From: Todd Lockwood
Sent:
Wednesday, October 29, 2003 1:37 AM
Subject: Digest #104
Watching
part of the Presidential news conference this morning spurred me to
start
another Digest. He must have said "remembering the lessons of 911"
every
time he was remotely questioned about his failures in Iraq regarding
security and WMDs (and believe me, it was only remotely from this
hand-picked group of "reporters").
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/28/opinion/28KRUG.html?th
A Willful Ignorance
PAUL KRUGMAN
According to The New
York Times, President Bush was genuinely surprised to
learn from moderate
Islamic leaders that they had become deeply distrustful
of American
intentions. The report on the "perception gap" suggests that the
leader of
the war on terror has no idea how badly that war ‹ which must,
ultimately,
be a war for hearts and minds ‹ is going. Mr. Bush's ignorance
may reflect
his lack of curiosity: "The best way to get the news," he says,
"is from
objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people
on my
staff." Two words: emperor, clothes.
But there's something broader going
on: a sort of willful ignorance,
supposedly driven by moral concerns but
actually reflecting domestic
politics. Surely it's important to understand
how others see us, but a new,
post 9/11 version of political correctness has
made it difficult even to
discuss their points of view. Any American who
tries to go beyond "America
good, terrorists evil," who tries to understand
‹ not condone ‹ the growing
world backlash against the United States, faces
furious attacks delivered in
a tone of high moral indignation. The attackers
claim to be standing up for
moral clarity, and some of them may even believe
it. But they are really
being used in a domestic political
struggle.
Yet that moral punctiliousness is curiously selective. Last
year the Bush
administration, in return for a military base in Uzbekistan,
gave $500
million to a government that, according to the State Department,
uses
torture "as a routine investigation technique," and whose president has
killed opponents with boiling water. The moral clarity police were notably
quiet.
Why is aiding a brutal dictator O.K., while trying to
understand why others
don't trust us ‹ and doing something to create that
trust ‹ isn't? Why won't
the administration mollify Muslims by firing Lt.
Gen. William Boykin, whose
anti-Islamic remarks have created vast ill will,
from his counterterrorism
position? Why won't it give moderate Muslims a
better argument against the
radicals by opposing Ariel Sharon's settlement
policy, when a majority of
Israelis think that some settlements should be
abandoned, and even Israeli
military officers have become bitterly critical
of Mr. Sharon?
Muslims are completely wrong to think that the U.S. is
engaged in a war
against Islam. But that misperception flourishes in part
because the
domestic political strategy of the Bush administration ‹ no
longer able to
claim the Iraq war was a triumph, and with little but red ink
to show for
its economic plans ‹ looks more and more like a crusade.
"Election Boils
Down to a Culture War" was the title of Mr. Fineman's
column. But the
analysis was all about abortion and euthanasia, and now we
hear that
opposition to gay marriage will be a major campaign theme. This
isn't a
culture war ‹ it's a religious war.
Which brings me back to
my starting point: we'll lose the fight against
terror if we don't make an
effort to understand how others think. Yet
because of a domestic political
struggle that seems ever more centered on
religion, such attempts at
understanding are shouted
down.
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War
is Peace, Down is Up, "Jobless Recovery",
"Healthy Forests", "Clean Skies",
and this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23470-2003Oct27.html?referrer=email
Bush Says Attacks Are Reflection of U.S. Gains
President
Bush yesterday put the best face on a new surge of violence in
Iraq as his
top defense aides huddled to discuss additional ways of
thwarting the
anti-American rebellion there before it becomes more
widespread.
The
president, speaking after attacks on police stations and a Red Cross
facility in Iraq killed at least 35 people, said such attacks should be seen
as a sign of progress because they show the desperation of those who oppose
the U.S.-led occupation.
________________________________________________________
A long
and detailed article about how much money it takes to do nothing.
Note
how little of that 87 billion actually goes to Iraq, and how much of it
goes
to Halliburton and Bechtel operations:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/985304.asp
The $87 Billion Money Pit
No doubt, reconstructing
postwar Iraq is a brutally hard and hazardous task.
Sabotage already has
destroyed some 700 power-transmission towers. But
George W. Bush, who has
staked his nation¹s credibility‹and perhaps his
presidency‹on success in
Iraq, has no choice but to set things right. And
Daura offers a small window
into problems that have become all too typical
of America¹s postwar morass
in Iraq, a NEWSWEEK investigation shows. Iraqis
like to point out that after
the 1991 war, Saddam restored the badly
destroyed electric grid in only
three months. Some six months after Bush
declared an end to major
hostilities, a much more ambitious and costly
American effort has yet to get
to that point. It is only in recent weeks
that the Coalition amped up to the
power-generation level that Saddam
achieved last March‹4,400 megawatts for
the country (though it¹s since
dropped back). True, Saddam didn¹t have a
guerrilla war to contend with, and
his power infrastructure was in much
better shape than the Americans found
it. But he also had far fewer
resources.
Still, it's not easy determining why the biggest power plant
in Iraq¹s
largest city seems to be such a low priority. Baghdad is still
beset by
blackouts, and so much of America¹s success or failure depends on
power: the
economy can¹t recover with-out it. Some CPA officials
concede privately
that the problem stems from the lack of preparation before
the war. ³It
always comes back to the same thing: no plan,² says one CPA
staffer
Rebuidling Iraq: Where the $87 Billion Goes
$65.6
billion: Military Costs: The majority of the proposal is
for
the Department of Defense:
$41.1 billion: Ops & maint.
$17.8
billion: Personnel costs
$5.4 billion: Procurement
$624 million: Fuel and
repairs
$412 million: Construction
$360 million: Other
$20.3
billion: Reconstruction costs: Funds go to the
Iraq
Relief and Reconstruction Fund for use by
the
Coalition Provisional Authority.
$5.67 billion: Electricity
$5.13
billion: Security (justice system and Iraqi police)
$3.7 billion: Public
works
$2.1 billion: Rehabilitate and repair oil infrastructure
$875
million: Water resources
$850 million: Health
$835 million: Transportation
and telecommunications
$470 million: Housing
$353 million: Private
sector
$300 million: Human
rights
________________________________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/28/politics/28TERR.html?th
Bush Weighing Decision on Release of
Documents to Sept. 11
Panel
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 ‹ President Bush declined on Monday
to commit the White
House to turning over highly classified intelligence
reports to the federal
commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror
attacks, despite public
threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan
panel.
The president said in a brief meeting with reporters that the
documents were
"very sensitive" and that the White House was still
discussing the issue
with the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former
Republican governor of
New Jersey.
Mr. Bush's remarks and subsequent
comments from his press secretary
suggested that the White House might
ultimately refuse the commission's
demand for access to the documents,
setting up a possible showdown between
the White House and the independent
investigators
________________________________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/28/opinion/28TUE5.html?th
Superfund Undermined
The industry-financed trust fund
that helps underwrite one of the country's
most valued environmental
programs, the Superfund, will soon run out of
money. It will be a milestone
of sorts, and a sad one. Unless Congress
renews the fund, which pays for
cleaning up toxic waste dumps, taxpayers
will have to foot the bill instead
of the companies that caused the messes
in the first place. An important
principle will have gone down the drain,
and public health may suffer as a
result.
Superfund was enacted under President Jimmy Carter in 1980 to
clean up
thousands of contaminated waste sites. The program's core principle
was that
polluters should pay. The program enforced that principle in two
ways.
First, in cases where the company responsible for a mess could be
clearly
identified, that company paid to clean it up. Of the 800 or so
cleanups
since the program began, about two-thirds have been paid for by the
companies responsible, at an overall cost of about $20 billion. A majority
of the sites awaiting cleanup will also be dealt with in this
fashion.
There is, however, a second category: sites whose ownership has
changed many
times over the years, or whose owners have gone bankrupt. For
these sites,
Superfund's architects created an "orphan" fund, to be financed
by excise
taxes on the oil and chemical industries and by a tiny
environmental income
tax levied on most other corporations. These taxes
expired in 1995, when
Congressional Republicans refused to renew them.
President Bush has not
asked for their reinstatement, the first president
not to do so. The orphan
fund is down to its last few million dollars and is
likely to run dry next
year. It will then be entirely dependent on general
revenues.
________________________________________________________
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/7118958.htm
12 states sue EPA on pollution rule
Twelve states and
several Northeastern cities sued the Environmental
Protection Agency
yesterday to try to block the Bush administration's
changes to the Clean Air
Act.
The EPA's new rule makes it easier to upgrade utilities, refineries
and
other industrial facilities without installing additional pollution
controls.
Attorney generals for the 12 states - New York,
Connecticut, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New
Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin - and legal
officers for
New York City, Washington, D.C., and New Haven and several
other cities in
Connecticut said the new regulations would weaken
protections for the
environment and public health.
They argued that
only Congress could make sweeping changes to such a bedrock
law.
The
rule broadens the EPA's interpretation of "routine maintenance" for
older
plants. Before the rule change, operators who did anything more than
routine
maintenance were required to add more pollution-cutting devices.
The rule
change allows companies to replace up to 20 percent of the cost of
plant
equipment without installing pollution controls that were previously
required for any routine maintenance.
Scott Segal, director of the
Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a
group of power companies that
support the rule change, argued that it would
clarify regulations and that
"no litigation from the Northeast attorneys
general can produce anything but
confusion."
________________________________________________________
http://www.misleader.com/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df10282003.html
New Push for Corporate Tax Cuts Gives
Special Treatment to
Multinationals
President Bush has promoted his tax plans in
the past by promoting their
fairness and that they "[don't] give special
treatment to special
interests." But as Congress considers legislation to
staunch the bleeding of
U.S. manufacturing jobs, the Bush Administration has
been silent over
proposed legislation that heavily favors multinational
companies over
U.S.-based manufacturers.
Congress has been working on
new legislation to prop up American
manufacturing in response to the 2.5
million manufacturing jobs that have
been lost since 2001. The legislation
Congress is promoting would cut
corporate taxes by $142 billion over the
next ten years, in part by
expanding who qualifies as a manufacturer.
Industries now covered include
agriculture, food processing, construction,
architectural and engineering.
One issue involves whether the proposed
changes will actually serve the
purpose of saving the U.S. manufacturing
sector and encouraging corporate
investment in the United States. This is
because corporate taxes are at
their lowest level since the 1930s, except
for one year during Ronald
Reagan's first term.
The second issue
involves fairness to U.S.-based companies. One bill offered
by Ways and
Means committee chairman Bill Thomas, focuses on relief for
multinational
firms, including expansion of tax shelters at a value of
almost $80 billion.
Another bill, the bipartisan Crane-Rangel bill, does not
favor offshore
manufacturers.
Bush's top tax official, Assistant Treasury Secretary for
Tax Policy Pamela
Olsen, has been very visible in pushing for new corporate
tax cuts and
loopholes, saying, "our tax rules are outmoded at best and
punitive of U.S.
economic interests at worst." But the Bush Administration
is so far
invisible in taking a strong stand for U.S.-based manufacturers
and keeping
Mr. Bush's pledge to stop special treatment.
Because of
the generous definition of manufacturing in the Thomas
legislation, firms
like Fluor and Halliburton, both of whom have won
contracts for
reconstruction in Iraq worth billions, will also benefit from
the changes.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as CEO of Halliburton
from 1995 until
six months before he took office, continues to receive a
six-figure deferred
annual salary. Cheney has downplayed his tenure at the
firm, with no mention
of his service at Halliburton, though his bio does
mention his
"distinguished career as a businessman."
________________________________________________________
An
interesting site
http://www.pipa.org/
________________________________________________________
This
one is for the current administration:
http://www.despair.com/teamwork.html
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Action Items:
ACTFORCHANGE ACTIVISM UPDATE: October
28, 2003
Tell Your Senators to Cast a Historic Vote to Fight Global
Warming
Contributed by Natural Resources Defense Council
This
Thursday, for the first time in history, the U.S. Senate is
scheduled to
vote on legislation to fight global warming.
The Climate Stewardship Act
would cap and reduce global warming
emissions from the biggest polluting
industries in the U.S. by cutting
carbon dioxide and five other global
warming pollutants emitted by
power plants, refineries and other industries.
Patterned after the
Clean Air Act's successful acid rain program, the bill
would use a
market-based approach, with emissions caps and emissions
trading, to
cut global warming pollution at the lowest possible
cost.
Urge your senators to vote "Yes" on the McCain-Lieberman Climate
Stewardship Act (S.139).
Click here for more information and to take
action!
http://act.actforchange.com/cgi-bin7/DM/y/eVzn0DbpX40JAe0gve0A4
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