From EPA air proposals bypass Congress: Industry would get flexibility, more time to comply
Unable to get Congress to endorse its plan for dealing with air pollution, the Bush administration is crafting regulations that would accomplish the same ends. Power plants would have to cut emissions sharply, but also be given flexibility and more time to do it — terms that environmentalists find unacceptable.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed new requirements Thursday calling on power plants in 30 states to reduce the amount of smog- and soot-forming chemicals they release from their smokestacks. It shortly will announce a rule to cut mercury emissions as well.

The level of pollution reductions, the timetable and the strategy for getting it done mirror closely proposals the administration offered Congress nearly two years ago in its so-called Clear Skies initiative. But that legislation has stalled with little indication of any movement.
[MSNBC, 12/5/03]

Bush sure is a "go it alone" guy, isn't he?

Joke of the Day: Bush Sends a Republican to Solve Iraq's Debt Problem
The New York Times reported today that James Baker is being sent to Iraq to solve their debt problem. It seems that they owe the rest of the world, including the US, about $100 billion.

Is this a joke? Is Bush really sending a Republican anywhere to solve a debt problem? Just look at the debt problem Bush has created at home. It will be decades before we recover from his tax cuts for the wealthy and his corporate welfare aimed at the oil and drug companies and HMOs.

If Bush really wants to solve the problem, why not send Bill Clinton? He took the Bush-Reagan debt and turned it into a surplus. Better yet, why not have Clinton solve our debt problem at home? The Republicans have mismanaged the economy to such an extent our children and their children will be paying the price. It really is time for change. It really is time to let an adult take over the national economy.
[One Thousand Reasons, 12/6/03]

Be sure to check out One Thousand Reasons, the site where I found this item.

From Bush let down U.S. workers
Recognizing the essential role of domestic steel production, the president said he wanted to make a similar commitment [as demonstrated by other countries] to preserve the manufacturing base of the United States by revitalizing the steel industry. While his decision was derided by Bush's corporate allies, it began a slow process of restoring the U.S. steel industry's ability to compete at home and in global markets.

Unfortunately, the president's commitment has proved to be short-lived. Long before the steel industry has been sufficiently revitalized, he has scrapped the tariff protections 16 months before they were supposed to be lifted.

The president's supporters claim that enough has been done to get the steel industry back on its feet and to renew American manufacturing.

But that is simply not the case.
[Capital Times, 12/6/03]

From Turkey Day triumph or wagging the bird? Bush's bump in the polls from Baghdad trip can't veil rising US casualties, shot-up Iraqi civilians, and a muddled occupation by Bill Berkowitz
Ever on the alert for photo-ops and re-election footage, Team Bush put the president on Air Force One and snuck him into Iraq to visit the troops at their base at the Baghdad International Airport on Thanksgiving Day. Displaying good humor, the president, like some modern-day Wizard of Oz, emerged from behind camouflage netting dressed in an Army workout jacket. He served up a few meals, ladled out some war-against-terrorism-rhetoric as thick as gravy, and took off for home.
...
Not many Iraqis appeared impressed by the president's visit. Reports soliciting the reaction of ordinary Iraqis found many of them wondering why the president didn't visit some of his highly-trumpeted "good news" sites while he was in town. Time magazine reported that to the man on the street -- even those who supported the removal of Saddam Hussein -- "Bush's Thanksgiving visit meant little." They are more concerned with "the killing of innocents, the 'disappearance' of countrymen detained by U.S. forces, and the destruction of buildings, including family homes."

And, as one person put it at an American Online Message Board, "What a shame the world's most powerful nation's president has to sneak in and out of a country that is occupied with U.S. troops."
[Working For Change, 12/5/03]

From Looting the Future by Paul Krugman
One thing you have to say about George W. Bush: he's got a great sense of humor. At a recent fund-raiser, according to The Associated Press, he described eliminating weapons of mass destruction from Iraq and ensuring the solvency of Medicare as some of his administration's accomplishments.

Then came the punch line: "I came to this office to solve problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations." He must have had them rolling in the aisles.

In the early months of the Bush administration, one often heard that "the grown-ups are back in charge." But if being a grown-up means planning for the future — in fact, if it means anything beyond marital fidelity — then this is the least grown-up administration in American history. It governs like there's no tomorrow.

Nothing in our national experience prepared us for the spectacle of a government launching a war, increasing farm subsidies and establishing an expensive new Medicare entitlement — and not only failing to come up with a plan to pay for all this spending in the face of budget deficits, but cutting taxes at the same time.
...
What really makes me wonder whether this republic can be saved, however, is the downward spiral in governance, the hijacking of public policy by private interests.
[New York Times, 12/5/03]

From Cheney's grab-and-go rubs some the wrong way by Richard Benedetto
Vice President Cheney is collecting millions in campaign contributions as he headlines fundraisers for the Bush-Cheney re-election bid and other Republican candidates.

But his cool, all-business approach to the task, with little attention to the communities he visits, risks reinforcing an image Democrats are pushing of an administration insensitive to the concerns of ordinary people.

As he travels, Cheney does not hold news conferences. His meetings with business and community leaders are private. He rarely makes time to meet voters outside the fundraisers, which often results in news reports and commentary that suggest he's indifferent to the people and problems of the cities he visits.
...
In Louisville on Nov. 24, Cheney attended a fundraising lunch for Rep. Anne Northup, R-Ky. The Courier-Journal reported, "After the luncheon, Cheney remained at an undisclosed location for more than two hours and did not leave Louisville until near the beginning of the afternoon rush hour, which caused some traffic tie-ups."

Cheney spokesman Kellems was quoted as saying the vice president was performing unspecified "duties of his office."
[USA Today, 12/2/03]

Other than hiding, raising money from millionaires, and getting us into Iraq Nam, just what does he do?

From Put the Blame on Cheney for U.S. Mess in Iraq by James Klurfeld
This isn't how Papa Bush and the handlers thought it would work out. Not when they put solid Dick Cheney in charge of the kid's government.

With all of his experience in government, from White House chief of staff to congressional leader to secretary of defense, Cheney was the one who would avoid the big mistakes, who would make up for Junior's lack of experience.

And yet President George W. Bush is going into his re-election year with one huge mess on his hands in Iraq. It isn't only that much of the world is bewildered if not downright scared at the administration's arrogant unilateralism; it's that a good segment of the American people have begun to question the president's judgment and credibility because of how Iraq was handled.

Cheney was supposed to prevent something like this from happening. He was supposed to protect the not so well prepared W. from the big mistakes. And yet, as more accounts of the maneuvering inside the administration are revealed, it is increasingly clear that it was Cheney who was the moving force behind the decision to fight a war of choice against Iraq.
...
Yes, the buck stops with the president, but the more I learn about what happened behind the scenes the more I say put the blame on Cheney.
[Newsday, 12/4/03]

There has been talk that Bush would blame everything on Vice President Dick, then dump him for '04 by way of cleaning house. But I keep seeing "Bush-Cheney '04" signs, making me think he's going to stay with the "A" team.

From Perle lobbied for Boeing's tanker bid by Joshua Chaffin and Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Richard Perle, a prominent Pentagon adviser, lobbied on behalf of Boeing's bid for a controversial $18bn government contract a year after the aerospace company made a $20m investment in the venture capital fund he runs.

Mr Perle, a former Reagan-era assistant defence secretary, is considered one of the most influential civilian members of Washington's defence establishment.

He was appointed in 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, to chair the Defence Policy Board, a group of former military and policy experts who meet regularly with Mr Rumsfeld and top Pentagon officials.

In August, Mr Perle co-authored an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing in favour of a deal in which the Air Force would lease 100 767 aircraft refuelling tankers from Boeing. The piece was published at a time when the deal was under intense attack by critics who claimed the tankers were unnecessary and the deal too expensive.

Mr Perle and Thomas Donnelly, both members of the American Enterprise Institute think- tank, wrote that a "special government green-eyeshade mentality" was holding up a crucial deal.

Mr Perle did not disclose that Boeing had committed to invest $20m in his venture capital fund, Trireme Partners, in mid-2002. The investment marked one of the largest early stakes taken in the fund by a corporate partner.
[Financial Times (UK), 12/5/03]

From America's eager executioners by H.D.S. Greenway
Why is America so eager to put people to death?

Attorney General John Ashcroft's advocacy of capital punishment is second to none. He took the unusual step of taking the Washington area sniper suspects away from Maryland and sent them to Virginia simply because Virginia was more likely to execute them. And in Arkansas a paranoid schizophrenic prisoner on death row is being force-fed antipsychotic medication just to make him sane enough to execute.

China leads the world when it comes to executions, but the United States is either third or fourth after Iran and possibly Saudi Arabia. The United States leads the world in executing child offenders, however, and stands alongside Somalia as the only countries refusing to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, which bars child executions.

In most of Europe, the death penalty has gone into historical oblivion along with the rack, the iron maiden, and other medieval methods of dispatching people. Europeans look with horror at America's predilection for capital punishment, just as many Americans look upon stoning a woman to death for adultery in the Third World. Americans think nothing of criticizing other cultures and other societies for asking women to wear veils without a backward glance to those millions around the world who find capital punishment a lot more repugnant.
[Boston Globe, 12/5/03]

This administration is extremely death-oriented. Do you remember Bush mocking that woman on Death Row? "Please don't kill me", he said in a whiny voice. Disgusting.

From Spin clouds truth in polls of Iraqis by Derrick Z. Jackson
A worse case of poll abuse also occurred in September. On "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney cited a Zogby poll commissioned by the conservative American Enterprise Institute as "very positive news." Cheney singled out a question that asked what kind of government Iraq should replicate. Cheney said, "The US wins hands down."

That was another Cheney lie. Of specific countries named, the United States was the "winner," but the favorite of only 21.5 percent of 600 Iraqis. In second place at 16 percent was the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. In third place at 11 percent was the dictatorship of Syria, which the White House and the US Congress have vilified in recent months for not helping us in the war on terrorism. Add in another 9.3 percent of Iraqis who favor an Egyptian or Iranian style of government and Iraqis actually favor less-democratic models of governments in the Arab world over the US model by 34.3 percent to 21.5 percent.

Cheney failed to cite the finding that only 31.5 percent of respondents said the United States and Britain should help make sure a fair government is set up in Iraq, compared to 58.5 percent who say Iraqis should be left to "work this out themselves."
...
That does not stop the White House from spinning "very positive news" out of the polls. In his Thanksgiving trip to Iraq, President Bush said, "To a person, the Iraqi leadership I met with are incredibly thankful and generous with their praise of what America has done for them." But in the newest and biggest survey yet of Iraqi sentiments, Oxford Research International found that while 42.3 percent of Iraqis say the best thing that happened to them was the demise of the Saddam regime, 35.1 percent said the worst thing that happened was the war, the bombings, and the defeat of the Iraqi army.
[Boston Globe, 12/5/03]

From Righteous Anger: The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush by Doug Bandow
First, George W. Bush, despite laudable personal and family characteristics, is remarkably incurious and ill read. Gut instincts can carry even a gifted politician only so far. And a lack of knowledge leaves him vulnerable to simplistic remedies to complex problems, especially when it comes to turning America into the globe’s governess.

Second, despite occasional exceptions, the Bush administration, backed by the Republican-controlled Congress, has been promoting larger government at almost every turn. Its spending policies have been irresponsible, and its trade strategies have been destructive. The president has been quite willing to sell out the national interest for perceived political gain, whether the votes sought are from seniors or farmers. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 encouraged the administration to push into law civil-liberties restrictions that should worry anyone, whether they are wielded by a Bush or a Clinton administration.

The president and his aides have given imperiousness new meaning. Officials are apparently incapable of acknowledging that their pre-war assertions about Iraq’s WMD capabilities were incorrect; indeed, they resent that the president is being questioned about his administration’s claims before the war. They are unwilling to accept a role for Congress in deciding how much aid money to spend.
...
Third, President George W. Bush has made Woodrow Wilson the guiding spirit of Republican foreign policy. A candidate who criticized nation building is now pursuing global social engineering. The representative of a party that once criticized foreign aid is now pushing lavish U.S. social spending abroad, demanding that it be a gift rather than a loan.
[American Conservative, 12/1/03 issue]

This is a remarkable article, considering the source.

From The Law of Say-So
The Pentagon's announcement Tuesday that its officials have agreed that an American citizen held for 18 months may finally consult with a lawyer is at once a relief and scary.

For a year and a half, Yaser Esam Hamdi has been locked in a military brig at the mercy of Pentagon officials engaged in what they blandly term "intelligence collection." Hamdi — who, we repeat, is an American citizen — is charged with no crime, yet his captors have denied him a lawyer and any contact with his family.

Hamdi, captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, is one of two Americans the Pentagon has deep-sixed since the 9/11 attacks. The other is Jose Padilla, arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002 on suspicion of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb. President Bush declared both men "enemy combatants" on his say-so alone, stripping them of every constitutional right.

Like so much else since 9/11, the administration seems to have cobbled together its enemy combatant policy on the fly, without thinking through the ominous consequences of its actions. That this outrageous and capricious policy has prompted a chorus of opprobrium from the right and the left only underscores how insupportable it is.
[Los Angeles Times, 12/4/03]

And yet, Bush goes to Iraq, spends 2 hours at the airport, holds up a fake turkey - and his approval ratings go up 5 points. Are we a nation of morons?

From Bush Claims of Small Business Tax Cuts Exaggerated
On a campaign trip to Michigan yesterday, President Bush echoed one of his familiar claims, saying "I want to remind people about is that the tax relief was geared toward small businesses...When you hear us talking about reducing all taxes on individuals, you really hear also the message that we're reducing taxes on small businesses." This statement is the most recent in a long line of similar assertions - an unscientific Lexis-Nexis search shows, that in just the three years since Bush became President, he and Vice President Cheney have given at least 150 separate speeches claiming that their tax proposals are specifically geared to helping small business.

But simple statistics show just how misleading these statements are. In talking about his 2001 tax cut, the President specifically promised that there would be "more than 17.4 million small business owners and entrepreneurs who stand to benefit from dropping the top rate from 39.6% to 33%" - the major piece of his proposal.

But according to nonpartisan analyses of IRS and Treasury Department data, just 3.7% of small business owners are subject to these top tax rates - meaning the rest receive almost nothing from the major piece of his plan.3 In other words, for every small business owner that benefits, there are 15 small business owners that do not. All told, small business owners "would be far more likely to receive no tax reduction whatsoever from the Administration's tax package than to benefit" in any way.
[Daily Mis-Lead, 12/2/03]

From Bush Betrays P.O.W.'s by Jim Hightower
I need help here, or else I might not make it through this story. But I have to tell it, or I'll have a total anger meltdown.

George W and his regime of warmongering chicken hawks are constantly doing political photo-ops with our soldiers and piously admonishing everyone to "support the troops." But you might ask Lt. Col. Dale Starr, Col. David Everly, Col. Clifford Acree, and several other soldiers about how the Bushites themselves support our troops.

These combat veterans were captured, imprisoned, and tortured by Saddam Hussein's minions during the 1991 war with Iraq. As prisoners of war, they sustained fractured skulls, burnings, broken bones, threats of dismemberment and castration during their nightmarish confinement, yet they survived and made it home. Here they found some solace in a 1996 U.S. law that allowed them to sue the Iraqi government for the physical and emotional injuries they suffered, with payments to be made from Iraqi assets that had been frozen by our government. Last summer, a federal court awarded this group nearly a billion dollars in damages.

So, guess who is trying to keep them from collecting even a dime of it? Bush and gang, that's who. They've taken the soldiers back to court, arguing that this money is now needed for rebuilding Iraq. White House mouthpiece Scott McClellan and our Iraqi occupation czar, L. Paul Bremer III, both have been trotted out to say that these tortured POWs cannot be allowed to "get in the way" of the administration's nation-building scheme in Iraq.
[On the Air, 11/24/03]

From UN still waiting for US report on Iraq weapons
United Nations weapons inspectors say they still have not been given a key report by American and British experts who have searched post-war Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

The revelation is contained in a report by UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the UN arms team which originally monitored Baghdad's weapons programs and left on the eve of the war.

The interim report from the US-led Iraq Survey Group was completed in October.

Controversy has raged over whether the regime of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, cited as a main reason for the US-led war that ended his regime.

The Bush administration has said the survey group's report confirms its statements about Saddam's weapons programs, even though it also admits no WMDs have been found.
[ABC News, 12/4/03]

So where was the imminent threat?

From White House Changes Story on Bush Plane Incident
The White House on Wednesday changed its story of a British Airways pilot's spotting of Air Force One during President Bush's stealth trip to Iraq last week.

The original story -- which held that the airline's pilot had talked to Air Force One and that he kept the secret of Bush's Thanksgiving Day flight to Baghdad -- had been told by White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett to reporters as he sought to portray the drama of Bush's trip.

But after British Airways denied such a conversation took place, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Wednesday the airline's pilot never contacted Air Force One. "The conversation was between the British Airways plane and the London control tower," McClellan said.

It was also the London control tower, not an Air Force One pilot as in the original story, that misidentified Air Force One as a much smaller "Gulfstream 5" aircraft, McClellan said.
...
British Airways said it could not confirm the new account.
[Yahoo News, 12/4/03]

OK, we'll try another story then. Would you believe...?

From The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner: In Iraq Picture, Bush Is Holding the Centerpiece by Mike Allen
President Bush's Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.

The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.
[Washington Post, 12/4/03]

Does everything this man does have to be stage-managed and phony?

From Bush signs bill to curb wildfire threat: Critics call forest restoration act payback for big timber
President Bush signed legislation Wednesday that he said would help prevent “sudden and needless destruction” from wildfires like the California blazes that destroyed thousands of homes. “With the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, we will help to prevent catastrophic wildfires,” Bush said in a signing ceremony at the Agriculture Department. He was joined by firefighters who fought the Western blazes.
...
Sean Cosgrove, a forest expert with the Sierra Club, said some good may come from the increased spending on forest treatment, but there is bound to be unnecessary logging in roadless areas and wildlife habitat as the timber companies try to harvest valuable old-growth trees.

“The timber industry fought real hard for this bill for a reason, and it’s not because they want to remove brush and chaparral,” Cosgrove said. “Through and through, this thing is about increasing commercial logging with less environmental oversight.”

Since 1999, the timber industry has contributed $14.1 million to political campaigns, 80 percent of it going to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Bush has received $519,350 from the industry in that period.
[MSNBC, 12/3/03]

From D.C. Upside Down by Michael Hirsh
Taken together, all these changes have signaled a power shift in Washington. Today there is a rebalancing of influence between the new transformationalists and the old traditionalists, between those who cry freedom and those who fret about its burdens, between the ideologues and the policy professionals. Power, in other words, is shifting away from the hawks who believe that America can do as it pleases, who embrace American hegemony, even empire, as a righteous cause and see Iraq as the first step toward a grand democratic transformation of the Arab world. That power seems to be increasingly falling to moderates who stress American limitations—carefully matching commitments to resources—and cultivating allies, and who worry that by getting bogged down in grand designs for Iraq, America is failing to deal with other dire threats like North Korea.

It is a clash between unabashed champions of U.S. power, like Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney—as well as influential neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, all of them latter-day Reaganites—and the realists who grew up embracing containment during Vietnam and the cold war. The latter include wavering realists like Rice and powerful GOP senators such as Richard Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and John Warner, who runs the Armed Services Committee.

Even within Rice’s NSC, the ideologues are losing altitude. “Traditional realists are more energized in presenting their view assertively,” says Dimitri Simes of the Nixon Center. “A lot of people are becoming quite angry with the ideologues. The feeling is they are just indifferent to facts.”
[Newsweek, 12/3/03 issue]

This is an interesting (and encouraging) analysis.

From Bush's Trip Was Typical: All Politics, No Policy by Marie Cocco
The Iraq war, not a year old, already has offered a kaleidoscope of images. Some have faded quickly. The toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue as Baghdad fell to American troops - a portrait of triumph applauded in congressional offices and at the White House - soon was replaced by scenes of looting and chaos in the streets. Protesters in London during Bush's recent state visit sensed the ease with which that initial image can now be mocked. They toppled their own version of a Bush statue.

Terrorist bombs since the American occupation of Iraq have made a liberated Baghdad look less like joyful Berlin when the wall fell and more like Beirut when war raged. The tableau of twisted concrete obliterated the last big presidential photo op - Bush's landing aboard an aircraft carrier to announce the end of major hostilities. The "Mission Accomplished" banner is belied every day by the casualty count, 440 U.S. military dead since the war began; 302 lives lost since the president, costumed in his flight suit, landed on the carrier May 1.

Through it all, the administration has banned pictures of the arrival of military caskets coming home. Bush hasn't attended any funerals of service members who died in Iraq. If it isn't on camera, did it happen?

The president has every reason and even a duty to visit troops who risk their lives at his command. But these troops and the American people have a right to expect a policy based on reality and not imagery.
[Newsday, 12/2/03]

If that's what you want, get another president.

From Bush's PR Problem by Fareed Zakaria
In Thailand at the meeting for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, "there was no question that [Chinese President Hu Jintao] was the better appreciated one," a Thai official said to me. "He outshone Bush in most of the attendees' eyes." The trips ended with the two making back-to-back visits to Australia. Bush was greeted with demonstrations, his address to Parliament interrupted by hecklers. Hu, on the other hand, got a 20-minute standing ovation from Parliament.

"It is Hu's visit rather than George W. Bush's that will provide a lingering sense of satisfaction and security about Australia's place in the region," wrote the Australian, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch and not given to knee-jerk anti-Americanism.
...
There is a lack of empathy emanating from Washington. After the Bali bombings, which were Australia's Sept. 11, the administration did not bother to send a high-level envoy to a steadfast ally for condolences. Australians had to make do with a videotape of George Bush. Even last week, Bush could surely have arranged to meet in Baghdad with a few troops from allied countries who are also fighting and dying in Iraq.

What is most dismaying about this state of affairs is that for the past 50 years the United States has skillfully merged its own agenda with the agendas of others, creating a sense of shared interests and values. When Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy waged the Cold War, they also presented the world with a constructive agenda dealing with trade, poverty and health. They fought communism with one hand and offered hope with the other. We have fallen far from that model if the head of the Chinese Communist Party is seen as presenting the world with a more progressive agenda than the president of the world's leading democracy.
[Washington Post, 12/2/03]

From A Bad Reversal on Trade
Presidents can end up endorsing policies that seem to contradict their core beliefs: Richard Nixon recognized China; Bill Clinton overhauled welfare. Now George W. Bush is following in their footsteps — for the worse. Bush entered office a vocal supporter of more free-trade agreements. But ever since the 2001 recession, his administration has embraced protectionist measures that go beyond controversial steel tariffs and that have antagonized Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The steel tariffs are bad enough, increasing costs for small steel users in California and the Midwest. Appearing Tuesday at a lavish fund-raiser in Pittsburgh, Bush avoided the question of whether he would lift these tariffs, which have the European Union threatening to impose $2.3 billion in retaliatory duties. A World Trade Organization court declared the U.S. levies illegal Nov. 10, and Bush is said to be ready to lift them.
...
The administration should lift the steel tariffs, back off textile protectionism and return to its campaign position: Free trade benefits this country and should be pursued.
[Los Angeles Times, 12/3/03]

This administration suffers from a disconnect between campaign promises and actual policies, and not just in the area of trade.

From Bush, in 'Steel City,' Skips the 'T' Word: Tariffs are Topic A among workers, but the president deflects talk about lifting the duties by Maura Reynolds and Richard Simon
Here in "Steel City," President Bush didn't say a word in public Tuesday about the hot political issue of the day: his expected decision to lift the tariffs he imposed on imported steel last year.

But it was on the minds of the steelworkers who demonstrated outside Bush's campaign fund-raiser in Pittsburgh as well as some of the president's Republican supporters who attended the event, underscoring the high political stakes of the trade issue in the 2004 presidential campaign.
...
"He's trying to dance across Pittsburgh without having to deal with this thing," said Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland and a former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.

"However, he's going to have to deal with it," he said.

In his remarks at the Pittsburgh fund-raiser, which officials said had been scheduled long before the tariffs became an issue, Bush avoided the subject and spent less time than usual promoting his economic policies.

He barely mentioned unemployment or recent improvements in job creation, since those have been little felt in western Pennsylvania.
[Los Angeles Times, 12/3/03]

From EPA Chief Pledges Drive to Clean Air by Elizabeth Shogren
Mercury is a neurotoxin that is particularly dangerous to fetuses. It migrates from the air to ground water, and humans become exposed by eating seafood tainted with it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that one in 12 women of childbearing age has blood mercury levels exceeding what EPA considers safe for fetuses, and 41 states have advisories on eating local fish because of high mercury levels.

[New EPA administrator Michael] Leavitt argued that the cap-and-trade system would "achieve substantially greater reductions in mercury emissions over the next 15 years" than would traditional regulations. "This is the first time mercury has been regulated from power plants," he said. "It moves us down the road toward better air."

But environmentalists and state regulators argued that more significant reductions were possible.

"Rather than take this issue head on and respond to the courts and the Clean Air Act, they are backing off and allowing public health and the environment to suffer," said S. William Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials.
[Los Angeles Times, 12/3/03]

Imagine that.

From Do Americans know the score? by Derrick Z. Jackson
In the great spirit of President "Bring 'em on" Bush, the military was back to lecturing the enemy as to how utterly superior we are. General Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "They attacked, and they were killed. So I think it will be instructive to them." Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said: "Any enemy looking at eight tanks, four Bradley fighting vehicles, and 93 coalition soldiers and still decides to fight is making a dreadful mistake."

We Americans, of course, make no mistakes. "We take proper aim and fire at those firing at us," said Lieutenant Colonel Mike Consalves. "We don't indiscriminately engage. We engage people who are shooting and trying to kill us."

Our soldiers were so sure of their aim, they had no problem describing the gore. Specialist Sergio Silva told The New York Times how he literally blew apart a guerrilla with his Bradley cannon just before the guerrilla was about to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. "He just exploded," Silva said.

Enough of this proper aim. Since our invasion was a dreadful mistake based on lies (seen any weapons of mass destruction lately?), American scorecards are about as trustworthy as Vegas odds. Even the military admits the sudden interest in counting the bodies of Iraqi soldiers is a political ploy. It comes after the deadliest month for American soldiers since we commenced the bombing of Iraq. Eighty-one American soldiers perished -- more than the 65 in March or the 73 in April during the actual invasion.
[Boston Globe, 12/3/03]

From Political 'beat the clock' by Robert Kuttner
But the economy looks positively rosy compared with the foreign policy front. The president has served American troops a turkey, in more ways than one.

Ever since last month's emergency meeting with proconsul Paul Bremer, it's clear that the administration is belatedly looking for an exit strategy. Bush wants most troops home for the election. However, no serious observer of Iraq thinks that nation's political situation can be stabilized that quickly. An international peacekeeping force for Iraq under United Nations auspices is off the table because Bush refuses to share authority.

If power is turned over to the Iraqis in 2004, the likely result will be escalating violence, a serious risk of partition into three countries -- Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd -- and civil war. Iraq could easily be more of an international menace -- and a US foreign policy failure -- in 2004 than in 2002.

Of course, Bush and his political handlers are cynical enough to arrange a power transfer late in 2004, so that the newscasts will be filled with happy troops returning home all fall, and hope to delay the collapse until the election is over. But events have a way of mocking such split-second timing.
[Boston Globe, 12/3/03]

From The Politics of Payoff by E. J. Dionne Jr.
President Bush likes to talk about the need for "fiscal sanity in Washington." His decision to run up the national debt is entirely sane -- as long as you understand his real purpose. Bush doesn't care a whit about deficits. That's because he is not a fiscal conservative. He is a political conservative out to buy himself a majority in 2004 and spending the next generation's money to do it.

Some act mystified, as if conservatives are always more responsible with the people's money than liberals. But it's possible to be generous toward social needs and pay as you go. That's what liberals have usually done. Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page editor, once called this approach "balanced-budget liberalism." It's conservatives, not liberals, who twice over the past quarter-century have created extravagant deficits.

It's also forgotten that redistribution to the poor is not the only way to shift money around. The government's coffers can also be run down by redistribution to the wealthy and to favored interest groups. And when it comes to the politics of payoff, the president and his allies are nothing short of brilliant. Disgorging public money to your friends makes political sense. By recycling a small fraction of the cash back to Bush and his party in the form of campaign contributions, those friends are financing the construction of a mighty political machine. It's a weird form of public financing of campaigns -- confined to one party.
[Washington Post, 12/2/03]

Our entire system of government is being corrupted by this administration. Evidently, their objective is single-party rule, Soviet style (complete with mock elections). How are they getting away with it? Is this the America we want?

From Pilots Didn't Radio Air Force One, Airline Says
British Airways said yesterday that none of its pilots made contact with President Bush's plane during its secret flight to Baghdad on Thanksgiving, contradicting White House reports of a midair exchange that nearly prompted Bush to call off his trip. Honor Verrier, a spokeswoman for British Airways in North America, said two British Airways aircraft were in the area at the time and neither radioed the president's plane to ask if it was Air Force One.

"We have spoken to the British Airways captains who were in the area at the time and neither made comments to Air Force One nor did they hear any other aircraft make the statement over the radio," Verrier said.

The White House had no immediate comment on the discrepancy.
[Washington Post, 12/2/03]

This entire administration is one big discrepancy. Why would they make up a story like this?

From Hack the Vote by Paul Krugman
Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking these safeguards haven't caused problems. "How do you know?" he asks.

What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.
[New York Times, 12/2/03]

From Trading Favors
Presidents subordinate economic and trade policy to electoral pandering at their own peril. That should now be abundantly clear to George Bush as he tries to decide what to do — and when to announce it — in response to a World Trade Organization ruling that his 2002 steel tariffs were illegal.

Yesterday, Mr. Bush starred in a campaign fund-raiser in Michigan held by steel-dependent auto executives and other industrial leaders who have complained bitterly about the tariffs. Today, he will collect $1 million or so in Pittsburgh at a fund-raiser held by the chief executive of a steel maker. There is no way Mr. Bush can say anything on steel that will please both audiences.

Despite the opposition of its own economic team, the White House adopted the tariffs to protect America's ailing industry and woo steelworkers' votes in the key electoral battlegrounds of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The move, based on the specious claim that a sudden surge of imported steel was responsible for the domestic industry's woes, harmed the overall economy and antagonized the nation's trading partners.
[New York Times, 12/2/03]

Anything for a vote.

From FBI targets anti-war movement by Dale Mills
US civil liberties groups have reacted with alarm to a leaked FBI memo which equates demonstrations in the USA with terrorist activity. The memo, released by the New York Times on November 23, was dated October 15. Its purpose is to “provide law enforcement [agencies] with current, terrorism information developed from counter-terrorism investigations and analysis”.

The memo concentrated on the tactics to be used by anti-war protesters at the October 25 demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington. It urged police to report the activities of demonstrators to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The language of the memo recalled the well-documented role of the FBI in illegally infiltrating and disrupting the left and other domestic dissidents in the 1950s and '60s, including the civil rights movement and anti-war movement. These were known as COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence) programs.

The language of the leaked memo reeks of bureaucratic paranoia. The memo warns that “extremists may be prepared to defend themselves against law enforcement officials during the course of the demonstration... Activists may also use intimidation techniques such as videotaping” police.
[Green Left (Australia), 12/3/03 issue]

That's some "intimidation technique". And look who's talking!

From Military Officers File Brief Against Bu$h's Policy in Guantanamo by Frank Davies
Navy Rear Admiral Don Guter felt the Pentagon shudder when an airliner hijacked by terrorists crashed into it on Sept. 11, 2001. He helped evacuate shaken personnel and later gave the eulogy for a colleague killed that day.

"I would have done anything that day, and I fully support the war on terrorism," said Guter, who served as judge advocate general, the Navy's chief legal officer, until he retired last year.

Nonetheless, he's joining his predecessor and a retired Marine general with expertise on prisoner issues to challenge the Bush administration's indefinite detention of suspected terrorists at the Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba.

Guter, Rear Adm. John Hutson and Brig. Gen. David Brahms worry that lengthy incarcerations at Guantanamo without hearings will undermine the rule of law and endanger U.S. forces.

"For me it's a question of balance between security needs and due process, and I think we've lost our balance," Guter said.
...
For two years, the Bush administration has described the detainees as "the worst of the worst" and "killers." The three former officers are skeptical, noting that 88 have been released so far from the prison camp.

"We're trying to separate the goat-herders from the real terrorists, and that's not easy, but I'm not convinced they're all guilty," said Hutson, now the dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H.
[Knight-Ridder, 12/1/03]

From Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall
The greatest deceit perpetrated by the architects of the war turns out to have had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or ties between Saddam and al Qaida. The profoundest deception was the claim that the [Interim Governing Council] was designed to be a transitional governing authority when in fact, as is now becoming clear, its true purpose was to provide a sort of dark, Falstaffian comic relief to balance out the ominous backdrop of postwar Iraq.

Much of the jockeying we're now seeing involves efforts by the IGC to perpetuate its power into post-occupation Iraq even though -- with the exception of the Kurdish faction leaders -- few of its members have any serious base of political support in the country or, to put it bluntly, any armies on hand for when things really get fun next fall.
...
All of this adds up to the essential ridiculousness of the moment: On the homefront, the president is shaping his political campaign around the notion that we shouldn't show weakness and we can't cut and run. Meanwhile, it's clear to pretty much everyone in Iraq that we're doing both.

And they're acting accordingly.
[Talking Points Memo, 11/30/03]

From Europe's Cheap U.S. Labor by Harold Meyerson
In fact, right now, in the opening years of the 21st century, Europeans are still coming here to exploit the American workforce.

The irony is that these European-based global enterprises are the kind of model corporate citizen over there that has all but vanished over here. In Europe, they pay their workers decently, tend to health and safety concerns and actually encourage their employees to unionize.

When they cross the Atlantic, however, they find themselves in a brave new world where wages have eroded (a new Russell Sage Foundation study concludes that 24 percent of U.S. workers make less than $8.70 an hour) and employees' rights to unionize have been effectively abolished.
...
So it's come to this: When European employers look to the United States, they see roughly the same thing that U.S. employers see when they look to China: millions of low-wage workers who have all but lost the right to organize and a government intent on keeping things just the way they are.

The erosion of worker power and the growth of employer supremacy here have transformed the bottom half of the U.S. workforce into a vast exploitable mass worthy of a colonial backwater.

Something to chew on as we give thanks for the marvel that once was America.
[Washington Post, 11/26/03]

The Bush administration seems to have declared a War On the Working Class. And it's winning.

From A Coward Goes to Baghdad by Doug Basham
When the coward in chief is safe and sound in America, he says… "Bring 'em On", or..."We will not be intimidated by thugs." Now don't you think a more appropriate time to say that - if indeed you were a man of courage, honor, conviction and "boldness" - would have been if you were planning to GO to Iraq, or when you were already THERE in Iraq?

But what did he say instead? First thing he said was… "Shhhhhhh." The second was, "I was fully prepared to turn this baby around and come home."

Put another way - when it's the lives of our soldiers that are at risk, Bush says "Bring 'em on" or, "The United States will not be intimidated by a bunch of thugs." When it's HIS sorry ass that might be in peril, he says, "if anyone finds out I'm coming… I'M turning this plane around and going home." And for this act of seemingly unnoticed cowardice, he's called... bold?!
[OpEdNews.com]

From Guest Opinion: Bush makes protesters 'disappear' by Charles Levendosky
President Bush has never been an advocate of the First Amendment. Even when he was governor of Texas, he prohibited demonstrations on the walkways in front of the governor's mansion, an area that had traditionally been used for peaceful protests.

As president, Bush has widened his restrictions on demonstrations against his policies. Anti-Bush protesters are now relegated to what are euphemistically called Free Speech Zones. These areas are cordoned off as far as a mile away from the president and the main thoroughfares, so that Bush cannot see the demonstrators, or their signs of protest, nor hear their chants.

The free speech enclosures are only for those who disagree with the administration's current policies. Those citizens who carry pro-Bush signs are allowed to line the street where the president's motorcade passes.

Members of the Secret Service or local law enforcement officers under orders of the Secret Service demand protesters move into a free speech area.

Peter Buckley, of Oregon, a former Democratic candidate for Congress, attended a presidential appearance. After being herded into a fenced-in free speech area, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Oregonian: "We were not allowed anywhere near any kind of position where the president, or the media which follows him, would see or hear us. This is not America. This in not the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is some other country. I'm a patriotic American. I want the country I was raised to believe in, a country strong enough for political discourse and debate, with leaders courageous and decent enough to have the willingness to listen to all citizens, not just those who parrot their own views. ... The effort being made to hide political opposition in this country is more than cowardly, it's un-American."
[Billings Gazette (MT), 11/29/03]

So it would seem.

From Locals Dispute U.S. Claims of 54 Dead in Iraqi Battle
The US army claimed today that 54 Iraqis were killed in Samarra as they used tanks and cannons to fight their way out of simultaneous ambushes while delivering new Iraqi currency to banks.

But residents of the northern town said today that the casualty figure was much lower and that the dead were mostly civilians.

By the American account, yesterday’s fighting was the bloodiest combat reported since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in a US led invasion.

The military said attackers, many wearing uniforms of Saddam’s Fedayeen paramilitary force, struck at two convoys at opposite sides of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.
...
“Civilians shot back at the Americans,” said 30-year-old Ali Hassan, who was wounded by shrapnel in the battle. ”They claim we are terrorists. So OK, we are terrorists. What do they expect when they drive among us?”

Many residents said the Americans opened fire at random when they came under attack, and targeted civilian installations. Six destroyed vehicles sat in front of the hospital, where witnesses said US tanks shelled people dropping off the injured. A kindergarten was damaged, apparently by tank shells. No children were hurt.
[Scotsman.com (UK), 12/1/03]

This is certainly a different story than the one we are hearing.

From The Nitty-Gritty of Democracy by Fred Hiatt
When I recently asked an Egyptian human rights leader whether she had taken heart from President Bush's new commitment to democracy in her region, she looked at me as though I must be either slightly mad or utterly naive. Choosing her words with as much polite restraint as she could muster, Dr. Aida Seif El Dawla replied: "What Egyptians have experienced from U.S. policy is not in harmony with any human rights values."

Her reaction, which mirrors that of many democracy advocates in the Middle East, speaks to the challenge of shifting policy when a president experiences a midterm conversion.
...
But announcing a new policy doesn't make it so. If the United States is to commit to a struggle equivalent to its fight against communism, Bush will have to back his words with the nitty-gritty of execution -- with student exchanges, with support for language training and area studies in universities, with reorientation of every government institution.

The foreign-service bureaucracy he directs, after all, is a product of that mentality of the past 60 years -- a mentality that considered democracy unrealistic for Arab countries and, as Bush said, cherished stability as the primary goal. Even his own political administration was formed by a president -- the pre-9/11 George W. Bush -- for whom democracy in the Middle East wasn't a consideration.
[Washington Post, 12/1/03]