Evict Bush!

Friday, May 23, 2003  

Around

Talk Left on a new Texas abortion law. Clearly, no one with a lick of common sense was allowed within a mile of writing this thing.

Liquid List with two posts on topics that seized up my hamster wheels; a massive tax deduction for SUV buyers, and the roundup of recent government resource misallocation.

RonK tells us all about Operation Desert Snipe.

Wampum has moved to Movable Type so go look for her latest flashback posts.

To The Barricades on how the foundations of empire have been set.

Hesiod talks about how conservatives honor freedom of speech.

Why fundamentalism and feminism should never, ever mix.

Cowboy Kahlil has another example of disrespect towards the military.

Alas, A Blog, is having technical difficulties at the moment due to a benighted hosting company which claims against all evidence to be Successful. However, before this disaster, Ampersand left us with the pictures to prove that Sharon has no intention of a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians, and Bean leaves us with a feminist critique of critiques of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

Matthew at It's Still The Economy wonders why anyone can call themselves an economist.

Yglesias wonders what Bush means by saying that we'll win the war on terror.

Skimble with the latest update on the wrist slap delivered to the companies that tore a gaping, fraudulent wound in the California economy.

Calpundit talks about paying for a decent society, wonders why Congress can't declassify documents, and explains why young people are more interested in American Idol than in politics.

Senate repeals nuke testing ban. Is this really happening? Really?

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday said such weapons may be useful in destroying stocks of chemical or biological materials for weapons of mass destruction that other countries may bury in bunkers.

So, to be clear, they want to destroy deadly toxins with shelf lives of decades with radioactive materials whose decay products will be around when the last crumbling remains of our civilization are protected archeological sites? Have our officials utterly lost their minds? No, don't answer that.

Is It Paradise Yet?

Democratic politicians have done a very bad job of explaining why taxes represent services we get, and not just money we pay. Conservatives have therefore been able to get the country nearly convinced that a gun in every home and the abolishment of the IRS would result in a utopian society wherein citizens would provide their own security. Where the market would solve every problem. Libertarians seem to believe that the result would be a spontaneous 'open source' self-governance, wherein the reason of the enlightened citizenry would prevail.

It might not seem like having a gun in every home was much of an economic issue, let alone one that relates to taxation, but *needing* a gun in every home certainly is. The provision of security, relatively invisible until recently in a peaceful country like the US, is a major function of governments large and small. A measure of peace is a vital component of trade. And, it happens to have a hefty price tag.

For corporations, it means diminished costs for physical security mechanisms and policing, the reasonable expectation that shipped or ordered goods will arrive at their destination, that contracts will be enforced, and an ability to be insured for unusual losses. (If losses become regular, by definition, insurability diminishes sharply.) For individuals, it means the ability of citizens to travel freely to work, decreases the risk of property loss or grievous bodily harm, centralizes the guarding of neighborhoods, and increases their willingness to engage in commercial transactions with parties unknown to them.

But, it turns out that we have a test case for the utopian dreamers: Iraq. The Big Gummint' is gone, no one is paying taxes, and everybody has guns. Must be sweet.

Yet there's the sticky problem of the need to protect hospitals from looters. A high crime rate. Growing resentment over the high crime rate. The rise of unaccountable paramilitary groups. And a dawning recognition that law and order becomes more important than democracy in the face of a need to perform nightly sentry duty outside your own home.

So I'll pay my taxes, thank you kindly. Bravely standing watch over your property with a trusty sidearm at the ready is yet another thing that's only exciting in movies and adventure novels.

x-posted at It's The Economy

Roving About
(Much thanks to BuzzFlash for several news links)

The Pentagon would like us to believed that the latest incarnation of Total Information Awareness will not unduly invade our privacy. And they have a lovely bridge for sale, bidding starts tomorrow.

Estimated Prophet (whose permalinks are finally working) writes about our current fight for civil rights and freedom from surveillance.

You won't see this on the cover of Newsweek, with a couple of slickly groomed teens vogueing for the camera, but one in five US teens will have sex before the age of 15. Shall we give them real sex education and access to birth control, or cross our fingers and hope they don't do anything stupid?

The Sideshow starts off with a heady dose of Krugman, and goes on to assail conservative pathology. And then, for anyone still mystified, explains why liberals bother with the Democrats.

The EPA says goodbye to Christie Whitman. This 'yeah, right' was included:

Secretary of State Colin Powell once joked that Whitman was the administration's "wind dummy," a military phrase for something pushed out the door of a plane before landing to check wind direction.

"I've never felt humiliated. ... You know you can't take any of this personally," Whitman said Wednesday when reminded of Powell's characterization.

In Florida, Jeb Bush has announced with much fanfare a redefinition of pollution which manages to exclude a great deal of actual pollution. Runs in the family, obviously.

A state in Australia will try medical marijuana.

Old girls network meets in London.

A profile of female Palestinian suicide bombers.

Iran Watch:

US now says that the Al-Qaida leader that planned the Saudi Arabian terror attack is living in Iran. We're left with this reassuring quote from one of the administration's professional unnamed sources:

But a senior Bush administration official said that the United States had "rock-hard intelligence" that at least a dozen Qaeda members, including Mr. Adel, had been "directing some operations from Iran."

This is probably the same kind of rock hard evidence indicating that there were lakes of anthrax boiling away under Baghdad, because there is no evidence of any Iran-Al Qaida link. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that Iran harbored bad intentions towards the west which it intended to act on. All they would have to do would be to stop intercepting opium traffic from Afghanistan, which isn't aimed at them anyway. Emphasis mine:

The Islamic Republic has launched a relentless anti-drug campaign since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in which more than 3,100 policemen have lost their lives. Iran's anti-drug campaign costs the country 800 million dollars per year, according to officials.

The country accounts for 80 percent of the opium and 90 percent of the morphine intercepted in the world, according to the International Narcotics Control Board.

An official said that the Iranian police seized 112 tons of illicit drugs and arrested 306,000 people on drug-related charges during the last Iranian year which ended on March 20.

Why should they make themselves targets by harboring Al-Qaida, when through simple inaction they could flood the West with enough heroin to make your head spin? Why bother risking the lives of their police force? Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a project for which the beneficiaries are generally not willing to reimburse them? And if they could fully control the porous tribal badlands that comprise their border with Afghanistan, surely they would have put a stop to this ruinous traffic through their territory.

One thing is certain: If we get ahead of ourselves in creating problems in one of the most resource rich and strategic countries on earth, NATO will likely be finished. Not even Britain and Italy would be able to stand with us, and regional allies would be virtually impossible to acquire. Neither Turkey, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, nor Syria would likely stay on the sidelines. If there's any country that knows about the value of gaining new allies, and maintaining good relationships with existing ones, it would be Iran.

Support The Troops, Fund The VA
A Virtual March

Today, Thursday, May 22nd will be the last full working day in congress before Memorial Day, when our intrepid legislators will return home for a week to do whatever it is they do when they aren't hanging around the Capitol building. However, a few of the slackers will probably be lounging around their offices for a bit tomorrow, so you can call then too.

Please take some time today to call your legislators and tell them that you would like real support for our troops. The kind that includes health care funding, full educational funding for their children, and the fulfillment of promises made to WWII and Korean War veterans about retirement benefits.

If you opposed the war, but want to show that you support the men and women who fought it on our behalf, ask the government to remember them when budget appropriation time comes around. Parades and handshakes don't pay the doctor bills, they don't educate children, they don't take care of you in old age.

What you can do: Tell everybody, make a phone call.

Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

For local numbers, you can look them up at Congress.org. You can always call local offices when the main DC numbers are busy.

Cassandra's predictions

Watching the Bush administration push the country to war with the steady, but sure force of a glacier moving down the mountain during the coming of an ice age, I often felt like there was no one in the Democratic party that saw the cynicism and naked power grab that seemed so evident when one watched the Republicans on a number of fronts. Knowing that this administration would be guaranteed to screw up any aftermath of war, I wondered why we didn't hear more from our Democratic Congresspersons or Senators to protest the administration policies. So many of our Democratic leaders have been compromised by their support of Bush and his policies. But, I forgot, even though Paul Wellstone is gone (God, I still miss you Paul!) there are a few Senators that still speak truth to power and are willing to speak out despite the conventional consensus. Notable in that regard is Senator Byrd.

Senator Robert Byrd just delivered another exceptional speech which touched on all the reasons I found Bush's war on Iraq questionable.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not.

Yes, indeed.

For the record (notable speeches of Senator Byrd):

Pre-Congressional Vote Handing Over Power to Bush, October 4, 2002

The War Debate, October 9, 2002

Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences, February 12, 2003

As War Is Imminent, March 19, 2003

Post Iraq Speech, May 21, 2003

Reviewing the speeches by Senator Byrd last Autumn, I found that on October 1, 2003, he made a speech on the US's part of supporting Saddam's biological weapons in the 1980s.

Is it possible that my email asking him to look into the validity of this link led to that speech? I had sent email to Senator Byrd on Sept. 26, 2002, asking him to validate the sources of the data I found on that page since I didn't know if it was just an web legend or a trustworthy document. (It documents the transfer of West Nile Virus by the CDC, along with agents for botulism, tetnus, and anthrax.) Since then, I've come to realize that that paper has been fully vetted since the references largely came from the congressional record.

Whether it was my email or not, I think I'll go ahead and believe that it was -- it provides me proof that our calls and letters do get heard.

Can't Make This Stuff Up...

Well, President Bush has gone on the offensive with Europe. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he has stepped up the level of offense which had seemed for a while now to have settled at a baseline. The EU is now being accused of (I'm glad I don't have to say this out loud, because it would be hard to keep a straight face) hindering the fight against AIDS in Africa, and recklessly subsidizing agricultural exports.

As you can see, the speechwriter for this one must have been chortling backstage the whole time.

As Body and Soul reported very recently, Bush himself has been all hat and no cattle when it comes to fighting AIDS in Africa. And as for agricultural subsidies, we need look no farther back than last year when Bush happily signed an election year giveaway to the megacorporations that handle the bulk of American farming.

And then, he went on to say that the EU ban on Genetically Modified Organisms (GM or GMOs) was furthering starvation in Africa because it hindered them from taking US food aid. Let's really look at this one. Back in December, George Monbiot wrote about the sorry debacle of biological warfare as propagated by the US version of 'aid' to Africa. This was the portion of the article quoted previously, which does a great job of explaining what a scam this is, emphasis added:

...Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, all of which are suffering from the current famine, have been told by the US international development agency, USAID, that there is no option but to make use of GM crops from the United States. This is simply untrue. Between now and March, the region will need up to two million tonnes of emergency food aid in the form of grain. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has revealed that there is 1.16m tonnes of exportable maize in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa. Europe, Brazil, India and China have surpluses and stockpiles running into many tens of millions of tonnes. Even in the US, over 50% of the harvest has been kept GM-free. All the starving in southern Africa, Ethiopia and the world's other hungry regions could be fed without the use of a single genetically modified grain.

But the United States is unique among major donors, in that it gives its aid in kind, rather than in cash. The others pay the World Food Programme, which then buys supplies as locally as possible. This is cheaper and better for local economies. USAID, by contrast, insists on sending, where possible, only its own grain. As its website boasts, "the principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the USAID contracts and grants go directly to American firms. Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods, created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans." ...

USAID's "training" and "awareness raising" programmes will, its website reveals, provide companies such as "Syngenta, Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto" with opportunities for "technology transfer" into the poor world. Monsanto, in turn, provides financial support for USAID. The famine will permit USAID to accelarate this strategy. It knows that some of the grain it exports to southern Africa will be planted by farmers for next year's harvest. Once contamination is widespread, the governments of those nations will no longer be able to sustain a ban on the technology. ...

Is there any other reason why a country might not want GM set loose in their backyards?

What about the possibility of hybridization. GM organisms interbreeding with wild cousins, and spreading. It's already happened in Mexico, where the original ancestor of corn is found, along with a variety of types bred over thousands of years. Because corn is wind-pollinated, like many grain crops, the taint spreads easily.

The reason this matters is as follows: Modern food crops are already the products of tampering. For millenia, humans have tinkered with plants to get them to grow bigger leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, you name it. Just by selective breeding, you can get a great deal of variety, which I'll write about in more depth in a future post. But these hybrids, having been bred for traits that don't necessarily make good survivors, are not always well suited for life in the real world. When a new cross is needed, the agrobusiness monocrop needs to be bred back with a wild variety. What happens when the 'wild' varieties are no longer wild?

As a test case, we can look at the common supermarket banana, now threatened with extinction due to its low tolerance for the encroachment of disease and pests. The fruit has virtually no genetic diversity, having been cloned (by grafting & other low tech methods) and raised all over the world in large, single species stands. Monocropping is the single best way, in fact, to ensure that a disease caught by one plant will get passed along to all the others. The banana will have to be replaced with a new hybrid developed from its largely inedible wild cousins.

There's even a reason in here to point a finger at the lawyers. Specifically, the bloodsuckers currently practicing in the field of corporate intellectual property law on behalf of large agribusiness conglomerates. A Candian farmer named Percy Schmeiser was ordered in 2001 to pay Monsanto $85,000 in fees because GM canola from a neighbor's crop had contaminated his seed stock. A judge ruled that whether he benefited or not, intended to use it or not, he had to pay for the use of this property.

Can you imagine why some countries aren't clamoring to let the stuff in? Hint to Bush: Anything Monsanto can do to a white Canadian farmer, it can do with 10 times the impunity to a black African farmer.

Only the Little People Pay Taxes

When Bush's tax cut for the very wealthy is finally signed into law, the poor (and the middle class) will certainly be paying a higher tax rate than the wealthy. Warren Buffet tells us exactly how this will work:

Suppose this measure goes through and the directors of Berkshire Hathaway (which does not now pay a dividend) therefore decide to pay $1 billion in dividends next year. Owning 31 percent of Berkshire, I would receive $310 million in additional income, owe not another dime in federal tax, and see my tax rate plunge to 3 percent.

And our receptionist? She'd still be paying about 30 percent, which means she would be contributing about 10 times the proportion of her income that I would to such government pursuits as fighting terrorism, waging wars and supporting the elderly. Let me repeat the point: Her overall federal tax rate would be 10 times what my rate would be.

So how did this happen?

Back in November the Wall Street Journal published a remarkable oped piece that stated that one problem with our current tax system was that the poor didn't pay enough in taxes. Since then the administration has put into effect new policies that have made it more likely that a poor person has chance of getting audited by the IRS than someone who is wealthy.

EJ Dionne remarked on how compassionate the administration's new plan was for the poor when it comes to taxes. It was all about those lucky duckies.

And WaPo reported in December: New Tax Plan May Bring Shift In Burden: Poor Could Pay A Bigger Share

Economists at the Treasury Department are drafting new ways to calculate the distribution of tax burdens among different income classes, which are expected to highlight what administration officials see as a rising tax burden on the rich and a declining burden on the poor. The White House Council of Economic Advisers is also preparing a report detailing the concentration of the tax burden on the affluent and highlighting problems with the way tax burdens are calculated for the poor.

Okay, the latest tax cuts shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor and middle class, so perhaps they are done punishing the poor?

Nah... The administration is anxious to go after the poorer tax cheats as well. In December, the NY Times reported: Departing Chief Says the I.R.S. Is Losing Its War on Tax Cheats

In his report to the oversight board, Mr. Rossotti put the tax loss from that area alone at $7 billion annually. But in earlier reports to Congress the I.R.S. has used figures that could put the tax loss as high as $64 billion. Mr. Rossotti has said that every fifth dollar of partnership income is not showing up on tax returns.

One would think that applying the IRS to the cheats who have the highest outstanding balances would make sense. One would be wrong.

In April, 2003, we find out that the IRS has found new energy to go after the worst tax cheats: I.R.S. Tightening Rules for Low-Income Tax Credit

The I.R.S., trying to prevent errors and cheating, says it needs greater proof of eligibility months before people claim the credit on their tax returns because its efforts to find errors through audits after the fact have not worked. Treasury officials estimate that $6.5 billion to $10 billion is lost to improper payments each year.

And, don't forget that our government has encouraged companies to go offshore to avoid taxes. Arianna Huffington teamed up with MoveOn.org to shame the congress into going after those scofflaw companies.

It's depriving the U.S. Treasury of around $70 billion a year.

Putting this all together: the administration has decided that the poor should pay a higher tax rate than the wealthy and catching the cheats at the bottom end of the scale (possible $10 billion lost) is more important than closing the loop hole that allows companies to hide from $70 billion a year and the potential $64 billion if the IRS auditor was focused on the very well-to-do. Now you know what compassionate conservatism looks like.

As Leona Helmsley so elegantly said: We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.

Around

Peace Tree Farm reports on the Senate FCC hearings, and urges us to oppose the further consolidation of our media.

Steve Soto tells us about the new levels of embarassment reached in the investigation of how the Department of Homeland Security was used for the political purpose of tracking down Texas Democrats on the lam. This has even given Joe Lieberman a chance to look good, and hot damn, but that's pretty hard.

Body and Soul explains that the Bush promise of $15 billion for AIDS is rapidly going the way of all of the administration's other promises.

Suburban Guerilla tells us what the Bushies were doing on 9-11. Yeesh.

Ampersand explains the relevance of one of my favorite musicals ever, Into The Woods.

Thanks to Frog N' Blog (links broken, but amazingly not bloggered) we learn that Yar has found the redeeming shroud of conservatism, (links bloggered, Tues, May 20) the mantle of the Concerned Parent. Which prevents people from calling you something more craven; like say, a greedy, self-regarding, ungrateful, marrow-sucking tick firmly draining the life from the American polity.

People have been sending fun stuff to Making Light.

Digby to Democrats: Stand together, Dammit!

Wampum alerts us to the fact that the Frist amendment to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has reared its ugly head once more. And in case you didn't catch it the other day, she answers the eternal question of how bad are Republicans at handling an economy, anyway?

First, bioweapons. Now, Iran is being accused of harboring Al Qaida. A friend of mine keeps assuring me that even this administration wouldn't be stupid enough to attack the country. Let's hope he's right.

Mother Jones on how Bush's hydrogen car rhetoric obscures actions taken to ensure that the hydrogen economy will still be based on fossil fuel, be just as polluting, and will crowd out genuine renewables. Also (subscription required for full article), how private military companies are replacing the armed forces.

Asia Times: Fallout Iraq. You want democracy in the Middle East? Go tell it to Lebanon. How we've gone from Cold War to Holy War.

Government Executive: Federal workers protest government outsourcing. Secretary Snow extends temporary halt to federal workers' retirement trust fund payments. The House calls for scrutiny of no-bid contracts on projects in Iraq, discusses resumption of nuclear testing. National Guard to be overhauled.

Support The Troops, Fund The VA
A Virtual March

Thursday, May 22nd will be the last full working day in congress before Memorial Day, when our intrepid legislators will return home for a week to do whatever it is they do when they aren't hanging around the Capitol building.

Please take some time that day to call your legislators and tell them that you would like real support for our troops. The kind that includes health care funding, full educational funding for their children, and the fulfillment of promises made to WWII and Korean War veterans about retirement benefits.

If you opposed the war, but want to show that you support the men and women who fought it on our behalf, ask the government to remember them when budget appropriation time comes around. Parades and handshakes don't pay the doctor bills, they don't educate children, they don't take care of you in old age.

What you can do: Tell everybody, make a phone call.

Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

For local numbers, you can look them up at Congress.org. You can always call local offices when the main DC numbers are busy.

Notable Comments

One of the White House reporters that is always ready to ask the hard questions in Ari Fleischer's briefings is Russell Mokhiber. Yesterday upon hearing of Ari's announced resignation, he asked:

Ari, one of your predecessors, Jerald terHorst, resigned as President Ford's press secretary, he said, as a matter of conscience - because he couldn't defend President Ford's pardon of President Nixon. I was wondering, is there anything President Bush has done as President, that made you think, even for a moment, that you would resign as a matter of conscience?

Ari, of course, said, absolutely not. Mokhiber and Robert Weissman followed up by writing the column Why Ari Should Have Resigned in Protest. They concluded:

In short, Ari, President Bush's war policy has killed thousands of innocents, the administration is allocating trillions of dollars to weapons and military spending and tax cuts for the rich, while starving funding for vital social programs and investments in public infrastructure, and while the world looks to the Middle East, federal and state white collar prosecutors are being stripped of their resources, and the corporate and white collar criminals are ravaging the Middle West, and the rest of the homeland.

How to Lose Friends, and Delight Enemies...

"Hyman Roth always makes money for his partners. One by one, our old friends are gone. Death -- natural or not - prison -- deported. Hyman Roth is the only one left -- because he always made money for his partners." - Johnny Ola, Godfather II

"Connie, all my life, I kept trying to go up in society, where everything higher up was legal, straight. But the higher I go, the crookeder it becomes. How in the hell does it end?" - Michael Corleone, Godfather III

Bush might want to remember one of these days that Halliburton & friends are in no position to stop Al Qaida, or pass on intelligence information. They cannot encourage billions in foreign direct investment, dictate or remove tariffs on US goods, or allow US companies to buy other countries' companies.

No responsible country would allow narrowing the definition of 'partners of the nation' to include only those who are direct partners of their leaders. Our interests are far broader than the narrow game played in the boardroom. We now run the risk of alienating those who have engaged favorably with us in the mutual back scratching marathon known as the global economy.

A country that relies exclusively on corporations as friends may find itself increasingly lonely in the mutual backstabbing marathon known as international diplomacy.

Around the Web:

Alas, A Blog linked to some interesting things last Friday, including an article in the Economist attacking the premise that Europe is trailing the US economically. Then, on Sunday, he found yet more good stuff. Including the excellent news that portions of Iraq's National Library were saved from looting and arson.

UBlog (links bloggered) has also pointed out that some of the artifacts from the museum have been discovered in storage, both at an outside location, and some apparently in hidden vaults in the museum itself. Several high-profile items remain at large, and professional thieves are suspected. I'd like to speculate about why some of these hidden vaults were so hidden that museum officials didn't seem to know they were there, but I'll resist.

From Jim Hightower's weblog, we get this posting of an essay on economic fascism, also known as corporatism.

Billmon wonders what planet Donald Rumsfeld is living on, because it sure isn't the one where the nation of Afghanistan is descending perilously into chaos. Our intrepid barkeep also considers troop deployment, wherein it appears that US forces are getting stretched pretty thin.

Steve at dKos discusses the deterioration of Iraqi society, and points out that Bush raised our taxes anyway. RonK gives us the new list of things you can't say on television.

TBogg refutes the complaint that war protestors didn't care about Iraqis.

Dwight Meredith (links bloggered, scroll to "Tell His Parents", Friday, May 16th) wonders what exactly Michael Savage finds funny about autism.