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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (39878)	3/18/2004 10:58:50 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

A MODEST PROPOSAL: LET'S HAVE TWO GDPS By Arianna Huffington Desperate to shore up its highly vulnerable economic flank, Team Bush is turning positively delusional. Despite more bad news on the jobless recovery front — 129,000 fewer new jobs in February than forecast — the White House spinmeisters are acting like everything is coming up roses and daffodils. "The economy is moving in the right direction, don't let anyone tell you otherwise," chirped Vice President "Pollyanna" Cheney. "Every single economic indicator that we have today is positive," chimed in administration mouthpiece Rep. David "Little Mary Sunshine" Dreier. The president himself is doing his part to spread the phony sweetness and light. At one of the staged-for-the-cameras "Conversations on the Economy" he's been holding on the campaign trail, President Bush got downright giddy at the prospect of a Bakersfield, Calif., stock car builder hiring two new workers at his business. "That's really good news," he gushed. "A lot of people are feeling confident and optimistic about our future so they can say 'I'm going to hire two more.' That’s confidence!" Actually, Mr. President, getting all worked up about two prospective jobs in a city that has a 12.8 percent unemployment rate and has lost 4,400 jobs since you took office is living in a state of denial! But no matter how many times their cheery economic projections come up short, the Bush faithful keep pitching the GOP party line: that the president's tax-cut-crazed policies are, as Cheney recently put it on MSNBC, "exactly the right medicine at the right time." Unless you're suffering from chronic unemployment syndrome. According to the latest estimates, almost 10 percent of American workers cannot find a job — large numbers of them have given up trying to find one, and many have settled for part-time jobs with no health-care benefits. But that doesn't seem to faze the White House. Last month, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said that when it comes to the state of the U.S. economy, "the stock market is, after all, the final arbiter." You know working stiffs are in trouble when the secretary of labor believes that the stock market is the end-all of our country's economic health. When the president and his people tell you that everything in the economy is looking good, it's because they are looking at a highly selective measure of our economic well-being, namely the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Remember the tidal wave of good press that followed the announcement that the GDP has risen 8.2 percent in the third quarter of 2003? Many in the media were ready to declare game over and hand Bush the keys to a second term. As we've since seen, the victory dance was as premature as that "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln. The trouble is the GDP is actually a woefully distorted and inadequate scorecard. It is little more than a gross tally of all goods and services — a raw number that doesn't differentiate between transactions that add to the well-being of our country and those that diminish it. Thus, a dollar spent sending a kid to prison is just as valuable as a dollar spent sending a kid to college. So here is a modest proposal: Let's have two GDPs. One based on the current model, which would reflect corporate profits, which are up 46 percent. And another that would factor in such things as joblessness; the inability of wages to keep up with steep increases in medical, housing and education costs; the 34 million Americans living in poverty; and the 43 million with no health insurance. Taking a step in this direction, Redefining Progress, a think tank dedicated to promoting sustainability, has developed what it calls the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), an alternative measure of economic growth that factors in close to two dozen aspects of our economic well-being that the GDP ignores. The group's Executive Director Michel Gelobter describes the GPI as "the GDP minus heart attacks, prison time and clear-cut forests. But adding back in volunteerism and time people spend with their families." Just last week the group released its latest GPI analysis, which found that current GDP figures overestimate the health of our economy by $7 trillion. With that damning figure, maybe the Kerry campaign can finally force the Bushies to take off the rose-colored shades they've been hiding behind and allow the American people to see them for what they indisputably are: "the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen." © 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (39878)	3/18/2004 11:00:31 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

S. Korea Won't Send Troops to Iraqi City By SANG-HUN CHOE, Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea (news - web sites) on Friday scrubbed plans to send troops to the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, citing U.S. pressure to participate in "offensive operations," but it said the promised 3,600 forces will be sent to a different location to help rebuild the country. The dispatch, making South Korea the biggest coalition partner after the United States and Britain, had been scheduled to come as early as next month. But Friday's decision means the mission might be delayed. The move comes as other allies in the Iraq (news - web sites) coalition reconsider their contributions. Spain's new government threatened to pull out its forces shortly after winning elections Sunday, following terrorist bombings in Madrid. On Thursday, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said his country was "misled" about whether Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime had weapons of mass destruction and also was considering an early troop pull out. South Korea's Defense Ministry said the "United States cited inevitability for offensive operations to keep security in order in the Kirkuk area, and proposed that a certain number of U.S. troops would remain in Kirkuk to continue to conduct stabilization operations under the tactical control of South Korea." The South Korean side said the U.S. proposal does not jibe with its intention to "keep its own independent operational command system and conduct peaceful reconstruction." The Pentagon (news - web sites) had no immediate comment on South Korea's decision. U.S. commanders had counted on the Koreans to send about 3,000 troops to the Kirkuk area, to be part of a multi-national force led by the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division. Without the Koreans there, the Pentagon might have to find another U.S. ground unit to fill the gap. The Koreans were to have replaced the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, which is returning to its base in Italy this spring after having spent an entire year in Iraq. The Korean contribution has special political significance for the United States because of the history of the U.S.-Korean military alliance, dating back to the Korean War in the 1950s and the continuing presence of thousands of American troops in Korea. South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing an unnamed ministry official, said the dispatch would be put off until June and that the military was considering sites in central or southern Iraq where things are more stable. One ministry source told Yonhap a strong candidate site is Najaf in southern Iraq, where the Spanish troops are currently stationed. A South Korean survey team, led by Lt. Gen. Kim Jang-su, was to return later Friday after a weeklong visit to Iraq, possibly with suggestions on a new site, Yonhap said. Kim had met with U.S. military leaders in Baghdad earlier this week and agreed on the changes regarding Kirkuk, Yonhap said. Earlier this year, the South Korean parliament approved the dispatch of 3,600 troops — in a mission code named "Zaytun," or olive in Arabic — to help with Iraqi reconstruction. The public was split over the decision, but the dispatch won the backing of all major political parties. The troops, to include special forces and marines, were to head to Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, and take control of reconstruction and security needs in the area. But local media reported that the United States asked to keep a small number of its own troops in a particularly unstable area of the region. South Korea reportedly bristled at having them in its area of command. About 460 South Korean medics and military engineers have been in southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah for almost a year and will come home when the new dispatch is sent. Prime Minister Goh Kun, acting president after the National Assembly impeached President Roh Moo-hyun last Friday, assumed duty over the weekend promising to follow through on the Iraq mission. On Feb. 23, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed vehicle outside a police station in Kirkuk, killing eight other people. Kirkuk also has also seen rising ethnic tensions as Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen compete for control of the city, located in one of the world's richest oil-producing regions. Poland contributed 2,400 combat troops to the Iraq invasion and now commands a 9,500-strong multinational force. But while many Poles feel historically close to the United States, public support for the mission in Iraq has been tepid. The comments by Kwasniewski, a staunch U.S. ally, were the first by a Polish leader to raise doubts about the intelligence behind the decision for going to war. He tempered them by stressing that Poland is not about to abandon its mission in Iraq and said the country was a better place without Saddam. "But naturally I also feel uncomfortable due to the fact that we were misled with the information on weapons of mass destruction," Kwasniewski told French reporters, according to a transcript released by his press office. "This is the problem of the United States, of Britain and also of many other nations," he later told a news conference.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (39878)	3/20/2004 1:12:53 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

Thanks for the welcome. I voluntarily left one thread when Kodiak Bull booted Raymond Duray. I got booted off the President George W. Bush thread when I wouldn't let Sylvestor's banning rest. I guess it's time that I find a home that's more suited to open discourse although it has been fun agitating the righteously indignant. I've always felt that the way to deal with unpopular opinions is to counter them with logic and reason, not to ban the author. Unfortunately that seems to be a point of view rarely shared by those on the right and sometimes not subscribed to by those on the left either. I appreciate the level of discourse on this thread.