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

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (2107)	5/25/2003 9:46:08 PM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 10965

LOL! Hey Raybo....it must take a lot of effort to sound so positively nutty all the time, eh? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (2107)	5/28/2003 12:13:42 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Stating the Obvious ___________________________ By PAUL KRUGMAN Columnist The New York Times nytimes.com The lunatics are now in charge of the asylum." So wrote the normally staid Financial Times, traditionally the voice of solid British business opinion, when surveying last week's tax bill. Indeed, the legislation is doubly absurd: the gimmicks used to make an $800-billion-plus tax cut carry an official price tag of only $320 billion are a joke, yet the cost without the gimmicks is so large that the nation can't possibly afford it while keeping its other promises. But then maybe that's the point. The Financial Times suggests that "more extreme Republicans" actually want a fiscal train wreck: "Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programs, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalizing prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door." Good for The Financial Times. It seems that stating the obvious has now, finally, become respectable. It's no secret that right-wing ideologues want to abolish programs Americans take for granted. But not long ago, to suggest that the Bush administration's policies might actually be driven by those ideologues — that the administration was deliberately setting the country up for a fiscal crisis in which popular social programs could be sharply cut — was to be accused of spouting conspiracy theories. Yet by pushing through another huge tax cut in the face of record deficits, the administration clearly demonstrates either that it is completely feckless, or that it actually wants a fiscal crisis. (Or maybe both.) Here's one way to look at the situation: Although you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric, federal taxes are already historically low as a share of G.D.P. Once the new round of cuts takes effect, federal taxes will be lower than their average during the Eisenhower administration. How, then, can the government pay for Medicare and Medicaid — which didn't exist in the 1950's — and Social Security, which will become far more expensive as the population ages? (Defense spending has fallen compared with the economy, but not that much, and it's on the rise again.) The answer is that it can't. The government can borrow to make up the difference as long as investors remain in denial, unable to believe that the world's only superpower is turning into a banana republic. But at some point bond markets will balk — they won't lend money to a government, even that of the United States, if that government's debt is growing faster than its revenues and there is no plausible story about how the budget will eventually come under control. At that point, either taxes will go up again, or programs that have become fundamental to the American way of life will be gutted. We can be sure that the right will do whatever it takes to preserve the Bush tax cuts — right now the administration is even skimping on homeland security to save a few dollars here and there. But balancing the books without tax increases will require deep cuts where the money is: that is, in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. The pain of these benefit cuts will fall on the middle class and the poor, while the tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the rich. For example, the tax cut passed last week will raise the after-tax income of most people by less than 1 percent — not nearly enough to compensate them for the loss of benefits. But people with incomes over $1 million per year will, on average, see their after-tax income rise 4.4 percent. The Financial Times suggests this is deliberate (and I agree): "For them," it says of those extreme Republicans, "undermining the multilateral international order is not enough; long-held views on income distribution also require radical revision." How can this be happening? Most people, even most liberals, are complacent. They don't realize how dire the fiscal outlook really is, and they don't read what the ideologues write. They imagine that the Bush administration, like the Reagan administration, will modify our system only at the edges, that it won't destroy the social safety net built up over the past 70 years. But the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need. The Financial Times, it seems, now understands what's going on, but when will the public wake up?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (2107)	5/30/2003 12:14:08 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Democrats: Profiles In Spinelessness ____________________________ by Arianna Huffington Columnist Published on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 commondreams.org "I a little bit disagree with Chairman Roberts on that." That was Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, kinda, sorta, uh, not really taking exception to Committee chairman Pat Roberts' assertion that we've turned the corner when it comes to keeping the peace in postwar Iraq. But it could just as easily serve as the motto for the whole Democratic Party: "Vote for us -- we kinda, sorta disagree." The Party leaders are so timid, spineless, and lacking in confidence that to compare them to jellyfish would be an insult to invertebrates. Call them the pusillanimous opposition. These dithering poltroons are so paralyzed by the fear of doing or saying something that could be turned against them in GOP attack ads they've rendered themselves utterly impotent when it comes to mounting any kind of challenge to President Bush on the two most important issues of the day: tax cuts and Iraq. Exhibit A comes from Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle who, when asked on Meet the Press why the Democrats didn't offer a bold, full-throated alternative to the Bush tax cut plan, including the repeal of the 2001 cuts and a guaranteed balanced budget, timorously explained: "Well, we -- you got to take it one step at a time." You do -- why? Is this an AA meeting? Bush doesn't take it one step at a time. He's comfortable leading by leaps and bounds. And he's taking us along with him -- straight over a cliff. We're facing a trillion dollars of new debt, incurred by a president with the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover, and the best the leader of the opposition party can muster is a meaningless cliche? Quick, get that man a dose of political Viagra! At least get the blood flowing… somewhere. Daschle's trumpet issued an equally uncertain call when it came to the war on Iraq. First, he helped draft the Senate's resolution on the use of force. Then, after sticking his finger in the political wind and catching a zephyr of anti-war sentiment, he blasted the president for failing "so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war." When that comment, made the day before the war started, unleashed a torrent of criticism from ever-vigilant Republican attack dogs, Daschle, instead of simply attacking back, hemmed, hawed, and executed another political pirouette, claiming that he "probably would have avoided making the statement" if he'd known we were on the brink of war. But a quick check of the record reveals this to be an utterly disingenuous dodge: word of the impending invasion was all over the media when Daschle opened fire on Bush. Maybe the Senator's TV -- and his staff -- was on the fritz that day. It is precisely this kind of craven vacillation that has made possible the triumph of the fanatics in the White House. Democrats are wringing their hands over the "tactical genius" of Karl Rove, and the "brilliant political stagecraft" of his TV experts who always present the president in the best light. Such is the Democrats' fragility that the mere smoke and mirrors of posing the president in profile at Mount Rushmore or asking the people standing behind him during a recent speech on the economy to take off their ties so they would look more like average Joes have them quaking in their boots. But the DNC's Terry McAuliffe needs to stop worrying about the GOP using footage of Bush's Top Gun landing on the Abraham Lincoln in campaign ads and start worrying about finding a presidential candidate who isn't afraid to take audacious and decisive stands on the party's core issues. If they can't compete on style, they should at least give it a shot on substance. After all, the problem isn't that Democrats are on the wrong side of the issues. It's that they are afraid to make an issue of being on the right side -- not to mention smack dab in the middle of the American mainstream. For example, only one out of four Americans believe the latest round of tax cuts will significantly reduce their taxes, and just 29 percent think the cuts are the best way to help stimulate the economy. Yet Democrats seem congenitally incapable of challenging a president whose entire domestic agenda consists of more and more tax cuts for the wealthy. The numbers also favor the Democrats on the foreign policy front. According to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 57 percent of Americans are opposed to investing the time and money needed to rebuild Iraq. But the Democrats sit idly by, their thumbs otherwise engaged, while the administration's Iraqi tar baby grows stickier by the day. And on and on it goes: On protecting the environment, safeguarding Social Security, greater access to affordable health care, gun control and abortion, the majority of the American people are with the Democrats. Which makes their inability to offer an alternative to the White House juggernaut all the more nauseating. And disgraceful. And tragic. If this sorry state of affairs is going to change, the Democrats are going to have to jettison their reliance on the consultants who botched the 2002 midterm elections by advising Party leaders to avoid taking on the president on tax cuts and Iraq and, instead, offer an unambiguous alternative to Bush's well-crafted image as a straight-shooting man of conviction. It's time for the Democrats to give up their broken play-it-safe politics and risk offending a few vocal members of a radical minority. They seem to have forgotten the old sports adage that sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Well, here's a scoreboard update for Messrs. Daschle and McAuliffe, and the rest of the party leadership: you're down by three touchdowns and the electoral clock is starting to run down. It's time to stop taking things "one step at a time" and start throwing deep. Copyright © 1998-2002 Christabella, Inc.