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SATURDAY 03.13.04 / 9:10 AM / LINK

On faith-based governance and other aspects of the last days

Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when the do it for conscience sake. --Pascal

In an excellent essay on the jihadist credentials of Republican neocon demolition experts Richard Perle and David Frum (Harper's, March 2004), Lewis Lapham concludes:

"Historians who study the rise and fall of nations mark the downward turn at the point when the rulers of the state begin to lose faith in the merely human institutions that embody a society's courage of mind and rule of law. They place their trust in miracles and look for their salvation to charlatans who come to comfort them with stories about the end of evil. When the turks sacked Constantiople in 1453, they found 10,000 people in the church of Santa Sophia, earnestly praying for deliverance in a sanctuary made sweet with the smell of incense and stale with the scent of fear. Authors Frum and Perle trade in the same commodities."

Unfortunately the article is not posted online. You'll have to buy the magazine, but it's worth it.



"An End to Evil" ... yeah, unhuh...



For some other comments on the Perle and Frum book Lapham is commenting upon go here.

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03.13.04 / 7:28 AM / LINK

That mat the Bush administration wipes its feet upon

Abuse of power is when you, ...well, abuse power. Why is this so difficult for the news media to talk about? It's not complicated or particularly hard to ferret out. During the last few years it's usually been in your face and there's really a lot of it coming down.

Ok, maybe we should put it another way.

How about this: abuse of power is when you have, say, power ...over others (for instance), and ... well ...you abuse it. As in when a boss threatens to can a subordinate if he does something he's morally obligated to do.

Like this guy: Republican Medicare Administrator Tom Scully who ordered government actuary Richard Foster to withhold information about the true price tag of the upcoming Medicare Reform bill, and said he would fire him "for insubordination if he disobeyed."

This is a good example of abuse of power.

What Bush's morally deviant Scully was trying to avoid was (druuuum rollllll) the Truth -- you know, that mat at the door to the Oval Office the Bush administration wipes its feet upon.

As we read here:

"The White House's penchant for threatening truth tellers reared its ugly head once again ... after ramming Medicare legislation through ... twisting lawmakers' arms ... circumventing House customs ... after sending Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to the House floor during an unprecedented 3-hour vote, it turns out the Administration deliberately hid the true cost of the bill ... Well, no-0-0 fooling, I'm astonished! ...specifically, government actuary Richard Foster told the White House five months before the November vote that a similar Medicare drug bill would have a hefty price tag of $551 billion. But with 13 conservatives promising to block a bill over $400 billion, the White House told Foster he would be fired if he did not keep quiet, and then buried the estimates, instead publicly touting an estimate that claimed the bill would cost only $395 billion. The actual cost was not released until after the law was signed by the President."

Or, as Knight-Ridder puts it:

"The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan. "

Now anywhere else on the planet that would be called a baldfaced lie. But in the home of the brave and land of the free it's called being patriotic and adhering to doctrine.

Doctrine is very important to certain people. Religious doctrine, or any other for that matter. It doesn't really make a difference to them, since they intend to roll them all together in the end. Seems they're taking their cue from mid-east mullahs who appear to have a pretty good grasp on things in their part of the world.

And grasping's the name of the game.


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FRIDAY 03.12.04 / 6:23 AM/ LINK

If stubbornness were a virtue George Bush would be lead character in a novel by William Bennett

What's the best way to work out a solution to a problem? Not the administration's way. As Dr. Phil says, "You want to keep getting what you're getting, keep doing what you're doing.

But though employment numbers keep sliding, George Bush keeps riding --slapping the butt of his tax-cut stallion, probably until someone arrests him for economic abuse.

There are two ways we've been tracking employment in recent years. One which asks businesses how many people they employ, and the household survey which asks people if they have jobs. The latter shows things are improving, the former shows things are not. Which one does the administration like...? Yup.

"But," as Paul Krugman points out, "the experts disagree. According to Alan Greenspan: 'I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate. Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow.' "

No politician wants to make himself look bad, of course. So it should come as no surprise to learn Republicans would pick the rosier of two pictures to tout their policy. But there's a point where even self-deception becomes dangerous, especially presidential self-deception. A time comes when we have to assess truthfully and change course.

The time is now because, as Krugman says, " ...things aren't as bad as they seem; they're worse. ...should we blame the Bush administration? Yes — because it refuses to learn from experience.

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TUESDAY 03.08.04 / 6:23 PM/ LINK

Call Him a cockeyed optimist

Paul Krugman on job promises.

See chart below.

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MONDAY 03.08.04 / 6:23 PM/ LINK

Good News Poll

Good temporary news: CNN Poll

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03.08.04 / 6:11 AM / LINK

Whose recovery is this anyway?

Good article by Bob Herbert in the NY Times this morning.

Some clips from Herbert's remarks:

The Labor Department report was as grim as faces on a bread line. Despite all the president's promises, the economy added just 21,000 jobs last month. No jobs were added by the private sector. The 21,000 additional jobs were all government hires. The estimated 36.8 percent employment rate for the nation's teens was the lowest ever recorded since 1948. ...the number of people aged 16 to 24 who are both out of work and out of school increased from 4.8 million to 5.6 million... Security and Time Off! VOTE ONE, GET ONE FREE For more well deserved lay-off family value time and more iron-fisted government VOTE BUSH! LINK TO POSTER Unemployment lasting half a year or longer grew to 22.1 percent of all unemployment in 2003. That was an increase from 18.3 percent in 2002, and the highest rate since 1983 Among those having a particularly hard time finding work, according to the report, are job seekers with college degrees and people 45 and older. Using the employment-population ratio, which is the proportion of the working-age population with a job, it found — incredibly — that nearly one of every two black men between the ages of 16 and 64 was not working last year.

And the administration is calling this a recovery. It begs the question, "For whom?"

There's more here.

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