From yesterday's Washington Post, "Appalachia Is Paying Price for White House Rule Change":
BECKLEY, W.Va. -- The coal industry chafes at the name -- "mountaintop removal" -- but it aptly describes the novel mining method that became popular in this part of Appalachia in the late 1980s. Miners target a green peak, scrape it bare of trees and topsoil, and then blast away layer after layer of rock until the mountaintop is gone.In just over a decade, coal miners used the technique to flatten hundreds of peaks across a region spanning West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. Thousands of tons of rocky debris were dumped into valleys, permanently burying more than 700 miles of mountain streams. By 1999, concerns over the damage to waterways triggered a backlash of lawsuits and court rulings that slowed the industry's growth to a trickle.
Today, mountaintop removal is booming again, and the practice of dumping mining debris into streambeds is explicitly protected, thanks to a small wording change to federal environmental regulations. U.S. officials simply reclassified the debris from objectionable "waste" to legally acceptable "fill."
The "fill rule," as the May 2002 rule change is now known, is a case study of how the Bush administration has attempted to reshape environmental policy in the face of fierce opposition from environmentalists, citizens groups and political opponents. Rather than proposing broad changes or drafting new legislation, administration officials often have taken existing regulations and made subtle tweaks that carry large consequences.
Sometimes the change hinges on a single critical phrase or definition. For example, when the Environmental Protection Agency announced proposals last year to control mercury emissions, it also moved to downgrade the "hazardous" classification of mercury pollution from power plants -- a seemingly minor change that effectively gave utilities 15 more years to implement the most costly controls. Earlier this year, the Energy Department helped insert wording into a Senate bill to reclassify millions of gallons of "high-level" radioactive waste as "incidental," a change that would spare the government the expense of removing and treating the waste.
The fill rule is one of several key changes to coal-mining regulations that have been enacted or proposed by the Bush administration, which took office promising to ease bureaucratic burdens for the coal industry and expand the nation's energy production. To administration officials and mining companies, the changes are simply clarifications that eliminated ambiguities in the law. To environmental groups, they are the administration's payback to an industry that has raised $9 million for Republicans since 1998. The coal industry is a political force in West Virginia, a vital swing state whose five electoral votes for George W. Bush helped put him over the top in 2000.
One proposed change -- described by administration officials as a "clarification" of the Clean Water Act -- would effectively void a two-decade-old ban on mining within 100 feet of a stream. Another proposal would scale back the federal government's legal obligation to police state mining agencies, by reclassifying certain duties from "nondiscretionary" to "discretionary."
In October 2001, the Bush administration intervened to change the focus of a federal mining study that was poised to recommend limits on the size of new mountaintop mines. And, in an internal policy change this spring, the administration promulgated guidelines that allow ditches dug by coal companies to serve as substitutes for streams that were being buried by debris.
So a couple of weeks ago at Unity 2004 John Kerry says, among other things, "I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."
And on Thursday in a speech to veterans Dick Cheney decides to ignore effective, thoughtful, strategic, and proactive, and instead goes with, "America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive."
(They weren't won by guys with five deferments, either, Dick.)
He goes on, "A sensitive war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans and who seek chemical, nuclear and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more. The men who beheaded Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity."
And later that day Hugh Hewitt interviews Dick and says: "Today you brought attention to John Kerry's plan to wage a more 'sensitive' war on terror. What do you think John Kerry meant when he said 'sensitive,' Mr. Vice President?"
And Dick responds, "Well, I'm not sure what he meant (laughing). Ah, it strikes me the two words don't really go together, sensitive and war. If you look at our history, I don't think any of the wars we've won, were won by us being quote sensitive. I think of Abraham Lincoln and General Grant, they didn't wage sensitive war. Neither did Roosevelt, neither did Eisenhower or MacArthur in World War II. A sensitive war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans, and who seek chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more."
And later in the same interview Hewitt asks, "Will the Najaf offensive continue until that city is subdued even if that means a siege of the Imam Ali shrine?"
To which Dick responds, "Well, from the standpoint of the shrine, obviously it is a sensitive area, and we are very much aware of its sensitivity. On the other hand, a lot of people who worship there feel like Moqtada Sadr is the one who has defiled the shrine, if you will, and I would expect folks on the scene there, including U.S. commanders, will work very carefully with the Iraqis so that we minimize the extent to which the U.S. is involved in any operation that might involve the shrine itself." (via Eschaton)
It would be funny if it wasn't so damn sad.
As anyone who has sat through the 90-minute forums knows, the questions are not hand grenades that detonate onto the evening news. Take, for example, one of the first queries at the "Ask President Bush'' session in Beaverton, Ore., on Friday:"I'm wondering if I can get some inauguration tickets?''
Or consider this from Albuquerque on Wednesday:
"Can I introduce my mother and mother-in-law, who are new citizens to this country?''
Many times the questions aren't even questions at all. Exhibit A might be these words from an audience member in Niceville, Fla., on Tuesday:
"I'm 60 years old and I've voted Republican from the very first time I could vote. And I also want to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.''
"Thank you,'' Mr. Bush replied, to applause.
Bush campaign officials tell reporters at every "Ask President Bush'' forum that the questions are not planted and that the sessions are spontaneous. Senator John Kerry's campaign officials say the events are too ridiculous to be believed.
[...]
The result is often a love-in with heavily Christian crowds. Mr. Bush relaxes, shows off his humor and appears more human than in his sometimes tongue-tied and tense encounters with the press. He clearly relishes the sessions: As of this coming Wednesday in Wisconsin, Mr. Bush will have had 12 such campaign forums, which is one less than the number of solo news conferences he has had in three and a half years in the White House. (New York Times)
So Bush campaigns like he governs: no dissent tolerated, no difficult thinking, and every small detail staged for the cameras.
The New York Times reports that Bush et al. are quietly changing regulations to help their business friends:
Allies and critics of the Bush administration agree that the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have preoccupied the public, overshadowing an important element of the president's agenda: new regulatory initiatives. Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others.And most of it was done through regulation, not law - lowering the profile of the actions. The administration can write or revise regulations largely on its own, while Congress must pass laws. For that reason, most modern-day presidents have pursued much of their agendas through regulation. But administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush has been particularly aggressive in using this strategy.
Of course, according to the President's spokesperson, all this is just a matter "common sense":
Scott McClellan, the chief White House spokesman, said of the changes, "The president's common-sense policies reflect the values of America, whether it is cracking down on corporate wrongdoing or eliminating burdensome regulations to create jobs."
In Bush's world, the "values of America" include eliminating environmental standards, creating unsafe conditions for workers and allowing energy companies to bilk consumers. We're not sure if this falls under "compassionate" or "conservatism," but either way, the public has been deeply harmed by this Administration's regulatory efforts.
From the AP wire, via today's Winston-Salem Journal, "Trade deficit reaches new high":
The U.S. trade deficit hit a record $55.8 billion in June as the country's foreign oil bill surged to an all-time high, the government reported yesterday.Soaring energy costs also showed up in wholesale prices for July, although a big drop in food costs helped keep the overall increase in the Labor Department's Producer Price Index down to a modest 0.1 percent.
Although food costs fell by 1.6 percent in July, the biggest one-month decline in more than two years, energy prices shot up by 2.3 percent, the biggest gain in six months.
The Commerce Department's monthly trade report showed the June imbalance up a sharp 19 percent from a revised May imbalance of $46.9 billion. Exports of goods and services fell by 4.3 percent to $92.8 billion and imports climbed 3.3 percent to a record $148.6 billion.
The far bigger-than-expected jump in the deficit caught analysts by surprise. They said that it would act to further slow an economy already struggling with what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan described as a "soft patch" in the early summer.
"America is bleeding badly in the trade area," said Sung Won Sohn, the chief economist at Wells Fargo in Minneapolis. "This implies not only weaker economic growth but a weaker dollar, which will contribute to inflation down the road."
Economic growth, as measured by the gross domestic product, slowed sharply in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of just 3 percent, down from 4.5 percent in the first quarter.
Economists said that June's huge widening of the trade gap would force the government to lower the second quarter GDP figure to an even weaker 2.5 percent.
They also said that the record highs for oil prices, which topped $45 a barrel this week, would make them trim their forecasts for growth in the second half of this year. Many said that second-half growth probably would come in at 3.5 percent to 4 percent.
"The drag we are getting from trade plus the big bite higher oil prices take out of purchasing power will translate into weaker growth," said David Wyss, the chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York.
The increase in the foreign energy bill was the biggest factor in June's trade deterioration. Energy imports climbed to a record $15.3 billion, up 17.8 percent from May.
The country's trade deficit with China climbed to a record $14.2 billion, up 17 percent from May, and the imbalance with Japan rose to $6.3 billion and the imbalance with the expanded 25-nation European Union to $10.6 billion.
The Bush administration blamed the weakness on a global economic slowdown. "Growth in the rest of the world appears to be slowing," Treasury Secretary John Snow told reporters in Boca Raton, Fla.
Perhaps you've already heard this clip of President Bush responding to a question about tribal sovereignty, or read a transcript:
Q: What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the twenty-first century, and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and state governments?THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Yeah. Tribal sovereignty means that - it's sovereign. It's...you're a...you're a...you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity.
Q: Okay.
YES, OUR PRESIDENT: And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.
Come on, people. We can do better than this.
From Scott McClellan's August 9 Press Conference:Q The President said at the community college that the people who we're fighting are cruel, have no conscience, and kill innocent people. And my question is, during our two wars in the last three years, have we killed any innocent people?
MR. McCLELLAN: The United States military goes to great lengths to make sure that we minimize any loss of innocent human life, and they go out of their way to make sure that that happens. This administration is strongly committed to making sure we do everything we can to minimize the loss of innocent human life.
Q I didn't ask you that. I asked you if we have killed any innocent people.
MR. McCLELLAN: And I would point out that this -- that the war in Iraq was one where we were able to target and remove a brutal regime from power while minimizing any collateral damage --
Q Did we kill any innocent people?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- or loss of innocent human life. We certainly do not target innocent human civilians. And there are terrorists and others in Iraq, former regime elements who do target innocent civilians, innocent Iraqis. They are enemies of freedom and peace. What we have done --
Q Seventy thousand tons of bombs --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- is liberated the Iraqi people and provided hope for innocent Iraqis.
Q How about the people who are dead?
MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead [next question]
The Bush administration can't even talk about dead civilians in Iraq? Spin is one thing, but this refusal to tell the truth to the American people -- a refusal to even admit that Americans have killed Iraqi civilians -- is totally irresponsible. This administration started the war in Iraq and is responsible for those dead civilians. Whether or not this was a necessary cost of war is up to the public to decide. To espouse freedom and democracy on one hand while on the other refusing to participate in the most important aspect of democracy -- the truthful disclosure of facts to the public so they can make informed choices -- is inexcusable.
A new portrait of Al Qaeda's inner workings is emerging from the cache of information seized last month in Pakistan, as investigators begin to identify a new generation of operatives who appear to be filling the vacuum created when leaders were killed or captured, senior intelligence officials said Monday.[...]
While the findings may result in a significant intelligence coup for the Bush administration and its allies in Britain, they also create a far more complex picture of Al Qaeda's status than Mr. Bush presents on the campaign trail. For the past several months, the president has claimed that much of Al Qaeda's leadership has been killed or captured; the new evidence suggests that the organization is regenerating and bringing in new blood.
Friends in the White House Come to Coal's Aid, via the New York Times:In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.
Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official - Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.
The reintroduction of the coal dust measure came after the federal agency had abandoned a series of Clinton-era safety proposals favored by coal miners while embracing others favored by mine owners.
The agency's effort to rewrite coal regulations is part of a broader push by the Bush administration to help an industry that had been out of favor in Washington. As a candidate four years ago, Mr. Bush promised to expand energy supplies, in part by reviving coal's fortunes, particularly in Appalachia, where coal regions will also help decide how swing states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio vote this year.
[...]
Safety and environmental regulations often shift with control of the White House, but the Bush administration's approach to coal mining has been a particularly potent example of the blend of politics and policy.
In addition to Mr. Lauriski, who spent 30 years in the coal industry, Mr. Bush tapped a handful of other industry executives and lobbyists to help oversee safety and environmental regulations.
In all, the mine safety agency has rescinded more than a half-dozen proposals intended to make coal miners' jobs safer, including steps to limit miners' exposure to toxic chemicals. One rule pushed by the agency would make it easier for companies to use diesel generators underground, which miners say could increase the risk of fire.
It's not only the extraction industries that are regulated by their former executives under the Bush administration. Bush's first SEC Chairman, Harvey Pitt, represented the Big Five accounting firms while in private practice and than ran the SEC like he was still representing them at the table. And of course there's Vice President Dick Cheney - who sees nothing wrong with non-competitive bids going to his old buddies at Halliburton.
The Bush administration governs as though government is for handing out spoils. And by the time it gets to things like the children, the elderly, and the environment ... there's just not much left to give.
I suppose there are people who still believe that enormous tax cuts for the very wealthy will lead to the creation of millions of good jobs for working people. In the twilight of his first term, the president, stumping for votes in regions scarred by the demon of unemployment, continues to sing from the tattered pages of his economic hymnbook:"The economy is strong,'' he says again and again and again, "and it's growing stronger."
At a riverfront rally under cloudy skies in Davenport, Iowa, last week, Mr. Bush told a crowd of 5,000, "We are turning the corner and we're not going back."
In another four years, he says, "The economy will be better."
His tax cuts, he insists, couldn't have been better timed.
The true believers were jolted Friday by the news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that employers added a meager 32,000 jobs in July. In an economy the size of America's, that's roughly equivalent to no jobs at all.
July's poor job-creation performance was widely described as unexpected. But it's important to keep in mind that it didn't occur in a vacuum and that there is no quick fix coming. American workers are hurting.
"The weak job market continues to put downward pressure on wage growth," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. He noted that nominal wage growth on a year-over-year basis has been decelerating even as inflation is increasing, which is bad news for an economy so dependent upon consumer spending.
Retail sales in July were disappointing, hampered by high gasoline prices as well as anemic wage growth. And the stock market is in a prolonged swoon.
Despite the rosy rhetoric that comes nonstop from the administration, millions upon millions of American families, including many that consider themselves solidly in the middle class, are in deep economic trouble. Friday's Wall Street Journal featured a page-one article with the ominous headline: "New Group Swells Bankruptcy Court: The Middle-Aged."
Personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S. are at an all-time high. The Journal story focused on "an emerging class of middle-age, white-collar Americans who make the grim odyssey from comfortable circumstances to going broke." Among the villains of this disturbing piece are the unstable job market and staggering amounts of personal debt.
It's getting harder and harder to close our eyes to the growing economic devastation. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and co-author of "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke," wrote in 2003:
"This year, more people will end up bankrupt than will suffer a heart attack. More adults will file for bankruptcy than will be diagnosed with cancer. More people will file for bankruptcy than will graduate from college. And, in an era when traditionalists decry the demise of the institution of marriage, Americans will file more petitions for bankruptcy than for divorce."
Bob Herbert in the New York Times (op-ed)
From Wednesday's Washington Post, "$1.9 Billion of Iraq's Money Goes to U.S. Contractors":
Halliburton and other U.S. contractors are being paid at least $1.9 billion from Iraqi funds under an arrangement set by the U.S.-led occupation authority, according to a review of documents and interviews with government agencies, companies and auditors.Most of the money is for two controversial deals that originally had been financed with money approved by the U.S. Congress but later shifted to Iraqi funds governed by fewer restrictions and less rigorous oversight.
Officials of the former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) have said most of the contracts paid from Iraqi money — obtained from sales of Iraqi oil and frozen foreign accounts from Saddam Hussein's regime — went to Iraqi companies, for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
Through the first 14 months of the occupation, the CPA provided little detail about specific contracts and the identities of companies that won them, citing security concerns, so it has been impossible to know whether these promises were kept.
The CPA ran Iraq from May 2003 until the U.S. handed over power to an interim Iraqi government June 28.
The CPA has said it awarded about 2,000 contracts with Iraqi money. Its inspector general compiled records for the major contracts, which it defined as those worth $5 million or more each. Analysis of those and other records shows 19 of 37 major contracts paid for with Iraqi money went to U.S. companies and at least 85 percent of the total $2.26 billion was obligated to U.S. companies.
That analysis and several audit reports released in recent weeks shed new light on how the occupation authority handled the Iraqi money it controlled. They show the CPA at times violated its own rules, authorizing Iraqi money when it didn't have a quorum or proper Iraqi representation at meetings and kept such sloppy records that the paperwork for several major contracts could not be found.
During the first half of the occupation, the CPA depended heavily on no-bid contracts that were questioned by auditors. And the shifting of projects that were publicly announced to be financed by U.S. money to Iraqi money prompted the Iraqi finance minister to complain that the "ad hoc" process put the CPA in danger of losing the trust of the people.
Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was paid $1.66 billion from the Iraqi money, primarily to cover the cost of importing fuel from Kuwait. The job was tacked on to a no-bid contract that was the subject of several investigations after allegations that a subcontractor for Houston-based KBR overcharged by up to $61 million for the fuel.
From yesterday's AP wire, via the Chicago Sun-Times, "McCain calls attack on Kerry military record 'cheap stunt'":
Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry's military service ''dishonest and dishonorable'' and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well.The White House declined.
''It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me,'' McCain said in an interview, comparing the anti-Kerry ad to tactics in his bitter primary fight with President Bush.
The 60-second ad features Vietnam veterans who accuse the Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his decorated Vietnam War record and betraying his fellow veterans by later opposing the conflict.
''When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry,'' one of the veterans, Larry Thurlow, says in the ad. Thurlow didn't serve on Kerry's swiftboat but says he witnessed the events that led to Kerry winning a Bronze Star and the last of his three Purple Hearts. Kerry's crewmates support the candidate and call him a hero.
The ad is scheduled to air in a few markets in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Asked if the White House knew about the ad or helped find financing for it, McCain said: ''I hope not, but I don't know. But I think the Bush campaign should specifically condemn the ad.''
McCain, chairman of Bush's campaign in Arizona, later said the Bush campaign has denied any involvement and added, ''I can't believe the president would pull such a cheap stunt.''
In 2000, Bush's supporters sponsored a rumor campaign against McCain in the South Carolina primary, helping Bush win the primary and the nomination. McCain's supporters have never forgiven the Bush team.
From Saturday's Washington Post, "U.S. Shifts Stance on Nuclear Treaty":
In a significant shift in U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear weapons materials.For several years the United States and other nations have pursued the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. At an arms-control meeting this week in Geneva, the Bush administration told other nations it still supported a treaty, but not verification.
Administration officials, who have showed skepticism in the past about the effectiveness of international weapons inspections, said they made the decision after concluding that such a system would cost too much, would require overly intrusive inspections and would not guarantee compliance with the treaty. They declined, however, to explain in detail how they believed U.S. security would be harmed by creating a plan to monitor the treaty.
Arms-control specialists reacted negatively, saying the change in U.S. position will dramatically weaken any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. The announcement, they said, also virtually kills a 10-year international effort to lure countries such as Pakistan, India and Israel into accepting some oversight of their nuclear production programs.
The announcement at the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament comes several months after President Bush declared it a top priority of his administration to prevent the production and trafficking in nuclear materials, and as the administration works to blunt criticism by Democrats and others that it has failed to work effectively with the United Nations and other international bodies on such vital global concerns.
"The president has said his priority is to block the spread of nuclear materials to rogue states and terrorists, and a verifiable ban on the production of such materials is an essential part of any such strategy," said Daryl Kimball, director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. "Which is why it is so surprising and baffling that the administration is not supporting a meaningful treaty."
[. . .]
While declaring nonproliferation a priority, however, the administration has opposed other arms-control treaties that rely on inspection regimes.
In 2001, the administration opposed attempts to create an inspections regime for the Biological Weapons Convention. It has signed an arms-reduction deal with Russia that doesn't include new verification mechanisms, and in its first year in office, the administration pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Richard Cohen in today's Washington Post:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned for the White House as a budget balancer. After his election, he started to spend money the government did not have, throwing one alphabet agency after another (CCC, WPA, etc.) into the black abyss of the Great Depression. FDR called this "the New Deal." In today's politics, it would be called flip-flopping.John F. Kerry now finds himself accused of aggravated flip-flopping in the first degree. The charge comes from various Republican Party front groups, individual GOP fellow travelers and, of course, the president himself. Campaigning hither and yon, George W. Bush has had great fun mocking Kerry or, among other things, his vote for the war and a subsequent vote not to fund it. Not mentioned is that in between the two votes came ample evidence of incompetence on the part of Bush. And so Kerry, as behooves a thinking man, chose to voice a protest. The vote did not lend itself to sound-bite analysis, but it made a certain amount of sense: The war in Iraq was a mess; Bush had not earned a blank check.
In supposed contrast to Kerry, Bush presents himself as the immutable politician, a man of fixed, firm beliefs who sticks to them not because they are popular but because they are right -- despite all evidence or reason. This is certainly the case when it comes to his core beliefs. His devotion to minimal taxes on the rich, for instance, is touching, but it has put the government in such debt that it will take our children's children to pay it off. By then, Bush imagines, his visage will be on Mount Rushmore.
But on other matters, Bush has flipped and flopped with the best of them. As a presidential candidate, he declared himself implacably opposed to nation-building. Now we are engaged in building Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the cost has been not merely a ton of money, as it was in Haiti and other places Bush said he wouldn't go, but nearly a thousand American lives lost and countless more ruined. Mind you, with weapons of mass destruction all but declared a mirage in the desert, the new -- and sole -- justification for the war is not anything approaching self-defense but getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime. This is nation-replacement and nation-building, a total rehab project.
Bush also declared himself a determined unilateralist, kissing off treaties and understandings and even spurning NATO's help in Afghanistan. Now, though, the unilateralist of old is sending Colin Powell around the world, seeking alms and arms for Iraq. Flip-flop.
Bush would not negotiate with North Korea. He did. Flip-flop.
Bush told the United Nations to butt out of Iraq. Now he wants it in. Flip-flop.
The president opposed creating the Department of Homeland Security. Soon after, his strong opposition apparently slipped his mind and he flip-flopped his way to an embrace. Bush later opposed the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, but now he cannot thank it enough. He did not want his chief aides -- Condoleezza Rice, for instance -- to testify publicly before it but relented in the face of popular opposition. Flip-flop. He himself would not testify for all sorts of hallowed constitutional reasons and then, of course, did. Flip-flop. He insisted, though, on taking Dick Cheney with him, the functional equivalent of bringing the textbook to the exam -- not exactly a flip-flop, I grant you, but such a blatant admission of ineptitude that I am moved to include it nonetheless. Look, it's my column.
Finally, of course, we get Bush's recent call for the creation of the post of national intelligence director, a position he once opposed. This prompted James P. Rubin, a Kerry adviser, to ask, "Why did President Bush flip-flop?" It is indeed a vexing question. The answer, of course, is that Bush flip-flops all the time. If he had been in public life as long as Kerry has, his flip-flops would be as legion as the fish in the sea.
But it is the areas in which Bush's convictions have not changed that are the most troubling, and this includes a religiosity that comforts him in his intellectual inertness and granite-like beliefs that are impervious to logic, such as his tax policy and his relentless march to war in Iraq. Flip-flopping, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder. It can be an indicator of an alert mind, one that adjusts to new realities, or it can be evidence of ambition decoupled from principle. With Kerry it's a mix of both. With Bush, who changes his positions but never his mind, it is always the latter.
From the Springfield, Missouri News-Leader, "Bush rally was sad day for democracy":
The phrase "this is what democracy looks like" changed meaning as the protest of President Bush's appearance in Springfield unfolded. Initially, the phrase described the thousands of people lined up with tickets, waiting to enter the field house, being reminded not all people in southwest Missouri thought this president deserved four more years of leadership that had launched wars resulting in thousands dead and tens of thousands wounded, a national debt increasing at $1.69 billion a day, and an atmosphere of secrecy in America.The Secret Service told protesters where to gather; the location was excellent. Democracy was working: People were exercising their right to assemble while others exercised their right to protest.
But when police told protesters they had to move about 200 feet away, while the people supporting Bush remained in place, the atmosphere grew tense. When protesters complained to local police, they replied, "We're just following orders." Then the protesters called the media: It was time for citizens to know how democracy was working in Springfield, as protesters had been herded into a "free speech zone."
When gatekeepers announced final seating for those with tickets, protesters with tickets tried to get in, but their tickets were grabbed and torn up, and police threatened them with arrest if they argued back. One woman screamed, "You're tearing up my ticket," and hit back at the man when he started shoving her with his chest, trying to shut her up. The police arrested the woman. Two other people were "taken down": a young girl who could not back up fast enough because there were so many people behind her and a man who is charged with trespassing because he was standing on property his own tax dollars partially funded.
All this, while the Bush supporters passed by, granted access to the president of us all because they would shout his praises at the appropriate moments.
When "this is what democracy looks like" arose from the protesters this time, it had an ominous tone. People were being taken down, and the picture was not pretty.
It seems that the unusually specific terrorist warning issued by the Bush Administration on Sunday was gleaned from mostly old intelligence -- gathered as far back as 2001 and 2000. According to the New York Times, intelligence and law enforcement officials "reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way."
Apparently, Sunday seemed as good a day as any for the Bush team to use this information to scare the bejeezes out of financial services workers in New York, New Jersey and Washington.
More from the Times article:
In a briefing on Sunday, a senior intelligence official said that the threat to the financial institutions "probably continues even today."
Probably.
Federal authorities said on Monday that they had uncovered no evidence that any of the surveillance activities described in the documents was currently under way. They said officials in New Jersey had been mistaken in saying on Sunday that some suspects had been found with blueprints and may have recently practiced "test runs'' aimed at the Prudential building in Newark.Joseph Billy Jr., the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Newark office, said a diagram of the Prudential building had been found in Pakistan. "It appears to be from the period around 9/11,'' Mr. Billy said. "Now we're trying to see whether it goes forward from there.''
Another counterterrorism official in Washington said that it was not yet clear whether the information pointed to a current plot. "We know that Al Qaeda routinely cases targets and then puts the plans on a shelf without doing anything,'' the official said.
So fear begets old suspects with blueprints begets armed guards all over our cities begets a sideways glance at anyone brown, all of which begets ... even more fear!
You gotta wonder if Karl Rove doesn't have sketched out somewhere in his back pocket a timetable for escalated alerts leading up to the election. No doubt the unprecedented red alert is on deck to appear sometime in, say, very early November.
If we continue to live in fear, the terrorists have won. The Bush administration seems intent on making this so. Or at least on keeping us scared enough to think that we must reelect the whole sorry lot in November.
Frankly, we're more scared of the prospect of a second term for Bush than we are of a terrorist attack. Terrorists create fear out of the unknown, but we already know how Bush governs (ineptly at best, malevolently on average, purely evil at worst). Fortunately, we don't have to wonder how we can rid ourselves of this nightmare. All we have to do is vote.
See related Washington Post article here.
UPDATE: Bush officials point to new information (New York Times).
Bush's Biggest Deficit: Consistency (BusinessWeek)In its latest fiscal forecast, released on July 30, the Bush Administration projects the deficit for the year ending on Sept. 30 will hit $445 billion. That would be $70 billion more than the record $375 billion deficit we hit last year. According to the White House and its GOP allies, this shows great progress in the battle against deficits.
"Because the President's economic policies are working," says Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten, "We are ahead of pace to meet the goal of cutting the deficit in half within five years." Adds House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Okla.): "Our budget outlook has significantly improved in the past seven months due to strong economic growth and spending restraint."
MISOVERESTIMATE. Say what? How does the idea of the deficit getting $70 billion bigger translate into fiscal success? It's easy, when you combine Washington's bizarre budget accounting rules, the increasingly superheated campaign season, and some Orwellian rhetoric. You see, last February, President Bush projected the deficit for this year would hit $521 billion. Now, thanks to a growing economy, the Bushies figure it will come in $76 billion below that number. Thus, we have a whole new way to game the budget debate: Overestimate deficits at the beginning of the year, come in below that forecast, and declare victory.
It's a pity that the real world isn't that rosy. Look more closely at the Bush numbers and you'll see that spending from '03 to '04 is up by a staggering $160 billion. Only $14 billion of that can be attributed to homeland security and Pentagon spending, including the war in Iraq. The rest is scattered throughout government, with much of it in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The deficit would have been even bigger, except that a growing economy is boosting tax revenues across the board from last year. Individual income tax receipts are expected to be up by $23 billion, corporate taxes up by a whopping $50 billion -- thanks to higher profits -- and Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes up by $18 billion. Those Social Security taxes, of course, are not saved to pay retirement benefits. They are spent on the rest of government.
THE REAL NUMBERS. And what about Bush's promise to cut the deficit in half in five years? The new Bush budget claims he can do it even faster -- by 2007. But don't hold your breath. That happy prediction assumes the U.S. will spend no more money on Iraq and Afghanistan after Sept. 30. And it ignores the need to fix the dreaded alternative minimum tax (AMT). Without a fix, the levy will hit more than 30 million taxpayers by the end of the decade.
The reality is that protecting millions of middle-class taxpayers from the AMT would cost close to $50 billion a year over the next decade. Once Washington fixes the AMT and pays for the war in Iraq, you can add at least $100 billion a year to Bush's deficit estimates over the next five years. That means forgetting about all that cutting-the-deficit-in-half business.
Commerce Department Deletes Recession From Record (see Reuters article here)Conspiracy theorists may now add this one to the books: Months before the November election the Bush Administration covered up the 2001 Recession.
That's right. Never happened. Didn't start under Clinton. Did not exist under Bush. Recession? We don't see a recession here.
Although the Department of Commerce revisions to the 2000-2001 economic data are probably legit, the timing will surely raise a few eyebrows among the "Bush Lied!" crowd. Because he's either lying now about there not being a recession, or he was lying then, ginning up a recession so he could give tax cuts to his rich friends.
(Wonkette, via guest editor BoiFromTroy)
Cuban prostitutes have received an unwelcome compliment from President Bush courtesy of an Internet search gone wrong.Earlier this month, Bush launched an attack against Fidel Castro and his alleged promotion of sex tourism in Cuba. Our fearless leader dug way back to a 1992 speech given by Castro to prove his case.
"The dictator welcomes sex tourism," Bush told a room of law enforcement officials in Florida, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Here's how he bragged about the industry," Bush said. "This is his quote: 'Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.'"
As it turns out, Bush had lifted that quotation not from an actual Castro speech but rather from a 2001 essay written by then Dartmouth University undergraduate Charles Trumbull. In the essay, Trumbull did appear to quote a Castro speech about prostitution. Sadly, the student made the quotation up.
According to officials, the actual quotation from Castro's 1992 speech reads as follows: "There are hookers, but prostitution is not allowed in our country. There are no women forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist. Those who do so do it on their own, voluntarily…. We can say that they are highly educated hookers and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number of AIDS cases."
Castro admitted that prostitution does exist in Cuba, as it does here, but tried to defuse the matter by pointing to the country's high health and education standards. This is hardly "welcoming sex tourism" as Bush claims.
And this isn't the first time the Internet has baffled Bush. Back in 2003, the President cited another student's thesis when making a case to go to war. The student's work ended up in a government document describing Iraq's weapons capability. Not exactly the kind of hard intelligence needed to justify an attack on another country.
But just as the Bush administration did with the Iraq evidence, it is not backing down about being wrong on the Castro issue.
"The president's point in citing Castro's quote was to highlight Castro's morally corrupt attitude to human trafficking," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan told the LA Times.
How funny then that the quotation ended up pointing out how inept the Bush administration is at research. Surely, the White House is committed to improving its information gathering practices in the future? Well, no. Bush's speech "was vetted the same way all the president's speeches are vetted," Buchan told the paper. (The Register, via Helpful Reader Eric)
From today's Washington Post, "EPA Will Not Have to Consult Wildlife Agencies on Pesticides":
The Environmental Protection Agency will no longer have to consult with wildlife agencies before deciding whether pesticides are likely to harm threatened or endangered species, according to rules issued by the Bush administration yesterday.Under current regulations, the EPA must get written approval from the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service before ruling that a new pesticide would not "adversely affect" imperiled plants and animals. Bush officials said the new rules would streamline the process by entrusting EPA scientists with the job of deciding how pest controls affect endangered species.
"This is the first administration to address a long-standing need to create a workable framework to protect species, ranging from salmon to butterflies and songbirds, ensuring that the potential effects of thousands of pest-control products are examined in a timely and comprehensive manner," said Steve Williams, director of Fish and Wildlife. "At the same time, we are making sure that farmers can continue to provide abundant food for our country and that consumers can continue to use many popular household and garden products."
[. . .]
But environmentalists said the change will harm vulnerable plants and animals. The administration proposed the regulations in January: It received about 125,000 comments, which ran 2 to 1 against the proposal.
Grant Cope, an associate attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice, said the new rule "is a drastic weakening of protections for all endangered species across the country."
"If you take the experts out of the room because you don't like what they're saying, that's one way to streamline the registration of dangerous pesticides," he said.
From today's Guardian, "Aid agency quits Afghanistan over security fears":
One of the world's leading frontline aid organisations, Médecins sans Frontières [Doctors without Borders], is pulling out of Afghanistan after 24 years because of a deterioration in security.MSF, a neutral group which depends primarily on private donations, has a reputation for sending medical staff into troublespots regarded by other agencies as too dangerous. This is its first pullout from any country since being founded 33 years ago.
The organisation, which worked in Afghanistan through the Soviet occupation, the civil war and the Taliban, said yesterday that the US-led coalition put aid workers at risk by blurring the line between military and humanitarian operations.
The surprise withdrawal is a setback for the Afghan government and the US in their attempts to persuade the international community that security in the country is improving in the run-up to the twice-delayed presidential election, now scheduled for October. A UN election worker and a person registering to vote were killed yesterday in a bomb attack in Ghazni, south of Kabul.
Thirty-two aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since March last year. Five MSF workers were killed at Badghis, in the north-west of the country, on June 2.
Before the attack, MSF had 80 expatriate staff in the country and 1,400 local staff, covering 13 provinces. The remaining 15 expatriate staff are leaving and the local staff are being made redundant. MSF aims to be out of Afghanistan by the end of August.
Vickie Hawkins, who returned to Britain two weeks ago after leading the MSF mission in Afghanistan, said yesterday: "While the security situation has deteriorated over the last year, what is a new feature is this targeting issue which has never happened before in Afghanistan and this is what makes us take the situation so seriously we felt we have to withdraw." She said the line between aid and the military had been blurred since US soldiers, after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, dressed in civilian clothes and drove around in the white Land cruisers favoured by aid agencies.
More recently, the Pentagon was forced to apologise for leaflets dropped on villages which threatened to withhold aid unless information was forthcoming about al-Qaida and the Taliban. Britain has distanced itself from this campaign.
Last Week:
The Army botched planning and management of the multibillion-dollar contract to provide food and other services to troops in Iraq, congressional investigators said.Investigators from the Government Accountability Office found a pattern of problems that led to cost disputes between the Pentagon and the contractor, Houston-based Halliburton. The GAO investigators also criticized Halliburton's staffing and accounting.
So far, the military has agreed to pay Halliburton more than $5 billion on the contract in question.
Separate federal investigations are looking into whether Halliburton overcharged the Army for fuel and meals and allegations that former Halliburton workers may have taken bribes from a Kuwaiti subcontractor.
Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney headed from 1995 until 2000, has said it did the best it could in the chaos of war. The company also has pointed to problems with military oversight of the contract -- complaints echoed in the GAO report.
The GAO report, released Wednesday, said problems with the Army's oversight included:
• Waiting until May 2003, after the fall of Baghdad, to develop a plan for providing support services to troops in Iraq.
• Taking more than a year, in some cases, to work out final costs on projects worth billions.
• Failing to train contract managers on how the contract should be managed, despite more than a decade of experience with the same problems. ("Report: Army bungled Halliburton contract")
Yesterday:
Halliburton Co. has lost $18.6 million of government property in Iraq, about a third of the items it was given to manage, including trucks, computers and office furniture, government auditors claim.The auditors couldn't account for 6,975 of 20,531 items on the ledgers of Halliburton's KBR unit, according to a report by Stuart Bowen, auditor for the coalition provisional authority inspector general.
Halliburton is providing services to U.S. troops under a contract that has generated $3.2 billion in revenue so far.
"This occurred because KBR did not effectively manage government property," Bowen wrote. "As a result, we projected that KBR could not account for 6,975 property items from an inventory of 20,531 valued at $61.1 million."
Halliburton is under investigation by the Justice Department for allegedly overcharging the military by $61 million for fuel purchases.
Democrats accuse the Bush administration of favoring the company because of its former connections to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Halliburton disagrees with the new audit, said company spokeswoman Cathy Gist.
"The examination simply included projections that were based on limited sample groups that were not necessarily a representative selection amount, which could have provided a more accurate measure," Gist said in an e-mailed statement. "The facts show that (KBR) has adequately managed the property for this mission by aggressively monitoring its property management functions above and beyond what is required for government approval of a property control system." ("Millions in U.S. property lost in Iraq, report says")
And also yesterday:
Halliburton Co.'s engineering unit KBR was awarded a contract worth up to $500 million to provide private sector construction and related services to the U.S. Navy and other defense department agencies, the company said on Tuesday.Under the contract, KBR could be asked to provide program planning and other services as well as personnel, equipment, materials and labor as needed by the Navy.
The total amount of the contract which includes one base year and four one-year options, is not to exceed $500 million and was won under a competitively awarded contract, the unit said.
Halliburton, once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, is the U.S. Army's main logistics contractor in Iraq and also has a separate deal trying to revive Iraq's oil industry. It has been mired in controversy over its work in Iraq since it has won lucrative deals and military auditors have found evidence of possible overcharging for some work. ("Halliburton Wins $500 Mln Navy Deal")
From yesterday's Washington Post, "Archivist's Resignation Questioned - Democrats Seek Reason for His Being Pushed Out":
Archivist of the United States John W. Carlin was pushed by the White House in December to submit his resignation without being given any reason, Senate Democrats disclosed last week at a hearing to consider President Bush's nomination of his successor.The Democrats said the White House should explain why it asked Carlin to resign. He said in a letter to Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) that White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales called him Dec. 5 and told him "the administration would like to appoint a new archivist." Carlin said, "I asked why, and there was no reason given."
Critics have suggested Bush may have wanted a new archivist to help keep his or his father's sensitive presidential records under wraps. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, many of President George H.W. Bush's papers are due to become public in January.
The 1984 law establishing the National Archives and Records Administration provides that the archivist will serve an indefinite term and can be replaced if he resigns or is removed by the president. If he is removed, "the president shall communicate the reasons for any such removal" to Congress, the law says.
Disclosure of the circumstances surrounding Carlin's decision to step down overshadowed the testimony of Bush's nominee, Allen Weinstein, and could delay any plans to confirm him before the November elections.
Carlin said in his July 22 letter to Levin he would like to remain in his post for four more months so he could complete several initiatives he had undertaken. They include getting congressional funding for development of "a groundbreaking system that will allow the government to manage and preserve any kind of electronic records, now and in the future."
Two weeks after the call from Gonzales, Carlin told the president he would resign -- the Dec. 19 letter contained no hint of what prompted his decision. Democrats on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee said it amounted to a forced removal, and Bush should be required to give his reasons for it.
From Saturday's Washington Post, "An Army Whitewash":
The Army's attempt to hold itself accountable for the abuse of foreign prisoners is off to a terrible start. On Thursday, while the media and political worlds were focused on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, the Army inspector general released a 300-page summary of an investigation of "detainee operations" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though it identified 94 cases of confirmed or possible abuse, including 20 prisoner deaths, the probe concluded by sounding the defense offered up by the Pentagon ever since the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison were published: that the crimes did not result from Army policy and were not the fault of senior commanders but were "unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals."This conclusion is contradicted by the independent investigations and reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross, by an earlier Army investigation undertaken before the scandal became public, and by testimony given to Congress. Oddly, it doesn't even square with some of the findings buried in the inspector general's own report, which confirm that commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan ordered "high-risk" interrogation procedures to be used on prisoners without adequate safeguards, training or regard for the Geneva Conventions.
No matter: The report effectively communicates the strategy of the military brass on the detainee affair, which is to focus blame on a few low-ranking personnel, shield all senior commanders from accountability, and deny or bury any facts that interfere with these aims. In that sense, the signal it sends to Congress is clear: The Pentagon cannot be counted on to reliably or thoroughly investigate the prisoner abuse affair. An independent probe by an outside authority is desperately needed.
To the credit of Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), the Senate Armed Services Committee quickly assembled for a hearing on the Army report, despite the not-so-subtle timing of its release, and some Republican as well as Democratic senators rightly voiced incredulity at the Army's findings. They pointed out that, while identifying no "systemic failures" in the military, the inspector general's team chose not to investigate such episodes as the hiding of "ghost detainees" from the Red Cross -- a Geneva Convention violation that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has publicly stated was authorized by him. Nor did the investigation explore the handling of Red Cross reports by the staff of the Iraq commander in chief, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez -- which, rather than acting to stop abuses, reportedly tried to restrict further Red Cross access. In fact, no one above the rank of brigade commander was considered culpable, the inspector general candidly told the senators. "We think it ended there," said Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek.
Really? That's hard to square with the general's own report, which says that top U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, under pressure to collect more intelligence, "published high risk [interrogation] policies that presented a significant risk of misapplication if not trained and executed carefully." Yet "not all interrogators were trained," "some inspected units were unaware of the correct command policy," and some officers "with no training in interrogation techniques began conducting their own interrogation sessions." Moreover, some of the techniques set forth by Gen. Sanchez and other senior commanders previously had been approved only for "unlawful combatants" held at Guantanamo Bay. That "appears to contradict the terms of" the Pentagon's own legal judgments, which said some interrogation methods permissible at Guantanamo could not be used in Iraq.
All this -- and yet, purportedly, there were no failures of policy, and responsibility ended at the level of a lieutenant colonel, or a reserve one-star general. The senators who rejected this whitewash were correct: It is implausible and unacceptable. If the reputation and integrity of the Army are to be restored, some other authority will need to do better.
From today’s New York Times, "In a Shift, Bush Moves to Block Medical Suits":
The Bush administration has been going to court to block lawsuits by consumers who say they have been injured by prescription drugs and medical devices.The administration contends that consumers cannot recover damages for such injuries if the products have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In court papers, the Justice Department acknowledges that this position reflects a "change in governmental policy," and it has persuaded some judges to accept its arguments, most recently scoring a victory in the federal appeals court in Philadelphia.
Allowing consumers to sue manufacturers would "undermine public health" and interfere with federal regulation of drugs and devices, by encouraging "lay judges and juries to second-guess" experts at the F.D.A., the government said in siding with the maker of a heart pump sued by the widow of a Pennsylvania man. Moreover, it said, if such lawsuits succeed, some good products may be removed from the market, depriving patients of beneficial treatments.
In 2002, at a legal symposium, the Bush administration outlined plans for "F.D.A. involvement in product liability lawsuits," and it has been methodically pursuing that strategy.
[. . .]
Jay P. Lefkowitz, former director of Mr. Bush's Domestic Policy Council, said the F.D.A.'s litigation strategy embodied "good health policy and good tort reform."
But Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, said the administration had "taken the F.D.A. in a radical new direction, seeking to protect drug companies instead of the public." Mr. Hinchey recently persuaded the House to cut $500,000 from the budget of the agency's chief counsel as a penalty for its aggressive opposition to consumer lawsuits.
In the Pennsylvania ruling, issued Tuesday, the appeals court threw out a lawsuit filed by Barbara E. Horn, who said her husband had died because of defects in the design and manufacture of his heart pump. The Bush administration argued that federal law barred such claims because the device had been produced according to federal specifications. In its briefs, the administration conceded that "the views stated here differ from the views that the government advanced in 1997," in the United States Supreme Court.
At that time, the government said that F.D.A. approval of a medical device set the minimum standard, and that states could provide "additional protection to consumers." Now the Bush administration argues that the agency's approval of a device "sets a ceiling as well as a floor."
The administration said its position, holding that individual consumers have no right to sue, actually benefited consumers.
The threat of lawsuits, it said, "can harm the public health" by encouraging manufacturers to withdraw products from the market or to issue new warnings that overemphasize the risks and lead to "underutilization of beneficial treatments."
Is it just us, or does "underutilization of beneficial treatments” seem like a lot of syllables to say “lower sales”?
