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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ecommerceman who wrote (1860)	2/19/2001 9:58:26 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Bush ran his campaign by flip flopping on positions and trying to steal his opponents issues. He was against campaign finance reform and then for it and now is against it. He was against government social programs and then became a "reformer with results." This (value of the dollar) is not an issue which his administration can afford to vacillate on. From Sesame Street to Mainstreet: Everyone Hunkers Down for the Coming Slowdown By Michael Swanson(TimingWallStreet.Com) This was a tough week for Wall Street bulls who trust in Alan Greenspan and believe that a big boom is going to appear at the second half of the year to justify current tech stock valuations. When Nortel blew up Thursday they announced that they see no possibility for a pickup in their business at the end of the year. Dell also announced Thursday that they could not forecast an improvement in the second half. In fact I can’t think of any company that has said that the second half is going to be better during their conference calls. What they have said is that they hope a second half recovery comes. The Wall Street analysts have grasped on to that hope to justify telling you to buy now. But on Saturday the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers stated that we are in a recession now and "there is no possibility of a soft landing." As soon as investors connect the dots and figure out that the fantastic hopes of the analysts aren’t going to happen the tech stocks will hit another liquidation phase. The real bomb though came Friday morning when the Producer Price Index jumped 1.1% in January, completely blowing away economist predictions for a .3% rise. This is the largest increase in years and if inflation signs continue to appear then the Federal Reserve will be seriously hamstrung in cutting rates. If they do cut rates in the face of inflation they risk creating worse financial problems down the road. At a conference of G-7 nations, George Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, William O’Neill, said, "We are not pursuing, as it is often said, a policy of a strong dollar." The dollar dropped right after his remarks. Hours later O’Neill’s spokesman said that the Treasury Department will work to maintain the value of the dollar. However, most currency speculators do not believe that the Bush administration will take steps to shore it up. This is the first real encounter the Bush administration has had with economic policy and they will have to do better in the future. All they did was manage to confuse people. Do they really support a strong dollar policy or not? What does this mean for investors? A falling dollar will create inflation, because it raises the costs of imports. That would make the Federal Reserve hesitant to cut interest rates. This is a much more important issue for the economy than Bush’s tax plan and demands to be managed better than he has been doing. Bush ran his campaign by flip flopping on positions and trying to steal his opponents issues. He was against campaign finance reform and then for it and now is against it. He was against government social programs and then became a "reformer with results." This is not an issue which his administration can afford to vacillate on. At this same G-7 meeting officials of the International Monetary Fund cut their forecasts for US economic growth for this year from 3.2% to 1.7%. The charts for the stock market are ugly and there are reasons for this. Thanks to Alan Greenspan the United States economy is at recession levels and thanks to the imbalances he has created over the years it is in danger of a prolonged economic slump or financial crisis. As I’ve mentioned in the past, Alan Greenspan created a stock market bubble when he flooded the economy with money in 1998 to bail out third world loans owed to international bankers and the Long Term Capital Management Fund. He then jacked up the money supply at the end of 1999 because he feared a Y2K computer crash. The economy began to overheat and there were a lack of real investment opportunities for that money to go to. When the money supply hyperinflates the extra money goes into the most speculative of ventures. This is what has happened in the 1890s with railroad stocks, in the 1920s with radio stocks, and again in 1999 with Internut stocks. In the first two eras an investment and stock market bubble popped and was followed by a horrendous economic downturn. During these downturns rapid social and political change took place. New social movements appeared and the entrances to political offices became revolving doors. The aftermath of the last bubble is only beginning. Alan Greenspan testified to the Senate two weeks ago and said that the current slowdown in the US economy is an "inventory correction" that will be adjusted within the next few months. He then went on to say that he thought a recession could be avoided as long as consumer confidence remained high, although he could not predict whether it would or not. Yesterday, the University of Michigan's twice-monthly barometer of U.S. consumer sentiment was released and fell again in February to its lowest level in seven years, indicating that consumer confidence is now cracking. Greenspan is playing a dangerous game and is putting the Federal Reserve on a course to make some of the most desperate gambles it has made in generations. Since the beginning of this year Greenspan has been pumping massive amounts of money into the financial system through interest rate cuts and changes in the reserve rate in an attempt to bail out the stock market. The moving average of the M2, money supply indicator, is registering a gain 12% for the past 13 weeks. This is even more liquidity than he injected into the system in 1998. Conventional economic thinking suggests that such a move would hyperinflate the currency and put the dollar into a downward spiral. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. Greenspan is hoping that economic productivity, thanks to technology, can offset these inflationary pressures and keep producer and consumer prices stable. If this doesn’t happen then companies’ costs will increase and they will either have to raise prices or lay people off to maintain their profit margins. Some economists and technology gurus, such as George Gilder and Lawrence Kudlow, have claimed that thanks to the Internet and the computer we are now in a "new economy" in which technology has created so much productivity that the economy can now grow at rapid rates without creating inflation. They believe that the business cycle has been abolished. Greenspan is betting that this theory is real. As I’ve said in the past, this theory is more myth than reality. The low inflation of the 1990s is more a factor of low commodity prices and a downward pressure on wages thanks to globalization and a weaker organized labor movement than it is due to some miracle of technology. Just as important is the strong dollar thanks to the slow growth rates in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, which helped to make imports cheap. In fact several studies done by the Federal Reserve itself have come to exactly this conclusion. The truth is the past decade wasn’t the economic boom people thought it was. During the 1990s personal and corporate debt levels grew faster than income. The US current account deficit, which measures the total balance of payments between the US and the rest of the world, reached levels never before seen in history. The United States became the world’s largest debtor nation. The GDP grew by 8 trillion, but personal and corporate debt grew by 10 trillion. Although the average American spent more, during the 1990s, his wage and income levels stagnated. The place where wealth really increased was in the stock market. Those who had stocks that rose in value felt as if they were richer and went out and spent more using loans and credit cards. The dead heads of the 1970s became debt heads. click on this link to view graphs timingwallstreet.com The stock market became the economy. Another way to put things is that instead of industrial production and income increases being the yard stick of economic growth paper gains became the impetus for greater consumption - the surest sign of an economic bubble. That is why Greenspan panicked in the beginning of the year and cut interest rates on a day in which the Nasdaq was making new yearly lows and completely melting down. It reached a point in which he felt he had to prop it up. He is determined to try to keep the stock market afloat no matter what it takes, even though by historical valuation standards and price to earnings multiples it is overvalued. He has created a chaotic mess and the stock market is in the process of factoring in a bad ending. Investors have been buying stocks in the faith that Greenspan will make the market go up. If Greenspan were to fail there could be a complete collapse in investor sentiment and a horrible deflation in investment spending on the part of corporations. A prolonged recession would be the result. From Wall Street to Sesame Street people are already feeling the pain and hunkering down. Several blocks away from Wall Street sits the CNBC television studios. Mark Haines and Maria Bartiromo, the CNBC dynamic duo, say that all is going fine. Greenspan will make everything good and the economy will take off before the year ends and stocks will skyrocket. You are a dummy if you don’t buy now. But as they are saying this the network has layed off 35 people to cut costs. Over in the suburbs thousands of people are beginning to fall prey to their personal debt bubble. USA Today ran a story with the headline Debt Smothers America’s Youth last week. The reporter interviewed Paige Hall, a 34 year old who found herself laid off from her job and now unable to pay her $18,200 in credit card bills for her wedding and new household furnishings. She thought her stocks would go up. Kevin Jackson, a software engineer who still has his job along with $8,000 in credit card debt and a $20,000 home equity loan, said "you learn to live with a certain amount of debt. It’s a means to an end." Over on Sesame Street Big Bird has handed pink slips with the letters FU written on them to 60 of his employees. Sesame Street is not just a TV show, but a magazine publishing house. In a move to cut costs the CEO of Sesame Street has laid off people who worked on the magazines titled Sesame Street Parents, Parenting, and Kids City. These layoffs are no joking manner and are jumping from company to company. Over on Main Street people are suffering from Greenspan’s mismanagement. 10 miles away from me a Goodyear Tire factory laid off 200 of its workers. A mobile home manufacturer laid off 1/4 of its workforce and told the rest that they will now only work 4 days a week. The Federal Reserve attempt to keep the stock market afloat and bring back the economic boom has best been summed up by Robert McTeer, the head of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. Speaking on February 2, 2001 McTeer said: "My term for what happened to the economy as we were gliding in for the proverbial soft landing is that we hit an air pocket. Fortunately, we were flying high enough so that the sudden decline in growth didn’t cause us to crash-land. If we all join hands and go buy a new SUV, everything will be all right. Preferably a Navigator. I can explain why the stock market fell like it did last spring. Wile E. Coyote looked down. You remember that the Road Runner always managed to stop just before going over the cliff. Wylie couldn’t stop. But he never fell until he looked down. Somebody looked down and saw all foam and no beer! Looking down will pop a bubble. What I don’t understand is why bubbles form in the first place—we’re all so smart and all. Today, we realize that there must be some prospect for some profit, some time for a stock to be worth a good sum of money. Why do we realize that today, but not yesterday?" "No, the New Economy isn’t dead. It may have a hangover. It may even have the blues. I can understand that. I’m bad to get the blues myself. As Billy Joe Shaver said, I’m "leanin’ t’ward the blues." But my New Paradigm frog doesn’t get the blues. Frogs don’t get the blues. They get the greens. You may remember the Far Side frog band that had the greens a few years ago. The greens went something like this: My baby’s left my lily pad, My legs were both deep fried, I eat flies all day, and when I’m gone, They’ll stick me in formaldehyde, Oh, I got the greeeens. I got the greens real bad! Well, my New Paradigm frog may have the greens, but he’s not ready for the formaldehyde yet. Just remember, the blues and the greens are contagious. Don’t get near people with symptoms. Just go out and buy something—maybe a Navigator." In other words just believe. Ignore the charts and economic data that point down. Have faith that this is a new era that has overturned the old fashioned rules of economics. Go out and buy something for the good of the system. Buy tech stocks. Use your credit card if you have to Or take out a loan. The problem is that most Americans now have wild levels of household debt. It will be hard to get them to go out and buy something when their jobs are in danger and their stocks, if they own any, are getting creamed. The massive debt levels will make the path to economic recovery a long one. This is the real legacy of the so called "new economy.

To: ecommerceman who wrote (1860)	2/21/2001 12:08:18 AM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

VOTING IN FLORIDA February 9, 2001 EXCERPT from On Line News Hour with Jim Lehrer BETTY ANN BOWSER: In December, Governor Bush appointed a 21-member, bipartisan task force to figure out what went wrong when Floridians went to the polls and how to keep those problems from ever happening again. The Governor was the lead-off witness at the first hearing. GOV. JEB BUSH: It seems to me that the main mission here ought to be to bring clarity, to bring clarity where after the – in the aftermath of this election there was clearly confusion. We should bring clarity to the voting methods in this state. Every voter needs to know, when they go to vote, that their vote is going to count. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Bush never gave the task force a broad sweeping mandate. But from the beginning, members said they hoped to make recommendations in at least these areas: How to improve voting machine technology; how to improve voter education; and how to better count absentee ballots. ………………………..*********************……………………………. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The task force held 31 hours of hearings – in four cities. There were 20 invited witnesses and only 100 members of the public showed up to testify. There was ONE PUBLIC HEARING in South Florida where most of the voting problems took place on election day, and it was held on the suburban campus of a new university, more than an hour from where the irregularities occurred. One witness complained about that. SCOTT HOTCHKISS: First I want to say – and I am extremely skeptical. I don’t believe the Florida legislature really want the participation of average working citizens. There WAS NO ADVERTISEMENT in the newspaper, the radio, or TV about this meeting. Also the time frame -- 5 to 7p.m., it’s very difficult for a working man to go home take care of his family and get cleaned up and make it to a meeting like this on time. BETTY ANN BOWSER: More distressing to South Florida’s election officials was that NONE OF THEM WERE INVITED TO TESTIFY. David Leahy, election supervisor of Miami-Dade, the state’s largest county, had to ask to be heard and was given only three minutes. DAVID LEAHY: Well, I did find it odd that you had the task force meeting in what is ground zero where we had all these problems Nov. 7th and that the supervisor from Palm Beach and the Supervisor from Miami-Dade County were not invited to make a presentation to the panel. Four meetings is difficult for all these issues to be discussed, to get public input, for them – for the task force members to become more educated in the electoral process in Florida. So it is a rush job. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Former Secretary of State and task force co-chair Jim Smith agreed the group needed more time. JIM SMITH: Realize we've got a March 1 reporting date. We only had about I think eight weeks for this task force to exist and we will have a number of areas that we are going to recommend need more study, and I'm confident the legislature is going to do that on a long term basis. Making recommendations BETTY ANN BOWSER: After finishing its business, the task force has indicated it will make four recommendations to the governor and the legislature: that new voting machines be leased on a short term basis, until a more permanent long term technology can be found; that Floridians get more voter education; that more money be put into training precinct workers; and create an online voter registration database. WOMAN: The purpose of my comment just now is to ask the task force to please not close the door to touch screen technology voting in Florida. BETTY ANN BOWSER: During the four hearings, a lot of time was spent debating what kind of voting machines should replace the antiquated punch card system that caused so many problems. This is the voting machine the task force indicates it has settled on. It’s called an optical scan. Voters fill in an oval on a paper ballot – then put the piece of paper in a machine at the precinct that optically scans it to count the votes. The machine can be set to reject a ballot when the voter marks two candidates for the same office…and can be set to let voters know when they have not voted for any candidate. " ………………………………………*********……………………………… BETTY ANN BOWSER: Co-Chairman Smith believes the optical scan system can be leased in time for next year’s statewide governor’s race and will go far to restore voter confidence. JIM SMITH: I think we need to be careful; we need to make sure that what we do with technology...to know that it works. You know, people are going to be distrustful I think for many election cycles. We need to give our supervisors the opportunity to look at whatever I think is recommended to ensure the legislature before they enact something into law that it really is going to work so that people don't continue to be frustrated. BETTY ANN BOWSER: But not one of the election supervisors in South Florida, where most of the problems were, think the optical scan is a good idea. DAVID LEAHY: Optical scan is also difficult for large counties to use. We have multiple languages here. We print every ballot in Spanish, English and some ballots in Creole -- difficult for optical scan to deal with three languages. My ballot is so long in this county that in some instances I will not hand a voter just one paper ballot – maybe front and back -- but two ballots. And that will confuse some voters." ……………………………..***************………………………… BETTY ANN BOWSER: Leahy and other South Florida election supervisors like the touch screen system; with it, the voter simply touches the screen to select which candidate to vote for. It will not allow people to vote for two candidates for the same office and will tell them when they have not voted for any candidate. But the touch screen system is expensive. Just to put it in Miami Dade alone would cost an estimated 32 million dollars. And the governor has already indicated there is only 30 million dollars in his next budget for election reform statewide. The task force made no recommendations on what to do about voting irregularities in predominantly black precincts...what to do about absentee or provisional ballots or how to restore voting rights to convicted felons who have served their time. …………………………………***********………………….. BETTY ANN BOWSER: At the hearing in Southern Florida last week, Senator Daryl Jones made a plea to tackle those issues. SEN. DARYL JONES: The fear that I had in coming on this task force was that we were going to deal with only one side of this issue -- two sides to this issue as I see it, the people who went to the polls and voted whose votes were counted, technology solves that problem for the most part. The other side of the issue are the people who went to the polls who were valid registered voters but who were not permitted to vote; that is a problem that we have to address. We cannot let this task force go beyond -- go past this process without attempting to deal with that side of the issue as well. Further investigation BETTY ANN BOWSER: The task force will ask the legislature to investigate these issues further. In spite of the hearings, there remains widespread distrust in the African-American community where thousands of people have complained they were not allowed to vote or their votes were later thrown out. After the election, there were angry demonstrations. The NAACP filed a class action lawsuit asking a federal judge to order the state and county election officials to upgrade voting equipment, to improve voter registration procedures, and better educate precinct workers. BISHOP VICTOR T. CURRY: My question to you – those of you who are listening – number one, you’ve got – you’ve got Katharine Harris, who is like at the forefront of this entire debacle of the election; you’ve got Jeb Bush’s brother benefited from it. Now, they’re calling the shots. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Critics, like Bishop Victor T. Curry, say Governor Bush is more interested in getting re-elected than in real election reform. Curry runs a religious-based radio station in Miami and is pastor of one of the largest African-American congregations in South Florida. BISHOP VICTOR T. CURRY: All of a sudden now he's real patriotic and he wants every vote to count? Of course not. I mean they're playing games with us and right now I'm just not buying that loaf of bread. It has too much mold on it. And until they allocate the money and put the system in place, because I guarantee you even if they allocate the money, they'll tell us that it won't be in place until after 2002 because they’ve got to get him four more years. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Governor Bush's press office turned down our requests for an on-camera interview, citing his busy schedule and saying he would have no comment on the task force until its work is done. But one of the states leading Republicans, Speaker of the House Tom Feeny, promised the legislature will undertake real reform and he defended the Governor REP. TOM FEENY:" I don't think anybody is more concerned about the integrity of the ballot box in Florida than Governor Bush. I think he takes it as a personal responsibility………..". ………………………………….*******………………………………… Public pressure mounting BETTY ANN BOWSER: Task force member Jones does think public pressure will force the legislature to pass something. SEN. DARYL JONES: I think that with the eyes of the world watching you and with people being smart enough to know the difference between right and wrong that it will be difficult for this legislature to discuss those issues and come out with anything but a positive result. I believe that if that legislature decides to take any other action, that there will be heck to pay in the upcoming election. And people will understand who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. ……………………………..****************………………………… BETTY ANN BOWSER: The task force will give its recommendations to the Governor and Florida legislature on March 1st. From there, the legislature has until the end of April to hammer out a reform package. The tight deadline is to give enough time for election supervisors in Florida's 67 counties to implement the reform package for the upcoming gubernatorial primary in the fall of 2002. pbs.org Copyright © 2001 MacNeil-Lehrer Productions.

To: ecommerceman who wrote (1860)	2/24/2001 10:04:27 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 93284

The press corps, happy at last But why, when they've got the Clintons dead to rights, are they fudging the facts? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Eric Boehlert From Salon February 23, 2001 Feb. 23, 2001 \| After eight years of pursuit, the press seems to be inflicting real damage on former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary. Particularly in light of the shady Hugh Rodham pardon-for-cash revelations, the Clintons, for now, seem caught dead to rights, without a coherent defense, without willing defenders and without a visible escape route. It could be the press' shining moment. A time to report the facts, stand aside and say I told you so. But the political press is rarely at its best during a feeding frenzy. It tends to get overly creative or unnecessarily sloppy. Perhaps it's just exhaustion. Writing and talking about the same white collar pardon for four, going on five, straight weeks would test any journalist's mettle. Especially since everyone is in heated agreement; the Rich pardon was a mistake. At least the last time there was wall-to-wall political news coverage, like during the Florida recount and impeachment proceedings, two sides were squared off against one another. Instead, the media's national dialogue quickly morphed into an echo chamber. Maybe that's why perspective has often been in short supply. This week, MSNBC host Chris Matthews wondered out loud (does he wonder any other way?) why former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had not stepped forward and "given a speech" about his role in lobbying for the Rich pardon. Perhaps Barak has been otherwise occupied, having just been voted out of office and contemplating whether to accept a Cabinet position in the new coalition government that is facing escalating Middle East terrorism. Maybe that's why Barak hasn't "given a speech" about the Rich pardon. For syndicated columnist Steve Roberts, the pardon episode simply reaffirmed old suspicions about Clinton. "I think that this is one more example of Bill Clinton saying, 'I'm not responsible for my actions,'" he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The timing of Roberts' comment was curious, considering that very same day Clinton's op-ed piece addressing the pardon controversy appeared in the New York Times. It read in part, "I made [the decision] on the merits as I saw them, and I take full responsibility for it." Maybe the feeding frenzy is the reason why Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly calls Clinton a liar for not disclosing that two tax attorneys who reviewed Rich's case were also paid by Rich. According to Kelly, when someone fails to disclose a fact, any fact he deems worthy, they're guilty of a "contextual" lie. Maybe that's why journalist James Stewart, who wrote a book on Whitewater, floated a what-if thesis in the Wall Street Journal op-ed page that Hillary played a crucial role in the Rich pardon. Stewart's proof? He has none. Although at one point he speculates about a possible fundraising quid pro quo between Hillary and Denise Rich. Stewart's proof? He has none. (And he wonders why Whitewater was never solved?) Maybe that's why journalists have portrayed Clinton's going around the Rich prosecutors as such a novelty. According to Blitzer, "One of the things that has outraged a lot of people was the way President Clinton went about this pardon of Marc Rich was the fact that he really only heard from one side of the case." Perhaps journalists ought to get in touch with Jim Brosnahan. In 1992 he was hired to prosecute former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger for crimes connected to Iran-Contra. Two weeks before Brosnahan was set to begin Weinberger's trial, Presiden tBUSH pardoned Weinberger. "I heard about the pardon on the news," Brosnahan tells Salon. "They had meetings with defense lawyers in Weinberger's case, but at no time did President Bush or his counsel, Boyden Gray, consult with me about whether this was suitable for a pardon, or not suitable." Journalists could also revisit pardons Ronald REAGAN gave in March, 1981, clearing two FBI agents who had been convicted of authorizing agents to illegally break into the homes of friends and relatives of radical anti-war fugitives from the Vietnam era. The pair were convicted in November, 1980 Their pardon requests were never reviewed by the Justice Department. "Nobody spoke to me about it," John W. Nields Jr., the chief prosecutor, told the New York Times in 1981. "I would warrant that whoever is responsible for the pardons did not read the record of the trial and did not know the facts of the case." Maybe that's why the term "quid pro quo" has been so quickly adopted to characterize political donations and a possible link to the pardon. For instance, on Sunday the New York Times detailed the central contributions Denise Rich made to the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark.: "$250,000 in 1998; $100,000 in 1999; and $100,000 in 2000." The emphasis was on the 2000 contribution because that was "the year that a lobbying campaign to win a presidential pardon for Mr. Rich intensified ." Readers were left with the impression the lobbying effort was a year long one, which is puzzling because according to the New York Times' own reporting the "lobbying campaign" for the pardon began only in November 2000, and occupied just six weeks of "the year." The article also failed to pinpoint when Denise Rich's final payment to the library occurred. If the check arrived in Little Rock last November for instance, or better yet, in December during the height of the pardon lobbying campaign, then the quid pro quo argument would be bolstered. On Sunday, the Times offered no further timeline details. Yet one week earlier the paper was more precise, reporting that Rich's final $100,000 library donation was given in MAY of 2000. Meanwhile, the paper, like most, had previously reported that Denise Rich was recruited into the pardon effort by her husband's attorney. So according to the New York Times' own reporting -- although spread out over several articles in separate weeks -- Denise Rich gave $100,000 to the Clinton Library in MAY 2000, then had to be recruited to help the pardon effort, which was not even undertaken until NOVEMBER 2000. Did Denise Rich's contribution affect the president's decision to grant a pardon? Possibly. Will investigators one day uncover "Dear Bill" quid pro quo notes from Denise? Perhaps, who knows? But the public record to date does not support a "quid pro quo" arrangement. The media's other central question for Denise Rich: Where did a moderately successful songwriter get $1.5 million to donate to the Democrats? A fair question for most. Yet does a woman who owns a $10 million apartment in New York, a $5 million mansion in Aspen, who sued her husband for a $500 million divorce (the final settlement was never made public) and who oversees a $60 million trust fund for her children really need to have money wired from overseas in order to write six-figure checks? The press prefers not to dwell on that part of the story. - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon. salon.com