Bush creates, "Low wage Job War" -- according to critics.

Note to readers: I haven't had the time to look into this issue at all. This is one of two stories that I need to bring myself up to speed on. The other story is Libya, and just what Muammar Gaddafi is offering for his excusal for past misdeeds. As well as the nexis between Libyan posturing and N. Korea's game of poker.

On to the story.

January 9, 2004

The Bush immigration reform will fan competition between groups of low-wage workers, undermining the advancement of African-Americans, Puerto Ricans and other legal U.S. residents from economically depressed groups, critics of the proposal say.

"It pits foreign-born and native-born workers against one another and lowers the standards for everybody," said Hector Figueroa, a spokesman for Service Employees International, Local 32BJ, which represents 70,000 doormen, custodians and other building workers.

Low-wage workers born in the United States "are already suffering because immigration policy that has gone unchanged since 1965 has succeeded in delivering into the U.S. millions of low-skilled, low-wage people year after year," said John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies.

The Bush plan would allow foreign workers to enter the country and take unfilled jobs here, as long as American employers first offered the jobs to U.S. citizens by posting them on a government Web site.

Critics say that could threaten the upward mobility of even middle-class workers, because employers would no longer have to offer higher wages or better working conditions to find workers for less desirable jobs.

Critics also say the guest worker program does not address issues such as lack of low-income housing, crowded schools and a lack of opportunities for minorities to advance into higher-skilled employment, issues that have caused friction in communities from Jackson Heights to Farmingville.

But Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, disagreed, saying the program would allow workers who are now employed illegally to enter the mainstream economy.

Once they did, she said, guest workers could insist on fair wages and decent working conditions. And they would be more willing to seek government services and better schooling that would improve their lives and those of their families.

Gordon Hanson, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies, said the proposed policies would mean immigrants could put down at least temporary roots, lending greater stability to communities feeling besieged by itinerant workers.

But critics say because the Bush plan only extends legal status to workers who are employed, employers would wield vast coercive powers over them. Guest workers who quit or were fired would be stripped of their right to remain in the United States.

Some immigrants believe the new policy will induce a deluge of new immigrant workers that would eat into their opportunities for employment.

One such worker is Miguel Sanchez Flores. Flores, 75, came from Mexico four years ago and said he was ousted from a job in a Chinese noodle shop by more recent Mexican immigrants who were willing to work for even less. More at link

I can certainly see this as a win win situation for the Bush Administration. Bush mollifies business by fomenting wage competition for the very lowest paid of American workers, and the large numbers of Latin Americans will likely see this as a positive development.

I need to read more about the Bush's "Immigration Reform" before bludgeoning it. 'Reform' is a GOP codeword for 'screw the average person, whilst lining businesses pockets.'

Krugman!

Enron and the System

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Two years after Enron, then one of America's most admired companies, was revealed as a fraud, prosecutors finally seem to be getting somewhere. Andrew Fastow, the company's former chief financial officer, and his wife, Lea, are reported to be engaged in plea-bargaining. Mr. Fastow's testimony will probably lead to charges against other former Enron executives.

But it would be a big mistake to conclude that the system is working. It isn't.

For one thing, the progress in the Enron case is something of a fluke — sort of like convicting Al Capone for income tax evasion. The charges against Mrs. Fastow don't focus on dubious corporate deals; they focus on her failure to report the personal kickbacks she received from participants in those deals. And it's still unclear whether the company's top executives will ever face charges.

More important, in political terms the statute of limitations may already have run out. The political figures with the most direct ties to the Enron scandal, former Secretary of the Army Thomas White and former Senator Phil Gramm, are no longer in office. War and a rising market have, at least for the time being, diverted attention from the role of other political figures whose deference to corporate demands aided and abetted Enron and other corporate malefactors.

And that's unfortunate. The wave of scandal was made possible, if not caused, by a political climate in which corporate insiders got pretty much whatever they wanted. Since the politicians who did their bidding haven't paid any price, that climate hasn't changed.

A November profile of Lea Fastow in Business Week was, among other things, a reminder of just how important a permissive political environment was to the company's growing sense that it could get away with just about anything. One of Mrs. Fastow's earliest high-profile deals involved the creation of an elaborate tax shelter. It was obvious from the beginning that this type of shelter was a scam, and the Treasury Department tried to get this maneuver banned in 1994 — but Congress refused to act. In 1998 Treasury tried a different tack, getting the I.R.S. to disallow Enron's tax deduction, but the agency backed down in the face of an intense lobbying campaign.

So have things changed? No. In October the I.R.S. backed off its challenge to another transparent scam, the synfuel tax credit. The agency denies that it was buckling under political pressure. Uh-huh.

Meanwhile, what about stock options? Just about every analysis of the emergence of widespread accounting fraud stresses the distorting role of huge options grants to top executives, which gave insiders a strong incentive to do whatever it took to push up stock prices. (A fixation on the stock price was central to the Enron scandal.) Companies might have issued fewer options, and accounting fraud might have been less of a problem, if accounting rules had required companies to count the issue of stock options as a cost, rather than pretending that they were somehow free.

But in 1994, when the Financial Accounting Standards Board tried to issue a rule to that effect, companies that issued lots of options mounted a lobbying campaign. And politicians rushed — in a fully bipartisan manner — to be of service. Senator Joseph Lieberman took the lead: he introduced a resolution opposing the change, the resolution was approved 88 to 9, and the board backed down.

So now it's clear that options were a big motivator for corporate fraud, has Congress moved to require that issuing them be counted against profits? No. In fact, the politicians who led the charge against reform back in 1994 haven't budged.

"The best comparison I can think of is the one the N.R.A. uses about guns — which is that guns don't kill people, criminals do," Senator Lieberman said on "Frontline" on PBS. "Options were not the problem with Enron; it was the way in which the executives at Enron sold their options."

Yesterday Gen. Wesley Clark made an appearance with Sherron Watkins, the Enron whistle-blower, and promised to crack down on corporate tax shelters. Howard Dean has also made a crackdown on tax shelters a central plank of his campaign. If these or other candidates actually succeed in making corporate abuse into a successful campaign issue, we may finally see some real reform. But right now, two years after Enron imploded, we have to say that the system is still broken.

And of course, Kenny Boy Lay, a Bush 'Pioneer' is still not charged in relation to the Enron implosion. America. What a country!

If you just popped in and see this awful high contrast text block and are mortified, fret not. As has always been my creed, build it better. I'm satisfied with the very general box properties and am going to be working on the text colors, and padding, etc.

But first, I'm going to feed. Thanks for your patience.

pure bs - Exclusive feature! ten daily links of interest

Link 1 Richer, stouter, and no happier

Short version: There's more and more of more and more of us

Link 2 Farmed Salmon Are Higher in Toxins Than Wild Ones, Study Finds

When the conditions of aquacultured fish are examined, it isn't hard to see why. Read.

Link 3 Not really news, but the Bush Administration is Pushing to Make Those Tax Cuts Permanent

That awful sound is your children and their children's children paying for our fiscal recklessness

Link 4 Bush Acts to Reward Companies Who Cut off Seniors' Drug Coverage

Read. Get angry. Email every senior you know. Now.

Link 5 Bush Plans Major Space Announcement

Was he the guy at Morton-Thiokol that designed those "O" rings? I think not. I think W's out of loop at NASA :)

Link 6 Jane Goodall On Our Commander-in-Chief

No. I'm sorry. That's just wrong on so many levels. Although the programme is called, "Demonic Ape."

Link 7 Bill Gates wants to visit YOUR living room

Well, okay. He wants to OWN your living room.

Link 8 That homicidal kidnapper guy offed himself after a police chase

Hard to know what really happened here. Girls are safe, though.

Link 9 Huge Movement of Troops Is Underway

Rotation in the Persian Gulf to get those folks some R & R. There's more there. Read. Learn. Know stuff. Impress chicks.

Link 10 Think those 'low tar' butts are saving your lungs? Think again

Low-tar cigarettes do not reduce a smoker's risk of developing lung cancer and are as deadly as regular brands, researchers said Friday.

Some of these we'll explore in greater depth. The salmon story is espercially intriguing. I'll continue to try and get the Carnegie report, and a host of other things big and small on the morrow.

More on Iraq via The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

A personal anecdote: Jessica Tuchman Mathews is my hero. Whenever Richard Perle gets a spot on PBS, Ms. Mathews takes him on and does a terrific job. I told her so.

You can read the two page summary of CEIP's findings here.

I have been trying to download the entire .pdf for some time now, and I keep timing out. I'm on a 3Mb line, and I just ran a speedtest here and my speed seems good. I'll keep trying.

You can contrast the Carnegie findings with Powell's assertions below, or you can parse the information here for a tease.

One tidbit that Powell himself says in another of today's entries is found in the above linked article. Ready?

.....Years of U.N. inspections to determine whether Saddam was harboring weapons of mass destruction were working well, and the United States should set up jointly with the United Nations a permanent system to guard against the spread of dangerous technology, the report said.

It recommended that consideration be given to making the job of CIA director a career post instead of a political appointment.

Mathews is president, Cirincione is director of the proliferation project, and Perkovich is vice president for studies at Carnegie, an independent research group.

Meanwhile, an unscientific State Department survey released this week showed most residents in five Iraqi cities believed attacks against Iraqi civilians, police and international organizations are more harmful than helpful for Iraq's future. About a third of Iraqis said attacks against the U.S. forces are helpful.

The survey also showed about two-thirds of those surveyed say the attacks emphasize the need for the continued presence of coalition forces in Iraq. A majority thought that troops should depart after a permanent government is elected by the Iraqi people....

Iraq is still a very nasty, dangerous place.

As I'm looking for all things Iraq related, I came across this in that Lefty rag, Stars and Stripes.

...."After we knew the Chinook had gone down and we flew at night in a darkened helicopter, we knew this was a dangerous place and we're at war," said Democrat Ed Case of Hawaii.

However, he said: "Whatever increased risk we faced, it was nothing compared to what the frontline troop goes through every day."

The delegation made a stop at the military hospital in Landstuhl, which has treated more than 7,000 injured and ill servicemembers from the Iraq war. The congressmen met with several injured soldiers, one whose arm had been amputated by a rocket-propelled grenade, and another who was injured by a homemade bomb.

Although this could just have easily been a report about today's Black Hawk downing, it was an earlier incident involving a Chinook. The 7,000+ injury figure was reported 5 November, 2003. Two full months ago. Link.

It is somewhat disconcerting that CentCom has removed the tallies from their usual location. I suspect this a bow to political pressure. Now that we're in a post-war, post-Saddam situation any additional deaths/casualties are likely to seen as a greater political liability.

I now use the numbers compiled at the excellent Lunaville.org site.

Today's downing of the UH-60 Black Hawk brings the total of downed helicopters as a result of hostile fire to eight if confirmed since the declaration of Mr. Bush on May 1 that major combat operations has ended.

Additional information on today's chopper crash. CentCom has confirmed that nine G.I.s were killed.

In another Iraqi story, it was reported that a military cargo plane may have been hit by a missile and had to make an emergency landing at Baghdad airport. I can't find the link now, .........I just found a link at Boeston.com. Good thing, I thought I might have hallucinated the entire incident. :)

Iraq is just a long string of bad news. I wonder if BushCo's plans to launch C-Span Baghdad are still go?

WTF? Powell overdosing on Ambien?

Powell, Back After Surgery, Defends His Call for Iraq War

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

Published: January 8, 2004

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 ? Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today offered a vigorous defense of his United Nations presentation last year on the need to wage war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, even as new criticism emerged and some American weapons inspectors have left Iraq empty-handed.

In a rare, wide-ranging news conference, Mr. Powell voiced some optimism on several other issues that have bedeviled the Bush administration, including North Korea, Sudan and Brazil. There are indications from allies that six-way talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program may resume, he said.

The secretary, appearing vigorous and in good spirits just three weeks after undergoing surgery for prostate cancer, did not yield an inch in defense of his justification for the war in Iraq. He was fully aware that "the world would be watching," as he painstakingly made the case that Mr. Hussein's regime presented a threat to the United States and its interests.

But, a central tenet of his argument ? that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction ? has, in the absence of evidence, stirred criticism that the administration may have exaggerated its case in order to win support for military action.

A report released today by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a non-partisan Washington research center, concluded that Iraq's weapons programs constituted a long-term threat that should not be ignored, but that they did not "pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region, or to global security."

The imminence of the risk presented by Iraq was at the core of debates in the United Nations last winter over how to proceed against Mr. Hussein, who by all accounts had flouted the international community by failing to cooperate with weapons inspectors and come clean about his programs. The Security Council ultimately balked at authorizing war, agreeing to give negotiations more time to work.

Mr. Powell's presentation -- complete with audiotapes and satellite photographs -- made the administration's strongest case for urgent action. Link

See entry below and link to Powell's declaration that Iraq is WMD free/not athreat to its neighbors/not a threat to the U.S./sanctions effective. I guess that the truth is a moving tartget for Colin 'Mai Lai" Powell.

The U.S. Secretary of State recommends: Ambien For those difficult out wash memories.

From the pure bs Dept. Of "How the Hell Did I Miss This?" comes this via the WaPo:

Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper
Since Gulf War, Nonconventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 7, 2004

BAGHDAD -- Of all Iraq's rocket scientists, none drew warier scrutiny abroad than Modher Sadeq-Saba Tamimi.

An engineering PhD known for outsized energy and gifts, Tamimi, 47, designed and built a new short-range missile during Iraq's four-year hiatus from United Nations arms inspections. Inspectors who returned in late 2002, enforcing Security Council limits, ruled that the Al Samoud missile's range was not quite short enough. The U.N. team crushed the missiles, bulldozed them into a pit and entombed the wreckage in concrete. In one of three interviews last month, Tamimi said "it was as if they were killing my sons."

But Tamimi had other brainchildren, and these stayed secret. Concealed at some remove from his Karama Co. factory here were concept drawings and computations for a family of much more capable missiles, designed to share parts and features with the openly declared Al Samoud. The largest was meant to fly six times as far.

"This was hidden during the UNMOVIC visits," Tamimi said, referring to inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. Over a leisurely meal of lamb and sweet tea, he sketched diagrams. "It was forbidden for us to reveal this information," he said.

Tamimi's covert work, which he recounted publicly for the first time in five hours of interviews, offers fresh perspective on the question that led the nation to war. Iraq flouted a legal duty to report the designs. The weapons they depicted, however, did not exist. After years of development -- against significant obstacles -- they might have taken form as nine-ton missiles. In March they fit in Tamimi's pocket, on two digital compact discs.

The nine-month record of arms investigators since the fall of Baghdad includes discoveries of other concealed arms research, most of it less advanced. Iraq's former government engaged in abundant deception about its ambitions and, in some cases, early steps to prepare for development or production. Interviews here -- among Iraqi weaponeers and investigators from the U.S. and British governments -- turned up unreported records, facilities or materials that could have been used in unlawful weapons.

But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.

A review of available evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Five pages, and pre-school drawings at link

I know, it's old news. It was old news to Powell and Rice pre-sept 11, 2001. Our watchdog press. Good thing they're not watching my home.

Pure bs pounding swing voters! (Gently)

Earlier today, it was sometime around noon, I was at my local lunchtime haunt. (sorry, no gratuitous plug -- soup was on the cold side today) I was sitting next to my erstwhile junior high school shop teacher. We were discussing the finer points of woodworking - now his vocation since he retired a few years ago, and a favorite pastime of your humble author - when Bush appeared on the TV. The TV was tuned to CNN. This life-long GOPer, and I suspect closet authoritarian started bashing Bush.

His grousing was over Bush's lack of real funding for No Child Left Behind and subsequent asking for Congress for an additional 75 billion dollars to fight a war that he now sees as unnecessary caused me to grin just a bit. I asked him what he thought about Bush's overall job handling as Commander-in-Chief. He quickly retorted, "if only Clark(Gen. Wesley Clark) was a Republican."

Sensing vulnerability I asked him, "what difference does it make what party a candidate is in, if you agree with their agenda?"

He honestly replied, "none."

I then proceeded to ask him if he would vote for Bush in 2004. He replied, "there is no way in hell I am going to vote for that [expletive removed]. I'd sooner vote for Dean."

This was too good to be true. I queried further, "what about a Dean/Clark or Clark/Dean ticket?"

We then chatted a bit about Bush's ties to mega-corporations and how money, while always a part of politics, has been brought to a new level in the past few years.

He then proclaimed quite unexpectedly, "I'm voting for Clark in the primary."

I asked him about his decades of devotion to the GOP and how he felt about being betrayed by Bush. He responded, "all these guys are bought and paid for by the time they reach Governor, or Senator, much less President. Clark doesn't owe anybody anything."

I just had to ask about the general election -- in NH we can vote, in any election, and immediately register with another party -- so I asked him, "Norm, are you really going to leave the GOP in November, or are you just angry for the moment?"

He laughed a bit, and said that he hadn't actually said that he was going to vote Democrat in the general election.

"Fair enough." I said. "Let's say the election was held tomorrow, would you vote for the Democratic nominee?"

"Tomorrow?" he asked, with a raised brow. "Yeah, I would. Absolutely," he averred, as he took an enormous bite out of his ham on rye.

I'll keep working on Norm. You have to know this guy. At one point when I brought up the fact that no WMD had been found in Iraq, he quickly rebuked me with, "So?"

We then had the discussion that I'm sure millions of Americans have had, regarding the Bush Administration's constantly shifting rationale for war. At this point, June or July of last year he was an ardent Bush supporter. How quickly things can change.

Bush and Stupidity

First this op-ed:

The S factor explains Bush's popularity

By NEAL STARKMAN
GUEST COLUMNIST

Millions of words have been written as to the motivations of voters. Particularly in close elections, as in the 2000 presidential contest, pundits and laypeople alike have speculated on why people voted for whom. The exit poll has been a major tool in this speculation.

But the speculation misses the mark by far. It's increasingly obvious, for example, that none of the so-called theories can explain President Bush's popularity, such as it is. Even at this date in his presidency, after all that has happened, the president's popularity hovers at around 50 percent -- an astonishingly high figure, I believe, given the state of people's lives now as opposed to four years ago.

What can explain his popularity? Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they've been impressed with the president's personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?

Is that likely?

Granted, there are certain subsections of the American polity that have substantially benefited from this presidency. Millionaires and charismatic Christians have accrued either material or spiritual fortification from Bush's administration. But surely these two groups are a small minority of the population. What, then, can account for so many people being so supportive of the president?

The answer, I'm afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It's the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don't ask it, the media don't report it, the voters don't discuss it.

I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it.

It's the "Stupid factor," the S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.

It's not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren't the people I'm referring to. The people I'm referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They're perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don't have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all -- far above all -- they don't think.

You know these people; they're all around you (they're not you, else you would not be reading this article this far). They're the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority -- perhaps even a majority -- of the populace.

Politicians have been aware of this forever; they cater to these people. They offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. They evade directed questions with non-sequiturs. They offer meaningless, jingoistic pap instead of thoughtful policy. And these people, the "S" people, eat it all up with a ladle.

I don't have a solution to this problem. To claim I did would belie my previous arguments. But I do have some modest suggestions that might provide a start for discussion: an intelligence test to earn the right to vote; a three-significantly-stupid-behaviors-and-you're-out law; fines for politicians who pander to the lowest common denominator and deportation of media representatives who perpetuate such actions.

It's well past time that people confront this issue, no matter who's offended. We are on the way to becoming a nation of imbeciles. I'm certain that a plethora of "George W. Bush" jokes is already being circulated in every capital of the world. We can stop this sapping of our national integrity but we must do it soon, lest the morons become the norm and those of us who use our brains for more than memorizing advertising jingles are ourselves ostracized from society.

Let's start talking. Let's bring the S factor out of the closet and into the daylight where we can all see it, gulp at its hideousness and finally make serious attempts to bring it to bay. Link

This op-ed is an over-simplification. It is not so much stupidity, as it is the very obvious fact that Americans by and large, lack critical thinking skills. Joe and Josephine six-pack swallow all manner of rubbish and harbor downright weird beliefs because of this. Early adoption into fundamental religion, and parents that are/were unable to equip their children to cope with the novelty of the world using logic and reason are better explanations as to why Bush is held in relatively high regard. Of course such rigidity of thinking is part of being intellectually bereft, but it is not the sole domain of those of less than average intelligence. Many really bright people like Bush, and harbor many other beliefs strongly despite a complete lack of evidence.

Religion, and 'group think' had some form of adaptive advantage in our distant past. Now, it has become a hindrance to continued scientific inquiry and all other higher order thought processing. Richard Dawkin's 'meme' hypothesis can show how people believe -- even otherwise high functioning people -- can hold utterly bizarre beliefs. I would say that Bush's popularity is due to a combination of factors.

Anyone that is well known is bound to have some level of popularity, regardless of what they may have done. The media, which is largely the propaganda arm of Bush Administration almost never fails to show 'their guy' in a positive light. Media consolidation is a huge hindrance to offering the whole spectrum of thought on any given issue. Corporate giants have morphed Bush into an 'everyday' guy, when it is clear that Bush comes from American royalty. Our media have transformed this 'fortunate son' into the guy next door, albeit with a speech impediment.

Yes, of course in any population 50% of the populace is of below average intelligence, but this fails to properly address Bush's popularity.

What we need in this country is true, open and elevated debate. It doesn't take a high IQ to sift through facts in a reasonable manner. All that is required is access to alternative viewpoints and a willingness to take a bit of time to assess options on an even playing field. People are busy. They want easy answers to hard questions. The biggest success of the Bush Administration -- and I would argue Republicans since Teddy Roosevelt -- is to frame issues in a black and white nature, when in reality everything is nuanced in shades of gray. If you do not believe that this is true, name me one issue that doesn't require a trade-off of some kind. There isn't one.

I am willing to concede that a person's intelligence does play a factor in how they view Bush. A person's cognitive and reasoning abilities color everything which one comes into contact. Yet, I think it both unreasonable and irresponsible to offer the simplistic conclusion that Bush's popularity is due to the stupidity of the masses. Bush has been merchandised to a degree that he has ceased to be anathema to half of our citizenry. It is no one person's fault that he/she lacks the proper skills to make a valid quantitative judgment about a political person.

Remember, this 50% of America is just as sure that Bush is a positive force, as the other 50% is that he is altogether something different. Some people cannot experience cognitive dissonance. This is true regardless of intellect, but is not neutral to those that have well developed critical thinking skills. Such people deal with cognitive dissonance in a healthy way. As citizens, it is our duty to try and bridge the gap and knock down those long held beliefs without evidence.

In closing, I'll offer a bit of pure bs speculation. If Bush fades in the polls, Karl Rove and his handlers will off up a myriad of demonstrably false assertions about their guy that will disappear under the least bit of scrutiny. These will be new revelations that have already been 'put out to pasture' by those not beholden to the GOP(Goering's Own Party) The reason that the GOP resorts to propaganda is that it works.

It should be obvious that this is an issue that I find fascinating. I hope that you at least made it through this screed.

For further reading, I recommend the following web material:

Iain Murray's : Living with the consequences of innumeracy, or Why Americans suck at math

A bit on memes, by Susan Blackmore

An Introduction to Psychological Warfare and Propaganda

IMF Still Miffed With Bush Aministration Their Suggestion: Try Budgeting You Neophytes!!!!

IMF continues warning on US deficit

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. budget deficit is burgeoning from rising defense and security spending, even as tax cuts are lowering government revenue, amid increasing demands on the budget from the retiring baby boom generation, the International Monetary Fund cautioned once again Wednesday.

But the IMF's warnings and its prescriptions for dealing with the budgetary as well as trade deficits are unlikely to have much impact on U.S. policymakers, if any, particularly in a presidential election year.

Since the Bush administration took over in 2001, the federal budget balance has deteriorated rapidly, and the government deficit is expected to exceed 4 percent of gross domestic product for the current fiscal year.

"And that deficit is likely to be sustained...which raises longer-term issues," not just for the U.S. economy, but for overall global economic prospects, said Charles Collyns, deputy director of the IMF's western hemisphere department in a phone conference with reporters. The group released a study Wednesday on U.S. fiscal policies and priorities for long-run stability, which Collyns said was based on discussions with U.S. authorities over the summer.

The IMF warned that the large fiscal deficits will likely continue over the next decade as the administration keeps on cutting taxes on the one hand, while increasing defense and social spending on the other. That, in turn, could lead to a rise in interest rates, even though the international agency did not specify by just how much monetary policy could be tightened. It also noted that higher interest rates would crowd out private sector investments and ultimately hamper business and productivity growth as well as consumer spending.

In the near-term, of course, prospects for the U.S. economy and indeed the world economy, appear to be looking much better than they did a year ago. With U.S. asset prices on the rise once again and GDP outpacing analysts' expectations in the third quarter, a brighter outlook for the U.S. economy has been key to improving prospects for both Japan and Europe.

Still, the IMF said that in the longer-term, the ballooning budget deficit and net foreign liability position in the United States will be the biggest dark spot in the global economy moving forward, and could "eventually" raise real interest rates in industrialized nations by 0.50 to 1.00 percentage points.

"The United States is on course to increase its net external liabilities to around 40 percent of GDP within the next few years...this trend is likely to put pressure on the U.S. dollar, particularly because the current account deficit increasingly reflects low savings rather than high investment," the IMF stated.Much more at link

Read the entire story. It details much of what we here at pure bs have been saying about U.S. debt in the longer term. The IMF is notorious for underestimating the fallout of events. Essentially, the IMF can only make suggestions about U.S. policy because the U.S is the largest single donor to the IMF, and is free to do what is pleases.

I am not an economist, but I do have the ear of an economist friend that works in Zurich. She is really at a loss to come up with a plan for the U.S. to balance its budget in the foreseeable future without a repeal of Bush's tax cuts, and a more robust growth engine. She sees a very dark future for middle America in the coming decades. She's also a real looker :)

Of course the issue with 'the dismal science' is as has oft been said, "put ten economists in a room and you'll end up with eleven interpretations."

Hmmm. I'm having IE issues. This abbeviated post is being made using my bestest favorite browser Mozilla Firebird.

More to follow shortly. Stay tuned.

BREAKING: BUSH DOCTRINE NIXED!

No more "Strut Proudly and Carry a Codpiece" New Doctrine: "Peace Available. Only 500 Carrots"

Runaway costs cited as reason for policy shift.

U.S. to free 500 Iraqi prisoners as peace "carrot"

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it would launch a carrot-and-stick drive to secure lasting peace in Iraq by cracking down harder on guerrillas while freeing hundreds of prisoners deemed low-security threats.

"It is time for reconciliation, time for Iraqis to make common cause," Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer told a news conference.

About 500 Iraqis held as low-level security threats in the last eight months are due to be released. Some 9,000 prisoners are being held by U.S.-led forces and many more have been detained and released since Saddam Hussein was ousted in April.

"In a gesture to give impetus to those Iraqis who wish to reconcile with their countrymen, the (U.S-led) coalition will permit some currently detained offenders to return to their homes and families," said Bremer.

He said those suspected of serious violent crimes would not be freed. "This is not a programme for those with blood-stained hands. No person directly involved in the death or serious bodily harm to any human being will be released."

Adnan Pachachi, president of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, said 100 prisoners would be freed on Thursday and thousands more soon. More at link, doc.

Hard to know what to say. Oops? Those zany Iraqis. They must be lovin' the freedom we've given them.

Mass exctinction underway

Global warming threatens mass extinctions - study

By Alister Doyle

OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming could wipe out a quarter of all species of plants and animals on earth by 2050 in one of the biggest mass extinctions since the dinosaurs, according to an international study.

The United Nations said the report, highlighting threats to creatures ranging from Australian butterflies to Spanish eagles, showed a need for the world to back the Kyoto protocol, meant to brake rising temperatures linked to human pollution.

"A quarter of all species of plants and land animals, or more than a million in all, could be driven to extinction," said Chris Thomas, professor of Conservation Biology at England's University of Leeds.

Thomas, lead author of the study published in the science journal Nature, told Reuters that emissions from cars and factories could push temperatures up to levels not seen for one million to 30 million years by the end of the century, threatening many habitats.

The survey, the largest of its kind to date, studied global warming links to 1,103 species of plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, frogs and insects in South Africa, Brazil, Europe, Australia, Mexico and Costa Rica and extrapolated findings as far as 2050. It did not examine the oceans.

"Climate change is the biggest new extinction threat," said Lee Hannah, a co-author, at Conservation International in Washington DC. Many species would simply be unable to adapt or migrate to new habitats.

Thomas said the feared extinctions could be one of the worst since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. "This could be on a par with some of the geologically significant extinctions," he said. Much more at link.

When asked about the phenomon, President Bush said only this, "I've taken mass extinction from the world of them egghead scientists, and brought it right out front of everyday Americans with my sweeping reforms of environmental laws. In fact, it's a cornerstone of my administration."

Meanwhile.....

France Faces Superstitions Head On

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac said on Wednesday civil servants should not display religious symbols at work, widening a heated debate as France prepares to ban Islamic headscarves in public schools.

It was the first time Chirac specifically addressed the issue of religious symbols in the civil service though he has made similar comments on schools and hospitals. He said workers in public services had to adhere to principles of neutrality.

"It is evident that no civil servant should display his religious beliefs while carrying out his job," Chirac said in a speech to civil servants.

"It is also evident that basic rules of community life have to be respected: nothing justifies, for example, a patient in hospital refusing to be treated by a doctor of the opposite sex."

France's conservatives plan to rush through a ban on religious symbols such as Islamic headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses in public schools, sparking criticism from many religious leaders.

The planned law, aimed mainly at veiled Muslim schoolgirls, split France's main Muslim group on Wednesday. The group's nominal head warned that protests against the law would be dangerous but other leaders said they approved of them.

A first protest march in Paris last month drew over 3,000 people, many of them veiled young women.

If only ANOTHER leader would follow Chirac's lead, and keep his superstitions private.

John's Snow Job

Snow: rebounding economy expected to help cut federal deficit in half by 2005

While concerned about soaring budget deficits, the Bush administration is confident that a rebounding economy will help cut the deficit in half by 2005, Treasury Secretary John Snow said Wednesday.

Snow rejected calls by many of the Democratic presidential candidates to roll back some or all of the president's massive tax cuts, which they blame as a major factor in the exploding federal deficits.

Snow said that instead of rolling back the tax reductions, which Democrats contend have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthy, they should be made permanent. He said if the 2001 and 2003 tax cut bills had not been passed, 109 million taxpayers would face tax bills this April 15 that would be on average $1,544 higher.

"Let me be perfectly clear: Failure to make the tax relief permanent would be a huge mistake and would put our recovery in jeopardy," Snow said in prepared remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

More fun at link

Keep your eyes on YOUR tax return. Remember, how much the top few percent of wage earners make in this country. It's puts true caste systems to shame..The wage disparity that is.

Failure to abolish the Bush cuts leads to huge burdens down the road, Mr. Snow. But you'll be pushin' up daisies then, and won't be crushed under mountainous debts, and worthless greenbacks.

Whose an Expert?

Okay. The U.S. Gov't's official word and this 'expert' opinion seem to be at odds.

First, the story:

Al-Qaida-linked groups planning attacks, expert says

Associated Press
Jan. 7, 2004 07:50 AM

SINGAPORE - Al-Qaida-linked groups are training and recruiting militants to carry out suicide attacks that have become Osama bin Laden's "greatest achievement" as his brand of extremist Islam spreads around the world, a terrorism expert said Wednesday.

The greatest threats include Al Ansar Al Islami in Iraq, Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, Al Ansar Mujahidin in Chechnya, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Salafi Group for Call and Combat in Algeria, Rohan Gunaratna told a Southeast Asian outlook forum.

Gunaratna said a fresh batch of Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists will graduate Jan. 15 from a camp in the southern Philippines. Based in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah is an al-Qaida funded regional group believed responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, among other terrorist attacks in the region.

The camp is run by the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, which is fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in Mindanao, Gunaratna said. He did not elaborate on the number of graduates or where he got his information, but Indonesia intelligence has also said there's a recruiting drive for the group, thought to have about 3,000 members.

Sidney Jones, the Indonesian project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, supported Gunaratna's assessment on the Philippines being a Jemaah Islamiyah training ground.

"There are several MILFs, all using the same name," Jones said, adding that these factions were not the same as the group now conducting peace negotiations with Manila.

Despite the arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged operations chief Hambali in Thailand last year, Jones said there were a number of key group operatives still at large, including Azahari Husin and Nordin Mohamed Top. The two men are accused of planning the Bali bombings.

Gunaratna, author of "Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror," said the bulk of the terrorist attacks expected in 2004 will come from these groups - trained and financed by bin Laden and not the network itself.

"Small, disparate organizations mounting operations are in many ways Osama bin Laden's greatest achievement," said Gunaratna.

Before the Sept. 11, 2001 strikes in the United States, the al-Qaida network launched an attack every two years; since then, there has been one al-Qaida-linked attack every three months, Gunaratna noted.

He predicted that pace will continue through this year, with the growing threats coming from the smaller, regional terrorist organizations.

"As the memory of 9/11 recedes, the West is likely to witness another mass casualty attack on Western soil," Gunaratna said.

In a paper presented at the forum, he said: "The threat of terrorism and its associated groups will persist throughout 2004."

Maritime targets are vulnerable to attack, he said, adding "almost all the attacks will be suicide vehicle bombings, an al-Qaida hallmark."

If left unchecked, Iran could emerge as a training ground for al-Qaida terrorists, Gunaratna predicted. Link

Okay, here we have what appears to be a true expert on these matters entirely contradicting what the U.S. Gov't. has told us. Furthermore, Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the foremost English speaking journalist covering the Middle-East, and author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, and Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia was on NPR's Fresh Air, has estimated Al Ansar al Islam's numbers at no more than a few hundred, and that their activity was confined to the area in Iraq that we'll detail in a moment.

Al Ansar al Islam articles chronicling U.S. successes during the Gulf War redux:

US claims victory against Ansar al-Islam

A US special forces team has asserted that a joint operation with local Kurds against an alleged Al Qaeda-linked group in northern Iraq had been a resounding success, with initial investigations turning up evidence of chemical weapons production.

Speaking during a rare appearance before the press, seven special forces officers said Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) was now "neutralised", even though many of the group's fighters may have escaped over the border to neighbouring Iran.

"It was pretty damn successful. In a period of one-and-a-half days, a terrorist organisation that has had a grip on this region was rooted out and neutralised," said one of the officers during the briefing in Halabja, a town in the south-east of the Iraqi Kurd autonomous zone.

"There was a lot of fighting. The Ansar al-Islam and Al Qaeda were not a pushover," the officer said. None of the team, decked out in battle fatigues, gave their names.

Citing "anecdotal evidence", the team said there were "several hundred" Ansar casualties. The group had an estimated 700 members, of which 75-100 were believed to be Al Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan. Much more at link

And this:

The rise and fall of Ansar al-Islam

Former members of Ansar al-Islam talk to the Monitor about the militant group's ties to Al Qaeda, the foreign fighters that joined its ranks, and its eventual destruction.

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SARGAT AND SULAYMANIYAH, NORTHERN IRAQ -- As the American air attack pulverized the mountain base of Ansar al-Islam last March, Mohamed Gharib let his video camera roll - just as he had done during countless operations of the northern Iraq-based militant group.

"I filmed the missiles falling," says Mr. Gharib, a Kurdish militant and the Ansar media chief. Gharib's footage had for years recorded the violent history of the Al Qaeda-linked fighters, and served as a fundraising tool. "You wouldn't believe if I told you we were happy [to be attacked]. They gave us the sense that we were so true, so right, that even America had to come fight us."

Washington fingered Ansar as a terrorist group experimenting with poisons, and used its tenuous links to Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to help justify the war against Iraq.

US officials were triumphant last spring, even as the broader Iraq invasion was still underway, after a three-day assault. Gen. Tommy Franks declared that a "massive terrorist facility in northern Iraq" had been "attacked and destroyed" by a joint US-Kurdish operation. Much more at link

What to believe? I honestly do not know. My gut tells that the CS Monitor and Ahmed Rashid's account in the Fresh Air segment's are more likely to be true. I think Rashid is more of an expert on the Taliban, and the Taliban certainly do appear to be regrouping along the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rashid has said this himself. The Taliban was never a direct threat to the U.S. It was their harboring of al-Qaeda that made them a menace.

As for the other groups that Mr. Gunaratna has named, they all appear at this time to involved in local terrorism. I am always leery of murky ties to al-Qaeda. Our own government has attempted to connect the Ba'athist regime to al-Qaeda, and this has thus far been debunked by our own intelligence agencies.

I remain skeptical. If Mr. Gunaratna's assertions are true, and "Al-Qaida-linked groups are training and recruiting militants to carry out suicide attacks" are indeed taking place, what is the international community doing about it? Cannot we find these camps and eradicate them? Or have our forces been so thinly stretched as to not have sufficient strength to carry out such operations? If the latter is the case, it is yet more evidence that the Gulf War redux was truly a sideroad in the war against terrorism.

Worse yet is the possibility that if all of this new activity is indeed occurring, our involvement in Iraq may directly have been responsible.

Press Suckered Again?

Consider this:

Tax Cut Repeal Plans Assailed

By Rick Pearson

CHICAGO TRIBUNE; The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Co. newspaper.

January 7, 2004

Des Moines - Democrats looking to extend their presidential campaigns through New Hampshire and beyond attacked Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt yesterday for their plans to repeal President George W. Bush's tax cuts and thus raise taxes on middle-class Americans.

But in a radio debate featuring six of the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls, Dean and Gephardt separately maintained that their proposals to use revenues gained by ending the tax cuts to pay for health care and other initiatives would provide benefits to the middle class.

Dean, a former Vermont governor, said charges that he was raising taxes on the middle class were "hogwash."

Dean and Gephardt, who are at the top of polls in Iowa, also clashed over Medicare funding. And while the candidates said they would work to represent all Americans, including conservative Republicans, if they won the White House, Dean said, "You cannot accommodate right-wing zealots. There's no accommodation to be had." More at Link.

It is abundantly clear that the Bush tax cuts have done two things. The tax cuts have shifted much of the burden for services normally subsidized by the federal government to that states. The other thing the cuts have done is to mortgage our future. It's really that simple.

Dean is the only major candidate from either party to have actually balanced a budget. Granted it was the small state of Vermont's, but it should be noted.

The repeal of Bush's tax cuts would immediately give more money to the states. Those that are fiscally responsible will benefit greatly. The federal government under GWB has been a mass of pork spending. Bush has yet to veto any spending bill. When you're born with a silver spoon up your in your mouth, you're not likely to have had the experiences of one developing under different circumstances. Dean was blessed as well, but he has a proven record of fiscal responsibility.

"Now Get your ass to Mars"

That's for making me come to Mars. [Kicks Ahnuld's groin.] You know how much I hate this fahking planet!

I have been stunned by the footage coming back from Mars. Please forgive the "Total Recall" quotes. :)

More Bovine Buffoonery available by clicking cartoon

CAP hits another one!

What Flavor of Progressive are You?

Progressivism in 2004: Transcending the Liberal-Conservative Divide

by John Halpin
January 5, 2004

As we look at the 2004 political year and the divisive struggles ahead, it seems like a good time to re-examine our roots and see how progressive values can help lead the way out of the liberal and conservative divide that leaves so many Americans disillusioned with our political system in general and Washington in particular.

At its core, progressivism is a non-ideological, pragmatic system of thought grounded in solving problems and maintaining strong values within society.

The original progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century sought to improve American life by encouraging personal and moral responsibility among citizens; by providing the carrots and sticks to promote efficient and ethical business behavior; and by reforming government to provide a level playing field for all citizens and groups.

Theodore Roosevelt’s brand of progressive reform appealed to a broad coalition of Americans and created a legacy of social and political change that battled social decay and modernized urban politics; reined in corporate corruption and abuse; expanded voting rights and democratic input; and – despite its jingoistic enterprises – set the stage for American intervention in defense of democracy.

Progressivism offers a panoply of strong, concrete ideas for today’s America, ideas that can help us move beyond the debilitating ideological debates that dominate our political discourse. Four stand out as we look to 2004:

The role of government. First and foremost, progressives believe the typical liberal-conservative fight over big government versus small government misses the point. We want to focus instead on finding the best solution – public or private – to a given problem, a proven approach that marries American pragmatism and our history of taking all challenges head on. Much more at link.

Whatever your political stripe, you should take the few minutes and read the whole article. Given today's lack of civil debate, untethered foreign and domestic policy, and general malaise amongst our citizenry, the points raised in the article just might offer something tangible onto which to grasp.

More on Code Orange

This from P.J. Crowley at The Center for American Progress

When the Department of Homeland Security elevated the threat level over the holidays, it did more than add the color orange to the traditional holiday colors of red and green or blue. The banter between Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg over the wisdom of being in Times Square on New Year’s Eve illustrated the government’s mixed message of buying plastic sheeting and duct tape while proceeding with holiday travel and celebrations.

The heightened security level will remain at least through January but we have learned three things from this latest alert. The elevated terrorism threat is real. Conspicuous gaps remain in our ability to protect ourselves and find out what our adversaries are planning. In 2004 we must devote more money to homeland security if we are to overcome the challenges we face today.

In 2003 there was progress in disrupting potential attacks, arresting terrorists associated with al Qaeda and its offshoots. But al Qaeda still conducted significant attacks in Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey while the United States did little to repair its image in the Islamic world.

In fact, there are a number of reasons to believe that we are in graver danger entering 2004 than at any time since Sept. 11. First, al Qaeda’s leadership has not abandoned its goal of launching significant attacks against highly visible and symbolic targets in the United States. Second, as the videotape released Sunday by al Jazeera demonstrates, Osama bin Laden remains at large and continues to incite his followers. Release of such videos have coincided with attacks in the past. Third, we know that al Qaeda and others are still underwriting training camps in southeast Asia and, more ominously, have not stopped their search for chemical or biological weapon technology.

I don't believe that our efforts to thwart al-Qaeda have been that successful. I have no evidence of this, but the lack of evidence showing real progress in thwarting al-Qaeda internationally would lead to this conclusion. The fall-out in post-war Iraq, and the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian issue make me less sanguine than Mr. Crowley regarding our 'successes' regarding the reining in of international terrorism. The fact that we are at Code Orange would support this view.

More....

Finally, there is the simple question of the bottom line: are we spending enough to properly counteract the threats. Consider:

• The Department of Homeland Security’s budget for the current fiscal year is $31 billion, less than one tenth that of the Department of Defense.



• The U.S. Conference of Mayors estimates that the last time DHS went to orange alert, cities and counties across the country had to spend another $70 million a week in response. As anyone who pays property taxes today can testify, this burden comes at a time when communities already under extreme budget pressure are laying off police or cutting back on hospital services, two critical homeland security components.



• Private sector projections indicate that corporations, which own 85 percent of our nation’s critical infrastructure, today spend roughly $50 billion on security and have failed to increase security beyond pre-September 11 levels.

Even accepting the administration estimate in last year’s Homeland Security Strategy that, as a country, we are spending roughly $100 billion on homeland security, these funds are clearly insufficient. Terrorism remains a relatively low-cost business, with a handful of potential hijackers posing a threat that requires us to spend millions in response. It may be a matter of increasing budgets but it also is a matter of setting priorities that match the threat we face. Much more at link

I knew roughly what the figures were, as I have delved into this issue a bit. I am sure that homeland security will be either the number one, or the number two issue on people's minds during election 2004. As to why the DHS is so woefully underfunded, yet the Department of Defense is flush with cash is readily apparent. The Bush Admininstration convinced enough of the American people and Congress that Saddam Hussein was a real threat. We now know that this was a fantasy. Between UN inspections and 10+ years of sanctions, Saddam was a though criminal on the world stage. Sure he was a bad man and his removal seems a good thing. But what hath we wrought in his absence? Few people dare ask this question.

The Bush administration, guided by a small group of neo-conservatives have really turned U.S. foreign policy on its head. The ramifications of this are for another day.

What we need to do today, is to shift money from the Department of Defense to the Department of Homeland Security. Today.

Another in our, "why do we have to get this stuff from the foreign press" series

How the war machine is driving the US economy
Military Keynsianism¹ might get Bush re-elected, but it is starting to worry economists

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
06 January 2004

What do the war in Iraq and the economic recovery in the United States have in common? More than one might expect, to judge from the last couple of rounds of US growth figures.

The war has been a large part of the justification for the Bush administration to run ever-widening budget deficits, and those deficits, predicated largely on military spending, have in turn pumped money into the economy and provided the stimulus that low interest rates and tax cuts, on their own, could never achieve.

The result, according to economists, is a variant on Keynesianism that has particular appeal for Republicans. Instead of growing the government in general - pumping resources into public works, health care and education, say, which would have an immediate knock-on effect on sorely needed job creation - the policy focuses on those areas that represent obvious conservative and business-friendly constituencies. Which is to say, the military and, even more specifically, the military contractors that tend to be big contributors to Republican Party funds.

"It may be very inefficient and obviously not fair, but it is nevertheless causing almost 5 per cent more money to be pumped into the economy than is being taken out in tax revenues," observed Robert Pollin, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "At the same time, it fits into the broader ideological goals of the administration because they can paint it as part of a national emergency, the fight against terrorism, the fight against Saddam Hussein, and so on."

During the second quarter of 2003, when the war in Iraq was in full swing, some 60 per cent of the 3.3 per cent GDP growth rate was attributable to military spending. Expenditure on manpower and weaponry was relatively flat, according to Professor Pollin's analysis, while the lion's share of the stimulus came from the multi-billion dollar contracts handed out to Halliburton, Bechtel and other private contractors.

A smaller proportion of the roaring 8.2 per cent growth recorded for the third quarter was directly attributable to the military, but Professor Pollin and others argue that it is still the military that is driving the deficit, and the deficit - budgeted at about $500 billion (£270bn) for next year - that is driving the recovery.

Just last month, the Pentagon awarded a $4 billion contract to California company Northrop Grumman to work on the Star Wars missile defence programme. It is the sort of figure that can regenerate the economy of an entire region. California - the state where US economic booms have a tendency to begin and end - is also a beneficiary of the boom in security-related spending, since much modern security paraphernalia depends on Silicon Valley computer technology.

The Bush administration itself prefers to attribute the recovery to its tax cuts, targeted disproportionately towards the richest Americans. Many non-administration economists, however, say this is nonsense, and that the tax cuts are far more political than they are stimulative. A more significant role has been played by buoyant household spending, helped by low mortgage interest rates which have inspired many homeowners to borrow against the rising value of their properties. But there are signs that interest rates are now on their way back up and that the refinancing fad has ended.

"The administration is conducting a highly irresponsible fiscal policy, and there is no legitimate economist on the face of the earth who doesn't say the tax cuts are just loony," said Kent Sims, a San Francisco economic consultant and public policy expert. "The chosen weapon for dragging the economy off the floor - now that an election is coming - is the deficit. Military expenditure is usually the least effective of short-run ways of spending money, because it doesn't build infrastructure that give you returns over time. But it does create a short-term lift." Much more at The Independent.

Both parties are fond of military spending increases. This is partly why I consider myself a Libertarian Socialist². The only way that military spending adds real value to the economy is when the goods produced are exported at a profit. It seems like the theme today is "borrowing our way into depression", but this needn't be so. Reining in traditional military spending, and pouring a fraction of that sum into the intelligence services seems a more than reasonable way to confront the threats of the early 21st century.

Although I am prime benfactor of the Bush tax cuts, I cannot see how they can become permanent, and have a vibrant economy. There are lots of unfunded, or underfunded programs in this country that could use an infusion of cash. Where is that money going to come from? Should we allow our national governance to further mortgage away our children's futures, or should we adopt a more 'pay as you go' spending policy? I think the answer is clear to anyone that has had to balance a budget..But this may not be as obvious to someone that has never had to worry about where money comes from. The current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue certainly fits this mold. Let us have both the wisdom and the courage to make well reasoned, responsible choices.

1 | Keynesianism - A school of economics inspired by the theoretical contributions of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), an English economist. Keynes argued that government spending and investment function as means of disbursing purchasing power into the economy and, hence, affect the demand for consumer goods in the same way as private investment. He suggested increasing government expenditures during deflationary periods and decreasing it during inflationary periods as a means of manipulating aggregate spending and income. By prescribing governmental intervention to maintain adequate levels of employment, Keynesianism paved they way for the growth of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression.

2 | Libertarian Socialism - A social system which believes in freedom of action and thought and free will, in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods.

So kids, the next time your mom says you're reading "pure bs, " tell her that it's educational!

The Bush Administration's Labor Department and You Score: Employers 1 Peons 0

Labor Department offers employers tips to avoid overtime pay

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.
The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms, which Labor Secretary Elaine Chao called long overdue.

Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.

The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.

Most excellent! There's more!

Employers' options include:

Adhering to a 40-hour work week.

Raising workers' salaries to a new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible for overtime pay.
If employers raise a worker's salary "it means they're getting a raise -- that's not a way around overtime," Frank said. The current threshold is $8,060 per year.

Making a "payroll adjustment" that results "in virtually no, or only a minimal increase in labor costs," the department said. Workers' annual pay would be converted to an hourly rate and cut, with overtime added in to equal the former salary.
Essentially, employees would be working more hours for the same pay.

The department does not view the "payroll adjustment" option as a pay cut. Rather, it allows the employer to "maintain the pay at the current level" with the new overtime requirements, said the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division administrator, Tammy McCutchen, an architect of the plan. More Compassionate Conservatism™ at link.

I don't see how ANYONE could see this as a boon to employees, and a blow to employers.(heavy sarcasm) This is really good policy for the Bush Administration in an election year. About the only thing that Americans fear more than terrorism is the government actively f***ing with their paychecks. I hope that this gets major airtime. It's one issue that really effects millions.

Krugman!

Robert Rubin, shrill?

Rubin Gets Shrill
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Argentina retained the confidence of international investors almost to the end of the 1990's. Analysts shrugged off its large budget and trade deficits; business-friendly, free-market policies would, they insisted, allow the country to grow out of all that. But when confidence collapsed, that optimism proved foolish. Argentina, once a showpiece for the new world order, quickly became a byword for economic catastrophe.

So what? Those of us who have suggested that the irresponsibility of recent American policy may produce a similar disaster have been dismissed as shrill, even hysterical. (Hey, the market's up, isn't it?) But few would describe Robert Rubin, the legendary former Treasury secretary, as hysterical: his ability to stay calm in the face of crises, and reassure the markets, was his greatest asset. And Mr. Rubin has formally joined the coalition of the shrill.

In a paper presented over the weekend at the meeting of the American Economic Association, Mr. Rubin and his co-authors — Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution and Allan Sinai of Decision Economics — argue along lines that will be familiar to regular readers of this column. The United States, they point out, is currently running very large budget and trade deficits. Official projections that this deficit will decline over time aren't based on "credible assumptions." Realistic projections show a huge buildup of debt over the next decade, which will accelerate once the baby boomers retire in large numbers.

All of this is conventional stuff, if anathema to administration apologists, who insist, in flat defiance of the facts, that they have a "plan" to cut the deficit in half. What's new is what Mr. Rubin and his co-authors say about the consequences. Rather than focusing on the gradual harm inflicted by deficits, they highlight the potential for catastrophe.

"Substantial ongoing deficits," they warn, "may severely and adversely affect expectations and confidence, which in turn can generate a self-reinforcing negative cycle among the underlying fiscal deficit, financial markets, and the real economy. . . . The potential costs and fallout from such fiscal and financial disarray provide perhaps the strongest motivation for avoiding substantial, ongoing budget deficits." In other words, do cry for us, Argentina: we may be heading down the same road.

Lest readers think that the most celebrated Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton has flipped his lid, the paper rather mischievously quotes at length from an earlier paper by Laurence Ball and N. Gregory Mankiw, who make a similar point. Mr. Mankiw is now the chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, a job that requires him to support his boss's policies, and reassure the public that the budget deficit produced by those policies is manageable and not really a problem.

But here's what he wrote back in 1995, at a time when the federal deficit was much smaller than it is today, and headed down, not up: the risk of a crisis of confidence "may be the most important reason for seeking to reduce budget deficits. . . . As countries increase their debt, they wander into unfamiliar territory in which hard landings may lurk. If policymakers are prudent, they will not take the chance of learning what hard landings in [advanced] countries are really like."

The point made by Mr. Rubin now, and by Mr. Mankiw when he was a free agent, is that the traditional immunity of advanced countries like America to third-world-style financial crises isn't a birthright. Financial markets give us the benefit of the doubt only because they believe in our political maturity — in the willingness of our leaders to do what is necessary to rein in deficits, paying a political cost if necessary. And in the past that belief has been justified. Even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when the budget deficit soared.

But do we still have that kind of maturity? Here's the opening sentence of a recent New York Times article on the administration's budget plans: "Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted an election-year budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending without alienating politically influential constituencies." Needless to say, the proposed spending cuts — focused only on the powerless — are both cruel and trivial.

If this kind of fecklessness goes on, investors will eventually conclude that America has turned into a third world country, and start to treat it like one. And the results for the U.S. economy won't be pretty. Link.

I have often wondered about the pundits -- who do not seem to have any economic credentials -- that have argued that the U.S. is not Argentina, hence it can't happen here. Well, it can. The decline of the dollar vs. the world's major currencies, while orderly at present, could in the future go into free-fall. I do not have the economic background to postulate what a precipitating event might be. Debt as a percentage of GDP cannot be a good thing. At some point dollar holders as well as those holding treasuries, will likely be moved to alter their asset allocations potentially leaving the U.S. in a very ugly position.

Lieberman...

Lieberman Works To Set Himself Apart
Two New Ads, A New Hampshire Push, And Speech Are Planned

11:26 AM EST,January 6, 2004
By DAVID LIGHTMAN, The Hartford Courant

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign today said it would intensify its effort in New Hampshire with two new ads and a "major speech" Wednesday outlining the senator's differences with President Bush and Howard Dean.

Lieberman, who was heading for Iowa and a radio debate with his rivals that begins at 2 P.M. EST, plans to illustrate in the speech how Dean and Bush represent the extremes of American politics -- Dean on the left, Bush on the right.

Lieberman, said deputy campaign director Brian Hardwick, "is in a unique position between the extremes."

It's a theme he has been using in debates, in ads and previous speeches. Today, he unveiled two new ads that will run in New Hampshire, both pegged to the idea that Lieberman is a problem-solver unbound by rigid ideology.

One 30 second spot calls him "the only one who's proposed a new cut in rates for the middle class, not tax increases.

Dean wants to repeal all of President Bush's tax cuts, and use the savings to reform health care, college tuition relief and other programs that burden middle and lower class taxpayers.

Lieberman also insists in the ad he's "the only one who's consistently taken a clear stand against terrorism and tyranny."

The key pieces of evidence are two congressional votes, one in 1991 on the Gulf War, the other 11 years later on the Iraq war. Only Lieberman, his staff says, voted for both.

That's true, but only two of his rivals, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, were in Congress both years. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who voted for the Iraq war, was not elected until 1998. Neither retired Gen. Wesley Clark nor Dean ever served in Congress, and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, elected to the House in 1996, opposed the Iraq war.

Lieberman's other ad, which will play only on radio, cites a reported Bush comment from last month to the prime minister of Australia.

"Hey," the announcer asks, "want to know a secret? Shh. It's from a private closed door meeting between George W. Bush and the Prime Minister of Australia.

"Newspapers report that George Bush told the Prime Minister who he thinks would be the toughest Democrat for him to run against. What do you think he said? Howard Dean? No way. George Bush said that Joe Lieberman would be the toughest to beat. That's right. Lieberman's the one that Bush says he worries about the most."

Lieberman staffers said they believed the report to be true because, among other things, it has not been denied. The White House today did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But, said Lieberman consultant Mandy Grunwald, "It did happen in private. That's the thing that makes it so credibleÂ….those of us who live in Washington hear it from the White House all the time."

Note: I've posted the entire article from the Hartford Courant, sparing you the onerous registration process.(I felt I sold my soul to read this article)

Lieberman will say anything to keep his chances alive. You want to know about Liberman, don't buy the rhetoric. Lieberman's Voting Record is the clearest indicator of his true stances on positions.

Lieberman is no centrist. Although he is trying to paint himself as one.

From my perspective, Dean does not represent the extreme left. That position isn't one taken by any of the major candidates. Dennis Kucininch is furthest left by a wide margin.

Lieberman is, as noted by his voting record, much closer to Bush than he would like us to believe. Howard Dean is not so 'left' as Lieberman portrays him. Being a New Hampshirite, I have talked to all of the major candidates -- save for GWB :) and I questioned Lieberman on his sudden centrist moves. He asked me what I was talking about. I replied, "come on, Senator. You have a voting record that would peg you as neo-conservative." He smiled, and told me that I was mistaken. I told him that I would meet him again with a copy of his voting recoed and discuss the matter further, but he told me that, "I was not a member of the press."

I am a citizen, and unlike the fawning lapdogs masquerading as our press corps, I have no issue with the truth, wherever it may lead. Furthermore, I don't make shit up to suit my desires.

It is now unlikely that I'll se Lieberman before the NH primary, but if I do, I'll have an updated copy of his voting record with me.

More Lieberman: He highlights his 'Uniqueness'

Primary follies, via the AP

From the same Associated Press that has given rise to Nedra Pickler comes this via needlenose. Hat tip to the ever resourceful Atrios.

The author of that sterling bit of journalism is one Calvin Woodward. The truth has been an issue for Mr. Woodward for some time. As Bob Somerby noted back in October of 2000:

There simply can't be an easier job than being a Washington journalist. Under the current rules of the game, any time you have nothing to say, you can type up the "Gore embellishes" story. You throw together some jumbled version of favorite alleged misstatements by Gore. On October 5, for example, the AP's Calvin Woodward sampled the genre. Early on, he offered this:

WOODWARD: Whether claiming to have been an inspiration for a "Love Story" character years ago or recently recalling the strains of a childhood song that wasn't written until he was grown, Gore has tended to go off track on peripheral things.

Woodward's passage is simply astonishing. Author Erich Segal told the New York Times (three years ago!) that Gore was a model for the Love Story character. Woodward's implication that Gore embellished this simply flies in the face of reality. And Gore has explained that the "childhood song" remark was a joke (made to a labor audience that is plainly heard laughing on the videotape). Woodward doesn't even mention that, to let readers judge the facts for themselves. When the Washington press corps tells treasured old tales, they tend to serve up "novelized" news—stories in which favorite tales are shaped to be pleasing and simple-minded. The Gore embellishment story is one of their favorites. As Woodward does, they'll routinely embellish the facts themselves, just to keep stories lively and pleasing.

Calvin Woodward's latest dissembling

Calvin Classic™ via Somerby.

Job Bleeding Continues

As has been chronicled on these pages, technology concerns from Accenture to Yahoo have moved much of their design and development to the Bangalore technology center. India's Silicon Valley™ has gone from being basically a technology support call center to burgeoning design and development center. It now produces everything from basic business software to semi-conductor design.

India has many advantages over the U.S. when it comes to consideration as a place to conduct all manner of technology business. India produces approximately 2/3 more engineers and computer scientists than the U.S, and this highly competent workforce is available to employers at as little as one tenth the cost of their American counterparts.

India is especially attractive to U.S. firms as the vast majority of high technology workers speak English. I found the following in a Goldman-Sachs report.

"In the next decade, as many as six million jobs might be sent to India and other nations by US companies in search of lower costs and a tech-savvy, English-speaking workforce."

"The shift of North American technology jobs to low wage countries like India cannot be stopped because not only are Indian companies a third of the cost, but they actually are better," said Pradeep Sood, president of Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce.

I am in the process of compiling a report detailing the American 'brain drain.'

The peril here is that the world's second largest country in gross human numbers, and the highest in desirable human capital is entirely capable of absorbing every technology job at less cost and equal skill.

One can only believe that as India's technology sectors grow, more and more of the young will be drawn into engineering as a field of study compounding this troublesome trend in the future. Remember, India has a very young population, and can grow its engineering base organically, whereas the U.S.'s supply of engineers is in decline. Both in real numbers, and as a percentage of the population. Our population growth comes largely via immigration, and these people are largely laborers. Successive generations produce higher numbers of technology workers, but this path has a low trajectory.

I have a lot more on this phenomenon, but as noted above, I am going to compile it and present it as an overall picture of the displacement of the American technology worker, and the acceleration rates of these trends.

On Edit: NYT Performs Nice Analysis on Manufacturing. Call it "The China Syndrome."

How the Terrorists Win

First a news item:

Crying Wolf On Terrorism?

Jan 4, 2004 12:20 pm US/Central

(CBS) Concerned with terrorism threats in the air and on the ground, the British government delayed a London-to-Washington flight for three hours -- after canceling the flight altogether for two days in a row.

CBS News Correspondent Joie Chen reports Flight 223 only carried half it's typical passenger load, raising the questions: How many more flights can the airlines afford to cancel? How long can this level of scrutiny and security go on?

Even as they demonstrated stepped up security at their airports, foreign governments expressed frustration with U.S. demands for greater scrutiny of their flights.

Terrorism expert Paul Beaver tell Chen, "We've got to the stage in Western Europe where nobody actually takes any notice of American alerts anymore because there's so many of them."

One French police official said that bad U.S. intelligence information resulted in six cancellations from Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport.

The New York Times reported in its Saturday editions that the cancellation of the British Airways flights was not in response to U.S. safety concerns, but was prompted by the refusal of British pilots to fly with armed marshals on board.

The British government has declined to provide details of its security concerns about Flight 223. The department said it took action Saturday following discussions with a variety of sources, including U.S. authorities. Much more at link.

It should be abundantly clear that all a terrorist entity need do is to disrupt any system of large enough scale to be effective. In an township, this could be something as small a called-in bomb threat against a commercial, residential or municipal target. Use your imagination to scale up to the threat of an event that would disrupt a system on an international scale.

Any time that the populace feels threatened by the possibility of a terrorist event, and subsequently changes their behavior to avoid this perceived threat the terrorists win.

I do not wish to make this a manual on how to terrorize a population. I am merely pointing out that ofttimes the mere threat of an attack can be psychically and financially damaging with no expenditure of resources by the terrorist entity.

The real threat of terrorism on U.S. soil post 9/11, has come from our very own homegrown terrorists in tragically underreported stories.

Unless you're name is Mohammed or you practice Islam, apparently the media deems you unworthy of coverage. As I wrote in an earlier piece, Jose Padilla -- John Ashcroft's "dirty bomber" -- is/was far less a threat than the media coverage he was given would imply. I am of the opinion that Padilla was used by agents sympathetic to al-Qaeda, or perhaps al-Qaeda itself as a cheap and easy way to instill fear in the populace.

This opinion dovetails nicely with the fairly obvious fact that terrorists would much rather do their harm without the expenditure of capital. Why fly jets into buildings in expensive long term operations that remove valuable assets, when well placed faux information can be used to similar effect? This is essentially a large part of what state sponsored actors(militaries) do when they employ 'psyops.'¹

Of course, after a time, a successful operation must be conducted or else the threats not followed through by actions lose their value to the terrorist. This is precisely what is happening in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S. In the U.S. we have been subjected to only two alert levels post September 11, 2001. These levels are two out of a possible five.

The five threat levels from highest probability of an event to lowest are: Red -- Severe, Orange -- High, Yellow -- Elevated, Guarded -- Blue, and Low -- Green

I asked dozens of people earlier today what the threat levels are, both color and value, and what the current threat level is. No one, and this includes two members of the national media, could answer all of these important questions.

Currently we are at "Threat Level Orange," the second highest threat level. It is unknown when this threat level is going to be changed. The only other level that we have been subjected to is, "Threat Level Yellow." Threat Level Yellow is the level that which we have spent the most time since 9/11 2001. I think it reasonable that most Americans now view "Threat Level Yellow" as the common background level.

It is not known by this author the financial costs of the latest update to "yellow," but numerous flights have been cancelled, and rescheduled and there is evidence that the current series of flight disruptions will further hurt an already weakened airline industry.

Speaking to the Toronto Star, Dexter Koehl, a spokesman for the Travel Industry Association of America, said the cancelled and disrupted flights are "bothersome and worrisome" but he predicted the effect on the industry will be short-term. With the exception of cut-rate Southwest Airlines, the immediate outlook is bleak. U.S. airlines lost more than $18 billion in 2001-02 and are expected to post losses of another $3 billion in 2003.

One can only hope. The airline industry does not operate in a vacuum, and the hotel and tourism sectors are certain to feel this pinch as well. One can see how inter-related the economy really is. When one industry is directly effected, all of the adjunctive industry groups are effected as well, and this trend continues in a snowball effect.

I need to wrap this up. Anytime the terrorists disrupt systems it can objectively be said that their goals have been achieved. If terrorists can do this without using valuable assets, all the better for the terrorists. This leaves them with two future possibilities to further their agenda. The first, and much more preferable is to stage another mock attack, and if successful, continue this until no one believes in their threats. The second obviously, is to conduct a true attack expending assets, and 'resetting' the terror threat so that mere threats illicit the same manner of response as an actual attack.

1. Psyops. Shorthand for 'Psychological Operations'

Planned psychological activities in peace and war directed to enemy, friendly, and neutral audiences in order to influence attitudes and behavior affecting the achievement of political and military objectives. They include strategic psychological activities, consolidation psychological operations and battlefield psychological activities.

Media: Wrong Again?

Yes.

In this S.F. Chronicle article, the paper is claiming that, "Dean Faces Stiffest Test Yet." This is absurd. Dean has been compaigning for umm, it seems like forever.

I live in New Hampshire, and Dean has been all over this state for well over as year. Dean has already overcome his toughest battle. I recall the early U.N.H. polls conducted in the past year plus, and Dean was polling at 3% or even less. That was in NH where he seemingly spent all of his time. On the national level Dean's numbers were so low as to be off the radar.

Governor Dean has overcome his 'stiffest test.' His challengers' now face theirs.

On Edit: I was wrong. Badly. Dean's stiffest test does lie ahead. But it is not coming from his challengers in the upcoming primary, it is coming from that model of objectivity, collectively known as The American Press. More later.