12 August 2004

The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story
Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn't Make Front Page
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.

Spies Like Goss
How much of a hack is Bush's CIA nominee?
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 10 August 2004
EXCERPT: If Porter Goss becomes the next CIA director (a big if, by the way), two predictions can be made with confidence. First, to the extent possible, he will return the agency's clandestine branch to its adventurous, gun-toting days of yore. Second, he will be ruthlessly loyal to George W. Bush. ...In an interview with PBS's Frontline, Goss said he thought no laws would need revising to give a president the authority to order assassinations. ...Goss has generally been a cheerleader for the CIA. Asked during the Frontline interview about the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, he said: "I don't think 'failure' is the right word. … Here we are, a nation at peace going along and all of a sudden some bad guys come along and they are playing by different rules. … They have simply come in and done something that is, to us, unthinkable." ...Most official panels on reforming intelligence emphasize the need to separate analysis from policy—professional objectivity from politics. At least since June, Goss has been campaigning to be the next CIA director, and in that time he has served energetically as a shill for Bush's re-election. His record might make him a good candidate for director of operations, but his behavior makes him a bad one for director of the CIA.

ABA Passes Resolutions Criticizing U.S. Treatment of Prisoners and Opposing Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Structures
Watching Justice, 11 August 2004
EXCERPT: In response to abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, the American Bar Association has passed a resolution condemning "any use of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment upon persons within the custody or under the physical control of the United States government (including its contractors) and any endorsement or authorization of such measures by government lawyers, officials and agents." According to the Associated Press, the ABA cited what it called "a widespread pattern of abusive detention methods," saying that such actions "feed terrorism by painting the United States as an arrogant nation above the law." The ABA resolution goes on to urge the U.S. government to comply with all relevant international law, including the Geneva Conventions, and to ensure that any foreign person held by the United States "are treated in accordance with standards that the United States would consider lawful if employed with respect to an American captured by a foreign power."

Survey Finds Beneficiaries Largely Fault Medicare Law
By ROBERT PEAR
NYT,  11 August 2004
EXCERPT: A new survey suggests that the number of Medicare beneficiaries with negative views of the new prescription drug law far exceeds the number with positive views. But, it says, beneficiaries want Congress to fix what they see as problems in the law, not repeal it as many Democrats have advocated. The survey, released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, found that 47 percent of beneficiaries had unfavorable views of the law, while 26 percent had favorable views. The rest said they did not have enough information to offer an opinion.

Bush Needs to Change the Subject
The party that Nixon built has become one of rote instincts
Sidney Blumenthal
Guardian, 12 August 2004
EXCERPT: To win elections in general, Bush must raise his percentage of Hispanic votes from 35% in 2000 to close to 40%. But, according to a recent Democracy Corps poll, he is five points below his 2000 level and seven down in the south-west and Florida. In Illinois, a former presidential bellwether, the Republican party has fallen off the map. In his famous 1960 victory, Kennedy won the state, with 65% in Chicago. The Chicago suburbs, two-to-one Republican as recently as 1988, have now begun to tilt Democratic (just as have the suburbs of Los Angeles). Meanwhile, the state Republican party has imploded: unable to find a credible Senate candidate against the star of the Democratic convention, Barack Obama, it has now come up with its own African-American, Alan Keyes. A screeching religious right fanatic, Keyes, who has worn a lapel pin featuring the feet of a foetus, is Jerry Falwell as played by Little Richard. Obama is beating him 67-28, undoubtedly Keyes's peak. The turn in Michigan is, if anything, even more distressing for Republicans. West Michigan, home to Nixon's successor Gerald Ford and even today unrepresented by any Democrats in Congress, has John Kerry 12 points above Bush in a poll taken by a local TV station. This collapse is a consequence largely of the desertion of moderate Republicans repulsed by Bush's reckless economic mismanagement and neoconservative foreign policy. These moderates are overwhelmingly mainline Protestants, also offended by Bush's evangelical culture war and faith-based efforts to break down the wall of separation between church and state. The party that Nixon built is crumbling. Bush is the candidate of canned talking points and a party whose instincts have become rote and often counterproductive. The "war president" wraps himself in the flag, but the latest code-orange terrorist alert aroused no rally-round-the-flag syndrome; instead, it raised questions about Bush's timing and handling. Rather than campaign on his record, he has challenged Kerry to justify his vote for the Iraq war resolution, and when Kerry explained his reasoning accused him of "nuance". How can Bush change the subject? With independent voters bleeding away from him, he has taken to stumping with the maverick Republican senator John McCain, his mortal enemy. Can Bush dump Cheney without being seen as desperate and repudiating his entire term? Bush's father owed his political career to Nixon's patronage; now the son is in danger of inheriting the wind.

11 August 2004

Big Business Becoming Big Brother
By Kim Zetter
Wired News, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: The government is increasingly using corporations to do its surveillance work, allowing it to get around restrictions that protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, according to a report released Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that works to protect civil liberties. Data aggregators -- companies that aggregate information from numerous private and public databases -- and private companies that collect information about their customers are increasingly giving or selling data to the government to augment its surveillance capabilities and help it track the activities of people. Because laws that restrict government data collection don't apply to private industry, the government is able to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance. Congress needs to close such loopholes, the ACLU said, before the exchange of information gets out of hand. "Americans would really be shocked to discover the extent of the practices that are now common in both industry and government," said the ACLU's Jay Stanley, author of the report. "Industry and government know that, so they have a strong incentive to not publicize a lot of what's going on."
SEE ALSO:
Emerging “Surveillance-Industrial Complex” Is Turbo-Charging Government Monitoring, ACLU Warns in New Report
ACLU.org, 9 August 2004
The report is available online at www.aclu.org/surveillance

Sidestepping Reform at the C.I.A.
NYT editorial, 11 August 2004
EXCERPT: As the Sept. 11 commission made clear, the nation urgently needs to reorganize its intelligence agencies. Nominating a new candidate for the old, unreformed job of director of central intelligence, as President Bush did yesterday, is not the logical or appropriate place to start. Last week, Mr. Bush attempted to transform the powerful new position of national intelligence director, as proposed by the commission, into a neutralized bureaucratic cipher by depriving the office of any real authority. Now he once again seems intent on draining momentum from the idea of systematic intelligence reform. Even under normal circumstances, it's questionable whether a president should try to install a new C.I.A. chief a few months before an election. Mr. Bush seems to be deliberately inviting a confirmation battle by turning to Representative Porter Goss of Florida, a partisan Republican and a man criticized for his close, protective relationship with that intelligence agency - where he once worked. After the catastrophic intelligence failures and oversight lapses of recent years, the Senate must rigorously examine Mr. Goss's suitability and political independence. But contentious confirmation hearings are likely to distract the Senate's attention from the far more important job of figuring out how to coordinate America's disparate and overlapping intelligence agencies and streamline a largely dysfunctional system of Congressional oversight.
SEE ALSO:
Bush Picks House Intelligence Chief to Lead C.I.A.
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 11 August 2004
SEE ALSO:
In their headlines, British papers call it like it is:
Bush Names Rightwing Republican as CIA Chief
By Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian (UK), 11 August 2004
EXCERPT: President George Bush turned yesterday to a Republican congressman with intelligence expertise to lead the CIA through an era of change following the September 11 terror attacks. If approved by the Senate, Porter Goss, 65, a former CIA operative and leader of the House intelligence committee, will be responsible for restructuring the CIA after failures of intelligence on the September 11 attacks and the Iraq war.

Vermont Will Sue U.S. for the Right to Import Drugs
By PAM BELLUCK
NYT, 11 August 2004
EXCERPT:  Vermont will become the first state to sue the federal Food and Drug Administration for rejecting a plan to import prescription drugs from Canada, the state's governor and attorney general said Tuesday. Reacting to intense pressure to help make prescription drugs more affordable, Vermont officials had asked the drug agency in November to approve a pilot program under which the state would contract with a Canadian company that would take orders from Vermont residents and distribute the drugs by mail.

7,345 and Counting...Bush Books
The Nation, 10 August 2004
EXCERPT: A friend in Oregon reports: "I made my biweekly visit to Powell's bookstore in Portland this morning and found more than a dozen new anti-Bush books. The woman at the check-out counter told me that an online newsletter called Hey Bookseller had just sent them information on the plethora of anti-Bush books out there. I couldn't believe what she told me, but she kindly recaptured the newsletter from the trash and wrote down the exact quote: 'By rough count there are some 7,345 anti-Bush books already out or soon to be released.'" He added: "If all of these books were held by the branch of the Multnomah County Public Library down the street from my offices, which serves all of Northwest Portland, they would constitute one-fifth of their entire collection."
And it's not just books. At a small toy store in Sag Harbor, the owner tells me he just can't keep enough Bush paraphernalia in stock. One of the hottest items: a seven-foot tall, three-dimensional bop-bag with a sand filled base. "Duke it out with the Battling Bush! The stress reliever for any situation." The store is also running rapidly through its stocks of Bush buttons. (Young kids are big buyers, he reports.)
His Top Five Sellers:
*Compassionate Conservatism is an Oxymoron, George Bush is Just a Moron.
*Can You Impeach Someone Who is Never Elected in the First Place?
*Another Bush--another Recession and Another War to Cover it Up.
*The Bush Doctrine: Speak Incoherently and Hit Someone with A Big Stick.
*Gay Marriage Ceremony: $5000. War In Iraq: $87 Billion. Bush Not Getting Re-elected: Priceless.
SEE ALSO: The NationMart Button and Bumper Sticker Shop

None Too Swift
Everyone has a right to free speech. But they don't have a right to lie, and it's up to editorialists to call them on it.
By Michael Tomasky
The American Prospect, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: It's the duty of editorial pages to at once participate in and referee the dogfight that is a presidential campaign. There are rules here, even in the realm of electoral politics; and one of them should be that a group of people can't knowingly inject outright lies into the dialogue. Whether Bush did enough to fight terror before September 11, or whether Kerry could deliver democracy to Iraq, are matters of interpretation. Kerry's record in Vietnam is a matter of fact. If people are lying about those facts, they need to be called on that and sent away. It is not a matter of these veterans, as The New York Sun wrote in a mendacious editorial last week, deserving "the right we all have to speak." They obviously have a right to speak. They don't have a right to lie (and they, not Kerry, have the burden of proving that what they say is true). Only the leading editorial pages have the power to enunciate this standard. And so far, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post has chosen to use that power. Only the Los Angeles Times has editorialized that Kerry's "war record" is not "fair game." The country's two most important papers should follow suit. They should demand that Bush denounce the ad and declare that the standard has to be higher than this. They're not strangers to such practices; on February 5, The Washington Post's editorial page criticized Wesley Clark for not having criticized Michael Moore's use of the word "deserter" to describe President Bush while Moore was speaking at a Clark event. Early next week, Unfit for Command, a book by John O'Neill, will hit the stores. It's already #1 on Amazon as a result of a Matt Drudge plug and the attendant media flurry. The ads running in the three swing states will no doubt spread to more battleground states. A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on, as the old saying goes. It's time for our civic referees to suit up.
SEE ALSO:
Man Kerry Rescued Calls Swift Boat Ad False: Gives Vivid Account of Rescue Under Enemy Fire
FactCheck.org, 10 August 2004
EXCERPT: "This smear campaign has been launched by people without decency," Rassmann said. "Their new charges are false; their stories are fabricated, made up by people who did not serve with Kerry in Vietnam."

Government as Insurer
We're about to stumble into another pension debacle, and Congress is letting it happen.
By Robert B. Reich
The American Prospect, 10 August 2004
EXCERPT: Are we on the edge of another savings and loan debacle? That one, in the late 1980s, cost taxpayers an estimated 150 to 200 billion dollars. It happened because too many of the nation's savings and loan banks, knowing that their depositors were insured, took big risks with their depositor's money -- investing in all sorts of schemes. And why not? The upside gains were huge, the downside risks were borne by the government. Now it's big airlines, along with big steel, and other big old industries that have promised their employees pensions when they retire. Many of these companies are in trouble because of new, low-cost competitors -- the old airlines now facing the likes of Southwest and JetBlue; old steel now facing high-tech mini-mills. The government guarantees that pensions will be paid, just as it insured savings and loan depositors they'd be paid. Companies are supposed to save enough to fund their pension obligations. But they've been investing the savings in stocks, hedge funds, junk bonds, and other risky things. And why not? The upside gains could be large and the downside risks are borne by -- yes -- the government. ...After the S & L mess, you might have expected Congress to demand that companies set aside more money to meet their pension obligations, and invest it more conservatively. But you'd be wrong. Last April, Congress actually loosened the rules, enabling the most troubled industries to use accounting gimmicks to make their pension funds look better than they are. Hey, it's an election year.
The lesson: When government insures an industry against loss, it's only a matter of time before those losses are shifted to the government.

The Fog Machine
The Skinny on Right-wing "Fact Checkers" Who are Spinning the Lousy Job Numbers.
By Jared Bernstein
The American Prospect, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: After the worst jobs report in months came out last Friday, the President, in an almost Stepford-like fashion, asserted that his tax cuts are working and the economy is “strong and getting stronger.” In fact, fewer than 100 days before the presidential election, unemployment is stuck where it was when the recovery began two-and-a-half years ago. Real wages are down over the past few months. And many who have found new employers after losing their jobs during the recession or its jobless recovery are earning less than they used to. The fact that some in the Bush camp are in denial about the data is to be expected at this point in the game, but it seems like a good time to set out the relevant facts, both positive and negative.

Bush's House of Cards (Home Market Bubble)
by DEAN BAKER
The Nation 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: The crash of the housing market will not be pretty. It is virtually certain to lead to a second dip to the recession. Even worse, millions of families will see the bulk of their savings disappear as homes in some of the bubble areas lose 30 percent, or more, of their value. Foreclosures, which are already at near record highs, will almost certainly soar to new peaks. This has happened before in regional markets that had severe housing bubbles, most notably in Colorado and Texas after the collapse of oil prices in the early eighties. However, this time the bubble markets are more the rule than the exception, infecting most of real estate markets on both coasts, as well as many local markets in the center of the country. In this context, it's especially disturbing that the Bush administration has announced that it is cutting back Section 8 housing vouchers, which provide rental assistance to low income families, while easing restrictions on mortgage loans. Low-income families will now be able to get subsidized mortgage loans through the Federal Housing Administration that are equal to 103 percent of the purchase price of a home. Home ownership can sometimes be a ticket to the middle class, but buying homes at bubble-inflated prices may saddle hundreds of thousands of poor families with an unmanageable debt burden. As with the stock bubble, the big question in the housing bubble is when it will burst. No one can give a definitive answer to that one, but Alan Greenspan seems determined to ensure that it will be after November. Instead of warning prospective homebuyers of the risk of buying housing in a bubble-inflated market, Greenspan gave Congressional testimony in the summer of 2002 arguing that there is no such bubble. This is comparable to his issuing a "buy" recommendation for the NASDAQ at the beginning of 1999. More recently, Greenspan has done everything in his power to keep mortgage rates as low as possible, at one point even offering markets the hope that the Fed would take the extraordinary measure of directly buying long-term Treasury bonds. The man who testified that the Bush tax cuts were a good idea apparently has one last job to perform for the President.

10 August 2004

Bush masters spinning of intel and economic statistics
Spin the Payrolls
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 10 August 2004
EXCERPT: When Friday's dismal job report was released, traders in the Chicago pit began chanting, "Kerry, Kerry." But apologists for President Bush's economic policies are frantically spinning the bad news. Here's a guide to their techniques. First, they talk about recent increases in the number of jobs, not the fact that payroll employment is still far below its previous peak, and even further below anything one could call full employment. Because job growth has finally turned positive, some economists (who probably know better) claim that prosperity has returned - and some partisans have even claimed that we have the best economy in 20 years. But job growth, by itself, says nothing about prosperity: growth can be higher in a bad year than a good year, if the bad year follows a terrible year while the good year follows another good year. I've drawn a chart of job growth for the 1930's; there was rapid nonfarm job growth (8.1 percent) in 1934, a year of mass unemployment and widespread misery - but that year was slightly less terrible than 1933. So have we returned to prosperity? No: jobs are harder to find, by any measure, than they were at any point during Bill Clinton's second term. The job situation might have improved somewhat in the past year, but it's still not good. Second, the apologists give numbers without context. President Bush boasts about 1.5 million new jobs over the past 11 months. Yet this was barely enough to keep up with population growth, and it's worse than any 11-month stretch during the Clinton years. Third, they cherry-pick any good numbers they can find.

International Team to Monitor Presidential Election
Observers will be part of OSCE's human rights office
From David de Sola
CNN, 8 August 2004
EXCERPT:  A team of international observers will monitor the presidential election in November, according to the U.S. State Department. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was invited to monitor the election by the State Department. The observers will come from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. It will be the first time such a team has been present for a U.S. presidential election. "The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should," spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said. "It's not legally binding, but it's a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections." Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives, raising the specter of possible civil rights violations that they said took place in Florida and elsewhere in the 2000 election, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July, asking him to send observers. After Annan rejected their request, saying the administration must make the application, the Democrats asked Secretary of State Colin Powell to do so. The issue was hotly debated in the House, and Republicans got an amendment to a foreign aid bill that barred federal funds from being used for the United Nations to monitor U.S. elections, The Associated Press reported. In a letter dated July 30 and released last week, Assistant Secretary of State Paul Kelly told the Democrats about the invitation to OSCE, without mentioning the U.N. issue.
"I am pleased that Secretary Powell is as committed as I am to a fair and democratic process," said Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, who spearheaded the effort to get U.N. observers. "The presence of monitors will assure Americans that America cares about their votes and it cares about its standing in the world," she said in a news release.
Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California agreed. "This represents a step in the right direction toward ensuring that this year's elections are fair and transparent," she said.

One nation, incorporated under God, etc., etc.
Outsourcing the Defense Budget
Defense contractors are writing the president's defense budget
By Elizabeth Brown
Center for Public Integrity, 29 July 2004
Courtesy of the Agonist
EXCERPT: Private defense contractors have been given the authority to help prepare the president's national defense budget—another job the Department of Defense has outsourced. The Center for Public Integrity has found that at least three private-sector contracting firms have advertised employment positions for analysts to work in the development of America's defense budget. According to a job listing posted on the Web site of McLean, Va., defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, the company is looking for a senior budget analyst to work in a Department of Defense or military services budget division to "prepare the agency's President's Budget, Budget Estimate Submission and Program Objective Memorandum."

Malpractice Misdirection
The Century Foundation, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: Elizabeth Perl  Tort reform advocates argue that large jury awards lead to high medical malpractice premiums, which lead to a correspondingly high cost of medical care for consumers. Those advocates fail to mention that large payouts to victims of medical malpractice would not occur without … medical malpractice. Blaming the trial lawyers might play well with some audiences, but it also takes the focus away from another method of reducing medical malpractice payouts: reducing the errors that cause the injuries to patients. While not all medical errors are the result of malpractice, the climate of tolerance that permits them needs to be changed. In July, HealthGrades Inc., a healthcare rating company, released a study of Medicare patients admitted to every U.S. hospital, and estimated that between 2000 and 2002 as many as 195,000 people per year died from potentially preventable medical errors. The HealthGrades calculation is an increase over the upper limit of 98,000 deaths estimated in a ground breaking 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine. The HealthGrades figure accounts for failures to diagnose or properly treat diseases, known as "failure to rescue," a category that some critics argue is subjective and could have inflated the number. Nonetheless, the total number of deaths from medical errors may be even larger than the numbers from both HealthGrades and the IOM because neither study takes account of errors in facilities like outpatient clinics or nursing homes.

Views authority given as appropriate but Bush misused it...
Kerry Says His Vote on Iraq Would Be the Same Today
By JODI WILGOREN
NYT, 10 August 2004
EXCERPT: Senator John Kerry said Monday that he would have voted to give the president the authority to invade Iraq even if he had known all he does now about the apparent dearth of unconventional weapons or a close connection to Al Qaeda. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," said Mr. Kerry, who has faced criticism throughout his presidential campaign for that October 2002 vote. But Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, extended his attack on President Bush's prosecution of the war, saying he had not used the Congressional authority effectively. "My question to President Bush is, Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace?" Mr. Kerry told reporters here after responding to Mr. Bush's request last week for a yes-or-no answer on how he would vote today on the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. "Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?" he said. "Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve it and relieve a pressure from the American people?

Bush sets aside the Hippocratic oath
U.S. Links Immigrant Patients' Status to Hospital Aid
By ROBERT PEAR
NYT, 10 August 2004
EXCERPT: The federal government is offering $1 billion to hospitals that provide emergency care to undocumented immigrants. But to get the money, hospitals would have to ask patients about their immigration status, a prospect that alarms hospitals and advocates for immigrants. When Congress decided to provide the money last year, state officials and hospital executives saw it as a breakthrough. For years, they had argued that the federal government was responsible for immigration policy and should cover the costs of medical care for illegal immigrants because it had created the problem. These costs weigh heavily on border states like Texas, Arizona and California and on states like New York and Illinois, with large numbers of such immigrants. The largest allocations are going to California, $72 million a year; Texas, $48 million; Arizona, $42 million; New York, $12 million; Illinois, $10 million; and Florida, $9 million. But federal health officials, under guidelines developed in the last couple of weeks, said hospitals had to ask questions about immigration status to make sure the money would be used as Congress intended, for "emergency health services furnished to undocumented aliens." Hospital executives and immigrant rights groups said the questioning would deter undocumented immigrants from seeking hospital care when they need it, and some hospitals said compliance might cost them more than they would receive in federal aid.

Missouri Opts for Bigotry
An editorial
Madison (Wisconsin) Times, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: The voters of Missouri let their bigotries get the best of them Tuesday when they voted to single out gay and lesbian couples for discrimination. When they voted overwhelmingly to amend their state constitution to bar same-sex couples from marrying, Missourians made that document an instrument of hatred and cruelty. There will be those who suggest that, even if Missourians were wrong, they were simply exercising their democratic right to set the rules for their state. That's true, up to a point. In a pure democracy, voters have a right to shape as cruel and hateful a society as they choose. Fortunately, the United States is not a pure democracy. This country has a tradition of protecting the rights of minorities from the most abusive excesses of the majority. That is why the anti-same-sex marriage campaign being pushed by President Bush and his minions is such a foul and anti-American enterprise.

9 August 2004

Making the nation safer by hindering the prosecution of terrorists?
Superiors Hindered Terror Prosecutors
By John Solomon
Associated Press, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: Prosecutors in the first major terror trial after Sept. 11 were hindered by superiors from presenting some of their most powerful evidence, including testimony from an al-Qaida leader and video footage showing Osama bin Laden's European operatives casing American landmarks, Justice Department memos show. The department's terrorism unit "provided no help of any kind in this prosecution,'' the U.S. Attorney's office in Detroit wrote in one of the memos, which detail bitter divisions between front-line prosecutors and their superiors in Washington. The Detroit case ended last summer with the convictions, hailed by the Bush administration, of three men who were accused of operating a sleeper terror cell that possessed plans for attacks around the world. A fourth defendant was acquitted, however, and only two of the four men originally arrested were convicted of terrorism charges. Now the convictions are in jeopardy because of an internal investigation into allegations that defense lawyers were denied evidence that could have helped them. Whatever the outcome, internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and more than three dozen interviews with current and former officials detail how the differences between Washington and the field office kept important evidence from being shown to jurors.

Kerry's Platform Shows Shift to the Right on Foreign Policy
By Stephen Zunes
Foreign Policy In Focus, 5 August 2004
EXCERPT: Against the backdrop of ongoing death and destruction in Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation, the Democratic Party formally adopted their 2004 platform on July 28 at their convention in Boston. The platform focused more on foreign policy than it had in recent years. It represented an opportunity to challenge the Republican administration's unprecedented and dangerous departure from the post-World War II international legal consensus forbidding aggressive wars as well as a means with which to offer a clear alternative to the Bush Doctrine. Even the Republican Party under Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 did not openly challenge such basic international principles as the illegitimacy of invading a sovereign nation because of unsubstantiated claims they might some day be a potential security threat. Yet not only have Senators John Kerry and John Edwards continued to defend their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2004 Democratic platform complains that the administration "did not send sufficient forces to accomplish the mission." The most direct challenge to Bush administration policies in Iraq contained in the platform is its alleged failures to adequately equip American forces. The only thing the 2004 Democratic Party platform could offer opponents of the war is a sentence which acknowledges "People of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq." As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, "Indeed they do. That is why we have elections, and it would have been nice if the opposition party had the guts to actually oppose it."

Reporting for Duty: Where the Killing Starts
By David Edwards of Media Lens
ZNet, 8 August 2004
EXCERPT: Where did all this killing begin? We might think it began with the leaders who issued the orders for the invasion of Iraq, and with the pilots and soldiers who pushed the buttons and pulled the triggers. But in truth the killing always starts with you and us - the public. First, we have to be persuaded that we are led by good, reasonable people who absolutely would not kill unless they had to. Psychological buffers must be set up in our minds to protect us from the realisation that our leaders are willing to kill cynically - for power, for profit, for the status quo. Because these buffers erode over time, our leaders must be manufactured fresh, smiling and new every few years by the same system of power with the same ruthless goals. We know all about Bush-I and Thatcher, but things are different now. Now there is Clinton and Blair. And now Bush-II and Blair. And now, perhaps, John Kerry and Gordon Brown. All arrive declaring their determination "to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world", while the same boot continues stamping on the same human face - for ever. The killing, actually, starts with the surreal emptiness and manufactured optimism of party conferences and conventions.

So Much for the Economic Recovery
By Mary Diebel
Capitol Hill Blue, 7 August 2004
EXCERPT: Job growth almost ground to a halt last month, the Labor Department announced Friday in a report that suggests the summer slowdown may not be as short-lived as President Bush and others hoped. Employers added just 32,000 jobs in July, marking the worst jobs performance since December and stunning forecasters who expected the economy to create between 215,000 and 247,000 jobs last month. "Worse, payroll growth in May and June was revised lower by a cumulative 61,000, further adding to evidence that this job market is not recovering well," said vice president Rick Cobb of job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The Labor Department also reported that average hourly earnings rose 5 cents to $15.70 last month, a 1.9 percent increase over July 2003 that did not keep pace with a 3.2 percent annual inflation rate fueled by rising gasoline prices, health care expenses and interest rates. A separate household survey reported the unemployment rate dropped from 5.6 percent to 5.5 percent last month. The jobs report sent financial markets skidding as Wall Street questioned predictions by the White House and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that the soft patch the economy hit this spring had passed. The dollar slumped and oil prices hit record highs of $44 a barrel only to retreat on the possibility a slowdown would lessen energy demand. The employment report caused Fed watchers to reconsider what central bank policymakers will do when they gather Tuesday. The Fed was widely expected to add to the quarter-percentage-point rate hike made in June, but analysts predict the Fed may rethink increasing rates at later meetings if the economy doesn't regain momentum.

It's Not Just the Jobs Lost, but the Pay in the New Ones
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
NYT, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: The stunningly slow pace of job creation, which sank to growth of just 32,000 in July, has provided new ammunition in an intense political debate over job quality. For months, Democrats have said that the long-delayed employment recovery was concentrated in low-wage jobs that paid far less than those that were lost. White House officials replied that the available data failed to settle the matter one way or the other. Even now, at a time when a disproportionate number of new jobs appear to be lower-paying ones, there has been growth in some high-income occupations like accounting, architecture and software. Yet the earnings gap between the highest-paid employees and the rest of the work force is still widening, as it has over most of the last 30 years. The trend is most striking in factories, which accounted for the bulk of job losses in the last three years and tended to pay above-average wages. In contrast to previous recoveries, when companies rehired a large proportion of laid-off workers, manufacturers have added only 91,000 jobs this year, having eliminated more than two million jobs in the previous three years.

Time to examine tax exempt church politics
Churches See an Election Role and Spread the Word on Bush
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: Susanne Jacobsmeyer, a member of the West County Assembly of God in a St. Louis suburb, voted for George W. Bush four years ago, but mostly out of loyalty as a Republican and not with much passion. This year, Ms. Jacobsmeyer is a "team leader" in the Bush campaign's effort to turn out conservative Christian voters. "This year I am voting for him as a man of faith," she said over breakfast after an early morning service. "He has proven that he will do what is right, and he will look to God first." Jan Klarich, her friend and another team leader, agreed. "Don't you feel it is a spiritual battle?" she asked to nods around the table. The Bush campaign is seeking to rally conservative churches and their members to help turn out sympathetic voters this fall, and West County Assembly of God, a 600-member evangelical congregation in a Republican district of a pivotal swing state, is on the front lines of the effort. The church's pastor, John A. Wilson, has led a prayer for the president every Sunday for 10 years. His sermons often extol the importance of opposing abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage, and he says he supports Mr. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. Before Missouri voted last week to add a ban on same-sex marriage to the state's Constitution and keep in place a restriction on gambling, the church newsletter endorsed both measures so vigorously that the post office denied the church its usually discounted postal rate for engaging in political activity. To promote involvement on social issues, Mr. Wilson said, the church has formed a dozen-member "moral action team." They hold open meetings for parishioners each month. They inform church members about socially conservative electoral issues. They register them to vote at stands outside the sanctuary on designated "voter registration" Sundays. Last week, the "moral action team" even drove church members to the polls, and they plan to do the same for this fall's general election as well. Ms. Klarich, a former state Republican Party official and former state chairman of the Christian Coalition, founded a local Republican organization meeting in an office park next to the church, and many members of the congregation attend. Last year, the Bush campaign sent Ralph Reed, its Southeast regional chairman and the former chairman of the Christian Coalition, to speak to her group.

Friends in the White House Come to Coal's Aid
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NYT, 9 August 2004
EXCERPT: In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government. Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official - Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease. The reintroduction of the coal dust measure came after the federal agency had abandoned a series of Clinton-era safety proposals favored by coal miners while embracing others favored by mine owners. The agency's effort to rewrite coal regulations is part of a broader push by the Bush administration to help an industry that had been out of favor in Washington. As a candidate four years ago, Mr. Bush promised to expand energy supplies, in part by reviving coal's fortunes, particularly in Appalachia, where coal regions will also help decide how swing states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio vote this year. The president has also made good on a 2000 campaign pledge to ease environmental restrictions that industry officials said were threatening jobs in coal country. That promise led many West Virginia miners, who traditionally voted Democratic, to join coal operators in supporting Mr. Bush. It helped him win the state's five electoral votes, ultimately the margin of victory.

7-8 August

AUDIO LINK
Bush and Our Enemies
Audio Clip from Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know?
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New Alert Shows That Intelligence Weaknesses Remain
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and ERIC LIPTON
NYT, 7  August 2004
EXCERPT: In what amounted to an unexpected test run of the nation's overhauled security system, the unfolding terrorist threats of recent days revealed both marked improvements and lingering vulnerabilities in the federal government's ability to identify and mobilize against a possible attack. A tense week of global arrests, closed-off roadways and public jitters demonstrated the government's capacity to move much more quickly and mass far more resources in response to a perceived threat than it did three years ago before the Sept. 11 attacks, government officials and outside experts agreed. But the week underscored the United States' increased reliance on terrorist information from Pakistan and other allies, its continued difficulties in using covert sources to infiltrate Al Qaeda and, perhaps most critically, the credibility problems the government faces in deciding what to tell a somewhat jaded public.

Safety Second
Are We Spending Tax Dollars the Best Possible Way In the War On Terrorism?
Op-Chart in the NYT, 8 August 2004

Kerry Steers Message With Eye to the Nation's Center
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
NYT,  7 August 2004
EXCERPT: Cruising across the country on a post-convention tour by road, water and rail, John Kerry has begun reaching out to moderate, undecided voters with a general-election message that suggests he is more confident in his base than President Bush is in his own. "I want to talk to the people who aren't here," he said in Hannibal, Mo., on Wednesday, a line he is repeating everywhere he goes. "I want to talk to rural, I want to talk to conservative Missouri. I want to talk to Republicans and independents - because I want to talk common-sense, mainstream American values." Indeed, while Democrats note that Mr. Bush continues to talk about banning gay marriage and late-term abortions, and to visit bedrock Republican areas of the country like Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Mr. Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts, is rolling through the Great Plains and the high plateaus of the Southwest preaching fiscal responsibility, tax cuts, gun owners' rights and national security. In his choice of themes and in his tone, Mr. Kerry is running straight up the middle, as polls show he has solidified his backing among Democrats, with more of his supporters now saying they are voting for him as opposed to voting against Mr. Bush.

G.O.P. Donors Paying to Play at Convention
By GLEN JUSTICE
NYT, 7 August 2004
EXCERPT: Lunch at the Plaza Hotel. Dinner at Le Cirque. Cocktails at the New York Stock Exchange. That's the least the Republican Party could do to welcome its top fund-raisers to the convention in New York this month. Right? Yes, but there's just one catch. They have to pay for it. These supporters - some of whom have raised $200,000 or more for President Bush or the party - are being charged a "convention fee'' this year of up to $4,500 per person for themselves and each guest, according to a Web page run by LogiCom Project Management, the company handling the events and travel arrangements. That's just for starters. The fund-raisers will also pay for airfare, several nights in a hotel and optional events they might choose - like a fashion show at Barneys or the U.S. Open tennis tournament. The result is that a couple could easily run up a tab of well over $10,000. "A lot of us looked at that thing and said, whoa!'' said Bruce Bialosky of California, who raised $100,000 to become a Pioneer fund-raiser. He estimates that the convention will cost him and his family $15,000. "A lot of people just can't afford that.''

Low Numbers, New Problem
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
NYT, 6 August 2004
EXCERPT: All week long, President Bush traveled the country, cheerfully telling audiences that ''we've turned the corner'' on the economy. But on Friday, in the face of the government's paltry new numbers on job growth, the president's new slogan suddenly sounded premature at best.
Republicans had hoped the early indications this year that the economy was turning the corner would have allowed them to neutralize, or even turn to their advantage, the issue that John Kerry had once considered central to his White House bid. Instead, the new numbers, coming just three weeks before the G.O.P. convention, leave little doubt that the economy could still be a potent issue for the Democrats.
Rather than address his vulnerability head-on Friday, Mr. Bush delivered an upbeat assessment of the economy, saying it was getting stronger and lauding the American entrepreneurial spirit. "There's more work to do to make this economy stronger,'' he said at a rally at a farm in Stratham, N.H. "We've been through a recession, we've been through corporate scandals, we've been through a terrorist attack. But we've overcome these obstacles, because our workers are great, because our farmers are really good at what they do. We've overcome these obstacles because the entrepreneurial spirit is strong.''
This prompted cheers of "four more years.''
...Still, the Democrats were determine to emphasize the figures as an affirmation that Mr. Bush was taking the country in the wrong direction - and they have no plans to let up before November. After all, they said, if Mr. Bush continues on this track, he would be the first president since Herbert Hoover to experience a decline in jobs during his presidency, an issue they do not want lost.

Where's Ashcroft?
by Chisun Lee
The Village Voice, 5 August 2004
EXCERPT: The once ubiquitous U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has been conspicuously absent from the recent spate of terror announcements. Maybe that's because, in the scary times of a close presidential race, he's just a little too scary. In previous alerts over the years, Ashcroft's hooded eyes and ominous baritone cued America to imagine the worst. His alarmism—and a tendency to call press conferences without checking first with the White House—quickly became a political liability to the Bush administration, as critics on both the right and the left balked at the head prosecutor's McCarthyesque zeal. After all, if the voters are afraid, they might not want to risk change—but if they are terrified, they might opt in their panic for someone who represents new hope.

Pick Me, Pick Me, I Know The Answer . . .
By Cary W. Blankenship
PoliticalStrategy.org. 6 August 2004
EXCERPT: NCLB, under the guise of accountability, is a full frontal assault on American public schools. It will insure the perception of failure of America’s schools and build public support for vouchers for private and parochial schools. While espousing vouchers to help poor children “escape” failing public schools, it really targets the middle class, the group that will take the most advantage of any voucher program, an entitlement program like food stamps. Even a minimal voucher added to their own resources will allow middle class parents to afford private school tuition, while few poor parents are either well-enough informed or have the resources to manage sending their children to private schools.

Federal Roadblocks and Checkpoints Creating Capital Maze
By JAMES DAO
NYT, 6 August 2004
EXCERPT: Each day seems to bring a new reminder that this is a city under siege by an invisible enemy. On Monday, following a terrorism alert naming financial institutions as targets, parking spaces were eliminated around the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. By Tuesday, the Capitol Police had closed a street and established 14 traffic checkpoints around Capitol Hill. By Thursday, the police were inspecting vehicles near the Federal Reserve. And by Friday, the Secret Service was planning to close a sidewalk outside the Treasury Department. More is to come, security officials said. On its own, each measure might have seemed inconsequential. But together, they have brought an explosion of denunciations from local officials fed up with the growing maze of concrete barriers and guard posts around their city. To them, the latest round of fortifications have seemed excessive, intrusive and even harmful.
"It's an overreaction," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's nonvoting delegate in Congress, who contends street closings have created havoc for emergency vehicles and choked off the city's evacuation routes.
Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey complained, "The city has to be able to function," predicting cancerous traffic jams when vacation season ends and Congress returns in September.
And Tony Bullock, the spokesman for Mayor Anthony Williams, called the moves "a decidedly knee-jerk reaction" by federal agencies seeking to use the latest alert to impose security measures they had wanted long before Sept. 11, 2001.
"It's not entirely clear what we're reacting to," Mr. Bullock said. "The warning from the Department of Homeland Security was specific to certain buildings. We're seeing federal government agencies using that information to implement security measures that have no connection to that warning. What is happening in the capital is unsustainable."

6 August 2004

Bush says that he will not rest until all Americans that want a job, have one. Considering that his employment policy is principally a "trickle down" method from the very rich, the implication for tax policy is that he will give even more to the upper 1/2 of one per cent group. Who's class war is this, anyway?
  --BWUSA Comment

U.S. Employment Growth Surprisingly Weak in July
AP in the NYT, 6 August 2004
EXCERPT: The nation's payroll growth slowed dramatically in July with a paltry 32,000 jobs being added-- a potentially troubling sign that the rough patch the economy hit in June was no aberration. The unemployment rate, however, dipped down a notch to 5.5 percent last month, from 5.6 percent in June, the Labor Department reported Friday. The new jobless rate was the lowest since October 2001. The payrolls figure and the unemployment rate can sometimes go in different directions because they are derived from two separate statistical surveys. Economists, however, look more closely at the payroll figure as a better barometer of the health of the jobs market. The 32,000 net jobs added in July represented the smallest gain in hiring since December and followed a revised gain of just 78,000 in June, even less than previously reported. May's payrolls also were revised down to show a gain of 208,000. ``Employers got cold feet,'' said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. ``Employers just don't have the confidence in the economy that we need to sustain the kind of economic growth that we've seen.'' Soaring energy costs, which have hit companies bottom lines', also may have played a factor in businesses being more cautious in their hiring, economists said.

An American Debate: How Severe the Threat?
By STEPHEN KINZER
and TODD S. PURDUM
NYT, 5 August 2004
EXCERPT:  If the United States was in danger of a terrorist attack and faraway financial institutions were supposed to be on high alert, there was no evidence of it at Franks Diner, a 78-year-old Kenosha institution where senators mix with regular folk and the prospect of another attack seemed just part of the background noise of daily life. "I don't know who on earth to believe anymore," said Michael Schumacher, a 54-year-old writer who was eating a bratwurst for breakfast. "You feel you're being manipulated all the time."

Harris Passes Either Secret Info or Nonsense
BY DAVID HACKETT
Southwest Florida Herald Tribune, 5 August 2004
EXCERPT: Officials in Indiana and Washington, D.C., said they are dumbfounded by a statement U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris made about a terrorist plot to blow up a power grid in Indiana. In making the statement during a speech to 600 people Monday night in Venice, Harris either shared a closely held secret or passed along second-hand information as fact. A staff member of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the nation's intelligence operations, said he had heard of no such plot. And Indiana officials in the county where the power grid is located were at a loss to explain where the information originated.

Fear itself...
Iraqis on Tour Banned from Memphis Hall
Seattle PI, 3 August 2004
EXCERPT: Iraqis visiting on a civil rights tour were barred from city hall after the city council chairman said it was too dangerous to let them in. The seven Iraqi civic and community leaders are in the midst of a three-week American tour, sponsored by the State Department to learn more about the process of government. The trip also includes stops in Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago. The Iraqis were scheduled to meet with a city council member, but Joe Brown, the council chair, said he feared the group was dangerous.

Despite Promises, Bush Refuses to Prosecute Leaks
The Daily Mis-Lead, 5 August 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush has promised to prosecute those who leak sensitive classified information, saying, "We can't have leaks of classified information." Attorney General John Ashcroft said, "leaks of classified information do substantial damage to the security interests of the nation." Ashcroft promised swift prosecution of leaks, saying, "Until those who, without authority, reveal classified information are deterred by the real prospect of productive investigations and strict application of appropriate penalties, they will have no reason to stop their harmful actions." But according to a new report, the Bush administration is refusing to prosecute a top Republican who leaked classified information.

Agency Curbs War Critic Author
By JAMES RISEN
NYT, 4 August 2004
EXCERPT: A senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency who has written a best-selling book critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror has been ordered to sharply curtail his interviews with news organizations in connection with the book, his publisher said on Wednesday. The author of "Imperial Hubris," who wrote the book anonymously, is a longtime counterterrorism official at the C.I.A. who previously ran the agency's unit that concentrated on Osama bin Laden. In his book and in subsequent interviews, the author has said he believes that the war in Iraq has been a major distraction from the effort to fight Al Qaeda and that the war has also inflamed Islamic resentment against the United States while aiding Al Qaeda's recruitment among Muslims. Since the book was published on July 15, the anonymous author, known publicly only as Mike, has granted numerous interviews to discuss his book and his views. Christina Davidson, the editor of "Imperial Hubris'' at Brassey's Inc., the publisher, said Mike was told in a meeting with senior C.I.A. officials at the agency's headquarters on Wednesday that effective immediately he was prohibited from taking part in more interviews without prior written approval. ...Ms. Davidson said he was told that he must seek approval for each interview at least five business days in advance. He also must provide the agency with a detailed outline of what he plans to say each time.
SEE ALSO:  AUDIO LINK  Interview with Mike on the Diane Rehm Show

AUDIO LINK
Interview with Ralph Nader
Diane Rehm Show, 5 August 2004
The Good Fight: Declare Your Independence and Close the Democracy Gap
Listen Now

AUDIO LINK
Interview with Jack Germond
Diane Rehm Show, 5 August 2004
Fat Man Fed Up (Random House)
A veteran political journalist discusses his growing frustration with both American politics and the media.
Jack Germond, journalist, has written and provided commentary for many media outlets including the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Star, The McLaughlin Group and Inside Politics.
Listen Now

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