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

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (504836)	12/6/2003 7:21:15 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

Runaway Spending So much for the promise of smaller government. This year, for the first time since World War II, federal spending has topped $20,000 per household (in dollars, adjusted for inflation.) Last week, The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that monitors federal spending (and seeks to eliminate the deficit), said the first six months of this year have been "the most fiscally irresponsible in recent memory." Also last week, the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs issued a newsletter warning that federal spending is "out of control . . . these Republicans have presided over an orgy of tax cuts and benefit increases that, according to The Concord (Coalition) group, will not only boost this year's projected deficit but also add as much as $800 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years. The damage will be even greater in the following decade." Even past defenders of Republican fiscal policy abandoned the party last week. The Wall Street Journal editorialized about it Nov. 24 under the heading "The Price of Governance": "What was supposed to be an end-of-session triumph for the Republican Congress is turning into something of an embarrassment, if not a crackup. This tends to happen when a political party attempts to pass legislation inconsistent with what it claims are its limited-government principles." Faced with the prospect of expanded Medicare without genuine reform, The Journal finished by wishing Sen. Edward Kennedy success with a filibuster to block the Medicare bill and ended by adding, "It's all enough to make us long for the Washington gridlock of the 1990s." What generated those comments was passage of a $400 billion Medicare bill that included a prescription-drug benefit, along with a $400 billion defense bill and the discussion of a proposed $373 billion year-end spending package. The spending bill, said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, demonstrated that "Congress was abandoning all pretext of taxpayers' money being used in a rational fashion." Robert L. Bixby, executive director of The Concord Coalition, summed up the new entitlements, tax breaks and pork projects: "With all the giveaways, you might think that Santa Claus had arrived early. But that wouldn't be fair to Santa -- when he delivers presents he doesn't slip a bill for several hundred billion dollars into our kids' stockings." These warnings came on the heels of another, this one issued by a lifelong Republican: Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. If the flow of red ink isn't stemmed by the beginning of 2010, Greenspan said, the deficit could have "notable, destabilizing effects" on future growth when 75 million baby boomers begin retiring. Only some of this can be accounted for by an increase in defense spending and the war on terrorism. Defense spending has increased by about 33 percent since President George W. Bush took office. During that same period, nondefense discretionary spending -- the portion of the budget that Congress and the president can do something about -- has gone up 28 percent. Has any of this drawn the attention of Congress? Apparently not. The Senate put on hold an energy bill that provided generous tax breaks amounting to nearly $27 billion over the next 10 years -but not because there weren't enough votes to pass it. It was sidetracked because the Senate couldn't get the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster. As for being fiscally responsible with the Medicare program, "Nobody is serious about the solvency goal," said Stuart Butler, vice president of domestic and economic policy studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to The Washington Post. "That isn't even on the radar screen of more than a handful of members." Too bad. With elections coming next year, maybe there's still time for the Democrats to repackage themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility and leaner government. Who would have thought the Republicans would have shunned the mantle? Last modified: December 06. 2003 12:00AM

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (504836)	12/6/2003 3:11:14 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

I'm alarmed by the possibility of cable dominating broadband access and then cable companies limiting access to web sites as they see fit. They could simply deny access for, say, a web site that competes with one of their media companies or, say, one that disagrees with their political POV. Instead of being a peer-to-peer kind of system for relatively low-cost communication from anyone to anyone, it could become more like a broadcast medium like television or radio. I don't have the exact sources but I understand that some public tv affiliates are being denied access to cable networks. Al Gore is having problems getting cable access as well and is apparently getting a 20 million user channel rather than a 40 million user channel which is considered the minimum required for success. If Amazon, Microsoft and the ACLU are on the same side, something's going on. mediaaccess.org "Will the Internet of the future look something like cable television today, with pre-selected content foisted on users and access to unaffiliated channels of information limited or blocked? That's the fear of a host of third parties ranging from the Microsoft Corp. to the American Civil Liberties Union as the Federal Communications Commission contemplates the regulation of broadband... Right now, more than 15 million American households use a broadband connection to access the Internet. Cable modems are the most popular means of transmission, with almost 70 percent of the market... In March, the FCC made a key decision: that cable broadband is an interstate information service rather than a telecommunications service. The decision, which is being challenged by consumer groups in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, is important because, as an information service, cable has no common carrier obligation to share its lines with competitors... In a dissenting statement, Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps noted that the decision "places [cable broadband] services outside any viable and predictable regulatory framework." DSL broadband is currently subject to a different -- and far more stringent -- set of FCC regulations than cable. That's because DSL is provided by telephone companies, and telephone services have historically been subject to heavy FCC regulation... In mid-November, the Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators was formed when the National Association of Manufacturers, the Consumer Electronics Association, and the Information Technology Association of America teamed up with individual companies including Microsoft, Apple Computer, Amazon.com, the RadioShack Corp., and the Walt Disney Corp. The coalition's unlikely third leg is the Media Access Project, a liberal First Amendment consumer advocacy group. The coalition shares the fears of the ACLU and the Consumer Federation of America, as well groups such as the AARP and the United Church of Christ over the future of the Internet if cable and DSL providers are given free rein..." fcc.gov