is a serious benefit cut. It would then use the power of the markets to compensate retirees for those cuts and to create a reserve fund to make the system solvent.
The government would essentially borrow at 2 percent in real terms, invest that money through regulated private accounts in the market and get a return, based on conservative historical averages, of about 4.6 percent. Those returns would, over time, cover the $11 trillion in liabilities that threaten to bring down the system.

People who think the markets are a rigged game, or who think financial profits are just paper profits, won't like this approach. But the fact is that over the next decade - whether we are talking about pensions, health care or even schools - the central argument is not going to be over whether to apply market competition to these problems. It's going to be over how to structure competition to produce the most dynamic results.

I may be a complete idiot, but I actually believe that Democrats and Republicans can reach a grand bargain that includes personal Social Security accounts while addressing Democratic objections.

You already see some Democrats growing concerned over the perception that their party is trying to build a bridge to the 1930's. On Thursday, the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, struck a very different tone than her Senate colleague. She is willing to enter into discussions about Social Security reform with no preconditions. Meanwhile, a Democratic underground is forming, made up of members of Congress willing to consider a grand compromise with Bush to make the system solvent.

Even the White House folks seem to know they can't do this without Democratic support. They will have to protect the system's progressivity and have mechanisms built in to combat the corruption. They're going to have to do something about the deficit.
This is not 1932 any more. This is not the age of big, static state institutions. This is actually about building a bridge to the 22nd century.

Bush Rules Out Higher Payroll Tax

2004-12-10T13:05:00.000-05:00

WSJ piece today. Some think that to get Social Security reform passed, a tax hike somewhere might be needed to not strain the deficit.. So massive borrowing may be needed?? Of course the Dec 15-16 Bush Econ Summit may offer some better ideas.. Stay tuned...
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Bush Rules OutHigher Payroll TaxFor Social Security

WASHINGTON -- President Bush reaffirmed his opposition to raising payroll taxes to buttress Social Security and create private accounts, as he and his administration continued to lay the groundwork with the public for proposing massive borrowing to cover the costs.
While the president said, "I will not prejudge any solution" to assure the program's long-term solvency, he added, "We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem." He spoke during an Oval Office appearance with several Social Security trustees, including Treasury Secretary John Snow and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

Separately, White House budget director Joshua Bolten predicted that annual budget deficits should shrink enough in Mr. Bush's term "that we could absorb transition-financing elements." Borrowing money now, he said, "is merely bringing forward obligations that the U.S. government now has." "If markets see our political process moving toward a solution to that, I think markets will be greatly comforted," Mr. Bolten added.

With Social Security's incoming annual revenues due to fall short of outgoing benefits starting in 2019, tax changes have been part of many rescue proposals from lawmakers, academics and think tanks in recent years, including one espoused by the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whom Mr. Bush singled out for praise yesterday. Social Security payroll taxes are 12.4% of wages, split between workers and employers, on the first $87,900 of wages; that amount rises annually, indexed to average wage growth.

All this week, and several other times since his re-election, Mr. Bush has held events to draw attention to what will be the top domestic priority of his second term: allowing workers to divert some of their payroll taxes to private retirement accounts, intended to earn a higher return years from now. But because current taxes pay current retirees' benefits, any diversion must be made up somehow. Government analysts put the cost of transitioning to private accounts at $1 trillion over 10 years if workers divert two percentage points of their tax.

While Mr. Bush hasn't proposed any plan, his advisers have acknowledged they favor borrowing the transition funds, arguing that the sum pales next to the roughly $11 trillion present value of Social Security's obligations to all beneficiaries 75 years out. But they face a big sales job with Congress, financial markets and the public, given the current U.S. debt of about $8 trillion and counting.

Moreover, creating private accounts alone doesn't address Social Security's fundamental long-term problem: having fewer workers financing ever more retirees as baby boomers leave the work force. That requires tax increases, which Mr. Bush has ruled out, or benefit cuts, which he has ruled out for current and near-term retirees.

While Mr. Bush has been silent, some administration officials privately acknowledge his idea is that workers who open private accounts would agree to take a smaller share of Social Security benefits. Also, the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, Gregory Mankiw, recently spoke supportively of changing the formula for computing workers' future benefits in a way that would save huge sums over time, while still keeping pace with inflation

Al Hunt: Red Flags For GOPs Political Bull Market

2004-12-09T13:22:00.000-05:00

WSJ piece from Al Hunt. Makes a few good points; hurry out though
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Red Flags for the GOP'sPolitical Bull Market

Holiday hubris is in the air . . . if you're a Republican.
Not even during the peak of the Reagan years did Republicans in the capital radiate such confidence; the Bush White House expects historic achievements in the next Congress to usher in a generation of real Republican dominance of American politics.

More than a few Democrats fear they may be right. A leading indicator: the decision last week by New Jersey Sen. Jon Corzine -- only in his first term and a month removed from directing the Democrats' Senate campaign committee -- to get out of Dodge. Sen. Corzine has announced plans to run for governor next year.

Before imbibing too much of this political eggnog Republicans might consider a few sobering caveats: history; questionable leadership in critical areas; political polarization; and Iraq.
Six other presidents have been reelected to second terms over the past century; none of those tenures were altogether successful and certainly not historic. More often than not, it's the opposition party that flourishes in those years.

There are many reasons: These second-term presidents have been afflicted with scandals; overreaching; and the beginnings of pitched political battles for the future.
"First terms are about revolution and second terms are about legacies," notes scholar Joseph Ellis, whose latest bestseller is "His Excellency: George Washington." That, he notes, gives the president the flexibility to support unpopular policies -- the first president's embrace of the Jay Treaty aligning the young nation with England was an example -- but also causes "structural problems that gives the president increasingly less leverage."

(For somewhat different reasons, George Washington's second term ended in frustration. He did not take well, Mr. Ellis notes, to the rancor and partisan bickering; when the first president retired after that term, Thomas Paine wrote him an open letter praying for his imminent death.) "The second-term pattern is overwhelming," suggests the historian. "Bush is bucking a pretty strong trend here."

The Bush crowd dismisses such concerns; this president, unlike most of his second-term predecessors, has a clear and bold agenda and a reasonably unified party that controls Congress.
But that big domestic agenda -- Social Security and tax reform -- is a hugely risky undertaking, politically and economically. These are not free lunches like cutting taxes and will require some forceful and skillful leaders, something the Bush administration continues to lack in the economic arena.

The tax-reform success of the second Reagan administration was a tough struggle that would not have been possible without the extraordinary political and legislative skills of Treasury Secretary Jim Baker and his top deputy, Dick Darman. At this stage there is not a Jim Baker or Dick Darman pretender among Bush's economic advisers.

That 1986 bill also would never have passed without bipartisan backing from Bill Bradley, Dan Rostenkowski, and Dick Gephardt. Mr. Bush is fortunate to have a House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Bill Thomas, with unsurpassed legislative skills.

But it's rare to pass major domestic initiatives without bipartisan support. A key to securing respectable Democratic support is whether the White House backs off its intent to finance the Social Security transition costs with more borrowing, adding as much as $2 trillion to the sea of red ink already created.

A few conservatives, like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), realize that Social Security reform probably necessitates wealthier Americans to dip into their pockets in the short term to pay for it. But the White House has said no new taxes; that would make it almost impossible for any serious Democrat to come on board. Moreover, it's difficult to believe financial markets -- or Alan Greenspan, who in his final term as Federal Reserve Chairman would hate to see a fiscal cataclysm that mars a sterling record -- will see Social Security as a fiscal free lunch.

Genuine tax reform may be even dicier. The Bush administration's hope to tap a commission by now has failed; the White House reportedly hates the term commission and has yet to find credible Democrats or non-partisans who could provide necessary credibility. More fundamentally, unlike 1986 when the supply-siders, who wanted lower rates, and the liberals, who wanted a broader tax base, coalesced, there's little clamor for a fundamental and comprehensive tax reform today. George Bush may be willing to expend political capital in a second term, but if he cashes in on Social Security -- assuming the measures are done separately -- there won't be much left to win public support for curbing the mortgage deductions, or employer write-offs for health-care coverage or state and local tax deductions.
He'll have even less if Iraq continues to deteriorate. The official line that we're making progress and it'll get much better after the Jan. 30 elections has no credibility. This week the New York Times revealed a bleak picture painted by a classified cable from the CIA's Baghdad station chief. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, after a recent trip to Iraq, said some areas are actually more dangerous than a few months ago. The early line on training Iraqis to take over the security tasks is not encouraging.

Peter Galbraith, a serious student of the Iraqis and Kurds, just returned from a 12-day stay in Iraq and is horrified at what's occurring: "The optimistic scenario is that half of the country (controlled by the Shiites) will be turned over to the Iranians; the Kurds will resist that and the Sunni area is a violent mess."

There's talk of stretching out the elections and little reason to believe violence, bloodshed or American casualties will decline. Years of thousands of young Americans dying in a foreign civil war will transform any second-term euphoria. If that sounds familiar, it is; think 40 years ago.

Baffles Me Why Rummy Still Has A Job....

2004-12-08T14:02:00.000-05:00

Bush kicks out all the cabinent members except the one who messed up the MOST... It Baffles Me Why Rummy Has A Job....when you read this....

Dec 8th....WSJ...As Chaos MountsIn Iraq, U.S. ArmyRethinks Its Future

Shortly after the U.S. deposed Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, the Army kicked off its annual "war game," a mock battle in which U.S. forces set out to topple another Middle Eastern regime. Set 10 years in the future, the game featured a force built around a light, fast, armored vehicle that the Army planned to start producing in 2010. The Army attacked from seven dizzying directions and, when the game ended, appeared on the verge of shattering the enemy force. "We walked out and patted ourselves on the back and said 'marvelous job,' " says retired Lt. Gen. William Carter, who commanded U.S. forces in the game. "We didn't understand that what we were seeing in those games wasn't victory." Today, the exercise stands as a stark example of how senior Army leaders and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the years leading up to the Iraq invasion were guided by a flawed understanding of how future enemies would fight. Swift Strikes

Me: Let alone that we've blown $200bn on this project...

WSJ> Intelligence Bill Passed......Rumsfeld Wins...

2004-12-08T13:37:00.000-05:00

House Clears Intelligence Bill
Major Proposals by 9/11 CommissionAre Left Out, Watered Down

WASHINGTON -- Congress is on the verge of passing the most far-reaching overhaul of U.S. intelligence-gathering in decades. But does it go far enough? The legislation establishes a director of national intelligence with unprecedented powers to coordinate U.S. intelligence activities, especially in counterterrorism. But in the difficult process of getting the bill through Congress, some major changes proposed by the independent 9/11 Commission have been left out or watered down. The House voted 336-75 for the measure yesterday. The Senate is expected to approve it today, sending it to the White House for President Bush to sign.

other parts:
The new intelligence director, to be known as the DNI, will have far less authority over covert operations at the Central Intelligence Agency than the commission recommended. Nor is the director given as much power as the commission envisioned over domestic intelligence-gathering by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The bill doesn't address congressional oversight of the intelligence community, which is split among dozens of committees and subcommittees with often-competing priorities.

While the director has impressive powers on paper, the job's effective control over the roughly $40 billion-a-year intelligence structure may not match the expectations created by its first major overhaul since 1947, some officials and experts say. "There's a crying need to have someone in charge," says John MacGaffin, a former senior CIA official and FBI adviser. "It's not clear that that has happened, in part because, bureaucratically, no one is anxious for the DNI to have these new authorities."

The national intelligence director's clout could depend to a large extent on whom President Bush appoints and whether his choice has stature within the administration. Among those said to be under consideration are Porter Goss, the current CIA director, and White House homeland-security adviser Fran Townsend. Some of the bill's supporters worry that while President Bush has endorsed the measure, his administration often has seemed lukewarm to many of the changes.

The same is true in Congress, where senior lawmakers including Rep. Duncan Hunter (R., Calif.), have held up final passage for more than a month, claiming that the powerful new post could interfere with the ability of military commanders to receive crucial intelligence. He won a promise from Mr. Bush to issue regulations protecting the military's access to intelligence.
"What happens to some of this stuff remains to be seen," says a congressional aide involved in drafting the bill. "A lot will depend on how people implement it."

Iraq Elections....

2004-12-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

Bush continues to insist that the Iraq Elections have to happen on Jan 30th. Well of course he wants to make sure he can mention them in the State of the Union address, and all of the this despite growing violence and many within the region and country pushing for postponement...

one link:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/11/26/iraq-election041126.html

and then this week also had the NY Times report earlier this week from the departing CIA station chief of baghdad who said that violence will get worse before better...

" WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 7: A classified cable sent by the CIA’s station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials. The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a year-long tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior CIA official who recently visited Iraq. "

clearly the Bush team has "faith" that things will get better there...gee

Shock and Awe, Continued

2004-12-03T12:14:00.000-05:00

piece from today, Dec 3, 2004, Economist...hey, they stole my tagline of Bush quote from November 3d, 2004..

***
Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: to make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation.

IN THE month since George Bush's acceptance speech, the following things have happened. The president has replaced a third of his cabinet, tightening White House control over government departments still further. In the House of Representatives, the Republican speaker, Dennis Hastert, has pulled a bill on intelligence reform that would have passed with Democratic votes because it did not have majority support in his own party. In the Senate, Republicans have increased the power of their party leader to dole out plum jobs, and threatened to change the procedural rules that allow Democrats to filibuster judicial nominations. If this is bipartisanship, heaven help America when the Republicans play rough.

This week, Tom Ridge, the homeland-security secretary, became the seventh head of an executive department to resign. Of the four replacements nominated so far, three are policy advisers from the White House: Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, as secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, as attorney-general; and Margaret Spellings, a domestic-policy adviser, as education secretary. In other words, the people who made policy in the White House during the first term have fanned out across Washington to take charge of the executive departments in the second.

All this is not necessarily a sign of hubris. America, after all, has a presidential not a cabinet system of government. Having won a clear electoral victory, and having put forward a clear and expansive agenda, Mr Bush has every right to nominate people who helped formulate the policies he campaigned on—particularly if they are the best people to put those policies into practice.

The biggest test will come in how Mr Bush reshuffles his economic team. By common consent, this needs strengthening. So far, the commerce secretary and head of the National Economic Council have gone, and the treasury secretary's position looks about as solid as the dollar (one White House aide told the Washington Post that John Snow can stay “as long as he wants, provided it is not very long”).

With the complex issues of Social Security and tax reform high on Mr Bush's second-term agenda, the most important requirement for the new team would seem to be a solid grounding in policy wonkery. But Mr Bush's first nomination—Carlos Gutierrez, the chairman of Kellogg, for commerce secretary—suggests the president is looking to the cornflakes executive for business acumen, rather than a detailed command of policy. This may be pardonable in a commerce secretary. But worries will mount about overconfidence if the rest of the team has the same look.

There are greater signs of Republican hubris on Capitol Hill. Before they captured the House in 1994, the Republicans had imposed upon themselves a rule: if any of their leaders were indicted, he or she would be suspended from his leadership position. Reassembling for their lame-duck session last month, the first thing the Republicans did was scrap this provision so that the majority leader, Tom DeLay, could stay on even if he were to be indicted in a Texan money-politics scandal. The fiercely partisan Mr DeLay denies any wrongdoing, but the removal of this “Caesar's wife” provision was seen by Democrats (and not a few Republicans) as arrogant and unseemly.

Still, expectations of bipartisanship in the House of Representatives were never high. The more worrying changes have come in the Senate, traditionally more resistant to party discipline.
To start with, conservatives mounted a ferocious campaign to stop Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania, from becoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (this oversees judicial nominations and will become the main forum for conflict over the Supreme Court). Mr Specter had infuriated his colleagues by saying anti-abortion judges were unlikely to be confirmed. On this occasion, Senate traditions prevailed: Mr Specter got the job based on seniority—but not before having to eat his words and kow-tow to all and sundry. He is one of the centrists whom Mr Bush will need if he is to work across party lines, so this ritual hazing hardly boded well.

The Republican senators then gave their leader, Bill Frist, an instrument for enforcing party discipline: he may now fill some vacancies on committees himself, overriding traditions of seniority. More controversially, Republicans are talking about challenging what is arguably the most important rule in the Senate—the filibuster, a delaying tactic which means that to get anything done you need 60 votes, not a simple majority of 51. The rule has been used—Republicans say abused—by Democrats to delay votes on some of Mr Bush's judicial nominees. To challenge it would be a big step towards imposing greater party discipline on the Senate.
Republican self-confidence is plainly a problem for bipartisanship, but why should Mr Bush care? After all, he promised to work across party lines in 2000 as well, but he still managed to push through most of his first-term aims despite bitter partisanship. This time, though, it could be harder for him for two reasons.

First, Mr Bush's second-term agenda is so ambitious that Democratic support may be a political necessity. For instance, Social Security touches almost everyone in America. Ramming reform of the pension system through on a party-line vote could make change vulnerable to subsequent reversal; it would also leave Republicans with no cover in the mid-term elections. The same is probably true of Mr Bush's more radical tax-reform plans.

Second, Mr Bush may need the support of Democrats because some Republicans are so confident in their larger majorities that they are willing to thumb their noses even at the White House. Consider the fate of the bill that would centralise the intelligence services, based on proposals of the September 11th commission.

This bill has Mr Bush's support (nominally at least). It would have passed the House with Democratic votes. But two senior Republicans objected to some of its provisions and persuaded a majority of their colleagues to back their stance. On November 20th, rather than see the bill pass with Democratic support, Speaker Hastert delayed the vote.

This may have been understandable. No speaker—indeed no president—wants to lobby against his own party. As Mr Hastert said last year, one of his principles as speaker is “to please the majority of the majority”. But it is still a challenge to Mr Bush. Republicans, it seems, are no longer prepared to sacrifice their own views to the overriding aim of getting their president re-elected.

On the particular issue of intelligence reform, Mr Bush might yet find a bipartisan deal. But the emerging pattern of politics it reveals looks explosive. In the White House, a more coherent administration is gearing up for an ambitious agenda. In Congress, the Republicans are already squabbling with each other and stirring up Democratic resentment. It could be a gruelling second term.

New Attorney General...Thrilled??

2004-12-01T14:11:00.000-05:00

I know many are thrilled that Ashcroft is leaving the AG office, BUT the replacement? Forget the possibility that Bush may be grooming Gonzales for the Supreme Court one day... does anyone recall that he's the one who authored the the Abu Graib torture memo?

As another blog said...this guy.."actually said that the President is not just above international law (the Geneva Convention), but that Bush is even above Federal law. So now, the chief law enforcement officer in the country is going to be the individual who advised Ashcroft that torture was okay and came up with the enemy combatant designation to strip Americans of their rights. Out of the frying pan into the central furnace of hell. Ashcroft was bad enough, but he was simply a willing puppet of individuals like Gonzalez and Bush. Everyone should contact Congress and tell them enough is enough. We don't want Josef Mengele Gonzalez as our Attorney General. "...

Ok.. that's a bit harsh....but...from the May 24 2004 Newsweek article "Roots Of Torture by Barry, Hirsh, and Isikoff, the following...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989436/site/newsweek/

May 24 issue - The Bush administration's emerging approach was that America's enemies in this war were "unlawful" combatants without rights. One Justice Department memo, written for the CIA late in the fall of 2001, put an extremely narrow interpretation on the international anti-torture convention, allowing the agency to use a whole range of techniques—including sleep deprivation, the use of phobias and the deployment of "stress factors"—in interrogating Qaeda suspects. The only clear prohibition was "causing severe physical or mental pain"—a subjective judgment that allowed for "a whole range of things in between," said one former administration official familiar with the opinion. On Dec. 28, 2001, the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel weighed in with another opinion, arguing that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction to review the treatment of foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The appeal of Gitmo from the start was that, in the view of administration lawyers, the base existed in a legal twilight zone—or "the legal equivalent of outer space," as one former administration lawyer described it. And on Jan. 9, 2002, John Yoo of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel coauthored a sweeping 42-page memo concluding that neither the Geneva Conventions nor any of the laws of war applied to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Cut out of the process, as usual, was Colin Powell's State Department. So were military lawyers for the uniformed services. When State Department lawyers first saw the Yoo memo, "we were horrified," said one. As State saw it, the Justice position would place the United States outside the orbit of international treaties it had championed for years. Two days after the Yoo memo circulated, the State Department's chief legal adviser, William Howard Taft IV, fired a memo to Yoo calling his analysis "seriously flawed." State's most immediate concern was the unilateral conclusion that all captured Taliban were not covered by the Geneva Conventions. "In previous conflicts, the United States has dealt with tens of thousands of detainees without repudiating its obligations under the Conventions," Taft wrote. "I have no doubt we can do so here, where a relative handful of persons is involved."

The White House was undeterred. By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by NEWSWEEK, it was clear that Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, which was written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told the president that Powell had "requested that you reconsider that decision." Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales wrote to Bush. "The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians." Gonzales concluded in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Gonzales also argued that dropping Geneva would allow the president to "preserve his flexibility" in the war on terror. His reasoning? That U.S. officials might otherwise be subject to war-crimes prosecutions under the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales said he feared "prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges" based on a 1996 U.S. law that bars "war crimes," which were defined to include "any grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. As to arguments that U.S. soldiers might suffer abuses themselves if Washington did not observe the conventions, Gonzales argued wishfully to Bush that "your policy of providing humane treatment to enemy detainees gives us the credibility to insist on like treatment for our soldiers."

When Powell read the Gonzales memo, he "hit the roof," says a State source. Desperately seeking to change Bush's mind, Powell fired off his own blistering response the next day, Jan. 26, and sought an immediate meeting with the president. The proposed anti-Geneva Convention declaration, he warned, "will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice" and have "a high cost in terms of negative international reaction." Powell won a partial victory: On Feb. 7, 2002, the White House announced that the United States would indeed apply the Geneva Conventions to the Afghan war—but that Taliban and Qaeda detainees would still not be afforded prisoner-of-war status. The White House's halfway retreat was, in the eyes of State Department lawyers, a "hollow" victory for Powell that did not fundamentally change the administration's position. It also set the stage for the new interrogation procedures ungoverned by international law.
What Bush seemed to have in mind was applying his broad doctrine of pre-emption to interrogations: to get information that could help stop terrorist acts before they could be carried out. This was justified by what is known in counterterror circles as the "ticking time bomb" theory—the idea that when faced with an imminent threat by a terrorist, almost any method is justified, even torture.

With the legal groundwork laid, Bush began to act. First, he signed a secret order granting new powers to the CIA. According to knowledgeable sources, the president's directive authorized the CIA to set up a series of secret detention facilities outside the United States, and to question those held in them with unprecedented harshness. Washington then negotiated novel "status of forces agreements" with foreign governments for the secret sites. These agreements gave immunity not merely to U.S. government personnel but also to private contractors. (Asked about the directive last week, a senior administration official said, "We cannot comment on purported intelligence activities.")

The administration also began "rendering"—or delivering terror suspects to foreign governments for interrogation. Why? At a classified briefing for senators not long after 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet was asked whether Washington was going to get governments known for their brutality to turn over Qaeda suspects to the United States. Congressional sources told NEWSWEEK that Tenet suggested it might be better sometimes for such suspects to remain in the hands of foreign authorities, who might be able to use more aggressive interrogation methods. By 2004, the United States was running a covert charter airline moving CIA prisoners from one secret facility to another, sources say. The reason? It was judged impolitic (and too traceable) to use the U.S. Air Force.

***
I dont wanna come off as sounding like a wuss for interogation, but geez, "rendering" the Geneva convention obsolete is a bit risky...I agree with Powell, the only voice of reason in the WH, "The proposed anti-Geneva Convention declaration, he warned, "will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice" and have "a high cost in terms of negative international reaction."....oh well

Bring Back Fuzzy Math....

2004-11-28T23:44:00.000-05:00

NY Times Sunday November 28, 2004
Bush's Social Security Plan Is Said to Require Vast Borrowing

some pieces from article:

* WH: "The administration hasn't settled on any particular Social Security reform plan," Joshua B. Bolten, the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, said in an e-mail message in response to questions about overhauling the system. "The president does support personal accounts, which need not add over all to the cost of the program but could in the short run require additional borrowing to finance the transition," Mr. Bolten said. "I believe there's a strong case that this approach not only makes sense as a matter of savings policy, but is also fiscally prudent."

* Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress have paid little political price in the last four years for the swing from budget surpluses to deficits. But some polls show that Americans consider reducing the deficit to be a higher priority than many other goals, including cutting taxes, and embracing a new round of borrowing could pose political as well as economic risks.

* "Anybody who thinks borrowing money for the transition to personal accounts is going to solve the problem of the long-term solvency of Social Security doesn't understand the size of the problem," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the retirement system. Mr. Grassley said Congress would also have to put benefit reductions and tax increases on the table, in part to hold down the need for borrowing and in part to assure that any changes restore Social Security's long-term financial stability.

* "To the extent that the transition is debt-financed, the ostensible macroeconomic benefits from individual accounts are undermined," said Peter Orszag, an economist at the Brookings Institution who has been critical of personal account plans. "In particular, you do not get an increase in national savings. It's engaging effectively in accounting gimmicks to make it look as if you're doing something when you're not."

Me: here come the games:
* But he said the additional debt might have to be accounted for on the government's books in a way that would not technically show an increase in the budget deficit in coming years. "You've got to look at this as a very significant long-term fiscal policy decision where you're going to have a loss in the first 10 to 15 years and a significant move toward solvency in the last 20 to 30 years," Mr. Gregg said. "That mitigates against doing it in the context of a typical budget resolution."

* Representative Jim Kolbe, Republican of Arizona, said the government could probably keep new borrowing to $800 billion over 10 years, but only if Congress and the administration are willing to back tax increases and benefit cuts as part of a broad overhaul of the retirement system. "People do not understand that tough choices need to be made," Mr. Kolbe said.

Me: these are hard choices. there's some fuzzy math happening...No wonder nobody likes the U.S. Dollar. Sounds like we are better off trying to find ways to mandate/boost savings...

Fiscal Huh?

2004-11-28T23:42:00.000-05:00

Treasury Secretary Snow, Sunday, November 21, 2004

"The United States is leading the global growth surge. Thanks to President Bush's pro-growth policies and sound monetary policy by the Fed, the economy is on a solid expansion path. GDP growth is strong. In 2004 alone our economy has created 2 million new jobs. Sustaining this strong global growth requires all of us to act. Addressing global imbalances in particular is a shared challenge. The United States needs to do its part by raising national saving and reducing its budget deficit. President Bush is committed to cutting the budget deficit in half over the next four years. We will do this with spending restraint and continued growth -- encouraged by pro-growth policies -- in our economy."

Suskind Piece/NY Times...The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model

2004-11-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

* this is a great piece if want to know the framework which drives these guys....
* The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model

Without a Doubt By RON SUSKIND (NYT)
8405 wordsPublished: October 17, 2004

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''

Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!''' The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying to make sense of the same thing -- a president who has been an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability, opacity and action.

But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect.

The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.''

What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?

All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.

The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'' (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New Jersey.) The nation's founders, smarting still from the punitive pieties of Europe's state religions, were adamant about erecting a wall between organized religion and political authority. But suddenly, that seems like a long time ago. George W. Bush -- both captive and creator of this moment -- has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself. He has created the faith-based presidency.

The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. The dome of silence cracked a bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also, in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul O'Neill. When I quoted O'Neill saying that Bush was like ''a blind man in a room full of deaf people,'' this did not endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin to ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar impressions and anecdotes about Bush's faith and certainty. These are among the sources I relied upon for this article. Few were willing to talk on the record. Some were willing to talk because they said they thought George W. Bush might lose; others, out of fear of what might transpire if he wins. In either case, there seems to be a growing silence fatigue -- public servants, some with vast experience, who feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era children, seen but not heard, and are tired of it. But silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White House. After many requests, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said in a letter that the president and those around him would not be cooperating with this article in any way.
Some officials, elected or otherwise, with whom I have spoken with left meetings in the Oval Office concerned that the president was struggling with the demands of the job. Others focused on Bush's substantial interpersonal gifts as a compensation for his perceived lack of broader capabilities. Still others, like Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat, are worried about something other than his native intelligence. ''He's plenty smart enough to do the job,'' Levin said. ''It's his lack of curiosity about complex issues which troubles me.'' But more than anything else, I heard expressions of awe at the president's preternatural certainty and wonderment about its source.

There is one story about Bush's particular brand of certainty I am able to piece together and tell for the record.

In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. ''You were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does have an army.''

This story was told to me by one of the senators in the Oval Office that December day, Joe Biden. Lantos, a liberal Democrat, would not comment about it. In general, people who meet with Bush will not discuss their encounters. (Lantos, through a spokesman, says it is a longstanding policy of his not to discuss Oval Office meetings.)

This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker. Nothing could be more vital, whether staying on message with the voters or the terrorists or a California congressman in a meeting about one of the world's most nagging problems. As Bush himself has said any number of times on the campaign trail, ''By remaining resolute and firm and strong, this world will be peaceful.'' He didn't always talk this way. A precious glimpse of Bush, just as he was ascending to the presidency, comes from Jim Wallis, a man with the added advantage of having deep acuity about the struggles between fact and faith. Wallis, an evangelical pastor who for 30 years has run the Sojourners -- a progressive organization of advocates for social justice -- was asked during the transition to help pull together a diverse group of members of the clergy to talk about faith and poverty with the new president-elect.

In December 2000, Bush sat in the classroom of a Baptist church in Austin, Tex., with 30 or so clergy members and asked, ''How do I speak to the soul of the nation?'' He listened as each guest articulated a vision of what might be. The afternoon hours passed. No one wanted to leave. People rose from their chairs and wandered the room, huddling in groups, conversing passionately. In one cluster, Bush and Wallis talked of their journeys. ''I've never lived around poor people,'' Wallis remembers Bush saying. ''I don't know what they think. I really don't know what they think. I'm a white Republican guy who doesn't get it. How do I get it?'' Wallis recalls replying, ''You need to listen to the poor and those who live and work with poor people.''

Bush called over his speechwriter, Michael Gerson, and said, ''I want you to hear this.'' A month later, an almost identical line -- ''many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do'' -- ended up in the inaugural address.

That was an earlier Bush, one rather more open and conversant, matching his impulsiveness with a can-do attitude and seemingly unafraid of engaging with a diverse group. The president has an array of interpersonal gifts that fit well with this fearlessness -- a headlong, unalloyed quality, best suited to ranging among different types of people, searching for the outlines of what will take shape as principles.

Yet this strong suit, an improvisational gift, has long been forced to wrestle with its ''left brain'' opposite -- a struggle, across 30 years, with the critical and analytical skills so prized in America's professional class. In terms of intellectual faculties, that has been the ongoing battle for this talented man, first visible during the lackluster years at Yale and five years of drift through his 20's -- a time when peers were busy building credentials in law, business or medicine.

Biden, who early on became disenchanted with Bush's grasp of foreign-policy issues and is among John Kerry's closest Senate friends, has spent a lot of time trying to size up the president. ''Most successful people are good at identifying, very early, their strengths and weaknesses, at knowing themselves,'' he told me not long ago. ''For most of us average Joes, that meant we've relied on strengths but had to work on our weakness -- to lift them to adequacy -- otherwise they might bring us down. I don't think the president really had to do that, because he always had someone there -- his family or friends -- to bail him out. I don't think, on balance, that has served him well for the moment he's in now as president. He never seems to have worked on his weaknesses.''

Bush has been called the C.E.O. president, but that's just a catch phrase -- he never ran anything of consequence in the private sector. The M.B.A. president would be more accurate: he did, after all, graduate from Harvard Business School. And some who have worked under him in the White House and know about business have spotted a strange business-school time warp. It's as if a 1975 graduate from H.B.S. -- one who had little chance to season theory with practice during the past few decades of change in corporate America -- has simply been dropped into the most challenging management job in the world.

One aspect of the H.B.S. method, with its emphasis on problems of actual corporations, is sometimes referred to as the ''case cracker'' problem. The case studies are static, generally a snapshot of a troubled company, frozen in time; the various ''solutions'' students proffer, and then defend in class against tough questioning, tend to have very short shelf lives. They promote rigidity, inappropriate surety. This is something H.B.S. graduates, most of whom land at large or midsize firms, learn in their first few years in business. They discover, often to their surprise, that the world is dynamic, it flows and changes, often for no good reason. The key is flexibility, rather than sticking to your guns in a debate, and constant reassessment of shifting realities. In short, thoughtful second-guessing.

George W. Bush, who went off to Texas to be an oil wildcatter, never had a chance to learn these lessons about the power of nuanced, fact-based analysis. The small oil companies he ran tended to lose money; much of their value was as tax shelters. (The investors were often friends of his father's.) Later, with the Texas Rangers baseball team, he would act as an able front man but never really as a boss.

Instead of learning the limitations of his Harvard training, what George W. Bush learned instead during these fitful years were lessons about faith and its particular efficacy. It was in 1985, around the time of his 39th birthday, George W. Bush says, that his life took a sharp turn toward salvation. At that point he was drinking, his marriage was on the rocks, his career was listless. Several accounts have emerged from those close to Bush about a faith ''intervention'' of sorts at the Kennebunkport family compound that year. Details vary, but here's the gist of what I understand took place. George W., drunk at a party, crudely insulted a friend of his mother's. George senior and Barbara blew up. Words were exchanged along the lines of something having to be done. George senior, then the vice president, dialed up his friend, Billy Graham, who came to the compound and spent several days with George W. in probing exchanges and walks on the beach. George W. was soon born again. He stopped drinking, attended Bible study and wrestled with issues of fervent faith. A man who was lost was saved.

His marriage may have been repaired by the power of faith, but faith was clearly having little impact on his broken career. Faith heals the heart and the spirit, but it doesn't do much for analytical skills. In 1990, a few years after receiving salvation, Bush was still bumping along. Much is apparent from one of the few instances of disinterested testimony to come from this period. It is the voice of David Rubenstein, managing director and cofounder of the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm that is one of the town's most powerful institutions and a longtime business home for the president's father. In 1989, the catering division of Marriott was taken private and established as Caterair by a group of Carlyle investors. Several old-guard Republicans, including the former Nixon aide Fred Malek, were involved.

Rubenstein described that time to a convention of pension managers in Los Angeles last year, recalling that Malek approached him and said: ''There is a guy who would like to be on the board. He's kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job. . . . Needs some board positions.'' Though Rubenstein didn't think George W. Bush, then in his mid-40's, ''added much value,'' he put him on the Caterair board. ''Came to all the meetings,'' Rubenstein told the conventioneers. ''Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years: 'You know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company.' He said: 'Well, I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board.' And I said thanks. Didn't think I'd ever see him again.''

Bush would soon officially resign from Caterair's board. Around this time, Karl Rove set up meetings to discuss Bush's possible candidacy for the governorship of Texas. Six years after that, he was elected leader of the free world and began ''case cracking'' on a dizzying array of subjects, proffering his various solutions, in both foreign and domestic affairs. But the pointed ''defend your position'' queries -- so central to the H.B.S. method and rigorous analysis of all kinds -- were infrequent. Questioning a regional supervisor or V.P. for planning is one thing.

Questioning the president of the United States is another.

Still, some couldn't resist. As I reported in ''The Price of Loyalty,'' at the Bush administration's first National Security Council meeting, Bush asked if anyone had ever met Ariel Sharon. Some were uncertain if it was a joke. It wasn't: Bush launched into a riff about briefly meeting Sharon two years before, how he wouldn't ''go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon. . . . I'm going to take him at face value,'' and how the United States should pull out of the Arab-Israeli conflict because ''I don't see much we can do over there at this point.'' Colin Powell, for one, seemed startled. This would reverse 30 years of policy -- since the Nixon administration -- of American engagement. Such a move would unleash Sharon, Powell countered, and tear the delicate fabric of the Mideast in ways that might be irreparable. Bush brushed aside Powell's concerns impatiently. ''Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things.''
Such challenges -- from either Powell or his opposite number as the top official in domestic policy, Paul O'Neill -- were trials that Bush had less and less patience for as the months passed. He made that clear to his top lieutenants. Gradually, Bush lost what Richard Perle, who would later head a largely private-sector group under Bush called the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had described as his open posture during foreign-policy tutorials prior to the 2000 campaign. (''He had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much,'' Perle said.) By midyear 2001, a stand-and-deliver rhythm was established. Meetings, large and small, started to take on a scripted quality. Even then, the circle around Bush was tightening. Top officials, from cabinet members on down, were often told when they would speak in Bush's presence, for how long and on what topic. The president would listen without betraying any reaction. Sometimes there would be cross-discussions -- Powell and Rumsfeld, for instance, briefly parrying on an issue -- but the president would rarely prod anyone with direct, informed questions.

Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily shaped by its president, by his character, personality and priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels. There are, of course, a chief executive's policies, which are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start to adopt the boss's phraseology, his presumptions, his rhythms. If a president fishes, people buy poles; if he expresses displeasure, aides get busy finding evidence to support the judgment. A staff channels the leader.

A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping George W. Bush's White House through the summer of 2001: a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners. Already Bush was saying, Have faith in me and my decisions, and you'll be rewarded. All through the White House, people were channeling the boss. He didn't second-guess himself; why should they?

Considering the trials that were soon to arrive, it is easy to overlook what a difficult time this must have been for George W. Bush. For nearly three decades, he had sat in classrooms, and then at mahogany tables in corporate suites, with little to contribute. Then, as governor of Texas, he was graced with a pliable enough bipartisan Legislature, and the Legislature is where the real work in that state's governance gets done. The Texas Legislature's tension of opposites offered the structure of point and counterpoint, which Bush could navigate effectively with his strong, improvisational skills.

But the mahogany tables were now in the Situation Room and in the large conference room adjacent to the Oval Office. He guided a ruling party. Every issue that entered that rarefied sanctum required a complex decision, demanding focus, thoroughness and analytical potency.
For the president, as Biden said, to be acutely aware of his weaknesses -- and to have to worry about revealing uncertainty or need or confusion, even to senior officials -- must have presented an untenable bind. By summer's end that first year, Vice President Dick Cheney had stopped talking in meetings he attended with Bush. They would talk privately, or at their weekly lunch. The president was spending a lot of time outside the White House, often at the ranch, in the presence of only the most trustworthy confidants. The circle around Bush is the tightest around any president in the modern era, and ''it's both exclusive and exclusionary,'' Christopher DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, the neoconservative policy group, told me. ''It's a too tightly managed decision-making process. When they make decisions, a very small number of people are in the room, and it has a certain effect of constricting the range of alternatives being offered.'' On Sept. 11, 2001, the country watched intently to see if and how Bush would lead. After a couple of days in which he seemed shaky and uncertain, he emerged, and the moment he began to lead -- standing on the World Trade Center's rubble with a bullhorn -- for much of America, any lingering doubts about his abilities vanished. No one could afford doubt, not then. They wanted action, and George W. Bush was ready, having never felt the reasonable hesitations that slowed more deliberative men, and many presidents, including his father.

Within a few days of the attacks, Bush decided on the invasion of Afghanistan and was barking orders. His speech to the joint session of Congress on Sept. 20 will most likely be the greatest of his presidency. He prayed for God's help. And many Americans, of all faiths, prayed with him -- or for him. It was simple and nondenominational: a prayer that he'd be up to this moment, so that he -- and, by extension, we as a country -- would triumph in that dark hour.
This is where the faith-based presidency truly takes shape. Faith, which for months had been coloring the decision-making process and a host of political tactics -- think of his address to the nation on stem-cell research -- now began to guide events. It was the most natural ascension: George W. Bush turning to faith in his darkest moment and discovering a wellspring of power and confidence.

Of course, the mandates of sound, sober analysis didn't vanish. They never do. Ask any entrepreneur with a blazing idea when, a few years along, the first debt payments start coming due. Or the C.E.O., certain that a high stock price affirms his sweeping vision, until that neglected, flagging division cripples the company. There's a startled look -- how'd that happen? In this case, the challenge of mobilizing the various agencies of the United States government and making certain that agreed-upon goals become demonstrable outcomes grew exponentially.
Looking back at the months directly following 9/11, virtually every leading military analyst seems to believe that rather than using Afghan proxies, we should have used more American troops, deployed more quickly, to pursue Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. Many have also been critical of the president's handling of Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 hijackers; despite Bush's setting goals in the so-called ''financial war on terror,'' the Saudis failed to cooperate with American officials in hunting for the financial sources of terror. Still, the nation wanted bold action and was delighted to get it. Bush's approval rating approached 90 percent.

Meanwhile, the executive's balance between analysis and resolution, between contemplation and action, was being tipped by the pull of righteous faith.

It was during a press conference on Sept. 16, in response to a question about homeland security efforts infringing on civil rights, that Bush first used the telltale word ''crusade'' in public. ''This is a new kind of -- a new kind of evil,'' he said. ''And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.''
Muslims around the world were incensed. Two days later, Ari Fleischer tried to perform damage control. ''I think what the president was saying was -- had no intended consequences for anybody, Muslim or otherwise, other than to say that this is a broad cause that he is calling on America and the nations around the world to join.'' As to ''any connotations that would upset any of our partners, or anybody else in the world, the president would regret if anything like that was conveyed.''

A few months later, on Feb. 1, 2002, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners stood in the Roosevelt Room
for the introduction of Jim Towey as head of the president's faith-based and community initiative. John DiIulio, the original head, had left the job feeling that the initiative was not about ''compassionate conservatism,'' as originally promised, but rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way to consolidate and energize that part of the base.

Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand, and squeezed. ''Jim, how ya doin', how ya doin'!'' he exclaimed. Wallis was taken aback. Bush excitedly said that his massage therapist had given him Wallis's book, ''Faith Works.'' His joy at seeing Wallis, as Wallis and others remember it, was palpable -- a president, wrestling with faith and its role at a time of peril, seeing that rare bird: an independent counselor. Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, '''but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not only the war on poverty, but we'll lose the war on terrorism.'''

Bush replied that that was why America needed the leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy. ''No, Mr. President,'' Wallis says he told Bush, ''We need your leadership on this question, and all of us will then commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never defeat the threat of terrorism.'' Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls. They never spoke again after that. ''When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,'' Wallis says now. ''What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year -- a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn't want to hear from anyone who doubts him.''
But with a country crying out for intrepid leadership, does a president have time to entertain doubters? In a speech in Alaska two weeks later, Bush again referred to the war on terror as a ''crusade.''

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: ''Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you.'' When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, ''Look, I'm not going to debate it with you.''
The 9/11 commission did not directly address the question of whether Bush exerted influence over the intelligence community about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. That question will be investigated after the election, but if no tangible evidence of undue pressure is found, few officials or alumni of the administration whom I spoke to are likely to be surprised. ''If you operate in a certain way -- by saying this is how I want to justify what I've already decided to do, and I don't care how you pull it off -- you guarantee that you'll get faulty, one-sided information,'' Paul O'Neill, who was asked to resign his post of treasury secretary in December 2002, said when we had dinner a few weeks ago. ''You don't have to issue an edict, or twist arms, or be overt.''

In a way, the president got what he wanted: a National Intelligence Estimate on W.M.D. that creatively marshaled a few thin facts, and then Colin Powell putting his credibility on the line at the United Nations in a show of faith. That was enough for George W. Bush to press forward and invade Iraq. As he told his quasi-memoirist, Bob Woodward, in ''Plan of Attack'': ''Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify the war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray to be as good a messenger of his will as possible.''

Machiavelli's oft-cited line about the adequacy of the perception of power prompts a question. Is the appearance of confidence as important as its possession? Can confidence -- true confidence -- be willed? Or must it be earned?

George W. Bush, clearly, is one of history's great confidence men. That is not meant in the
huckster's sense, though many critics claim that on the war in Iraq, the economy and a few other matters he has engaged in some manner of bait-and-switch. No, I mean it in the sense that he's a believer in the power of confidence. At a time when constituents are uneasy and enemies are probing for weaknesses, he clearly feels that unflinching confidence has an almost mystical power. It can all but create reality. Whether you can run the world on faith, it's clear you can run one hell of a campaign on it.

George W. Bush and his team have constructed a high-performance electoral engine. The soul of this new machine is the support of millions of likely voters, who judge his worth based on intangibles -- character, certainty, fortitude and godliness -- rather than on what he says or does. The deeper the darkness, the brighter this filament of faith glows, a faith in the president and the just God who affirms him.

The leader of the free world is clearly comfortable with this calculus and artfully encourages it. In the series of televised, carefully choreographed ''Ask President Bush'' events with supporters around the country, sessions filled with prayers and blessings, one questioner recently summed up the feelings of so many Christian conservatives, the core of the Bush army. ''I've voted Republican from the very first time I could vote,'' said Gary Walby, a retired jeweler from Destin, Fla., as he stood before the president in a crowded college gym. ''And I also want to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.'' Bush simply said ''thank you'' as a wave of raucous applause rose from the assembled.

Every few months, a report surfaces of the president using strikingly Messianic language, only to be dismissed by the White House. Three months ago, for instance, in a private meeting with Amish farmers in Lancaster County, Pa., Bush was reported to have said, ''I trust God speaks through me.'' In this ongoing game of winks and nods, a White House spokesman denied the president had specifically spoken those words, but noted that ''his faith helps him in his service to people.''

A recent Gallup Poll noted that 42 percent of Americans identify themselves as evangelical or ''born again.'' While this group leans Republican, it includes black urban churches and is far from monolithic. But Bush clearly draws his most ardent supporters and tireless workers from this group, many from a healthy subset of approximately four million evangelicals who didn't vote in 2000 -- potential new arrivals to the voting booth who could tip a close election or push a tight contest toward a rout.

This signaling system -- forceful, national, varied, yet clean of the president's specific fingerprint -- carries enormous weight. Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Republican senator from Rhode Island, has broken with the president precisely over concerns about the nature of Bush's certainty. ''This issue,'' he says, of Bush's ''announcing that 'I carry the word of God' is the key to the election. The president wants to signal to the base with that message, but in the swing states he does not.''

Come to the hustings on Labor Day and meet the base. In 2004, you know a candidate by his base, and the Bush campaign is harnessing the might of churches, with hordes of voters registering through church-sponsored programs. Following the news of Bush on his national tour in the week after the Republican convention, you could sense how a faith-based president campaigns: on a surf of prayer and righteous rage.

Righteous rage -- that's what Hardy Billington felt when he heard about same-sex marriage possibly being made legal in Massachusetts. ''It made me upset and disgusted, things going on in Massachusetts,'' the 52-year-old from Poplar Bluff, Mo., told me. ''I prayed, then I got to work.'' Billington spent $830 in early July to put up a billboard on the edge of town. It read: ''I Support President Bush and the Men and Women Fighting for Our Country. We Invite President Bush to Visit Poplar Bluff.'' Soon Billington and his friend David Hahn, a fundamentalist preacher, started a petition drive. They gathered 10,000 signatures. That fact eventually reached the White House scheduling office.

By late afternoon on a cloudy Labor Day, with a crowd of more than 20,000 assembled in a public park, Billington stepped to the podium. ''The largest group I ever talked to I think was seven people, and I'm not much of a talker,'' Billington, a shy man with three kids and a couple of dozen rental properties that he owns, told me several days later. ''I've never been so frightened.''

But Billington said he ''looked to God'' and said what was in his heart. ''The United States is the greatest country in the world,'' he told the rally. ''President Bush is the greatest president I have ever known. I love my president. I love my country. And more important, I love Jesus Christ.''
The crowd went wild, and they went wild again when the president finally arrived and gave his stump speech. There were Bush's periodic stumbles and gaffes, but for the followers of the faith-based president, that was just fine. They got it -- and ''it'' was the faith.

And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.

The bond between Bush and his base is a bond of mutual support. He supports them with his actions, doing his level best to stand firm on wedge issues like abortion and same-sex marriage while he identifies evil in the world, at home and abroad. They respond with fierce faith. The power of this transaction is something that people, especially those who are religious, tend to connect to their own lives. If you have faith in someone, that person is filled like a vessel. Your faith is the wind beneath his or her wings. That person may well rise to the occasion and surprise you: I had faith in you, and my faith was rewarded. Or, I know you've been struggling, and I need to pray harder.

Bush's speech that day in Poplar Bluff finished with a mythic appeal: ''For all Americans, these years in our history will always stand apart,'' he said. ''You know, there are quiet times in the life of a nation when little is expected of its leaders. This isn't one of those times. This is a time that needs -- when we need firm resolve and clear vision and a deep faith in the values that make us a great nation.''

The life of the nation and the life of Bush effortlessly merge -- his fortitude, even in the face of doubters, is that of the nation; his ordinariness, like theirs, is heroic; his resolve, to whatever end, will turn the wheel of history.

Remember, this is consent, informed by the heart and by the spirit. In the end, Bush doesn't have to say he's ordained by God. After a day of speeches by Hardy Billington and others, it goes without saying. ''To me, I just believe God controls everything, and God uses the president to keep evil down, to see the darkness and protect this nation,'' Billington told me, voicing an idea shared by millions of Bush supporters. ''Other people will not protect us. God gives people choices to make. God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation at this time.''

But when the moment came in the V.I.P. tent to shake Bush's hand, Billington remembered being reserved. '''I really thank God that you're the president' was all I told him.'' Bush, he recalled, said, ''Thank you.'' ''He knew what I meant,'' Billington said. ''I believe he's an instrument of God, but I have to be careful about what I say, you know, in public.''

Is there anyone in America who feels that John Kerry is an instrument of God? ''I'm going to be real positive, while I keep my foot on John Kerry's throat,'' George W. Bush said last month at a confidential luncheon a block away from the White House with a hundred or so of his most ardent, longtime supporters, the so-called R.N.C. Regents. This was a high-rolling crowd -- at one time or another, they had all given large contributions to Bush or the Republican National Committee. Bush had known many of them for years, and a number of them had visited him at the ranch. It was a long way from Poplar Bluff. The Bush these supporters heard was a triumphal Bush, actively beginning to plan his second term. It is a second term, should it come to pass, that will alter American life in many ways, if predictions that Bush voiced at the luncheon come true.

He said emphatically that he expects the Republicans will gain seats to expand their control of the House and the Senate. According to notes provided to me, and according to several guests at the lunch who agreed to speak about what they heard, he said that ''Osama bin Laden would like to overthrow the Saudis . . . then we're in trouble. Because they have a weapon. They have the oil.'' He said that there will be an opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice shortly after his inauguration, and perhaps three more high-court vacancies during his second term. ''Won't that be amazing?'' said Peter Stent, a rancher and conservationist who attended the luncheon. ''Can you imagine? Four appointments!''

After his remarks, Bush opened it up for questions, and someone asked what he's going to do about energy policy with worldwide oil reserves predicted to peak.
Bush said: ''I'm going to push nuclear energy, drilling in Alaska and clean coal. Some nuclear-fusion technologies are interesting.'' He mentions energy from ''processing corn.''
''I'm going to bring all this up in the debate, and I'm going to push it,'' he said, and then tried out a line. ''Do you realize that ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] is the size of South Carolina, and where we want to drill is the size of the Columbia airport?''
The questions came from many directions -- respectful, but clearly reality-based. About the deficits, he said he'd ''spend whatever it takes to protect our kids in Iraq,'' that ''homeland security cost more than I originally thought.''

In response to a question, he talked about diversity, saying that ''hands down,'' he has the most diverse senior staff in terms of both gender and race. He recalled a meeting with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany. ''You know, I'm sitting there with Schröder one day with Colin and Condi. And I'm thinking: What's Schröder thinking?! He's sitting here with two blacks and one's a woman.''

But as the hour passed, Bush kept coming back to the thing most on his mind: his second term.
''I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in,'' Bush said, ''with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security.'' The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us ''two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck.''

Joseph Gildenhorn, a top contributor who attended the luncheon and has been invited to visit Bush at his ranch, said later: ''I've never seen the president so ebullient. He was so confident. He feels so strongly he will win.'' Yet one part of Bush's 60-odd-minute free-form riff gave Gildenhorn -- a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a former ambassador to Switzerland -- a moment's pause. The president, listing priorities for his second term, placed near the top of his agenda the expansion of federal support for faith-based institutions. The president talked at length about giving the initiative the full measure of his devotion and said that questions about separation of church and state were not an issue.
Talk of the faith-based initiative, Gildenhorn said, makes him ''a little uneasy.'' Many conservative evangelicals ''feel they have a direct line from God,'' he said, and feel Bush is divinely chosen.

''I think he's religious, I think he's a born-again, I don't think, though, that he feels that he's been ordained by God to serve the country.'' Gildenhorn paused, then said, ''But you know, I really haven't discussed it with him.''

A regent I spoke to later and who asked not to be identified told me: ''I'm happy he's certain of victory and that he's ready to burst forth into his second term, but it all makes me a little nervous. There are a lot of big things that he's planning to do domestically, and who knows what countries we might invade or what might happen in Iraq. But when it gets complex, he seems to turn to prayer or God rather than digging in and thinking things through. What's that line? -- the devil's in the details. If you don't go after that devil, he'll come after you.'' Bush grew into one of history's most forceful leaders, his admirers will attest, by replacing hesitation and reasonable doubt with faith and clarity. Many more will surely tap this high-voltage connection of fervent faith and bold action. In politics, the saying goes, anything that works must be repeated until it is replaced by something better. The horizon seems clear of competitors.

Can the unfinished American experiment in self-governance -- sputtering on the watery fuel of illusion and assertion -- deal with something as nuanced as the subtleties of one man's faith? What, after all, is the nature of the particular conversation the president feels he has with God -- a colloquy upon which the world now precariously turns?

That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about with George W. Bush. That's impossible now, he says. He is no longer invited to the White House.
''Faith can cut in so many ways,'' he said. ''If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness -- that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There's no reflection.

''Where people often get lost is on this very point,'' he said after a moment of thought. ''Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not -- not ever -- to the thing we as humans so very much want.''

And what is that?

''Easy certainty.''

Pentagon's New Map > Primer To What They Doing

2004-11-24T13:03:00.000-05:00

I've been working through Thomas Barnetts book The Pentagons New Map. Stop here if you've read the book. Slow read, but good.

If some of the Bush Admin foreign policy latest (and future) thrusts irk you a bit (blue state?) or rally you (red state) or interest you a bit (interested state..)...then I'd encourage you to step into the book. Its been recommended to me by 4 different people in the past 4-6 months from various political leanings. I'm reading more and more about how some feel its shaping the Bush Admin policy...

I unfortunately don't read books as much as a I like anymore -- I'm collecting them for my library, I say. So, I've paused and jumped to the web.

You can start at his website, which gives you intro to him, writings and all.

Well, the orgin of the book, among places, was an article he wrote for Esquire. See link below. You can read the article and get very good sense of the book. And then you can read a few of the letters to the editor. Links attached too

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/pentagonsnewmap.htm

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/media/PNMLettersOne.htm
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/media/PNMLettersTwo.htm

FT Piece: China Says Like It Is....

2004-11-23T13:04:00.000-05:00

These quotes are great. From the FinTimes on Nov 23, 2004, with PBOC official telling the USA to get its house in order....totally agree... we blame first, instead of making hard choices. NO doubt, the Bush Admin has many hard fiscal/structural choices to make going forward. No wonder people dont like the US Dollar..
*************
Beijing tells spendthrift US to put its own house in orderBy James Kynge Published: November 23 2004 02:00 Last updated: November 23 2004 02:00

China's growing economic influence is such that its central bank - an important buyer of US government debt - now feels confident enough to offer blunt advice to Washington and even criticism of American statecraft.

Li Ruogu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), said Washington was now blaming others for its ballooning trade deficit and unemployment problem. But American economic habits and not outsiders caused the ailments, he said before last weekend's leadership summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Chile,

"The savings rate in China is more than 40 per cent. In the US it is less than 2 per cent. So the problem is that they spend too much and save too little," he said. Mr Li also said US workers enjoyed relatively high wages but remained excessively engaged in low value-added industries such as textiles and agriculture.

In addition, US policies that restricted exports of military and high-technology products to China were also partly to blame for Beijing's huge trade surplus with America, he said. China's trade surplus with the US reached $124bn (€95bn, £67bn) last year and has grown this year.
Mr Li's remarks appeared designed to defuse mounting US and European pressure on Beijing to allow an appreciation of its currency, the renminbi, which has remained virtually pegged at Rmb8.27 to the US dollar since the Asian financial crisis of 1997/98.

However, commentators said, the desire to defuse foreign pressure should not be taken as a sign that China wished to do nothing to reform its fixed currency regime. Beijing's financial policymakers considered such reform to be crucial.

Mr Li acknowledged that recent speculative and external pressure on China to allow the renminbi, its currency, to appreciate had been heavy. He mentioned the activity in offshore markets for non-deliverable renminbi futures and investment banks that "forged" reports on PBoC decisions.

Within five to six years, China hopes to have liberalised about 70 per cent of the 43 items in its capital account and made the renminbi a virtually convertible currency, Guo Shuqing, another PBoC deputy governor, said earlier this year.

Such reform would aim to shake up China's sluggish socialist-era banks and financial institutions by subjecting them to the rigours of international competition and capital flows. A more open capital account could also promote the reform of China's capital markets. "Two years later we are going to liberalise [the banking] sector to foreign competition," Mr Li said. "In order to compete with foreign counterparts, you are going to have to reform yourself - if you cannot make money, you are going to lose and you are going to go bankrupt."

The PBoC has moved this year to allow more capital outflows. Tourists and students travelling overseas have been permitted to take more money with them than before, Chinese emigrants have been allowed to withdraw assets from the mainland and some companies have won permission for overseas portfolio investments.

The liberalisations were introduced to reduce the inflationary pressures from capital inflows that Jonathan Anderson, economist at UBS in Hong Kong, estimates are still running at about $15bn a month. Although the PBoC has the means to "sterilise" these inflows, such operations are costly.

When speculation over renminbi liberalisation grows, the inflow of capital also swells - intensifying pressure on the PBoC. But, Mr Li said, mounting speculation reduced the likelihood of any imminent change to promote flexibility in the renminbi's exchange rate system.
Economists said such an analysis was not mere rhetoric. Officials know that if they widen the band within which the renminbi is allowed to fluctuate at a time when speculative inflows of capital far outpace outflows, the Chinese currency will appreciate.

Such appreciation could lead to expectations of further strengthening, locking the PBoC into another round of its battle with speculators, economists said. "The PBoC wants to wait until capital inflows and outflows are roughly in equilibrium before acting on renminbi flexibility," said one Chinese financial expert.

Until then, China's rising foreign exchange reserves, which now stand at $515bn, will continue to lend the PBoC considerable weight in discussions with Washington. After all, as a significant buyer of US treasuries, it is helping to subsidise the huge US budget deficit and finance the "war on terror" as well as other foreign and domestic policies dear to the administration of President George W. Bush.

Colin Powell, At It Again....

2004-11-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

MANAUS, Brazil (Reuters) - Washington has intelligence suggesting Iran is working on the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead on a missile, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday in a claim that could increase fears about Tehran's nuclear activities.

The top U.S. diplomat, who has pressed in vain for Iran to be referred to the U.N. Security Council because of its suspected nuclear weapons programs, said the disclosure should concern the international community. "I have seen some information that would suggest they have been actively working on delivery systems," Powell told reporters during a brief stop in Brazil on his way to an international meeting in Chile.

"I'm talking about what one does with a warhead," Powell said. "We are talking about information that says they not only have (the) missiles but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together." His remarks came on the same day an Iranian exiled opposition group also made several claims about the extent of the Islamic Republic's nuclear programs.

Oh oh. Where's The Love From November 3d?

2004-11-04T13:00:00.000-05:00

President Holds Press Conference Nov 4, 2004

Q Do you feel more free, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, in terms of feeling free, well, I don't think you'll let me be too free. There's accountability and there are constraints on the presidency, as there should be in any system. I feel -- I feel it is necessary to move an agenda that I told the American people I would move. Something refreshing about coming off an election, even more refreshing since we all got some sleep last night, but there's -- you go out and you make your case, and you tell the people this is what I intend to do. And after hundreds of speeches and three debates and interviews and the whole process, where you keep basically saying the same thing over and over again, that when you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that's what I intend to tell the Congress, that I made it clear what I intend to do as the President, now let's work to -- and the people made it clear what they wanted, now let's work together.

And it's one of the wonderful -- it's like earning capital. You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened in the -- after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is -- you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.

We have an obligation in this country to continue to work with nations to help alleve poverty and disease. We will continue to press forward on the HIV/AIDS initiative, the Millennium Challenge Account. We will continue to do our duty to help feed the hungry. And I'm looking forward to it, I really am.

Oh oh, he's swinging to the Right. What happened to the quote from the day before?

Hey: he's speaking to me. I'm excited.

2004-11-03T17:00:00.000-05:00

Remarks by the President in Acceptance Speech Nov 3, 2004:
"Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans. So today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: To make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America. (Applause.) "

Why?

2004-11-03T09:03:00.000-05:00

I created this Blog as an educational process for me. I'd really like to do a better job at tracking what they say, for it can get lost in the media cycle. At the same time, this effort is an attempt too at staying on top of the issues. With luck, this Blog will help me better structure/organize my thoughts and observations in days, weeks and months ahead. Let's see how it goes. - Peter