APRIL 22, 2005


MEDIA AND THE REPUBLICAN LEXICON


Over the past several years the media have bent over backwards to adopt the Republican lexicon. You don't call it the "estate tax"; it has become the "death tax." You make up terminology such as "partial birth abortion," although there is no such medical procedure. Since Newt Gingrich pushed the Contract on America back in 1994, creating a list of highly-charged language to use against GOP opponents, the Republicans have created their own lexicon and the corporate media have walked in lockstep. Jonathan Chait writes about it in this column at www.latimes.com:


President Bush and his allies are probably going to lose his fight to privatize Social Security. But in the course of losing they have won an astonishing victory: They have established the precedent that a political party can unilaterally force the news media to change its terminology essentially. Push them hard enough, and the media will render verboten any previously agreed-upon phrase, no matter how widely accepted.


THE ANTI-EARTH REPUBLICANS


It wasn't an accident that the Republican Congress passed a disgusting "energy" bill on the eve of Earth Day. Among other things, the bill will allow the rape of ANWR. Environmentalists care more about preserving the environment than they do about quarterly profits for corporations, and that's horrible in right-wing land. The louts in the Republican party really showed us, didn't they?


WILD HORSES END UP AT SLAUGHTERHOUSE


Horses are beautiful animals with a grace and swiftness that has inspired humans for generations. That's unless you're a right-wing cretin like George W. Bush. A new law made it possible for the horses to be captured and sold to private owners. There's more of that wonderful capitalist system at work. This story by the Associated Press is at www.commondreams.org:


Wild horses rounded up on federal land in the West and sold to a private owner have been slaughtered for the first time since a new law went into effect, a government official said Thursday.


"This is something we regret and are very disappointed this has happened," said Celia Boddington, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Washington.

APRIL 21, 2005

OUR ECONOMIC WELLBEING NOT A REPUB CONCERN

Republicans care about the rich. Period. Ordinary working stiffs are just cannon fodder. We're there to be exploited, underpaid, ripped off, sent off to fight their wars. If anyone needed proof of that, just look at two recent pieces of legislation: the bankruptcy bill that gives credit card companies just about everything they want and the bill to permanently repeal the estate tax. This article by Jonathan Weisman and Dan Balz is at www.washingtonpost.com:

Inflation and interest rates are rising, stock values have plunged, a tank of gas induces sticker shock, and for nearly a year, wages have failed to keep up with the cost of living.


Yet in Washington, the political class has been consumed with the death of a brain-damaged woman in Florida, the ethics of the House majority leader, and the fate of the Senate filibuster.


BUSH, MURDER, AND SUICIDES


The Center for Disease Control has a new study showing the rate of murder and suicide is the highest since the early 1990's. Is there a correlation between rotten Republican economics, the laissez-faire availability of guns, and death? I think there probably is. This story by Paul Simao is at news.yahoo.com:


Murder rates are on the rise in a handful of U.S. states, according to a federal study that bolsters indications the nation as a whole may be experiencing its first significant jump in violent deaths since the early 1990s.


The finding, published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was based on data from the first six states to take part in the federal agency's national violent-death reporting system.


SEND THE GROPER BACK TO "B" MOVIES


He's rich, he's charismatic for some, he took steroids and lifted weights, and starred in some violent action movies. Then he took advantage of a coup to become the Governor of California. Even though he has tried to cast himself as a moderate, the Groper is just another sleazy big business Republican, and it's becoming obvious to the voters of California. Maybe he can star in a movie about being a lousy governor. This story is by Bill Bradley at www.laweekly.com:


Arnold Schwarzenegger could well be a one-term governor. Unbelievable as that seemed at the beginning of the year, which the action superstar entered as arguably the most popular governor in California history, it may end up that way.


Suddenly happy Democrats, gathered last weekend at the L.A. Convention Center for their annual state convention, lived up to this e-mail prediction from a Schwarzenegger friend: "It is going to be a gidfest of lefties. They have every right to be happy. They have this governor right where they want him and they are driving the ship."


Schwarzenegger thinks he is still in the center, unlike George W. Bush. But his opponents are succeeding in recasting him to the right, bad news in this blue state.

APRIL 20, 2005

BIGGEST INFLATION JUMP IN FIVE MONTHS

A few days ago New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about stagflation, which is a combination of high unemployment and high inflation. The "official" rate of unemployment isn't considered bad, although we know the real unemployment rate is probably at least twice as high, but unemployment has remained over 5% for some time now. Low inflation has benefited the Bush administration because lots of people were able to refinance their homes and use the money from refinancing to spend in the consumer economy. But the Federal Reserve will likely react to inflationary fears by raising interest rates, which will put a lid on consumer spending, and unemployment is also likely to rise. This story by the Associated Press is at www.nytimes.com:

Consumer prices jumped 0.6 percent in March, the biggest inflation surge in five months, as the costs of energy, clothing and airline fares all rose sharply.
The Labor Department said last month's increase in the Consumer Price Index, the most closely watched inflation gauge, followed a 0.4 percent rise in February and left consumer inflation rising at an annual rate of 4.3 percent in the first three months of this year. That was a full percentage point above the 3.3 percent rise in prices for all of 2004.

NEW POPE NOT SO WARM AND FUZZY

Image making goes on for the powerful all the time. There's no doubt that the Pope is one of the most powerful men in the world. He may not have an army at his disposal, but he has major influence in governments around the world. His decisions have major impact on all the lives of the true believers in the Church. The image makers say that the former Cardinal Ratzinger is an intellectual, a man who speaks several languages, a guy who walks to work, and even plays piano. They throw in as a casual aside that he was in the Hitler Youth, that he's a hardline conservative more appropriate for a few centuries ago, and that he has turned a mostly blind eye to the pedophile priest scandal in the Church. Bill Berkowitz has a column at www.workingforchange.com:

In fact, Cardinal Ratzinger, who chose the name Pope Benedict XVI, is known for his ultra-conservative views. Since 1981, Ratzinger has been prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, chief guardian of the church's orthodoxy; maintaining and enforcing its hard line on issues such as birth control, abortion and women in the priesthood.

INVESTMENT IN OUR DEBT, NOT OUR GOODS

This is an effect of the whopping federal deficits I hadn't thought about. Money that could go to buy U.S. goods is being spent instead to buy our bonds. The bonds attract money because we need the financing to keep the government afloat thanks to the deficits being run up by the Bush administration. The money used to buy the bonds could have been used to buy manufactured goods, but as you know we increasingly don't manufacture anything. We ship our jobs offshore, we destroy the hopes and dreams of a middle class lifestyle for our citizens, and we put ourselves at the mercy of foreign investors. Doesn't this strike you as a rather screwy way to conduct the business of the country? This article by Jerry Mazza is at www.onlinejournal.com:

Ironically, the deindustrialization of America is mostly a result of our large federal deficits. The simple reason is that dollars other nations might spend on our goods are being spent on US Treasury Bonds to support our rising debt. What's more, our government's debt jones is matched by American families' low savings. Ergo US corporations hungering for investment capital have to look far and away.

APRIL 19, 2005

FRIST HAS NO PRINCIPLES

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist tries to cloak himself in righteousness, but the halo just isn't there. I remember Jesus Christ saying, "My followers are not a part of this world, just as I am not a part of this world." Christ may have been the first advocate of church-state separation. But Mr. Frist sees pandering to the nuts on the religious right as a good platform to launch his presidential ambitions. The First Amendment and religious liberty be damned! Richard Cohen writes about the pandering Senator at www.washingtonpost.com:

Totally by mistake, I was summoned to meet Sen. Bill Frist shortly after he first arrived in Washington. This happened because someone in Frist's office confused me with the congressional affairs correspondent of the National Journal, Richard E. Cohen, but I stayed to meet Frist anyway and found him impressive. Time and tide have changed my view. He is now the Senate majority leader and an undeclared but neon-lit presidential candidate who is getting into shape for the long run to the White House by shedding anything that weighs him down. In his case it's principles.

FUNDAMENTALISTS SELECTIVE IN WHAT THEY BELIEVE

They march and fulminate and say the Ten Commandments should be displayed everywhere, but never mind little things like "Thou shalt not kill." It's just a part of how selective so-called fundamentalist Christians are in what they believe. They are horrified at the thought of gay marriage, but they have no problem with the Draconian and obscene bankruptcy "reform" bill just passed by Congress. Jesus said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to inherit the Kingdom. But that's forgotten when Congress votes to abolish the estate tax that affects only the very rich. It seems if you're going to say you believe in the Bible you have to believe in all of the Bible. Sean Gonsalves writes about it in an article at www.commondreams.org:

Given "Bible-believers" deafening silence over a bankruptcy bill that subjects the working-poor to market discipline while doing nothing to hold unethical lending institutions accountable, and their low-key support for the permanent repeal of the estate tax, is blasphemy against the spirit embodied in the very Bible they claim as their guide.

Exodus 22:25-27 speaks of a divine ordinance prohibiting interest charges on money lending. Hebrew and Semitic Language Professor John Gray points out: "The prohibition against interest refers, not to commercial investment, where the interest is simply a share of the borrower's profit, but to exploitation of a poor man's need."

LIBERAL MEDIA? WHAT A LAUGH

The lunatic who wrote an op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times yesterday attacking Air America Radio brought out the old right-wing canard about the "liberal media." Air America won't work, you see, because there is already so much liberalism amuck in the media. That's a crock, of course. If anyone needs convincing, look at who is on the cover of Time Magazine. It's none other than total nut job whacked-out Ann Coulter. Coulter should be in a padded cell, not on the cover of Time, but she gets celebrated as some kind of media icon. David Sirota writes about it at www.smirkingchimp.com:

There's been a lot of debate over whether the media is "liberal" or "conservative." But as I saw this week's cover of Time Magazine, I realized just how ridiculous it is for there to even be a debate.

The cover trumpets right-wing crazy person Ann Coulter. This is a woman who advocating blowing up the New York Times offices and claimed Vietnam war hero/triple amputee Max Cleland didn't deserve to be honored for his losing his limbs on the battlefield.

APRIL 18, 2005

GOP HAS GOT TO GO

California's Governor Groper, once flying so high, is now falling back to earth. Californians were foolish enough to put this phony "moderate" Republican into the governor's office with what was essentially a coup of our duly elected governor, Gray Davis. Arnold has since managed to act like a celebrity, borrow millions of dollars and put us more in debt, threaten teachers and nurses, called the legislature names, vetoed a minimum wage increase, and even threatened the lunch breaks of working people in this state. He's been all pro-big business and anti-worker, which makes him a typical Republican. We see the examples of rotten governance by Republicans everywhere, from all the scandals in the Bush administration, the sleazy Tom DeLay, and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Where's that rail to run them out of town with? This story by Howard Breuer is at story.news.yahoo.com:

California Democrats showed increasing confidence on Saturday in challenging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger after a series of bruising political battles that have weakened the Republican who once seemed invincible.

Speaking at a convention of state Democrats, lawmakers and candidates for the 2006 governor's race criticized Schwarzenegger's handling of the state budget and accused him of catering to special interests.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION NOT VERY TRANSPARENT

George W. Bush has talked about the need for "transparency" in government, all the while trying to hide as much information as possible. A government obsessed with secrecy is hard to trust, and not representative of a democracy. David Sirota has a list of various reports the administration has squelched at www.davidsirota.com:

President Bush has said that "in a society that is a free society, there will be transparency." That means that in America, we have a government where the public gets to see as much information as possible about its government.
But as the record shows, Bush is anything but pro-transparency. A careful look shows the Bush White House has systematically tried to stop publishing government information that it finds embarrassing or disagrees with - the opposite of "transparent." See the record for yourself:

KRUGMAN WRITES ABOUT STAGFLATION

During the Nixon-Ford years we had the experience of what economists call "stagflation," a combination of inflation and high unemployment. Under classic economic models that's not supposed to happen. It puts policy makers into a bind. If you try to increase employment, you may set off a new round of inflation. If you try to reduce inflation, unemployment increases. The problem is worse now because the Bush administration has created such massive deficits it limits the flexibility of the government. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:

In the 1970's soaring prices of oil and other commodities led to stagflation - a combination of high inflation and high unemployment, which left no good policy options. If the Fed cut interest rates to create jobs, it risked causing an inflationary spiral; if it raised interest rates to bring inflation down, it would further increase unemployment.

Can it happen again?

I WISH WE HAD ANOTHER FDR

We have just observed the 60th anniversary of the death of perhaps our greatest president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR led the country through the dark days of the Great Depression and the Second World War. His administration created programs that have benefited most of us ever since. He was hated by the right-wingers of his day and is still despised by them today. FDR stood for an egalitarianism that appalls the crowd that thinks the rich should just get richer, and the heck with the rest of us. Bob Herbert has a good column at www.nytimes.com:

That more wasn't made of this anniversary is not just a matter of time; it's a measure of the distance the U.S. has traveled from the egalitarian ideals championed by F.D.R. His goal was "to make a country in which no one is left out." That kind of thinking has long since been consigned to the political dumpster. We're now in the age of Bush, Cheney and DeLay, small men committed to the concentration of big bucks in the hands of the fortunate few.
To get a sense of just how radical Roosevelt was (compared with the politics of today), consider the State of the Union address he delivered from the White House on Jan. 11, 1944. He was already in declining health and, suffering from a cold, he gave the speech over the radio in the form of a fireside chat.

ANOTHER STUPID RIGHT WING COLUMN

I'm in no mood to be diplomatic. Today a right-winger had a column in The Los Angeles Times sneering at Air America Radio and at liberals in general. This guy has published with Regnery Publishing, which is to publishing what graffiti is to art. His critique is mostly a rehash of every right media cliche. You know, the rest of the media are liberal. We even have NPR, lucky us! He claims that Air America's flagship station has weak ratings. I don't have the ratings book, so I can't verify that. Ratings aren't the most important issue here. What is important, despite all the right-wing predictions, is that Air America has made it for one year and has expanded to 53 markets. If Air America were so unimportant, this right-wing creep probably wouldn't even be writing a column. The column by Brian C. Anderson is at www.latimes.com:

The liberal Air America Radio, just past its first birthday, has probably enjoyed more free publicity than any enterprise in recent history. But don't believe the hype: Air America's left-wing answer to conservative talk radio is failing, just as previous efforts to find liberal Rush Limbaughs have failed.

APRIL 17, 2005

WHERE'S THE MAD COW BEEF?

If something has terrible and lethal as mad cow disease could get into our food supply, it would seem logical and prudent to take precautions against that happening. But that's not true if you're the Bush administration. We've apparently dodged the bullet so far and, after all, profits are at stake. So of course the Bush administration doesn't mind that so-called "downer" cattle, who are obviously sick, are slaughtered and introduced into our food supply. Better think about that before you get that next hamburger or steak. This story by Randy Fabi is at story.news.yahoo:

The Bush administration said on Friday it may allow some injured cattle to be slaughtered for human food, easing a regulation that the Agriculture Department adopted 15 months ago after the nation's first case of mad cow disease.

Consumer groups said they oppose any changes in regulations aimed at keeping the deadly disease out of the food supply.

The USDA prohibited all so-called downer cattle -- those too sick or injured to walk -- from being slaughtered for human food soon after a Washington state dairy cow was diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in December 2003.

THOSE GOOD CORPORATE TAX CHEATS

The same hypocrites who moan and groan about "overregulation" or the terrible costs of labor are the first to cheat the government out of taxes, it appears. In a perfect world corporations would not be treated as persons, but as big businesses. Their major stockholders and members of their Boards of Directors would be criminally liable for the company breaking the law. The world is far from perfect, though. This story by Robert Kuttner is at www.prospect.org:

Last fall, Citizens for Tax Justice examined federal taxes paid by 275 of America's largest corporations. On average, they paid a rate of 17.3 percent -- lower than the rate paid by nearly everyone who is reading this column.
The statutory corporate rate is 35 percent. The fact that the taxes actually paid were less than half that amount reflects a blend of special-interest laws, shelters, and outright tax-cheating. As McIntyre observes, in the 1950s, U.S. corporations paid 4.8 percent of the gross domestic product in taxes. By 2004 that had fallen to 1.6 percent.

THE "GENIUSES" ON WALL STREET

You think of the character Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street who summed up the 1980s when he said, "Greed is good." It turns out that maybe greed isn't so good after all. The business types on Wall Street, in corporate boardrooms, in conservative think tanks, and in the government have driven the U.S. economy like the Titanic and we may be about to hit the iceberg. Those policies of huge tax cuts for the rich, ignoring the importance of global climate change, not dealing with finding energy sources other than oil, outsourcing jobs and technology, and destroying the middle class here at home are coming home to roost. This story by Chris Isidore is at money.cnn.com:

Economists and investors who were confident about the pace of growth only a week or two ago are suddenly much more concerned about a slowdown in the months ahead.

As the first-quarter earnings reporting period speeds up next week and key economic reports are released the next two weeks, there will be talk about whether factors such as high gas prices and rising short-term interest rates could choke off growth in the months ahead.

"We've seen a sea change in the way in the way the financial markets and economy watchers are looking at the world," said Anthony Chan, senior economist with JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management. "For many months, people thought the economy was so strong and robust, they could ignore these head winds."

RIGHT-WINGERS DEFILE THE NAME OF CHRIST

They proclaim their love of Jesus, while they pursue policies totally opposite to what Jesus taught. I'm speaking of the so-called religious right and the politicians who pander to them, the types like Bill Frist, George W. Bush, and Tom DeLay. Dawn Baldwin writes about it in this column at www.commondreams.org:

I'm no Bible scholar, but I can't for the life of me find any exceptions to these directives in the Gospels. Nothing about respecting our neighbors unless they come from a different social class, or unless they happen to be in a distasteful line of work, or unless they happen to have the double misfortune of being poor and sick, or unless they happen to be women, or children. Nothing about making every effort not to harm those around us unless they come from a foreign land and do not share our ways or beliefs. Nothing about non-violent resistance unless we're just too impatient to restrain ourselves, in which case carpet-bombing now and asking questions later is a-okay.

ANOTHER MBNA VICTIM

I really, really hate credit card companies.

They bait you with offers of what a good and wonderful person you are and how pleased they are to offer you a gold or a platinum credit line of whatever amount with all these wonderful benefits. Down there in the fine print is the ticking time bomb, of course.

They can use something like an "average daily balance," for instance, to calculate their interest. They can hit you with a huge late fee for being one day late, even if it's not your fault. They can jack up your rate if you're late on some other bill totally unrelated to them. They can change the terms on their own whim from a "guaranteed" fixed rate to some onerous variable rate.

Now they have the latest gift from Congress in this bankruptcy bill that makes it harder for people to get out from under. MBNA is probably the absolute worst of these jackals, and Lisa Rowe Fraustino writes about them in this piece at www.commondreams.org:

When we sign papers for fixed rates on mortgages, car loans, and student loans, fixed means fixed. We know the deal and can budget accordingly. But credit card companies get to change all the rules whenever they want, and consumers can't do a damned thing about it except pay up or move debt around. There's something wrong with this system. We might even call it morally bankrupt. Instead of blaming the debtor and making it harder to erase credit card debts in bankruptcy, instead of catering to the desires of big business, our government representatives ought to be taking a hard look at the needs of their constituents.

APRIL 16, 2005

PSST! WANT YOUR RETIREMENT IN THE STOCK MARKET?

The Stock Market suffered its third consecutive day of triple digit declines. Just imagine that you're about ready to retire and your retirement is dependent on the performance of the Stock Market. Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. This story by Jesus Sanchez is at www.latimes.com:

Today was the third consecutive day that the Dow suffered a triple-digit loss, and the widely watched index has now tumbled to its lowest level in nearly six months.

Other financial indexes also posted major losses. The technology-heavy Nasdaq fell 38.56 points to 1,908.15, and the broader S&P 500 lost 19.43 to 1,142.62.
Investors ignored a decline in oil futures prices - which were once again on the verge of falling below $50 a barrel - and some positive earnings reports to instead focus on the most recent batch of economic data that seemed to point to a slowing economy.

"WAR ON TERROR" HAS MADE TERROR WORSE

It's a mark of the Bush administration's dishonesty and of its ineptitude that the State Department is stopping publication of an annual report on terror. The report contains the inconvenient information that terror has increased more than any year since 1985. That "war on terror" has made us safer, hasn't it? This story by Jonathan S. Landay is at www.realcities.com:

The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

APRIL 15, 2005

WE'RE GETTING SCREWED

Molly Ivins is one of my favorite columnists because she cuts right to the chase, usually with humor. But there is no humor in Mudville today because it's tax day and it's a reminder of how the tax code has been rewritten for the very rich and the IRS weakened so it can't collect what the very rich still owe. You can thank those wonderful folks in the Republican party. This column is at www.alternet.org:

Every year at this time, conservatives moan and groan and tell us how terribly, terribly overburdened we are by taxes. We wouldn't be overburdened if the tax code hadn't been rewritten by Republicans, and if Republicans hadn't weakened the IRS so much it can barely function. Damn right, this is a partisan effort. And damn right, I'm bitter about it. We don't need to raise taxes in this country, we need to collect them. We need tax cuts that don't favor the obscenely rich. You are getting screwed.

THE TRAITORS IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

I'm incensed about this bankruptcy bill that is just a major gift for the credit card companies. It rewards the greedy predators in the credit card industry and punishes people who fall into financial hardship often through no fault of their own. Studies have shown that many people filing for bankruptcy are there because of medical bills. We can thank the Republicans for there being no national health insurance policy too. I blame Republicans for this despicable bill, but the 73 Democrats who sided with the enemy should be castigated too. One of those Democrats was Jim Costa from the Central Valley. This article is by Rob Hotakainen is at www.commondreams.org:

Opponents of the bill said it passed only after lobbyists for the financial services industry spent $40 million. "Let's not kid ourselves: This bill was written for and by the credit-card industry," said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass. "It's got nothing to do with the consumer."

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said the means test will take power away from judges, who already have the discretion to deny bankruptcy protection if they believe the law is being abused. He said too many families are "just one medical bill or pink slip away" from financial disaster.

SURPRISE! FAT CAT CEOS FAVOR SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION

To be a CEO of a major corporation it must help when you don't have a conscience. You can collect millions of dollars in salary and perks even when your company is tanking. You can live elegantly while you lay off your work force or pay them miserable wages and benefits. You can buy a Congressman or two and get your taxes cut and the tax burden dumped on to people far less affluent than you. And you advocate privatization of Social Security, putting the retirements of most of us at risk, because you'll rake in millions from brokerage fees. All I can say is these guys better hope there is not a hell. This story by Scott Klinger is at www.commondreams.org:

In 2004, the CEOs of the 26 leading Wall Street firms advocating for social security earned an average of over $17.7 million. Because of the earnings cap, they were done paying their Social Security taxes an average of four days into the new year.

Seven of the CEOs were 'taxpayers for a day.' Their salaries were so gargantuan, they exceeded the $87,900 earnings cap in eight hours or less. These include the CEOs of Bear Stearns, Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley.

THE BLOODY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

I don't consider myself anti-Catholic. Two of my political heroes are John and Robert Kennedy, both Catholics. But the rightward leanings of the current Catholic church are disturbing. And it pays to keep in mind the very un-Christian history of the Church. This article by David Crumm is at www.realcities.com:

The stately nobility of the election about to unfold at the Vatican - eagerly watched by world leaders and members of other faiths - is all the more amazing because of the centuries of corruption, greed and murder in its past.
This first papal election of the new millennium is the crowning glory in a papal history that survived enough bizarre twists to fill a dozen sequels to Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code."

APRIL 14, 2005

GEORGE RADANOVICH IS SCUM

George Radanovich, the so-called Representative from my congressional district, is as reliable as the sunrise when it comes to screwing working people and feathering the nests of big business. Rubber Stamp George went along with the Republican majority in the House in voting for the onerous bankruptcy bill that is just a gift for the predatory credit card industry. Rubber Stamp George voted for the war in Iraq. He voted to rape ANWR. He's supported invasion of privacy by voting for things like the PATRIOT Act. Why would most of us in this congressional district, those of us who work for wages, those of us at the bottom of the economic ladder, vote for this creep?

LET'S TALK REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

George Radanovich and others like him believe the wealthy aren't wealthy enough, even though inequality in the United States is the worst in the industrialized world (except for Russia and Mexico) and getting even worse under Republican economics. According to this story, the poor in Norway are better off than the poor in the United States. But, hey, we can buy TV's and VCR's and drive old clunker cars and go to McDonald's, so the poor in this country have it good, right? This story by David R. Francis is at www.csmonitor.com:

The US has the worst distribution of income of any well-to-do country. In a list of 30 prosperous nations, including smaller economies such as Taiwan and Israel, only Russia and Mexico have a greater maldistribution of income than the US.

"We choose to let the market determine most everything," says Timothy Smeeding, a public policy professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, who compiled these inequality numbers. "We do far less on the social side. We have not as good a safety net. The priorities aren't there. Other countries make other choices."

APRIL 13, 2005

IF MARK TWAIN WERE HERE NOW

Mark Twain wrote about the Gilded Age of his own time. I wonder how he would write about today's more advanced version. The human race hasn't advanced much since Mark Twain lived. This article by Warren Goldstein is at www.courant.com:

This president has offered more blatant class legislation than we've seen since the 1890s. Tax cuts for the richest Americans have done double duty, lining their pockets while starving the state and federal budgets that provide services for the poor and middle class. Public transportation? Why bother when the rich don't use it? The president's current budget cuts 150 social programs. How many of those were directed toward rich people? You guessed it.

WHAT A DEAL

At a time when jobs are being outsoured, health care costs are increasing, and wages are failing to keep pace with inflation CEOs are raking in the big bucks. That's true even if their companies aren't doing all that well. Is there something wrong with this picture? This story by Abid Aslan is linked at www.commondreams.org:

''We have seen a tremendous amount of interest among workers in holding CEOs and their boards accountable,'' said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the 13-million-member labor federation. ''They are rightfully outraged when they learn about jaw-dropping executive compensation packages. It's time to put the brakes on runaway CEO pay.''

An analysis of securities filings showed that CEO salaries rose 12 percent in 2004 compared with average raises of 3.6 percent for rank-and-file workers, further widening the world's largest gaps between executive and labor pay.
The average CEO of a major corporation received $9.84 million in total compensation in 2004, the AFL-CIO said.

Business Week magazine arrived at similar numbers last week, when it released its 55th annual executive pay scorecard. It pegged the average CEO pay raise at 11.3 percent and described this as ''not far off the rise in shareholder gains'' last year.

WANT TO TRUST PEOPLE LIKE THIS WITH SOCIAL SECURITY?

It happens all the time, but it doesn't get the attention it deserves. It's corporate crime. It's white collar criminals. This story is about a scandal in the Stock Market, the place George W. Bush would like us to trust our retirement money. This article by Carrie Johnson is at www.washingtonpost.com:

Fifteen current and former traders at the New York Stock Exchange were criminally charged yesterday with cheating investors out of the best prices for their stock trades in what could be unparalleled abuse of their position at the world's largest and most prestigious stock market.

The exchange also faces disciplinary action for failing to adequately police its sprawling floor, where 1,366 traders handle an average of 1.6 billion shares a day. The traders are accused of getting in between orders to buy and sell, taking for themselves the best prices and depriving investors who ordered the trades of at least $32.5 million.

GOVERNMENT OWNED BY THE RICH

According to this article, the IRS has just become another tool for the super rich to get even richer. Yeah, let's hear that right-wing argument about how the very richest pay (whatever percentage) of the income tax, and implying the rest of us are just slackers. This article by David Cay Johnston is linked at makethemaccountable.com:

People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million, the latest Internal Revenue Service data show. And in income taxes alone, people making $400,000 paid a larger share of their incomes than the 7,000 households who made $10 million or more.

While millions of Americans in the last quarter-century debated about who shot J.R. and scurried for news about who would be Jennifer Lopez's next lover, Congress quietly passed tax laws that shift the tax burden from the 28,000 Americans in households with incomes of $8 million per year or more…

APRIL 12, 2005

A SNAPSHOT OF CENTRAL VALLEY RIGHT-WINGERS

This is a profile of a woman named Jody Hutchens, who evidently thinks gay marriage will be the downfall of western civilization. I'd never heard of Ms. Hutchens before seeing this article, but the attitudes she expresses are all too common here in Dust Bowl West. This article by Joe Garofoli is at www.sfgate.com:

California's religious right is stepping up recruiting for its crusade in the Central Valley, where the culture has more in common with the red states of America's heartland than with the state's coastal cities. Hutchens is calling on pastors throughout the valley, passing out church bulletin announcements and organizing rallies in the name of protecting marriage. The next is scheduled for April 23 in Clovis.

REAL WAGES FELL LAST YEAR

Lots of unprecedented things have been happening with the Bush administration in power. We've seen our government blatantly and unapologetically launch a war against a country that didn't attack us. We've seen the greatest failure of intelligence in our history with the attacks on September 11. We've seen the greatest threats to the Bill of Rights since the McCarthy era. We've seen record deficits with more records to come. Now we learn that inflation-adjusted wages for working people fell last year for the first time in a decade. This story by Steven Greenhouse is at www.nytimes.com:

Beginning in the mid-1990's, pay increases for most workers slowly but steadily outpaced the rate of inflation, improving the living standards for nearly all Americans. But an unexpected reversal last year in those gains has set off a vigorous debate among economists over whether the decline is just a temporary dip or portends a deeper shift that may cause the pay of average Americans to lag for years to come.

Even though the economy added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell for the year, after adjusting for inflation - the first such drop in nearly a decade.

THE PHONY ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE ESTATE TAX

In their typical twisting of language, Republicans call the estate tax the "death tax." They also claim that the estate tax hits small family farmers and other good ordinary people. In fact, the estate tax affects a tiny minority of the very richest Americans, and the Republican plan to eliminate the estate tax will only add to the budget deficits that are already ballooning. The Washington Post has a editorial at www.washingtonpost.com:

Those who inveigh against the "death tax" point to the travails of family farmers and other small-business owners whose heirs are supposedly forced to liquidate enterprises to pay the tax bill. In fact, even if the estate tax were to revert in 2011 to its 2001 level -- and no one believes that the exemption will remain at $1 million -- it would affect the estates of only 2 percent of those expected to die that year. At $3.5 million (and $7 million for a couple) -- the level proposed in a Democratic alternative sponsored by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.) -- a mere three-tenths of 1 percent of estates would be covered. In other words, no one but the richest Americans would be asked to pay estate tax.

MOO!

I recently talked about the Congressman who "represents" the district where I live. I said George Radanovich should be called "Congressman Rubber Stamp" because he just rubber stamps anything the Bush administration wants, no matter how much it hurts his constituents. This piece rightfully compares the right-wing Republicans in Congress a "herd." Whatever Massa Bush wants Massa Bush gets. This article is at tvnewslies.org:

They are the new, mindless and obedient herd of George W. Bush Republicans.
Totally submissive, the GWB Republican herd methodically falls in line. Not unlike the suicidal terrorists they are taught to loathe, they follow their leader even if it means their own demise. They protect the corporations that poison the very air they have to breathe. They vote to eliminate the civil rights that are rightfully theirs. They vote billions of their own tax dollars to the Halliburtons of the world, even as they watch the quality of life around them crumble.

APRIL 11, 2005

REPUBLICAN ECONOMICS: INFLATION, STAGNANT WAGES

For the first time in fourteen years, inflation is outpacing the rise in wages. What makes it worse is that workers are also having to foot more of their healthcare bill, which causes another slide in living standards. Don't you love Republican style economics? This story by Nicholas Riccardi is at www.latimes.com:

For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut.

The growth in wages in 2004 and the first two months of this year trailed inflation, compounding the squeeze from higher housing, energy and other costs.

VOLKER: ECONOMY ON THIN ICE

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker warns that our pattern of borrowing more than we produce in the United States is putting our economy at grave risk. This story is at www.washingtonpost.com:

The difficulty is that this seemingly comfortable pattern can't go on indefinitely. I don't know of any country that has managed to consume and invest 6 percent more than it produces for long. The United States is absorbing about 80 percent of the net flow of international capital. And at some point, both central banks and private institutions will have their fill of dollars.

I don't know whether change will come with a bang or a whimper, whether sooner or later. But as things stand, it is more likely than not that it will be financial crises rather than policy foresight that will force the change.

WHAT IF THERE WERE NO INCOME TAX?

That's the question posed by Carolyn Kay in this article at makethemaccountable.com. Libertarians and their ilk have utopian dreams of a government that provides for defense and not much else. But is it the kind of world you'd really want to live in? What would be the consequences of no income tax?

When George Bush was touting his various tax cuts, he used the mantra, "Tax money is your money." But is it, really? Let’s imagine what would happen if Bush were able to do away with the income tax completely—tomorrow.
Would salaried workers and wage earners continue to receive the amount shown as their gross pay on their pay stub? Probably not. Why would employers pay more than the amount employees currently live on, their net pay? Most likely, companies would give their employees an immediate cut in pay—to an amount equal to their former gross pay less what they would have paid in income tax. Consultants who work for fees would be pressured by their clients to reduce those fees, since the consultants would no longer have to pay income taxes.

LIBERALISM IS BASED IN PRAGMATISM

Since the presidential election of 2004 we've heard a lot about "values," mostly from the hypocrites on the right. A recent op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times chided us on the left by suggesting that the New Deal was based in Judeo-Christian values. This writer disagrees. He says the New Deal was based on pragmatism, and it's the right-wingers who aren't living in the real world. I tend to agree. This article by P. M. Carpenter is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Until the New Deal's advent, observed Hofstadter, progressive thinkers on the whole were utopian moralists with their feet fixed just about everywhere except on planet Earth. Yet in the 1930s they began grappling with the "urgent practical realities" of everyday life -- more urgent than ever, of course, because of the Great Depression's toll on human welfare. With their heads forced out of the clouds, progressives tackled as best they could the problems of the newly unemployed, the long-term impoverished, farmers with goods to sell but no markets to sell in, banking and investment calamities, and so on. In short, events compelled progressives to rapidly transform from twinkling idealists to practical thinkers.

APRIL 10, 2005

GAS PRICE WATCH

I paid $2.71 a gallon for regular today, which is my all time record. That's a jump of 16 cents a gallon since last week.

U.S. IS FALLING FARTHER BEHIND IN TECH

U.S. universities were once the leaders in high tech fields, but a new international competition shows how far we've slipped. Is it any wonder when you have a good portion of the population that believes the sun orbits the earth, or that the biblical account of creation is literally true? Our population is being dumbed down, and it's going to have major economic consequences. This article by Birgitta Forsberg is at www.sfgate.com:

The University of Illinois tied for 17th place in the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. That's the weakest result for the United States in the 29-year history of the competition.

U.S. UNIVERSITY ATTENDANCE DECLINING

Along the same lines as the story above, this story shows that attendance at universities in the United States is declining. I think a college education should be a right. No one should be blocked from attending college because of lack of funds. But that, among other factors, is keeping many people from going to college. This story by Donald MacLeod is at education.guardian.co.uk:

While some commentators have argued there is a natural ceiling on the proportion of the population capable of going to college, Dr Douglass said there were other factors, including a large rise in the immigrant population of California and Texas. Poverty has increased, as has the gap between rich and poor, and the effects have been seen in falling graduation rates at high school, and hence the ability to go on to university (in California only 58% of Chicano/Latino youngsters graduate from high school). However 64% of students at Berkeley, a highly selective institution, have at least one parent who is an immigrant. At the same time, states have been making drastic cuts in their university budgets, pushing more of the costs on to students in fees. Meanwhile, the federal government has been shifting from grants to student loans. These sort of factors are going to become increasingly pressing in the UK and the rest of Europe as they approach American levels of higher education.

ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX HITTING MIDDLE INCOME FAMILIES

The Alternative Minimum Tax was originally designed to insure that the very rich had to pay at least some income tax. Now, though, the tax is hitting people in middle income tax brackets, raising their tax burden several thousand dollars above what it would have been. Bush has paid lip service to reforming the tax, but no serious effort is being made because the tax is projected to raise billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years. With the very rich getting their taxes cut, more revenue has to come from somewhere. This article by Edmund L. Andrews is at www.nytimes.com:

Baffling in its complexity and often bizarre in its impact, the alternative minimum tax is a giant undeclared tax increase that will ensnare tens of millions of moderate-income families in the next several years.
It was created in 1969 to prevent the very rich from using tax deductions to avoid paying a fair share of taxes. But when the deadline for filing income tax returns arrives on Friday, the alternative minimum tax will require 2.9 million families to pay an average of about $6,000 more than what they would owe under traditional calculations.

FRANK RICH: A CULTURE OF DEATH

When George W. Bush solemnly intones about a "culture of life" it's enough to gag a maggot. The man is responsible for mass death, torture, and executions, not to mention making life harder for millions upon millions of working class people. We've had the ungodly and ghoulish spectacles of watching the public deaths of Terri Schiavo and the Pope served up as "news," but in reality a kind of death porn. Frank Rich writes about it at www.nytimes.com:

What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

APRIL 9, 2005

THE PHONY RATIONALIZATIONS FOR IRAQ WAR

Congressman Ron Paul, who is a conservative, has a good and hard-hitting piece about the phony rationales used to justify attacking Iraq. The article is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

How much better off are the Iraqi people? Hundreds of thousands of former inhabitants of Fallajah are not better off with their city flattened and their homes destroyed. Hundreds of thousands are not better off living with foreign soldiers patrolling their street, curfews, and the loss of basic utilities. One hundred thousand dead Iraqis, as estimated by the Lancet Medical Journal, certainly are not better off. Better to be alive under Saddam Hussein than lying in some cold grave.

Praise for the recent election in Iraq has silenced many critics of the war. Yet the election was held under martial law implemented by a foreign power, mirroring conditions we rightfully condemned as a farce when carried out in the old Soviet system and more recently in Lebanon. Why is it that what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander?

POOR IN BUSHWORLD: OUT OF LUCK

You get the feeling that the only housing for the poor that Republicans support is behind barbed war, armed guards, and big concrete walls. For all the touchy-feely rhetoric about "compassion," Republicans show absolute contempt for anyone without a big bank account. It's all our fault, you know, not the fault of a rotten economic system. This editorial comes from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:

The Bush administration pays lip service to the goal of "ending chronic homelessness" - while undermining the very programs that keep poor people from ending up in the streets. The Housing and Urban Development Department is proposing unreasonable cuts in federal subsidies, which would make it harder for underfinanced housing authorities to keep their developments livable and safe. And a proposal in Congress would make it harder for the poor to get rental subsidies from Section 8, the public-private partnership that underwrites rents for nearly two million of the country's low-income families and encourages builders to develop affordable housing.

This meat-ax approach has to stop. Congress needs to understand that poor people won't just disappear when the housing that serves them dries up.

WE PAY, THE RICH PLAY

In the usual thoughtful way of reactionaries George W. Bush once called Social Security a "socialist" program and showed his disapproval of New Deal innovations such as unemployment insurance, and agencies to regulate the greed mongers on Wall Street. This article is by a former professor who had the misfortune of having Bush as a student. The article by Yoshi Tsurumi is at www.thecrimson.com:

Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.

APRIL 8, 2005

WAL-MART IS DISGUSTING

From their commercials you'd think Wal-Mart was the epitome of truth, justice, and the American way. You can't get any more Norman Rockwell apple pie vibes than from a Wal-Mart commercial. But the reality is that Wal-Mart is a vicious, worker-hating, greedy corporation. Anyone who works for wages, as I've said before, should shun Wal-Mart like smallpox. This story by Jonathan Tasini is linked at makethemaccountable.com:

The Beast of Bentonville (better known as Wal-Mart) is grappling with a spate of management dismissals and investigations over the past few months that appear rooted in internal petty thievery. But rather than a few bad apples being rooted out, it’s clear that crime, greed, wrongdoing, malfeasance and cronyism are deeply embedded in the Wal-Mart business model. Indeed, Wal-Mart could not survive without manipulating the system and breaking the law.

In case you didn’t catch it, Thomas Coughlin-a former vice chair of the company and at one time a potential future CEO candidate-was forced to resign from the board because of, as the British Financial Times reported on its front page, an “alleged unauthorized use of corporate-owned gift cards and personal reimbursements that appear to have been obtained from the company through the reporting of false information on third-party invoices and company expense reports. The amount in controversy is estimated to be in the range of $100,000 to $500,000.” Translation: the guy padded his expense accounts.

THE CRIMINAL TOM DELAY

Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, like a good number of Republicans, apparently believes rules don't apply to him. Violate ethics and get called on it and it's a "left wing conspiracy." If DeLay were a Democrat, he would have been ridden out of Washington on a rail by now. What's even more astounding is that DeLay likes to posture as such a good Christian, such as when he blatantly interfered in the Terri Schiavo case. Good Christians, from all I've been told, uphold their oaths of office and good Christians don't steal. In her column Maureen Dowd talks about the Republican party has gone way too far in trying to impose the "values" of the Christian right on everyone else by quoting Republican Senator John Danforth, who is a minister himself. The column is at www.nytimes.com:

All the divisions that President Bush was able to bridge in 2004 are now bursting forth as different wings of his party joust. John Danforth, the former Republican senator and U.N. ambassador, wrote an Op-Ed piece in The Times last week saying that, on issues from stem cell research to Terri Schiavo, his party "has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement."

When the Rev. Danforth, an Episcopal minister who prayed with Clarence Thomas when he was under attack by Anita Hill, says the party has gone too far, it's way over the edge.

BUSH HEARD WHAT HE WANTED TO HEAR

The war in Iraq drags on and people die, and it's all unnecessary. We should never have invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein was contained and not a threat to us. He had no meaningful ties to terrorists. He had no weapons of mass destruction. All of that should have been evident to the Bush administration before they launched this horror and killed so many innocent people. Richard Cohen has some thoughts at www.washingtonpost.com:

It is now clear that the decision to do so was made shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks -- maybe even the next day. History may well decide that this was the correct decision, that it eradicated terrorism and spread democracy throughout the Arab world -- just as the neocons intended. Even if that materializes (from Richard Perle's mouth to God's ears), it won't change the fact that the administration failed to make a truthful case for war. Instead it built a sham one based on the hysteria, hate and panic created by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Intelligence hardly mattered. Hussein was going to go, regardless of the evidence. My source in the intelligence community understood this from the get-go. I did not -- not right away, anyway.

No doubt Iraq was a doozy of an intelligence failure. But it was, fundamentally and above all, a breach of faith with the American people. When it comes to matters of life and death, we expect our government to level with us. The Bush administration did not -- and it would not matter if all of the Middle East, from the Tigris to the Nile, becomes a democracy overnight. The fact will remain that this war was fought for a lie. The failure was not in intelligence. It was in political character.

IS BUSH JUST STUPID OR TOTALLY CRAVEN?

George W. Bush repeated the same argument I've seen from some other right-wingers that the Social Security trust fund is based on "i.o.u.'s." The implication is that it's not real money. If that's the case, the full faith and credit of the United States government doesn't mean a thing, including the bonds held by other countries. Is Bush suggesting the United States will default on all its debt, or just selectively the Social Security Trust Fund? This editorial is from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:

Imagine this: On his next trip to Japan, President Bush visits the vault at the Bank of Japan, where that country's $712 billion in United States government bonds is stored. There, as the cameras roll, he announces that the bonds, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, are, in fact, worthless i.o.u.'s. He does the same thing when he visits China and so on around the world, until he has personally repudiated the entire $2 trillion of United States debt held by foreigners.

APRIL 6, 2005


REPUBS TRYING TO TRASH OUR WAY OF GOVERNMENT

Republicans have no respect for democracy, no respect for the Bill of Rights, no respect for the Constitution, and no respect for justice. We've seen a continuing pattern since the stolen election of 2000. The man who got less votes got into the White House. There are many anomalies about the 2004 election too. The doctrine of the separation of church and state has been thrown on the scrap heap. Honoring treaties has been chucked into the waste basket. They want to attack the Senate rule that allows the opposition party to filibuster. Now they're attacking the principle enshrined in the Constitution that deals with separation of powers. A Republican Senator talked about violence against judges because "judges aren't accountable to the people." Never mind that the Founding Fathers designed it that way for a good reason. This editorial is at www.nytimes.com:

It was appalling when the House majority leader threatened political retribution against judges who did not toe his extremist political line. But when a second important Republican stands up and excuses murderous violence against judges as an understandable reaction to their decisions, then it is time to get really scared.

It happened on Monday, in a moment that was horrifying even by the rock-bottom standards of the campaign that Republican zealots are conducting against the nation's judiciary. Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, rose in the chamber and dared to argue that recent courthouse violence might be explained by distress about judges who "are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public." The frustration "builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in" violence, said Mr. Cornyn, a former member of the Texas Supreme Court who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which supposedly protects the Constitution and its guarantee of an independent judiciary.

OUR AWFUL, AWFUL MEDIA

If you were an outsider and wanted to learn about the United States, what would you conclude from watching the mainstream media? There is a fixation on things like the Terri Schiavo case, Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, shark attacks, Britney Spears, steroids in baseball, and now the dead Pope. Gene Lyons has some thoughts at www.nwanews.com:

If everything you knew came from cable TV news, you’d think the nation’s predominant religion was a pagan cult of celebrity worship: a neverending Dionysian spectacle of sexual transgression, violence and redemptive sentimentality. We create celebrity-gods, it seems, largely to destroy them. Shortly before the Schiavo carnival, I watched an hour-long MSNBC newscast devoted entirely to these five topics: actor Robert Blake found not guilty of murdering his wife; celebrity wifekiller Scott Peterson sentenced to death; a missing child and a pedophile on the lam in Florida; Ashley Smith, the heroic Atlanta waitress; and the Michael Jackson sexual molestation trial. Evidently, nothing of significance had happened anywhere in the world. Then came the death of Pope John Paul II, and suddenly everybody turned Catholic. Except that, judging by TV coverage, you’d think that the late pontiff was the spiritual head of the Republican Party and that the "culture of life," as defined by GOP politicians, was the essence of the Catholic faith. Defined, that is, by "hot-button" issues of sexual morality: gay marriage, gay priests, abortion, contraception, etc.

THE RICH AREN'T VERY ADMIRABLE

One of the things that irritates me most about right-wingers is the absolute fawning they do over the very rich. You get the feeling they would openly worship the rich if they could get away with it. Instead, they deify the rich by suggesting they're more hard-working, more clever, thriftier, more innovative, and all the rest, and any criticism of the rich is just "class envy." This article talks about some of the realities of how the very rich got that way and how they manipulate the system to our disadvantage. The article by Scott Klinger is at www.commondreams.org:

Several of the wealthiest billionaires capitalized on public assets and made their fortunes by buying them. This was the case with Mexican Carlos Slim Helu, the world’s fourth richest man, who used inherited wealth to buy a substantial share of Mexico’s privatized national telephone company. U.S. billionaires Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, and Larry Ellison of Oracle would not be in Forbes’ top 20 billionaires had the U.S. government not invested tens of billions of public dollars developing computers and the Internet.

Some billionaires’ fortunes rest upon paying their employees poverty-level wages. Such is the case for the Walton family (numbers 10 through 14 on the Forbes list.) Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world. Many of its U.S. workers are so poorly paid that they must rely on food stamps and other forms of public assistance to get by. Such forms of government aid represent an indirect government subsidy to corporations whose business model does not include paying employees enough to live on. Worldwide, billions are gained by outsourcing service, production and manufacturing functions to workers who labor in sweatshop conditions in countries like China.

APRIL 5, 2005

WE'RE BORROWING MORE THAN WE EARN

It's hard to believe much of anything the Bush administration says about the economy or job growth because it's all based on cooked statistics. The facts are that we're a country that relies on debt to keep the economy going. Personal debt is astronomical and so are the deficits at the state and federal levels. It's interesting that income is more skewed toward the top than anytime since just before the Great Depression. Most of us borrow because we just don't have enough income. This story by Mark Trahant is at seattlepi.nwsource.com. The report is from the Economic Policy Institute:

The country's wealth scale is out of balance. "Using newly available income data that goes all the way back to 1913, income in 2000 was only slightly less concentrated among the top 1 percent of households than during the run-up to the Great Depression, which was the worst period of uneven income concentration in the last century," the report says.

Where you see the effects is in the shrinking paycheck of median household income. In real dollars, the median household income has declined $971 in 2001, $502 in 2002 and $63 in 2003 -- a cumulative loss of $1,536.

HERE'S THAT GREAT BUSH ECONOMY IN ACTION

Consumer confidence dropped for the second consecutive week. Every time you drive by a gas station now you have to brace yourself for another jump in prices. Everything is going up except wages. Republicans are good for the economy how? This article by Claudia Deane is at www.washingtonpost.com:

Consumer confidence fell for the second week in a row as Americans continue to face record-breaking gas prices at the pump, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Consumer Comfort survey.

The overall index of consumer sentiment now stands at -17, down four points from last week and 10 points in the past month. Ratings were last in this territory in the summer of 2004, following another late winter and spring surge in gas prices.

APRIL 4, 2005

ANOTHER LOOK AT JOHN PAUL II

Just as when Ronald Reagan died, hagiography abounds about the life and career of Pope John II. He's being called "the people's Pope" and even given major credit for bringing down communism. The pundits aren't talking about the sex scandals in the Catholic Church or the failure to advance the rights of women. They aren't talking about the Church's backward attitudes on birth control and contraception. This article by Terry Eagleton looks at the dark side of John Paul II. The article is linked at www.commondreams.org:

From his early years as a priest, he was notable for his exorbitant belief in his own spiritual and intellectual powers. Graham Greene once dreamed of a newspaper headline reading "John Paul canonises Jesus Christ". Bishops were summoned to Rome to be given their orders, not for fraternal consultation. Loopy far-right mystics and Francoists were honoured, and Latin American political liberationists bawled out. The Pope's authority was so unassailable that the head of a Spanish seminary managed to convince his students that he had the Pope's personal permission to masturbate them.

The result of centering all power in Rome was an infantilisation of the local churches. Clergy found themselves incapable of taking initiatives without nervous glances over their shoulders at the Holy Office. It was at just this point, when the local churches were least capable of handling a crisis maturely, that the child sex abuse scandal broke. John Paul's response was to reward an American cardinal who had assiduously covered up the outrage with a plush posting in Rome.

The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising Aids death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands. He was one of the greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin.

THIS IS THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN ACTION

During the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK had a meeting with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and emerged dismayed at their casual view of mass death. "And we call ourselves the human race," JFK said in disgust. Down through human history we have found all kinds of ways to inflict pain, maim, and kill other people. It's certainly not changing with that good Christian George W. Bush in charge. Prepare to be nauseated if you read this article by Nick Turse. It's linked at www.commondreams.org:

In addition to a plethora of high-tech devices, from laser-sights for weapons to battlefield computers, the US Special Operations Forces had a special request: 40mm rifle-launched flechette grenades. For the uninitiated, flechettes are razor-sharp deadly darts with fins at their blunt ends. During the Vietnam War, flechette weaponry was praised for its ability to shred people alive and virtually nail them to trees. The question is, where will those Special Ops forces use the grenades and which people will be torn to bits by a new generation of American flechettes. Only time will tell, but one thing is certain -- it will happen.

REPUBLICAN ANTI-TAX THEOLOGY: PROVE IT

We've heard the anti-tax sermons from Republicans especially since the days of Ronald Reagan. The spiel is that taxes are bad, bad, especially taxes for rich people, and a drag on the economy. As this article points out, there is no proof that taxes are bad for the economy. To the contrary, in eras of American history when taxes for the most affluent have been considerably higher than they are now we have prospered. This article by Anna Bernasek is from www.nytimes.com:

At the heart of such antitax sentiment is this belief: Taxes are bad for the economy. And who would disagree, especially as April 15 nears?

There's just one problem, though. Despite the widespread notion that taxes harm the economy, no one has actually been able to back that up. It's not that taxes have no effect; they are a major part of the American economic system and affect planning and behavior in many ways. Taxes influence who wins and who loses in a competitive society. But over all, there is surprisingly little evidence that tax rates are an important factor in determining the nation's economic prosperity…

Over the last 30 years, economists have undertaken hundreds of studies to determine whether taxes hurt the economy. So far, they've turned up little to convict taxes of the charge. After reviewing the literature on the topic in 1993, two economists, William Easterly of New York University and Sergio Rebelo of Northwestern, concluded in a joint paper that "the evidence that tax rates matter for growth is disturbingly fragile."

APRIL 3, 2005

BUSH THE MURDERER

Even though the Bush administration will try to use a new report faulting intelligence over reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it's painfully obvious they wanted a war against Iraq. They wanted Iraq's oil and they wanted hegemony in the region. They've tried to dress it up with claims of removing a murderous dictator, of bringing democracy to the Iraqi people, and all the rest, but at least 100,000 innocent people have been slaughtered in Iraq for a lie. David Podvin writes it in this column at www.makethemaccountable.com:

George W. Bush is a murderer, and a prolific one at that. He has deployed surrogates to kill more than one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians in a ruthless slaughter that is ongoing. The fact that he murders via remote control from the Oval Office does not confer legitimacy to his crimes. If anything, it makes them all the more despicable.

Bush is slaying people in the name of democracy, yet his commitment to democracy has already been debunked in Haiti and Venezuela, not to mention Florida and Ohio. Recently released State Department papers reveal that the former Texas governor is murdering Iraqis for the purpose of stealing their oil, which was always obvious and is now documented. There may be worse motives for killing people than thievery, but none leaps immediately to mind.

The level of cruelty involved in this theft is awe-inspiring. At Bush’s behest, the United States military has “neutralized” unarmed Iraqis by dropping cluster bombs on them, showering them with napalm, shooting them from helicopters, executing them in mosques, and torturing them in dungeons. The BBC broadcast an interview with a grieving woman whose pregnant daughter had been machine-gunned by U.S. troops, which is the one method of abortion that conservatives are willing to tolerate. As the corporate media turns a blind eye, Bush is massacring human beings who pose no danger to America…

A REAL TRIBUTE TO TERRI SCHIAVO

Right-wingers put their hypocrisy on full display in the sad and tragic Terri Schiavo case. As this article points out, we should build a true legacy to Terri by implementing health care for all people in this country. It's a disgrace that in the richest country in the world that forty million people have no health insurance. This article by Anthony Wade is at www.makethemaccountable.com:

… [T]he true legacy of Terri Schiavo needs to come from the progressives in this country. It is time to have the GOP put their money where their mouths are and pass a “Culture of Life” bill, honoring Terri Schiavo.

The first tenet of a Culture of Life Bill must demand healthcare for all Americans in this country. I do not want to hear any more of the right-wing talking points about socialism meant only to distract from the pitiful reality that in the richest country in the world, there are 40 million people who do not have healthcare. Because of these shortages in healthcare, there are 18,000 unnecessary deaths per year…

The second tenet of any Terri’s Law would have to federally protect Medicaid, Medicare, and State Children’s Health Insurance Program from any federal budget cuts. Sound impossible? No, it is simply a matter of making priorities…

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS A MINORITY

The old cliche is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that's certainly true of the extremists on the Christian Right. They're a distinct minority, but you would get the impression from the media that they comprise the majority of the country. Juan Cole has an article about it at www.salon.com (after the commercial):

Both the reelection of George Bush and the Schiavo travesty have heightened the sense that the religious right in the United States is all-powerful. Reading the press, you get the impression that almost all Americans are devout Christians, people who believe in a literal heaven and hell and spend their idle moments devouring the "Left Behind" novels about the end of the world. This isn't true -- and it's getting less true all the time. While evangelical Christians are a significant political force, they are probably only a fifth of the country, and not all of them are politically conservative: Only 14 percent of voters in an exit poll for the presidential elections in 2000 characterized themselves as part of the "Christian right." In fact, polls show that the United States is becoming less religious. Only about 60 percent of Americans say religion is important in their lives. The United States is still a predominantly Christian country, but it is no longer an overwhelmingly Christian one. And more and more Americans are either non-religious, unchurched or subscribe to non-Christian religions.

BUSH IS CULPABLE FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ

The new report by the Presidential Commission on Intelligence tries to put most of the blame on the CIA and other intelligence agencies for the totally rotten intelligence used to justify attacking Iraq. But don't be fooled. The Bush administration wanted this war and they were going to find some way to get it. Scott Ritter talks about how George W. Bush is responsible in this article at comment.independent.co.uk:

The Presidential Commission's report speaks of the "worthless or misleading" assessments produced by the CIA. Building on the foundation established by Colin Powell, the commission placed blame for this failure on the CIA, quashing any notion of political pressure influencing the assessments by emphasising that: "The analysts who worked on Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgements". This is a curious statement, given the fact that the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, used to justify the decision to go to war against Iraq, was published almost two months after President Bush made his decision to invade Iraq. The commission, in an understatement, did note: "It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage scepticism about the conventional wisdom."

As the commission's own report shows, when it came to Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programmes, the CIA had ceased to function as a professional intelligence agency, tasked with discerning fact, and instead had transformed itself into a clearing house of rumour and speculation. In this diseased environment, defector reports that under any other circumstance would have been discarded as fictitious were certified as viable and then used to germinate numerous other corroborating intelligence reports that were treated as separate accounts, and yet had as their genesis the same errant report. In the same way, intellectual "traps" were manufactured where a hypothesis which postulated Iraqi guilt were constructed, together with the notion that any information that was uncovered which contradicted this hypothesis was to be dismissed as being part of an elaborate Iraqi "cover story".

APRIL 1, 2005

BUSH'S COMMITMENT TO "LIFE"

When he inserted himself into the Terri Schiavo tragedy George W. Bush made the statement about erring on the side of life. His whole record belies that statement. Dawn Baldwin takes a look in this article linked at www.commondreams.org:

For the majority of the living, however, he plays very different odds.

When his policies expose hundreds of thousands of children to toxic levels of mercury, risking neurological disorders, disease, and death appears to be an "error" he's more than willing to make.

When his policies cut the Medicare benefits for millions who have to go without the preventive care, early detection, and medical treatment that would prolong and enhance their lives-"life" wouldn't appear to be his first concern.

When his policies withhold the information and resources necessary to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies, he's chosen to risk the deaths of teenagers, adults, orphaned children, and fetuses worldwide rather than acknowledge sexual activity as a natural, one might even say life-affirming human activity.

AS USUAL, BUSH TALKS OUT BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH

George Bush says on the one hand that Democrats should talk to him about revamping Social Security, but on the other hand he has dissenters thrown out of his phony "town hall" meetings. The truth is that Bush wants everything his way. Any "talking" is a one way conversation. E. J. Dionne discusses the subject at www.washingtonpost.com:

If President Bush is so insistent on the need for his political adversaries to talk to him about fixing Social Security, then why does he keep throwing them out of his campaign rallies -- excuse me, "town meetings" -- on the subject?

Lately the president has been chastising Democrats for not sitting down with him to fashion a solution. "I think there is a political price for not getting involved in the process," Bush said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday. "I think there is a political price for saying, 'It's not a problem, I'm going to stay away from the table.' " But when Bush's critics show up at the president's taxpayer-financed events, they are often told there is no place at the table for dissenters.

USING HUNGER AND THIRST AS WEAPONS

If the human race survives hundreds or thousands of years, you have to wonder just how future generations will evaluate this country at this time. There's no depth too low for the Bush administration to sink to, whether declaring war on a country that wasn't going to attack us, or sanctioning torture, or encouraging policies that threaten all life on the planet. This article examines the way the administration is using deprivation of food and clean drinking water as a weapon. The article is at www.guerillanews.com:

A UN human rights expert sharply condemned the invasion of Iraq and the global anti-terror drive, accusing the US-led coalition of using food deprivation as a military tactic and of sapping efforts to fight hunger in the world.

“The situation of the right to food in Iraq is of serious concern,” the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said in a report to the UN human rights commission.

The report also highlighted “widespread concerns about the continued lack of access to clean drinking water” and allegations by British campaigners that water sources were deliberately cut off by coalition forces.