Flexible Reality
Saturday, November 29, 2003
They Called It ‘Rubinomics’
Ex-Treasury Chief Robert Rubin says nothing in life is certain. But in his new book, the ex-treasury chief is sure about one thing: Bush’s economic policies are badly misguided. An excerpt:
In January 2001, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a ten-year federal government surplus of $5.6 trillion. By September 2003, after two rounds of tax cuts, Goldman Sachs estimated a ten-year deficit of $5.5 trillion. That’s a swing of $11.1 trillion, but adjusting for methodological differences the better number to use is $9 trillion. Though many factors contributed, the tax cuts of June 2001 and May 2003 were central to this reversal.
They Called It ‘Rubinomics’
Robert Rubin, Ex-Treasury Chief's new book, excerpt:
NEWSWEEK
Nov. 17 issue — After being somewhat involved in the 2000 election, I didn’t give much thought to what role, if any, I would have in the policy debate going forward. But more than anything else, it was my deeply troubled reaction to the administration’s tax cut proposals that led me to reengage.
The Tax Bil, debated and passed in the first half of 2001, began a period in which tax cut advocates dismissed mainstream views about the direct and indirect effects of large tax cuts on the government’s fiscal position, the value of sound fiscal policy, and the harm caused by large, long-term structural deficits.
Conservatives often framed the debate over Bush’s proposals as a question of lower taxes versus more spending. If government didn’t give back the surpluses to the public in the form of a tax cut, leading conservatives argued, “Washington” would find a way to spend the money. Another version was that the surpluses were the people’s money and should be returned to them. These formulations are as politically shrewd as they are simplistic. Nobody likes what government does when it’s described as “spending.” Yet the major programs that make up the vast preponderance of government spending—from Social Security and Medicare to defense, law enforcement, education and environmental protection—command widespread public support.
The Bush administration’s approach to tax cuts framed a new stage in the Great Fiscal Debate, an ongoing clash about the effects of fiscal discipline and of tax cuts on economic growth. This argument first affected policy in a significant way during the 1980 presidential campaign, when a group of conservative “supply-siders” attained prominence. The core of the supply-side theory was that lower marginal tax rates would cause people to “supply” more labor, working more and harder, which would increase growth—and the positive effect on growth would be so large that government tax revenue would actually increase rather than decrease in response to the tax cut.
Interview: Not Out of the Woods
George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan’s opponent for the Republican nomination in the 1980 election, referred to this as “voodoo economics.” And not all of Reagan’s advisers believed this theory. Some committed conservatives understood that reducing the size of government is difficult because of the popularity of most spending programs of significant size. Tax cuts seemed to offer a way around this problem. If government’s revenues were squeezed, this line of reasoning went, spending could no longer grow and might even be forced to shrink. Despite that theory, spending throughout the 1980s consistently and significantly exceeded levels —necessary to offset the tax cuts. The result was large deficits that kept increasing during the early 1990s and were projected by the outgoing administration in 1992 to grow even more in the years ahead.
To run a cyclical deficit—a short-term and temporary deficit in conjunction with a recession or slowdown—isn’t necessarily bad and at times may be entirely sensible. But the Reagan tax cuts, combined with defense spending increases, created something different: large and long-term structural deficits, which persisted even when economic conditions were good.
After Clinton took office, the Great Fiscal Debate mutated. In 1993, the debate was between supporters of Clinton’s economic plan—which included revenue increases, principally an income tax increase on the top 1.2 percent of taxpayers and a small gas tax—and opponents who argued that tax increases of any kind would harm the economy. “I believe this will lead to a recession next year,” Newt Gingrich said at the time. “This is the Democratic machine’s recession and each one of them will be held personally accountable.”
The 1993 deficit reduction program was a test for supply-side theory. Instead of the job losses, increased deficits, and recession the supply-siders predicted, the economy had a remarkable eight years—the longest period of continuous economic expansion yet recorded. That success created an immense anger on the part of some conservatives, who saw a policy they decried led to conditions they said wouldn’t occur.
As the deficits diminished and a surplus emerged during Clinton’s second term, the debate evolved again. Conservatives now argued for “giving back” the large projected surpluses to taxpayers in the form of a tax cut. We felt that continued fiscal discipline—in this case, beginning to pay down the federal debt—would best promote growth. What’s more, Social Security and Medicare were facing huge deficits once the baby-boom generation began to retire.
All of this argued against massive tax cuts. But the surplus left the Democrats in a tricky situation. Most voters don’t even understand the difference between the government’s annual deficit and its accumulated debt. So it was almost impossible to explain why entitlement obligations we faced decades down the road meant that a government that was running a surplus should use the money to pay down its long-term debt instead of refunding it to taxpayers. Preserving the surplus as savings and using that to pay down debt would contribute to lower interest rates, greater job creation, and higher standards of living.
In January 2001, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a ten-year federal government surplus of $5.6 trillion. By September 2003, after two rounds of tax cuts, Goldman Sachs estimated a ten-year deficit of $5.5 trillion. That’s a swing of $11.1 trillion, but adjusting for methodological differences the better number to use is $9 trillion. Though many factors contributed, the tax cuts of June 2001 and May 2003 were central to this reversal.
The Great Fiscal Debate now moved to the question of whether these projected deficits mattered. The proponents of tax cuts had to argue that they didn’t matter—or at least didn’t matter much—because large tax cuts and a sound fiscal position could not be reconciled. And tax cut advocates pointed to me as the symbol of the position that deficits have a significant effect on interest rates and therefore on economic activity, job creation, and growth. The Wall Street Journal editorial page dismissed the theory that deficits affect interest rates as “Rubinomics.” Flattered as I was, I didn’t think this position could possibly get traction. But it was loudly trumpeted, and the countervailing view wasn’t. What seemed to me arrant nonsense came to be treated as a serious point of view.
The first thing you learn in Introductory Economics is that supply and demand determine price. It’s curious that people whose credo is that markets explain everything don’t think that an important factor in the supply and demand for debt financing—the government’s fiscal position—has any effect on interest rates. Put another way, it’s an even more obvious point: when the government borrows, the pool of savings available for private purposes shrinks and the price of capital—the interest rate—rises.
Interest rates are only part of the picture. An unsound long-term fiscal situation can also damage business and consumer confidence—as was evident before the 1992 election. Large structural deficits can also diminish confidence in our economy and currency abroad, impair the ability of the federal government to serve the purposes the American people wish it to serve, and undermine our resilience in dealing with future recessions or emergencies.
One major impediment to serious discussion of our fiscal morass is that it immediately raises the question of whether the country now needs to raise taxes to deal with the deficit. My view is that the fiscal deterioration caused by the current fiscal policy will inevitably mean shared sacrifice, as it did in 1993, and will involve both spending and tax measures. But whatever the eventual solution, the president and congressional leaders of both parties should get together—sooner rather than later—to deal with what has become a serious threat to our future well-being.
Robert Reischauer, a former head of the CBO and one of the wisest budget experts I know, thinks that our nation’s leaders may well be unwilling to repair our long-term fiscal mess until we reach an inevitable day of reckoning. When that crisis arrives, we will either make the decision to increase revenues substantially—at what may well be an inopportune time—or face severe and prolonged economic tribulations. Then the American people will look back with dismay at what happened. Unfortunately, no one who is now concerned about deficits has yet found a way to explain these future costs in a way that has political resonance while these problems are being created and can still be prevented.
Leaving aside debates about whether deficits matter and about whether the supply-side effects are real, tax cuts and spending increases often seem attractive in the short term to politicians—and voters—who either don’t focus on the long term or perhaps recognize the potential problems but feel that they will fall on somebody else’s watch.
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From “In an Uncertain World” by Robert E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg. To be published by Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. © 2003 by Robert E Rubin and Jacob Weisberg.
November 25, 2003 E-mail story Print
LA Times Special Report
Third of three parts
By Nancy Cleeland and Abigail Goldman, Times Staff Writers
Grocery Unions Battle to Stop Invasion of the Giant Stores
Wal-Mart plans to open 40 of its nonunion Supercenters in California. Labor is fighting the expected onslaught, but the big retailer rarely concedes defeat.
Wal-Mart and the Unions
Number of visits to U.S. Wal-Marts weekly: 100 million.
Single-day sales record: $1.4 billion for American stores on Nov. 29, 2002 - larger than the annual GDP of Belize, Greenland and Monaco. (Source: Wal-Mart & the CIA World Factbook)
Number of new employees Wal-Mart plans to hire through 2008: 800,000 — the equivalent to of adding all the workers at General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. combined. (Source: Wal-Mart & Hoovers)
Number of ocean shipping containers imported in 2002: 291,900. Home Depot was No. 2 at 182,000.
Wal-Mart stores permit recreation vehicles to park for free on its lots on a store-by-store basis, making Wal-Mart an unofficial campground chain for cross-country travelers.
Wal-Mart's distribution center in Bentonville covers 1.2 milllion square feet, which could hold 24 football fields, 800 tennis courts or 7 Major League Baseball fields. (Source: Wal-Mart)
Wal-Mart is the country's top seller of dog food, disposable diapers, photographic film, toothpaste and pain remedies.(Fortune magazine, Feb. 2003 article)
If Wal-Mart were a country, its 2002 sales of $245 billion would make it No. 31 on the list of the world's largest economies richest nations, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Austria. (Source: CIA World Factbook)
Wal-Mart is three times the size of Carrefour, the world's second-largest retailer. (Source: Retail Forward)
Wal-Mart is the No. 1 retailer not just in the U.S., but also in Canada and Mexico as well as the U.S. (Source: Wal-Mart)
Additional sources: "The Wal-Mart Decade," by Robert Slater; The Journal of Commerce; Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Hoovers Inc., CIA World Factbook, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Retail Forward.
November 24, 2003 E-mail story Print
Second of Three Parts
Scouring the Globe to Give Shoppers an $8.63 Polo Shirt
Wal-Mart, once a believer in buying American, extracts ever lower prices from 10,000 suppliers worldwide. Workers struggle to keep pace.
Kofi Annan says Israeli 'wall' puts peace at risk
By Leonard Doyle and Eric Silver in Jerusalem
29 November 2003
Israel has swatted aside a formal complaint by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, over its refusal to halt construction of a wall that cuts deep into the West Bank and slices through Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem.
Mr Annan said the fence "could damage the longer-term prospects for peace by making the creation of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state more difficult".
Israel said it was speeding up construction and may take other "unilateral steps" if the Palestinians delay peace talks. "Our patience is running out," the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, declared.
An update on the Worldwide AIDS Epidemic from a BBC Interview with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Nov. 2003.
Transcript: Kofi Annan's BBC interview
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was interviewed by Carrie Gracie of the BBC in his New York office for the World Service's The Interview programme.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Thanksgiving Prayer by Brad Jensen
Nov. 26th, 2003
Thanks to my Creator(s) for making me a part of your creation. Thank you for deciding that free will, rememberance, integrity, and self-awareness is a part of existence, even down to the smallest particle.
Thank you for making more than one of us, so we can love each other. Thank you for making light a rainbow, instead of just one color. Thank you for letting us have loneliness, so we can come together in love. Thank you for letting us have ignorance, so we can become wise. Thank you for letting us have childhood, so that we can become mature.
Thank you for letting me see you through the eyes of my children, and letting them see you in my eyes. Thank you for my friends and relations, who remind me to love the whole tapestry of life and not just the prettiest colors. Thank you for my lover, who reminds me of your love when I need it.
Thank you for letting us have the sunrises and sunsets that people call birth and death. Thank you for the trees and flowers that are the growth of love and awareness in our hearts. Thank you for the birds and beasts that are the thoughts taking on a life of their own. Thank you for all of life.
Thank you for letting us know that you are there, by the way you respond to the prayer of our hearts.
Thank you for investing me with a body, heart, and mind, that I may use each to their utmost to appreciate the endless bounty of life.
Thank you for letting me be like you.
Amen
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Treason's Greetings
The GOP calls Democrats soft on terror.
By William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2003, at 2:15 PM PT
The first attack ad from the RND, "Reality" was produced for the Republican National Committee by Crawford Creative. To watch the ad on the RNC Web site, click here. For a transcript of the ad, click here. When Republicans introduced this ad, they suggested that Democrats had twisted President Bush's national security record for months and that it was time to even the score. If so, mission accomplished. In 30 seconds, this ad distorts the Democrats' views and impugns their motives more crudely than the Democrats have done to Bush in two years.
Note: Choice phrase from the ad:
CHYRON: Tell them (legislators) to support the President's policy of preemptive self-defense.
THE TROUBLING MEDICARE DRUG AGREEMENT
By Edwin Park, Melanie Nathanson, Robert Greenstein, and John Springer
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Nov. 21, 2003
The conference agreement on the Medicare drug bill would cost an estimated $400 billion over ten years, and much larger amounts in succeeding decades as drug prices continue to rise. Because the legislation is not “paid for,” it would substantially worsen the nation’s long-term fiscal problems, which already threaten to be the most serious in the nation’s history.
This raises a fundamental question: is the legislation sound enough policy to justify substantially worsening an already grim long-term fiscal outlook? Examination of the legislation strongly suggests the answer is no. The legislation contains a number of features that do not represent sound policy, either because they would change Medicare in troubling ways or because they fail to incorporate measures to curtail spiraling drug costs that ought to be an essential part of any legislation to establish a Medicare drug benefit.
November 23, 2003
LA Times
First of Three Parts
An Empire Built on Bargains Remakes the Working World
Wal-Mart is so powerful that it moves the economies of entire countries, bringing profit and pain. The prices can't be beat, but the wages can. By squeezing suppliers to cut wholesale costs, the company has hastened the flight of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. By scouring the globe for the cheapest goods, it has driven factory jobs from one poor nation to another. Wal-Mart's penny-pinching extends to its own 1.2 million U.S. employees, none of them unionized. By the company's own admission, a full-time worker might not be able to support a family on a Wal-Mart paycheck.
AARP Faces Kickback For Backing Medicare Bill
Many Seniors Unhappy With Reform Bill Passed By Congress
POSTED: 6:46 p.m. EST November 26, 2003
BOSTON -- Senior citizens angry over the AARP's endorsement of the Medicare bill are ripping up or burning their AARP membership cards and flooding the lobbying group with complaints in what could be the biggest revolt in its ranks since the 1980s. Many fear the Republican-backed bill approved by Congress on Tuesday will harm senior citizens and say the AARP, the nation's most influential retiree lobby, with 35 million members, sold them out.
If signed by President George W. Bush as expected, the new law would set up a limited program of competition between traditional Medicare and private plans, beginning in 2010. Activists are worried that could lead to the privatization of Medicare, placing the elderly in the hands of insurance companies more concerned about profits than quality medical care.
AARP policy director John Rother said the new plan is not perfect, and the organization will continue to try to improve it. The group's chief executive said between 10,000 and 15,000 members have quit because of the bill.
GOP Defends Bill
The bill adds a prescription-drug entitlement that would be available to 40 million older and disabled Americans. The Medicare bill has been heavily pushed by the White House and narrowly survived a weekend vote in the House. In the Senate, the package cleared several procedural votes Monday.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said the bill will allow seniors more access to preventive care for heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and a host of other ailments. Bush hails the Senate's passage. Speaking at a Las Vegas hospital Tuesday, he said the 38-year-old Medicare program will now be able to catch up with the changes taking place in medicine.
He said under the system that existed until now, the government would pay for ulcer surgery costing $28,000 but wouldn't pay for $500 worth of medicine that could have prevented the surgery to begin with. Bush said the changes that he'll sign into law will strengthen and modernize the Medicare system and give "high quality care" to the nation's seniors.
Under the legislation, the prescription drug benefit doesn't begin until 2006. At that time, all Medicare beneficiaries will have access to the prescription drug benefit -- and some will save significantly.
In the meantime, seniors will be eligible to purchase a Medicare-backed discount drug card that will offer an estimated 15 to 25 percent savings. Low-income seniors would get an additional $600 credit on this card. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she supported the bill even though it sometimes wasn't easy to do. She said the bill contains items that seniors in her home state of California have asked for -- especially the drug benefit. She said the benefit is needed because some low-income seniors have to choose between buying food or buying prescription drugs.
Opponents said final passage was a formality, since they lacked the votes to stop the measure. They have denounced the $400 billion measure as a windfall for drug companies and private insurers. Democrats worked hard to block it, but they failed by two votes Monday to block a final vote on the measure. But even now, Democratic opponents of the Medicare bill are vowing to keep fighting it.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said he didn't see many senior citizens in the Senate gallery during Tuesday's vote. Instead, he said he saw lobbyists for the drug and insurance industries, which he said are favored by the bill. Daschle suggested that some seniors fear they may be forced into a private health plan under the measure. And he said seniors in his home state of South Dakota don't think the drug benefit is adequate. Daschle had called the bill a "bailout for the HMOs and insurance companies."
Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy said the measure threatens the traditional Medicare system. He's vowing that he and other opponents will continue to battle provisions of the bill in future elections and future sessions of Congress.
2:15pm (UK)
Hero Hacker Does It Again
A young Norwegian who became a global hacker hero by writing and distributing a program to crack DVD security codes appears to have struck again, this time against Apple Computer’s ITunes online music service. Jon Lech Johansen, 19, faces a new trial next week after prosecutors appealed his acquittal for violating Norway’s data break-in laws with his DeCSS program.
Now, a new security ripping program called QTFairUse was posted – along with the message So sue me – on an Internet home page under Johansen’s name. The new program circumvents ITune’s anti-copying program, MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding, by legally opening and playing a music file, but then, essentially, draining the music into a new and parallel file.
The newspaper said there are many other programs on the Internet allowing ITune’s files to be copied, but that Johansen was the first to post his program as “open coding.” By providing details of his program, Johansen makes it possible for other programmers to use it as a basis for other applications, the report said.
Johansen, also known as DVD-Jon, was 15 when he developed the program, DeCSS, to watch movies on a Linux-based computer without DVD-viewing software. He also posted it on the Internet in 1999. The program is just one of many that can break the film industry’s Content Scrambling System, which prevents illegal copying and blocks the use of legitimate copies on unauthorised equipment.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Nigeria Will Surrender Taylor for War Crimes Trial
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 25, 2003
OTA, Nigeria (AP) -- Nigeria's influential president set tough terms Tuesday for two African pariahs, pledging to "persuade'' indicted war criminal Charles Taylor to surrender for trial if Liberia asks, and to bar Zimbabwe's president from an international summit.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE "HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE": AN EXERCISE IN PROBLEM DEFINITION
William F. Griswold, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.
This ... suggests that one way to understand the nature of press coverage of the debate over the Bush administration's "Healthy Forests Initiative" is to see it as an example of the process by which powerful groups in society use the media as they compete among themselves to influence the problem definition stage of public policy making.
A theoretical perspective is outlined that argues that for many public issues, the decision-making process entails: 1) recognition of a trend, issue or situation; 2) widespread perception of the trend, issue or situation as a problem that requires action; 3) formation of a consensus about what the problem is; 4) delineation of the range of possible policy alternatives; 5)selection of one of the policies, and 6) implementation of the policy.
The third step in this process, problem definition, is important because, as one researcher has observed, "There are great political stakes in problem definition. Some are helped and others are hurt, depending on how problems get defined." How a problem is defined can determine the range of possible responses to the problem, and being able to define a problem in a desired way may make it much more likely that a person or group or institution can shape policy responses to meet his/her/its own interests.
The findings indicate that the Bush administration used rhetoric and communication strategies designed to get across the message that America?s forests had become "sick," and that the problem was an excessive build-up of combustible material. Part of the reason for the vehement opposition to the proposals in the environmental community was that they went against a consensus that had developed over the last decade that the real problem of forest fire management was a history of overzealous fire suppression, combined with development of homes and businesses that encroached on the forests.
These findings are interpreted as an instance in which the mass media served as arenas in which powerful interests in society competed to have their different problem definitions adopted by the public.
The author argues that the way problem definitions on this issue were presented in news media reports was powerfully affected by the actions of interest groups that stood to gain or lose both money and political power. The discussion suggests conditions under which elite groups are more likely to be able to have their preferred definitions of problems included in news reports, and the conditions under which mass-mediated presentations are likely to be able to shape public understanding of what public issues are all about.
The Uncivil War
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times
Published: November 25, 2003
"One of the problems with media coverage of this administration," wrote Eric Alterman in The Nation, "is that it requires bad manners."
He's right. There's no nice way to explain how the administration uses cooked numbers to sell its tax cuts, or how its arrogance and gullibility led to the current mess in Iraq.
So it was predictable that the administration and its allies, no longer very successful at claiming that questioning the president is unpatriotic, would use appeals to good manners as a way to silence critics. Not, mind you, that Emily Post has taken over the Republican Party: the same people who denounce liberal incivility continue to impugn the motives of their opponents.
Smart conservatives admit that their own side was a bit rude during the Clinton years. But now, they say, they've learned better, and it's those angry liberals who have a problem. The reality, however, is that they can only convince themselves that liberals have an anger problem by applying a double standard.
When Ann Coulter expresses regret that Timothy McVeigh didn't blow up The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal laughs it off as "tongue-in-cheek agitprop." But when Al Franken writes about lies and lying liars in a funny, but carefully researched book, he's degrading the discourse.
More important, the Bush administration — which likes to portray itself as the inheritor of Reagan-like optimism — actually has a Nixonian habit of demonizing its opponents.
For example, here's President Bush on critics of his economic policies: "Some say, well, maybe the recession should have been deeper. It bothers me when people say that." Because he used the word "some," he didn't literally lie — no doubt a careful search will find someone, somewhere, who says the recession should have been deeper. But he clearly intended to suggest that those who disagree with his policies don't care about helping the economy.
And that's nothing compared with the tactics now being used on foreign policy.
The campaign against "political hate speech" originates with the Republican National Committee. But last week the committee unveiled its first ad for the 2004 campaign, and it's as hateful as they come. "Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists," it declares.
Again, there's that weasel word "some." No doubt someone doesn't believe that we should attack terrorists. But the serious criticism of the president, as the committee knows very well, is the reverse: that after an initial victory in Afghanistan he shifted his attention — and crucial resources — from fighting terrorism to other projects.
What the critics say is that this loss of focus seriously damaged the campaign against terrorism. Strategic assets in limited supply, like Special Forces soldiers and Predator drone aircraft, were shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, while intelligence resources, including translators, were shifted from the pursuit of Al Qaeda to the coming invasion. This probably allowed Qaeda members, including Osama bin Laden, to get away, and definitely helped the Taliban stage its ominous comeback. And the Iraq war has, by all accounts, done wonders for Qaeda recruiting. Is saying all this attacking the president for attacking the terrorists?
The ad was clearly intended to insinuate once again — without saying anything falsifiable — that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11. (Now that the Iraq venture has turned sour, this claim is suddenly making the rounds again, even though no significant new evidence has surfaced.) But it was also designed to imply that critics are soft on terror.
All this fuss about civility, then, is an attempt to bully critics into unilaterally disarming — into being demure and respectful of the president, even while his campaign chairman declares that the 2004 election will be a choice "between victory in Iraq and insecurity in America."
And even aside from the double standard, how important is civility? I'm all for good manners, but this isn't a dinner party. The opposing sides in our national debate are far apart on fundamental issues, from fiscal and environmental policies to national security and civil liberties. It's the duty of pundits and politicians to make those differences clear, not to play them down for fear that someone will be offended.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Rush's Rich Excuse
NY Post
By John MainelliI
November 20, 2003
Rush Limbaugh yesterday claimed that the more than $300,000 he withdrew in cash from an account at U.S. Trust in Palm Beach, Florida was just "walking-around money," adding that he knew who was responsible for stories that he's being investigated for violating money-laundering laws. "I have not laundered any money," Limbaugh told his radio audience, two days after returning to the air from five weeks of rehab for his painkiller addiction.
Limbaugh, who pockets an estimated $35 million a year, reportedly made up to 40 cash withdrawals from U.S. Trust in amounts just under the mandated federal reporting limit of $10,000. Investigators reportedly believe the top-rated talker used the money to buy massive amounts of black-market painkillers over several years - most of them from a maid in his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion.
The ABC report questioned whether he helped his supplier hide the proceeds of their transactions. "It's being reported in the paper [that] every time I got cash, somebody from the bank snuck over under the cover of darkness to my building," he said. "It was nothing like that," he said, blaming the bank for telling him to keep the amounts under $10,000 "so they wouldn't have to report anything."
Limbaugh, 52, said he wasn't sure how much cash he got. "I don't know - two or three, four or five, whatever, it wasn't very many" under-the-radar cash deliveries. He said the rest involved him personally cashing checks at the bank - "with witnesses." U.S. Trust paid a $10 million fine in 2001 for similar transactions involving Limbaugh and others.
Limbaugh said he used the cash to remodel his Palm Beach mansion and for travel, food and "playing a lot of golf tournaments." He conceded that $300,000 is "a lot of money, but given the amount of money I earn and so forth, it's pretty much in proportion with, you know, what anybody earns in terms of percentage of walking-around money."
"I answered every question that they had," he said.
War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal
Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian
International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law. But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.
French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein". Mr Perle, who was speaking at an event organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, had argued loudly for the toppling of the Iraqi dictator since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.
"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it." Mr Perle's remarks bear little resemblance to official justifications for war, according to Rabinder Singh QC, who represented CND and also participated in Tuesday's event.
Certainly the British government, he said, "has never advanced the suggestion that it is entitled to act, or right to act, contrary to international law in relation to Iraq". The Pentagon adviser's views, he added, underlined "a divergence of view between the British govern ment and some senior voices in American public life [who] have expressed the view that, well, if it's the case that international law doesn't permit unilateral pre-emptive action without the authority of the UN, then the defect is in international law".
Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has questioned that justification, arguing that the security council would have to rule on whether the US and its allies were under imminent threat. Coalition officials countered that the security council had already approved the use of force in resolution 1441, passed a year ago, warning of "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to give a complete ac counting of its weapons programmes.
Other council members disagreed, but American and British lawyers argued that the threat of force had been implicit since the first Gulf war, which was ended only by a ceasefire. "I think Perle's statement has the virtue of honesty," said Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University who opposed the war, arguing that it was illegal.
"And, interestingly, I suspect a majority of the American public would have supported the invasion almost exactly to the same degree that they in fact did, had the administration said that all along." The controversy-prone Mr Perle resigned his chairmanship of the defence policy board earlier this year but remained a member of the advisory board.
Meanwhile, there was a hint that the US was trying to find a way to release the Britons held at Guantanamo Bay. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said Mr Bush was "very sensitive" to British sentiment. "We also expect to be resolving this in the near future," he told the BBC.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
In 2001 The "Overtime Bill" was passed with bi-partisan support, and was aimed at preventing hospitals from forcing nurses to work overtime. The current legislation, hidden in the omnibus funding bill and fought over along party and economic class lines, is another in a long line of Bush Administration "Bully Tactical Measures" to reward Big Business at the expense of working people.
If you and those you love own a small business, work for a living, and are not a principal of a Fortune 500 company, and you still want to vote for Christian/Republican Fundamentalists/Neocoms in '04, then IMHO, you should request a refund on any money you paid for your education.
Bush said to prevail on overtime
Congressional aides say Pa.'s Specter lifts objections to rule changes.
November 22, 2003: 11:59 PM EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration has won a Capitol Hill battle over proposed changes to U.S. overtime work rules that are supported by business and opposed by labor, congressional aides said. They said Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, had lifted his objections, clearing the way for passage of a huge year-end spending bill without a provision that would have blocked the new regulations.
Specter, who could have kept the bill bottled up in committee by one vote, made the about-face a day after he floated a possible compromise that was shot down, and hours after he told a news conference he was still seeking a deal. He conceded he had been "boxed in" with no certain way out. The administration, which has refused to back down from its proposal despite majority votes against it in both the House and the Senate, contends the regulations would clarify and update often confusing and antiquated work rules.
It also says the changes in the rules would guarantee overtime protection for an estimated 1.3 million more low-income, white-collar workers. But foes warn that the regulations, which the administration intends to put into effect in a few months, could cost more than 8 million Americans their overtime pay and result in companies forcing employees to work longer hours without compensation.
Specter and other lawmakers have vowed to challenge the proposed work rules next year under an act that allows congressional review of new regulations, and labor groups promise to test them in court. Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who had teamed up with Specter to try to block the regulations, issued a statement expressing his regrets.
"I understand that the Republican leadership, at the behest of the White House, has killed the overtime pay protections in the omnibus appropriations bill," Harkin said. "This is hugely disappointing to me, and a real blow to the working men and women of this country who depend on overtime pay." William Samuel, legislative director for the 13-million member AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor group, said: "We know Specter was under enormous pressure and that the White House was willing to provoke a fiscal crisis to gets its way."
"We will make sure that the American people know the length that this administration went to cut overtime for 8 million Americans," Samuel said. A majority of the Republican-led Senate and House had defied a White House veto threat by voting in favor of a Harkin provision that would have blocked a proposed expansion of overtime exemptions for white-collar workers under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.
Specter sought to keep the provision in a massive catch-all spending bill for a number of federal agencies, but the White House got him to back down and allow the measure to move without it, aides said. Specter's sudden reversal seemed to catch even some members of his own staff by surprise. "This is news to me," said a spokesman for the senator, adding Specter had left town.
Specter recommended Thursday that a commission be created to review the proposed work rules and that Congress then vote on them. But the recommendation, like a similar suggestion Specter offered earlier, was turned down.
ANA Applauds Introduction of Mandatory Overtime Legislation
May 16th, 2001
Companion measures would ensure safer patient care, greater protections for nurses
Washington, DC --The American Nurses Association today hailed the Safe Nursing and Patient Care Act of 2001, a bill introduced by Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) and Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) with more than 20 U.S. House of Representatives colleagues that would strictly limit the use of mandatory overtime for nurses. Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and John Kerry (D-MA) will introduce companion legislation in the Senate.
The bill is expected to address the current nurse staffing crisis in the U.S. by strictly limiting the use of forced overtime among nurses, a dangerous practice that has contributed to a recent exodus of nurses from the nation's hospitals and a decline in safe, quality patient care. ANA was at the forefront of the push for this legislation and worked collaboratively on its development with members of Congress and other organizations representing nurses.
"We know that excessive use of mandatory overtime by health care facilities has been on the rise," said ANA President Mary Foley, MS, RN. "In fact, 67 percent of respondents to a recent ANA health and safety survey reported working some form of mandatory or unplanned overtime every month. With this proposed legislation, we can offer protection by prohibiting health care facilities from forcing exhausted nurses to work extra shifts, an unsafe practice that puts both patients and nurses at risk."
