By: Paul Krugman  

This $7 trillion reversal of fiscal fortune has received remarkably little public attention; it has been crowded off the front page by talk of war. But its consequences will be immense.

Where did the surplus go? The "trifecta" is not the main story; recessions have only a small impact on long-run projections, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that increases in military and homeland security spending account for only 16% of the 10-year deterioration in the CBO's projection. In fact, it's clear that we would be facing large deficits outside Social Security, and probably significant deficits in the budget as a whole, even if neither the recession nor Sept. 11 had happened.

The two main culprits are the tax cut and "technical changes" in the estimates: perhaps because of the end of the bull market, a given level of GDP is yielding much less revenue than it did during the late 1990's. Or to put it another way, our brief era of big surpluses seems to have been a fluke.

Florida, Counties Plan to Settle NAACP Suit Over 2000 Election

By: Catherine Wilson  

The NAACP's lawsuit over Florida's disputed 2000 presidential election appears headed for a close as the state and two counties the only remaining defendants have agreed to a settlement, attorneys said Tuesday.

Joe Klock, an attorney for the state, told U.S. District Judge Alan Gold that all parties promised to file final papers by Friday for approval. Attorneys would not discuss terms of the settlement.

A settlement would eliminate the likelihood of unflattering headlines from a trial projected to last through parts of Gov. Jeb Bush's re-election campaign.

By: Paul Krugman  

Round up the usual suspects! George W. Bush's new "Healthy Forests" plan reads like a parody of his administration's standard operating procedure. You see, environmentalists cause forest fires, and those nice corporations will solve the problem if we get out of their way.

Am I being too harsh? No, actually it's even worse than it seems. "Healthy Forests" isn't just about scrapping environmental protection; it's also about expanding corporate welfare.

So as in the case of the administration's energy policy, beneath the free-market rhetoric is a plan for increased subsidies to favored corporations. Surprise.

A final thought: Wouldn't it be nice if just once, on some issue, the Bush administration came up with a plan that didn't involve weakened environmental protection, financial breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations and reduced public oversight?

By: Molly Ivins  

Hard to find a soul in this country who doesn't think getting rid of Saddam Hussein is a good idea, but there are lots of people wondering why it's up to us to do it, and also asking: "What happens then?" Given our experience with George W. as governor, that's a particularly relevant question. Not that it's on par with a nuclear first-strike, but Texas now faces a $7 billion deficit and rising. As governor, Bush inherited a surplus, pushed through two big tax cuts, and left virtually nothing in the Rainy Day Fund, so now we're not just broke, but in the hole. As witness the case of the charter schools in Texas, the man does have a habit of coming up with not-very-bright ideas and then wandering off to leave someone else to clean up the mess.

Speaking of cleaning up messes, how smart is it to get involved in a war with no allies? Canada announced Tuesday it won't support a war. That means, among other things, we have to pay for all of it ourselves, unlike the Persian Gulf War. Our fiscal house is not in good order now. Bush and Congress both blew the surplus in record time and will leave us with $742 billion and rising added to the national debt by the end of the decade. That's without a war.

"I am getting really sick of people who whine about 'civilian casualties'. Maybe I'm a hard-hearted guy, but when I see in the newspapers that civilians in Afghanistan or the West Bank were killed by American or Israeli troops, I don't really care. In fact, I would rather that the good guys use the Air Force to kill the bad guys, even if that means some civilians get killed along the way. One American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian."

- Ben Shapiro, 18-year-old right-wingnut

From:  

Some top quality shenanigans in the world of conservative idiocy force Dubya from his number one position this week, although the Chump-in-Charge does manage two more entries this week at numbers 4 and 10. But this week's top slot is reserved for Jerry "Biblical Spanking" Reiger, Florida's new head of the Department of Children and Families. Nice. Nudging up against Jerry Reiger's mudflaps we find Bob Barr (2) to whom we can only say, "You lost! Get over it!" And man, does it feel good to say that. Elsewhere, Judy Woodruff (5) is now having her TelePrompTer fed directly from the White House - no, she really is - and the head of Miami-Dade's Christian Coalition, Antonio Verdugo (8), is just a big ol' fraud (allegedly). Enjoy.

Did George W. Bush Evade Income Taxes on His Harken Loans?

By: Bob Fertik  

George W. Bush's questionable activities and profits during his years as a director of Harken Energy Corp. (1986-1993) have come under a fair amount of scrutiny from the media. Mr. Bush has thus far avoided responsibility for those activities, thanks to a compromised investigation by the SEC during his father's presidency, as well as Mr. Bush's stubborn refusal to provide details of those deals.

But an investigation by Democrats.com has uncovered the possibility that one Harken transaction - the cancellation of an estimated $230,375 in debt in 1993 - may have been structured to help Mr. Bush evade income taxes. Further analysis by the Anonymous CPA suggests that Mr. Bush may have filed false tax returns every year between 1986 and 1993. Income tax evasion and filing false returns are both crimes.

Democrats.com therefore calls upon Mr. Bush to release his tax returns for 1993 and 1994, and to provide the other documents required to fully understand this shady deal.

By: Chris Matthews  

The American people are not committed to a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Vice President Cheney's staff is. The White House speechwriting office is. The guys they're working under are.

This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut, and Somalia in the history of U.S. military catastrophes. What will set it apart for all time is the immense - and transparent - political stupidity.

A mission to attack an isolated enemy will isolate us. A mission justified by the fight with terrorism will give birth to millions of terrorist-supporting haters.

By: William Rivers Pitt  

...The streets of Portland were filled on August 22^nd by average American citizens seeking to inform the President of their disfavor regarding the manner in which he is governing their country. They were rewarded with the business end of a billy club, a face-full of pepper spray, and the jarring impact of a rubber bullet.

If America needed one more example of the cancer that has been chewing through the guts of our most basic freedoms since Mr. Bush assumed office, they can look to Portland. The right to freely assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances has been rescinded at the point of a gun.

The imperative is clear. Such violence by the authorities cannot go unchallenged. The next time Mr. Bush appears in public, there must be even more concerned Americans to greet him. They must face the baton and the pepper spray, they must stare into the shielded faces of the police, and they must stand in non-violent disobedience of the idea that they are not allowed to be there. The men and women who faced the brunt of police fury in Portland are to be lauded as American patriots, and their actions must be duplicated by us all. The groups which organized this protest, and the ones to come, deserve our praise.

By: Ritt Goldstein  

Nearly a year into the war against terrorism extraordinary things are happening. The Bush Administration is flirting with the possibility of America's military pursuing law enforcement, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission has broached the possibility of Arab-American internment, and the FBI's monitoring of domestic dissent and Internet traffic has intimidated many into comparative silence.

There are fears that the organisation established to manage disaster relief, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has evolved into an unseen threat to American life.

Its origins began secretly during Ronald Reagan's administration when FEMA's domestic disaster management role was broadened to take in martial law and internment of so-called aliens and radicals. A joint exercise was held with the military to prepare for such a contingency, Rex-84. Concurrently, FEMA began assembling files on those whom the agency might target.

Editorial from:  

The Bush administration has a plan to address this summer's disastrous forest fire season out west that destroyed millions of acres of valuable timber and hundreds of homes: Relax environmental laws so the timber industry can clear out the national forests. No more trees, no more fires. Simple.

The plan is right out of industry's playbook, and no surprise. The undersecretary of agriculture in charge of the U.S. Forest Service is Mark Ray, former chief lobbyist for the American Forest and Paper Products Association. The hysteria over the worst fire season in recent memory has provided him and his friends on the other side of the government-industry revolving door the opening they've been waiting for.

"First they ignore you... then they laugh at you... then they fight you... then you win."

- Gandhi

Political Prisoners and the Post-9/11 Police State

By: Ted Rall  

George W. Bush may not have read Gibbon but he possesses the morals and cunning of a gangster; in a country still stunned by last fall's attacks, that seems to be enough.

The "war on terror", we're told, requires new tactics. Law enforcement - which somehow now includes the military, CIA, FBI, and NSA - needs stronger tools. Terrorists are sneakier and smarter than your garden-variety mafia don. So now they're no longer "accused terrorists" but rather "enemy combatants".

Who cares if these "enemy combattants" are American citizens? They can be held forever, or to be more precise, until the federal government "defeats terrorism". And while they're awaiting that distant day, Bush's "detainees" - not prisoners, since his first decisive victory has been in his jihad against the English language - don't get to see a lawyer. This works out well because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - who has anointed himself judge, jury, and executioner - won't offer them a chance to prove their innocence in court.

For the Bushies, see, guilt and innocence aren't the point. The detainees aren't in prison for what they've done. They're there because of what they might do, for whom they know, for what they think. They are political prisoners.

"He is totally an asshole."

- Japan's Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, commenting on what she thinks of G.W. Bush

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