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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (275697)	7/15/2002 6:31:08 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Karen, they are not thought leaps. They are simple logic reduction to the essential truths of equality. In today's engineering of products, the expression of the problems can require dozens of equations with dozens of unknowns. Simplifying the equations is what make American productivity possible. Technical problems have far more abstract logic rules and are far more complex than most political problems. Honesty, honor and integrity are trivial to quantify. Learn what Sacred Honor means and then use simple tests. Every correct judgement I make of others can be tested against. I will judge others as I will judge myself. I will make assumptions about others as I wish them to make assumptions about me.

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (275697)	7/15/2002 7:31:44 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 769670

Karen, this is an excellent article on comparitive logical association..... More slander York Times editorial page, maybe Bill Clinton did kill Vince Foster. Evidently President Bush is responsible for Enron because he is from Texas and -- it is insinuatingly noted -- so is Enron! If the left's physical proximity argument constitutes evidence, I take it back: There are boatloads of evidence that Clinton killed Foster. Indeed, the entire Republican Party is evidently responsible for various rich liberal "Friends of Bill" who now stand accused of insider trading, such as Martha Stewart and ImClone chief Sam Waksal. Republicans are responsible on the basis of the fact that liberals have spent 20 years calling Republicans "the party of the rich." Liberals are like the monkeys in Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" who explain: "We all say so, and so it must be true." Republicans are responsible for Clinton's pal Martha Stewart because liberals say so. Again, I note: If hysterical partisan insinuation constitutes proof, then we need to reopen the Vince Foster files. Liberals have no real arguments -- none that the American people would find palatable, anyway. So in lieu of actual argument, they accuse conservatives of every vice that pops into their heads, including their own mind-boggling elitism. The Democratic Party has basically remade itself into a party of left-wing academics and Park Avenue matrons. And then they attack Republicans for being elitist snobs protecting "corporate interests." It's bad enough that these rich snobs want to raise our taxes all the time. Having to endure Malibu Marie Antoinettes calling Republicans "the rich" is more than working Americans should have to bear. Howell Raines, the former editorial page editor of The New York Times, described Ronald Reagan as "making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white and healthy." Striking a manly tone, Raines woefully noted that this "saddened" him. The idea that Reagan was a privileged overlord swatting down working-class wretches with his polo mallet is more delusional than some of Barbra Streisand's wackier ideas. This was the same Reagan who cut taxes, bombed Libya, stood up to the left's beloved Soviet Union, built up the military and restored pride in America. (Yes, that Reagan.) Who were these initiatives supposed to appeal to? Martha Stewart? I think not. Average, middle-class Americans voted Reagan back into office for a second term in the largest electoral landslide in history. But 20 years of propaganda about Republicans being the party of "the rich" has created pre-programmed reflexes. The fact that propaganda works is demonstrated by the fact that people don't laugh out loud when Democrats try to pin corporate malfeasance on the Republican Party. Liberals also have many important and substantive backup arguments such as that they hate Republicans. In December 1998, the New York Post described talk show host Phil Donahue exploding with rage at a Four Seasons party (where the Party of the People mingles) screaming about how he hated Republicans. His wife, Marlo Thomas, apologetically explained: "I don't know why he's saying that. He doesn't really hate all Republicans." (He probably likes Jim Jeffords, for example.) In the alternative, liberals thoughtfully explain that Republicans are bigots. In a 1995 interview, Clinton's Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders called Sen. Jesse Helms a "typical white, Southern male bigot." It's a little difficult to imagine a Republican presidential appointee referring to any congressman as being a "typical" member of his race without inciting a blizzard of protest. But this is standard political debate for the left. It is simply not possible to disagree with liberals about constitutional interpretation, guns, abortion, immigration, racial quotas -- or really, anything. Serious political dialogue becomes the exception when political discourse is littered with ad hominem land mines. By contrast, when Republicans directly quote their opponents, all hell breaks loose. A Republican actually quoting a Democrat verbatim constitutes a McCarthyite witch hunt. Thus, for example, in 1988 George Bush (41) pulled the old quote-your-opponent trick on Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. During the primaries, Dukakis had said: "I am a strong liberal Democrat. I am a card-carrying member of ACLU." Those were Dukakis' precise words. Bush quoted him during one of the debates. Ten years later, liberals were still fuming about Bush's dirty rat trick of quoting Dukakis. On July 4, 1999, CNN reporter Bruce Morton cited Bush's low blow, saying it was a "echo of the late Joseph McCarthy's card-carrying member of the Communist Party, but it seemed to help Bush." They'll stoop to anything to win, those Republicans, even quote their opponents. Serious political debate evidently consists of randomly accusing your opponent of being a hateful bigot or having some vague ephemeral association with corporate crooks. Those are good arguments. jewishworldreview.com

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (275697)	7/16/2002 1:36:00 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 769670

Steps to Wealth By PAUL KRUGMAN The New York Times Editorial / Op-Ed July 16, 2002 Why are George W. Bush's business dealings relevant? Given that his aides tout his "character," the public deserves to know that he became wealthy entirely through patronage and connections. But more important, those dealings foreshadow many characteristics of his administration, such as its obsession with secrecy and its intermingling of public policy with private interest. As the unanswered questions about Harken Energy pile up — what's in those documents the White House won't release? Who was the mystery buyer of Mr. Bush's stock? — let me now turn to how Mr. Bush, who got by with a lot of help from his friends in the 1980's, became wealthy in the 1990's. He invested $606,000 as part of a syndicate that bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989 — borrowing the money and repaying the loan with the proceeds from his Harken stock sale — then saw that grow to $14.9 million over the next nine years. What made his investment so successful? First, the city of Arlington built the Rangers a new stadium, on terms extraordinarily favorable to Mr. Bush's syndicate, eventually subsidizing Mr. Bush and his partners with more than $150 million in taxpayer money. The city was obliged to raise taxes substantially as a result. Soon after the stadium was completed, Mr. Bush ran successfully for governor of Texas on the theme of self-reliance rather than reliance on government. Mr. Bush's syndicate eventually resold the Rangers, for triple the original price. The price-is-no-object buyer was a deal maker named Tom Hicks. And thereby hangs a tale. The University of Texas, though a state institution, has a large endowment. As governor, Mr. Bush changed the rules governing that endowment, eliminating the requirements to disclose "all details concerning the investments made and income realized," and to have "a well-recognized performance measurement service" assess investment results. That is, government officials no longer had to tell the public what they were doing with public money, or allow an independent performance assessment. Then Mr. Bush "privatized" (his term) $9 billion in university assets, transferring them to a nonprofit corporation known as Utimco that could make investment decisions behind closed doors. In effect, the money was put under the control of Utimco's chairman: Tom Hicks. Under his direction, at least $450 million was invested in private funds managed by Mr. Hicks's business associates and major Republican Party donors. The managers of such funds earn big fees. Due to Mr. Bush's change in the rules, these investments were hidden from public view; an employee of Utimco who alerted university auditors was summarily fired. Even now, it's hard to find out how these investments turned out, though they seem to have done quite badly. Eventually Mr. Hicks's investment style created a public furor, and he did not seek to retain his position at Utimco when his term expired in 1999. One last item: Mr. Bush, who put up 1.8 percent of the Rangers syndicate's original capital, was entitled to about $2.3 million from that sale. But his partners voluntarily gave up some of their share, and Mr. Bush received 12 percent of the proceeds — $14.9 million. So a group of businessmen, presumably with some interest in government decisions, gave a sitting governor a $12 million gift. Shouldn't that have raised a few eyebrows? All of this showed Mr. Bush's characteristic style. First there's the penchant for secrecy, for denying the public information about decisions taken in its name. So it's no surprise that the proposed Homeland Security Department will be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and from whistle-blower protection. Then there's the conversion of institutions traditionally insulated from politics into tools for rewarding your friends and reinforcing your political control. Yesterday the University of Texas endowment; today the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; tomorrow those Social Security "personal accounts"? Finally, there's the indifference to conflicts of interest. In Austin, Governor Bush saw nothing wrong with profiting personally from a deal with Tom Hicks; in Washington, he sees nothing wrong with having the Pentagon sign what look like sweetheart deals with Dick Cheney's former employer Halliburton. So the style of a future Bush administration was easily predictable, given Mr. Bush's career history. __________________________________________ Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics. nytimes.com