By: An Ordinary Patriot  

Apologists for the cabal of greed and self-interest infesting the White House have continued to "lower the bar" for their misadministration's abysmal performance, practicing their deceitful brand of politics by pandering to the "soft bigotry of low expectations". In just a few months, they've exacerbated economic conditions leading to record setting increases in unemployment. These whining demagogues persist in their claims that "September 11^th is to blame" for everything from corporate welfare to unemployment, repeatedly likening the atrocious events of that tragic day to Pearl Harbor in a hypocritical attempt to disguise their attack on both the economy and civil liberties behind a cloak of patriotism.

By: Robert Scheer  

The United States is responsible for the new regime's behavior. Continued religious intolerance and the subjugation of women in Afghanistan will be a stain on our crusader's cape. The growth of a pluralistic, modern and democratic society is essential, but it won't be easy - the Afghans have known the rewards of modern life only in brief periods, and then only in Kabul.

To lead in a modernizing role, Bush must break with a popular American notion that religion is inherently a benign experience. For most of the world, although it has guided people to high standards of community, religion just as often has been a divisive nightmare. The best thing we could do for the Afghan people, beyond our clear obligation to bear the enormous cost of creating a national economy where none exists, would be to export the concept of separation between church and state - the key tool to keeping our own nation religiously sane.

By: Sally Slate  

'Tis the season to be jolly. You have just six days left to make gone with whatever money you have or can borrow, or face a visit from the Shopping Police. So spend, spend, spend. It's the "patriotic" thing to do and you surely wouldn't want to be labeled "unpatriotic", "un-American" or worse.

Let us not forget just how generous George W. Bush has been to his corporate supporters. He has given them all the Clinton administration's surpluses in the form of tax reductions and outright gifts. Why he has even turned a blind eye to their nefarious deeds. Now he expects you to do your part. It matter not whether you still have a job or may lose it tomorrow. Open you wallets, gentle readers, and plunk down those greenies or credit cards to help empty the store shelves. It's the "patriotic" thing to do. Charity begins at corporate headquarters.

By: Marc Ash  

George W. Bush has embarked on perhaps the most radical course of any president in US history. Without consulting or even informing Congress, Mr. Bush this week terminated the landmark 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty that has been the cornerstone of global nuclear arms control for three decades. And that was just for openers. While the entire country was obediently watching the Osama bin Laden video Mr. Bush was quietly invoking - for only the third time in U.S. history - Powers of Executive Privilege.

Surprised? Don't be. Amidst the chaos, destruction and distraction of the past year Mr. Bush has set about, by "whatever means necessary", reshaping America to conform to a vision that is - his to know - and ours to find out. A fundamental redefinition of the entire U.S. tax structure, fast track authority to unilaterally formulate U.S. trade agreements world-wide, plans to privatize social security, a sweeping overhaul of the entire U.S. justice system... and this is only the ninth month.

Any one of these social and political developments in years gone by would have set off a whirlwind of controversy. Today, while TV broadcast news keeps the nation transfixed on the hunt for bin Laden, Mr. Bush is presiding over a truly radical 180 degree reversal of America's fortune. In little more than a year we have gone from enjoying peace and the most prosperous economy in our history, to a nation plunged into war, recession and fear. This is a nation being transformed before our very eyes.

"Do we want to send the terrorists a message? Go for conservation. Go for clean, home-grown energy. As for national security, well, it's time to expose the energy plan before Congress for the dinosaur it is. Everyone knows America needs to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel. But this energy plan is more of the same: more subsidies for the rich, more pollution, more waste, more inefficiency... America's unchecked consumption of oil has become our Achilles heel. It leaves our economy dangerously vulnerable to price shocks. It invites environmental degradation, ecological disasters, and potentially catastrophic climate change."

- Bill Moyers, in a keynote address to the Environmental Grantmakers Association on October 16, 2001

By: Mike Hersh  

Enrongate makes Whitewater look like seltzer water. Votergate - the many crimes the Bushes used to steal Florida's electoral votes - makes even Watergate look watered down. Add to that the sealed records, the quashed investigations, the secret military tribunals and secret commissions - a growing list of cover ups, crimes and kickbacks which have already gone much too far in less than a year.

"Rudy, Pataki, Hillary, Schumer - they're pulling for us. But the damned Administration - tons of lip service, lots of platitudes about 'heroes', but actual help? Fuhgedaboudit. They're dragging their feet. If Williams or Enron had been hit by a plane, you could bet 'W' would go to any length to 'save' them, and fast. But New York? This is economic apartheid. If you're not in the fossil fuel business, they just don't give a sh!t."

- anonymous New Yorker

Editorial from:  

The administration and Republican congressional leaders threaten to blame the Democrats if no stimulus bill passes and the economy is still weak as next year's elections approach. The Democrats should not be cowed. On this one, they've mainly pushed in the right direction. The Republicans, far more than they, have tried to use this bill for extraneous purposes, and ought to be called on it.

Editorial from:  

The president is too fond of secrecy.

In a range of recent situations, the White House has had a choice between opening government to scrutiny or keeping the public in the dark. In each instance - from an investigation of the mob to the release of presidential papers, to secret military tribunals and secretive detention for terror suspects - George W. Bush has opted for the dark. That's unhealthy for any democracy.

By: Joseph R. Biden Jr.  

No one doubts we live in a dangerous world and that our enemies are ruthless. But a "Star Wars" defense, assuming it could be made to work, would address only what the Joint Chiefs of Staff argue is the least likely threat to our national security.

One of the lessons we should have learned from the devastating attack of Sept. 11 is that terrorists determined to do this nation harm can employ a wide variety of means, and that weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological or even nuclear - need not arrive on the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile with a return address...

By: Arianna Huffington  

Unfortunately for Enron's investors and employees, we know exactly where the bankrupt behemoth's longtime auditor, the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, was while the company was being looted: double-dipping as highly paid consultants. Arthur Andersen pocketed a cool $27 million from Enron while also inspecting the company's books. Now there's a recipe for objectivity. It's just a tad harder to blow the whistle when you're making a mint.

How, you might ask, can such a mega-million dollar conflict of interest be legal? Well, actually, we have the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - the government body charged with regulating this kind of financial monkey business - to thank for that.

Here's what happened: Last year, then-SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt proposed a long-overdue ban on accounting firms performing additional services for companies they are auditing - precisely the sort of dual relationship Arthur Andersen had with Enron. But his efforts were beaten back by a furious lobbying campaign mounted by the accounting industry's uber-lobbyist, Harvey Pitt, a man who has made a career out of butting heads with the SEC.

So when the Bush administration got around to naming its choice to head the watchdog agency this summer, who do you think they picked? That's right, SEC nemesis Harvey Pitt. Which is a little like naming Osama bin Laden to run the Office of Homeland Security.

By: Nat Hentoff  

The Church Committee (named for Idaho Sen. Frank Church, its chairman) added: "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order."

But a Dec. 3 Wall Street Journal story, headlined "Justice Department Considers Stepping Up Monitoring of Religious, Political Groups", reported that the FBI will, under this proposal, no longer be held to "Justice Department regulations requiring agents to show probable cause that a crime was afoot before spying on political or religious organizations". Those regulations were put in place after the Church Committee exposed the FBI's disgraced COINTELPRO record.

By: Bridget Gibson  

Kenneth Lay, CEO and Chairman of Enron, was the number one contributor for G.W. Bush's presidential bid; a man who refused last week to appear before a Congressional inquiry; a man who now admits that even he did not understand how his company operated. Ken Lay was the "darling" of Wall Street and close friend to George W. Bush and to his father, George Herbert Walker Bush. Now, Ken Lay doesn't get his phone calls returned for fear that perhaps his "bad luck" will rub off. One would have thought that Enron's millions would have bought more lasting friendships.

By: Joe Conason  

While the implosion of Enron is almost as murky as the bankrupt company's financing schemes, its self-dealing and scamming have evoked memories of other great business scandals, such as Teapot Dome and the South Sea Bubble. Whether or not those analogies ever prove to be justified, the most compelling political comparison for the moment is with another scandal that turned out, despite the investigative zeal of journalists, pols and prosecutors, to be more squib than bombshell: Whitewater.

By: Scott Davis  

Bush has learned time and again that his name and family wealth will carry him. No need for hard work. One of the first things the press corps learned about Bush's style was that they needn't stay late. Unlike Clinton's administration, Bush's turned in early. Bush has no intellectual interests. His hobbies are baseball, video games, and workouts.

He treated the presidency as he treated his last office. He neglected his duties and kept a light schedule. The governorship of Texas is a part-time job; it's legislature meeting only once every two years. It left plenty of time for his signature jogs and naps. His previous position as one of owners of a baseball team, is something rich people take up as a hobby, among their other social elite functions, not a profession. In the world of work, Bush cashed in on his family connections and even then he lost investors' money.

By: Max J. Castro  

It has been said so many times that this war is different that it has become a cliché. But there's one way in which this war is unique that isn't discussed enough. This is a war in which there are likely to be more American casualties on the home front than on the battle front, and not just the victims of terrorism. There will be a predictable human toll from the economic fallout and how we are handling it.

Our most recent major wars - World War II, Korea, Vietnam - extracted an awful human cost on the battlefield that, thankfully, is unlikely to be repeated in this conflict. Yet these previous wars were accompanied by a sharing of sacrifice and an expansion of social justice at home through programs like the G.I. Bill and the Great Society. Women and minorities were brought into the workforce in unprecedented numbers. There was a sense that, if we were fighting for justice in the world, we had to ensure justice at home.

By: John Isaacs  

In time for the Christmas holidays, President Bush has presented a lump of coal to the American people: the first withdrawal from a major arms control agreement since World War II.

President Bush is doing his best impression of Scrooge, telling the rest of the world 'Bah humbug.

By: Robert Sherrill  

Looking back over the investigations that appeared in the small press during the last dozen years - investigations that, for the most part, were not picked up and developed by the big press - one is inclined to think that the Bush clan is coated with even more Teflon than Ronald Reagan. Nearly a decade ago, for instance, some portions of the small press began to say (as did David Armstrong in the Observer, July 12, 1991), that Harken Oil Company "has direct links to institutions involved in drug smuggling, foreign currency manipulation, and the C.I.A.'s well-documented role in the destabilization of the Australian government. While it should be stressed that none of the players involved in Harken stand accused of any improper or illegal activity, the company's association with these institutions raises serious questions". Maybe. But if so, they were never answered. The mainstream press just hasn't been very interested in the powers behind the Bushes.

One may also fairly conclude that the Bushes are blessed and protected beyond reason by those portions of the public's brain that have turned to mush. What other explanation but public stupidity explains the denouement of the Texas Rangers deal? As everyone knows, George W. used $600,000 from the Harken stock sale to buy a tiny slice of the Texas Rangers; and when the Rangers were sold last year for $250 million, the second-largest amount ever paid for a baseball team, George W. emerged with more than $14.9 million. What had made the ball club so valuable was a gift from the public - a $200 million stadium mostly paid for by a sales tax that the citizens of Arlington, Texas, had overwhelmingly voted to assume.

By: Holly Sklar  

Instead of admitting they were wrong, the tax cutters wrapped themselves in the flag of economic stimulus. The House passed a stimulus package stuffed with budget-busting gifts for wealthy individuals and corporations, which have long been on the lobbyists' wish lists. Giving stimulants to wealthy campaign donors is a habit Congress must break.

By: Cactuspat  

...One can only hope and pray that the depraved fascist swine now in control of the U.S. government are not directly involved. In this time of Government/Military PSYOP induced patriotic fervor, the extremists in this country are certainly playing everything possible to their direct advantage. While most mind controlled Americans are wrapping themselves in the flag, the fascists have made startling moves to further consolidate power, destroy our citizen's constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, and perform multiple raids on the Treasury in continuing the largest redistribution of wealth in the nation's history. All this while stifling dissent under the jack boot of blatant propaganda and outright tyranny. But it's far more complicated than just "are we to blame?".

"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is my government."

- Martin Luther King

By: Jonathan Rowe  

No beliefs are more entrenched in the United States than those regarding the economy. A couple of weeks ago I saw a banner headline in the local paper. "San Francisco Retailers' Plea: Shop 'Til You Drop", it said. "Economy needs holiday spending."

There was nothing exceptional about those statements. For weeks the media have been in worry mode over laggard consumers. Still, the headline was truly strange. The economy is supposed to meet our needs. And we are supposed to be the best judges of those needs, not the government, not corporations, and not the economic experts whom the media quote so dutifully.

So, if we Americans aren't shopping 'til we drop, it just might mean we don't feel like dropping. Just possibly we don't need a lot of stuff right now. Yet that thought is not permitted. In the reigning system of belief called "economics", we Americans are "consumers" by nature and definition. We are genetically programmed with an insatiable desire to consume. Our closets and garages might be bulging, and our waistlines, too. But still we must be driven like the beast in Dante's Inferno, the one that "when she has fed is hungrier than ever".

By: Eric Alterman  

Sept. 11 was a moment and that moment has passed. We witnessed the shock of the attack, paused momentarily to mourn the dead, pay tribute to the heroes, and launch a war on the terrorists' sponsors, and then return to normal. The parameters of our politics have shifted but the psyches and characters between them have not.

It's hard to pinpoint the day the moment ended, but how else to explain the degree of shameless manipulation of the tragedy by so many people for such disparate ends?...

Editorial from:  

The child-welfare turnaround was "announced" in an obscure notation in a mid-session budget review in August. The administration only weeks before had been urging Congress to reauthorize this "valuable safety net program". But the emphasis in the mid-session review was on how little money was left even then for spending increases. "Congress and the president must... continue restraining total spending". it said. "The administration is prepared where necessary to extend the principle of restraint to its own... initiatives." Translation: The vulnerable kids can help pay for the tax cut.

By: Jeff Ritchie  

With the anniversary of the Bush Inauguration just around the corner, we thought it would be a helpful public service to answer some of the most Frequently Asked Questions about the President's first year in office. Please note that all answers have been screened through the Office of Homeland Security, and anybody who says otherwise is giving aid and comfort to terrorists.

From:  

We're not sure what Asa Hutchinson's been smoking, but it must be some good shit - because he's made it all the way to the top of the chart this week. America's finest - the Enron Executives - have bankrupted themselves into second, and George W. Bush makes his customary appearance, this time in the third slot. Meanwhile Tommy Thompson (4) wants us all to slim for victory, Charles and Frances Witcomb (5) are making complete fools of themselves, and Junius P. Fulton (6) gives everyone a much-needed lesson on the consequences of irresponsible gun ownership. Bringing up the rear we've got Mark Racicot (9), greasing the wheels of power with his own slime, and the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson (10), who is really just a great big crybaby. Enjoy.

By: William Rivers Pitt  

How far did Enron's tentacles reach into the Bush administration before it vaporized will likely be a hot topic in the upcoming Congressional investigations into the matter. At best, the situation is uncomfortable for Bush. At worst, it is a political scandal that dwarfs the picayune Whitewater deal. Among certain circles, the name 'Enrongate' has already begun to circulate.

If the worst is true, Bush will have a hard time getting out from under. This is not a situation where the illegal destruction of evidentiary documents will do the trick. The chain of evidence has names, and it will prove a messy affair if Bush tries to stuff Rove or Pitt into a document shredder.

"It's Christmas time and I love to see the faces of children. If you're from out of town, pay good attention to their faces because later on you might have to pick them out of a lineup."

- David Letterman

By: J.G. Schwam  

Enron was the Texas oilman's dreams come true. A vehicle by which energy purchasers such as power companies and local natural and oil distributors can buy electricity and oil and gas products weeks or months in advance of their delivery. Cash in pocket before your customer even gets the goods. But as it turns out Enron is not much more than an out and out testament to greed. Enron's management chose to enrich themselves excessively to an extent yet to be entirely disclosed.

It is obvious now they must have had some knowledge that their vast energy trading bubble was nearing collapse. There is evidence that both CEO Kenneth J. Lay and CFO Andrew S. Fastow had large stock sales shortly before the collapse while at the same time prohibiting employees whose retirement funds were nearly entirely vested in Enron stock. Those portfolios of hard working employees are now nearly worthless.

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