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

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (538140)	2/10/2004 1:03:38 PM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769667

Kenneth statements like that make you sound very immature...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (538140)	2/10/2004 1:11:40 PM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Minority Leader's Fund-Raisers Fined Tuesday, February 10, 2004 WASHINGTON — A fund-raising committee run by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (search) was fined $21,000 for improperly accepting donations over federal limits, according to records and interviews. The political action committee, Team Majority, was one of two PACs Pelosi used to support candidates during the 2002 campaign. She stopped raising and donating money through the committee more than a year ago, after complaints that she was using the multiple PACs improperly to exceed limits. The fine, paid in October, was reported in Team Majority's year-end campaign finance records, released recently. The case is still open, and the Federal Election Commission (search) would not comment. Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the fine involved donations made to more than two dozen candidates from both of Pelosi's leadership PACs, Team Majority and PAC to the Future, that together exceeded federal limits. "We checked with the FEC; we thought this was OK. When we found out it wasn't, we did everything aboveboard, and we've been complying with them," Daly said. Daly said Pelosi would dissolve Team Majority after the FEC ends its case. Two Democrats — Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen (search) and Julie Thomas (search), who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Iowa — have been fined $2,500 each in connection with donations received from the committee. A Democratic source said the agency was negotiating with a third congressional committee before closing the case. Federal law dictates that if a person should control multiple PACs, they are considered affiliated and must adhere to limits as if they were one. Federal law limits PAC contributions to candidates to $5,000 per election. Donors to PACs can give $5,000 annually. In the 2002 election cycle, Pelosi gave more than two dozen candidates the $5,000 maximum contribution from Team Majority as well as PAC to the Future, which is her main leadership PAC — thereby exceeding contribution limits. Team Majority gave back more than $100,000 that was collected above limits, records show. It also collected more than $140,000 that Daly said was within the proper limits. That money was spent last year to support Pelosi's fund-raising activities, including money for salaries, legal fees and phone services, and $2,176 to entertain donors at a box at the Simon and Garfunkel Concert at the MCI Center in December, records show. The fine was first reported Monday by Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. foxnews.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (538140)	2/10/2004 1:57:50 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

Finally, the Washington Times has the scoop on tonight's "Presidential Pop Culture Quiz" on VH-1, beginning with Wes Clark: "The former Army general knew the definition of 'metrosexual,' confessed a taste for chocolate-covered gummi bears and is downright chummy with Madonna. Mr. Clark regularly listens to Madonna's 'Greatest Hits,' he said . . . "Definitely old school, Howard Dean revealed he still listens to the Grateful Dead and the Beatles. But perhaps he's really 'Hip Hop Howard,' because also he listens to rap singer Wyclef Jean, and agreed that if elected president, he would try to reunite Mr. Jean with the Fugees, the singer's former music group . . . "But on to Sen. John Kerry. The front-runner from Massachusetts identified with the travails of actor Ben Affleck, recently split from singer Jennifer Lopez. "'I met Ben a couple of times,' Mr. Kerry said. 'When you get in public life you kind of become a little bit of public property and you have to face that. I've put up with it awhile.'" Oh, and there's this: "Mr. Clark did not know who starred in 'Total Recall,' the meaning of the term 'bling-bling' and to which music group Justin Timberlake belonged. Mr. Clark guessed the Beach Boys." We've come a long way since boxers or briefs.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (538140)	2/10/2004 2:17:05 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

CAPITOL REPORT: Bush plan would need up to 5 mln jobs Commentary: Report's call for 2.6 mln doesn't add up By Rex Nutting, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 10:54 PM ET Feb. 9, 2004 cbs.marketwatch.com{F0542557-91DC-4D0C-8033-A1E9BBE67CC6}&siteid=mktw WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- President Bush has set himself up for the greatest job-creation success in U.S. history, but it will be hard to achieve. The U.S. economy would need to add between 3.6 million and 5 million jobs between now and the end of the year to meet the administration's official job-growth forecasts, not the 2.6 million figure cited Monday by the White House. In the Economic Report of the President released Monday, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers said employment would average 132.7 million jobs in 2004, about 2.6 million more than the 2003 monthly average. See full story. All day, the White House bandied the 2.6 million forecast without explaining just how difficult that average would be to achieve. Greg Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wouldn't be pinned down to a specific job growth target in an interview with CBS MarketWatch's Corbett Daly. Watch the interview. But Mankiw did repeat what he'd told reporters earlier: "You will see that we expect, sort of, on average jobs in 2004 to be 2.6 million more than jobs in 2003." Creating 2.6 million new jobs by the end of the year won't raise the monthly average by that amount. Assuming steady growth month after month for the rest of the year, employment would need to reach 135.3 million in December in order for the monthly average to be 132.7 million for the year. That's 5.2 million more than in December 2002 and 5.1 million more than the current 130.16 million. That's 462,000 new jobs each month between now and December. Only once in its history has the U.S. economy added as many as 5 million jobs in a 12-month period: In 1941 when millions of unemployed Americans left their Hooverville shacks for the factories to build the ships, tanks, planes and bombs that Britain was using against Hitler. The 2.6 million number matches the number of jobs lost under Bush, but the White House says it did not make the forecast by taking what would be needed to keep Bush from joining Herbert Hoover as the only modern president to preside over job destruction for a full term and simply plugging that number into the official forecast on Table 3.1 on page 98 of the report. Read the report. A simple mistake is the explanation that's easiest to understand. Why would the administration set itself up for failure on the one issue that matters most to voters? Why promise so much more than anyone could reasonably expect? The Council of Economic Advisers says its report isn't political. But then why did the CEA inject itself into partisan politics by unilaterally changing the starting date for the 2001 recession so that it began during Bill Clinton's last weeks in the presidency, rather than during Bush's second month in office, as determined by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research? The CEA broke the gentleman's agreement that the NBER's rulings are not to be dragged into the mud of campaigns. Asked whether the administration was really forecasting 5 million new jobs in 2004, a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told us to read Footnote One very carefully. Footnote One explains that the White House forecast is based on information available to its economists on Dec. 2, a few days before the November jobs report was released. Asking us to rely on Footnote One means the White House no longer believes the forecast it just released. Footnote One says, in essence, that the White House doesn't want to be judged on what will happen between now and December, but by events that took place in an alternate universe in which job growth was robust in November, December and January. So let's grant the White House its wish. Let's back up to December and see what the forecast implied when it was written. Back then in December, the jobs picture looked quite a bit rosier than it does now. If there had been steady job growth since October, the administration would have needed just 300,000 jobs a month to reach its goal. That would have brought total employment to 134.3 million by December and employment would average 132.7 million for the year. Creating 300,000 jobs is more manageable than 460,000, but it still implies of 3.6 million new jobs in 2004. It's do-able. Year-over-year job growth peaked at 3.9 million in early 1995, when the economy was coming out of a similar jobless recovery. Today's economy is much bigger than it was in 1995, so 3.6 million isn't as tough. If the White House gets its 300,000 new jobs each month, by Election Day total employment will be 132.6 million, just a whisker ahead of the 130.4 million who had jobs when he took office. Bush will avoid the distinction of presiding over net job destruction and voters may feel he's done his best. But if the White House does not get its 300,000 each month, Democrats will point to Monday's forecast and ask the president: Where are the jobs you promised? The White House just set the bar very high indeed. Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of CBS.MarketWatch.com.