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

To: TigerPaw who wrote (286714)	8/14/2002 12:53:24 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

In fact, your are absolutely correct,when Clinton said he wanted to get back to the business of running the country, righwingers would not hear of it being far more interested in prurient details of Clinton's life.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (286714)	8/14/2002 12:53:52 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Oh Dear....looks like the Fed boyz are finally saying the gas prices that stripped this country of BILLIONS was manipulated......imagine that.....and many from a state called Texas. nytimes.com can't wait for the W tour to apologize to those in HOUSTON instead of Mississippi CC

To: TigerPaw who wrote (286714)	8/14/2002 1:03:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Dirty Dealings? Bush Is Shocked ... Shocked! His friends helped create corporate America's mess. By Robert Scheer Columnist The Los Angeles Times August 13, 2002 Last week, speaking in Mississippi near the corporate headquarters of the now bankrupt and disgraced WorldCom, President Bush consoled fired workers with his shopworn canard that the loss of their jobs was the result of "shady corporate practices" that deeply shocked him. This naivete, if not feigned, reflects an embarrassing stupidity about how he and his corporate buddies played the capitalism game during the last decade. Companies like WorldCom and Enron were not a natural manifestation of the free-market capitalism celebrated by the likes of Adam Smith. The corporate manipulators of the market that we are now seeing were precisely the enemy of the "invisible hand" celebrated in Smith's economics classic, "The Wealth of Nations"; they betrayed the solid post-Great Depression regulatory foundation designed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to prevent large corporations from subverting the integrity of the free market. The fervent deregulators of the last two decades were not interested in a truly free market in which profit is dictated by consumers choosing what they want to buy. On the contrary, although government interference in the economy was corporate America's most convenient scapegoat for its failures, this was also exactly what it wanted. Regulations that suited its purposes were just fine. Corporate America was very much against government action to protect the environment, consumers, the poor or even shareholders trying to read annual reports, but it had no compunction about buying legislative loopholes that the clumsiest of con artists could jump through. Without such loopholes, snake-oil salesmen would not have been able to transform Enron--a small energy company affected by logical legal restraints on utilities--into the dominant manipulator of the U.S. energy market before it became a flaming wreck. Similarly, WorldCom was only a minor player until the Telecommunications Act of 1996, pushed through Congress by Rep. Newt Gingrich and Sen. Trent Lott and signed into law with the enthusiastic support of corporation-friendly "New Democrat" President Clinton. At the behest of lobbyists for WorldCom--based in Lott's home state of Mississippi--the senator stuck in an amendment specifically designed to enable WorldCom to grab a huge chunk of the telephone market. At the time, WorldCom was lagging badly behind the big three long-distance carriers. Lott's legalese, however, turned this to the company's advantage by specifying that only companies--such as WorldCom--with 5% or less of the long-distance market could enter into joint marketing agreements with local phone service suppliers. The firm was thus free to buy MFS Communications, then the top alternative provider of local phone services, for $12.4 billion and became the first company to provide both local and long distance since deregulation forced the breakup of the Bell system. Lott was rewarded for his efforts with major contributions from WorldCom to him and other GOP politicians who had propelled him into the top leadership position in the Senate. WorldCom also granted a cool million to help underwrite the Trent Lott Leadership Institute, which presumably will train future politicians to comply with the wishes of corporate lobbyists. Thus was born the overreaching, out-of-control and fundamentally dishonest corporation that is now in bankruptcy after conceding false accounting of more than $7 billion. Bush condemns such irresponsibility without ever daring to examine its roots. Is he clueless, or is it that he just doesn't want to know? Bush was in Mississippi not just to console the WorldCommers but to help raise a quick half-million dollars for the campaign of Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering, the Republican candidate for reelection who "represents" many of the fired WorldCom workers. Pickering got that job after being an aide to Lott on the very telecommunications issues that favored WorldCom, which returned the favor with $80,000 in contributions to Pickering. When Bush said, "I met WorldCom employees who no longer have work, who are disillusioned like me and others about the corporate fraud which is taking place in our country," it might have provided comic relief if the president had turned to Pickering and Lott and asked them whether they were now sorry for creating this monster. Or maybe not; the risk is that they might have turned the question back on Bush in pointed reference to his own sordid history of business shenanigans. _____________________________ Robert Scheer writes a syndicated column. latimes.com

To: TigerPaw who wrote (286714)	8/14/2002 2:02:38 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

And none of it prevented 9/11 did it? What a joke. What a waste. Sickening all right. M Clinton proposes anti-terrorism plan January 22, 1999 Web posted at: 1:27 p.m. EDT (1327 GMT) Clinton Increases Anti-Terrorism Funding as Assisstance to Israel ©Dallas Morning News February 9, 1999 U.S. Quietly Upgrading Homeland Defense Plan $110 billion rise in military spending Clinton administration budget snubs social needs By Martin McLaughlin 4 February 1999 (To deflect blame. Typical of Slick. Pass the buck.) Politics: Former Clinton officials criticize Bush team on terrorism Copyright © 2002 AP Online THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For Immediate Release August 5, 1996 FACT SHEET AMERICAN SECURITY PRESIDENT CLINTON'S COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY TO FIGHT TERRORISM