Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (285655)	4/27/2006 6:46:38 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572724

re: Brighter than posting NYTimes editorials without comment that you actually pay for.... Here ya go Stevie, free just for you, from the country's best newspaper.... nytimes.com Editorial Fiscal-Conservatives-Come-Lately President Bush is threatening to veto this year's emergency budget supplement for the Iraq war and hurricane recovery efforts — he's suddenly shocked, shocked that his own Republican-led Senate has steadily inflated it with $14 billion in unrelated goodies. As if this sort of fiscal mayhem is not the now-familiar fallout from the administration's own signature fecklessness in adding to the record debt and deficit for future generations to handle. This year's $92 billion "must pass" measure, while supposedly restricted to the pressing costs of the war and the post-Katrina Gulf Coast repairs, has been turned into a fiscal Christmas tree. Billions have been added for extra farm subsidies, highway repairs, higher education, veterans' health care and forest maintenance, and even a $15 million bauble for something that's called a "seafood promotion strategy." Taxpayers interested in fiscal sanity should first wonder why, three years into the war, its costs are still being rushed through Congress by administration planners who are obviously wary of detailed accountability. No less irresponsible is the growing penchant of members of Congress to bypass the harsher tests of the regular budget process in favor of giving their pet projects a ride aboard the White House's annual "emergency" express. The $4 billion the Senate ponied up for extra farm subsidies certainly deserves a more serious look, considering that farm incomes have been booming, in part because of a record $23 billion in crop subsidies. What's at the heart of the veto threat is an intramural Republican war over a feared mutiny by voters this November. House Republicans running as fiscal "hawks" (after years of cheerleading for the costly Bush tax cuts for the affluent) back the president's budget request; the Senate Republicans who are more concerned about popular spending programs opt for the add-ons. No one mentions the responsibility to find revenues to someday pay for all this, plus debt costs. With his eye on a run for the White House, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, one of the enablers of the administration's ongoing budget mess, scolded his colleagues to take care "not to blow the bank on the back of war." But the bank's already been blown. Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, made that point last month in his previous role as a conservative polemicist: "A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget." Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

To: steve harris who wrote (285655)	4/27/2006 7:25:05 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572724

Wounded US soldiers fighting off military debts: report Wed Apr 26, 7:48 PM ET Hundreds of US soldiers wounded in Iraq have been hounded by bill collectors for military debts after coming home, US television reported. In one case the Army demanded a soldier repay a 2,700 dollar enlistment bonus because he only served two years of a three year tour -- even though it was a mortar blast in Iraq that cut short his service, according to the ABC News report. In another case, the army mistakenly continued paying a combat bonus to a soldier while he recuperated from a roadside bomb that nearly severed his leg -- then sought to get 2,000 dollars of it back. "By law, he's not entitled to the money, so he must pay it back," Colonel Richard Shrank, the head of the US Army Finance Command, was quoted as saying. The cases were unveiled in a report by the Government Accountability Office, which oversees public spending for Congress, according to ABC. The GAO report is to be released Thursday. The report "found hundreds of wounded soldiers were turned over to collection agencies for military debts incurred though no fault of their own," ABC said.