"Why have the rich gotten richer while employee income has stagnated? Because that's the way the corporation is designed. Corporate capitalism embraces a predemocratic concept of liberty reserved for property holders, which thrives by restricting the liberty of employees and the community."

- Marjorie Kelly, from her book The Divine Right of Capital

By: Paul Krugman  

It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we've become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters - a group that includes a large segment of the news media - obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

If this same lack of accountability extends to matters of war and peace, we're in very deep trouble. The British seem to understand this: Max Hastings, the veteran war correspondent - who supported Britain's participation in the war - writes that "the prime minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit, and it stinks".

It's no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. I could point out that many of the neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980's. But the important point is that this isn't about Saddam: it's about us. The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history...

By: Robert Kuttner  

It's easy to understand why the administration is plowing ahead with one immense tax cut after another. The Bush people oppose social outlays, and the best strategy for cutting public services is to starve government.

It's a neat game: Cut taxes on the Republican watch (Reagan, Bush I), force intervening Democratic Presidents to opt for fiscal prudence over social investment - someone has to - and then, when the budget is back in balance at a lower level of social outlay, do it again (Bush II).

This maneuver forces Democrats to take responsibility for periodically raising taxes to undo the economic damage. Putting budget balance ahead of social outlay also undercuts the traditional Democratic winning formula of delivering services that ordinary Americans actually value.

By: Thom Hartmann  

Let's be blunt. The real agenda of the new conservatives is nothing less than the destruction of democracy in the United States of America. And feudalism is one of their weapons.

Their rallying cry is that government is the enemy, and thus must be "drowned in a bathtub". In that, they've mistaken our government for the former Soviet Union, or confused Ayn Rand's fictional and disintegrating America with the real thing.

The government of the United States is us. It was designed to be a government of, by, and for We, the People. It's not an enemy to be destroyed; it's a means by which we administer and preserve the commons that we collectively own.

"This logical morass is as good an example as any of what might be called the train-wreck ideal: the right's belief that it can persuade the public that government is bad by giving us spectacularly bad government. Just as Republicans in the Reagan era ran up towering federal deficits in order to discredit deficit spending, just as congressmen of the Gingrich era let government services grind to a halt in order to show just how irresponsible congressmen could be, just as Republicans of our own day have taken to electing cretins to positions of great public authority in order to discredit the very notion of public authority, so the present Social Security commission uses the possibility that politicians might try to do away with Social Security as a justification for doing away with Social Security."

- Thomas Frank, from his article The Trillion-Dollar Hustle, in Harper's magazine, Jan. 2002

By: Nancy Waitz  

The number of people applying for U.S. initial jobless aid rose unexpectedly by 16,000 last week, a government report showed on Thursday, as gloom in the labor market persisted.

First-time claims for state unemployment insurance benefits, a guide to the pace of layoffs, rose to 442,000 in the May 31 week, its highest in over a month, compared with a revised 426,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

Analysts were expecting 420,000 first-time claims.

Distorted intelligence on Iraq is part of an Orwellian world of fabricated reality.

By: Timothy Garton Ash  

Perhaps we live in the Matrix after all. Wherever we turn, we find a politics of manufactured reality that recalls the world of that cult film. How can we, the citizens, unplug ourselves and fight it? Take three of the main media stories of the last week. It turns out that we went to war with Saddam Hussein on the basis of Anglo-American intelligence reports that were, at best, politically misrepresented, or, at worst, falsified. The world leaders' summit in Evian produces stage-managed photo-opportunity smiles between President Bush and Chancellor Schröder that reflect the precise opposite of the truth about their relations. The British rightwing press paints a picture of a steamroller European federal superstate that stands to the reality of what is happening in the constitutional convention in Brussels as a Salvador Dali sculpture does to a plain metal saucepan.

This systematic attempt to fool most of the people most of the time is the work of some of the most intelligent, best-informed, and highly paid men and women in western societies: spin-doctors, PR consultants, hacks, and spooks. Like the Inner Party member, O'Brien, in George Orwell's 1984, they know better. They have seen the photograph, tape, or transcript that shows the public claim is wrong, but then, like O'Brien, they have dropped it down the memory hole: "'Ashes,' he said, 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.'"

By: punpirate  

Maybe this is a parallel universe. Maybe someone set the Wayback Machine to 1887. Or, maybe, we collectively just took a wrong turn at the corner of Liberty Avenue and We The People Way. Perhaps, the White House is dragging us down the rabbit hole. But, no matter the mechanism, everything in the U.S. is upside down right now.

A foreign and presumably conservative, albeit rational, voice, the Financial Times of London, says of the United States, approximately, that "the lunatics are in charge". They refer, of course, to U.S. economic policy under the Bush administration.

They aren't particularly interested in the other aberrant afflictions the Bush administration has visited on the U.S. They are only interested in what upsets the international monetary applecart. More's the pity. We could use a little more of the same from the very staid and tweedy Financial Times. No one else seems willing to call this particular spade for what it is.

By: Robert Jensen and Rahul Majahan  

Americans face an important question in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion: Does it matter that our government fudged facts to justify war? Should politicians face consequences when they mislead us, especially about the need for military force?

While British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing increasing pressure because of his role in this debacle, the Bush administration is betting the American public will tire of the debate. Officials apparently think that if they constantly repeat the mantra - "We know for certain Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction" - and the news media faithfully relay that message, they will get away with their deception.

Requires (free D/L)

"Those of us who've spent some time in the agricultural sector... understand how unfair the death penalty is - death tax is - and we need to get rid of it. I don't want to get rid of the death penalty, just the death tax."

- pResident 'Numb-Nuts', proving once again that he's too stupid to be President

By: Arianna Huffington  

This is not a right/left issue. It's a right/wrong issue. But the GOP's self-imposed morality czars have been deafeningly silent on this bit of economic indecency. I guess Bill Bennett was too busy doubling down to notice.

Adding to the obscenity is the fact that while the congressional hatchet men were hacking away at the $3.5-billion child tax credit in the name of keeping the total tax cut under $350 billion, they let stand billions in corporate tax dodges and accounting cons, including the use of offshore tax havens. The White House labeled the bill the Jobs and Growth Act. I guess the Leave No Corporate Loophole Behind Act didn't work as well with focus groups.

The last few years have shown us what happens when an entire subculture loses its moral compass: Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom, et al. And it's becoming increasingly clear that the current administration has embraced the unethical ethos of the corporate oligarchy from which many of its members came, and which all of them continue to serve. The same inability to distinguish right from wrong that characterized the corporate scandals also dominates public policy. It's the Enronization of Washington.

By: David Firestone  

The House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, said today that the House would not consider a Democratic measure to provide an increased tax credit to 6.5 million low-income families who did not receive it in the new tax law.

Clearly irked at the mounting criticism of Republicans for the last-minute decision not to give the credit to minimum-wage families, Mr. DeLay said those who favored the increased credit had had their chance in the debate over the bill.

"There are a lot of other things that are more important than that", Mr. DeLay said in a news conference today. "To me, it's a little difficult to give tax relief to people that don't pay income tax."

By: Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman  

Three successive tax cuts pushed by President Bush will leave middle-income taxpayers paying a greater share of all federal taxes by the end of the decade, according to new analyses of the Bush administration's tax policies.

As critics of the tax cuts in 2001, 2002, and 2003 have noted, the very wealthiest Americans - those earning $337,000 or more per year - will be the greatest beneficiaries of the changes in the nation's tax laws. And, as administration officials have argued, low-income taxpayers will also enjoy a disproportionately lighter tax burden.

The result is that a broad swath of lower-middle, middle- and upper-middle-income people, as well as some rich Americans, will carry a greater share of the federal tax burden after the laws passed in the past three years are fully implemented...

By: Max Castro  

Now, I know it's hard to believe that any one outrage could stand out so much as to be called obscene in a year in which the state's lawmakers brazenly and repeatedly sacrificed the public interest to serve the economic interests of big business.

But what to say of a bill that would redefine the meaning of "catastrophic injury" so that workers who lose only one limb (as opposed to two or three) cannot qualify for full disability benefits?

It reads like a macabre joke, a satire worthy of the imagination of Jonathan Swift. Surely, no one could take such a proposal seriously.

September 12, 2002:
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

January 28, 2003:
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

February 8, 2003:
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

March 17, 2003:
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

April 24, 2003:
"We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them."

May 3, 2003:
"We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so."

May 6, 2003:
"I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein - because he had a weapons program."

"Once upon a time, we impeached a sitting President for lying under oath about sexual trysts. No one died, no one had their legs or arms or face or genitals blown off because of the lies of a President who had been caught with his pants down. Today in America, we endure a sitting President who lied for months about the threat posed by a sovereign nation. That nation was invaded and attacked, and thousands died because of it. The aftereffects of this action will be felt for generations to come. The very democracy which gives us meaning as a country has been put in peril by these deeds. When the smoke cleared, every reason for that war was proven to be a lie. Of course, there will be no impeachment with a Republican Congress. This must not dissuade us from demanding satisfaction. Let the House be brought to order. Gavel the members to attention, and let the evidence be brought forth. Let there be justice for the living and the dead. Let this man Bush be impeached and cleansed from office for the lies he has told. These are not innocent lies. The dead remember."

- William Rivers Pit, in an article for truthout

By: Bill Gallagher  

When the reality of his recklessness comes home, Bush will be back at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, enjoying the benefits of his dirty work and the praise of his corporate sponsors, the ones who made it all possible.

The radical shift of tax obligation from the rich to the middle class will already be done, and all the fat cats will have to do is play golf and cash their fat dividend checks. People looking for work, living on paychecks, paying mortgages, college tuition, and medical bills - they can just eat cake.

"Praise God and the Republican sense of distributive justice!" they're shouting at the Petroleum Club down in Houston. Others should pray and cling to their wallets.

Action Alert

"Feudalism... refers to an economic and political system, just like democracy or communism or socialism or theocracy. The biggest difference is that instead of power being held by the people, the government, or the church, power is held by those who own property and the other necessities of life. At its essential core, feudalism could be defined as 'government of, by, and for the rich'... When the wealthiest in a society take over government and then weaken it so that it no longer can represent the interests of the people, the transition has begun into a new era of feudalism."

- Thom Hartmann, Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights, 2002

By: David Firestone  

The White House today defended the decision of Congressional negotiators to deny millions of minimum-wage families the increased child tax credit, saying the new tax law was intended to help people who pay taxes, not those who are too poor to pay.

"While the Republican tax break leaves no business behind, it leaves behind millions of children from working-poor families", said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. "Faced with a choice between giving a tax break to an elite few or helping millions of working families, the Republicans once again chose to help their wealthy friends."

"There was a predisposition in this administration to assume the worst about Saddam. They were inclined to see and interpret evidence a particular way to support a very deeply held conviction."

- a senior military officer, as quoted in Time

From:  

Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), reacting to the agencies' latest proposal on what aspects of the findings should be kept secret, said in a statement: "It is my feeling that still more of the report could be made available to the American people."

"The administration has returned to us a version of our final report, which strips out in their entirety two key sections and all but eliminates a third key section", Graham said.

Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), chairman of the House committee, shared the chairmanship of the special committee.

"Rumsfeld was deeply, almost pathologically, distorting the intelligence."

- an unnamed Army intelligence officer, as quoted in Time

By: Nicholas D. Kristof  

"The American people were manipulated", bluntly declares one person from the Defense Intelligence Agency who says he was privy to all the intelligence there on Iraq. These people are coming forward because they are fiercely proud of the deepest ethic in the intelligence world - that such work should be nonpolitical - and are disgusted at efforts to turn them into propagandists.

"The Al Qaeda connection and nuclear weapons issue were the only two ways that you could link Iraq to an imminent security threat to the U.S.", notes Greg Thielmann, who retired in September after 25 years in the State Department, the last four in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "And the administration was grossly distorting the intelligence on both things."

The outrage among the intelligence professionals is so widespread that they have formed a group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, that wrote to President Bush this month to protest what it called "a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions".

From:  

Hey everybody, we've found the weapons of mass destruction! Well, actually we haven't yet. But that doesn't really matter, does it? Top of the list this week is the Bush Administration for the startling revelation that weapons of mass destruction were not the reason that we invaded Iraq! At least, they're not right now because we haven't found any. Or have we? According to George W. Bush (2) we have, but then I'd trust George W. Bush about as far as I could throw Rush Limbaugh. Meanwhile Congressional Republicans (3) thought you weren't watching and decided to screw the poor, Halliburton (5) is raking in the cash, the Florida Legislature's (7) new definition of "catastrophic injury" will cost you an arm and a leg, and Chuck Dunnick (10) chucks his wife. Enjoy.

"It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons. It's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

- Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1^st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq

By: Bryan Bender  

Despite previous U.S. assertions that Saddam Hussein's government had enough deadly agents and chemical toxins to kill millions of people, no biological or chemical materials have been found nearly two months after the fall of the Iraqi regime.

The doubts are being further fueled by establishment in the Department of Defense of an office intended to improve the flow of intelligence from the CIA and other spy agencies. The head of the new office, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, is being billed as an advocate for the military's changing intelligence needs.

But some critics say the office will mold intelligence to further the administration's foreign policy goals and erode the independence of other U.S. intelligence agencies. Current and former lawmakers, as well as analysts, say that's what may have happened on Iraq.

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