Bush's Tax Cut

10 Nobel Laureate Economists, Alan Greenspan, and Bush's former secretary of the treasury Paul O'Neill thought that the big tax cut was a bad idea this year. Below is an article from the New York Times which discloses that Paul O'Neill's report on the problem of deficit was shelved by the Bush administration. The editor's note comes from truthout.org where the article is reprinted. I want to say that I am not opposed to tax cuts in general. That would be stupid. Tax cuts can be a good way to spur a slow economy. The idea is that people who have money in hand will spend it on goods and services. Also, people will be encouraged to invest. The important thing is to get money out into the economy. However, there are other ways to do this as well. Spending on government programs also puts money into the economy and has the added benefit of helping people who need help. Sometimes these programs are not implemented well, but I would also point out that tax cuts can be implemented in bad ways. Take Bush's. If you give all the tax breaks to the rich, they are not going to go out and spend more money in the economy. These people already have more money than they know what to do with. They will save it rather than spending it. This will keep money out of the economy. The low interest rates on savings accounts show that there is a low demand for capital right now. If you give a tax break to the working and middle class, they will spend it and this will stimulate the economy. This all goes without saying that giving rich people tax breaks is unfair because it is giving a break to the very people who don't need it.

Editor's Note | Many financial experts have warned that the massive budget deficits described in the article below will bankrupt this country for the next 25 years. One must also ponder whether the drafting of this report was the main reason Paul O'Neill was removed as Treasury Secretary. - wrp

White House Shelved Deficit Report
By Peronet Despeignes
The Financial Times

Thursday 29 May 2003

Study commissioned by O’Neill sees $44 trillion in red ink

The Bush administration has shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury that shows the U.S. currently faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totaling at least $44 trillion in current U.S. dollars.

The study, the most comprehensive assessment of how the U.S. government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the “baby boom” generation’s future healthcare and retirement costs, was commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill.

But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.

The study asserts that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoidable if the U.S. is to meet benefit promises to future generations. It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase.

The study was being circulated as an independent working paper among Washington think-tanks as President George W. Bush on Wednesday signed into law a 10-year, $350 billion tax-cut package he welcomed as a victory for hard-working Americans and the economy.

The analysis was spearheaded by Kent Smetters, then-Treasury deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagdessh Gokhale, then a consultant to the Treasury. Mr. Gokhale, now an economist for the Cleveland Federal Reserve, said: “When we were conducting the study, my impression was that it was slated to appear [in the Budget]. At some point, the momentum builds and you think everything is a go, and then the decision came down that we weren’t part of the prospective budget.”

Mr. O’Neill, who was fired last December, refused to comment.

The study’s analysis of future deficits dwarfs previous estimates of the financial challenge facing Washington. It is roughly equivalent to 10 times the publicly held national debt, four years of U.S. economic output or more than 94 percent of all U.S. household assets. Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, last week bemoaned what he called Washington’s “deafening” silence about the future crunch.

President Bush signed into law a $350 billion tax-cut package on Wednesday saying:‘ ‘We can say loud and clear to the American people: You got more of your own money to spend so that this economy can get a good wind behind it.”

The estimates reflect the extent to which the annual deficit, the national debt and other widely reported, backward-looking data are becoming archaic and misleading as measures of the government’s solvency. Mr. Smetters, now a University of Pennsylvania finance professor, said tax cuts were only a fraction of the imbalance, and that the bigger problem “is the whole [budget] language we’re using.”

Laurence Kotlikoff, an expert on long-term budget accounting, alleged in a recent Boston Globe editorial that the Bush administration suppressed the research to ease passage of the tax-cut plan.

An administration official said the study was designed as a thought-piece for internal discussion — one among many left every year on the cutting-room floor — and noted the budget’s extensive discussion of projected, 75-year Social Security and Medicare shortfalls.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Criminal Administration

In an interview with the Berlin newspaper, 'Der Tagesspiegel'

28 May, 2003. Donald Rumsfeld: "It is also possible that they decided they would destroy them prior to a conflict..."

This is Rumsfled answering questions about WMD's in Iraq.
If Iraq did destroy the weapons prior to conflict, then it was in compliance with Resolution 1441 and The US invasion of Iraq was illegal. The US Constitution states that any treaty we sign, including the UN Charter, must be treated as the law of the land. This administration is criminal and it admits it.

More Criminals

Why does Bush like to reward criminals? Back in 1991 Elliot Abrams pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from congress. He was one of Reagan's cronies involved in the Iran-Contra affair. Bush rewarded Mr. Abrams by appointing him as senior advisor for the middle east last december. I know that conservatives believe that once a person becomes a criminal he is always going to be a criminal. Conservatives don't believe in rehabilitation. It appears then that Bush is knowingly committing an "evil" act. Personally, I don't want an "evildoer" as president. Rather than running the country, it looks as though Bush is running the Texas Mafia. The Texas Mafia took over the United States government in the coup of 2000.
This appointment is bad for our country and bad for the rest of the world. "A self-described 'neo-conservative and neo-Reaganite' with strong ties to Jews and evangelical Christians, Abrams has become a flash point for the debate on how much pressure the Bush administration is prepared to apply to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to reach an agreement with the Palestinians." — The Washington Post. With this obviously biased criminal sitting as a devil on Bush's shoulder, the roadmap for peace might have a chance in hell, but it certainly doesn't have one on earth.

Criminals Awarded Contract in Iraq

The Bush administration has awarded MCI-WorldCom a new contract in Iraq. WorldCom committed the the biggest corporate fraud in history. Such a company ought to be punished not rewarded for deviating from moral business practice. Bush campaigned on a promise to "bring integrity to the White House." Associating with a criminal company such as WorldCom can only taint this administration further. Bush said, "you're either with us or against us." I will accept one horn of this false dichotomy and say I am against a morally degenerate man who awards contracts to criminals and terrorizes his own people by telling them unconfirmed horror stories about WMD's in Iraq.

The Myth of Equal Opportunity

It is impossible to have equal opportunity in a capitalist society. The myth conservatives try to sell us is that those who work hard and provide the most value to society will be rewarded with the most wealth. On the flip side, those who are lazy and are a burden on society will be poor. Capital is accumulated goods and money used to create more goods and money. When there is private ownership of capital, an individual's opportunities for education, work, and to earn wealth are directly tied to the amount of capital that person already owns. It takes resources to make something of value, and if a person does not have these resources she finds herself at the mercy of those who do. Those who already own capital are in a postition to create even more capital. They can take this newly created capital and create yet more for themselves. This is how the rich keep getting richer and the poor, poorer. It is a travesty that people without capital are labeled as being "lazy" and denied aid because of this. Calpundit asks why an individual's wealth doesn't grow at the same rate as the economy. It is in the nature of capitalism not to work that way.

No Shit

Product is the Excrement of Action
by Jeanette Winterson

Honestly, when was the last time you spent a whole day just enjoying what you were doing and feeling? Enjoying it solely for its own sake, without thinking about the future or worrying about the long-term consequences? When was the last time you spent a whole month living that way? Do you have a hard time forgetting about your responsibilities, your goals, your productivity, and just being in the present?

Today, our lives revolve around things. We measure our worth in terms of our material possessions: in terms of our control over things outside ourselves. We gauge our success in life in terms of our "productivity"; that is, our ability to make these things. Our social system revolves around the production and consumption of material goods more than anything else. Even when we are not thinking about material objects, we represent our lives to ourselves as things: we consider our accomplishments, our future prospects, our social position... anything but how we actually feel. "The end justifies the means," we say; that is, the products of our actions, the end results of our lives, are more important to us than the process of living itself.

But products are the excrement of actions. Product is what is left over when the dust settles and the pulse returns to normal, when the day is done, when the coffin is laid in the ground. We do not exist in the settling dust or the scorecard; we are here in the present tense, in the making, the doing, the feeling. Just as we try to immortalize ourselves by fleeing into the world of fixed, deathless images, we try to externalize ourselves by thinking in terms of the results of our actions rather than our experience of the actions themselves. After all, it's so complicated to have to worry about whether you are really enjoying yourself, how you are feeling in the moment. It is easier to focus on the results, the hard evidence of your life; these things seem easier to understand, and easier to control.

Modern society is centered around the production and distribution of material goods, rather than the happiness and satisfaction of its participants. thus Modern man thinks of his life in terms of what he has "to show for it," rather than considering the life itself.

Of course today's average worker is used to thinking about the ends rather than the means. He spends most of his time and energy working at a job that in all likelihood does not fulfill his dreams. He looks forward to payday every two weeks, for he counts on his paycheck to make sense out of his life: without it, he would feel like he was wasting his time. If he didn't look at the "consequences" of his actions as a justification for them, life would be unbearable-what if he constantly considered how he was feeling as he bagged groceries, or asked himself if he was having fun every moment he struggled with the fax machine? Insofar as his everyday experience of life is tedious and meaningless, he needs to concentrate on the coming weekend, the next vacation, his next purchases, to fend off insanity. And eventually he is bound to generalize that mode of thinking to other parts of his life: he comes to evaluate possible actions according to the rewards they offer, just as he would evaluate a job according to the wage it offers.

Thus, the present has lost almost all significance for modern man. Instead he spends his life always planning for the future: he studies for a diploma, rather than for the pleasure of learning; he chooses his job for social status, wealth, and "security," rather than for joy; he saves his money for big purchases and vacation trips, rather than to buy his way out of wage slavery and into full time freedom. When he finds himself experiencing profound happiness with another human being, he tries to freeze that moment, to turn it into a permanent fixture (a contract), by marrying her. On Sundays he goes to church, where he is told to do good deeds in order to one day receive eternal salvation (as NietzsChe says, the good Christian still wants to be paid well), rather than for the sheer pleasure of helping others. The "aristocratic disregard for consequences," that ability to act for the sake of action that every hero possesses, is far beyond him.

It is a cliche that men and women of middle class and middle age have a hard time putting aside their insurance policies and investment programs to seize the moment; but, all too often, we, too, end up exchanging present for future and experience for souvenirs. We save mementos, trophies, boxes of keepsakes, old letters, as if life can be gathered, stored up, frozen for later... for later? For when? Life is here with us now, running through us like a river; and like a river, it cannot be held in place without losing its magic. The more time we spend trying to "save it up," the less we have to throw ourselves into it.

The worst of us, in fact, are the radicals and artists. All too often, we "revolutionaries" expend our efforts thinking and talking about a revolution "that is to come," rather than concentrating on making revolution in the present tense. We're so used to thinking in terms of production that even when we try to make life into something immediate and exciting, we still end up centering our efforts around an event in the future-one that we may not even live to see. And like factory supervisors, we worry more about our productivity (the number of new believers recruited, the progress of the "cause," etc.) than about how we and our fellow human beings are feeling and living. Artists suffer from this tendency most of all; for their vocation itself depends on making products out of the raw material of real-life experience. There is something of the capitalist's lust for domination in the way that artists mold their emotions and experiences into forms of their own making through the act of expression; for the expression of feelings and sensations, unique and unfathomable as they are, always consists of a kind of simplification. It isn't enough for the artist to just experience and appreciate life as it really is; she comes to cannibalize her life for what is really a career, a series of products outside herself, even adjusting her life for her career's sake. Worse, she may find that she cannot make love on a rooftop at daybreak without planning out the excellent scene for her novel (excrement!) that this will make for.

Certainly, excretion is a healthy and necessary function of the soul as well as the body, and there is a place for art in our lives as a way to pour feeling back into the world when the heart is full to overflowing; but if you keep trying to do it after it is unnecessary, you eventually force out your heart and the rest of your insides (remember the fairy tale of the goose and the golden eggs?). We must put life and experience first, we must meet the world with only this in mind, as fresh and innocent as when we were children, with no intentions to cannibalize, categorize, organize, or simplify the profound infinities of our experiences. Otherwise, we will miss what is most vital, most beautiful, most immediate in this world, in our search for things that can be pressed flat and preserved "for all time." Imagination should be used first and foremost to transform everyday reality, not just to make symbolic representations of it. How many exciting novels could be written about the sort of lives that most of us lead these days, anyway?. Let us make living our art, rather than seeking to make mere art out of our lives.

If we ever find happiness, it will be in the process of living, of doing what we want and living out our dreams, not in the products of our lives. If we don't pause and enjoy the present now, when will we? So let's stop "making history"-we're all so obsessed with "making a mark"-and start living. That would be a real revolution. Let's live for today, for our lives, not our "results"!

"Sometimes," said Julia, "I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all." "But I tell you, Henri, that every moment you steal from the present is a moment that you have lost forever. There's only now."

Corrupt FCC

The FCC are a bunch of Fucking Corrupt Cronies.
Jon Nichols of The Nation reports that 97% of Americans oppose the new rules for media ownership that Chairman (Mao) Powell of the FCC wants to push through. In the same article a study by the Center for Public Integrity shows that FCC officials have been the recipients of free junket trips to conventions where they are wined and dined by media executives is cited. "FCC chairman Michael Powell, the most aggressive proponent of the media ownership rule changes that will be considered June 2, had 44 junkets, costing almost $85,000, paid for by interests he is supposed to regulate." Apparently the NRA even opposes the new rules. They are afraid that the media will be consolidated in the hands of liberals. Eric Boehlert writes, "You know something's kooky when the NRA and MoveON.org are on the same side of an issue." Aha, so now conservatives will have to admit that regulating industry may be necessary.

Take the Red Pill

"This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.... Remember, all I'm offering is the truth, nothing more...."
—Morpheus

Do you think we went to war to protect ourselves from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction? Take the red pill. Read Senator Byrd's speach and find out the truth. Sanctions torn Iraq was not an imminent threat.
Do you think the Bush tax cut is designed to help all Americans and stimulate the economy. Take the red pill. This tax cut is for the rich only. 10 Nobel prize winning economists say this tax cut is not the way. Let us not forget that Bush put through a tax cut two years ago. Some stimulus that was.
Do you think we live in a democracy? Take the red pill. In this country we are not even guaranteed the the right to vote while corporations are given the rights of a personhood.
Take the red pill and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Barney is Torture

BBC reports uncooperative Iraqi POW's are being exposed to hours of music from Barney, Sesame Street, and Metallica in an attempt make them more cooperative in interogation sessions.

"The US's Psychological Operations Company (Psy Ops) said the aim was to break a prisoner's resistance through sleep deprivation and playing music that was culturally offensive to them.
However, human rights organisation, Amnesty International, said such tactics may constitute torture - and coalition forces could be in breach of the Geneva Convention."

Damn Straight. Barney is torture!

Fill in the Blank

Woody Allen once said, "If I had to live my life all over again, I'd do it all exactly the same - only I wouldn't read Beowulf."

I would like to ask my readers to fill in the blank.
If I had to live my life all over again, I'd do it all exactly the same - only I wouldn't read _______

There was a Better Way

Now that it has become increasingly likely that no significant amounts of chemical or biological weapons will be found, the Dick & Dubya Junta must spin things in a new way. They now want to focus on the fact that Saddam Hussein is a very bad man. Reports of mass graves are now coming out of Iraq and there is no doubt that sadistic Saddam was indeed a nasty fellow. Many Americans now believe that it is irrelevant that Dick, Dubya, and Dr. Strangelove (Rumsfeld) may have lied to us about WMD's. They believe the war was justified because Saddam Hussein is wicked. However, battle needn't be used to topple dictators. It wasn't the bombing of Serbia that caused Milosevic's fall. That bombing actually temporarily strenghtened Milosevic's grip. The people of Serbia united behind Milosevic in solidarity against a foreign power bombing their nation. It was non-violent conflict in the form of civil disobedience and strike that finally caused his fall. It wasn't combat that defeated the British Empire. It was Ghandi's followers uniting in non-violent conflict. Whenever you use violence to topple a regime, however bad, innocents will get caught in the middle. When innocents die, resentment is created. Violence begets violence. Saddam's malevolence does not justify the US invasion of Iraq because there was a better way.

Stupid People Hook Up

"You know what is good about these Dixie Chicks burnings or bashings? It's a wonderful, wonderful way for really stupid people to hook up. They meet, they throw some things on the fire, they talk about Vin Diesel, they tell stories about who their favorite Fox anchor is, they exchange phone numbers, and in some cases this has led to marriages" —Janeane Garofalo

The War On...

An excellent article by Dyer has been posted over on onegoodmove. A "War on Terrorism" is an unwinnable war. How many sovereign nations will Bush be allowed to invade? As I have said before, this is a dangerous metaphor.

Republican Matrix

For the whole cartoon go
here.

Sustainability not Growth

On a finite planet economic growth not only must stop, it will.

"To walk in growth through the night crowd, protected by growth, lulled by growth, dulled by growth, the crowd itself a growth, the breath growth, no least single object anywhere that is not growth. Growth, growth everywhere and still not enough! and then no growth, or a little growth, or less growth, or more growth but growth always growth. and if you have growth, or you don't have growth it is the growth that count, and growth makes growth, but what makes growth make growth?"
Adapted From Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer. I replaced money with growth.

From adbusters

Published on Friday, May 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Miracle Grow!
by Stan Cox
Prairie Writers Circle

The way the House and Senate have been battling over tax cuts and other money matters lately, you'd think some sweeping economic changes had been proposed. But when a debate becomes this boisterous, it's actually a sure sign that everyone is in full agreement on the fundamental issues.

Suppose the following resolution were introduced in Congress: "Resolved: Economic growth is good." It would pass both chambers without a single nay. An amendment stating, "And faster growth is better," would probably pass on an easy voice vote.

Politicians like growth because the problems of society appear to shrink in an expanding economy. For one thing, growth provides an excuse to ignore this country's widening rich-poor gap. Today, reports Inequality.org, the richest 5 percent of families own 60 percent of the wealth, while the average net worth of Americans in the bottom 40 percent is just about zero.

Redistribution of that wealth is not discussed in polite company. So when Washington politicians or Wall Street economists offer lower-income Americans their usual little sliver of the economic pie, they have to conjure up a dream of an ever-expanding pie offering bigger slices for everyone, sometime in the future.

"Dream" is the key word. Our economic system is grounded in the fantasy that consumption can grow forever and without limit, both in America and throughout the planet.

In his Earth Day statement in April, President Bush pretended otherwise: "We will promote energy efficiency and security, and improve and protect water quality, while encouraging economic growth." But that's a list of goals that clash, inevitably and often. When they do, Bush opts for growth, as do almost all politicians.

We have already carried this fantasy too far. Oakland-based Redefining Progress recently evaluated the ecological effect of people living in 146 nations. The organization estimated the average consumption per person in each country and compared it with the ability of that country's territory to provide the resources and handle the wastes.

In the United States, we consume and discard at a rate that exceeds our country's biological carrying capacity by 83 percent. We import resources from other countries to make this possible. So does the rest of the industrialized world: The populations of the 10 richest countries, including the U.S., overshoot their carrying capacity by an average of 85 percent.

These numbers represent a much more troubling deficit than the merely fiscal shortfalls that now plague our federal and state governments. We gobble resources and throw off wastes at almost twice the rate that can be supported by our land mass and biological systems. And Redefining Progress' estimates are conservative; they do not include some hard-to-quantify damage like loss of biodiversity.

The World Bank reported in April that rich countries, with 15 percent of the world's population, account for half of all energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that because of economic growth in 30 advanced capitalist nations, their municipal waste output increased 40 percent -- almost twice as fast as population growth -- from 1980 to 2000.

Don't we just need more resource-efficient growth? We already have it, in some areas of the economy. The Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado reports that by the year 2000, the U.S. economy used 39 percent less energy to generate a dollar's worth of growth than it did in 1975. But that impressive savings has been almost entirely eaten up by headlong growth of the economy. Energy use -- overall and per person -- has risen steadily for the past 20 years. The typical American now consumes 6 percent more energy than in 1983.

Suppose a technology were developed that cut resource use in half. In the irresistible logic of capitalism, that would be a signal to double production, not to exercise restraint. Even if business were slow, we'd be much more likely to see "Buy One Get One Free" specials than "50% Off" sales.

Greater technological efficiency is needed, but we really won't stop the overconsumption of the world's resources without some very serious political and economic change. This planet is round, but if we don't wake up from the dream of growth we'll sleepwalk right over the edge.

Stan Cox is a member of the Prairie Writers Circle and senior research scientist at the Land Institute, a natural systems agriculture research organization in Salina, Kan. He holds a doctorate in plant breeding from Iowa State University.

Halliburton Hooligans

Apparently Halliburton Oil, the company that Vice-President Dick Cheney was running up until 2000, has been using its foreign subsidiaries to circumvent sanctions in order to do business in Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Take a look at Rep. Waxman's letter to Donald Rumsfeld detailing these concerns. More questions to answer for an administration that may be one of the most corrupt in the history of this country.

Intelligence Officers Challenge Bush

"The failure to find weapons of mass destruction six weeks after US and UK forces invaded Iraq suggests either that such weapons are simply not there, or that those eventually found there will not be in sufficient quantity or capability to support your repeated claim that Iraq posed a grave threat to our country’s security. Your opposition to inviting UN inspectors into Iraq feeds the suspicion that you wish to avoid independent verification; some even suggest that your administration wishes to preserve the option of 'planting' such weapons to be 'discovered' later. Sen. Carl Levin recently warned that, if some are found 'Many people around the world will think we planted those weapons, unless the UN inspectors are there with us.'"

This is an excerpt from a letter by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a coast-to-coast enterprise; consiting of mostly intelligence officers from analysis side of CIA.

I encourage you to read this very important letter in its entirety here. This echoes some of what I said in my post Impeach Bush Now!

The 4th Reich

In 1933 Chancellor Hitler formed a homeland security department to combat terrorism in response to an arsonist attack on the Reichstag. This department later became the infamous SS. We can see how our own homeland security office is heading down the same path. In order to prevent Republicans from redistricting Texas in an unfair way, Texas Democrats left the state. Texas state law requires one hundred representatives to be present in order for a vote on legislation to be legitimate. With the Democrats missing that threshold could not be reached. Read about this here. The Texas Republicans used the Homeland Security Department to locate the missing Democrats. This is a political use of the department of homeland security. This is an outrage. The Homeland Security Act states that the office shall not be used for political purposes. Here we go, the 4th Reich in America. For a great editorial on this go to Common Dreams.

Uniforms

Impeach Bush Now!

Bush is as dumb as he looks or he is a lying, criminal son of a bitch. Where is the imminent threat? Where are the weapon’s of mass destruction? The famous British dossier told us Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that could be ready in 45 min. This turned out to plagiarized from a graduate students paper from the early 1990's. In his presentation of so-called evidence to the United Nations, Colin Powell said there were stockpiles of hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons. However, the Washington Post reports the first team of WMD hunters is frustrated and heading home empty handed here . Donald Rumsfeld, whom I have dubbed Dr. Strangelove, set up his own intelligence agency that is independent of the CIA and the Defense Department's intelligence branch. This service is the Office of Special Plans or OSP. This agency reports directly to Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. This agency has consistently contradicted the CIA and the Department of Defense intelligence agency. Where those two organizations found nothing conclusive before the war, the OSP pressed on. You can read about this in the Observer . These two articles make it pretty clear that Iraq was not the threat the administration led us to believe it was. Bush was either incredibly incompetent as a president in that he only listened to the hawks in his administration and the obviously biased OSP or he knew there wasn't enough evidence to justify going to war and did so anyway.
There is more that is corrupt in this administration. I want Cheney's energy policy meeting investigated. Cheney has not been very forthcoming about the role of the oil industry in setting the administration energy policy. There is a big potential for conflict of interest here. Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time of 9-11, has come out and said that the administration is hiding information surrounding the events of September 11. He says by classifying this information, the Bush Administration is putting Americans at risk. Read about it at the LA Times . If an alien anthropologist came to earth they would find it very strange that we impeach a president for lying about his private sexual life and praise a president who violates the Constitution. Yes, that's right, I am accusing Bush of breaking the law. According to the Constitution, any international treaties we sign must be treated as the law of the land. The United States was a founding member of the United Nations and signed the United Nations Charter. A pre-emptive strike against a country is only legal if that country presents an imminent threat. It is clear from the Washington Post article and the Observer article above that Iraq was not an immanent threat. Support the effort to impeach this criminal bastard whose claim to the presidency is dubious at votetoimpeach.org We do not live in a safer country because of Bush. We live in a more dangerous one. Impeach this son of a bitch now!

Best By Choice

Where can we find good news in this day of corporate propaganda. Don’t look to the major networks in the good ole U.S. of A. Here we have the CaNNed News Network, Corporate Bullshit Service (CBS), Never Been Correct (NBC), Absolute Belligerent Crap (ABC), and last but definitely not least Fucking Obfuscating Xenophobes (FOX). So how can we avoid this ghetto, jingoistic propaganda? I agree with George Lakoff that news can never just be a straight forward telling of who, what, when, where, and why because the words we choose to describe events inevitably put a slant on the story. (More on Lakoff and blogger’s opinions about him here ) However, in Great Britain they seem to drink their V8. Their slant isn’t always in the same direction.
"The general director of the BBC bemoaned the ‘gung ho’ coverage of the U.S. networks while a veteran British Cabinet minister dismissed U.S. news coverage of the war as ‘old-fashioned propaganda.’ " John Nichols notes the thinking Americans exodus to BBC news coverage here .
Two important causes of bias in the American media are: 1. Corporate conflict of interest. 2. An ever increasing ignorant swath of the American public.
"Viewers are growing intolerant of dissent. Memo to the thousands of viewers who turned out to protest the war in Iraq: Huge numbers of your fellow citizens don't want to see you on the news. Ever. If that doesn't frighten you, consider this: It's becoming bad business for us to put you there." See more on this from Forrest Carr.
Both of these problems are related in that the American media has no protection from market forces. Even if events such as the protests against the invasion of Iraq are unpopular, they should be reported with the absolute minimum of bias possible. The BBC is funded by the British government. The editorial board, is not elected however, and is independent of the government. British law prohibits any interference on editorial choices from any branch of the government. The BBC still follows good journalistic ideas like the two source rule. A good journalist doesn’t just report what the Bush administration says happened. It attempts to confirm this information from another source. Do yourself a favor and switch to the BBC for your news. Best By Choice.

Suicide

I know I haven't been blogging long, but I am posting this entry to say goodbye. I don't understand this world anymore. It has been turned upside down and inside out. Double-speak is the langauge of the day. Peace is war. Bush and Blair have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize. Existence on this God forsaken planet has lost its last shred of decency. Goodbye. Bang!

Stay tuned for my posts from the afterlife...

Family Choices Valuable

Michelle Goldberg wrote an interesting article about the correlation between happiness and having children. Interestingly, she cites several studies that show that couples who choose not to have children are happier than couples who have children. According to the article choice is the key to happiness. Couples who CHOOSE not to have children and couples who CHOOSE to have children are happier than couples that didn't have the choice either way. She also mentions that despite what one might think, people who grow old and did not have children are not any less happy than older people who did have children. So you conservatives out there, stop pushing breeding on women who don't want it and stop interfering with family planning programs so that couples can choose if and when they want to have children.

The Right to Vote?

It would seem that a fundamental right in a democracy is a right to vote. However, there is no such right in the United States. In this country voting is a privilege that can be taken away, as it was from many people in Florida in 2000. ReclaimDemocracy.org has a nice little article about this. It is a great site in general and I encourage anybody who is progressively minded to pay it a visit and perhaps make a donation.

The War on... A Dangerous Metaphor

The metaphor of a war on this or a war on that reached prominence when the "War on Drugs" was coined as a phrase by United States President Richard Nixon when he formed the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in 1972. After the tragedy of September 11, another Republican, dubya, coined the phrase the "War on Terrorism." I have always believed this to be a mistaken metaphor. According to Dictionary.com war is "A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties." A war with drugs or terrorism doesn't fit this definition because terrorism or drug dealers do not constitute a nation, state, or A unified party. If you look at the other definitions listed, there is a more general sense of the word that does not include nation states as the combatants. However, it is dangerous to use this metaphor because it suggests using the tactics common to war between nation states for a conflict that is not between nation states. These tactics are inappropriate for dealing with illicit drugs or terrorism. Thom Hartmann explains the detrimental effects of treating our problem with terrorism as a war rather than a problem for international policing.

Published on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
The Crime Of The Century:
A Never-Ending "War Against Terrorism"
by Thom Hartmann

During this lull in the fighting between the 2002 election cycle Iraq conflict and the soon-to-come 2004 election cycle conflict, it's a good time to (anonymously) sit in a library or bookstore and browse "The Turner Diaries" and Gore Vidal's "Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace."

The former was the inspiration for Timothy McVeigh; the latter includes his self-written eulogy. Together, they show how terrorist McVeigh choose the wrong administration - and terrorist Osama bin Laden, by luck of the draw, chose the right one - to harm American democracy.

The Turner Diaries is an apocalyptic novel that opens with a convenience store robbery and ends with an Armageddon-style worldwide holocaust leaving only white Anglo-Saxon Protestants standing. The government of the United States responds to a terrorist attack (the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma) by cracking down on dissent, expanding the power of the Executive Branch, and shredding constitutional civil rights protections. White "patriots" respond by declaring war against the government that had once tried to take away their guns. Thus begins the cycle of violence that ends with the ultimate worldwide war, a vision straight out of the Book of Revelation.

But Tim McVeigh's expectation of a repressive federal reaction to his right-wing terrorism ran into a snag: Bill Clinton knew the difference between a rogue nation and a rogue criminal.

Like every President since George Washington, Bill Clinton knew that nations only declare war against nations. While armies deal with rogue states, police deal with criminals, be they domestic or international.

Like Germany's response to the Red Army Faction, Italy's response to The Red Brigades, and Greece's response to the 17 November terrorist group (among others), Clinton brought the full force of the criminal justice system against McVeigh, and even had Interpol and overseas police agencies looking for possible McVeigh affiliates. The result was that the trauma of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing was limited, closure was achieved for its victims, the civil rights of all Americans were largely left intact, and the United States government was able to get back to it's constitutionally-defined job of ensuring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its citizens.

Every President from Washington to Clinton understood the logic expressed by our founders when James Madison, on April 20, 1795, wrote: "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

"In war, too," Madison continued, "the discretionary power of the Executive [Branch of Government] is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

Although numerous recent presidents have declared "wars" on abstractions like poverty, illiteracy, drugs, and a variety of other social ills, all were well aware that these so-called "wars" were, in truth, just politically useful rhetoric. Real war can only be declared by one nation against another: it's not possible to declare a war against an abstraction.

The crime of 911 has been often cited to rationalize the loss of civil liberties and the ongoing traumatizing of the American people with daily "Terror Alerts" and a never-ending "war on terror."

But 911 wasn't an act of war, because it wasn't done against us by a nation. It was, instead, a crime, perpetrated by a criminal and his followers.

It was a horrific crime, certainly. A crime that required strong, swift, and sure response. A crime that other nations, corporations, and individuals may have abetted and must be held accountable for both domestically and in the international venues of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. A crime deserving a thorough investigation (which has yet to begin).

But Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are not nations. Bin Laden was a criminal, and his group was a Middle Eastern sort of mafia with terrorist ambitions, initially funded by Poppy bin Laden, who was coincidentally a business partner with Poppy Bush. And, according to most of the world's police and intelligence agencies, Osama is dead (or dying) and his organization is in tatters.

To continue using our military against a criminal organization will only compound the horrific crime of 911, because armies aren't particularly good at police work.

It's time to restore civil liberties to Americans; reign in an Executive Branch intoxicated by warfare; and hand over to American and international police agencies the very real and very big job of dealing with the remnants of al Qaeda around the world, and prevent a recurrence of 911 by investigating who was involved and how they pulled it off in the first place.

Anything less will simply perpetuate this crime of the century.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise Of Corporate Dominance And The Theft Of Human Rights" and hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio talk show on the i.e. America Radio Network. www.thomhartmann.com and www.ieamericaradio.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.