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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (1991)	5/12/2003 9:37:40 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 10965

Convention Timing Creates Challenges for Bush Monday, May 12, 2003 LOS ANGELES — The Republican Party (search) is pushing the envelope — or at least, the calendar — by scheduling its 2004 national convention later than usual, forcing states to figure out ways to prevent President Bush from being left off the ballot in November. In California, Bush may be forced to become a write-in candidate because of a rule that says he must be certified 68 days before Election Day, according to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley (search). In 2004, the election will be held on Nov. 2. Sixty-eight days before that would be August 26. But the four-day Republican National Convention is not set to begin until Aug. 30. The president won't get the official nomination until the end of the convention, meaning if California's ballots include Bush, the state would be illegally jumping the gun on his nomination. California officials are wrestling with the dilemma. "Our various jurisdictions throughout California have to get those ballots ready and have to get those ballots ready in more languages than in any other state of the country," Shelley said. "We want them to be printed on time. We want there to be no question about people having the ability to go vote," said Mindy Tucker (search), special council for the California Republican Party. Some Democrats are accusing the GOP of picking the late convention date and the New York City setting to ensure the Sept. 11 attacks are fresh in voters' minds. Republican officials say that is not true. "We decided to have the convention after the Olympics in August. It was the only time that made good sense," Tucker said. A number of states have faced the same date dilemma. Indiana and Idaho have changed their laws to get Bush on their 2004 ballots. Alabama and the District of Columbia are looking into changing their deadlines. But California, with its 15 million voters, is still the electoral brass ring. While California's government is completely controlled by Democrats, the state's chief elections official is promising to work with the GOP to resolve the matter. "I very much respect the president and I respect the ability and the opportunity for him to be on the ballot. And I'm going to make sure that it happens as a Democratic secretary of state," Shelley said. "I don't think this is really a problem. I think, you know, in the end everybody is going to want to have the election to be fair," Tucker said. URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86581,00.html

To: John Carragher who wrote (1991)	5/12/2003 9:39:00 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 10965

Bloomberg to New York: Drop Dead The mayor tries to destroy the city in order to save it. BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY Monday, May 12, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT Michael Bloomberg seems to think he's mayor of Ben Tre. That's the Vietnamese city etched into history by the quote "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." The original quote was attributed to an anonymous army major in an AP dispatch by Peter Arnett of more recent notoriety. But whatever its provenance, it describes Mayor Bloomberg's answer to the New York financial crisis--a slew of tax increases certain to speed the downward spiral. The state legislature is about to give him what he wants, precluding meaningful recovery from the September 11 attacks coming atop the debacle of the city's major industry, finance. The mayor and city council have already increased property taxes by 18.5%. He also instigated a cigarette tax increase of $1.50. Water fees and transit fares are going up, and parking meters now apply on Sundays. In his deal with the legislature, the combined state and local sales tax will go to 8.625%. An income-tax surcharge will be applied on taxable incomes of more than $100,000. With the state taking a similar approach to its own budget problems, the top marginal rate for state and local income taxes will reach 12.5%. Even without the pending increases, the Tax Foundation calculated that on average New York State residents spent 12.0% of their incomes on state and local taxes, second only to Olympia Snowe's Maine at 12.2%. The figure was 9.7% nationally, 10.9% in Connecticut, 9.8% in New Jersey and 9.1% in Pennsylvania. Mayor Bloomberg says the taxes are necessary because budget cuts would ravage essential services. His 2004 budget plan projects spending of $44.5 billion, an "austere" increase of 2.0%. This depends on union concessions not yet reached, and on laying off some 4,500 employees. The mayor's "doomsday" contingency budget would lay off an additional 10,000. New York City counts 296,598 public employees; doomsday would be a 5% reduction. The city's work force is more than 25% of the 1.2 million employees it takes to run the U.S. federal government, exclusive of the defense department and postal service. Over the last two years, private-sector employment in the city has already absorbed a 4.7% loss; the public sector dipped 0.25%. The state comptroller reported in April that the city accounted for half of the 293,000 jobs the state lost in that time period. Heaping on new taxes can only accelerate the loss. Businesses and residents have been fleeing New York for years. A decline in manufacturing has been offset by growth in financial services, but with modern communications these firms are not tied to any one location. And of course, the upper-income individuals targeted by the income tax surcharge are the most mobile taxpayers. These realities are propounded in detail by the Manhattan Institute, one of the nation's premier think tanks and an important source of advice for initiatives such as the Giuliani crime program. At a campaign lunch at the institute, Mayor Bloomberg said he didn't mind paying high taxes because life in New York is a luxury good. After his hosts explained the life of a housewife in Queens, he did give a few speeches on fiscal responsibility, but since then his message has been mixed, sometimes comparing the city and federal work forces, and sometimes saying he could find no corruption or waste in the budget. His signal success as mayor, establishing control over the sprawling board of education, seems to be slipping away as the supposed phonics program turns out not to be a phonics program. So Mr. Bloomberg has lost the precious opportunity to use the present crisis to address structural issues in the city economy, such as the power of the municipal unions and its unique municipal welfare state (20% of the population is on Medicaid, for example). Instead he will be remembered as the mayor who banned smoking in bars, which is to say, as a political dilettante. The rest of the nation has pledged $40 billion to help the city recover after the September 11 attacks, and has been fascinated by Daniel Libeskind's winning design for the site. But a downward spiral in the New York economy would mean little of the design will ever be built. It ultimately depends on demand for office space in downtown Manhattan, where the vacancy rate already stands at more than 13%. Financial firms remaining in the city but diversifying to other locations, including this newspaper's publisher Dow Jones, have millions of square feet of sublet space in the World Financial Center, and millions more in other Class A buildings. This does not count space, such as the shrouded Deutsche Bank building, that are currently off the market. The landmark 1,776-foot tower may indeed be built, essentially at taxpayer expense by political fiat of New York Governor George Pataki. He wants to lay a cornerstone during the Republican convention in 2004 and top out structural steel by the end of his term in 2006. There will be revenue from a TV tower, and the governor promises to move state offices into the 60 stories of office space. But other tenants will be needed. The governor is also promising to veto the pending state tax increases, and possibly the city ones as well. But both passed the legislature by veto-proof margins, and Pataki cynics doubt he'll make a serious effort to reverse this. Having the measures passed over his veto relieves him of responsibility and allows him to posture as a fiscal conservative. If the governor is serious, he will shortly have a second chance to spark a New York revival. The city's malignant rent-control laws expire June 15, and vetoing an extension of them could directly spark recovery. Thanks largely to these World War II laws, the city is perpetually starved for housing, and repealing them would be the first step in opening a vast untapped market and unleashing a construction boom. Mr. Bartley is editor emeritus of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com. URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=110003482

To: John Carragher who wrote (1991)	5/12/2003 9:42:21 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Bush to Take Tax Cuts Message to States Monday, May 12, 2003 SANTA FE, N.M. — President Bush (search) is trying to parlay popularity from military successes in Iraq into momentum for hefty tax cuts he believes will stimulate the economy -- and heighten his chances for re-election. Beginning a two-day swing through three states to promote his tax-cut proposal, the president was meeting Monday with small-business owners near Albuquerque. Then he was on to Omaha, Neb., to speak to workers at a plastics plant. On Tuesday, he'll stop in Indianapolis and then view tornado damage in Missouri before returning to the White House. Bush's trip is timed to pressure moderate Republicans and Democrats to back a larger tax-relief package in the Senate, which was beginning debate Monday on a bill that calls for $350 billion in cuts through 2013. The Senate version is less than half of what Bush originally sought. The president now says he at least wants the version passed in the House that would cut taxes by $550 billion. Senate Republicans say large tax cuts are needed to jump-start the economy, which Treasury Secretary John Snow (search) on Sunday talk shows described as "soggy." The administration says the tax cuts will create 1 million jobs by the end of 2004. Democrats and many economists say large tax cuts would fuel the growth of federal deficits -- on track to near $300 billion this year, a record in raw dollars although not as a percentage of the overall economy. Trying to revitalize America's economic engine with large tax cuts is a "high-risk" political move for Bush, said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "Come the election, he's responsible for the economy. If it's better, he wants to be able to say he made it better." If it's not, the administration could blame Congress for not assenting to the higher tax cuts he wanted, but Sabato said that won't wash. "If the economy is bad, voters blame it on the incumbent," he said. Bush's stop in Bernalillo, N.M., outside Albuquerque, to hold a round-table discussion with local businessmen and make a speech about his economic stimulus package at a family-owned manufacturing company, MCT Industries, follows a leisurely weekend of golf in Santa Fe. The president stayed at the home of Democratic friend Roland Betts, a Yale classmate who was a part-owner with Bush in the Texas Rangers baseball team. Politically, New Mexico is a choice place for Bush to visit. In 2000, he lost the state to Democrat Al Gore (search) by just 366 votes. If Bush's appearances in New Mexico were an effort to persuade Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to vote for larger tax cuts, he's wasting his time, says Bingaman spokeswoman Jude McCartin. "The president hasn't even called Bingaman," she said. "He didn't need to go to the trouble of visiting the state. He could have given him a call." Bingaman, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, voted last week against the tax package the full Senate is debating this week. Bush's second stop of the day, the Airlite Plastics Co., a family owned business in Omaha, is more like the detour the president made to Arkansas earlier this month to put pressure on Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, also a Finance Committee member. Her vote was key in the committee's passage of the Senate tax bill, which was approved by a near party-line 12-9 vote with Lincoln joining the committee's 11 Republicans. The White House now is going after Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., whose vote on any amendment to enlarge tax cuts could help the White House get closer to the $550 billion Bush says will do enough to stimulate the economy. Nelson has been cooperating with the White House to pass a significant tax cut, Nelson's spokesman, David DiMartino, said Sunday. "Nelson is supportive of it being higher than $350 billion, but with him it doesn't matter the size as much as the content," DiMartino said. Nelson wants states to receive help paying Medicaid costs and block grants for social services. "He may be the deciding vote on a couple issues," DiMartino said. The president's message in Omaha will be on his plan to prime the economy and create jobs, but employees at the Airlite plant have been told they'll need to make up the time if they take off for the president's visit. Airlite President and Chief Executive Brad Crosby said workers will be given one of four options during the visit: work their regular shift in an adjacent plant not visited by the president, take the day off and make up the work on Saturday, use a vacation day, or take an unpaid day off. URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86596,00.html