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

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (438207)	8/4/2003 9:41:28 PM
From: Emile Vidrine	Respond to of 769670

[The trans-world Jewish collusion. More evidence of the Jewish/Zionist sweep of American foreign policy. Jewish/Zionist Pentagon bigwig Richard Perle interferes in Russian politics in the name of the Jewish Russian owners of Yukos Oil; Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Russia's richest man) is Jewish] THE WORLD: Russian Firm's Woes Raise Fears for Big Business. The outcome of a battle between an energy giant and criminal prosecutors could affect the development of the nation's free market, By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2003 "When key Washington policy advisor Richard Perle sat down this week for a meeting with leading Russian political analysts, he had an unsolicited word of advice: Lay off Yukos Oil Co., the Russian energy giant locked in a showdown with criminal prosecutors. Many believe that the outcome of that battle could determine the future of big business and foreign investment in this nation's still-fledgling free-market economy. "It's possible already to say that real damage is being done to the prospects for future Russian economic growth and development by what appears to be an arbitrary, capricious and vindictive campaign against a private company," warned Perle, adding that "it will get very bad" if the Kremlin decides to move decisively against Yukos. For nearly three weeks, Moscow has been politically shaken by the face-off between prosecutors and Russia's richest man, 40-year-old Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose Yukos empire has been threatened by the arrest of a key shareholder, searches at company offices and announcements that prosecutors are examining company officials for suspected crimes from tax evasion to murder. The fact that U.S. interests are quietly weighing in on Khodorkovsky's behalf - Perle emphasized that he was not speaking on behalf of the government, but U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow clearly was when he said the affair "raises a number of questions for us" - is testament to Khodorkovsky's role as a powerful advocate for Western interests in a country still deeply troubled over issues such as U.S. policy in Iraq and the future of free-market capitalism within its own borders. The outcome of the Yukos crisis is crucial for Russia, not only because it will signal whether free-enterprise advocates in the Kremlin will hold out against an apparent assault from the state bureaucracy's old guard but also because the dogfight has already proved costly. Yukos, which is expected to become the world's fourth-largest oil company after a planned merger with Russian company Sibneft, has lost $10 billion in market capitalization over the last two weeks, or about a quarter of its value. Its slide pulled down the stock market, which has lost more than $20 billion ... It is not known to what extent [Russian Prime Minister] Putin may have been involved in approving the July 2 arrest of Platon Lebedev, 43, a billionaire and a key member of Khodorkovsky's financial empire, on embezzlement charges stemming from the privatization of a fertilizer plant nearly a decade ago. Some analysts believe that Putin simply wants to warn Khodorkovsky and the other oligarchs to stay out of politics and is not seeking to reverse liberal economic reforms. Not only has Khodorkovsky given millions of dollars to two liberal parties that might block Kremlin policy in parliament, but he also urged Russia not to oppose the U.S. in the war on Iraq."

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (438207)	8/4/2003 10:24:20 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Lieberman Warns Democrats Against Turn to Left By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 4, 2003; 5:28 PM washingtonpost.com Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), expanding a fight among Democrats, attacked former Vermont governor Howard Dean and several other rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination today and argued that they have embraced extreme left ideas that threaten to return the party to political exile. Saying he is in a fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, Lieberman said policies rooted in the "vital center" of the political spectrum, not what he termed the antiwar and big government policies of his rivals, provide the only hope of defeating President Bush. He warned Democrats that abandoning the policies that helped elect Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 would result in a terrible setback for the party. "I share the anger of my fellow Democrats with George Bush and the wrong direction he has taken our nation," Lieberman said in a speech at the National Press Club. "But the answer to his outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in outdated extremes of our own. That path will not solve the challenges of our time and it could well send us Democrats back to the political wilderness for a long time." The party's 2000 vice presidential nominee saved his toughest criticism for Dean, the upstart candidate whose passionate opposition to the Iraq war and pugnacious confrontation of Bush have propelled him to the upper tier of the Democratic race. But aides said Lieberman also had in mind two other rivals whom they see standing in the Connecticut senator's path, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) over trade, taxes and health care, and Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) for what he described as "ambivalence" over going to war in Iraq. Lieberman, who was one of Bush's strongest supporters in the run-up to the war in Iraq, has been struggling to find his voice in a year when his centrist ideas and restrained demeanor have appeared out of sync with many Democratic activists. He has led in several national polls for the nomination but he is behind Dean, Gephardt and Kerry in Iowa and behind Dean and Kerry in New Hampshire. Lieberman's decision to escalate his rhetoric over the direction of the party came on the eve of a candidate forum at the AFL-CIO executive council meeting in Chicago and assures that the concerns about Dean's gathering strength and what it represents will continue to be a dominant feature of the battle for the Democratic nomination. A week ago, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), of which Lieberman is a former chairman, warned that the party is in danger of being captured by the "far ideological left" and other DLC leaders warned that a Dean nomination could result in the kind of landslide defeats Democrats suffered in 1972 and 1984. With Democrats focused on the two-day union meeting in Chicago, Gephardt continued his campaign to build momentum aimed at winning the AFL-CIO's endorsement this fall. The United Steelworkers of America scheduled a news conference to announce their endorsement tomorrow morning in Chicago, with a Gephardt adviser confirming that the former House Democratic leader was the union's choice. The 90-minute Democratic candidate forum will be begin at 8 p.m. EDT and will be carried live on C-SPAN. As Lieberman was delivering his broadside against what he saw as the leftward drift of his party, Gephardt was in New York offering more elements of an economic plan that would eliminate all of Bush's tax cuts and use much of that money to fund a health care plan designed to provide near universal access to health insurance, including a rise in the minimum wage, accelerated spending from the Highway Trust Fund and a federally guaranteed national development bank to help states through their fiscal problems. Gephardt said the Bush administration economic policies are decimating the middle class and described Bush's program as "Houdini economics because it almost takes a sleight of hand to make a multi-trillion dollar surplus disappear." Arguing that the Democrats had helped produce the longest running expansion in history during the 1990s, Gephardt said, "President Bush has taken us right back to the broken policies of the past, the economics of debt and regret: unaffordable tax cuts for the few, zero new jobs, surging unemployment." Lieberman was equally unsparing in his criticism of Bush, saying the president "has left our country dangerously unprepared to defend against and defeat the threat of terrorism. And his leadership has clearly driven our great American economy right into the ditch." Bush, however, was a pretext to draw distinctions with his opponents. "If George Bush and his bankrupt ideology are the problem, old Democratic policies like higher taxes and weakness on defense are not the solution," Lieberman said. He said repealing all the Bush tax cuts, as Dean and Gephardt have proposed, would hurt the middle class; called Gephardt's health care plan a "break-the-bank $2 trillion program;" warned against raising "the walls of protectionism" on trade and said America "must not shrink from the use of force when our security or our values are at stake." Together his speech provided a summary of arguments Lieberman began to make in May, at a Democratic debate in South Carolina, which his advisers said have become more relevant because of Dean's success and which they believe will crystallize the choice for Democratic voters more sharply. During the question period today, Lieberman brushed aside repeated inquiries about the state of his campaign. "I feel good about where this campaign is," he said at one point. At another he vowed, "I'm not going to stand back and let this party be taken over by people who would bring us to the political wilderness again."

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (438207)	8/4/2003 10:27:36 PM
From: SecularBull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Dividends pile high in 2003: S&P By Chris Kraeuter, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 1:22 PM ET Aug. 4, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Investors will receive $46.7 billion more this year than last due to dividend increases and tax cuts, Standard & Poor's said Monday. Dividend activity is up sharply this year due to tax-law changes, growing corporate cash hordes, and the stability a dividend can imply. See recent story about dividends. "Paying a dividend to investors represents a certain maturity," said Howard Silverblatt, equity analyst for S&P, in a statement. "It sends a signal to the investment community, as well as competitors, that the company has sufficient confidence in its long-term ability to maintain and grow their business, that they can afford to give something back to the shareholders," he said. So far this year, 171 companies in the S&P 500 have boosted or begun dividend payouts compared to 113 at this point in 2002. Of the 155 companies to increase their dividend, the average boost has been 18 percent this year. The forward 12-month-indicated dividend rate for the S&P 500 is $13.9 billion higher than it was at the end of 2002. Combined with the tax law changes, Silverblatt said investors should received almost $47 billion more in their pockets during 2003. Overall, 365 companies in the S&P 500 have declared dividends this year, an increase from 351 companies that did so in each of 2001 and 2002. That reverses a 20-year decline in issuance. Silverblatt noted significant amounts of dividend activity from industries that have traditionally shunned dividends, like information technology. For instance, Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile), the world's largest software firm, declared its first dividend in January. In May, taxes on dividends and most capital gains were both lowered to 15 percent. Previously, capital gains were taxed at 20 percent for many taxpayers, while dividends were taxed at personal income tax rates as high as 38.6 percent. The tax advantage for capital gains was seen as a disincentive to dividend issuance.