By: Bob Herbert  

The President, buoyed by the bountiful patronage of the upper classes, seems indifferent to the increasingly harsh struggles of the working classes and the poor.

As Mr. Bush moves from fund-raiser to fund-raiser, building the mother of all campaign stockpiles, states from coast to coast are reaching depths of budget desperation unseen since the Great Depression. The disconnect here is becoming surreal. On Thursday the National Governors Association let it be known that the fiscal crisis that has crippled one state after another is worsening, not getting better.

Taxes have been raised. Services have been cut. And the rainy day funds accumulated in the 1990's have been consumed. If help does not materialize soon - in the form of assistance from the federal government or a sharp turnaround in the economy - some states will fall into a fiscal abyss.

By: Jennifer C. Kerr  

Nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States remains "dangerously unprepared" to handle another catastrophic attack, according to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The government says it already has done some of what the council suggested and is working on other recommendations.

The report said the main problem is that emergency responders on the front lines - police, fire, public health, and other officials - are drastically underfinanced and lack the equipment or training they need.

The council, a New York-based private world affairs advocacy organization, recommended spending $98 billion beyond the $27 billion it said the federal government planned to spend on first responders over the next five years.

By: Edward M. Kennedy  

Throughout this history, the Senate has been able to stand up to the executive branch because our constitutional structure of government and the Senate's rules permitting extended debate have made the Senate the world's most successful deliberative body. Until 1949, Senate debate on nominations was unlimited. From 1949 to 1975, the Senate could end debate if at least two-thirds of the Senators wanted to. Since 1975, if at least three-fifths agree, the debate can be ended.

The nation was closely divided on President Bush's election, and the Senate is almost evenly divided today. In making his most important judicial choices so far, the President has rarely consulted with Democratic members of the Senate to select nominees who will have broad, bipartisan support. Even so, the vast majority of the President's nominees to the federal courts have been confirmed - 131 of the 133 who have reached the Senate floor. Only two have been held up - one on the merits and one for procedural reasons.

George Bush Parachutes Again to Exorcise Demons of Past Betrayal

By: Ted Sampley  

Chester Mierzejewski, an old war buddy of Bush, who said he was angered by the "false assertions" made by candidate Bush when describing the incident, gave a different account.

After 44 years of silence, Mierzejewski, who also was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, told the New York Post that Bush had abandoned his crew to death when there was another choice.

He said he was approximately 100 feet in front of Bush's plane as the turret gunner for Squadron Commander Douglas Melvin's plane, "so close he could see in the cockpit" of Bush's bomber. Mierzejewski's close wartime buddy was one of the two crew members in Bush's plane.

According to Mierzejewski, the squadron was in a tight-formation bombing raid against a Japanese radio installation on an island reported to be heavily fortified. He saw "a puff of smoke" come from Bush's plane which quickly disappeared and was certain only one man parachuted from the plane and that it was Bush, the pilot.

"...there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists, but that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short that would not be America."

- Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), arguing against the USA PATRIOT Act on the Senate floor, Oct. 25, 2001

By: Ed Hanratty  

I wake up every morning hoping that it's all a bad dream. But by now it's evident that it's not. I try to tell myself that we are not living through the single most reactionary and outright dangerous period in America's brief, yet fascinating history. I try to tell myself that, as a left-leaning concerned citizen, that I would be this critical of any government right of center, but again, that's not true. I've lived through Republican Presidents before, and have lived in New Jersey my whole life, where a Republican sat in the governor's mansion in Trenton for 16 out of the last 21 years - and I've never been so angry.

It's not the petty, typical political arguments: taxes, health care, and education. Sure, they are important issues that play a significant role with the crisis at hand, but there's a plethora of larger issues facing this land that culminate into one large and destructive entity: The Bush Administration.

"This administration is headed down a dangerous path that has serious long-term consequences for the American people. It is high time that the Bush administration start leveling with the American people with honesty and openness instead of keeping us in the dark with half-truths and misleading statements."

- Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL)

By: Dafna Linzer  

The terrorism committee has just completed a draft report charting efforts by countries to track and shut down Osama bin Laden's operations. The report notes success in the war on terrorism stemming from the arrests of some top al-Qaida figures.

But it also notes the group has been able to reconstitute support and benefit from loopholes in order to continue acts of terror worldwide.

Nowhere in the 42-page draft is there any mention of Iraq or claims that it served as a safe haven for al-Qaida. "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and al-Qaida", said Michael Chandler, the committee's chief investigator.

"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

- G.W. Bush, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, as reported in Ha'aretz, June 27, 2003

By: David Cay Johnston  

The 400 wealthiest taxpayers accounted for more than 1% of all the income in the United States in the year 2000, more than double their share just eight years earlier, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. But their tax burden plummeted over the period.

The data, in a report that the IRS released last night, shows that the average income of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers was almost $174 million in 2000. That was nearly quadruple the $46.8 million average in 1992. The minimum income to qualify for the list was $86.8 million in 2000, more than triple the minimum income of $24.4 million of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers in 1992.

While the sharp growth in incomes over that period coincided with the stock market bubble, other factors appear to account for much of the increase. A cut in capital gains tax rates in 1997 to 20% from 28% encouraged long-term holders of assets, like privately owned businesses, to sell them, and big increases in executive compensation thrust corporate chiefs into the ranks of the nation's aristocracy.

By: John Chuckman  

What were the characteristics of Nazism that might justify comparisons with influential contemporary groups in America?

As the title of Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, suggests, the Nazis viewed life as a struggle, embracing the idea that only the able should thrive and reproduce. It is helpful when you hold this belief if you also regard yourself as among the ablest, and so the Nazis did. Hitler was a social Darwinist with a mystical belief in the special merit of Germans.

The Nazis had an absolute loathing of Communism, or Bolshevism as it was called then, and contempt for all forms of liberalism and social democracy. All philosophies that offered hope against their vision of a world of successful predators prevailing over the weak were despised. Ruthlessness itself was held up by Hitler as a virtue because it could bring victory, or so he thought.

The Nazis were big-business capitalists, although political expediency had put socialist in the party name, but where issues of great national significance were concerned they never hesitated to redirect with subsidies, contracts, and other pressures the efforts of German industry. The Nazis encouraged the development of gigantic corporate entities...

Bush Inherited Clinton-Era Plans to Kill bin Laden. Instead, He Did Nothing

By: Ted Bridis and John Solomon  

When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones had recently spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader. But the administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies until after the Sept. 11 attacks later that year, current and former U.S. officials say.

Top administration officials discussed the mission to kill bin Laden as late as one week before the suicide attacks on New York and Washington, but they had not yet resolved a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators and whether the missiles would be sufficiently lethal, officials told the Associated Press.

By: Joe Robinson  

Americans are already working more hours than at any time since the 1920's. Some 63% of Americans log more than 40 hours a week, according to a new survey by the Internet travel company Expedia.com. Two other polls found that nearly 40% of Americans work more than 50 hours per week. We work 2.5 more weeks a year on the job than the Japanese and up to three months more than the Europeans. The average middle income family now puts in four months more on the job in total hours each year than in 1979. For my money, the biggest threat to family values is the hostile takeover by work of every inch of our lives.

If the administration wants to make changes to labor law, how about starting with vacation? We're the only country in the industrialized world without a minimum paid-leave law. The Europeans have laws requiring four or five weeks of paid-leave each year. The Japanese are guaranteed two weeks. Even the Chinese have a three-week vacation policy. Here, whether or not you get vacation is completely up to employers, most of whom would rather have a root canal than okay a vacation schedule. The lack of a paid-leave law is what leaves vacations with the distinct whiff of illegitimacy in this country, and it's why many feel guilty asking for their time or taking it.

American workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, get an average of 8.1 days of vacation after one year on the job, and just 10.2 days after three years...

By: Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay  

In recent days, George W. Bush has accused those asking awkward questions about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction of rewriting history. "We made it clear to the dictator of Iraq that he must disarm", Mr Bush said last week. "He chose not to do so, so we disarmed him. And I know there's a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain. He is no longer a threat to the free world and the people of Iraq are free."

But if anyone is revising history, it is the U.S. President. Iraq's WMD programme was the test case for Mr Bush's doctrine of pre-emption. The Iraqi threat was "grave and growing", Mr Bush declared. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised", he warned on the eve of war.

For most ordinary people, the tax-cut benefits amount to less than zero. What the Feds give, state and local governments will take away.

By: Anna Quindlen  

Bogus is the name of the game, and not just in libraries. The much-vaunted Bush tax cut is totally bogus, a shell game in which money is moved from one place to another with political sleight of hand. The bottom line is that for most ordinary people the benefits amount to less than zero. What the Feds give, the state and local governments will be taking away, and then some. Part of that is because of the states' own foolish budgetary decisions in recent boom times. (Remember the boom times?) But a large part is because the federal government has required the states to provide expensive programs, from Medicaid to Homeland Security, but not provided anywhere near enough cash to help pay the bills.

The linchpin of the President's education agenda, for instance, which he developed before terrorists made it possible for his administration to dispense with domestic policy - and civil liberties - was something with the catchy slogan "Leave No Child Behind". It is a program heavy on performance standards that may as well be called "Leave No Child Untested". But the states have been picking up most of the added costs for the new mandates. Thus your state and local taxes are soaring, and your alleged tax cut merely moved from beneath one government walnut to another. You'll get a peek, and then it will disappear.

By: Jack Balkwill  

Bush is a coward. I am the one who took his place in Vietnam, so I should know.

I have marched for peace many times with friends who are war veterans, and others who are long veterans of the peace movement. I opposed all of the Bush wars - the invasion of Panama, Afghanistan, the various Iraqi Wars. I opposed Daddy Bush's arming Saddam and protecting him politically for so long. Daddy Bush was the pilot who bailed out on his crew, leaving them to crash and die in WWII. Cowardice runs deep in the Bush family.

During the Vietnam War, when Bush deserted from the Texas National Guard, the National Security State found itself to be one short on cannon fodder, so they sent me. A member of the peasant class, I was expendable. Bush loved the war up to the point of actually risking his own "investment class" ass, to employ a favorite term of his father. He supported the war mind you - has always enjoyed killing, setting the all-time execution record for governors, though brother Jeb has competed well in Florida.

"We have heard a lot about revisionist history from the White House of late in answer to those who question whether there was a real threat from Iraq. But, it is the President who appears to me to be intent on revising history. There is an abundance of clear and unmistakable evidence that the Administration sought to portray Iraq as a direct and deadly threat to the American people. But there is a great difference between the hand-picked intelligence that was presented by the Administration to Congress and the American people when compared against what we have actually discovered in Iraq."

- Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)

From:  

The Birth Tax is the interest paid on an enormous debt that Republicans will create when they decide not to collect the estate tax anymore. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the cost to the rest of us taxpayers for the elimination of the estate tax will be $294 billion over the next 10 years or so. At around 5% servicing costs per year, that means that after 10 years of borrowing money to offset the estate tax cut, those Americans who still pay taxes will see a permanent $14.7 billion annual increase in their tax bill. Of course, that bill will increase the next year. And the year after that. The Birth Tax will continue to grow as long as the government borrows money every year to offset the elimination of the estate tax.

If the Republicans in the House have their way, we employed Americans will soon be enjoying our new Birth Tax. And we'll really enjoy knowing that this tax used to be paid by the very richest of estates after their former owners were finished with them, and that Republicans decided to shift that burden to the rest of us instead.

By: Paul Krugman  

For example, some commentators have suggested that Mr. Bush should be let off the hook as long as there is some interpretation of his prewar statements that is technically true. Really? We're not talking about a business dispute that hinges on the fine print of the contract; we're talking about the most solemn decision a nation can make. If Mr. Bush's speeches gave the nation a misleading impression about the case for war, close textual analysis showing that he didn't literally say what he seemed to be saying is no excuse. On the contrary, it suggests that he knew that his case couldn't stand close scrutiny.

Consider, for example, what Mr. Bush said in his "denial and deception" speech about the supposed Saddam-Osama link: that there were "high-level contacts that go back a decade". In fact, intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and an infant Al Qaeda in the early 1990's, but found no good evidence of a continuing relationship. So Mr. Bush made what sounded like an assertion of an ongoing relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but phrased it cagily - suggesting that he or his speechwriter knew full well that his case was shaky.

By: Mike Allen  

The Bush administration yesterday released a highly selective analysis of the cost to families of rolling back scheduled tax cuts, an early sign of the White House's plan to brand Democrats as tax raisers throughout their race for the presidential nomination.

The seven-page analysis, by the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Analysis, asserts that repealing the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and last month would mean a tax hike of $1,933 for a married couple with two children and an income of $40,000. Their taxes would go from $45 to $1,978, for an increase of 4,296%, the study said.

"If you are advocating repealing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, you are advocating a significant tax increase on the American people", said Rob Nichols, the Treasury Department's chief spokesman. "You're talking about raising taxes on roughly 100 million households."

By: Ted Rall  

As George W. Bush's aristocorporate junta runs roughshod over hard-earned freedoms, as his lunatic-right administration loots $10 trillion from the national treasury, as his armies invade sovereign nations without cause, as he threatens war against imagined enemies while allowing real ones to build nuclear weapons, those charged with standing against these perversions of American values remain appallingly, inexplicably silent.

We have become a nation of cowards, and I am ashamed.

Where are the Democrats? Under our two-party system it is their patriotic duty to represent the opinions and beliefs of their constituents, who are mostly liberal. That responsibility becomes an urgent necessity when the GOP, in firm control of all three branches of government, abandons a proud tradition of conservatism in favor of outright fascism...

By: Pamela Troy  

Roughly three years ago, a major political party showed it was willing to push its candidate into the White House by disenfranchising Americans. The Supreme Court showed that it was willing to give its assent to this gross subversion of the political process. With only a few exceptions, the rest of us showed that we were willing to let them get away with it. It's possible that a political movement that succeeds in installing a President using these methods will retain the rock-solid conviction that voters are an important part of the process, but it's unlikely.

The lie we are being told in many forms is that the "will of the people" is as meaningful and unassailable as it was before the 2000 election. The "Greater Truth" this lie seeks to conceal, the "Greater Truth" behind the 2000 election voter purge in Florida, Bush's dismissive response to the massive anti-war demonstrations, the increasing use of "Free Speech Zones", and the expansion of the Executive branch at the expense of the Legislative branch, is the conviction that certain Americans can't be trusted and do not deserve to have a voice in the political arena.

Certain Americans are not conservative enough. Certain Americans are not well off enough. Certain Americans are not Christian enough. Certain Americans are not white enough.

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