By: Paul Krugman  

Right now, the United States is the Scrooge of the Western world - the least generous rich nation on the planet. One of the tables in that WHO report shows the share of gross national product given in foreign aid by advanced countries; the United States ranks dead last, well behind far poorer countries such as Portugal and Greece. The sums proposed by the WHO would double our foreign aid budget, not because those sums are large, but because we start from so low a base - about a dime a day for each U.S. citizen.

By: Lisa Kadonaga  

At a time of year when many people's thoughts turn towards home, it's ironic that the man who made the title statement doesn't seem to have one - at least, not in the birthplace sense. George W. Bush likes to give the impression that's he's a natural-born Texan, Midland born and bred, though the truth is that his parents moved there when "Georgie" was three years old, and that barely a decade passed before the younger Bush transferred to a private school in Houston, and then to Andover and Yale. He did return to Midland when he was trying to strike it rich in the oil business (and failing), after getting his Harvard MBA. But it appears that he hasn't been back there much since the 1980's, though he's stated that he hopes to be buried in Midland someday. (In late 2001, a local historical society got a grant to restore one of the houses in which the family lived, to the way it looked in the 1950's - consistent with what he's been doing to the rest of the country.)

By: John Balzar  

Down here in the loam and mud, the 2002 elections have commenced. Some Americans will roll their eyes at this reminder. Not politics, not already. By chance, these are the very people I'm thinking about just now. Because they bear blame for the worst of what we're about to endure.

These are the much-celebrated "swing voters". The I-can't-stand-politics voters. They believe themselves above the fray. They vote "the man, not the party", if they vote at all. They are independent thinkers, which often means they pick their politicians the way they pick their toilet tissue - by the sway of advertising. They think of themselves as common-sense patriots.

For the most part, though, they are just airheads.

By: Mike Hersh  

We have the weakest economy in ten years. Who was screwing up the economy then? G.H. Wimp Bush. Another Bush, another recession. As the Republican precision smear team attacks Democrats for holding off on the Bush "special interest porkage", our unelected unqualified misleader does back flips.

Do we need the 'stimulus' right wingers and special interest lobbyists demand on behalf of workers - who will see almost nothing from the Bush bill? AWOL Bush has no idea. Why should he? His handlers haven't told him what he thinks yet.

By: Robert Scheer  

If you follow George Bush's thinking on how to fix our broken economy, you would throw a few hundred million in tax breaks to his buddies who bankrupted Enron. Not simply because they bankrolled his ascension to the Texas governorship and the White House but, more important, because they are modern alchemists who make money out of nothing.

By: Jim Hightower  

One vote. That's the margin by which lobbyists for corporate globaloneyists literally squeezed out a victory in the House of Representatives over "We the People".

By: George Ochenski  

It has never ceased to amaze that so-called "conservative" politicians wind up implementing some of the least conservative policies. As conservative contradictions stack up on the federal level, the national press, albeit slowly, is beginning to question the obvious differences between the professed political philosophies that conservatives use to get elected and the actions they take once in office. Here at home, we are far from immune as our legislature and governor display the same puzzling dichotomies, although our local press seems less capable of grappling with the obvious contradictions. While the holidays are hardly the best time for the murky and often controversial topics associated with politics these days, a quick look at some of the more blatant conservative contradictions may help us start the new year with a greater demand for accountability on the part of our leaders.

By: Paul Krugman  

It has not been a good year for economic policy, at home or abroad. The best you can say is that things could have been worse.

The bad news was legion. The U.S. went into recession, and the collapse of Enron raised questions not only about our economy but about the state of business ethics. We squandered our hard-won budget surplus, and with it our best chance to do something about the fiscal burdens of an aging population, on an ill-conceived tax cut. Overseas, Argentina melted down - something I had long predicted, but the actual events were still shocking. And Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, looks less like Franklin Roosevelt and more like Herbert Hoover every day.

The good news all takes the form of things that didn't happen.

By: Richard Willing  

Susan Gaertner, chief prosecutor in Ramsey County, Minn., had hoped to use federal grant money to offer tests to convicted rapists, murderers and others who had argued at trial that they were wrongly identified.

"I'm very disappointed" in the Justice Department's decision to drop the grants, she says. "Maintaining public confidence in our criminal justice system through DNA is apparently not on Ashcroft's screen."

By: Barry Crimmins  

Can it really be a year since we didn't elect George W. Bush president? Time sure flies when you're going straight to hell.

Let's take a look back at our first 12 months with the court-appointed chief executive.

By: Mike Hersh  

Some people still say the major differences between Republicans and Democrats are only "skin deep". I respect their opinion, but the facts don't support it. Their premise requires downplaying enormous, important differences. Worse, it blames the worthy and rewards the blameworthy. Progressives have a basic choice. We can respect each other and discuss differences honestly, or else we can ignore facts, exaggerate differences, and waste time.

...and that's the truth!

By: Arianna Huffington  

It's a tradition for this column to arrogantly and self-righteously offer New Year's resolutions for assorted public figures. I was thinking of skipping it this year, but then it hit me: If I don't write this column, the terrorists win!

By: Jim Hightower  

Woodrow Wilson noted that some people who get into high office in Washington grow with the job, while others simply swell. John Ashcroft, the right-wing ideologue who was named by George W. Bush to be America's Attorney General, has swollen up like roadkill on a blistering hot day.

Using terrorism as his excuse, the arrogant and inept Ashcroft has defiled our Constitution, engaged in massive racial profiling, jailed thousands of innocent people in a political ploy to look like he's "doing something", arbitrarily set up secret star chambers that subvert our judicial system, and made such a mockery of good American police work that his autocratic tactics have been rejected by some of his own FBI officials, some local police departments, and some of our European allies. Meanwhile, he has not nailed a single terrorist.

"I didn't - I swear I didn't - get into politics to feather my nest or feather my friends' nests."

- pResident-in-Thief George Dubya Bush, lying thru his teeth while witnessing to his Gawd

"Many of us believe the country was in the right condition when President Clinton left us and that we should have built on those successes instead of turning the clock back. I believe the two terms of the Clinton administration were very good for our country. I'm deeply concerned that, within a space of a year, we seem to have done a U-turn."

- Senator Hillary Clinton, telling the truth that those on the right refuse to hear

By: Richard Cohen  

If you believe that Clinton could compartmentalize in the manner of your computer, then no ill effects came of this scuzzy effort to oust the President. If you believe that Lewinsky and Jones were in Clinton's "C" drive and bin Laden and everything else - the Israeli-Palestinian situation, for instance - in his "D" drive, then there is no reason the President could not have functioned smoothly.

But common sense screams otherwise. And if that is not persuasive, you can - as I have - ask Clinton's aides or his visitors about his mental state at the time. Consumed with his own plight, they will tell you - and understandably so.

That long, arduous and contemptible effort to shame the President from office did real damage. It lowered the bar to impeachment and it weakened the country at a moment when, as we now know, it was in peril. No doubt Clinton's legacy suffered, and no number of conference calls can change that. But if history faults him for not focusing more on bin Laden, then it will also take into account the reasons. Say what you will about history, it does not compartmentalize.

Analysis

By: Gary Langer  

The economy now rivals terrorism when it comes to the issues that concern average Americans the most, a new ABCNEWS.com poll finds.

Sampling, data collection and tabulation for this poll were done by TNS Intersearch.

By: Bernie Sanders  

Throughout the country, in the wake of September 11^th, there has been a growing sense of coming together and shared sacrifice. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated to special funds for the families of the victims, and Americans are taking a deeper look at the meaning of their lives.

And then of course there are the titans of corporate America. Unfortunately, for many of them, it’s the same old story. Greed, greed and more greed.

Case in point is the Enron Corporation, which, just last year, was the seventh largest company in America with revenue exceeding $100 billion and over 20,000 employees. Having contributed millions in campaign contributions to the Republican Party and the President, the company was strongly positioned to influence the direction of energy policies in the Bush Administration. One of the results of their efforts was a huge increase in electric rates in California.

Earlier this year, Enron was forced to admit that it had over-reported its profits by nearly $600 million. This led to the largest bankruptcy in history. While Enron was exaggerating its profits, and before its artificially high stock price plummeted, three top executives in the company, Lou Pai, Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling cashed in stock options worth some $560 million. Like rats on a sinking ship, they got their money out just in time. But they didn’t give that same opportunity to their employees. While Enron’s stock was crashing, the company forced more than 12,000 of its employees to retain Enron stock in their 401(k) pension plans. This caused massive losses for the workers and many lost their entire retirement savings.

Taxpayers will be delighted to know that the House Republicans included a $254 million corporate welfare check for Enron as part of their so-called "economic stimulus plan"...

By: Marie Cocco  

There is something old and something new about this latest resurgence of poverty amid plenty. The U.S. Conference of Mayors' annual report on hunger and homelessness was a barometer in the 1990's of how many the boom missed. Now it is an early warning of how broadly the bust has hit.

The mayors' report is a transcontinental portrait of trouble. The demand for food assistance from families with children increased 19 percent in the past year. Requests from the elderly rose a similar amount. Well more than a third of adults requesting food were working.

Eighty-one percent of the cities reported an increase in requests for emergency housing. As usual, it could not be met. More than half the cities said shelters may turn people away because there is no room.

The voices of the city officials surveyed in the report have the tone of despair. They talk of mushrooming need and a corresponding catastrophe - a steep drop in donations caused in part because so many donations went to the victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. A third of the cities reported food-assistance sites may have to turn people away because they don't have enough to give.

By: Bill C. Davis  

Like the ghost of Christmas past the words of Christ should haunt George and the ranks that make up his approval rating. We can let this season remain a hollow repetition of soulless words or connect Christ to the emerging reality with which we are collaborating. The ostensible born again Christian who is presently occupying the people’s house, which is now closed to the people, told the Christian country that he would be a faith-based president. What is his faith based in? Is his faith based in the difficult words of his savior? Or was having Jesus as his personal savior an expedient posture?

As the country stops to acknowledge the birth of what George and his faith-filled voters believe is the savior of the world, it might be wise to study how this savior intended the world should be saved. And it would also behoove us to put George’s feet to the fire and demand answers that honor what he purports himself to be.

When George was asked during a debate what Christ would say about George’s steely commitment to the death penalty he said, “I’m a lowly sinner - I can’t presume to put words in Christ’s mouth”. Why was he allowed to get away with that? He presumes to know who is evil and who is not. He presumes to know who should be eliminated and who should not. He presumes to do things that the actual words of Christ have no bearing on and yet at the same time he tells the befuddled and aggrieved nation that he will act as Christ’s ambassador, because when you’re saved what else can you do?

"The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?"

- A.J. Muste

Earth's 2001 Temperatures to Be Second Highest

By: Jonathan Fowler  

World Meteorological Organization officials on Tuesday (12/18/01) called the data more proof of global warming caused by humans. They said the warming temperatures led to an increase in the severity and frequency of storms and droughts and other unusual weather conditions.

"Temperatures are getting hotter, and they are getting hotter faster now than at any time in the past", said Michel Jarraud, the organization's deputy secretary-general.

This Christmas - post September 11 - Americans are told to "buy, buy, buy".

By: Ros Davidson  

Shopping as a moral duty. Economic patriotism. The virtue of spending. Since September 11 the United States has plunged into such in a frenzy of consumerism, cynics have dubbed the trend "Shop 'til bin Laden drops".

Buying more stuff - whether patriotic, militaristic or sentimental - is the new credo to jump-start the sputtering economy and prove al-Qaeda can't usurp the American way. As Barbara Bush, mother of the leader of the free world, recalled in a recent speech to college students: "I asked the president, 'What can we do to show support for America?' He said, 'Mom, if you really want to help, buy, buy, buy'."

By: Bridget Gibson  

When George Walker Bush ascended to the office of the President of the United States, with his experienced entourage in tow, we were told that "the adults were back in charge" and there would be no learning curve. With this in mind, knowing that the collective governmental and administrative experience would not fail to recognize the function of the Executive Branch of our government in international policies, I look back on the accomplishments of the Bush administration's first year.

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