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

To: jlallen who wrote (17418)	12/2/2002 11:47:00 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 93284

Thank goodness for the Republican leadership of NYC.... December 2, 2002, 10:32 AM EST NEW YORK -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation Monday raising property taxes by 18.5 percent, the largest property tax hike in the cash-strapped city's history. The tax increase was undertaken to bridge a $1.1 billion budget gap in the current fiscal year, and to reduce the size of a projected $6.4 billion deficit for next fiscal year, which begins July 1. The tax hike will bring in an extra $837 million in the current fiscal year alone. "By increasing the real property tax and significantly reducing expenditures, the city moves another step closer to its economic recovery," Bloomberg said. The city's grim economic situation is due in large part to the national recession and the downturn on Wall Street, the city's traditional economic engine. New York's fiscal troubles also were exacerbated by the World Trade Center attack, tax cuts and spending increases enacted during the administration of Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani. The mayor, who had originally called for a 25 percent tax hike, thanked City Council members for approving the increase. "It is a very difficult thing to face the public and say we have a problem and we have the courage to stand up and solve that problem," he said. The new rate will be reflected in property tax bills going out this week. Council Speaker Gifford Miller said the increase came after the city made $3.5 billion in budget cuts, adding, "it's important to be aggressive about getting on top of our fiscal problems." Under the new property tax, the annual tax for a single-family home worth $245,000, currently $1,853, would go up this fiscal year by $171 to $2,024. It would go up next fiscal year to $2,196. Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

To: jlallen who wrote (17418)	12/2/2002 11:58:51 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 93284

This one is pretty funny...Tom DeLay was/is one of the worst offenders of pork barrel spending [remember those millions to fix up a private airport].... G.O.P.'s 'Cardinals of Spending' Are Reined In by House Leaders By DAVID FIRESTONE WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — It was several steps short of a full-blown purge, but a recent move by the strong-minded Republican House leadership to consolidate its power over the next Congress still packed enough force to jolt Capitol Hill. In a display of discipline applauded by some of the most conservative House members, the leadership pulled in the reins on the 13 Republican members who control most discretionary federal spending, a group of subcommittee chairmen so powerful they are known as the Cardinals. From now on, House leaders said, the chairmen will be selected not by seniority but by J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, and Tom DeLay, the majority leader, and their close circle, who are likely to use their new leverage to restrain spending. The message was unmistakable: Congressional appropriators will have to follow the tune piped by the leadership, in close consultation with the White House. Those Republicans who march to their own beat in doling out spending favors or preserving programs without authorization could find themselves out of a job. "These subcommittee chairmen are as powerful or in some cases more powerful than regular committee chairmen," said John Feehery, Mr. Hastert's spokesman. "The speaker's action reflects the fact that those chairmen are now going to have to be accountable." The Cardinals of the Appropriations Committee are generally not well known to the public, but their supreme authority over the 13 spending bills that provide the government with tax money has made them a magnet for lobbyists and campaign cash, and has made every other member who needs a project back home beholden to them. Each year, chairmen like Jerry Lewis of California, who leads the defense subcommittee; Joe Skeen of New Mexico, who leads the interior subcommittee; and Henry Bonilla of Texas, who leads the agriculture subcommittee, pick and choose from among thousands of spending requests. Their concentrated power has always produced tensions with Congressional leaders and the executive branch. Several top Republican aides said privately that some subcommittee chairmen had become so enchanted with their unchecked ability to spend billions of federal dollars in their districts and those of friends — a practice formally known as earmarking and commonly called pork-barreling — that they had strayed from the ideological reservation. Mr. Hastert has not forgotten that four of the chairmen defied the leadership a year ago and voted against giving President Bush the ability to negotiate free-trade agreements. And appropriations staff members are considered insufficiently deferential to the wishes of the leadership......... nytimes.com --------------- I liked the last paragraph posted. Your GOP representitives haven't been taking their orders. Goodness, your party needs lackeys. Dennis and Tom ought to just send your GOP representatives home and keep a stack of pre-signed votes...with the subject blank of course. The GOP way. jttmab

To: jlallen who wrote (17418)	12/2/2002 12:11:33 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Looks like some conservatives are finding GW to be a verbal wuss...... WASHINGTON President George W. Bush finds himself in a rare disagreement with conservatives in his party over his efforts to portray Islam as a peaceful religion that is not responsible for anti-American terrorism. . In a score of speeches since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the president has called for tolerance of Muslims, describing Islam as "a faith based upon peace and love and compassion" and a religion committed to "morality and learning and tolerance." . But a large number of foreign policy hawks - some of them with advisory roles in the Bush administration - have joined religious conservatives in taking issue with Bush's characterizations. . While most of them understand the political rationale for Bush's statements - there's no benefit in antagonizing Muslim allies such as Pakistan and Indonesia - they say the claim is dishonest and destined to fail. . For Bush and for the country, the outcome of the argument is crucial. The administration, and moderate governments in Arab and Muslim countries, are struggling to prevent the war on terrorism from becoming what Osama bin Laden wants: a war of civilization between the Judeo-Christian West and a resentful and impoverished Muslim world. . Calling Islam a peaceful religion "is an increasingly hard argument to make," said Kenneth Adelman, a former official in President Ronald Reagan's administration who serves on the Bush Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. "The more you examine the religion, the more militaristic it seems. After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus." . Another member of the Pentagon advisory board, Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal editorial page arguing that the enemy of the United States is not terrorism "but militant Islam." ........... iht.com

To: jlallen who wrote (17418)	12/2/2002 12:25:35 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

This is one of the things that frustrates me about you "conservatives". We had a program from prior Administrations [that's plural] to suck up some of the excess weapons grade material from places like Russia and the Ukraine. Certain conservatives [named by Sen Lugar] were obstacles. When Dubya took office, he put a stop to the program altogether and only after 9/11 did Bush even thinks of re-starting the program and we still have conservatives in Congress that are blocking it. ------------------ WASHINGTON -- Eleven years after the United States committed to helping the former Soviet Union secure and destroy its weapons of mass destruction, and 14 months after President Bush made it a priority to keep them out of terrorists' hands, vast and lethal stockpiles remain ripe for plucking, officials and nonproliferation experts say. Although Bush and other world leaders have become ardent about the need to secure stockpiles and crack down on proliferators, implementation is snarled in bureaucratic and political wrangling in the U.S., Russia, Europe and Japan, arms control experts say. As a result, even while the U.S. talks about a dangerous new arms race — between terrorists determined to get weapons of mass destruction and governments desperate to stop them — progress on taking deadly material out of circulation is slow and sometimes stymied. And the proliferation threat, U.S. officials say, is getting worse, not better. Potential buyers are believed to include Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, who has said it is the duty of Muslims to acquire nuclear weapons. Last week's terrorist attacks in Kenya underscore the proliferation threat from Soviet-made weapons. The shoulder-fired missile that just missed an Israeli passenger jet appears to have been Soviet-made, and Al Qaeda is believed to have fired several more surface-to-air missiles at American targets in Afghanistan and the Middle East in the last several years. If U.S. lawmakers of both major parties are frustrated by the delays in securing or destroying the former Soviet Union's arsenals, arms control advocates are apoplectic. Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to Washington this spring to urge Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to move faster, before disaster strikes. Even billionaire investor Warren Buffett has weighed in, paying millions to do what the U.S. government cannot. A small number of conservative House members and Pentagon hard-liners who are suspicious of Russian intentions have put key nonproliferation programs in handcuffs. The issue has caused divisions among Republicans in Congress. During recent Senate hearings, the gentlemanly Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), in a rare breach of protocol, began to name names. He blamed California Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine and Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania for blocking funding of anti-proliferation programs. Hunter did not return repeated telephone calls to his office. Weldon, in a telephone interview, insisted that he supports nonproliferation programs and would be willing to spend more if the money did not come out of the U.S. defense budget. But sources say that behind closed doors, Weldon, Hunter and other conservatives on the House Armed Services Committee have for years sabotaged the programs by attaching numerous conditions that are all but impossible for the Russians to fulfill. Opponents say every dollar given to the Russians to destroy obsolete weapons is a dollar freed up for them to use for other military spending. They also have raised concerns that disarmament funds are used to solve environmental problems that are not security threats........... latimes.com