3 June 2004

Bush Consults Lawyer in CIA Leak Case
By TERENCE HUNT
AP in The Guardian, 3 June 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer about possibly representing him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year, White House officials said Wednesday night. There was no indication that Bush was a target of the leak investigation, but the president's move suggested he anticipates being questioned about what he knows.

Silent Draft
Army Extending Tours of Troops Due in War Zones
By ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 3 June 2004
EXCERPT: The Army announced Wednesday that it would require all soldiers bound for Iraq and Afghanistan to extend their active duty at least until their units have returned home from duty there, a move that could keep thousands of troops in the service for months longer than they expected over the next several years. The announcement, which expands an existing program that applies to many troops already in the two countries, means that soldiers who had planned to retire, move to other Army jobs or leave the military when their enlistments expired will be required to stay for the length of their units' deployment in either of the two combat zones. That could range from a few extra weeks to more than a year. Commanders will be allowed to make exceptions in special circumstances. The move will affect active-duty and Reserve units that are within 90 days of deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, in what are now typically one-year assignments, and will last up to 90 days after the unit returns home, Army officials said. The officials did not give a precise time frame for how long the policy would remain in force or exactly how many troops it would affect, saying it depended on the pace of an ambitious Army reorganization and how operations go in Iraq and Afghanistan.
SEE ALSO: Soldiers Facing Extended Tours (Washington Post)

AUDIO LINK
Shameful Priorities
Robert Reich on Market Place, 2 June 2004
Listen
The wrangling over President Bush's $2.4 trillion budget has moved mostly behind the scenes. In the Senate, GOP moderates don't want to approve that kind of money without a guarantee that any more tax cuts will be offset by spending cuts. Deals are being cut right now. But the bigger deal, just might be the widest gap in a century between the very rich and the very poor.
Commentator: Robert Reich

Fiscal Shenanigans
New York Times, 3 June 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush appears to be planning to run for re-election as a tax cutter without discussing what federal programs will be sacrificed to make up for the lost revenue. That can't be allowed to happen. Voters have the right to see the whole picture, including the downside. Chances are they won't like the view. While Mr. Bush has been out crowing about spending increases in some popular programs, his Office of Management and Budget was instructing federal departments to prepare to pare them down. In a May 19 memo that was first reported in The Washington Post, departments were told to trim domestic discretionary spending in 2006, the first complete fiscal year after the November election. And the administration recently submitted legislation to impose caps that would result in further reductions in every year after that through 2009. According to estimates by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Office of Management and Budget guidelines translate into inflation-adjusted reductions in 2006 alone of about $925 million for Head Start and childhood education. That would come at a time when schools are already struggling to meet the demands of Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative without adequate resources. College financial aid, mainly Pell Grants, would take a $550 million hit — at a time when lower-income students are dropping out of school because they cannot meet rapidly rising costs. The same projections show that veterans' medical care would be cut by $1.5 billion (after a planned $380 million cut in 2005). All told, under the proposed cuts, total funds for these and other affected programs — like environmental protection, housing programs and nutrition aid for poor pregnant women and children — would be $21 billion less in 2006 than today. By 2009, domestic discretionary spending, not counting homeland security, would be $45 billion below its current level and would be a smaller portion of the economy than it has been at any time since 1963.

Proof, Negative
The Justice Department's Triumphant Victory Over the Constitution
By Dahlia Lithwick
EXCERPT: With a triumphant chorus of "We-told-you-so"s, the Justice Department unveiled yesterday a seven-page document summarizing all the accumulated evil that lurks in the heart of alleged enemy combatant Jose Padilla. Why release all this information now?  ...The DOJ insists that the timing of this release has nothing to do with public outrage about unsubstantiated warnings of stepped-up terror threats. They also say it has nothing to do with the Supreme Court's deliberations over Padilla's case, due to be decided this month. (Your instincts were right, Stephen Breyer, Padilla really is a bad guy!) Perhaps it also has nothing to do with mitigating the public horror about the information-at-all-costs ethos that led to the events at Abu Ghraib. (OK, so we torture them some, but just look at what they planned to do to us!) Maybe it also has nothing to do with the fact that the solicitor general's office, most likely unintentionally, misled the Supreme Court at oral argument in this case, with claims that this administration allowed no prisoners to be tortured, even as the government knew what had happened in Iraq. (OK, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so we lied about the torture thing, but see how dangerous this guy is anyhow?) Something needed to be done to remind the world and the court how serious the case against Padilla really is. The question is: Does this constitute a case against Padilla? Isn't it wacky that all this evidence—released as a sop to an American public that's about had it with secrecy, abuse, and intimidation—was itself obtained through secrecy, abuse, and intimidation? You can call it the military brig in South Carolina, or call it Abu Ghraib. But evidence procured in dank rooms, by threat of interminable isolation and coercive interrogation and without the protections of the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions, is generally hard to credit. That's why we have a Constitution.

Enron Scheming Caught on Tape
AP in USA Today, 2 June 2004
EXCERPT: Enron traders openly discussed manipulating the California power market and joked about stealing from grandmothers during the Western energy crisis in 2000-2001, according to transcripts of telephone calls filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The transcripts, some littered with profanity, were filed by a public utility district near Seattle. The calls on the transcripts are central to the Justice Department's investigation of Enron's trading practices. Energy merchants regularly tape trader conversations to keep a record of transactions. According to the Snohomish County Public Utility District, which obtained audiotapes of trader conversations from the Justice Department and transcribed them, traders openly discussed creating congestion on transmission lines, taking generating units offline to pump up electricity prices and overall manipulation of the California power market.

Bush Gives Contract to Tax Traitor/Campaign Donor
Daily MisLead, 2 June 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush has said he wants to “make sure that the system is fair for those of us who do pay taxes” and that “we want everybody paying their fair share.” But yesterday, the president went out of his way to lavish a massive government contract on a major campaign contributor, even though it specifically moved operations offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. According to news reports, the Bush administration yesterday gave a $10 billion contract for the Department of Homeland Security to Accenture (formerly Arthur Andersen), despite the company having recently moved its official headquarters to Bermuda to avoid U.S. taxes. The contract was awarded less than two years after the White House and its allies in Congress gutted a House-passed provision that would have banned awarding homeland security contracts to corporations who exploit tax loopholes, move offshore, and avoid U.S. taxes. At the time, Accenture lobbied to eliminate the provision, hiring GOP political consultant “and Bush family confidant” Charlie Black to lobby on its behalf. Accenture executives have given President Bush more than $68,000 in campaign contributions since 2000.

Republicans Ponder Not Adopting a Budget This Year
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
New York Times, 3 June 2004
EXCERPT: They have tried sweet-talk and dire warnings, insults and bluffing tactics. None of it has worked, which is why a growing number of Republicans are beginning to despair about agreeing on a budget plan for next year. Embarrassing as that would be for the party that controls both houses of Congress, many Republicans are concluding they would be better off with no budget plan than with one that would require them to pay the cost of permanently extending last year's tax cuts. Senate Republican leaders, back from their Memorial Day recess, showed little sign on Wednesday of persuading a small band of rebels within their own party to drop their insistence on "pay as you go" rules. The four Republican dissenters, joined by most Democrats, are demanding rules that would force Congress to pay the cost of any new tax cuts either with spending cuts or tax increases in other areas. The impasse has already undermined President Bush's top domestic goal, which is to make the tax cuts permanent, and it will apparently postpone major budget decisions until after the elections.

Here come the Bush babies
Dubious Conceptions
Why concerns that Plan B may harm the youngest teens are greatly exaggerated.
By Liza Mundy
Slate, 1 June 2004
EXCERPT: Last December, an FDA advisory panel voted overwhelmingly in favor of making emergency contraception easily available, ruling that a drug called Plan B (levonorgestrel) should be sold in pharmacies without a prescription. It was a huge victory for reproductive rights groups, who went home exhilarated by the prospect that Plan B would soon materialize on drug store shelves, as easy to buy as Tylenol or Trojans or Slim-Fast.
In early May, the acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Steven Galson, derailed that hope by nixing the application on the grounds that access to emergency contraception might harm the very youngest teens. Plan B's proponents had failed, he said, to supply data about the drug's impact on "the younger age group from 11 to 14, where we know there's a substantial amount of sexual activity." It was a puzzling assertion, accompanying what many suspected was a politically motivated decision: There is plenty we don't know about young teens, but one of the things we do know is that they have very little sex at all. And what we know about the sex they are having only reinforces the case for making emergency contraception more available. As a reason for sabotaging efforts to take Plan B over-the-counter, Galson could hardly have reached for a more ironic one—and reach he certainly did.
Emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill, is a highly effective form of hormonal birth control. Often wrongly confused with RU-486, EC does not induce abortion; instead, when taken after unprotected sex or condom failure, it prevents pregnancy from occurring. For years women turned to Web sites to learn how to mix their own off-label EC, which is really just a cocktail of regular birth-control pills. Plan B was born when a woman named Sharon Camp formed a small company to distribute a dedicated EC product. In 1999 Plan B was approved for prescription use, but Camp had higher ambitions. If women could buy Plan B without having to ask a doctor first, she and others believed that it could cut America's abortion rate in half.

God's 'chosen one' needs your help
Bush Campaign Seeks Help From Thousands of Congregations
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
New York Times, 3 June 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush campaign is seeking to enlist thousands of religious congregations around the country in distributing campaign information and registering voters, according to an e-mail message sent to many members of the clergy and others in Pennsylvania. Liberal groups charged that the effort invited violations of the separation of church and state and jeopardized the tax-exempt status of churches that cooperated. Some socially conservative church leaders also said they would advise pastors against participating in such a partisan effort. But Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush administration, said "people of faith have as much right to participate in the political process as any other community" and that the e-mail message was about "building the most sophisticated grass-roots presidential campaign in the country's history." In the message, dated early Tuesday afternoon, Luke Bernstein, coalitions coordinator for the Bush campaign in Pennsylvania, wrote: "The Bush-Cheney '04 national headquarters in Virginia has asked us to identify 1,600 `Friendly Congregations' in Pennsylvania where voters friendly to President Bush might gather on a regular basis." In each targeted "place of worship," Mr. Bernstein continued, without mentioning a specific religion or denomination, "we'd like to identify a volunteer who can help distribute general information to other supporters." He explained: "We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation."

Dubya, Explained
The pretzel behind the Bush Doctrine.
By Timothy Noah
Slate, 2 June 2004
EXCERPT:  (January 2002) Bush lost consciousness for a brief time in the White House on Sunday evening while eating a pretzel and watching a professional football game on television. He fell from his couch and has a scrape and large bruise on his left cheekbone, plus a bruise on his lower lip, to show for his troubles. His glasses cut the side of his face. …[Air Force physician Richard] Tubb told reporters Bush reported a pretzel "did not go down right" and the doctor said it was possible a pretzel had lodged against a nerve and momentarily caused a decrease in the president's heart rate, causing him to faint.

2 June 2004

Code Red (States)
The Department of Homeland Security's Tom Ridge wasn't aware of the terrorist threat until he saw his colleague John Ashcroft announce it on national television. CIA veteran McGovern outlines the evidence suggesting Ashcroft's pronouncement was more motivated by politics than intelligence.
Ray McGovern
tompaine.com, 1 June 2004
EXCERPT: Last Wednesday, it was Attorney General John Ashcroft—joined Friday by me-too Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge—claiming that “credible intelligence from multiple sources indicates that Al Qaeda plans to attempt an attack on the United States” between now and the November election. If “credible intelligence” sounds to you like protesting too much, there is ample reason to be skeptical. Overshadowing Ashcroft’s dramatic warning that Al Qaeda planned to “hit the United States hard” was the headline-grabbing, specific claim that “an Al Qaeda spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete.” Had Ashcroft thought to check this out with the CIA—or even NBC—he would have learned that the “Al Qaeda spokesman” was actually “Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades”— a fact later conceded with some embarrassment by the FBI. According to a senior U.S. intelligence official, this “group” may consist of no more than one person with a fax machine. The “Brigades” have nonetheless claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London, and the March 11 train bombings in Madrid. NBC news analyst Roger Cressey, a former deputy to counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, notes, “The only thing they haven’t claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington.”

Management Style Shows Weaknesses
Delegation of Responsibility, Trust In Subordinates May Have Hurt Bush
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 1 June 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush has long prided himself for focusing on big goals rather than niggling details and delegating significant responsibility to his aides. But his belated attention to the brutality at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison has revealed vulnerabilities in a management style that had brought him personal and political success. Bush's aides say the graphic images documenting abuse of detainees took him by surprise. But as they tell it, the president and his staff received many clues over the past year that there might be a problem -- for example, periodic reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross -- and did nothing because they had been assured the Pentagon was on the case. A variety of presidential advisers and scholars said the White House's failure to recognize the significance of the warnings points to flaws in Bush's approach to governing that also could have contributed to the administration's inadequate planning and inaccurate presentations in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Concerns Rise Over Chemicals as Targets
By Charlie Savage
Boston Globe, 1 June 2004
EXCERPT: Homeland Security watchdogs call them "prepositioned weapons of mass destruction" for terrorists: huge tanks of concentrated deadly gases that the chemical industry stores near densely populated areas and that railroads bring through cities en route to somewhere else. The United States harbors more than 100 chemical facilities where an accident would put more than a million people at risk, according to documents filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. One is in Boston: A chemical distributor acknowledged in its filing that in a worst-case scenario if a tank holding 180,000 pounds of vinyl acetate -- a highly flammable liquid -- ruptured, it would send a 4.9-mile-long toxic cloud through the city. As federal security officials warn that Al Qaeda is poised to strike the United States again, the presence of these highly toxic chemicals in the midst of cities may be the most vulnerable point in the nation's defenses. But proposals to reduce that risk by requiring the use of alternative chemicals or rerouting hazardous tankers around a city have faltered. Fear of such an attack on a chemical facility prompted bipartisan momentum in Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks for requiring the chemical industry to switch to less dangerous processes where possible. Although many Republicans supported the measure initially, many changed their minds after intense industry lobbying, and the bill died on the Senate floor.

U.S. Judge in San Francisco Strikes Down Federal Law Banning Form of Abortion
By ADAM LIPTAK
New York Times, 2 June 2004
EXCERPT: A federal judge in San Francisco yesterday struck down a federal law that banned a form of abortion, saying it created a risk of criminal liability for virtually all abortions performed after the first trimester. The law, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, enacted in November, makes it a crime for doctors to perform any "overt act'' to "kill the partially delivered living fetus." In a 117-page decision, the judge, Phyllis J. Hamilton, ruled that the law was unconstitutional in three ways. She said that it placed an undue burden on women seeking abortions, that its language was dangerously vague and that it lacked a required exception for medical actions needed to preserve the woman's health. The decision was the first ruling on the merits of the law. Two other cases, in Nebraska and New York, are pending. All three judges had halted enforcement of the law while they conducted trials. The federal law is similar to a Nebraska law struck down by the Supreme Court in 2000, and yesterday's decision did not surprise legal experts. Groups opposing abortion said yesterday that they hoped the new cases would give the Supreme Court an opportunity to reconsider. The White House said it would continue to fight for the law.

Negative: Bush 75%, Kerry 27%
White House Going Hyper Negative
by Dan Froomkin
Washington Post, 1 June 2004
EXCERPT: The White House is not a warm and fuzzy place these days, or so suggest two seminal articles from over the long weekend. In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei describe the unprecedented ferocity of the Bush campaign's often deceptive anti-Kerry advertising blitz. And in the New York Times, David E. Sanger describes a spectacular loss of discipline in the White House, now riven by vicious backbiting. Meanwhile, Matthew Cooper writes in Time magazine that President Bush is now keeping Saddam Hussein's gun in his study. Unloaded, we are assured.
Messages of Negativity
In The Post, Milbank and VandeHei write: "Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising. "Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total."

Kerry Promises Speedier Efforts to Secure Nuclear Arms
By JODI WILGOREN
New York Times, 2 June 2004
EXCERPT:  Evoking images of mushroom clouds and terrorists "with their fingers on a nuclear button,'' Senator John Kerry vowed Tuesday to significantly speed the timetable for securing the world's nuclear weapons and materials, saying it would be his No. 1 security goal if elected president. Mr. Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, promised to appoint a White House nonproliferation coordinator and to safeguard weapons as well as raw plutonium and uranium in Russia and 40 other countries within four years instead of the Bush administration's expected 10 to 13. He also said he would set an example by curtailing United States production of nuclear weapons; engage in bilateral talks with North Korea; and call Iran's "bluff" by corralling allies into offering it nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes in exchange for spent fuel that could be turned into bombs.

Kerry's Mideast Policy is Miles from Bush's
By Thomas Oliphant
Boston Globe, 1 June 2004
EXCERPT: The profound differences over foreign policy between John Kerry and George Bush can be encapsulated in two words, the Middle East. Administration policy in the Middle East consists of periodic meetings to calibrate the US nonresponse to the latest outrage. There is no real road map, there are no partners; periodic, halfhearted attempts to restart a serious pursuit of settlement have gone the way of all halfhearted initiatives. This murderous atmosphere can be projected forward indefinitely. In other times, that would be tragic. In these times, it is unacceptable. Experts on the region agree on precious little, but the one thing everyone agrees on is that a continuous Middle East conflict, with the United States as Israel's only ally, is at the core of Muslim anger worldwide, and at the core of the noninvolvement of Arab countries in the reconstruction of Iraq. Kerry is on record from early in his campaign warning that "ignoring or downplaying the conflict, as the Bush administration did for far too long, is a dangerous game." President Kerry would get back in the real game. Unlike Bush, he would run a vigorous, nonstop diplomatic operation from the very top. He would ask European and Arab allies to help the Palestinian Authority develop a credible security force against terrorist groups, and he would work with Israel on meaningful responses to their progress.

Bush Could be Accused of Conduct Unincumbent
By Peter S. Canellos
Boston Globe, 1 June 2004
EXCERPT: ...the continued closeness of the election only makes Bush's attack-dog tactics seem more out of proportion for an incumbent seeking reelection. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton seized the initiative in their reelection runs by portraying their administrations in gauzy, upbeat themes, conveyed in 30-second spots that played like Viagra ads. This year, if anyone's running a stately, incumbent-style walk-through, it's Kerry. And if the poll numbers continue to decline for Bush, expect a further role reversal. It could be only a matter of weeks before Bush starts invoking the spirit of Harry S. Truman, the patron saint of embattled incumbents, whose toughness and feistiness (they didn't call it negative campaigning then) helped him overcome his unpopular policies. The Democrats' secret weapon this year has been their unity of purpose. Not only has the party avoided internal squabbles, it has tacitly accepted the idea that it must run two complementary campaigns without ever acknowledging the differences between them.

1 June 2004

Email Shows Cheney 'Link' to Oil Contract
By Timothy J. Burger and Adam Zagorin
Time, 30 May 2004
EXCERPT: Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government." Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official‹whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon‹that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year. The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids.

Even Some in G.O.P. Call for More Oversight of Bush
By Carl Hulse
New York Times via Common Dreams, 31 May 2004
EXCERPT: Members of Congress have a proud tradition of asking witnesses tough questions at famous inquiries like the Watergate and Iran-contra hearings. Now the Iraqi prison abuse scandal has some lawmakers asking a hard question of themselves: What doesn't Congress know and why doesn't it know it? The disclosures about the treatment of detainees, coupled with complaints from some quarters about the Bush administration's handling of antiterrorism money, have ignited a debate over whether Congress is keeping a close enough eye on the White House and staying adequately informed on developments in Iraq. Democrats, not surprisingly, think much more scrutiny is necessary and have been complaining for months that the Republican leadership in Congress is refusing to hold its allies in the administration accountable on a range of subjects. Now even some Republicans say they worry that Congress is abdicating its oversight responsibility. "I believe our failure to do proper oversight has hurt our country and the administration," said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who traveled to Iraq to get a view of the situation outside administration control. "Maybe they wouldn't have gotten into some of this trouble had our oversight been better."

Turning the Tide: Noam Chomsky's New Blog
BushWhackedUSA, 1 June 2004
Although it has been active since March, we've only just discovered Noam Chomsky's official weblog, "Turning the Tide." Professor Chomsky posts his comments directly to the blog, and other bloggerspost links to Chomsky's interviews, articles, etc. Although we haven't had the chance to follow this blog over time, it promises to be worth some attention. Here's an excerpt from one of several of yesterday's posts by Chomsky: "Did Bush lie on the reasons for 9-11 ("they hate our freedoms," etc.)? I think one has to be a bit cautious. Lying requires a certain competence: at least, it requires an understanding of the difference between truth and falsehood. When a 3-year old tells you an obvious falsehood, it isn't really fair to call it a lie. The same was true of the huge whoppers that Reagan came out with when he got out of the control of his handlers. The poor soul probably had no idea. With Bush, I suspect it is more or less the same. There is a literature of "exposures" (Woodward, etc.), which is taken seriously, but I don't frankly understand why. Among the people he is interviewing, some have the competence to lie, and it only makes sense to suppose that they are doing so; why should they tell him the truth? As for the others, it doesn't really matter what they tell him. The same is true of people who are deeply immersed in some religious cult, like the Washington neocon intellectuals. It is hard to know whether they have the competence to lie, just as it's hard to know for someone who has a direct line to some divinity."
SOME OF OUR OTHER FAVORITE BLOGS:
"Empire Notes" by Rajul Mahajan
"Talking Points Memo" by Joshua Micah Marshall
"Informed Comment" by Juan Cole
"Political Animal" by Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly
"Blah3"
"Seeing the Forest" by Dave Johnson, et al
"BushWhackedUSA: The Blog" by the BushWhackedUSA staff

When Do Workers Get Their Share?
Economic Policy Institute Snapshot, 27 May 2004
EXCERPT: Despite recent good news on employment growth, the current economic recovery, now approaching its third year, remains the most unbalanced on record in respect to the distribution of income gains between corporate profits and labor compensation. Essentially, rapid gains in productivity have been translating into higher corporate profits without increasing the wage and salary income of American workers. The chart below shows growth in corporate profits and total labor compensation (the sum of all paychecks and employee benefits in the U.S. economy) over the last 12 quarters; measuring profit growth since the peak of the last recovery in the first quarter of 2001.

A Really Open Election
By CLIVE THOMPSON
New York Times, 30 May 2004
EXCERPT: This fall, as many as 20 percent of American voters will be able to cast their ballots on A.T.M.-style electronic voting machines. But to put it mildly, these machines -- where you simply touch a screen and a computer registers your vote -- have not inspired much confidence lately. North Carolina officials recently learned that a software glitch destroyed 436 e-ballots in early voting for the 2002 general election. In a Florida state election this past January, 134 votes apparently weren't recorded -- and this was in a race decided by a margin of only 12 votes. Since most of the machines don't leave any paper trail, there's no way to determine what actually happened. Most alarmingly, perhaps, California's secretary of state recently charged that Diebold -- the industry leader -- had installed uncertified voting machines and then misled state officials about it. Electronic voting has much to offer, but will we ever be able to trust these buggy machines? Yes, we will -- but only if we adopt the techniques of the ''open source'' geeks. One reason it's difficult to trust the voting software of companies like Diebold is that the source code remains a trade secret. A few federally approved software experts are allowed to examine the code and verify that it works as intended, and in some cases, states are allowed to keep a copy in escrow. But the public has no access, and this is troublesome. When the Diebold source code was accidentally posted online last year, a computer-science professor looked at it and found it was dangerously hackable. Diebold may have fixed its bugs, but since the firm won't share the code publicly, there's no way of knowing. Just trust us, the company says. But is the counting of votes -- a fundamental of democracy -- something you want to take on faith? No, this problem requires a more definitive solution: ending the secrecy around the machines.

Wise Counsel
Appoint a special counsel to investigate Geneva violations.
By Neal Katyal
Slate, 28 May 2004
EXCERPT: In the past week, details have emerged of not only more prisoner abuse in Iraq, but also a concerted effort by the president's chief lawyer to try to insulate such abuse from domestic criminal investigation. A 2002 memorandum from White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales tells the president to refuse to apply the protection of the Geneva Conventions to detainees because Americans could be charged in domestic courts with war crimes. Now that photos and Army reports suggest that just such crimes have been committed, a criminal investigation is necessary. And because the administration's own memoranda reveal that it tried to adopt policies to frustrate precisely such prosecutions, the attorney general must now appoint an outside prosecutor to investigate whether war crimes actually occurred. This is the paradigmatic case for a special counsel.

The Big Money Election
The Nation, 14 June 2004 issue
EXCERPT: For anyone who wants to reduce the role of big money in politics, the 2004 election is an object lesson in how not to solve the problem. John Kerry's briefly floated proposal to delay his formal presidential nomination, which would have allowed him to keep raising private money for as long as George W. Bush, is the latest sign that the post-Watergate system of partial public financing is simply not up to the task. If we want elections, not auctions, where candidates compete on a level playing field and all voters are equal, we have to overhaul the system.

Bush Takes Spotlight Off Medicare Drug Benefit
By Wayne Washington
Boston Globe, 31 May 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush signed the bill adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare last December in a Constitution Hall packed with seniors thrilled by the prospect of the federal government stepping in to help them cope with the soaring cost of medicine. White House aides seized on the image of a Republican president demonstrating his oft-noted compassionate conservatism and asserting some credibility on an issue Democrats had long used to their political advantage. But when Bush traveled to Ohio and Tennessee and talked about the prescription drug bill last week, some political observers were surprised -- because he has talked about it so infrequently during the past five months. A Globe survey of Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks indicate 22 mentions in December and January, four in February, five in March, one in April, and three in May. The reason seems clear: The Medicare expansion, once viewed as a crucial link between Bush and seniors, is now a subject of intense scorn among many seniors. Some health-care specialists and members of Congress, including some Republicans, say the law is a bad piece of legislation that could do the president more harm than good as he campaigns for support among older voters, whose higher turnout makes them a critical part of the electorate. Representative Gil Gutknecht, a Minnesota Republican who resisted lobbying from his party's congressional leadership in voting against the bill, said seniors in his district don't like the law. ''I think it's somewhere between confused and clunker," Gutknecht said in describing their depictions of the law, which does not take full effect until 2006. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released in April indicated that seniors have gone from supporting the changes Bush signed into law to opposing them. In December, 46 percent of those 65 and older said they supported the law and only 39 percent were opposed. By late March, those numbers had switched to 48 percent opposing the changes with 36 percent favoring them. When Bush opened his Florida campaign with a massive rally in Orlando on March 20, the prescription drug bill was not included among the list of administration achievements he rattled off to the excited crowd. Laura Bush did not bring up the prescription drug bill during a recent campaign swing, focusing instead on her husband's faith-based initiative, his tax cuts, and his No Child Left Behind education plan.

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