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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (35667)	8/1/2002 7:17:01 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Easy, Scott, we have a long way to go. I read the November elections as a tossup right now. At least that's what the national opinion polls say. To know better, one would have to take a careful look at the races, district by district, and state by state. Take Texas, for instance. Some talk that the Dem candidate to replace Phil Gramm is ahead. Which has everyone surprised. He has never run for state wide office, his only serious political work is as the just past Mayor of Dallas, and he's African American, running in a state that is not comfortable with blacks as state wide office holders. Plus he's running in a state in which the deep pockets of the oil industry always come into play fairly late in the game to get their candidate elected (whether Dem or Rep). So it's much too early to count this one in the Dem column, though a few are doing so. Bush, I'm afraid, is a surprisingly good politician, in the narrowest sense of that word. If he gets his crew working on getting the Senate back or keeping the House, it will be interesting to see the outcome. However, he may not for fear that a loss of either would diminish his reputation. And then there are the dumb Dems. However, one good note on that. Just watched the 6:30 CBS News here on the New York station. Just before it began, Torecelli, in a paid political ad, gave a perfectly crafted political speech. Aggressive counter attack after the Ethics committee charges, right degree of "my fate is in your hands" talk, "I'm ashamed of my own mistakes" talk, etc. Whatever else one says about T (and there is definitely much that is not good), he is one aggressive politician. Beats the heck out of Daschle and the rest of them. Whoa is this tirade off topic or what!!! Didn't mean to do this much.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (35667)	8/2/2002 9:01:32 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

The president could not have reassured anybody yesterday when he said he remained committed to making his fiscally disastrous 10-year tax cuts permanent. It seemed especially surreal to mention this, as he did, after saying that he would ask Congress to show some fiscal restraint. Compare the "fiscally disastrous" policies of Bush Jr. to the "ABSOLUTELY FISCALLY DEVASTING" policies of FDR during the depression. FDR put the government in incredible debt with his "pump priming" public spending. He took the US off the gold standard and devalued the US dollar by 60%. Well, it seemed to work to a limited extent, but we were still in depression until World War II broke out and created massive deficit spending (and inflation which was prevented through price controls). It was the marshalling of US industrial power, and the economic devastation of the rest of the world that set the stage for "Pax Americana". Sounds to me like Bush is following a similar policy except that he is reducing government expenditures in order to provide people and corporations more money to keep, which helps corporate profitability and hopefully encourages companies to hire again. He has permitted the US dollar to fall, and will likely permit it to fall even more, thus ending the subsidization of foreign economies through currency differentials. And he has a Fed leader who understands the mistakes made during the '29 market crash, and that low interest rates and increased liquidity are required to buffer economic shocks. And if Bush fails to accomplish this, he too can devalue the US dollar (figure the odds since the Japanese haven't yet devalued the yen) and spend his heart out with massive public works projects aimed at putting people to work, just as FDR once did. Personally, I would be all for some massive public works projects right NOW, since so much of our infrastructure is dilapidated and in desperate need of repair or replacement. Hawk