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Non-Tech : The ENRON Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (4923)	8/9/2003 2:11:29 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 5185

The judges are in the pockets of OIL AND GAS as well...... commondreams.org CC

To: Mephisto who wrote (4923)	9/13/2003 1:42:53 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

Chasm of poverty / The economy's up, but so is the number of poor "But there is still reason to ask why 34.8 million Americans should live in poverty while Bush policies have increased the comforts of those at the top" post-gazette.com Editorial Thursday, September 11, 2003 The current state of the economy and one's estimates of where it is going both depend on where one is standing. From the high end looking down, the picture is rather positive, based on rising markets, good overall growth figures and lower taxes on the wealthy's income, dividends and inheritances. From the low end looking up, particularly if one is unemployed, the rise in stock market prices doesn't help at all, at least in the short run. The number of Americans who are poor grew last year by 1.4 million, including 700,000 children, to a total of 34.8 million. That's one out of every eight Americans. The economy continues to bleed jobs, losing another 93,000 in August, for an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent. That's 2.7 million jobs gone since President Bush took office. Next year's elections will bring voters to the inevitable assessment: How am I doing? Am I better off now than I was a year ago? Better than at the beginning of the Bush administration? The bad part of a political season, in terms of long-term prospects for the economy and steps that should be taken by the administration and Congress, is that politicians' actions will be influenced by party and candidacy. Citing rising markets and encouraging growth rates, President Bush and the Republicans say the administration is on top of the economic recovery, and that the measures they have taken already -- the tax cuts and other benefits to the high end of society -- are the reason for what is going right. Democrats latch onto the job hemorrhaging and put it down to Bush administration mismanagement, citing the huge deficit and tight domestic spending, which have cascaded from the federal level to state and local governments, causing substantial pain and misery. So what does it mean? The Republican "trickle down" approach, pursued by the Bush administration for the past 2 1/2 years, says that if the rich do well, spending and investing more, the poor will eventually do well also. The problem with that is there is inevitably a lag as wealth trickles down -- if it trickles down at all. Another fact inside the rhetoric is that five out of six jobs lost since 2001 are in manufacturing, dear to the hearts of southwestern Pennsylvanians. Many of those jobs have migrated to low-wage centers like Mexico and China and are unlikely to return to the United States. The American economy is flexible enough to adjust to this phenomenon, in time. Pittsburgh, in particular, has been agile in retooling itself. The fact that southwestern Pennsylvania's unemployment rate runs about half a percentage point below the national average testifies to the region's resilience. But there is still reason to ask why 34.8 million Americans should live in poverty while Bush policies have increased the comforts of those at the top. Chief executives in industry, some of whom are not exemplars of honesty and integrity, rake in multimillion-dollar salaries that bear no relation to the success of their companies or the compensation of employees who toil further down the line. This growing financial chasm only polarizes society, against the backdrop of Mr. Bush's tax cuts, his favors to big business and large federal contracts thrown to companies like Halliburton, Boeing and Bechtel that make substantial campaign contributions. There is something wrong with an American government -- both the executive and legislative branches -- that is driven by the needs and desires of rich campaign contributors. Anyone seeking the White House in 2004 must be ready to address the nation's growing poverty and the rising social cost of ignoring it.