By: Joe Conason  

Do tax cuts for the wealthy represent the will of God?

What might normally be an impertinent and perhaps offensive question suddenly seems entirely reasonable after hearing George W. Bush's ungrammatical but passionate pledge to defend the tax cuts his administration provided to the richest, smallest segment of American citizens, at the cost of his own life if need be. The vow he uttered during his town-hall meeting in California over the weekend - "Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes!" - was the strongest he's made on any subject since his promise to deliver Osama bin Laden to justice "dead or alive".

Even allowing for hyperbole, such edgy remarks indicate what matters most to Mr. Bush...

By: Bob Herbert  

You'll have to look long and extremely hard to come up with an example of corporate treachery in the United States that's as horrible as the Enron debacle. This is a scandal with a very broad reach and it has some of the wise guys in the Bush administration and other top Republicans trembling in their penny loafers.

Enron was a bonanza for - whom else? - the folks at the top of the pyramid. They ferociously exploited their gilt-edged political connections and harvested breathtaking amounts of cash for themselves, even as the company was collapsing into the biggest bankruptcy mess in U.S. history...

Action Alert

Just the FACTS!

Stolen from:  

"An immense effect may be produced by small powers wisely and steadily directed."

- Noah Webster

By: Jeremy Rice  

As Bush and Democratic leaders square off over economic policy, it's tempting to make this a fight about the size of the deficit. But the real question is how we are going to provide relief to those who really need it. The Democrats must focus on people - not numbers - to win the budget battle and, more importantly, make the government work for us.

Aside from the President's recent self-promotion, no credible authorities support his recent efforts to "stimulate" the economy. Speeding up the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, says the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), according to this Washington Post report, will not substantially help us in the short term. Neither will repealing the corporate minimum tax, which has the added problem of being a retroactive reimbursement of millions of dollars to companies that have not been substantially hurt by recent events.

Someone tell the Attorney General he must protect the public, not the NRA.

By: Geo Beach  

Well, 'Top Cop' John Ashcroft's Justice Department has denied the FBI's request to review records of gun purchases to determine if any potential-terrorist detainees might be named there.

That looks more like a case of smart politics than smart law. Ashcroft gets along fine with the NRA. But police chiefs aren't going along - they're protesting.

Access to these records is an appropriate example of smart men using a tool to do something fast. It's not a question of type - not warrantless jackboots kicking down the door to take away a law-abiding citizen's guns - it's a question of scale: How quickly can the task of vetting possible accomplices-to-murderer be accomplished? Illegal aliens (and legal aliens admitted under a non-immigrant visa) are not allowed to purchase guns. So what's the story here - that if you make it past "Go" you can't thereafter "Go Directly to Jail"?

By: Joan Ryan  

Of all the ideas and institutions we took for granted as recently as six months ago - our electoral system, our national security, our civil liberties - none has shaken the confidence of more Americans than the sudden and colossal collapse of that sure-thing, Wall-Street-darling Enron.

Perhaps this sounds politically insensitive, but I fear the upper management of the companies that comprise my pension fund more than I fear the upper management of al Qaeda. The truth is, the cold indifference inside an American boardroom is more likely to cripple any one of us than the cold indifference inside an Afghan cave.

By: Harley Sorensen  

During his eight years in office, Clinton signed 14 declarations of national emergency, more than half of which dealt with the threat of terrorism. Disregarding his overuse of presidential powers, those declarations clearly show Clinton's interest in doing something about terrorism.

In 1996 - on Sept. 9, to be precise - Clinton asked Congress for $1 billion to improve airport security, to improve security at our nation's infectious-disease laboratories and to require that chemical markers be put in explosives to make them easier to trace, plus a host of other provisions designed to make air travel safer and to discourage terrorist attacks.

"We know we can't make the world risk-free", Clinton said at the time, "but we can reduce the risks we face, and we have to take the fight to the terrorist". Congress scuttled most of Clinton's recommendations, partly because of pressure from the National Rifle Association.

When Clinton ordered bin Laden's terrorist training camps blown up on Aug. 20, 1998, he made a speech defending his actions. That same speech could have been given by George W. Bush yesterday. It indicates a good grasp of the problems we faced then and still face, and our efforts to deal with those problems.

By: Paul Krugman  

Mr. Greenspan ought to be upset. It's not just that during the Clinton years he became an icon of fiscal probity; the sudden plunge back into deficit undoes his own handiwork.

You see, back in the early 1980's, before he became Fed chairman, Mr. Greenspan headed a commission that was supposed to secure the future of Social Security. The main result of that commission was an increase in payroll taxes, even as Ronald Reagan was cutting income taxes. The purpose of this regressive tax increase - payroll taxes fall most heavily on low and middle income families - was to generate a surplus that would, in turn, make it easier for the federal government to pay benefits to an aging population.

But now, thanks to the disappearance of the budget surplus, the excess revenue collected by the payroll tax isn't being used to acquire assets, or even to pay down the federal debt; it's being used to cover deficits elsewhere in the budget. We're not talking small numbers here; only about 70¢ of each dollar in Social Security revenue is used to pay current benefits. In effect, the other 30¢ has now been expropriated for other uses - mainly tax cuts for the richest few percent of the population.

Editorial from:  

...Mr. Bush came close to suggesting that the partisan rhetoric he was employing to such fine effect wasn't legitimate when used by the other side. "It's time to take the spirit of unity that has been prevalent in fighting the war and bring it to Washington, D.C.", the President said. His economic stimulus plan metamorphosed over the holiday into an "economic security plan". The implication is that opposition to his tax cuts would carry a whiff of failed patriotism.

This tactic strikes us as ill-advised. The unified support from Democrats and Republicans for the war effort since Sept. 11 is admirable, but there's no reason it should extend to unrelated matters. Stretching it too far in fact can only weaken it where it counts. Mr. Bush should let his arguments stand or fall on their merits.

By: William Raspberry  

I ponder the commentaries (I very nearly said "rantings") of those whose politics are counter to my own, and I wonder: Do I sound like that to them?

That is, do my careful attempts at arms-length analysis come across to those on the other side of the political divide as mere sophistry, as argument in service of a predetermined conclusion? It's something I've been thinking about for a while, but it was crystallized by the cover article in the year-end edition of Insight, the magazine of the ultraconservative Washington Times: "The Making of the Clinton Recession"

The Clinton recession? Here's my recollection: Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote for Bill Clinton's economic package - Republicans said it would ruin the economy - and the economy took off, reaching such giddy heights that smart people found it reasonable to warn us against "irrational exuberance", to remind us that "trees don't grow to the sky".

"If polls are to be believed, 100 million US citizens believe that humans and dinosaurs were created within the same weak as each other, less than ten thousand years ago. This is... serious. People like this have the vote, and we have George W. Bush (with a little help from his friends in the Supreme Court) to prove it. They dominate school boards in some states. Their views flatly contradict the great corpus of the sciences, not just biology but physics, geology, astronomy, and many others. It is, of course, entirely legitimate to question conventional wisdom in fields that you have bother to mug up first. That is what Einstein did, and Galileo, and Darwin. But our hundred million are another matter. They are contradicting - influentially and powerfully - vast fields of learning in which their own knowledge and reading is indistinguishable from zero."

- Richard Dawkins, in Free Inquiry, 2001

By: Kera Bolonik  

It was the kind of battle that provocateur journalist Michael Moore would ordinarily consider red meat: a major media corporation threatening a writer's freedom of speech. Moore's new book, "Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation", which pointedly criticizes President George W. Bush and his administration, was due in stores on Oct. 2. As with many books scheduled for release in the weeks that immediately followed Sept. 11, plans to ship the title to stores were put on hold. According to Harper-Collins, "both Moore and [Judith Regan's Harper-Collins imprint] ReganBooks thought its publication would be insensitive, given the events of September 11".

By mid-October, there were 50,000 finished books (out of an announced first printing of 100,000) collecting a month's worth of dust in a Scranton, PA, warehouse, and ReganBooks had yet to schedule a new release date for "Stupid White Men". It was holding off in hopes that Moore would include new material to address the recent events, and would change the title and cover art. Moore says he readily agreed to these requests. But once Harper-Collins had his consent, it asked Moore to rewrite sections - up to 50% of the book - that it deemed politically offensive given the current climate. In addition, the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing house wanted Moore to help defray half the cost of destroying the old copies and of producing the new edition, by contributing $100,000 from his royalty account.

Moore was aghast. "They wanted me to censor myself and then pay for the right to censor myself", he declared. "I'm not going to do that!"...

By: Robert Kuttner  

The economic collapse of Argentina is the latest failure of the one-size-fits-all model that the United States tries to impose on developing countries. Critics of this model are often attacked as protectionists, tools of special interest groups, anarchists, and worse. But in fact they include some of the world's most eminent economists.

The economic model that the United States exports, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the role of enforcer, works like this: Developing nations are supposed to open their economies wide to foreign investment - to allow their banks, public utilities, and anything else to be sold to the highest foreign bidder. They are to balance their budgets, restrict the role of government, discipline wages, and limit social outlays.

"The Bush budget includes cuts, after accounting for inflation, to the three primary sources of ideas and personnel in the high-tech economy. The National Science Foundation is cut by 2.6%, NASA by 3.6%, and the Department of Energy by an alarming 7.1%...

The 21^st century economy will continue to depend on scientific innovation. Economists estimate that innovation and the application of new technology have generated at least half of the phenomenal growth in America's gross domestic product since World War II. Keeping that economic source productive is critical to both national prosperity and federal revenues...

The proposed cuts to scientific research are a self-defeating policy. Congress must increase the federal investment in science. No science, no surplus. It's that simple."

- D. Allan Bromley, former Science Advisor to George H.W. Bush

By: Amory B. Lovins  

Then there are new ways to supply fuel that are secure, fast, and competitive. Done right, abundant farm, forest, and even urban wastes can yield clean liquid fuels while protecting topsoil, farmers, rural culture, climate, and prosperity. Producing such biofuels locally bypasses vulnerable pipelines and provides more jobs. Another attractive innovation is fuel cells using natural gas or renewable energy. (Manhattan's Condé-Nast Building outperformed its rivals by saving half its energy and incorporating the two most reliable known power sources - fuel cells and solar cells - all at no extra cost.) Together, these proven alternatives can displace oil promptly, securely, profitably - and, in time, completely.

In contrast, such options as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge decrease security. If the Refuge held economically recoverable oil (unlikely and a decade away according to the official data), then delivering that oil by its only route, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), would undercut the anti-terrorist purpose of the pending Defense Authorization Bill. It would make TAPS the fattest energy-terrorist target in the country.

TAPS is American, but frighteningly insecure. It's mostly above ground, accessible to attackers, and often unrepairable in winter. If pumping stations or key facilities at either end were disabled, nine million barrels of hot oil could congeal in one winter week into an 800-mile-long 'Chapstik'...

"He who will not reason is a bigot, he who cannot is a fool, and he who dares not is a slave."

- Sir William Drummond

From:  

Hope everyone had a good holiday season - we certainly did, because it gave us an excuse not to have to hunt for conservative idiots for a week or two. If you think it's maddening to read, you should try researching and writing it... good grief! But as 2001 fades slowly into memory, and 2002 is but a few weeks old, conservative idiocy sadly remains a constant presence. Orrin Hatch grabs the number one position this week for telling blatant fibs which would make his mother ashamed. Meanwhile, George W. Bush (2) is following in his father's footsteps, our "good friends" Saudi Arabia (3) are doing their bit to put an end to the gay agenda, and Rudy Giuliani (4) seems to be letting that "Person of the Year" stuff go to his head. Elsewhere we find Bill O'Reilly (7) displaying his complete and utter impartiality, American Airlines (9) taking racial profiling to interesting new levels, and USA Today (10) demonstrating why they should probably think about changing their name to "USA Toady". Enjoy!

By: Linda Deak  

His supporters were attracted by his down home simplicity, his black/white, evil/good thinking. The steam rolling that had Bush declared the president was fueled by money, a lot of it oil money. The press and the polls were loyally Republican and they did their part. It did not matter that the greed candidate had a pitifully stocked brain and we had entered the Information Age. It did not matter that he was clueless about the outside world as the globe spun towards a one-world vision. It was about money and the belief that money was what mattered most in America. It was about not being fancy, not being complicated.

Lets make an assessment of the bomb damage in our country and I do not mean the plane bombs. I mean the damage the Supreme Court inflicted on us by not allowing us to have the winner of our election lead our country. It has occurred to me at several junctures since Election 2000 that perhaps the angst that many of us feel is a waste of energy. There is an enormous backfire building; the ironies are beautiful. Everyone in the world knows that Bush and friends brought shame to our nation and that democracy in our country is in serious jeopardy. His presidency is not a win for America. It is not a win for Republicans and it is not a win for the corporations that fought with vigor and paid handsomely to give greed a chance by having their corporate puppet appointed.

By: Robert S. McIntyre  

The Bush administration has come up with still another outrageous tax-giveaway scheme, this time not by legislation but by administrative fiat. In mid-December, the administration announced that it would soon send out billions of dollars in tax refunds to companies that have flouted the tax laws - and to the major accounting firms that helped them do so.

At issue is something called the "research and experimentation" tax credit, which dates back to Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax-cut law. According to the congressional reports on the original legislation, the free market doesn't do an adequate job of encouraging scientific advances. Not only is research inherently risky, it was argued, but businesses that engage in successful research often find that the fruits of their efforts generate public benefits well beyond the profits accruing to the companies. Consequently, "many businesses have been reluctant to allocate scarce investment funds for uncertain [or inadequate] rewards".

Whatever you may think of this argument - I find it pretty dubious - solving this "market failure" problem was clearly what Congress had in mind in 1981. But once the tax break was adopted, companies and their tax advisers quickly set out to pervert its purpose. What, after all, is "research"? Soon, horror stories emerged about tax credits being successfully claimed for such scientific breakthroughs as McNuggets, Gillette's Lemon-Lime shaving cream, and new fashions in clothing. More generically, as one wag put it, "if you send the janitor down to fix the boiler and he succeeds, it's repairs; if he fails, it's R&D".

By: Ernest Partridge  

Though we may not have fully realized it at the time, that meeting quite possibly sealed the fate of the Public Advisory Panel of the (now) American Chemistry Council. Those name and slogan changes were no doubt the result of expensive and extensive public opinion and focus-group studies. Ours was not the response that ACC had hoped for.

Our next meeting was in Arlington, Virginia, in late October, 2000 (the date may be significant). At the close of that meeting, we were advised that "ACC is re-evaluating its public dialogue processes, including the Public Advisory Panel". We were also told that a continuation of the Panel was a distinct possibility, and that we would be informed individually by phone of the Council's decision in mid-November.

We can only speculate about the deliberations of the Council concerning the future of the Panel. However, the timing of the decision in the light of subsequent events makes such speculation irresistible. Was the Panel and Responsible Care, "window dressing" designed to give the industry the public appearance of responsibility? If so, then the Panel would be more useful to the Council in the event of a Gore victory and Democratic Congress, and a consequent threat of government oversight and regulation. But if Bush and the Republicans brought in an administration and Congress much more friendly to the industry, then ACC could adopt a posture more along the lines of Commodore Vanderbilt: "the public be damned, I work for my stockholders."

All this would be presumably settled a week from the Tuesday following the meeting: November 7, Election Day, whereupon ACC, as promised, would phone its decision to the Panel members. Trouble is, a funny thing happened on the way to that decision. The election was not decided until a month later, December 12, by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. A couple of days after that decision, we received our phone call: The Public Advisory Panel was toast!

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