"Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose."  -  Nietzsche

• Abolish the stupid notion that corporations are "persons" under the Constitution.
• Prevent corporations from going out of business or declaring bankrupcy to avoid paying their debts.
• Make stockholders in corporations personally liable for debts of their corporations and for jail time when their corporation engage in criminal activities.

Some things which might happen to tip the scales back into at least some sembalance of balance:

• Some folks will seek other means of obtaining justice- e.g. use of guns and bombs
• Since corporations are "persons", the "little people" injuried by corporations can ban together and form their own corporation to suit the bastards.
• Lawyers could enter into contracts with folks in various states and provide them with the documents for filing suits in state courts without the need for a lawyer. If the corporations thought fighting one class action suit was expensive, let 'em fight thousands filed in hundreds of courts.

Time reports that nearly half of the world's 6 billion residents are poor-  vver one billion of them subsist on less than $1 a day.   In the US  the number of impoverished Americans rose 3.7 percent in 2003. Even more despicably, the number of children living in poverty rose 6.6 percent.

Fifty years ago in the United States, the highest marginal income tax rate was 91 percent; today it is 34 percent.  As recently as 1979, taxes on capital gains from the sale of stock, real estate and businesses were 35 percent; today they are 15 percent. Corporate taxes as a percentage of the U.S. economy have shrunk from 4.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 1965 to just 1.5 percent in 2002. While corporate taxes have declined throughout the world, they have plummeted in the United States, leaving only Iceland among industrialized countries with a lower corporate tax burden.  (from Scott Klinger, co-director of the Responsible Wealth project at United for a Fair Economy and co-author of Executive Excess 2004)

Bush's 05 Budget - From a Progreso Weekly article:

The epitome of the immoral values reflected in Bush-GOP policies is the 2006 budget proposal, which Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman rightly describes as "Bush’s Class-War Budget." The proposed budget would severely cut programs serving human needs like health and education while making the tax cuts for the rich passed in the first Bush term permanent. "It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends," writes Krugman. But, he adds, "the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes... One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid to about 300,000 people." At the same time, the Bush budget proposal contains a provision that would eliminate two little-known provisions of the tax code. The beneficiaries? Fully 97 percent make more than $200,000 a year and half more than $1 million. The average annual benefit to the latter group: $19,000.

Added to that, Bush has been able to appoint more federal judges than Reagan, Bush I, or Clinton- 204 of total of 877 federal judges. Of the 13 appellate circuits, 10 now have more Republican appointees than Democrats.

One right wingnut is William Myers. This idiot is so far to the right and so anti-enviro that he is the first judicial nominee ever opposed by the Native American community (23 tribal governments) and the first ever opposed by the centrist and meek National Wildlife Federation.

Here's a run-down on three of the idiots the regime wants to appoint to lifetime seats on the federal bench:

William Myers III has never been a judge and spent most of his career as lobbyist for the cattle and mining industry.  He has written that habitat conservation laws are unconstitutional because they with potential profit.   In 2001, Bush appointed him as the lawyer for the Department of the Interior. In that role he as a champion of corporate interests, setting his agenda with former employers he promised not to speak with, and even giving away sacred Native American land to be strip mined.

Terrence Boyle was a legal aide to Jesse Helms. As a judge, his decisions have attempted to circumvent federal laws barring discrimination by race, gender, and disability.  His decisions have been overturned a staggering 120 times by the conservative District Court of Appeals, either due to gross errors in judgment or incompetence.

William Pryor Jr. served as Attorney General of Alabama, where he took from Phillip Morris, fought against the anti-tobacco lawsuit until it was almost over, and cost the people of Alabama billions in money for their healthcare system as a result.  He called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our time" and has consistently argued against the federal protections the civil rights of minorities, lesbian and gay couples, women, and disabled.

The ever evil Tom Delay is using the issue to try to deflect attention from the ongoing investigations of his lack of ethics.   He ranted thusly:   "One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," DeLay told the crowd... This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others."   He complained that "the other side" was leading the attack, with a goal "to defeat the conservative movement."  According to DeLay, a "whole syndicate" of "do-gooder" forces are arrayed against him in "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."

As governor of Texas, Shrub  signed a law which gives hospitals the right to remove life support in cases where there is no possibility of revival, when the family cannot pay, no matter what the family's wishes are in the matter.  In the middle of the Schiavo flap, a Texas hospital pulled the plug on a 5 month old baby against the wishes of the parents.  The ripublicans didn't utter a tsingle word about this.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD, didn't even need to examime the woman to offer his "professional" medical opinion that there was "insufficient information to conclude that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state."  He was able to to this by simply looking at a homemade video.  Even more amazingly, he's a heart doctor and unqualified to render neurological opinions.   He's an idiot as a senator and has now proven he's an idiot as a MD.    Glenn Smith of DriveDemocracy.org  recommends sending a video of your medical problem to First for a diagnose.

Then there is the utter hypocrisy of the ripublicans' touting state rights except when the a state's position differs from their's.  This case is just another example of this- others were medical grass in Calif., death with dignity in Oregeon,  trying to preventing  federal judges from ordering states to recognize same-sex marriages that were permitted in other states and impsoing limits on the ability of federal courts to review petitions from prisoners on death row.

From a MoveOn post:

On Sunday (3/20/05),  Tom DeLay and Bill Frist convened an emergency meeting of Congress to pass a bill that that interferes with the Terri Schiavo tragedy. And although in five years no other issue has prompted President Bush to return to Washington during a vacation--including the tsunami--Bush flew back from his ranch in Texas to sign it.

Bush, Frist, and DeLay claim that they're acting out of concern for Ms. Schiavo. But a memo intended only for Republican Senators--uncovered by ABC News--reveals Republicans' true concern: "The pro-life base will be excited...this is a great political issue...this is a tough issue for Democrats." (source)

Even right-wing activists are concerned about Congress's interference in this case. GOP pollster Tony Fabrizi told the L.A. Times, "It becomes a more crystallized proof point that we are no longer the party of smaller government. We have become a party of 'It doesn't matter what size the government is as long as it is imposing our set of values." (source)

The New York Times talked to David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization, who said, "When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism."  (source)

Did God create Schiavo case to deliver Tom DeLay from political persecution?

Never underestimate the Republican leaders in Washington. Whenever they appear to have exhausted the possibilities for cynical abuse of their authority, they can still inflict fresh outrages upon the nation.

By intervening in the sad dispute over Terri Schiavo between her husband and parents, the President and his Congressional allies have again revealed how little respect they have for any conservative or constitutional principle that doesn't enhance their partisan power. In the name of defending human life, they have swept aside their own party's traditional commitment to federalist respect for state law and to the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary. In the name of equal protection under the law, they have departed from all traditional notions of legality.
....
And in the White House, George W. Bush rose from his bed the other night to sign the bill that provides a special privilege of federal legal appeal solely to Ms. Schiavo's parents. For dramatic effect, he had rushed back to the capital from Texas. Perhaps he didn't want to sign that awful legislation in his home state, thus recalling another law he signed as Governor in 1999.

That Texas statute permits hospitals to withdraw critical care in certain cases, despite the most  vehement objections of family members. It established a bureaucratic process that can doom such patients even if, unlike Ms. Schiavo, they are fully capable of speech, thought and feeling. And under that statute, Ms. Schiavo's husband Michael would have been designated as her "surrogate." With her doctors concurring, Mr. Schiavo would have been able to discontinue her life support - without enduring federal interference.

When Mr. Bush signed that earlier bill, he was trying to save money for the Texas Hospitals Association, of course. Although he claims to honor a "culture of life" and would spare nothing in defense of innocent humanity, the harsher truth is that keeping people alive when their brains and organs can no longer function is extremely expensive. Presented with an easily exploited symbol like Ms. Schiavo, the President and his Congressional allies will pretend that money is no object. Yet they are hardly inclined to spend whatever might be needed to preserve every single human life for as long as possible.

Instead, the Republicans consistently prefer to relieve the suffering of their wealthiest constituents. Consider the new budget crafted by Mr. DeLay and his minions, in which they proposed to cut as much as $20 billion from Medicaid, the health-insurance program for the nation's poorest citizens. The House budget could deprive more than a million children of basic medical care, while providing still more tax breaks for people whose luxuries include the most advanced medical attention on the planet.

These pious politicians don't really care about defending human life. If they did, they would immediately enact and fund a national health-insurance program - to protect the 18,000 Americans who now die every year for lack of essential care.

The more dogma-driven activists, self-perpetuating polls and ratings-crazed broadcast media prattle about "faith," the less we honor the credo that a person's relationship with God should remain a private matter.

As the Bush White House desperately maneuvers in Iraq to prevent the new government from being run according to the dictates of religious fundamentalists, it desperately maneuvers here to pander to religious fundamentalists who want to dictate how the government should be run.
. . .
As Christopher Shays, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill to allow the Terri Schiavo case to be snatched from Florida state jurisdiction and moved to federal court, put it: "This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy. There are going to be repercussions from this vote."

A CBS News poll yesterday found that 82 percent of the public was opposed to Congress and the president intervening in this case; 74 percent thought it was all about politics.
 . . .
Republicans easily abandon their cherished principles of individual privacy and states rights when their personal ambitions come into play. The first time they snatched a case out of a Florida state court to give to  a federal court, it was Bush v. Gore. This time, it's Bush v. Constitution.

The same Mr. Bush who couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation during the darkening summer of 2001, not even when he received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," flew from his Crawford ranch to Washington to sign Congress's Schiavo bill into law.
---------------------
What is the "right to life"? Does it simply include unborn fetuses, stem cells, and people in persistent vegetative states? Or does it also refer to health care for the 40 million Americans who don't have it; aid to children whose single moms can't make ends meet; and billions of dollars in Medicaid - a virtual lifeline for millions - that Bush tried to cut? What about the 1524 American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who have died in a war that never should have happened? Didn't they have the right to life?
. . .
Bush said, "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."   This statute (the one the ripublicans rushed thru congress) directly contradicts Bush's actions while Governor of Texas. Then, Bush signed a bill that allows hospitals to stop feeding a patient whose prognosis is so poor that further care would be futile, if the patient cannot pay his or her medical expenses. Just this past week, a baby was pulled off life support in Texas, against his mother's wishes.  (more)
. . .
As Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich) said on the floor of the House during the debate on Monday, "Last month, the Majority passed a class action bill that took jurisdiction away from state courts because they feared they would treat corporate wrongdoers too harshly. Today we are sending a case from the state courts to the federal courts even though it is the most extensively litigated 'right to die' case in our nation's history."
. . .
This attempt by Republican leaders to "shamelessly interject the federal government into the wrenching Schiavo family dispute" amounts to a "constitutional coup d'etat," according to the Los Angeles Times. It is "the new front in what began as the abortion war, an effort to translate religious dogma into law under the right-to-life banner." (source)

Conservatives are the historical defenders of states' rights, and the supposed proponents of keeping big government out of people's lives, but this case once again shows that some social conservatives are happy to see the federal government acquire Stalinist proportions when imposing their morality on the rest of the country. So breathtaking was this attempted usurpation of power, wresting jurisdiction over a right-to-die case away from Florida's judiciary, that Republican leaders in the end had to agree to limit this legislation's applicability to the Schiavo case.

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table."  -  Bush, 2/22/05 press conference.

The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream church, and a still-trusting populace, the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful air offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs -- with the added bonus of possibly causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble.

One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply be out of a desire to ensure that George W. Bush will have a few more years as president after an attack on Iran, so that they will have him to stand with Israel when bedlam breaks out in the Middle East.

.... And this for a real deja vu moment:

What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented moderates in Iran who, with a little help from the U.S., could seize power in Tehran. I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. For me, this evokes a painful flashback to the early eighties when "intelligence," pointing to "moderates" within the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to help justify the imaginative but illegal arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-Contras caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that spurious "evidence" on Iranian "moderates," former chief CIA analyst, later director Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created position of director of national intelligence makes the flashback more eerie -- and alarming.

During his term in office, George H. W. Bush, with the practical advice of his national security adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, was able to keep "the crazies" at arms length, preventing them from getting the country into serious trouble. They were kept well below the level of "principal" -- that is, below the level of secretary of state or defense.

Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of 1990, "the crazies" stirred up considerable controversy when they articulated their radical views. Their vision, for instance, became the centerpiece of the draft "Defense Planning Guidance" that Paul Wolfowitz, de facto dean of the neoconservatives, prepared in 1992 for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed deterrence as an outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the United States must maintain military strength beyond conceivable challenge -- and use it in preemptive ways in dealing with those who might acquire "weapons of mass destruction." Sound familiar?

Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War world, someone with access to the draft leaked it to the New York Times, forcing President George H. W. Bush either to endorse or disavow it. Disavow it he did -- and quickly, on the cooler-head recommendations of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a bulwark against the hubris and megalomania of "the crazies." Unfortunately, their vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there is method to their madness -- even if it threatens to spell eventual disaster for our country. Empires always overreach and fall.

Noting that a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq says that he and his unit are now training their sights (literally) on Iran and a very similar report during the run-up to the attack on Iraq, McGovern connects some dots:

Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with administration rhetoric and a preponderance of other "dots," though, and everything points in the direction of an air attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces. Indeed, from the New Yorker reports of Seymour Hersh to Washington Post articles, accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the ground as well as into Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing frequency. In a speech given on February 18, former UN arms inspector and Marine officer Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before the Iraq War on that country's lack of weapons of mass destruction) claimed that the president has already "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons program and eventually bring about "regime change."

In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as "guesses" -- especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative agenda. It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons - Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board (2001-03); Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney -- actually wrote policy papers for the Israeli government during the 1990s. They have consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel and those of the US -- at least as they imagine them.

As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his preference for the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly, has the president "wrapped around his little finger." (As Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also saying that the president has been "mesmerized" by Sharon, it seems possible that the Israelis already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.

Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, like the village drunk preaching sobriety -- the more so as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear weapons and keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of the Scripture passage about taking the plank out of your own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another's.

A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, has put it this way: "The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its policies."

An earlier American warned:

"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.... It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country." (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)

Powell's downfall was his military training and resulting mindset to be the good trooper and always follow orders.

Some random snippets from the web:

"The death of Thompson represents the passing from the Age of Gonzo to the Age of Gannon," wrote Russell Cobb in a column in The Daily Texan at the University of Texas. As he argues, today's White House press corps is less likely to be invaded by maverick talents like a drug-addled reporter from a renegade start-up magazine than by a paid propagandist like Jeff Gannon, a fake reporter for a fake news organization (Talon News) run by a bona fide Texas Republican operative....

Thompson was out to break the mainstream media's rules. His unruly mix of fact, opinion and masturbatory self-regard may have made him a blogger before there was an Internet, but he was a blogger who had the zeal to leave home and report firsthand and who could write great sentences that made you want to savor what he found out rather than just scroll quickly through screen after screen of minutiae and rant.  (Frank Rich)

Here's what William Rivers Pitt wrote of Thompson:

He was a flawed man, a maniac, in so many ways the antithesis of what a journalist is supposed to be. Worst of all, he told the truth. There is now one less warrior on this planet filled with Guckert clones, drones who get fed shit and regurgitate it  wholesale for the masses because that is what we are trained to eat.

Paul Krugman had this to say in his 2/18/05 column:

The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.

Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future.  When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future.  Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.

Surprisingly, the American public isn't buying Bush's bull shit.  A 3/10-13/05 poll reports 58 percent of those polled saying that the more they hear about Bush's plan, the less they like it and 56% disapprove of his approach.   Even those who think they gain from Bush's plan are against it- only 40% of the young support the plan.

Here's a take from Sidney Blumenthal's 3/3/05 Salon piece on the regime's plan to gut Social Security:

For Bush and the Republicans, the problem is salesmanship. If only they hone the pitch, convince the wary customers that they really mean well, saving them from a bad investment and delivering a bargain, they will clinch the deal. Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant who has made a specialty out of wordplay, has advised them on how to make friends and influence people. In a memo circulated among the Republican leadership last month, he urged that Republicans appeal to emotions, not facts. The public, Luntz writes, wants "empathy rather than statistical declarations ... It is tempting to counter-attack using facts and figures. Resist the temptation." He reemphasizes: Social Security "is a difficult subject because there are many obscure facts and figures. Stay away from them!!!" No fewer than three exclamation points!!!

Republicans, says Luntz, should never use the word "privatized." They should substitute "personalized." "And PLEASE remember that you are NEVER talking about privatizing Social Security, nor are you advocating INDIVIDUAL accounts. You are talking about creating PERSONAL retirement accounts." Republicans should also talk about "personalized accounts" as being about "the future," he says, and remind people that "Social Security was built for a different America."

Another problem, Luntz instructs Republicans, is that the public is familiar with the gyrations of the stock market. "There is a difficulty ... in talking too much about the stock market. The American people are sensitive to the ups and downs of the stock market." So, he urges, Republicans should claim that that Social Security is at "larger risk" if it is not "personalized."

When all else fails, Republicans should simply resort to the fear factor: "September 11th changed everything. So start with September 11th. This is the context that explains and justifies why we have $500 billion deficits, why the stock market tanked, why unemployment climbed to 6 percent ... Without the context of September 11th you will be blamed for the deficit ... Link the war on terror to the economy."

A white-wash is in the works- the charges have been forwarded to the grossly misnamed "President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency" for "investigation". Meanwhile, the idiot has solidified the regime's position by doubling the number of political appointees at the agency and has issued a gag order barring his employees from talking to the press or Congress about internal agency matters. a fitting action for a person heading an agency responsible for protecting whistleblowers.

The regime's response is to envoke the "state secrets privilege" which allows it to stonewall any civil suits. It also used it to hide their gross incompentence in preventing 9/11- a suit by a Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI linguist, who charges that the bureau bungled translations of terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If you think the regime only uses the alledged "privilege" in terrorism cases, consider these cases where it was used not just to prevent evidence from being presented, but to prevent the suits from even being brought: A racial discrimination suit by a black ex-CIA agent and a suit against the CIA for illegal bugging of a DEA's employee's home.

The work and our tax money may be going to foreigners but the real money is being siphoned off by the corporate contractors. Adding insult to injury, many if not most of the greedy bastards won't even have to pay taxes on the profits since they will be safely squirreled away in outshore accounts. next, buying arms from China via no-bid contracts with Haliburton. Since US military recruiting has dropped, maybe outright hiring whole armies as mercernaries? That would sure fit in with Bush and the rest of the neo-cons evasion of service in Nam. Hell, it even has precidence in US history- the northern rich were allowed by the republicans during the Civil War to evade service by the outright hiring of stand-ins. Well at least then, they and not the taxpayers had to pay.

On Social Security, 51 percent said permitting individuals to invest part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts, the centerpiece of Mr. Bush's plan, was a bad idea, even as a majority said they agreed with Mr. Bush that the program would become insolvent near the middle of the century if nothing was done. The number who thought private accounts were a bad idea jumped to 69 percent if respondents were told that the private accounts would result in a reduction in guaranteed benefits. And 45 percent said Mr. Bush's private account plan would actually weaken the economic underpinnings of the nation's retirement system.

...nearly 50 percent said Democrats were more likely to make the right decisions about Social Security, compared with 31 percent who said the same thing about Republicans. ... almost four out of five respondents said it was the government's responsibility to assure a decent standard of living for the elderly. ... 58 percent of respondents said the White House did not share the foreign affairs priorities of most Americans.

....Sixty percent of respondents - including 48 percent of self-described conservatives - said they disapproved of how Mr. Bush was managing the deficit. Methinks the 48% of self-described conservatives likely think the deficit needs to be made even higher via more tax cuts for the rich and needless wars so as to more quickly (in the words of conservative guru Grover Norquest) "starve the beast".

The regime is setting up a "war room" at the treasury department to coordinate and refine its lies and distortions about Social Security.   Maybe they should start with their leader. Here's what the idiot said recently:

"Because the all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how the benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases."

The regime has also hijacked the Social Security Administration itself by making it part of the regime's spin machine. Recent statements of future benefits mailed to participants have taken a decidely negative view of the program.

I think the regime's approach to their goal of killing Social Security is much like their attack on Iraq to steal the Iraqis oil- they are making it up as they go along and attempting to justify it with distortions and outright lies.

The regime and their supporters say the program holds no "real assets" and instead has "mere IOUs." In fact those "mere IOUs" are U.S. Treasury bonds which are currently considered the safest investment in the world. In times of grave national crisis. Form the founding of the US, they've always been repaid.

For more info on Social Security and the right wing nuts plan to kill it, check out American Prospect's Social Security Coverage, "Bush's House of Cards- The Privatization Fraud"

Growth of today's global economy rests in large part on American consumption. It represents a little less than 70% of the United States' Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and close to 20% of world economic activity. In counterpart to the Bush administration budgetary negligence, the United States' trade and payment deficits continue to grow - all the more quickly given that Americans devote practically all their income to spending and debt repayment.

The savings rate of American households has fallen to the unprecedentedly low level of 1.5% of available income. This system functions only because the central banks of countries that export to the United States recycle their considerable dollar surpluses. In 2004, China cleared a surplus with the United States of 162 billion dollars (125 billion Euros), with the European Union of 114 billion dollars, with Canada and Mexico of 111 billion, and of 75 billion dollars with Japan.

In the face of such imbalances, the principle adjustment variable is exchange rates. That's why the dollar has not stopped declining the last three years. It's lost close to 38% of its value against the Euro and 23% against the Yen. In theory, that should make American products more competitive. In practice, it has no effect at all. In January, the trade deficit once again attained a record 58 billion dollars. The explanation for this situation is at once the fixed linkage between key countries like China's currency and the dollar, and the incapacity of American industry to substitute for imports.

The increase in demand for manufactured products in a strongly growing economy (4.4% in 2004 and undoubtedly at least 3.5% this year) is good for the imported auto and steel industries, equipment manufacture, furniture, plastics, chemicals,  textiles and toys.

The stagnation of its industry - with the exception of information technologies - and the deterioration of the United States' trade balance are two sides of the same problem. The American economy needs more and more foreign capital to feed its growth. For the moment, central banks (especially in Asia) ceaselessly inflate their dollar reserves and try in this way to avoid a too-brutal decline in the American currency, to preserve both their own growth and their exports to the United States.

And it's only going to get worse- much worse.  According to the rosiest of predictions,  from the regime itself, the interest paid on the national debt is going to rise in 66% between 2003 and 2008.  (source)

The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq.

What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon's latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"-and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," one senior military officer told Newsweek. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November's operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency-as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time-than in spreading it out.

Now, Newsweek has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success-despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell Newsweek.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word "realist" into a "pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.

Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

.... It is a lesson never learned: Matters of state and the heart that start with a lie rarely end well.

On January 30, millions of Iraqis voted their hopes for democracy and an end to violence and occupation. But the only way for their hopes to be realized is to end the U.S. occupation of their country and bring all U.S. troops home now.

George Bush claims otherwise. Even before a single ballot was cast, the White House began trumpeting the vote as justification for its discredited invasion and continued occupation. Much of the corporate media has echoed the message that the elections were a success. But Washington's latest pronouncements are a tissue of misrepresentations and lies - just like Bush's earlier claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was linked to Al Qaeda.

Below is an assessment of the Iraqi election that gets to the heart of White House and corporate media distortions, in particular the claim that this balloting-at-gunpoint met international criteria for legitimate free and fair elections. Written by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies ( http://www.ips-dc.org ), a member group of UFPJ, it points to the long history of the United States using elections held under occupation to legitimize its illegal wars, with pointed reference to the 1967 "light at the end of the tunnel" elections held in South Vietnam.

As in Vietnam forty years ago, the presence of U.S. troops is the problem, not the solution.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

...A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February. ... The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by the Vietcong's disruption of the balloting.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging from the reports from Saigon.

Apparently the Bush regime has failed to learn valuable lessons form the past and is therefore repeating past mistakes.

----------
Then there is this from a UFPJ post:

U.S. has a long history of using elections held under conditions of war and occupation to legitimize its illegal wars - the January 2005 elections in Iraq mirror the 1967 election held in South Viet Nam , also held to give credibility to Washington 's puppet government.
...
At least in the short term, George Bush will emerge as the major winner in this election, through the false propaganda claim that Iraqi participation and enthusiasm for the elections somehow equals legitimacy for his continued occupation and the preventive war that put it in place. This is the latest effort to identify mileposts "on the road to freedom" in Iraq - earlier ones included the " Mission accomplished" claim, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the "transfer of sovereignty," and none of them led to freedom, independence and security for Iraqis. In fact, Bush's false claim of legitimacy continues to hold the Iraqi population and the 150,000 U.S. soldiers hostage to his agenda and occupation.

It is a huge insult to the people of Iraq to claim that enthusiasm for democracy only emerged when it was "offered" to Iraq in the form of elections imposed under the conditions of military occupation.
...
The Iraqi election was not legitimate. It was held under conditions of a hostile military foreign occupation. The Hague Convention of 1907, to which the U.S. is a signatory, prohibits the occupying power from creating any permanent changes in the government of the occupied territory.
...
These elections were arranged under an electoral law and by an electoral commission installed and backed by the occupying power. They took place in an environment so violent that voters could not even learn the names of candidates, and the three days surrounding the vote included a complete lock-down of the country, including shoot-to-kill curfews in many areas, closure of the airport and borders, and closure of roads. There were no international monitors in the country - unlike Afghanistan (with 122 monitors) and Palestine (with 800) during difficult elections held under occupation, Iraq was deemed too dangerous for international election monitors. The Canadian-led team of international election "assessors," who made an early claim that the elections met international standards, were in fact based outside the country, in Jordan.

The U.S.-based Carter Center, which has monitored elections around the world for more than a decade, declined to participate in Iraq. But they did identify key criteria for determining the legitimacy of elections, and their spokesman noted the day before the elections that none had been met. Those criteria included the ability of voters to vote in a free and secure environment, the ability of candidates to have access to voters for campaigning, a freely chosen and independent election commission, and voters able to vote without fear or intimidation.
...
U.S. domination of Iraq remains unchanged with this election. The U.S.-imposed Transitional Administrative Law, imposed by the U.S. occupation, remains the law of the land even with the new election. Amending that law requires super- majorities of the assembly as well as a unanimous agreement by the presidency council, almost impossible given the range of constituencies that must be satisfied. Chiefs of key control commissions, including Iraq's Inspector General, the Commission on Public Integrity, the Communication and Media Commission and others, were appointed by Bremer with five-year terms, can only be dismissed "for cause." The Council of Judges, as well as individual judges and prosecutors, were selected, vetted and trained by the U.S. occupation, and are dominated by long-time U.S.-backed exiles.
...
The $16 billion of U.S. taxpayer money not spent in the reconstruction effort (the billions paid to Halliburton, Bechtel, and others has come almost entirely out of U.S.-appropriated Iraqi funds) as well as the $50 billion/year military costs will become a potential slush fund for the new assembly's favored projects. The U.S.-backed privatization schemes imposed by former U.S. pro- consul Paul Bremer remain in place. The current interim finance minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, touted by the Los Angeles Times as a potential candidate for deputy president or prime minister, recently announced his support for the complete privatization of Iraq 's oil industry.

Let's not forget that despite the hoopla, this was a legitimate democratic election in name only. Actually, not even in name since most of the candidates on Sunday's ballot had less name recognition than your average candidate for dogcatcher. That's because they were too afraid to hold rallies or give speeches. Too terrorized to engage in debates. In fact, many were so anxious about being killed that they fought to keep their names from being made public. Some didn't even know their names had been placed on the ballot.
....
According to a poll taken by our own government, a jaw-dropping 92 percent of Iraqis view the U.S.-led forces in Iraq as "occupiers" while only 2 percent see them as "liberators." ...

According to an exhaustive report released last month by the CIA's National Intelligence Council, Iraq has become a breeding ground for the next generation of "professionalized" Islamic terrorists. Foreign terrorists are now honing their deadly skills against U.S. troops -- skills they will eventually take with them to other countries, including ours. The report also warns that the war in Iraq has deepened solidarity among Muslims worldwide and increased anti-American feelings across the globe. Iraq has also drained tens of billions of dollars in resources that might otherwise have gone to really fighting the war on terror or increasing our preparedness for another terror attack here at home.
...
Let's not forget the woeful lack of progress we've made in the reconstruction of Iraq. The people there still lack such basics as gas and kerosene. Indeed, Iraqis often wait in miles-long lines just to buy gas. The country is producing less electricity than before the war -- roughly half of current demand. There are food shortages, the cost of staple items such as rice and bread is soaring, and the number of Iraqi children suffering from malnutrition has nearly doubled. According to UNICEF, nearly 1 in 10 Iraqi children is suffering the effects of chronic diarrhea caused by unsafe water -- a situation responsible for 70 percent of children's deaths in Iraq.

He used "...a children's charity as a cover for collecting soft money from special interest groups and then spending it on dinners, a golf tournament, a rock concert, Broadway tickets and so forth. Because the money was supposedly for a charity, Celebrations for Children, Inc., special interests who wanted favors from DeLay were able to give him money without revealing themselves as campaign donors."

"DeLay took a $100,000 check from the Corrections Corporation of America, a company that runs private prisons in Texas and has a 20-year history that includes mismanagement and abuse. CCA wants the Texas Lege, over which DeLay exercises considerable sway because he's a money conduit, to privatize the prisons. And that check? Made out to DeLay's children's charity, the DeLay Foundation
for Kids."

"He has been admonished three times by the House Ethics Committee, so did he clean up his act? Nope, he went after the chairman of the ethics committee, threw him out, got the rules changed and then stacked the committee with his close allies. "

--------------

And this from a 2/15/05 Sierra Club post:

According to a February 3 report by the EPA's Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, EPA political appointees set "modest" new mercury pollution limits that just so happened to coincide with those in President Bush's "Clear Skies" proposal. They then told EPA scientists to work backwards to justify those limits.

She also found that the EPA did not adequately evaluate the environmental health effects of the proposed rule on children.
...
"I don't think anyone has ever seen as much political influence in the development of a rule as we saw in this rule," said one EPA staff member, who attended meetings between administrators and staff. "Everything about this rule was decided at a political level. . . . The political level made the decisions, and the staff did what they were told." agency's plan made clear that the EPA preferred to regulate mercury in a manner similar to the proposals in President Bush's "Clear Skies" legislative initiative. This cap-and-trade approach calls for a system whereby polluters must meet collective pollution- control targets but can trade credits so that not all plants must meet the same standard.

The IG's report criticized both ideas. It said the free-market approach did not fully account for "hot spots" -- areas that could end up with higher levels of pollutants under the cap-and-trade system

There is the same sad, monotonous predictability to Arnold's serial betrayals. Except that Arnold's victims have fewer resources with which to fight back. In the last few months alone, Schwarzenegger has reneged on well-publicized commitments made to educators, environmentalists, public servants--and voters.

He promised teachers and students last spring that if they agreed not to fight his plan to withhold $2 billion owed to them, he would never again dip into money earmarked for schools to balance his budget. "Trust me," he said. "Over my dead body," he guaranteed. But at a time when a recent Rand Corporation study reports that California ranks near the bottom nationally in both school funding and student performance, Schwarzenegger's new budget gives schools $2.8 billion less than they are owed.

He promised environmental groups that he would not support Prop. 64, a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored initiative that prevents citizens from using the courts to protect consumers and the environment. The California League of Conservation Voters plaintively called his promise "a commitment he personally gave to environmentalists." Then he turned around and endorsed Prop. 64, which, with his considerable weight behind it, passed.

He promised state Sen. Gil Cedillo that he would back a revised bill to allow illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses. Based on this pledge, Cedillo agreed to help repeal his own law. After the two came to their agreement, Cedillo asked Schwarzenegger if they should put their deal in writing. "He shook my hand," remembers Cedillo, "he looked me in the eye and said, 'No. I give you my word. I keep it.'" Of course he didn't. And he doesn't.

He promised police officers, firefighters and labor leaders he wouldn't overhaul the state's pension system if they went along with his 2004 budget proposals. They did--and now the governor is betraying them by pushing to privatize California's pension plans and replace them with individual 401 (k)-style private accounts. This is a move right out of the Bush "Let's Privatize Social Security" playbook.

He promised voters that if they passed his balanced-budget initiative, he would "tear up the credit card and throw it away." They did--but his new budget calls for $6 billion in new borrowing. As California Treasurer Phil Angelides sums it up: "The new debts and deferrals would bring the state's total credit card balance to $31 billion, a 68 percent increase since the governor took office."

And that's just the tip of the Matterhorn-sized iceberg. Indeed, there have been so many fresh deceptions it's easy to forget Arnold's old ones: his campaign pledge not to accept contributions from special interests (he has since raised over $28 million, the vast majority of it from all the usual special interest suspects); his claim that his first act as governor would be an exhaustive audit that would uncover "billions of dollars" in waste (those billions in waste proved as elusive as Saddam's WMD); his oft-repeated vow that he would become "the Collectinator," bringing back much needed federal funds from Washington (instead, things are moving in the opposite direction; the president's new budget will cost the state hundreds of millions more in lost funding). And then there were his PR-driven promises to convert one of his Hummers to hydrogen power and to hire a "well-respected investigative firm" to look into whether he was a serial groper (both promises no sooner made than abandoned).

State of the Union 2004

CLAIM: "If we failed to act in Iraq the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."
STATUS: "The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq," Charles Duelfer. [Washington Post, 10/7/04]
STATUS: The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. A senior intelligence official said Duelfer's findings will stand as the Iraq Survey Group's final conclusions and will be published this spring. [Washington Post, 1/12/05]

CLAIM: "America is committed to keep dangerous weapons from dangerous regimes."
STATUS: Under Bush's watch, North Korea's nuclear arsenal is thought to have quadrupled. Charles Pritchard, formerly Colin Powell's top official dealing with North Korea, has warned for months that "the White House lacks an effective strategy to dissuade North Korea from building up its nuclear arms." And, according to Pritchard, the situation has deteriorated because "the administration has neither offered much of a carrot nor wielded a stick." [New York Times, 5/7/04]
STATUS: According to a recent Harvard University report titled "Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action," "less fissile materials were secured in the two years after Sept. 11 than in the two years before." [Harvard Report, 5/04]

CLAIM: "The American economy is growing stronger."
STATUS: Job growth over the last 18 months has fallen short of administration predictions by 1,703,000-more than one-third fewer jobs than the president's Council of Economic Advisers said would be created even without the tax cuts. [EPI, 1/05]
STATUS: The most recent data from the Census Bureau show that the average income for middle-class households has dropped by $1,525 since its peak in 2000. [American Progress, 10/29/04]

CLAIM: "The tax relief you passed is working."
STATUS: The tax cuts have drained resources from domestic programs utilized by middle-class families. The Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of Americans this year alone will cost $148 billion. "That is twice as much as the government will spend on job training, $6.2 billion; college Pell grants, $12 billion; public housing, $6.3 billion; low-income rental subsidies, $19 billion; child care, $4.8 billion; insurance for low-income children, $5.2 billion; low-income energy assistance, $1.8 billion; meals for shut-ins, $180 million; and welfare, $16.9 billion." [UFE, 4/7/04; Detroit News, 9/29/04]
STATUS: Between June 2003 and December 2004, the economy produced 3.1 million fewer jobs than the administration predicted would result after the last round of tax cuts. [Jobwatch.org, 1/7/05]

CLAIM: "We are providing more funding for our schools."
STATUS: "The bipartisan National Governors Association voted unanimously in 2003 to name No Child Left Behind an 'unfunded mandate,' which means the federal government isn't supplying the money needed to make the law work." [Bloomberg, 1/12/05]
STATUS: For 2005, the administration has requested $9.4 billion less for No Child Left Behind than the bill supposedly ensures. Title I, the program to help poor kids, is underfunded by $7.2 billion, leaving nearly 5 million kids without academic help. [Star-Telegram, 2/26/04]

PROMISE: "I will increase support for community colleges."
STATUS: Last year, the Bush administration proposed cutting the largest direct aid initiative to community colleges, the Perkins program for technical and vocational training, from $1.3 billion to about $1 billion. Congress had to step in to save the funding. [Cincinnati Enquirer, 1/26/04]

PROMISE: "Millions of Americans will be able to save money tax-free for their medical expenses in a health savings account."
STATUS: "Approximately 440,000 Americans signed up for health savings accounts between December 2003 and September 2005.... [A] study released by the Commonwealth Fund concludes that people who used high-deductible insurance plans were more likely than those with traditional medical coverage to have difficulty paying their medical bills." [Fox News, 1/27/05]
STATUS: HSAs will likely drive up the annual deductibles paid by workers. Because of their adverse effects on employer-based coverage, HSAs could swell the ranks of the uninsured. [USA Today, 5/25/04; CBPP, 5/10/04]

PROMISE: "I will defend the sanctity of marriage."
STATUS: Efforts to pass a constitutional amendment that would effectively ban same-sex marriage failed in July. [CNN, 7/16/04]

PROMISE: "I will double the federal funding for abstinence programs."
STATUS: Bush more or less made good on this promise, requesting $270 million for abstinence-only programs in 2005. Studies have showed the well-funded programs "teach adolescents false and misleading information about reproductive health" and fail to increase abstinence. [Waxman Report, 12/2/04; WP, 12/2/04; Advocates for Youth, 9/27/04]

PROPOSAL: "I propose series of measurements called Jobs for the 21st Century."
This initiative included increasing Pell grants...
STATUS: For three straight years, Bush has proposed freezing or cutting Pell grants. [Ed Workforce, 2/2/04]
STATUS: A spending bill the White House helped push through Congress last November allows the U.S. Department of Education to proceed with a new eligibility formula that will remove an estimated 90,000 qualified students from eligibility for Pell Grants. [St. Petersburg Times, 12/24/04]

...And Community-Based Job Training Grants
STATUS: Bush's 2005 budget proposed cutting job training and vocational education by 10 percent - that's $656 million - from what Congress pledged to those programs in 2002. [Workforce Alliance, 4/5/04]
STATUS: Two federal banking agencies headed by Bush appointees are trying to change laws that would cripple the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination by banks against low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. [AP, 10/21/04]

PROPOSAL: "Pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign energy sources."
STATUS: The energy bill proposed by President Bush would allow power companies "to set up multiple subsidiaries and blur their financial reports, leading to market manipulation similar to that seen during the California energy crisis." [Sierra Club]
STATUS: The president's bill allows "automakers to sell more gas guzzlers by failing to raise fuel economy standards" and "fails to increase our use of clean, renewable energy by excluding a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) that would ensure that more of our electricity comes from clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power." [Sierra Club]
STATUS: President Bush's primary plan to reduce foreign energy dependence, drilling the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, would not reduce the price of oil and would produce only 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil (the United States consumes about 7 billion barrels each year). [Sierra Club]

PROPOSAL: "Reform in immigration laws and a new temporary worker program."
STATUS: President Bush blocked the Dream Act, which had bipartisan support and would have enabled 65,000 high school graduates who are undocumented immigrants to become citizens if they completed college, and allowed them to pay the in- state rate for tuition at public colleges and universities. [Washington Post, 7/21/04]

PROPOSAL: "New funding to continue our aggressive, community based strategy to reduce demand for illegal drugs."
STATUS: In his FY04 budget, the president proposed cutting funding for the Safe and Drug Free Schools program by $25 million. The 2005 budget proposes freezing funding for the program. [House Committee on Education and Workforce, 2/2/04]

PROPOSAL: "Grassroots campaign to help inform families about medical risks of STD's."
STATUS: Abstinence-only programs lavishly funded by the president have undermined this goal, increasing unsafe sex and encouraging hostility to contraception. [Advocates for Youth, 9/27/04]

State of the Union 2003

PROMISE: "I will send you a budget that increases discretionary spending by 4 percent next year-about as much as the average family's income is expected to grow."
STATUS: Real median household income fell 0.1 percent in 2003, from $43,381 to $43,318. According to the latest census data, median household income has dropped 3.5 percent since the beginning of the Bush presidency in 2000. [Mother Jones, 8/27/04; Census]

PROPOSAL: "I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70-percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years."
STATUS: The Bush administration's "Clear Skies" proposal, due to be debated in Congress in the coming weeks, would not reduce pollution as much as existing Clean Air Act regulations, according to an interim report by the National Academy of Sciences. [LA Times, 1/14/05]

PROMISE: "I ask Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn he tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean."
STATUS: Congress approved $2.9 billion to fight HIV/AIDS and other diseases in 2005, but it cut the U.S. pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to $350 million - almost $200 million less than last year's donation. "The administration is also blocking the Fund from receiving $88 million that Congress appropriated in the 2004 fiscal year." [Kaiser, 11/19/04]

PROMISE: "I am instructing the leaders of the FBI, and CIA, the Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense to develop a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge and analyze all threat information in a single location."
STATUS: "The Bush administration's effort to create a national database of potential terrorist targets such as dams, pipelines, chemical plants and skyscrapers is far behind schedule and may take years to finish." [USA Today, 12/8/04]

PROMISE: "We're strongly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency."
STATUS: The Bush administration campaigned behind closed doors to prevent respected Egyptian diplomat Mohammed ElBaradei from sitting for a third term as head of the IAEA because of "his willingness to challenge the administration's assertions on Iraq and Iran." No country would join the U.S. effort, however. The administration stooped so low as to install "dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's phone calls with Iranian diplomats and...scrutinize[d] them in search of ammunition to oust him." [Washington Post, 12/12/04; Washington Post, 01/22/05]

State of the Union 2002

PROMISE: "We need to replace aging aircraft and make our military more agile, to put our troops anywhere in the world quickly and safely. Our men and women in uniform deserve the best weapons, the best equipment, the best training-and they deserve a pay raise."
STATUS: In December, a soldier serving in Iraq asked why he had to "dig through local land fills" to find scrap metal to properly arm his military combat vehicle. Rumsfeld's response? "You have to go to war with the Army you have." [CNN, 12/9/04]

PROMISE: "We'll increase funding to help states and communities train and equip our heroic police and firefighters."
STATUS: According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), "At least two-thirds of the nation's fire departments are understaffed." Cuts in federal aid to local police agencies have pushed local agencies "to the breaking point." [USA Today, 11/28/04; USA Today, 11/16/04]

STATUS: Under the SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) Act, Congress authorized $7.6 billion over seven years to improve fire department funding, but President Bush "didn't request any money for the program in his 2005 budget." [USA Today, 11/28/04]

PROMISE: "Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term, so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a fiscally responsible manner."
STATUS: The federal budget deficit will reach a record $448 billion this year, exceeding last year's record of $412 billion. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), "the long-term outlook for the US budget deficit has deteriorated since the end of last year." [FT, 1/26/05]

Right now, as before the election, American forces find themselves on the horns of a dilemma that our top officer corps, post-Vietnam, never thought we would experience again. Our troops are mired in a seemingly endless guerrilla war in which, if you withdraw to your reasonably impregnable bases, you instantly surrender significant swathes of territory to your enemy; while, if you venture out armed and en masse to take the offensive, you not only suffer continual casualties but, operating relatively blindly in a strange land, create by your every act yet more enemies out of ordinary citizens.
...
Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, just told the House Armed Services Committee: "As it pertains to the National Guard, the Army National Guard in particular, we were woefully underequipped before the war started It's getting -- gets a little bit worse every day."

Donald Rumsfeld's privatizing Pentagon has been left in the ridiculous position of competing with itself because mercenary money is now so enticing. As Craig Gordon of Newsday reports, "The Pentagon is falling short on efforts to keep elite special forces units at full strength and now is fighting back dollar by dollar, offering up to $150,000 bonuses to commandos to keep high-paying private security firms from cherry-picking the teamss. Some military commanders have expressed worries that such high bonuses can distort the nature of the all- volunteer force and lead to a 'mercenary' culture."
....
So the Iraqi election is over; the votes are in; and our main man in Baghdad, Ayad Allawi (aka "Saddam Lite") suffered a significant battering, as Juan Cole pointed out immediately at his invaluable Informed Comment blog. On the other hand, Shiite votes, projected soon after the election at close to 60%, came in at close to 50% -- what one might call a convenient drop, from the American point of view. After all, the election of a heavily Shiite government with possible pro-Iranian sympathies wasn't quite what the neocons had in mind when they launched this little adventure. (Even as is, the Washington Post's Robin Wright points out, "[T]he top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.") I haven't heard anyone asking yet, but it's worth wondering what did, in fact, happen in those unexpected extra days of vote-counting that went on behind very closed doors. On this subject, given the American presence in Baghdad where the votes were counted (and our own now tainted electoral process), I would be surprised by nothing.

Nearly half of all respondents whose work is related to endangered species (44%) report that they have been directed for non-scientific reasons to refrain from making findings that protect species. One in five have been instructed to compromise their scientific integrity, reporting that they have been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a USFWS scientific document." In the Southwest region, that number was even higher - closer to one in three.

Agency scientists reported being afraid to speak frankly about issues and felt constrained in their role as scientists. 42% said they could not publicly express "concerns about the biological needs of species and habitats without fear of retaliation," while 30% were afraid to do so even within the agency. A third felt they are not allowed to do their jobs as scientists.

There has been a significant strain on staff morale. Half of all scientists reported that morale is poor to extremely poor; only 12% believed morale to be good or excellent. And 64% did not feel the agency is moving in the right direction.

Political intrusion has undermined the USFWS's ability to fulfill its mission of protecting wildlife from extinction. Three out of four staff scientists felt that the USFWS is not "acting effectively to maintain or enhance species and their habitats."

In one of numerous essays submitted on the topic of improving scientific integrity at USFWS, one biologist wrote: "We are not allowed to be honest and forthright...I have 20 years of federal service in this and this is the worst it has ever been." Another scientist reported that Department of Interior officials "have forced upper-level managers to say things that are incorrect." A manager wrote: "There is a culture of fear of retaliation in mid-management."

Instead of addressing a real impending crise, he has run amok in false crises like Social Security and crises of his own making like Iraq/WMDs.

The Bush regime said more study was needed in spite of the fact that the problem is real. A recent paper in Science examined every single peer reviewed scientific journal article from 1993 to 2003 that contained the phrase "global climate change". Of the 928 articles found, not a single one disagreed with the consensus view that current climate change is caused by human activity. Of course there are alledged "scientific" papers which attempt to say there is no global warming or those which admit the obvious but attempt to say humans aren't responsible; however not a single one of these have been peer reviewed. In fact, the vast majority of such papers are authored by "scientists" funded by corporations.

At the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of the debate likes to talk about: It is already too late to prevent global warming and the climate change it sets off.

Environmentalists won't say this for fear of sounding alarmist or defeatist. Politicians won't say it because then they'd have to do something about it. The world's top climate scientists have been sending this message, however, with increasing urgency for many years.

Since 1988, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of more than 2,000 scientific and technical experts from around the world, has conducted the most extensive peer-reviewed scientific inquiry in history.

In its 2001 report, the panel said that human-caused global warming had already begun, and much sooner than expected. What's more, the problem is bound to get worse, perhaps a lot worse, before it gets better.

Last month, the climate change panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, upped the ante. Although Pachauri was installed after the Bush Administration forced out his predecessor, Robert Watson, for pushing too hard for action, the accumulation of evidence led Pachauri to embrace apocalyptic language: "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive," he said. .... The problem with the Kyoto Protocol is not that the 5 percent greenhouse gas emission reductions it mandates don't go far enough, though they don't. (The climate change panel urges 50 to 70 percent reductions.)

The problem is that Kyoto governs only future emissions. No matter how well the protocol works, it will have no effect on past emissions, which are what have made global warming unavoidable. Contrary to the impression given by some news reports, global warming is not like a light switch that can be turned off if we simply stop burning so much oil, coal, and gas. There is a lag effect of about 50 to 100 years. That's how long carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, remains in the atmosphere after it is emitted from auto tailpipes, home furnaces, and industrial smokestacks. So even if humanity stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the planet would continue warming for decades. ...

British Prime Minister Tony Blair regards climate change as "the single biggest long-term problem" of any kind facing his country. His government's top scientist, Sir David King, goes further, calling climate change "the biggest danger humanity has faced in 5,000 years of civilization." ... A report released last year by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessments said that by 2020, climate change could unleash a series of interlocking catastrophes including mega- droughts, mass starvation, and even nuclear war as countries like China and India battle over river valleys and other sources of scarce food and water.

In order to maintain a world populations of 20 billion, we destroy 200 species a day. Since the population is expected to exceed an astouding 10 billion in the next 100 years, this rate enviromental rape will become unsustainable. We will either radically change our way of living or will one day become one of the 200 extinct species. Quinn likens the change in thinking needed to support such a change in the way of living to the radical mindshift of the Renaissance. As examples, he notes the use of science and reason as the basis for gaining knowledge rather than knowledge being dispensed by some higher authority. He also notes the concurrent erosion of the Catholic church saying:

During the Middle Ages, it was taken for granted that our relationship with God was a collective thing that only the Roman Catholic Church was empowered to negotiate. During the Renaissance, this dispensation was challenged by a completely new one, in which our relationship with God was seen as an individual thing that each of us could negotiate independently with God. In this new dispensation was born the magnification and sanctification of the individual that we take for granted in modern times. We all see ourselves as individually valuable and quite fantastically empowered--literally bristling with rights--in a way that would have been astonishing to the people of the Middle Ages. ... Just as persons living in the Middle Ages could in no way foresee radial change in modes of thought which resulted in the Renaissance, we cannot foresee what similar changes will occur if we are to survive.

The President has just announced that the "end of tyranny" is his goal, but in his first term the global democracy movement suffered its greatest setback since the cold war -- Russia's slide toward authoritarianism. A poll in the German newspaper Die Welt revealed that "Vladimir Putin is seen as more trustworthy than George W. Bush .... Even in little Slovakia, where the festivities seemed more spontaneous than elsewhere, an opinion poll showed that a majority believed that the United States, not Russia, was the most worrisome threat to democracy.

.... No sooner had the President arrived in Europe than an economic trapdoor seemed briefly to open beneath his feet when the South Korean Central Bank stated that it intended to move some of its holdings from the dollar to other currencies, causing a 174-point drop in the Dow Jones average. The next day, the bank disavowed its report and the dollar recovered, but not before the fragility of America's economic position in the world had been revealed. .... the rise of imperial pretenders has usually led to military alliances against them. Such was the case, for instance, when a previous imperial republic, Napoleon's France, conquered most of Europe but then was defeated by an oddly assorted alliance of Britain, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Such is not the case today. Europe seems determined to bypass rather than fight the American challenge. And power? The American kind is poor in "future goods." There is rivalry in the air, but it no longer takes a martial form. Instead, Europe seems bent for now on building itself up economically and knitting itself together politically -- readying, it appears, another kind of power, based more on cooperation, both within its own borders and with the world, and less on military force.

He opens with a reference to the Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in which the idealistic Smith stages a one man filibuster against the powers to be.  Byrd points out that even under the current rule requiring 60 senators to end debate, those 60 senators could represent a mere 24% of the population. Worse, a simple majority would represent only 17% of the US.

Ever the historian, Byrd cites the following in showing how much has already been lost:

In fact, it was 1917, before any curtailing of debate was attempted, which means that from 1806 to 1917, some 111 years, the Senate rejected any limits to debate. Democracy flourished along with the filibuster. The first actual cloture rule in 1917, was enacted in response to a filibuster by those who opposed U.S. intervention in World War I.

But, even after its enactment, the Senate was slow to embrace cloture, understanding the pitfalls of muzzling debate. In 1949, the 1917 cloture rule was modified to make cloture more difficult to invoke, not less, mandating that the number needed to stop debate would be not two-thirds of those present and voting, but two-thirds of all Senators.

Indeed, from 1919 to 1962, the Senate voted on cloture petitions only 27 times and invoked cloture just four times over those 43 years. .... Without the filibuster or the threat of extended debate, there exists no leverage with which to bargain for the offering of an amendment. All force to effect compromise between the two political parties is lost. Demands for hearings can languish. The President can simply rule, almost by Executive Order if his party controls both houses of Congress, and Majority Rule reins supreme. In such a world, the Minority is crushed; the power of dissenting views diminished; and freedom of speech attenuated. The uniquely American concept of the independent individual, asserting his or her own views, proclaiming personal dignity through the courage of free speech will, forever, have been blighted. And the American spirit, that stubborn, feisty, contrarian, and glorious urge to loudly disagree, and proclaim, despite all opposition, what is honest and true, will be sorely manacled.

Yes, we believe in Majority rule, but we thrive because the minority can challenge, agitate, and question. We must never become a nation cowed by fear, sheeplike in our submission to the power of any majority demanding absolute control.

Will the majority someday trample on the rights of lumber companies to harvest timber, or the rights of mining companies to mine silver, coal, or iron ore? What about the rights of energy companies to drill for new sources of oil and gas? How will the insurance, banking, and securities industries fare when a majority can move against their interests and prevail by a simple majority vote? What about farmers who can be forced to lose their subsidies, or Western Senators who will no longer be able to stop a majority determined to wrest control of ranchers' precious water or grazing rights? With no right of debate, what will forestall plain muscle and mob rule?

Many times in our history we have taken up arms to protect a minority against the tyrannical majority in other lands. We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men.

But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler's dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that "Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact." And he succeeded.

Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.

He delivered another great speech on the nuclear option on 3/10/05.

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Another article on the nuclear otpion notes that it was named that by one the regime's more stupid members- Trent Lott. Now, their spin machine is spinning it as the "constitutional option"- just the same Orewellian MO as calling their measures to increase pollution the "Clear Sky" initiative. Or perhaps, konow how stupid the american public is, they thing the "nuclear" monikier would invoke random synapse firings linking it to the regime lies on Iraq's nuclear WMDs (and later merely "nuclear program related activities").

It also has this from Orin Hatch:

Hatch didn't want to wait until the next filibuster to change the rules. "I have recommended that we go to the constitutional option early in the game," he said. "The worst way to do it is during a Supreme Court nomination, and then it becomes all politics. Let's do it now."

The piece also gives insight into just how lazy the ripublican senators are:

According to one Republican Senate aide, "The Democrats could keep one or two of their people on the floor, talking all night, and they could request a quorum anytime they wanted. We'd have to keep fifty-one of our people there all night, and our people wouldn't do it. Some of them are old. Some are sick. And it wouldn't break the filibuster anyway. That's why the filibuster is so effective."

"We Republicans are not blameless here," McCain told me. "For all intents and purposes, we filibustered Clinton's judges, by not letting them out of committee. Making this change would put us on a slippery slope to getting rid of the filibuster altogether. It's not called 'nuclear' for nothing."

A single member can gum up the legislative machinery, as Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat, who was his party's leader for a decade in the Senate, explained. "The Senate runs on 'unanimous consent,'" Daschle said. "It takes unanimous consent to stop the reading of bills, the reading of every amendment. On any given day, there are fifteen or twenty nominations and a half-dozen bills that have been signed off for unanimous consent. The vast work of the Senate is done that way. But any individual senator can insist that every bill be read, every vote be taken, and bring the whole place to a stop." Daschle also doubted that the limitations on filibustering would in the future be applied only to judicial nominations. "Within ten years, there'd be rules that you can't filibuster tax cuts," he said.

Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was granted unique access inside the White House in 2002 to report on the administration's communication strategy. "For them, essentially the way to handle the press is the same as how to handle the federal government; you starve the beast. When it's in a weakened and undernourished condition, then you're able to effect a variety of subtle partisan and political attacks. Armstrong Williams and others are examples of that."

.... The most egregious example of this almost metaphysical chutzpah appears in an October 2004 article for the New York Times Magazine, in which Suskind quotes a senior Bush advisor who dismissed reporters for living in the "the reality- based community." The advisor said, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

He notes that the position of Karen Hughes, Bush's former chief communications advisor, was, "'We're not concerned; we don't see there being any penalty from the voters for ignoring the mainstream press.' And there's been none to date. "

This approach to the press doesn't stop at the White House, it's prevalent throughout the regime:

And when touring the country to promote the controversial PATRIOT Act, then- Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to meet with print reporters; he only granted brief interviews to local television reporters, who generally ask less probing questions.

Last year Pentagon managers repeatedly ordered the department's widely read clipping service to omit articles critical of the military and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to the Washington Post.

Finally, to show how bad the situation is, in April 20003 a regime tank intentionally fired on the hotel in Bagdad where all the journalists, killing two forgein media employees. The regime lied and whitewashed the incident and, knowing they are (literally) outgunned, the main stream press has let the story slide (More).

Just as the regime said those who disagreed with it's war on terorism were terrorists, it should surprise no one when the regime decides to "detain" reporters who do not adhere to the regime's line.

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Then there's the murder by regime troops in Iraq of Mazen Dana, a Palestinian television cameraman for Reuters, per a TruthOut series .

Sent to cover the war in Iraq, Mazen was filming outside Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. According to American claims at the time, rebels had staged a deadly mortar bomb or grenade attack on the prison the day before, and several journalists went to report the story. They identified themselves to U.S. troops guarding the perimeter of the prison and got permission to film from a nearby bridge.

Mazen took the footage he wanted and got back into the car with his soundman and best friend Nael al-Shyouki. At that moment, a military convoy drove up. According to al-Shyouki, Mazen got out of the car with his camera and began filming. Al-Shyouki followed three or four meters behind. They were standing in the open in the middle of the road. Everything around seemed peaceful and matter of fact.

The lead tank was at most 100 meters away, or as close as 50 meters, witnesses differ. Without warning, a soldier on the tank began firing. Mazen screamed, clutching his chest. His camera tilted forward, then fell to the ground. Mazen had filmed the story.

January 2, 2004. Rebels shoot down an American OH-58 Kiowa helicopter near Fallujah, killing one soldier. Journalists rush to the crash site, among them three Iraqis working for Reuters - Salem Ureibi and Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al- Badrani, both journalists, and their driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani.

All we know about what happened next comes from the three, taken from separate interviews conducted by their employer, Reuters. Even a year ago, the average American would likely have dismissed what they said about how U.S. soldiers treated them. Our men and women would never do such things. Then we saw the photographs from Abu Ghraib and heard the revelations from Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

The story of the Reuters 3 is far less dramatic, far more ordinary. In many ways, this makes it even more alarming.

According to the three Iraqis, the Americans approached them in the general area of the crash sites. The three shouted "Reuters, Reuters, journalist, journalist." The soldiers looked in the car and saw the TV cameras and photographic equipment.

The soldiers handcuffed the three, took their shoes, wallets, and money, and forced them onto the floor of a Humvee, along with a stringer for NBC. The driver repeatedly raced ahead and then braked suddenly. The soldiers then transferred the Iraqis to a tank or armored personnel carrier, put bags on their heads, and stuffed Ahmad and Sattar under a seat. Salem, a large man, was forced to sit on top of them.

Finally, the men arrived at a makeshift American base, where the soldiers kept them for 72 hours, much of the time in a cold room where they were not allowed to sleep. According to the Iraqis, the Americans forced them to assume stress positions. beat them, and threatened them with rape.

"They took me to a kind of caravan where there was one Lebanese and two Americans for interrogation," recalled Sattar. They took his clothes and made him kneel on his knees with his hands in the air.

"Are you a woman?" the Lebanese translator asked.

"He asked me to pick up a shoe, took it and beat me on the face with it. Then he made me take the shoe in my mouth. He made me put my finger in my anus then he made me smell my hand and put it in my nose."

Ahmad told a similar story: "They told me to stick my middle finger in my anus and then lick it."

"an American soldier took me blindfolded. My hands were tightly cuffed, with my ears plugged so I could not hear properly, and my mouth covered so I could only make a muffled scream. Two soldiers, one on each side, forced me to bend down, and a third pressed my face down over a table. A fourth soldier then pulled down my trousers. They rammed a stick up my rectum."

The men had been hung by their arms from the ceiling and beaten so severely that, according to a report by Army investigators later leaked to the Baltimore Sun, their legs would have needed to be amputated had they lived....  the Army pathologist who signed the certificate had checked "homicide" as the cause of death.

 Prisoners subjected to 'mock executions'; photographs of detainees being sexually  humiliated.  New evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.  Documents obtained by the Guardian contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar.

An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture - suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said back then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed at the time. The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," the documents reviewed by The AP
show.

A former Iraqi detainee told Army investigators that a US soldier forced him to sign a statement that he had not been abused even though American interrogators in September 2003 had dislocated his arms, beaten his leg with a bat, crushed his nose, and put an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, according to newly released internal military documents.

Retail giant Wal-Mart, Stop & Shop supermarkets and Dunkin' Donuts top the list of Connecticut employers whose workers use the state's health insurance program for poor children and some parents, according to a new report.

Those three companies employ more than 2,600 adults who are parents or caretakers of children on the state's HUSKY program. Most of those adults are also receiving state health coverage, the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Research determined.

One downside is that SEIU's fight over the direction of the AFL-CIO may weaken the the labor movement. At a recent AFL-CIO meeting, Stern demanded that the AFL-CIO implement a slate of specific reforms that would "build something stronger, that really changes workers' lives" or the SEIU will leave the AFL-CIO and continue the process they started on their own.

Should the bill become law, I wish somebody would set up a religious charity, get some of the faith based money the regime is throwing around and advertise for employees at extremely high salaries. The first question in job interviews would be the candidate's religion. Anyone professing any christian affiliation would be summarily dismissed. The hypocritical hue and cry about the legalized discrimination from the regime, Fox "News", the bible thumpers... et al, would be most satisfying.  Alas, they would learn absolutely nothing from the experience.

"The Rise of the Machine" documents how a small group of politicians and corporations bought themselves a legislature
Bankrolling Beltway Badges

It also does nothing on the "supply side". Credit card companies, who earned a record $30 BILLION in profits last year can still hawk their cards to folks who shouldn't have them and charge astronomical rates. No, the hypocritical bible-thumpers wantonly rejected an admendent which would have capped interest rates at a whopping 30 percent when their bible says "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother." (Deuteronomy 23:19) As always, they quote their bible only where it suits them and thier corporate and right wing sponsors.

This a yet another prime example of the ripublicans shafting the poor and middle classes while rewarding the rich and corporations.

Alas, joining the usual suspects were idiot democrats John Kerry, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin. Obviously, they have been bought by the greedy corporations also.

Sure, some folks wantonly live beyond their means and declare bankrupcy. Those folks should be made to pay; however, the vast majority of people who file for bankruptcy are middle-class folks who can't pay their bills because they've lost their jobs or been hit with high medical bills. A recent study by Harvard University found that half of bankruptcies last year were due to crushing medical bills.

The 3/9/05 article "Debt-Peonage Society" by Paul Krugman contains some good info:

To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it's concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.   One increasingly popular loophole is the creation of an "asset protection trust," which is worth doing only for the wealthy. Senator Charles Schumer introduced an amendment that would have limited the exemption on such trusts, but apparently it's O.K. to game the system if you're rich: 54 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against the Schumer amendment.

Other amendments were aimed at protecting families and individuals who have clearly been forced into bankruptcy by events, or who would face extreme hardship in repaying debts. Ted Kennedy introduced an exemption for cases of medical bankruptcy. Russ Feingold introduced an amendment protecting the homes of the elderly. Dick Durbin asked for protection for armed services members and veterans. All were rejected.

None of this should come as a surprise: it's all part of the pattern.

As Mr. Hacker and others have documented, over the past three decades the lives of ordinary Americans have become steadily less secure, and their chances of plunging from the middle class into acute poverty ever larger. Job stability has declined; spells of unemployment, when they happen, last longer; fewer workers receive health insurance from