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2004-03-08 - 4:51 p.m.

Walter Cronkite: The Scariest Idea of All

Walter Cronkite, who has borne the reputation as "the most trusted man in America" for many years, and who always kept his personal opinions to himself when he was the news anchor for CBS, has now begun to speak out on issues critical to the future of our nation.

In this opinion piece in the Denver Post, he is critical of the Republican fiscal leadership of our nation, and wonders if this administration even knows what it is doing.

Some excerpts follow:

Two agencies of Congress - the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office - have recently cast doubt on either the Bush administration's ability to count or its candor. The CBO says the president's claim that he will halve the deficit in five years is off the mark. And the GAO warns of a fiscal train wreck not far down the track.

...

Say goodbye to school-lunch programs, farm subsidies, federal block grants and subsidized college loans. Altogether, one might guess that life for millions of Americans would get a lot harder and meaner than anything we experience today.

...

So what can this president be thinking, with his call for even further tax cuts while he increases spending by astronomical amounts (the GAO estimates the long-term costs of the new prescription-drug law at up to $8 trillion)? Well, there's a theory suggested by some that might or might not be valid. It's called "Starve the Beast," an idea dear to the hearts of many conservatives who believe the only way to get rid of government programs is to cut off the flow of money going to them. That's a scary idea.

...

There is another possibility - that Bush and his team don't really know what they are doing. That's the scariest idea of all.

Go here to read the entire thoughtful column by this wise and respected journalist.

2004-03-07 - 4:53 p.m.

Senator Kennedy's Recent Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations

On March 5th, Senator Edward Kennedy gave a powerful speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he laid out in detail the steps and the distortions by which the Bush Administration took us into the misguided invasion of Iraq.

He backs up his strong indictment of the rush to war with many direct quotations by Bush and the senior administration officials involved, showing how politics trumped policy and intelligence was exaggerated.

Here are a few excerpts:

The nation is engaged in a major ongoing debate about why America went to war in Iraq, when Iraq was not an imminent threat, had no nuclear weapons, no persuasive links to Al Qaeda, no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

...

Tragically, in making the decision to go to war in Iraq, the Bush Administration allowed its wishes, its inclinations and its passions to alter the state of facts and the evidence of the threat we faced from Iraq.

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The rushed decision to invade Iraq cannot all be blamed on flawed intelligence. If we view these events simply as an intelligence failure – rather than a larger failure of decision-making and leadership – we will learn the wrong lessons.

The more we find out, the clearer it becomes that any failure in the intelligence itself is dwarfed by the Administration's manipulation of the intelligence in making the case for war. Specific warnings from the intelligence community were consistently ignored as the Administration rushed toward war.

We now know that from the moment President Bush took office, Iraq was given high priority as unfinished business from the first Bush Administration.

...

But President Bush was not deterred. He was relentless in using America's fears after the devastating 9/11 tragedy. He drew a clear link – and drew it repeatedly – between Al Qaeda and Saddam.

In a September 25, 2002, statement at the White House, President Bush flatly declared: "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

...

Why would the Administration go to such lengths to go to war? Was it trying to change the subject from its failed economic policy, the corporate scandals, and its failed effort to capture Osama bin Laden? The only imminent threat was the November Congressional election. The politics of the election trumped the stubborn facts.

Early in the Bush Administration, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had raised concerns about politics pervading the process in the White House.

...

Our men and women in uniform are still paying with their lives for this misguided war in Iraq. CIA Director Tenet could perform no greater service to the armed forces, to the American people, and to our country, than to set the record straight, and state unequivocally what is so clearly the truth: the Bush Administration misrepresented the facts to justify the war.

America went to war in Iraq because President Bush insisted that nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein and his ties to Al Qaeda were too dangerous to ignore. Congress never would have voted to authorize the war if we had known the facts.

The Bush Administration is obviously digging in its heels against any further serious investigation of the reasons we went to war.

The Administration's highest priority is to prevent any more additional stubborn facts about this fateful issue from coming to light before the election in November.

Go here to read this entire powerful speech.

2004-03-06 - 11:47 a.m.

Greenspan's Con Job

William Greider writing in the Nation, clarifies the current situation about Social Security.

We just posted Paul Krugman's great column a few days ago, but this topic is worth another look.

It turns out that Social Security is fully funded by payroll taxes that produce a large surplus every year, so that it is solid through 2042, and could be easily extended if the payroll tax was increased past the $87,000 top limit so that the big earners would pay their share too.

By suggesting that benefits need to be trimmed, in order to protect Bush's tax cuts for the rich, Greenspan has indeed put forth a con job.

Some excerpts follow:

Here is the truth: Social Security is not in deficit, not now and not for at least the next forty years. The trust fund will have a surplus next year of $1.8 trillion. In 2011 when, Greenspan warns, the baby boomers will start retiring in large numbers, the surplus will be $3.2 trillion. These stored savings, plus future payroll-tax revenue, are sufficient to pay all retirees the current level of benefits through 2042, according to the fund's very conservative actuaries.

The problem is, the government borrowed this money and has spent it on other projects. But the trust fund, despite what right-wingers like to claim, is not an accounting gimmick. The government is legally obligated to pay back the money (as surely as it is obliged to repay Treasury bonds). The borrowed trillions, in fiduciary terms, belong to the "beneficial owners"--every worker who has paid higher payroll taxes for the past twenty years.

Greenspan is familiar with the accounting because he was chairman of the bipartisan commission that supposedly "fixed" the Social Security problem back in 1983 by imposing a huge increase in FICA payroll taxes--extra revenue that produced the still-growing surpluses. This historic tax shift (I think of it as the "crime of '83") was most convenient to the Reagan Administration because Reaganomics had just created huge budget deficits by cutting income taxes for the monied interests and pumping up the military budget. The burgeoning surpluses from the Social Security payroll tax would help offset the economic impact of the deficits. Hardly anyone noticed at the time, since Democrats cooperated in the "solution." Now Bush Jr. has done the same thing. And Greenspan is proposing another "fix": Double-cross the workers who paid the extra trillions; don't disturb the new monster tax cuts delivered to the rich. Any con artist would appreciate the bait-and-switch as a nifty piece of work.

Read the whole article here to understand the Social Security discussions going on nowadays.

2004-03-03 - 10:46 p.m.

Gay Marriage in Historical Perspective

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has put the president's proposed amendment to the Constitution to restrict gay marriage into historical perspective, by comparing it to a 1912 attempt to amend the Constitution to prohibit interracial marriages.

Many of the stated reasons for "defending marriage" then were much the same as the right wing is using now, and exposes their bigotry.

His column is titled, Marriage: Mix and Match, and follows here.

And for those who wish to read about the controversy at Baylor University, when the editors of the school paper defended San Francisco in allowing gay marriages, go here, here, here, and here.

Now, here's Kristof's brilliant column:

Shakespeare's "Othello" used to be among the hardest plays to stage in America. Although the actors playing Othello were white, they wore dark makeup, so audiences felt "disgust and horror," as Abigail Adams said. She wrote, "My whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the sooty heretic Moor touch the fair Desdemona."

Not until 1942, when Paul Robeson took the role, did a major American performance use a black actor as Othello. Even then, Broadway theaters initially refused to accommodate such a production.

Fortunately, we did not enshrine our "disgust and horror" in the Constitution — but we could have. Long before President Bush's call for a "constitutional amendment protecting marriage," Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia proposed an amendment that he said would uphold the sanctity of marriage.

Mr. Roddenberry's proposed amendment, in December 1912, stated, "Intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians . . . is forever prohibited." He took this action, he said, because some states were permitting marriages that were "abhorrent and repugnant," and he aimed to "exterminate now this debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy."

"Let this condition go on if you will," Mr. Roddenberry warned. "At some day, perhaps remote, it will be a question always whether or not the solemnizing of matrimony in the North is between two descendants of our Anglo-Saxon fathers and mothers or whether it be of a mixed blood descended from the orangutan-trodden shores of far-off Africa." (His zoology was off: orangutans come from Asia, not Africa.)

In Mr. Bush's call for action last week, he argued that the drastic step of a constitutional amendment is necessary because "marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society." Mr. Roddenberry also worried about the risks ahead: "This slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation to a conflict as fatal and as bloody as ever reddened the soil of Virginia."

That early effort to amend the Constitution arose after a black boxer, Jack Johnson, ostentatiously consorted with white women. "A blot on our civilization," the governor of New York fretted.

In the last half-century, there has been a stunning change in racial attitudes. All but nine states banned interracial marriages at one time, and in 1958, a poll found that 96 percent of whites disapproved of marriages between blacks and whites. Yet in 1997, 77 percent approved. (A personal note: my wife is Chinese-American, and I heartily recommend miscegenation.)

Mr. Bush is an indicator of a similar revolution in views — toward homosexuality — but one that is still unfolding. In 1994, Mr. Bush supported a Texas antisodomy law that let the police arrest gays in their own homes. Now the Bushes have gay friends, and Mr. Bush appoints gays to office without worrying that he will turn into a pillar of salt.

Social conservatives like Mr. Bush are right in saying that marriage is "the most fundamental institution in civilization." So we should extend it to America's gay minority — just as marriage was earlier extended from Europe's aristocrats to the masses.

Conservatives can fairly protest that the gay marriage issue should be decided by a political process, not by unelected judges. But there is a political process under way: state legislatures can bar the recognition of gay marriages registered in Sodom-on-the-Charles, Mass., or anywhere else. The Defense of Marriage Act specifically gives states that authority.

Yet the Defense of Marriage Act is itself a reminder of the difficulties of achieving morality through legislation. It was, as Slate noted, written by the thrice-married Representative Bob Barr and signed by the philandering Bill Clinton. It's less a monument to fidelity than to hypocrisy.

If we're serious about constitutional remedies for marital breakdowns, we could adopt an amendment criminalizing adultery. Zamfara, a state in northern Nigeria, has had success in reducing AIDS, prostitution and extramarital affairs by sentencing adulterers to be stoned to death.

Short of that, it seems to me that the best way to preserve the sanctity of American marriage is for us all to spend less time fretting about other people's marriages — and more time improving our own.

2004-03-02 - 12:57 p.m.

Maestro of Chutzpah

In today's New York Times column, Paul Krugman rips the mask of hypocrisy off of Alan Greenspan's recent comments about the need to cut benefits for Social Security recipients because of the rising Bush deficit, at the same time as he (Greenspan) approves making the Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent.

How blatant can Greenspan be about stealing from workers and retirees to give to the very rich?

For it turns out that Social Security is fully funded by payroll taxes through 2042, except that the government has been borrowing these funds for other purposes.

Here are some excepts from this brilliant column by a brilliant economist who has a way of making things plain to everyone:

The traditional definition of chutzpah says it's when you murder your parents, then plead for clemency because you're an orphan. Alan Greenspan has chutzpah.

Last week Mr. Greenspan warned of the dangers posed by budget deficits. But even though the main cause of deficits is plunging revenue — the federal government's tax take is now at its lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950 — he opposes any effort to restore recent revenue losses. Instead, he supports the Bush administration's plan to make its tax cuts permanent, and calls for cuts in Social Security benefits.

Yet three years ago Mr. Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, warning that otherwise the federal government would run excessive surpluses. He assured Congress that those tax cuts would not endanger future Social Security benefits. And last year he declined to stand in the way of another round of deficit-creating tax cuts.

But wait — it gets worse.

You see, although the rest of the government is running huge deficits — and never did run much of a surplus — the Social Security system is currently taking in much more money than it spends. Thanks to those surpluses, the program is fully financed at least through 2042. The cost of securing the program's future for many decades after that would be modest — a small fraction of the revenue that will be lost if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.

And the reason Social Security is in fairly good shape is that during the 1980's the Greenspan commission persuaded Congress to increase the payroll tax, which supports the program.

The payroll tax is regressive: it falls much more heavily on middle- and lower-income families than it does on the rich. In fact, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, families near the middle of the income distribution pay almost twice as much in payroll taxes as in income taxes. Yet people were willing to accept a regressive tax increase to sustain Social Security.

Now the joke's on them. Mr. Greenspan pushed through an increase in taxes on working Americans, generating a Social Security surplus. Then he used that surplus to argue for tax cuts that deliver very little relief to most people, but are worth a lot to those making more than $300,000 a year. And now that those tax cuts have contributed to a soaring deficit, he wants to cut Social Security benefits.

The point, of course, is that if anyone had tried to sell this package honestly — "Let's raise taxes and cut benefits for working families so we can give big tax cuts to the rich!" — voters would have been outraged. So the class warriors of the right engaged in bait-and-switch.

There are three lessons in this tale.

First, "starving the beast" is no longer a hypothetical scenario — it's happening as we speak. For decades, conservatives have sought tax cuts, not because they're affordable, but because they aren't. Tax cuts lead to budget deficits, and deficits offer an excuse to squeeze government spending.

Second, squeezing spending doesn't mean cutting back on wasteful programs nobody wants. Social Security and Medicare are the targets because that's where the money is. We might add that ideologues on the right have never given up on their hope of doing away with Social Security altogether. If Mr. Bush wins in November, we can be sure that they will move forward on privatization — the creation of personal retirement accounts. These will be sold as a way to "save" Social Security (from a nonexistent crisis), but will, in fact, undermine its finances. And that, of course, is the point.

Finally, the right-wing corruption of our government system — the partisan takeover of institutions that are supposed to be nonpolitical — continues, and even extends to the Federal Reserve.

The Bush White House has made it clear that it will destroy the careers of scientists, budget experts, intelligence operatives and even military officers who don't toe the line. But Mr. Greenspan should have been immune to such pressures, and he should have understood that the peculiarity of his position — as an unelected official who wields immense power — carries with it an obligation to stand above the fray. By using his office to promote a partisan agenda, he has betrayed his institution, and the nation.

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