Life in OUR America, Volume 5, the Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

"McCain faults administration on Iraq" 
 
By JOHN McCARTHY, Associated Press
Last updated: 4:55 p.m., Tuesday, August 22, 2006

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Republican Sen. John McCain, a staunch defender of the Iraq war, on Tuesday faulted the Bush administration for misleading Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach."
 
The potential 2008 presidential candidate, who a day earlier had rejected calls for withdrawing U.S. forces, said the administration had failed to make clear the challenges facing the military.

"I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was underestimating the size of the task and the sacrifices that would be required," McCain said.

"Stuff happens, mission accomplished, last throes, a few dead-enders."

"I'm just more familiar with those statements than anyone else because it grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be."

And speaking about the continued adverse impacts .....

To OUR America ....

And its military ......

As a direct result .....

Of the lack of thought ....

The BUSHCOS gave .....

To the ramifications .....

Of invading a foreign country .....

On the other side of an ocean from here .....

WITH NO PLANS ...

WITH INADEQUATE TROOPS .....

AND WITH A REAL GLIB ATTITUDE .....

THAT THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ .....

WOULD WELCOME GEORGE W. BUSH .....

AS THEIR NEXT CONQUEROR .....

We have ....

"Corps can recall Marines to active duty"

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 10 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Marine Corps said Tuesday it has been authorized to recall thousands of Marines to active duty, primarily because of a shortage of volunteers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Up to 2,500 Marines will be brought back at any one time, but there is no cap on the total number of Marines who may be forced back into service in the coming years as the military battles the war on terror.

The call-ups will begin in the next several months.

This is the first time the Marines have had to use the involuntary recall since the early days of the Iraq combat.

The Army has ordered back about 14,000 soldiers since the start of the war.

Marine Col. Guy A. Stratton, head of the manpower mobilization section, estimated that there is a current shortfall of about 1,200 Marines needed to fill positions in upcoming unit deployments.

The call-up affects Marines in the Individual Ready Reserve, a segment of the reserves that consists mainly of those who left active duty but still have time remaining on their eight-year military obligation.

Generally, Marines enlist for four years, then serve the other four years either in the regular Reserves, where they are paid and train periodically, or they may elect to go into the IRR.

Marines in the IRR are only obligated to report one day a year but can be involuntarily recalled to active duty.
___

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

end quotes

BUT NEVER FEAR, AMERICA ......

THIS IS NOT A DRAFT .....

IT'S MORE LIKE FORCED CONSCRIPTION ......

BUT SINCE THAT IS NOT THE SAME AS A DRAFT .....

Well ......

Something or other, anyway .....

And I'll be damned if I know what it is ......

Other than a part of the mess ....

That George W. Bush .....

And Dick Cheney ....

And Donald "GASBAG" Rumsfeld .....

Have made for OUR American military .....

And so ...

[Snuffysmith]

The Missing Links

By Dan Froomkin

It's ironic that at the same press conference where President Bush flatly acknowledged that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, he was putting forth -- largely unchallenged -- a new and equally specious linkage between Iraq and terror. The part of the press conference... Just when...

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

[Snuffysmith]

Its about time!


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/us/22cnd...059&partner=AOL
51% in Poll See No Link Between Iraq and Terror Fight

By CARL HULSE and MARJORIE CONNELLY
Published: August 22, 2006
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — Americans increasingly see the war in Iraq as distinct from the fight against terrorism, and nearly half believe President Bush has focused too much on Iraq to the exclusion of other threats, according to the latest

The finding that 51 percent of those surveyed see no link between the war in Iraq and the broader antiterror effort was a jump of 10 percentage points since June. It came despite the regular insistence of Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans that the two are intertwined and should be seen as complementary elements of an overall strategy to prevent domestic terror attacks.

Should the trend hold, the increased skepticism could present a political obstacle for Mr. Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill, who are making their record on terrorism a central element of the midterm election campaign. The Republicans hope the public’s desire for forceful action against terrorists will offset unease with the Iraq war and blunt the political appeal of Democratic calls to establish a timeline to withdraw American troops.

Public sentiment about the war remains negative, threatening to erode a Republican advantage on national security. Fifty-three percent of those polled said that going to war in the first place was a mistake, up from 48 percent in July; 62 percent said events were going “somewhat or very badly” in the attempt to bring order and stability to Iraq.

Mr. Bush recorded a gain of 4 percentage points in how the public views his handling of terrorism, rising to 55 percent approval from 51 percent a week earlier. The figure was his highest on the issue since last summer and followed the arrests in Britain in a suspected plot to blow up airliners.

Mr. Bush’s overall standing was nevertheless unchanged from the previous week, resting at 36 percent approval to 57 percent disapproval — far below the level his fellow Republicans in Congress would like to see as they face the voters in November. Compounding the political problems of majority Republicans, the survey reflected significant dissatisfaction with the way Congress was doing its job. Voters in the poll indicated a strong preference for Democratic candidates this fall.

The Times/CBS News poll differed somewhat with other recent surveys that showed higher approval ratings for the president. In surveys for USA Today and CNN, which were conducted Friday through Sunday, 42 percent approved of how Mr. Bush was handling his job and gave Democratic Congressional candidates less of an edge. The Times/CBS News poll was conducted Thursday through Monday by telephone with 1,206 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

According to the poll, terrorism and the war in Iraq hold about equal importance in the minds of Americans. Forty-six percent said the Bush administration had concentrated too heavily on Iraq and not enough on terrorists elsewhere, while 42 percent considered the balance just about right.

The opinion of 51 percent that the war in Iraq was separate from the war on terror was a considerable shift from polls taken in 2002 and the first half of 2003, when a majority regarded the fighting in Iraq as a major antiterror front. As recently as June, opinion was split: 41 percent said the war in Iraq was a major part of the fight against terror and 41 percent said it was not a part at all. Now only 32 percent considered it a major part of the terror fight, while 12 percent rated it a minor part.

“I’m just not sure there’s a connection between terrorism and the war in Iraq,” said Ann Davis, a Republican homemaker in Lima, Ohio, interviewed in a follow-up to the initial survey. She said she was fully supportive of American troops in Iraq but, “I feel we should not be over there, they should be able to figure it out on their own.”

However, another Republican, Marty Woll, 56, a retired accountant from Los Angeles, said he saw a clear link between the war and attempts to combat terrorism. “Iraq was obviously not the precipitating location for the 9/11 attacks, but if you look at the Middle East as a whole, you see it has been spawning the most violent and the most desperate of the attacks,’’ Mr. Woll said. “Saddam Hussein killed almost a million of his own people. That magnitude indicated that someone had to do something about it.”

Mr. Bush’s inability to improve his overall standing despite gains on the terror issue could be traced to people like Lucia Figueroa, 23, an independent from Fort Drum, N.Y., who backs the president on terrorism but faults him elsewhere. “Even though I approve of the way Bush is handling terrorism, he isn’t putting enough focus on other issues, like health care and Katrina, and those things need more attention,” she said

As recently as Monday, Mr. Bush, at a news conference, defended the invasion of Iraq as essential to preventing more domestic terror attacks and said he expected troops to stay there through the remainder of his presidency.

“If you believe that the job of the federal government is to secure this country, it’s really important for you to understand that success in Iraq is part of securing the country,” said Mr. Bush.

But Democrats in recent weeks have made a concerted effort to portray the war in Iraq as a distraction from essential antiterror initiatives, and the poll indicates that message may be effective. Democrats contend that the war in Iraq has sapped resources and attention from tracking terrorists and bolstering domestic security. “We took our eye off the real war, the war on terror,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, in a conference call with reporters today.

The public’s judgment on the job that Congress is doing remains largely negative, with 60 percent registering disapproval. Forty-seven percent of the registered voters surveyed in the poll said they expected to vote for a Democrat for the House this November; 32 percent said they would vote for a Republican. The national poll cannot measure the races in individual Congressional districts, but the findings are indicative of the two parties’ relative strength.

After terrorism and the war in Iraq, those surveyed considered the economy the third most crucial issue for political leaders to concentrate on followed by health care costs and gas prices. The White House has sought to get more credit for Mr. Bush for what the administration considers a strong economy and there has been an improvement in how the public views him on this issue. But the overall impression remains negative.

Thirty-five percent approve of how Mr. Bush is dealing with the economy, up 5 percentage points from a CBS News poll conducted last week, while 58 percent disapprove. Over all, 52 percent of those surveyed consider the national economy to be in good condition and 47 percent said it was in bad condition.

In the wake of the fighting in Lebanon, the public is increasingly pessimistic about the possibility of peace between Israel and its neighbors. Only 26 percent could foresee Israel and the Arab countries settling their differences while 70 percent could not — a figure up from 64 percent last month. And most Americans — 56 percent — said they do not believe that the country has a responsibility to try to resolve the conflicts between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, while 39 percent said it was a proper role.

Carl Hulse reported from Washington for this article, and Marjorie Connelly from New York. Megan Thee and Marina Stefan contributed reporting from New York.

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...t_subpoena.html

Sweet Subpoena
: Nine Tough Questions for Congress

News: Capitol Hill is way overdue for a blockbuster investigation. Here are 
nine questions to get Congress rolling—if it has the guts.

By James Ridgeway

September 1, 2006

The stately Russell Senate Office Building stands at one corner of a domestic Green Zone, just northeast of the Capitol building at the intersection of Delaware and Constitution avenues. In the past few years a maze of blockades has sprouted along the shaded avenues and curving drives of the Capitol complex. Checkpoints are patrolled by heavily armed police; guards watch for suspicious characters and prohibited items (which now include food and beverages; cans, bottles, and sprays; and bags larger than 13 by 14 inches). At the Russell Building, visitors encounter another set of barriers and metal detectors before being granted admittance to the elegant structure, its ring of Corinthian columns and soaring rotunda recalling a more worldly and optimistic past. Then, at the top of a sweeping staircase, they'll find a room walled in white marble, draped in deep red, overhung by a gilded ceiling, and fronted, altarlike, with a raised dais.

Depending on how much faith in American democracy still resides in the visitor's soul, the site's history may seem to justify its grandeur. Here in the humbly named Caucus Room, the U.S. Congress has held some of its most famous public hearings, beginning with a 1912 investigation into the fate of the Titanic. The Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s was broached here, in what would become a watershed investigation of executive branch corruption. Thirty years later, people around the country got their first glimpse of the Caucus Room in the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings, witnessing the famous exhortation by Army Special Counsel Joseph Welch: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

The Watergate hearings unfolded here in the early '70s, beneath the ever-watchful gaze of Senator Sam Ervin (D-N.C.). It was here that Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-Texas), the first Southern black woman elected to Congress, declared: "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." Here, too, the erect figure of Oliver North, straight from the basement of the Reagan White House, first hinted at the existence of a secret government to be deployed in times of crisis.

But in the past six years, congressional investigations of such bold, searching nature have disappeared. In a post-9/11 environment of silence and fear, the mood inside Congress has mirrored the bunkers and barriers outside: No one dares question the military or the intelligence services too closely, or to push the president too far. The Caucus Room continues to be used for party meetings and social events, and every so often there is a potted inquiry, as in the case of the 2003 hearings on the space shuttle. But on issues of war and peace, of corruption and graft, of civil rights, civil liberties, and constitutional breaches, meek questions are the rule, answered by dull assurances from the White House.

If the Democrats win back control of Congress (or even one of its chambers), if they can come up with the requisite moxie, and if they can muster the political will to reach out to their own base as well as to disaffected Republicans, they will have an opportunity to begin to change all that. They will need to overcome the myriad obstacles the Bush administration has created to keep lawmakers from obtaining and releasing critical information, such as its resistance to briefing congressional committees on intelligence issues, or its heavy hand in redacting congressional reports. When explosive information has leaked out—the fact that documents offering "proof" of Saddam Hussein's intent to buy uranium from Niger had been forged, or that the United States is operating a network of secret prisons in other countries—the administration's response has focused on condemning critics for politicizing national security—a charge before which the Democrats usually crumble.

Still, there is a chance that some of the gutsier Dems, with the support of an increasingly fed-up public, could make progress toward exposing the truth. A Democratic majority in the Senate could, for example, place the chairmanship of the intelligence committee in the hands of Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who has largely been stymied in his efforts to spur a thorough investigation of the Niger forgeries and what he suspects may be a broader campaign of deception. Among other things, such an inquiry could lead straight to the Pentagon's shadowy Office of Special Plans; under gop leadership, no one is too eager to learn much about this office, which led the prewar intelligence cherry-picking, and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) is holding up an inquiry.

Regardless of the election result in November, a few independent-minded Republicans in key positions offer hope that important investigations may gain traction. Under Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), the national security subcommittee of the powerful House Committee on Government Reform has actually summoned the mettle to subpoena Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in its investigation of the chain of command in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case.

But if lawmakers of either party do not begin to reclaim their constitutional powers—by asking questions such as those listed below—it's not hard to envision a time when visitors may come to the venerable Caucus Room as if to a museum, to learn about a bygone era when congressional investigations still served as a check on the imperial presidency.

1.Who lost Iraq?
It goes without saying that a congressional investigation—a joint inquiry by both houses, given the gravity of the matter—should address the causes, conduct, and effects of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, going back to the days immediately after Bush's election when the plans for invading Iraq were laid (see "A War Foretold," Page 61). But beyond that, the conduct of the war on terror has raised myriad vital questions that, at another time, would have been subjects of full-fledged inquiries on their own: the Pentagon's failure to adequately equip troops with armor, ammunition, radios, and the like; the use of mercenary forces; the contracting process; and the government's efforts to manipulate the press through outside PR agencies. Also worthy of scrutiny is the role of oil and gas, including the work of the secret Cheney energy task force, which points to prewar discussions with the ceos of major companies about Iraqi oil.

A congressional investigation into the Iraq war must make full use of subpoena power and must be prepared to forward findings of illegal acts to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. Just as important, public hearings could provide an opportunity—and protection—for would-be whistleblowers: Recall that Daniel Ellsberg didn't take his trove of documents, showing the Defense Department's true assessment of the war in Vietnam, to the New York Times until after he had been rebuffed by congressional Democrats. Somewhere inside the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies today's Pentagon Papers are waiting.

2. Did Rumsfeld order torture (and if not, who did)?
Last year, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) sought to clear up any confusion over the legality of torture with an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill. As McCain explained on the Senate floor, the measure was designed to "restore clarity on a simple and fundamental question: Does America treat people inhumanely?" This set off a bitter behind-the-scenes battle between the senator and Vice President Dick Cheney, who even as the White House was negotiating with McCain over the exact wording of the bill was privately cornering senators, arguing that the legislation would harm the CIA's operations. The result was a bill that bans torture at U.S. facilities but leaves open the question of foreign governments mistreating prisoners at the United States' behest. President Bush then wrote his own interpretation of the legislation, after it passed, in the form of a signing statement that said the White House was free to ignore the measure in the interests of national security. In the end, McCain's ban may have accomplished nothing except to give the administration an occasion to reaffirm its policy of permitting torture—so long as it involves foreigners being held in prisons that are not on U.S. soil.

Congress should demand a no-holds-barred public accounting of "inhumane treatment" since 9/11 by U.S. intelligence services and by third-country surrogates. Did Bush know about these practices? Did Rumsfeld order torture or supervise the chain of command? How far up the chain did knowledge of, and assent for, the horror at Abu Ghraib go? To which countries were prisoners sent for interrogation? When and how were these prisoners tortured? What are the CIA's policies on "unorthodox" interrogation techniques? Such hearings would go a long way toward halting the creeping normalization of torture—and they would almost certainly produce prosecutable evidence about the abuses that have already happened.

3. Who blew 9/11?
It's high time to follow up on the startling discoveries of the Senate and House's joint inquiry, back in December 2002, on pre-9/11 intelligence. In reconstructing the hijackers' trail, the inquiry's staff discovered that the FBI had failed to report, and had later balked at making public, information showing that it knew that a bureau informant in the San Diego Muslim community had socialized with two of the hijackers, and that another man who had been investigated by the FBI had rented an apartment to one of them. Both of the future hijackers had been closely followed by the CIA as they made their way from the Middle East to Malaysia; the agents lost track of the men before they boarded a plane to California, where they then lived openly, with driver's licenses and a phone book listing in their own names. So far, no one has been able to discover how they escaped detection by the FBI—and why the bureau refused to let Congress find out what happened.

The joint inquiry also discovered a Saudi spy operating in California—the same man who had rented an apartment to one of the hijackers—along with suggestions of a larger network, according to former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.). The spy nominally worked for a Saudi government contractor, and the committee followed a money trail going back to the royal family and the Saudi government, according to Graham. This was a tantalizing find. Congressional sources have suggested that Saudi spooks may have been sent to California to keep tabs on Saudi students who might be tempted by democratic ideas; it has also been speculated that some of these undercover agents could have become enmeshed with Al Qaeda. In any event, the White House has adamantly refused to declassify 28 pages of the final committee report that dealt with Saudi Arabia. When Congress later set up an independent commission to look into 9/11, it pointedly ordered the panel to "build upon the investigations of other entities" such as the joint inquiry. Yet the commission's report glossed over many questions involving Saudi Arabia. A new select committee could pick up where other probes left off.

4. What did the airlines know, and when did they know it?
The bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 ought to have been a wake-up call to aviation across the world. But 13 years later, the FAA was still ignoring warnings from its own staff about security holes at every airport that inspectors checked out. With airlines lobbying against tighter standards and Congress sitting by, the nation's airline security system was caught flat-footed on 9/11.

As far back as 1993, FAA inspectors showed that people with no authorization made it through San Francisco's airport security system 60 percent of the time. At Frankfurt in 1996, the FAA's undercover team broke through security every time it tried—a 100 percent failure rate. By way of addressing the problem, the FAA began telling the airlines when tests were going to be held, and negotiated fines for violations down to a pittance. There was idle talk of hardening the cockpit doors, but the airlines resisted additional security measures because they cost too much. The airlines ran wild in Washington, hiring top lobbyists such as Linda Daschle, the wife of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, threatening that their industry would face wholesale bankruptcy unless they got their way. (Most of them, of course, have since gone Chapter 11 anyway—but not before their ceos socked away millions more in salaries and bonuses.)

In the months before 9/11, the FAA warned that hijackers could turn a commercial airliner into a suicide missile and conducted classified briefings at 19 of the nation's largest airports, including Logan, Dulles, and Newark—the points of departure for the hijacked flights—warning of an imminent terrorist attack. Osama bin Laden's name was repeatedly mentioned. During the same period, FAA officials received 52 different intelligence briefings concerning threats from Al Qaeda.

The moment of truth ought to have come a little after 8 a.m. on September 11, 2001, when Betty Ong, a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 out of Logan, called AA headquarters and calmly began to describe the hijacking going on aboard that plane. She provided a detailed account of what she saw and heard and stayed on the line until the moment the plane crashed into the first tower.

Did AA officials, as family members later reported based on tapes and transcripts they were shown by the FBI in closed briefings, respond by saying, "Don't spread this around," "Keep it close," and "Let's keep this among ourselves"? Did that attitude prevent warnings to other pilots—warnings that could have kept Flight 93 on the ground, and could have helped bring Flight 77 down safely before it crashed into the Pentagon? Some member of Congress must have the decency and the guts to ask those questions—not in some backroom closed session, but in the full glare of the TV lights.


5. How wide is the domestic surveillance net?
In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee, named after Idaho Democratic senator Frank Church, put out 14 separate reports that exposed the intelligence agencies' abuses of law. The Pike Committee, named after Rep. Otis Pike (D-N.Y.), conducted a parallel inquiry in the House, focusing mostly on the CIA. Among other things, the investigations discovered the notorious COINTELPRO operation to spy on and disrupt left-wing groups. Thirty years later urgent questions are once again piling up: Just what is the extent of the agencies' spying inside the United States? What are the true motivations and outcomes of this surveillance? How much money is going into spying programs? There is much evidence that domestic intelligence gathering is not limited to the infamous NSA surveillance project. The ACLU, for one, has obtained numerous files describing FBI cooperation with local police in joint terrorism task forces that have targeted groups such as Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

6. Is Big Oil pulling an Enron?
The last serious investigation of the oil industry concluded in 1952 with the Federal Trade Commission's staff report on the International Petroleum Cartel, published by the monopoly subcommittee of the Senate. That study laid out a now-familiar pattern: A major concern of the oil industry has always been the threat of surpluses driving down prices. To prevent surpluses, oil and gas companies have employed means such as instituting quota systems, closing off reserves from market, and setting up cartels, or agreements among producers.

Today, while many experts believe oil will soon run out, there is no actual shortage that could be blamed for driving up gas prices. The hurricanes of 2005 did not put the supply in any serious jeopardy, nor was lack of refinery capacity a real factor. (According to the U.S. Department of Energy, refineries along the Gulf Coast and elsewhere frequently run below capacity, meaning that there was some slack in the system.)

There is, however, evidence to suggest practices reminiscent of Enron's market rigging: Last year, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a California-based consumer group, released a series of internal memos from Chevron, Texaco, and Mobil that laid out the industry's thinking. A Texaco memo, for example, warned that "supply significantly exceeds demand year-round. This results in very poor refinery margins and very poor refinery financial results. Significant events need to occur to assist in reducing supplies and/or increasing the demand for gasoline." An investigation would subpoena internal company documents and take testimony from oil executives under oath—not just in an "unsworn" chitchat like the sideshow put on by the Senate commerce and energy committees last year—to discover whether the companies conspired to rig prices or manipulate supply.

7. Who's making money off your retirement?
It's been predicted that at least 1 in 10 retirees in 2020 will teeter on the edge of financial collapse or plunge into outright poverty. Social Security is just a small bit of the problem. The potentially much bigger challenge is the disappearance of pensions, most of which have been replaced with 401(k)-type accounts dependent wholly on the securities market. This is an enormous shift: Corporations have succeeded, with amazingly little protest from labor, in transferring the cost—and the risk—of retirement from employer to employee. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. provides some backup when a company with a standard pension plan goes under (think United Airlines). With 401(k)s, there is no insurance. The Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to regulate mutual funds, which handle most 401(k) money; the sec has nowhere near the resources to keep tabs on the $9 trillion business, so policing is largely left up to the funds themselves.

Before this crisis grows greater, Congress ought to launch a serious investigation into the retirement system. We've got to know all the ways companies are bailing on their pension plans—by converting them into 401(k)s, by filing for bankruptcy, or simply by quietly not paying into (or "underfunding") them for years at a time. We need to understand who controls the money in 401(k)s, what the hidden costs are, and to what extent these accounts are threatened by Wall Street conflicts of interest. For example, thanks to deregulation laws passed during the Clinton administration, commercial banks can now sell the mutual funds that their investment-banking arms manage, but investors have no recourse if their 401(k)s lose value because of bad management. With Social Security privatization refusing to die, and Wall Street eager to get its hands on that money, Congress should do some due diligence.

8. Why is the morning-after pill not at your 7-Eleven?
After numerous clinical trials, thousands of pages of reports, and supportive resolutions from major medical groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, two Food and Drug Administration advisory committees in 2003 recommended that the FDA allow the emergency contraception pill Plan B to be sold over the counter. Conservative groups threw a fit, and House Republican leaders, including then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, urged the FDA to reconsider. When Democrats fought back, challenging the nomination of Lester Crawford to head the FDA until they got answers on Plan B, Crawford assured them that "the science part is generally done. We're just now down to what the label will look [like]. This is going to be a very unusual sort of approval." After promising a decision on Plan B by September 1, 2005, Crawford instead launched a public comment period. Not much later, he left the agency amid unrelated conflict-of-interest allegations. Now Congress deserves some answers: Why did Crawford overrule his own scientists? On what grounds? And was anyone outside the FDA involved? What about, for example, the calendar entry for then-FDA head Mark McClellan on April 21, 2003—just a few days after the agency got the application for over-the-counter Plan B—for "Conference call w/Jay Lefkowitz re: Plan B submis"? Lefkowitz, a White House go-to guy for conservatives, was at the time the deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.

9. Grounds for impeachment?
Congressional investigators digging into the aforementioned questions cannot ignore the possibility of impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney, who figures prominently in almost every one of the scandals engulfing the administration. It was Cheney who ran the government's response to the 9/11 attacks without constitutional authority, at one point ordering shoot-downs of commercial planes and what would turn out to be a medevac helicopter; who led the secret meetings of administration officials and oilmen to set energy policy; who allowed Ahmed Chalabi to play the U.S. government like a violin; who very well may be the origin of the whisper campaign that culminated in the Plame leak; and, of course, it was Cheney's former employer (and source of continuing deferred compeNSAtion paychecks) that benefited enormously from no-bid contracts in Iraq. Judicial Watch, the conservative legal outfit in Washington, has unearthed an email dated March 5, 2003, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official whose name had been blacked out, that said of a pending deal under which Halliburton would rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, "We anticipate no issue since the action has been coordinated w VP's office." There's plenty more where that came from; whether any of Cheney's actions constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors" is for Congress, and the nation, to debate.



This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.

© 2006 The Foundation for National Progress

[Livyjr]

And as REPUBLO-FASCISM continues to spread its tentacles ......

Throughout .....

The "fabric of life" .....

Here in OUR America ......

Replacing OUR former "AMERICAN" system of justice .....

With open courts .....

And the right to confront witnesses .....

With a "STAR CHAMBER" type of "KING'S JUSTICE" .....

Where everything is "SECRET" .....

And "unknowable" ......

To either the accused .....

OR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC ......

WHO NO LONGER HAVE A "RIGHT TO KNOW" .....

OR CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS .....

IN A REPUBLO-FASCIST WORLD .....

Such as OUR America is rapidly becoming ....

And so ....

We have ....

"Sting case prosecutors ask to shield witnesses - Anonymity for translators will prejudice jury, argue attorneys for mosque leader, pizza shop owner"

By MICHELE MORGAN BOLTON, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, August 23, 2006

ALBANY -- Federal prosecutors want FBI language specialists to be allowed to hide their identities -- using pseudonyms and physical disguises -- when they testify next month against two Albany men caught in a counterterrorism sting.

The translators are expected to speak about Urdu, Kurdish, Arabic and Bengali audiotape translations and written documents during the trial of Yassin Aref, a city mosque leader and Kurdish refugee, and Central Avenue pizza shop owner Mohammed Hossain.

Prosecutors say in court papers that the actual names of the translators are essentially irrelevant to their expert opinions:

"The mere name of a witness provides no insight into his or her translation abilities."

Prosecutors also say the protections will help ensure the safety of the translators, some of whom either live or work overseas.

Defense lawyers, though, contend the request is an Orwellian insult that will encourage a jury to assume that Aref and Hossain, a Bangladeshi immigrant who has lived here for decades, are dangerous.

"The prejudice to Mr. Aref and Mr. Hossain inherent in such measures cannot be underestimated," defense lawyer Terence L. Kindlon argued in court documents.

"And this is especially unjust when ... the defendants ... have done nothing whatsoever to threaten the translators."

Attorneys on both sides of the money-laundering case Tuesday were in Binghamton for a pretrial hearing.

The trial begins Sept. 6.

Hossain and Aref were arrested in an FBI sting that began in August 2003 in which they allegedly took part in a fake plot to sell missile launchers to terrorists.

A superseding indictment in September also charged Aref, an Iraqi refugee, with having documented connections to key terrorist figures in the Middle East.

He has been held in 22-hour-a-day protective confinement in the Rensselaer County jail since Sept. 30, when U.S. Magistrate Judge David Homer revoked his bail after 13 months of electronically monitored house arrest.

Hossain is free on bail.

Historically, requests for witness anonymity or disguises have surfaced in organized crime trials or congressional hearings, said Albany Law School professor Dan Moriarty.

"It's not rocket science to see that it's not normal," Moriarty said.

"It's really, really unusual."

Should a judge approve the prosecution request, defense lawyers would be at an immediate disadvantage during cross-examination, Moriarty said.

He said it would be impossible, without benefit of any underlying information, to try to impeach the witnesses' credibility or test their stories.

Court papers filed by assistant U.S. attorneys William Pericak and Elizabeth Coombe offer few details about their proposed witnesses.

They include the translators' basic academic expertise and language capabilities.

Kindlon also has renewed his call for U.S. District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy to suppress evidence, including 14 phone calls Aref allegedly made from Albany to the Damascus office of the IMK, or the Islamic Movement for Kurdistan.

Kindlon has said he believes the conversations were illegally taped by the National Security Agency in the post-9/11 fight against terror.

Published reports also have linked Aref and Hossain's alleged activities to that program.

The Justice Department claims the calls made to a Syrian number between 1999 and 2001 were a means of gathering intelligence for Osama bin Laden.

In court papers, Kindlon also acknowledged that McAvoy previously ruled, "in a secret order, that any such information regarding the transcripts of said phone conversations was classified."

Last week a federal judge in Detroit ruled that the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, approved in 2001 by President Bush, is unconstitutional.

Based on that, Kindlon said this week he planned to submit another request to have the case thrown out.

While the Detroit ruling was encouraging to the defense, national legal experts aren't so sure it will stand the test of time -- or appeal.

Howard J. Bashman, a nationally known appellate lawyer who appears regularly before the U.S Court of Appeals, said it's likely McAvoy will consider the Detroit decision.

But because it was rendered by a fellow trial court judge, McAvoy isn't bound by it, he said.

"This federal judge will have the opportunity to decide whether the evidence was legally gathered, independent of the Detroit judge's ruling," Bashman said.

"But he would be bound by it only if it was a higher level judge."

"He can rely upon it, however, if he finds it persuasive."

Bashman said he was surprised by the request for anonymity.

"If someone's appearance is greatly altered during testimony, the ability to tell how they're reacting, using normal human skills, is impeded," he said.

Morgan Bolton can be reached at 434-2403 or by e-mail at mbolton@timesunion.com.

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.alternet.org/story/40678/

Where Bush's Arrogance Has Taken Us

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted August 23, 2006.


An illegal war, a long list of eroded rights, and a country run by and for the benefit of corporate campaign donors -- all courtesy of the imperial presidency. Tools

[Editor's Note: The August issue of The Hightower Lowdown contains a poster-sized chart detailing the many grievances, lies and miscues of the Bush Administration. Below is the story in text form, you can also download the full poster from The Hightower Lowdown.]

During his gubernatorial days in Texas, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into his political soul. In hindsight, it should've been loudly broadcast all across our land so people could've absorbed it, contemplated its portent?and roundly rejected the guy's bid for the presidency. On May 21, 1999, reacting to some satirical criticism of him, Bush snapped: "There ought to be limits to freedom."

Gosh, so many freedoms to limit, so little time! But in five short years, the BushCheneyRummy regime has made remarkable strides toward dismembering the genius of the Founders, going at our Constitution and Bill of Rights like famished alligators chasing a couple of poodles.

Forget about such niceties as separation of powers, checks and balances (crucial to the practice of democracy), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and open government-these guys are on an autocratic tear. Whenever they've been challenged (all too rarely), they simply shout "war on terror," "commander-in-chief," "support our troops," "executive privilege," "I'm the decider," or some other slam-the-door political phrase designed to silence any opposition. Indeed, opponents are branded "enemies" who must be demonized, personally attacked, and, if possible, destroyed. Bush's find-the-loopholes lawyers assert that a president has the right to lie (even about going to war), to imprison people indefinitely (without charges, lawyers, hearings, courts, or hope), to torture people, to spy on Americans without court or congressional review, to prosecute reporters who dare to report, to rewrite laws on executive whim?and on and on.

Here, we are pleased to give you a sense of the enormity of what Bush & Company are doing under the cloak of war and executive privilege in a handy-dandy poster format.

The War President


"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
-George W., August 2004


Number of Americans killed in Bush's Iraq war as of August 2006: 2577

What Bush press flack Tony Snow said the day the total number of American dead reached 2,500: "It's a number"

Number of Americans killed since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1, 2003: 2,438

Number of Americans wounded (a vague term that includes such horrors as brain damage, limb blasted off, eyes blown out, psyche shattered, etc.) in Bush's war:
Official count: 18,777
Independent count: up to 48,000


Estimated number of Iraqi civilians (men, women, and children) killed in Bush's war since Saddam Hussein was ousted: 38,960

For Iraqis, the bloodiest month of the war so far: June 2006 (more than 100 civilians killed per day)

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit's advice to Iraqis who see TV reports of innocent civilians being killed by occupying troops: "Change the channel."

Percent of Iraqis who want American troops to leave: 82

Stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq since Bush committed Americans to war in 2003 on the basis that Saddam had and was about to use WMDs: 0

Number of nations in the world: 192

Number that joined Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" (COW) to invade Iraq: 48
(The list includes such military powers as Angola, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Latvia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Romania, Solomon Islands, and Uganda.)

Number of COW nations that actually sent any troops to Iraq: 39
(Of these, 32 sent fewer than 1,000 troops. Many sent no fighting units, deploying only engineers, trainers, humanitarian units, and other noncombat personnel.)


Number of the 39 COW nations contributing troops that have since withdrawn them: 17
(An additional 7 have announced plans to withdraw all or part of their contingents this year.)

Number of COW troops in Iraq: 150,000

Number of these that are U.S. troops: 139,000

Number of White House officials and cabinet members who have any of their immediate family in Bush's war: 0

Follow the Money


We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
-"Howling Paul" Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, in testimony to Congress, March 2003


The official White House claim before the invasion of what the war and occupation would cost U.S. taxpayers: $50 billion

As of July 2006, the total amount appropriated by Congress for Bush's ongoing war and occupation: $295,634,921,248

Current Pentagon spending per month in Iraq: $8 billion (or $185,185.19 per minute)

Assuming all troops return home by 2010, the projected "real costs" for the war: More than $1 trillion
(includes veterans' pay and medical costs, interest on the billions Bush has borrowed to pay for his war, etc.)

Bonus Stat!


Annual salary of Stuart Baker, hired by the Bushites to be the White House "Director for Lessons Learned": $106,641

Number of lessons that Bush appears to have learned: 0

The Imperial Presidency


"I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
George W., August, 2002.




Signing Statements

When signing a particular congressional act into law, a few presidents have occasionally issued a "signing statement" to clarify their understanding of what Congress intended. These have not had the force of law and have been used discreetly in the past.

Very quietly, however, Bush has radically increased both the number and reach of these statements, essentially asserting that the president can arbitrarily decide which laws he will obey.


Number of signing statements issued by Bush as of July 2006: more than 800
(This is more than the combined total of all 42 previous presidents.)
A few examples of congressionally passed laws he has effectively annulled through these extralegal signing statements:


a ban against torture of prisoners by the U.S. military

a requirement that the FBI periodically report to Congress on how it is using the Patriot Act to search our homes and secretly seize people's private papers

a ban against storage in military databases of intelligence about Americans that was obtained illegally

a directive for the executive branch to transmit scientific information to Congress "uncensored and without delay" when requested


Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that Congress alone has the power "to make all laws": Article 1, Section 8

Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed": Article 2, Section 3

Name of the young lawyer in the Reagan administration who wrote a 1986 strategy memo on how to pervert the use of signing statements in order to concentrate more power in the executive branch, as Bush is now doing: Samuel Alito, named to the U.S. Supreme Court by Bush this year

National Security Letters

These are secret executive writs that the infamous 2001 Patriot Act authorizes the FBI to issue to public libraries, internet firms, banks, and others. Upon receiving an NSL, the institution or firm is required to turn over any private records it holds on you, me, or whomever the agents have chosen to search.

Who authorizes the FBI to issue these secret writs? The FBI itself.


Surely the agents have to get a search warrant, a grand jury subpoena, or a court's approval? No


But to issue an NSL, an agent must show probable cause that the person being searched has committed some crime, right? No

Well, don't officials have to inform citizens that their records are being seized so they can defend themselves or protest? No

Number of NSLs issued by various FBI offices last year alone: 9,254

NSA Eavesdropping

In 2001, Bush issued a secret order for the National Security Agency to begin vacuuming up massive numbers of telephone and internet exchanges by U.S. citizens, illegally seizing this material without any judicial approval or informing Congress, as required by law.


Number of Americans who have had their phone and internet communications taken by NSA: Just about everyone!
(NSA is tapping into the entire database of long-distance calls and internet messages run through AT&T and probably other companies as well.)

In May of this year, the Justice Department abruptly halted an internal investigation that was trying to uncover the name of the top officials who had authorized NSA's warrantless, unconstitutional program. Who killed this probe, which was requested by Congress? George W himself! (He directed NSA simply to refuse security clearances for the department's legal investigators.)

What happened to NSA Director Michael Hayden, who was the key architect of Bush's illegal eavesdropping program and the one who would've formally denied clearances to Justice Department investigators? In May, Bush promoted him to head the CIA.

This past May, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned that journalists who report on NSA's spy program could be prosecuted under the antiquated Espionage Act of 1917.


Times in U.S. history this act has been used to go after the press: 0

Margin by which the U.S. House in 1917 voted down an amendment to make the Espionage Act apply to journalists: 184-144

Interesting Fact

The New York Times reported this June that Bush was running another spy program. This one was snooping through international banking records, including millions of bank transactions done by innocent Americans. George reacted angrily to the exposure, branding the Times report "disgraceful" and declaring that revelation of his spy program "does great harm to the United States." The White House and its right-wing acolytes promptly launched a "Hate-the-Times" political campaign.

Name the guy who was the first to reveal that such a bank-spying program was in the works: George W. Bush! At a September 2001 press conference, he announced that he'd just signed an executive order to monitor all international bank transactions.

Watch Lists

From the Bushites' ill-fated Total Information Awareness program (meant to monitor all of our computerized transactions) to the robust efforts by Rumsfeld's Pentagon to barge into the domestic surveillance game, America under Bush has fast become "The Watched Society."


Number of data-mining programs being run secretly on us by the federal government: Nearly 200 separate programs at 52 agencies

Number of "local activity reports" submitted to the Pentagon in 2004 under the "Threat and Local Observation Notice" program (TALON), which directed military officers throughout our country to keep an eye on suspicious activities by civilians: More than 5,000
(They included such "threats" as peace demonstrators and 10 activists protesting outside Halliburton's headquarters.)

Number of official "watch lists" maintained by the feds: More than a dozen run by 9 different agencies

Number of Americans on the Transportation Security Administration's "No- Fly" list: That's a secret.
(TSA concedes that it's in the tens of thousands. In 2005 alone, some 30,000 people called TSA to complain that their names were mistakenly on the list.)

Most famous citizen who is on the No-Fly list and has been repeatedly pulled aside by TSA for additional screenings at airports: Sen. Ted Kennedy


How can you get your name removed from TSA list? That's a secret.

Name That Guy!

In 1966, a young Republican congressman stood against his party's elders to cosponsor the original Freedom of Information Act, valiantly declaring that public records "are public property." He said that FOIA "will make it considerably more difficult for secrecy-minded bureaucrats to decide arbitrarily that the people should be denied access to information on the conduct of government."

Who was that virtuous lawmaker? Donald Rumsfeld!

Only eight years later, Gerald Ford's chief of staff strongly urged him to veto the continuation of FOIA. Who was that dastardly staffer? Donald Rumsfeld!

Who is now one of the chief "secrecy-minded bureaucrats" who routinely violates OIA's principles? Right, him again!

Regime of Secrecy


"Democracies die behind closed doors."
-- Appeals court judge Damon Keith, ruling in a 2002 case that the Bushites cannot hold deportation hearings in secret


Increase in the number of government documents marked "secret" between 2001 and 2004: 81 percent


Number of government documents stamped "secret" in 2001: 8.6 million

Number of government documents stamped "secret" in 2004: 15.6 million (a new record)

Cost to taxpayers of classifying and securing documents in 2004: $7.2 billion ($460 per document)

Number of previously declassified documents that the CIA tried to reclassify as "secret" under a 2001 secret agreement with the National Archives, even though many had already been published and some date back to the Korean War: 25,315


Number of different "official designations" the government now has to classify nonsecret information so it still is kept out of the public's reach: Between 50 and 60
(They include such stamps as CBU: Controlled But Unclassified, SBU: Sensitive But Unclassified, and LOU: Limited Official Use Only.)

The only vice-president in history who has claimed that he, like the president, has the inherent authority to mark "secret" on any document he chooses: "Buckshot" Cheney

Number of documents Cheney has classified: That's a secret.
(He claims he does not have to report this to anyone -- not even the president.)

Of the 7,045 advisory committee meetings held by the Bushites in 2004, percentage that were completely closed to the public, contrary to the clear intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act: 64 percent (a new record)

Number of times from 1953 to1975 (the peak of the Cold War) that presidents invoked the "state secrets" privilege, which grants them unilateral power in extraordinary instances literally to shut down court cases on the grounds they could reveal secrets that the president doesn't want disclosed: 4

Number of times the same privilege was invoked between 2001 and 2006: At least 24

Under Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno issued an official memo instructing agencies to release as much information as possible to the public. In October 2001, AG John Ashcroft issued a memo canceling Reno's approach, expressly instructing agencies to look for reasons to deny the public access to information and pledging to support the denials if the agencies were sued.

2005 FOIA requests still awaiting a response at year's end: 31 percent
(a one-third increase over the 2004 backlog)

Median waiting time to get an answer on FOIA request from Bush's justice department: 863 days

Halliburton


"Halliburton is a unique kind of company."
-- Dick Cheney, September 2003


Total value of contracts given to Halliburton for work in the Bush-Cheney "War on Terror" since 2001: More than $15 billion

Amount that Halliburton pays to the Third World laborers it imports into Iraq to do the work in its dining facilities, laundries, etc.: $6 per 12-hour day (50 cents an hour)

Amount that Halliburton bills us taxpayers for each of these workers: $50 a day

Amount that Halliburton bills U.S. taxpayers for:
A case of sodas: $45

Washing a bag of laundry: $100
Halliburton's campaign contributions in Bush-Cheney election years:
In 2000: $285,252 (96 percent to Republicans)
In 2004: $145,500 (89 percent to Republicans)
Plus $365,065 from members of its board of directors (99 percent to Republicans)
Increase in Halliburton's profits since Bush-Cheney took office in 2000: 379 percent

Halliburton's 2005 profit: $1.1 billion
(highest in the corporation's 86-year history


"Since leaving Halliburton to become George Bush's vice-president, I've severed all of my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind."
Former CEO Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, September 2003


Annual payments that Cheney has received from Halliburton since he's been vice-president:
2001: $205,298
2002: $162,392
2003: $178,437
2004: $194,852
2005: $211,465
Cash bonus paid to Cheney by Halliburton just before he took office: $1.4 million


Retirement package he was given in 2000 after only 5 years as CEO: $20 million
Number of times in the past two years that Republicans have killed Sen. Byron Dorgan's amendment to set up a Truman-style committee on war profiteering to investigate Halliburton: 3
Naughty word Cheney used during a Senate photo session in 2004 to assail Sen. Patrick Leahy, who had criticized Cheney's ongoing ties to Halliburton: "Go #@! percent yourself.

Jim Hightower is the author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush" (Viking Press). He publishes the monthly Hightower Lowdown.

[Livyjr]

I still remember 9-11 .....

And I am curious about my memories .....

The timing of statements, actually .....

Statements that were being made by the media ......

About what had happened ....

BEFORE THE TOWERS WERE STRUCK ....

On that day .....

I was down in Troy, New York ....

And when I walked into a coffee shop down there .....

A little after nine a.m., I believe .....

The owner ......

A young man .....

Came up to me and said, "Livyjr, did'ja hear about the hijackings ..."

And here is where I try to recall just what it was he said to me .....

As to who it was who had hijacked these planes .....

In my mind, I keep hearing him say "terrorists" .....

As if there was a script being read from by the news media ....

As if they knew details that you would think that they wouldn't know ....

And yet they did .....

BUT HOW DID THEY KNOW?

What went through my mind .....

When this young man told about these multiple hijackings .....

Was .....

THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE .....

WITH THE AIRLINE SECURITY THAT WE HAVE OVER HERE ......

THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE .....

And when the impossible is happening .....

Well .....

That's when I get real curious ....

Because for the impossible to happen .....

Somehow ......

Someone .....

Had to make it possible .....

And that is what I remain curious about .....

To this day .....

WHO OVER HERE AIDED AND ASSISTED THOSE HIJACKERS SO THAT THEY COULD GET POSSESSION OF ALL THOSE PLANES?

WHO OVER HERE HAD THAT KIND OF CLOUT?

And after the planes hit the two towers .....

Another impossibility ....

It all became anti-climax for me .....

It was all just too pat ....

TOO controlled ....

TOO MADE FOR TV .....

With those towers going down like clockwork ....

I had things to do that day .....

And places that I had to be ....

So after the towers came down .....

I finished up my coffee .....

And went on my way .....

And so ....

It was nice of them ....

Whoever put on that show for us .....

And if someone said that Dick Cheney's hand was in it up to his elbow .....

I wouldn't be surprised .....

It was nice of them .....

To fit that whole show .....

Into a short enough period of time .....

Where you could watch the whole thing go down .....

In the space of time .....

It took to drink some coffee .....

And so ......

A "MADE-FOR-TV" DISASTER .....

WAS THIS 9-11 ......

AND WHEN I FOLLOW THE BENEFITS THAT ACCRUED FROM IT .....

I KEEP COMING BACK TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY .....

AND THE OIL COMPANIES .....

AND DICK CHENEY ....

And so .....

[Livyjr]

REPUBLO-FASCISM .....

When I hear talk of "tax farmers" ......

I think of the EMPIRE OF ROME ......

And all the hapless peoples .....

Of the "ROMAN WORLD" ....

Who were victimized .....

By Roman "tax farmers" .....

And now ......

It appears that they are back .....

Here in the REPUBLO-FASCIST EMPIRE OF AMERICA ......

OR MURKA ....

As George W. Bush calls it .....

And so ....

Paul Krugman Column From NY Times - Some More Thoughts On Private Tax Collectors

"Tax Farmers, Mercenaries and Viceroys"

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 21, 2006

Yesterday The New York Times reported that the Internal Revenue Service would outsource collection of unpaid back taxes to private debt collectors, who would receive a share of the proceeds.

It’s an awful idea.

Privatizing tax collection will cost far more than hiring additional I.R.S. agents, raise less revenue and pose obvious risks of abuse.

But what’s really amazing is the extent to which this plan is a retreat from modern principles of government.

I used to say that conservatives want to take us back to the 1920’s, but the Bush administration seemingly wants to go back to the 16th century.

And privatized tax collection is only part of the great march backward.

In the bad old days, government was a haphazard affair.

There was no bureaucracy to collect taxes, so the king subcontracted the job to private “tax farmers,” who often engaged in extortion.

There was no regular army, so the king hired mercenaries, who tended to wander off and pillage the nearest village.

There was no regular system of administration, so the king assigned the task to favored courtiers, who tended to be corrupt, incompetent or both.

Modern governments solved these problems by creating a professional revenue department to collect taxes, a professional officer corps to enforce military discipline, and a professional civil service.

But President Bush apparently doesn’t like these innovations, preferring to govern as if he were King Louis XII.

So the tax farmers are coming back, and the mercenaries already have.

There are about 20,000 armed “security contractors” in Iraq, and they have been assigned critical tasks, from guarding top officials to training the Iraqi Army.

Like the mercenaries of old, today’s corporate mercenaries have discipline problems.

“They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath,” declared a U.S. officer last year.

And armed men operating outside the military chain of command have caused at least one catastrophe.

Remember the four Americans hung from a bridge?

They were security contractors from Blackwater USA who blundered into Falluja — bypassing a Marine checkpoint — while the Marines were trying to pursue a methodical strategy of pacifying the city.

The killing of the four, and the knee-jerk reaction of the White House — which ordered an all-out assault, then called it off as casualties mounted — may have ended the last chance of containing the insurgency.

Yet Blackwater, whose chief executive is a major contributor to the Republican Party, continues to thrive.

The Department of Homeland Security sent heavily armed Blackwater employees into New Orleans immediately after Katrina.

To whom are such contractors accountable?

Last week a judge threw out a jury’s $10 million verdict against Custer Battles, a private contractor that was hired, among other things, to provide security at Baghdad’s airport.

Custer Battles has become a symbol of the mix of cronyism, corruption and sheer amateurishness that doomed the Iraq adventure — and the judge didn’t challenge the jury’s finding that the company engaged in blatant fraud.

But he ruled that the civil fraud suit against the company lacked a legal basis, because as far as he could tell, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, wasn’t “an instrumentality of the U.S. government.”

It wasn’t created by an act of Congress; it wasn’t a branch of the State Department or any other established agency.

So what was it?

Any premodern monarch would have recognized the arrangement: in effect, the authority was a personal fief run by a viceroy answering only to the ruler.

And since the fief operated outside all the usual rules of government, the viceroy was free to hire a staff of political loyalists lacking any relevant qualifications for their jobs, and to hand out duffel bags filled with $100 bills to contractors with the right connections.

Tax farmers, mercenaries and viceroys: why does the Bush administration want to run a modern superpower as if it were a 16th-century monarchy?

Maybe people who’ve spent their political careers denouncing government as the root of all evil can’t grasp the idea of governing well.

Or maybe it’s cynical politics: privatization provides both an opportunity to evade accountability and a vast source of patronage.

But the price is enormous.

This administration has thrown away centuries of lessons about how to make government work.

No wonder it has failed at everything except fearmongering.

[Livyjr]

Taxes in the Roman Empire

In the early days of the Roman Republic, public taxes consisted of modest assessments on owned wealth and property.

The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% and sometimes would climb as high as 3% in situations such as war.

These modest taxes were levied against land, homes and other real estate, slaves, animals, personal items and monetary wealth.

Taxes were collected from individuals and, at times, payments could be refunded by the treasury for excess collections.

With limited census accuracy, tax collection on individuals was a difficult task at best.

By 167 B.C. the Republic had enriched itself greatly through a series of conquests.

Gains such as the silver and gold mines in Spain created an excellent source of revenue for the state, and a much larger tax base through its provincial residents.

By this time, Rome no longer needed to levy a tax against its citizens in Italy and looked only to the provinces for collections.

With expansion, Roman censors found that accurate census taking in the provinces was a difficult task at best.

To ease the strain, taxes were assessed as a tithe on entire communities rather than on individuals.

Tax assessments in these communities fell under the jurisdiction of Provincial governors and various local magistrates, using rules similar to the old system.

Tax farmers (Publicani) were used to collect these taxes from the provincials.

Rome, in eliminating its own burden for this process, would put the collection of taxes up for auction every few years.

The Publicani would bid for the right to collect in particular regions, and pay the state in advance of this collection.

These payments were, in effect, loans to the state and Rome was required to pay interest back to the Publicani.

As an offset, the Publicani had the individual responsibility of converting properties and goods collected into coinage, alleviating this hardship from the treasury.

In the end, the collectors would keep anything in excess of what they bid plus the interest due from the treasury; with the risk being that they might not collect as much as they originally bid.

Tax farming proved to be an incredibly profitable enterprise and served to increase the treasury, as well as line the pockets of the Publicani.

However, the process was ripe with corruption and scheming.

For example, with the profits collected, tax farmers could collude with local magistrates or farmers to buy large quantities of grain at low rates and hold it in reserve until times of shortage.

These Publicani were also money lenders, or the bankers of the ancient world, and would lend cash to hard-pressed provincials at the exorbitant rates of 4% per month or more.

In the late 1st century BC, and after considerably more Roman expansion, Augustus essentially put an end to tax farming.

Complaints from provincials for excessive assessments and large, un-payable debts ushered in the final days of this lucrative business.

The Publicani continued to exist as money lenders and entrepreneurs, but easy access to wealth through taxes was gone.

Tax farming was replaced by direct taxation early in the Empire and each province was required to pay a wealth tax of about 1% and a flat poll tax on each adult.

This new procedure, of course, required regular census taking to evaluate the taxable number of people and their income/wealth status.

Taxation in this environment switched mainly from one of owned property and wealth to that of an income tax.

As a result, the taxable yield varied greatly based on economic conditions, but theoretically, the process was fairer and less open to corruption.

In contrast, the Publicani had to focus their efforts on collecting revenues where it was most easily available due to limited time and capacity.

Their efforts were mainly directed at the cash wealthy because converting properties into cash could be a difficult process.

Additionally, growth of a provincial tax base went straight to the coffers of the Publicani.

They had the luxury of bidding against previous tax collections and the Treasury's knowledge of increased wealth would take several collections before auction prices were raised.

In this way, the Publicani increased their own wealth, but eventually the state would reap the benefit of increased collections down the line.

The imperial system of flat levies instituted by Augustus shifted the system into being far less progressive, however.

Growth in the provincial taxable basis under the Publicani led to higher collections in time, while under Augustus, fixed payments reduced this potential.

Tax paying citizens were aware of the exact amounts they needed to pay and any excess income remained with the communities.

While there could obviously be reassessments that would adjust the taxable base it was a slow process that left a lot of room for the earning of untaxed incomes.

While seemingly less effective to the state than that of the Publicani system, the new practice allowed for considerable economic growth and expansion.

As time passed each successive emperor was challenged with meeting the soaring costs of administration and financing the legions, both for national defense and to maintain loyalty.

New schemes to revise the tax structure came and went throughout the Empire's history.

Large inflation rates and debased coinage values, by the reign of Diocletion, led to one of the more drastic changes in the system.

In the late 3rd century AD, he imposed a universal price freeze, capping maximum prices, while at the same time he reinstated the land tax on Italian landowners.

Special tolls on money traders and companies were also imposed to help increase the tax collections.

Diocletion's program, in theory, should have helped ease the burden on various classes of taxpayers, but it didn't work that way in practice.

As an example, additional taxes were levied on land owners after the land tax had been paid because this was now a separate tax, instead of taking into account that taxes had already been collected.

The burden of paying the expected amounts was shifted from communities and individuals within them, to the local senatorial class.

The Senators would then be subject to complete ruin in the case of economic shortfall in a particular region.

Following Diocletion, Constantine compounded these burdens by making the senatorial class hereditary.

By so doing, all debts and economic ramifications were passed from one senatorial generation to the next, ruining entire families and never allowing for a recovery that could benefit an entire community.

Taxes in the Roman Empire, in comparison with modern times, were certainly no more excessive.

In many cases they are far less per capita than anything we can compare to today.

However, the strain of tax revenues was heavily placed on those who could most influence the economy and it would have dire consequences.

The economic struggles that plagued the late Imperial system coupled with the tax laws certainly played a part in the demise of the world's greatest empire.

"...in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes"--Benjamin Franklin

http://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php

[Livyjr]

I still remember 9-11 .....

And I am curious about my memories .....

The timing of statements, actually .....

Statements that were being made by the media ......

About what had happened ....

BEFORE THE TOWERS WERE STRUCK ....

August 3, 2006

"New Tapes Disclose Confusion Within the Military on Sept. 11"

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 — Newly disclosed tapes offer evidence of the widespread confusion within the military as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were being carried out, further undermining claims by the Pentagon that it moved quickly to try to intercept and shoot down one or more of the hijacked jets.

When matched with the timeline of the attacks, the tapes make clear that information about the hijackings was slow to reach the military on Sept. 11 and that much of the information that did reach Air Force commanders was faulty.

The tapes were provided under subpoena to the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, and parts of them had previously been made public by that commission.

But the full collection of nearly 30 hours of tapes from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, were released by the Pentagon last year to Michael Bronner, a producer on the recent film “United 93,” who described them in detail in an article posted this week on the Web site of Vanity Fair magazine ( http://www.vanityfair.com ).

The Web site includes links to excerpts from the actual tapes.

The tapes demonstrate that for most of the morning of Sept. 11, the airspace over New York and Washington was essentially undefended, and that jet fighters scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes were involved in a fruitless chase for planes that had already crashed.

Although much of the conversation in the tapes is heavy with military jargon, it makes clear the terror of the morning, with military air controllers trying to monitor the whereabouts of hijacked planes bearing down on lower Manhattan and Washington.

“I got an aircraft six miles east of the White House!” one military commander is quoted as barking to a colleague.

The tapes also document a conversation among officers about how best to shoot down passenger planes, if the order came from the White House.

“My recommendation, if we have to take anybody out, large aircraft, we use AIM-9’s in the face,” an Air Force commander is quoted as saying, a reference to a type of missile that would be fired into the nose of the plane.

The Sept. 11 commission subpoenaed the tapes and other evidence after the panel’s investigators determined that material had been improperly withheld by Norad, which is responsible for air defense.

Members of the commission said the tapes demonstrated that the Pentagon’s initial account of its actions on Sept. 11 was wrong and that some military officers might have intentionally provided false statements to the commission.

The officers had testified that Norad had been tracking Flight 93, the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field after a cockpit struggle between passengers and the hijackers, and were prepared to shoot it down if it approached Washington.

But the tapes show that the military was not even alerted to the hijacking of the United flight until four minutes after it had crashed.

[Livyjr]

And politics .....

Better watch out, Hillary .....

The REPUBLICANS are coming to get you .....

RUN, HILLARY, RUN ....

"McFarland to again campaign"

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press
First published: Wednesday, August 23, 2006

NEW YORK -- A top strategist for Republican Senate candidate Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland said Tuesday that McFarland would resume campaigning later this week after suspending activities to deal with her daughter's arrest on shoplifting charges.

"Nothing has changed -- we haven't canceled anything beyond yesterday and today," strategist Ed Rollins said.

"KT is trying to deal with her daughter, and that's a very painful process."

Camilla McFarland, 16, was arrested Saturday in Southampton.

She was charged with misdemeanor counts of petty theft and possession of stolen property for stealing a pair of jeans and two bathing suits from two stores.

KT McFarland said Monday she would suspend her campaign "until further notice" to address the matter.

McFarland is competing with former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer for the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the heavily favored Democrat.

In a statement to police obtained by The Associated Press, Camilla McFarland said she had decided to shoplift after purchasing gifts for friends at a beachwear store in Southampton.

"I then walked into another store called Nora's," McFarland said.

"While I was in Nora's I decided to take a pair of jeans."

"I put them in my bag while I was in the changing room, and then left."

The jeans were described as True Religion brand, valued at $172.

She said she went to another store, the Flying Point Surf Shop, where she took two bikinis.

Together, they were valued at less than $250.

end quotes

Ah, yes ......

Republican family values .....

And since when does a pair of jeans cost $172?

I know .....

I know .....

I'm a yokel .....

I live out in the sticks .....

I just don't know "value" .....

When it is staring me in the face .....

And so .....

Jeans for $172 .....

What a kick that is ....

$172 for a pair of ordinary blue jeans .....

What was it P.T. Barnum said?

You'll never lose money underestimating the intelligence of human beings?

And so .....

[Livyjr]

"A case for war? - President Bush talks a lot more about why the U.S. can't leave Iraq than he does about why it's there at all"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, August 23, 2006

More than three years and almost 3,000 American deaths later, it's harder than ever to discern a reason for just why the United States went to war in Iraq, or even what the precise mission is at this point.

President Bush certainly isn't of much help.

At a revealing news conference on Monday, the President instead went on and on about why the United States can't leave, complete with some sharp digs at those who now believe it is time to withdraw from Iraq.

A pre-emptive war to remove Iraq's chemical and biological weapons was exposed as a folly some time ago, of course, a matter of either very bad intelligence or outright duplicity.

Saddam Hussein, in Mr. Bush's words, was capable of obtaining weapons of mass destruction but not in possession of them.

The competing fallacy of Iraq's involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is off the President's list as well.

Mr. Bush now explicitly acknowledges the lack of such a link.

"Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September 11 were ordered by Iraq," he says.

Instead 9/11 is reduced to an issue of proximity, as in when Mr. Bush lists the consequences of leaving Iraq.

"If you think it's bad now, imagine what Iraq would look like if the United States leaves before this government can defend itself and sustain itself," he says.

"Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens."

The President presents Iraq as part of a much larger fight against Islamic extremism and its implications for America's national security.

Intriguing geopolitics, perhaps, but a case for an ongoing war?

As for why we're staying, Mr. Bush's words are much more pointed.

"'We're not leaving so long as I am president," he says.

"That would be a huge mistake."

"It would send an unbelievably ... terrible signal to reformers across the region."

"It would say we've abandoned our desire to change the conditions that create terror."

"It would give the terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks."

"It would embolden Iran."

"It would embolden extremists."

Still, the President seems to relish the thought of the midterm elections campaign being waged over the Iraq war.

"What matters is that in this campaign that we clarify the different points of view," he says.

"And there are a lot of people in the Democratic Party who believe that the best course of action is to leave Iraq before the job is done -- period -- and they're wrong."

If only a president so eager to take on the critics of the war could better defend it.

end quotes

George's war in Iraq is a faith-based initiative .....

PURE AND SIMPLE ....

So there is no defense ...

A defense would imply that there was nothing to have faith in ...

And that is George ....

We have faith in George ...

As GOD'S ANNOITED .....

Down here on this earth of OURS .....

And that's it ...

We don't question further ...

Because to question at all ...

Implies that we don't have faith ...

In what is a faith-based initiative ....

And so ...

Because it is a faith-based initiative .....

Well ......

That logic .......

Goes round and round and round and round and round ....

Ad infinitum ....

Forever ....

GOD loves George ...

So we have to, too .....

And so .....

Anyone who questions George's war .....

Don't love GOD .....

Which makes them into an enemy of America .....

And so ....

[Livyjr]

I have just started to read the book Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor ......

And my advice to George W. Bush .....

Before he goes and feeds us any more malarky ....

About the "NEED" .....

For us to be in Iraq ....

And about letting down any alleged "reformists" .....

Anywhere in the world ....

WHICH IS PURE INVENTION ON HIS PART .....

TO TUG AT OUR EMOTIONAL HEARTSTRINGS ...

SO AS TO DISTRACT US .....

IN THIS HOUR ....

OF OUR NATION'S NEED ....

WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES ....

"ADRIFT AT SEA" .....

Over there in Iraq .....

Without any leadership at the helm of OUR national government ...

Is that George W. Bush himself .....

Ought to read this book .....

AND THEN .....

Any national debate that we have on this subject of Iraq ....

And OUR alleged need to be over there ......

Should be based upon the documented AMERICAN HISTORY .....

That is contained .....

In just the first twenty or so pages .....

Of this one book .....

A history .....

That has to .....

And does begin .....

With his father ...

George H.W. "BIG" Bush .....

And "BIG" Bush's 100-HOUR WAR .....

To drive Saddam's Republican Guards back out of Kuwait ....

As a nation over here ...

And yes, I am subject to this myself ....

We have a tendency to never remember yesterday ....

As if "today" ....

Like Topsy .....

Just sprang to life, full-formed .....

When the sun rose over CORRUPT Washington, D.C. in the morning ....

And such is just not the case at all ...

At least not always .....

In the affairs of mankind ...

And especially over there in what is called .....

By us .....

In OUR arrogance ....

As if we were God's appointed label makers and affixers down here on this earth of OURS ....

The MIDDLE EAST ....

Which has nations in it ....

That were already in existence ....

And flourishing ....

When young ALEXANDER THE GREAT, ALTHOUGH NOT AS GREAT AS GEORGE W. BUSH .....

Made his rampage through that area .....

To satisfy his own massive ego .....

Which didn't do young ALEXANDER THE PENULTIMATE GREATEST .....

Much good at all ...

Since young Alexander died quite young ....

And so .....

In this debate that George W. Bush now wants to have on Iraq .....

Which I whole-heartedly endorse .....

George wants to completely skip over the actual history of how we got into Iraq .....

WHICH WAS IN A WAR OF HIS CHOICE .....

AND NOT A WAR OF NECESSITY FOR OUR AMERICA ....

And what George wants to do ...

Is to have a debate on OUR NATIONAL SECURITY ......

That has as its "base" ......

An emotional argument for "staying the course" .....

This "DAMAGED NATIONAL PSYCHE" psycho-babble .....

That George is now spouting ....

As opposed to a look at the history of wrong-headed decision-making .....

Primarily by Dick Cheney ....

And Donald "GASBAG" Rumsfeld .....

That has got us to where we are now .....

When you read this book Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor ......

And stop to consider the AMERICAN HISTORY ....

That is contained just within those opening pages .....

It becomes patently obvious ....

To all but a real, pure-goose fool like George, I would say .....

That this talk of "staying the course" ....

Is simply ridiculous .....

SINCE THERE NEVER WAS A "COURSE" .....

TO STAY .....

IN THE FIRST PLACE .....

A fact .....

That George W. Bush appears to be in complete denial of .....

And so ......

To all these Democrats out there .....

Who are simply shouting that we should pull out .....

What I think they should do .....

Is to read this book as well ...

And then tell us ....

The American people .....

How simply pulling out now ....

RATHER THAN TACTICALLY DIS-ENGAGING ....

AND PULLING BACK ....

AND CONTAINING IRAQ ....

Will solve anything now ....

And so .....

It is a fact .....

That in their collective stupidity ....

Which apparently knows no bounds ....

George W. Bush ....

And Dick Cheney ....

And Donald "GASBAG" Rumsfeld ....

And "CON-JOB CONNIE" (KILLER) Rice .....

HAVE BLUNDERED THIS NATION OF OURS ...

RIGHT INTO A DEEP PIT OF QUICKSAND .....

SOME EIGHT THOUSAND MILES ....

ACROSS AN OCEAN ....

FROM OUR HOMES AND HEARTHS ....

OUR KITH AND KIN .....

HERE IN OUR OWN COUNTRY .....

WHICH IS WHERE OUR ATTENTION BELONGS .....

UNTIL IT IS PERFECT OVER HERE .....

AT WHICH TIME ...

PERHAPS WE CAN THEN START THINKING ABOUT "PERFECTING" ANYBODY ELSE ...

And when you are in quicksand .....

The one thing that you should stop doing .....

Is blundering about any further .....

Since further blundering about ...

Which is all the strategy that George W. Bush now has to offer us in Iraq ....

Only sinks you down further ....

And so ...

But to stop sinking ....

So that you can hopefully begin to extricate yourself ....

And sometimes ....

It is too late for that ....

You have to stop moving .....

STRATEGIC INERTNESS, it is called .....

And there is where George W. Bush .....

And Dick Cheney .....

And Donald "GASBAG" Rumsfeld are now all completely worthless to us .....

As a nation ....

BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO VISION ....

TO SEE THIS REALITY ...

Blinded as they are ...

By their own egos ...

And their own ambitions ......

WHICH HAVE NOW LED US .....

OUR AMERICA .....

DEEP INTO THIS FOLLY ....

Of George W. Bush's WAR OF CHOICE .....

AND NOT NECESSITY .....

IN IRAQ ....

And so ....

[Livyjr]

And while we are on the subject .....

Of the monumental stupidity .....

And towering acts of folly .....

That have gotten us ....

QUITE PREDICTABLY .....

MIRED DOWN IN A QUAGMIRE .....

Over there in Iraq .....

And the "TRUTH FINALLY BEING OUTED" .....

Although it might now be way too late ....

For that truth .....

To do OUR military forces in Iraq ....

Who are the ones bogged down .....

In Iraq .....

Right in the heart of the quicksand ....

Much good ....

We have ....

"TV ads raise ire of GOP - Sweeney camp, national committee want stations to pull spots on Iraq funding"

By TIM O'BRIEN, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, August 24, 2006

TROY -- Congressman John Sweeney's campaign is seeing red over a pair of television ads that depict him as being caught "red-handed" backing the misuse of funds in Iraq.

MoveOn.org, a left-leaning political action group, is running the television ads on four area stations until Sept. 1.

The "issue ads" are funded by the political group and not by Sweeney's opponent in the 20th Congressional District race, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand.

Maureen Donovan, Sweeney's campaign spokeswoman, sent a letter to area TV stations Wednesday demanding the ads not be aired, saying they falsely accuse the congressman of wrongdoing.

The National Republican Congressional Committee joined the fray over the ads, one of which ran in four other congressional districts.

"This is another false and misleading ad from a group that believes our military should not be funded," said NRCC spokesman Ed Patru.

One ad depicts a truck dumping cash in Iraq.

The voice-over asks:

"What happened to the $300 billion we sent to Iraq?"

"Halliburton got 18 billion."

"Nine billion is just plain missing."

"And our congressman, John Sweeney, has been caught red-handed, voting for all of it."

The ad shows Sweeney with his hand tinted red.

Donovan and Patru object, saying that the unaccounted-for $8.8 billion did not come from funds authorized by Congress.

"That had nothing to do with congressional oversight."

"t came out of the Iraqi oil for food program," Patru said.

"The majority of House Democrats, including the leadership, voted to support Iraq funding eight times going back to 2003."

Both the Sweeney camp and the national committee also said Congress does not authorize the contracts with Halliburton or other contractors.

"There was never a vote on funding Halliburton," Patru said.

Tom Mattzie, Washington director for MoveOn.org, defended the ads.

"The ads are accurate," he said.

"He has continually voted to fund the war without any questions for the Bush administration."

Steve Baboulis, vice president and general manager for WNYT Ch. 13, said he will run the ads and let viewers decide whether they are fair.

"Our general philosophy is that we run it."

"In the forum of ideas, we run these things unless it is blatantly, patently false," he said.

Robert Furlong, general manager of WRGB Ch. 6, hadn't seen either Sweeney's letter or the ad when reached Wednesday afternoon.

He said his main concern is to make sure the ad is neither graphic nor full of bad language.

"There's a freedom of speech issue here," Furlong said.

"It is their opinion, or is it patently false?"

"I've got to sit and take a look at the spot."

Baboulis disputed Donovan's assertion the "caught red-handed" theme implies Sweeney committed a crime or some other misdeed.

"In the text itself and if anyone watches the ad carefully, they don't say that," he said.

"They never really say he did anything illegal."

"It's really beyond the scope of a broadcaster to be the censor of these things," he continued.

"If we were in the business of not running these ads every time someone wrote to us, we'd never run these ads."

Donovan disagreed and said the campaign team would meet today discuss its options on how to respond.

She said there ought to be some venue for appealing such decisions by network affiliates.

"That's problematic because they are going to air something that is totally untruthful," Donovan said.

"It's the duty of the radio and TV stations to fact-check that."

O'Brien can be reached at 454-5096 or by e-mail at tobrien@timesunion.com.

end quotes

"LEFT-LEANING" ......

Good old Timmy O'Brien .....

We haven't seen much of "REPUBLICAN TIMMY" up here lately .....

He has actually been quite silent ....

And now .....

Like the good REPUBLICAN SCRIBE that he is ......

Just before the November congressional races coming up .....

Here comes "REPUBLICAN TIMMY" .....

And his "brush" .....

With which he is now going to start painting anyone opposed to the REPUBLICANS ....

As being "LEFTIES" ......

Ready to sell out OUR America .....

To anyone with the nickel .....

Or dime .....

To buy it with ....

Since OUR America .....

Is always for sale ...

To the highest bidder .....

As "REPUBLICAN TIMMY" well knows .....

Having shilled for the REPUBLICANS so long .....

As they sell out OUR America every day ......

And themselves as well ....

TO WHOMEVER HAS THE MONEY TO BUY THEM WITH .....

And so ...

[Livyjr]

And from the "GROUND ZERO" .....

Of REPUBLICAN George Pataki's CORRUPT REPUBLICAN CAPITAL .....

Of Albany, New York .....

We have ......

VIOLENCE, AS USUAL .....

While REPUBLICAN GEORGE PATAKI .....

And "HEY, JACKIE BOY, HEY, JOHNNIE" Sweeney .....

Try to convince us ......

That all of OUR problems .....

Are over there in the quicksand of Iraq ......

WHICH IS BULL **** ......

I know a young man .....

Who is a Police Officer down there in the CORRUPT PATAKI CAPITAL .....

Of Albany, New York ....

And the other night ....

He tussled with .....

And arrested, finally .....

A fifteen-year old .....

Who had a $1200 Ruger .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun .....

Fully loaded .....

And ready for use ....

In his possession ....

And that is just one of a steady wave up here .....

Where George Pataki's CAPITAL CITY ....

Of Albany, New York .....

Is like a run-down version ....

Of the slums of Iraq ....

A vision, perhaps .....

Of what the REPUBLICANS will turn Iraq into .....

If we give them the chance .....

And so ....

"Shots hit 4 on Albany street - One victim "serious" as police hunt for two suspects in First Street shootings"

By MARC PARRY, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, August 24, 2006

ALBANY - Four people were shot on an Arbor Hill street late Wednesday night, leaving at least one man with "serious" injuries, police said.

Three men and a woman were wounded on First Street, between Lexington Avenue and Judson Street, at 9:15 p.m., said Detective James Miller, a police spokesman.

He said one of the victims suffered a "serious" gunshot wound, but stopped short of calling it life-threatening.

The man and another victim were undergoing surgery at Albany Medical Center Hospital, where all four people were taken after police arrived.

The other two victims were in stable condition, Miller said.

Investigators were searching for two men they suspect in the shooting, he said.

The names of the victims were unavailable.

"They're trying to work as quickly as possible to piece this together and identify people responsible so we don't have anything further occur," Miller said.

Police closed off a section of First Street after the shooting.

Sabrina Henderson, 41, of First Street, where she's lived for six months, was in her home when she heard the shooting.

"All I heard was gunshots."

"I stayed in the house," Henderson said, as she waited by police tape to get back in her home just before midnight.

"This street is hot -- stays hot."

"I go to work, (go) in the house, stay there until I go to work."

"I don't go out on this block."

end quotes

Posting stories .....

About people getting shot ....

On the streets .....

In George Pataki's Albany .....

In a lot of ways ...

Is like talking about cars going fast .....

On the interstates up here .....

So generally ...

I don't say anything about the rampant violence up here .....

WHICH IS A DAY-TO-DAY OCCURRENCE .....

But as we head into these November elections .....

With all this talk about "staying the course" in Iraq .....

To "help the alleged reformers" over there .....

MY THOUGHT IS ......

THAT PERHAPS .....

WE SHOULD FIX WHAT IS BROKEN OVER HERE FIRST ......

And a good place for that to start ......

Is right here in Albany, New York .....

Where you can find violence any day of the week .....

And drugs .....

And gunfire .....

Right outside the doors of George Pataki's BUNKER COMPLEX .....

At the top of State Street hill .....

In CORRUPT Albany .....

WHERE YOU NEVER FIND GEORGE PATAKI THESE DAYS ......

And so ....

[Livyjr]

And giving George W. Bush ....

The credit that he believes is due him .....

For bringing down .....

OUR NATIONAL ECONOMY ......

WITH HIS ENDLESS WARS .....

AND NOT MUCH ELSE .....

IN THE WAY OF LEADERSHIP ....

We have .....

"Chill hits house market - Sales of existing homes at 2-year low amid higher mortgage rates, worries about the economy"

By JEANNINE AVERSA, Associated Press
First published: Thursday, August 24, 2006

WASHINGTON -- House hunters shied away from buying in July, driving down sales of previously owned homes to a 2-year low.

The inventory of unsold homes climbed to a new record high.

The new figures, released Wednesday, provided fresh evidence of how much the once-sizzling housing market has cooled.

Prospective home buyers have turned cautious about making such a big-ticket purchase as mortgage rates have gone up and uncertainty has risen over whether the economy and job creation will keep slowing, analysts said.

Existing-home sales dropped 4.1 percent in July from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.33 million units, the National Association of Realtors reported.

That was the lowest level since January 2004.

The latest snapshot of housing activity was weaker than analysts anticipated.

Economists were forecasting the pace of sales to fall to 6.55 million.

Although sales prices for homes are no longer bounding ahead, some prospective buyers are still waiting for better deals -- another factor in the weak showing, economists said.

"Many potential home buyers have been on the sidelines, some kicking the tires but mostly waiting for sellers to compromise on prices and terms," said David Lereah, the association's chief economist.

The median nationwide price of a home sold last month was $230,000, up just 0.9 percent from the same month last year.

The median price is the middle point, where half sell for more and half sell for less.

Meanwhile, the inventory of unsold homes in July rose to a record high of 3.86 million.

At the current sales pace, it would take 7.3 months to exhaust that overhang.

That is the longest period to exhaust the supply of homes since the spring of 1993.

By region, sales tumbled 6.4 percent in the West in July from the previous month.

Sales fell 5.9 percent in the Midwest and 5.4 percent in the Northeast.

In the South, sales dipped 1.2 percent.

Wednesday's report shows that the bloom is off the rose.

For five years running, home sales had hit record highs as low mortgage rates lured buyers.

But the housing sector has lost steam this year as rates have gone up and would-be buyers have grown cautious amid high energy prices and a slowing economy.

Against that backdrop, the Federal Reserve earlier this month decided to halt a rate-raising campaign that had pushed interest rates steadily higher over the last two-plus years to fend off inflation.

The Fed's goal is to raise rates sufficiently to thwart inflation but not enough to hurt the economy.

One of the things that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are watching closely is the housing slowdown.

If home prices and sales were to crash, that could spell big trouble for the overall economy.

Thus far, Bernanke has said the market's slowdown has been fairly orderly and smooth.

Wednesday's figures made some economists worry about the potential for a sharper slowdown in housing.

However, Lereah said he still expects a "soft landing" for the housing sector.

But he urged the Fed to leave interest rates alone and refrain from bumping them up again -- as some analysts have said is a possibility.

The housing sector's transition from a red-hot market to a cool one has important implications for the overall economy.

Consumers who watched their homes rise rapidly in value over the last several years felt wealthy and more inclined to spend.

They also borrowed against their homes -- treating them like ATMs -- to support their spending ways.

But with home values nationwide not going up as much now as the double-digit gains seen in the past several years, consumers have tightened their belts.

That has contributed to a slowing in overall economic activity.

"Once upon a time there was a housing market that allowed homeowners to print money."

"Those days are gone," said Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors.

Recent reports underscore the housing slowdown's impact.

Luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc. on Tuesday reported a sharp drop in third-quarter profits.

One day earlier Lowe's Cos., the nation's second-largest home-improvement chain, warned that a slowing housing market will hurt its earnings for the rest of the year.

Last week, the National Association of Home Builders reported that confidence among builders sank to a 15-year low.

end quotes

I'm still chuckling about a pair of jeans costing $172 .......

Who in their right mind would pay $172 for a pair of jeans ......

And when you consider that these jeans are for teenagers ......

Well .......

I guess those teenagers who would spend $172 for a pair of jeans .....

Must have much better stock-option plans .....

Or something, anyway .....

Than us older fools like me out here in the country do .....

Where a pair of jeans costs about $17 ......

Which is considered high out here .......

But not so out of sight ....

That we will forego buying a pair ....

Every couple of years .....

When we need some ....

And so ....

[Livyjr]

Yes sir .....

If we just "stay the course" .....

Over there in Iraq .....

Everything ......

Will then be all right with OUR world .....

Over here .....

And so ...

BE PATRIOTIC .....

VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICANS .....

They don't cut and run .....

No sir .....

THEY WILL STAY THAT COURSE ...

EVEN THOUGH THERE REALLY NEVER WAS ONE ....

UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT WORTH FIGHTING FOR ....

BECAUSE IT WILL ALL BE GONE ....

WE WILL ALL BE EQUAL ...

EQUALLY DESTITUTE ....

WITH NOTHING LEFT TO FIGHT OVER ....

EXCEPT SCRAPS ....

AND BONES .....

And some grizzle, maybe .....

If we are lucky ....

And so ....

"Stocks fall on housing concerns"

Associated Press
First published: Thursday, August 24, 2006

NEW YORK -- Wall Street fell for a third straight session Wednesday as fresh signs of a housing slump triggered concerns that the economy is slowing too fast and could erode corporate profits.

Investors believed housing sales might be dropping more rapidly than anticipated and theorized a soft landing for the U.S. economy might be more difficult to achieve.

A Federal Reserve official hinted Tuesday that higher interest rates may still be needed to tame inflation, a move that could curtail consumer spending.

Retailers and home builders, which have the most exposure to consumers, led major indexes lower.

"Housing is a relatively important number and clearly an area that has been a driver for the economy, and now we're trying to figure out if the Fed is done or if it needs to do more," said John Caldwell, chief investment strategist for McDonald Investments, the securities unit of Cleveland-based KeyCorp.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 41.94, or 0.37 percent, to 11,297.90.

Combined with Monday's and Tuesday's losses, the drop erased last week's five-day rally, pushing the Dow 0.73 percent from Friday's close.

Broader stock indicators also fell.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 5.83, or 0.45 percent, to 1,292.99, and the Nasdaq composite index dropped 15.36, or 0.71 percent, to 2,134.66.

Oil prices declined after U.S. government data showed rising supplies of gasoline as refiners increased output.

Light sweet crude for October delivery fell $1.34 to $71.76 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

U.S. home-builder stocks, already trading near yearly lows as housing sales remain depressed this summer, pulled back after the housing data was released.

Toll Brothers Inc. dropped 65 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $24.55.

Pulte Homes Inc., the nation's largest home builder fell $1.02, or 3.5 percent, to $28.09.

end quotes

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! ......

"C'mon, you G** D*** goose ....."

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! ......

"Lay another egg, I'm telling you ..."

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!, WHAM! ......

"You want some more of this ...."

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! ......

"G** D*** goose ..."

[Snuffysmith]

http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src...57D%26symbol%3D

"The Biggest Slump in US Housing in the Last 40 Years"…or 53 Years?
Nouriel Roubini | Aug 23, 2006

“The Biggest Slump in US Housing in the Last 40 Years”: These are not my words but those of the Toll Brothers, the famous luxury McMansions homebuilders. As reported by the WSJ today: In his 40 years as a home builder, Mr. Toll says, he has never seen a slump unfold like the current one. "I've never seen a downturn in housing without a downturn in employment or... some macroeconomic nasty condition that took housing down along with other elements of the economy," he says. "This time, you've got low unemployment, you've got job creation, you've got a stable stock market and relatively low interest rates.". This followed last week’s CNN headline: “Builder: Oversupply slump worst in 40 years. Toll Brothers slashes outlook on new homes as orders plunge and revenue misses forecasts” Indeed, yesterday’s sharply falling profit results from the Toll Brothers confirmed their view that this is the worst housing slump in decades. Similarly, Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide – the country’s largest independent home mortgage lender - recently stated: "I've never seen a soft-landing in 53 years, so we have a ways to go before this levels out. I have to prepare the company for the worst that can happen." So, the only debate now is whether housing conditions are the worst in the last 40 years or in the last 53 years. So much for the bullish soft-landing wishful thinking coming out of Wall Street these days….

Of course, the message from the Toll Brothers and Countrywide is like the proverbial canary in the mine that is reflective of an ongoing rout – calling it slowdown or slump is a misnomer by now – in the US housing market. Every possible indicator of the housing sector that has been coming out in the last few weeks – and I will discuss their details below - suggests that the housing market is in free fall. And today’s figures on existing home sales and unsold homes say it all; as Bloomberg concisely headlined this morning: U.S. Existing-Home Sales Tumble; Unsold Inventory Is Highest in a Decade


At this point there no doubt on whether the housing sector is contracting – real residential investment fell at the annualized rate of 6.4% in Q2. The first derivative of the housing market is clear and negative today and looking ahead for the next few quarters. There is not even a debate about the second derivative of the housing market as any estimate out there suggests that the housing sector will contract at a faster rate in Q3 and Q4 than in Q2. Some official estimates that I have seen suggest that real residential housing will contract at 10% - rather than the Q2 6.4% in the next two quarters. My own estimate – based on a reading of the coming data – is that, actually, the contraction is more likely to be of the order of 12-15% annualized rate in the next several quarters. So, the only remaining scary question is about the third derivative of the housing sector and at which point – in terms of quantities and prices – the housing market will bottom out.


I have also argued before that the effects of housing on US economic growth and the role of housing in tipping the US economy into a recession in early 2007 are more significant than the role that the tech sector bust in 2000 played in tipping the economy into a recession in 2001. There are three reasons:

The direct effect of the fall in residential investment in aggregate demand will be as high as the effects of the fall in real investment in the 2000-2001episode. Then, real investment fell by about 2% of GDP. This time around the fall in residential investment alone – let alone the role other components of real investment, such as software and equipment, that are already falling in Q2 – will be as large as residential investment could fall from the peak of about 6.2% of GDP (the highest level since the 1950s) to as low as 4% of GDP at the bottom in 2007.
The wealth effect of the tech bust was limited to the elite of folks who had stocks in the NASDAQ. The wealth effect of now falling housing prices – yes median prices are starting to fall at the national level - affects every home-owning household: the value of residential real estate has also increased to 48.5% of household wealth in 2006 from from 38.7% in 1996. Also, the link between housing wealth rising, increased home equity withdrawal (HEW) and consumption of durable and non durables is very significant (see RGE’s Christian Menegatti brief on this), much more than the effect of the tech bubbles of the 1990s. Last year, out of the $800 billion of HEW at least $150 or possibly $200 billion was spent on consumption and another good $100 billion plus went into residential investment (i.e. house capital improvements/expansions). It is enough for house price to flatten – as they already did recently – let alone start falling - as they are doing now since they are beginning to fall in major markets – for the wealth effect to disappear, the HEW dribble to low levels and for consumption to sharply fall. Note that this year there will be large increases in the borrowing costs for $1 trillion of ARM’s while this figure for 2007 will be $1.8 trillion. Thus, debt servicing costs for millions of homeowners will sharply increase this year and next.
The employment effects of housing are serious; up to 30% of the employment growth in the last three years was due directly and indirectly to housing. The direct effects are job lost in construction, building materials, real estate brokers and sales agents, and employees of the mortgage finance industry. The indirect effects imply that the role of housing is even larger than 30%. The housing boom led to a boom in consumer durables spending on home appliances and furniture. Indeed, in Q2 real consumption of such goods was already negative: as you have less new home built and purchased and less old homes refurbished and expanded, you get less purchases of home appliances and furniture. There are also other indirect effects of the housing bust on employment, even on the purchases of motor vehicles. Indeed, the current auto sector slump is not unrelated to the housing slump. As the Financial Times put recently, the sharp fall in the sales of Ford's pick-up trucks is related to the housing slump as such truck are widely purchased by real estate contractors. And indeed in Q2 real consumer durables (that include both cars, home appliances and furniture all related to housing) already fell, consistent with the view that we have now have a glut in the stock of consumer durables (durables consumption has a investment-like nature to it as such goods last for a long time). Thus, as housing sector slumps, the job and income and wage losses in housing will percolate throughout the economy.
How bad are the signals coming from the housing sector? As a recent news headline clearly put it: it is simply UGLY. Indeed, all the indicators from the housing sectors - including the latest housing starts and the homebuilders (NAHB) forward looking business conditions - indicate a housing sector that is literally in free fall. New home sales started to fall since the beginning of 2006 and in some regions they are down over 30% relative to a year ago. As Bloomberg summarized today the new housing data: “Sales of previously owned homes in the U.S. fell more than expected in July, resulting in the biggest supply of unsold homes in more than a decade, as higher mortgage rates discouraged would-be home buyers.. Purchases declined 4.1 percent last month to an annual rate of 6.33 million, the lowest since January 2004, from 6.6 million in June, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. Sales fell 11.2 percent compared with a year earlier.” Indeed, the number of unsold homes and the ratio of unsold homes to new home sales has therefore risen sharply to over 5.5 months of supply. Similarly the ratio of unsold homes to existing home sales has also sharply increased. These are clear indicator of a glut of unsold homes in the market. Housing starts are also sharply down elative to a year ago and expected to fall further over the next few quarters. Note also that, while overall mortgage applications are still up in the latest figures published today, due to sustained refinancing applications, applications for purchase applications have fallen 1.0% during the last week, this being fifth fall in the last six weeks. Moreover, there is a large amount of evidence that suggests increasing cancellation of initial mortgage applications, as the slump in the housing market and in the economy is now scaring households considering buying a home. Thus, the official data on purchase mortgage applications are very likely to exceed actual home sales.

More generally, note that when demand for housing initially falls relative to a glut of supply, the initial market response is not on price, as it is the case of financial market where prices adjust rapidly, but rather on the quantity of unsold homes and on how long unsold homes stay on the market. Housing prices, unlike financial assets, are sluggish. This market inventory adjustment eventually leads to lower prices once sellers realize that demand is low and that waiting is not going to help.

The housing market has thus followed so far the predicted various stages of adjustment to cycle driven by the initial housing bubble: initially a glut of supply of new homes as high prices (driven in part by speculative demand) led to high and excessive production of new homes; then a fall in demand as speculative high prices and rising rates made the purchases of housing less affordable to many; then, the ensuing inventory adjustment – an increase in unsold homes. Then, the reduction in the production of new homes – lower housing starts – as homebuilders with falling revenues and profits and lower expected demand finally reacted to the growing glut of unsold inventories. Indeed, the value of home builders’ shares on the NYSE has fallen by almost 50% relative to a year ago. Finally, we have now a price adjustment in two directions: a) an increase in rents as housing affordability fell since more and more households could not afford to pay the speculative prices of existing and new homes; this increase in rents is now correctly jacking up owner equivalent rent and increasing headline CPI inflation; the beginning of a fall in actual housing prices as the glut of unsold homes is now putting downward pressure on actual prices. (for more on recent indicators of the housing bust see the RGE Monitor cluster of readings on housing indicators)

The evidence on falling home prices is now becoming clearer. Since the end of World War II, there has never been a year on year fall in housing prices. There have been instead several quarters in which housing prices declined. Of course in some regions where there were housing busts prices declined for a while: in Texas during the housing bust of the mid 1980s that led to the S&L crisis; in California in the early 1990s following the recession in that state; in Boston in 1990. Those episodes were all associated with the housing bust that was related to the 1990-1991 recession So, you do not need a persistent year-on-year fall in median housing prices to have a housing bust; such bust can occur even if prices are flattening or falling in some regions, but not nationally. Moreover, such regional bust can be associated with national recession, as in the 1990-91 episode. So, the fact that the latest housing bubble was concentrated on the two coasts (North East all the way to Florida; and West Coast, especially California) does not mean that the coming housing bust in these regions will not have national macro effects. For one thing, the value of the housing stock in those two regions is close to 50% of the total housing stock given the bubble of recent years. Thus, a housing bust in the two coasts can and will have macro effects.

Indeed, today the National Association of Realtors reported today that the median price of an existing home rose only 0.9 percent in July from a year ago. So, housing prices are practically flat at the national level. Worse, relative to a year ago housing prices have already fallen in the North East (-2.1%), Mid-West (-0.6%) and the West (-0.3%). So, not only housing prices are falling in the bubbly two coast; they are also starting to fall in the Mid-West, the region where the conventional wisdom was that there was no housing bubble. The fact that home prices are falling in the Mid-West where prices did not skyrocket in the bubble years is a scary signal of how much the housing bust and glut in supply will lead to a sharp fall in housing prices in the quarters ahead with painful effects on the wealth, and thus consumption, of households. You can expect falling median housing prices, on a year-on-year basis, at the national level starting this month of August: indeed, today's figures on the glut of unsold homes - much larger than in the housing bust of the early 1990s - are only consistent with a highly likely actual fall in home prices in the months ahead and throughout most of 2007. Note also that, on an inflation adjusted basis, real home prices (relative to the CPI index) are already falling at a 4% plus rate.

Also, as noted by Dean Baker: "current house price indices are failing to pick up the full decline in prices because they miss the various concessions (seller paid closing costs, buyer-side realtor bonuses, and seller subsidized mortgages) that sellers often use to move their houses."

Even more ominously, futures markets now expect that house prices will fall during 2007. Following the lead and prodding of Robert Shiller – the maverick Yale professor who predicted the 2000 stock bust and is now predicting a housing bust - the Chicago Mercantile Exchange opened this spring a new futures market for house prices in ten U.S. cities. While this market is very new and still relatively illiquid, it is now predicting that U.S. house prices will fall in 2007 at the national average level, for the first time in over fifty years. The index of this futures’ market for the entire US is projecting a 5% price fall in 2007. And the futures contracts for individual cities show expected declines in housing prices even larger than 5% for Miami, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Boston, San Diego, Miami, New York and Las Vegas.

The likely fall in median home prices in 2007 may actually turn out to be larger than the 5% priced in the futures markets. In fact, one of the peculiar features of the latest housing cycle has been the presence of a large housing bubble: prices were going up well above economic fundamentals because of the speculative demand coming from expectations of increased housing prices that were feeding further speculative demand: "condo flipping" is the popular term for this speculative demand. Now that the bubble is bursting the fall in prices will be sharper than the one implied by medium term fundamantals as the initial price increase was due to a bubble that is bursting and leading to a fall in speculative demand: with prices now falling homeowners and speculators have no incentive to buy new homes as they expect prices to be lower in the future. So, expected prices fall leads to fall in speculative and fundamental demand and triggers actual larger than otherwise fall in actual prices. The speculative excess of a price bubble will now bring the bust of this price bubble. While the effect will be slower than in asset markets where prices adjust instantaneously (due to the sluggish nature of housing prices and their slow adjustment to increased inventories) eventually this price adjustment will occur - as it is now - and it will be very persistent over time. So, you can expect falling housing prices throughout most of 2007.

So, the simple conclusion from the analysis above is that this is indeed the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades: every housing indictor is in free fall, including now housing prices. By itself this slump is enough to trigger a US recession: its effects on real residential investment, wealth and consumption, and employment will be more severe than the tech bust that triggered the 2001 recession. And on top of the housing bust, US consumers are facing oil above $70, the delayed effects of rising Fed Fund and long term rates, falling real wages, negative savings, high debt ratios and higher and higher debt servicing ratios. This is the tipping point for the US consumer and the effects will be ugly. Expect the great recession of 2007 to be much nastier, deeper and more protracted than the 2001 recession.

And the housing bust is not going to be only a US phenomenon. As I will discuss in another blog, housing bubbles festered in many other economies including many European ones. Thus, the combination of high oil prices, delayed effects of rising interest rates and slump of housing that is now leading to a US recession is a phenomenon that is common to many other economies, including several European ones. So, expect the same deadly combinations of three ugly bears (slumping housing, high oil prices and rising interest rates) to hammer Goldilocks and sharply hurt Europe and other economies in the world.




Comments

Of course, the National Association of Realtors is trying to put a positive spin on the imploding Housing bubble. Unfortunately, economists like NAR’s David Lereah have been mostly cheerleaders for the credit driven Housing bubble that has seriously damaged the monetary stability of the US Economy.

More evidence of the coming Recession from the California epicenter of the nation’s Housing bubble. According to Austrian Economic theory, the magnitude of the recession will be proportional to the excesses of the prior credit bubble boom. With million dollar McMansions overbuilt from coast to coast, the hangover will be a devastating hurricane to the debt bubble driven US Economy.

California Home Sales Down 25.3% in Q2
http://www.contactomagazine.com/calhomesales0808.htm

” The decline in housing sales has spread nationwide, with the number of deals falling in 28 states, including California, during the second quarter, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.

Nationally, the number of resale home purchases dropped 7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.69 million homes, the group said. In California, the number of deals was down 25.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 460,500 homes. “


Written by Dave Chiang on 2006-08-23 09:59:34
Of course, the National Association of Realtors is trying to put a positive spin on the imploding Housing bubble. Unfortunately, economists like NAR’s David Lereah have been mostly cheerleaders for the credit driven Housing bubble that has seriously damaged the monetary stability of the US Economy.

More evidence of the coming Recession from the California epicenter of the nation’s Housing bubble. According to Austrian Economic theory, the magnitude of the recession will be proportional to the excesses of the prior credit bubble boom. With million dollar McMansions overbuilt from coast to coast, the hangover will be a devastating hurricane to the debt bubble driven US Economy.

California Home Sales Down 25.3% in Q2
http://www.contactomagazine.com/calhomesales0808.htm

” The decline in housing sales has spread nationwide, with the number of deals falling in 28 states, including California, during the second quarter, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.

Nationally, the number of resale home purchases dropped 7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.69 million homes, the group said. In California, the number of deals was down 25.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 460,500 homes. “


Written by Dave Chiang on 2006-08-23 09:59:34
For a taste of what is to come for the US McMansion Housing bubble, the luxury condo market in Shanghai China has gone bust. Luxury Housing Prices collapse 10% in one week.
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1855956,00.html

" Others blame a housing market swamped with swanky apartment blocks and luxury villas. In a single week last month, residential prices in Shanghai fell 10%.

From the top floor of its sleek, luxury apartment blocks in the Pudong development zone, you can, say the brochures, look out across the Huangpu river at one of the world's most futuristic skylines.

Since it opened in October last year, the waterfront development has failed to attract a single buyer for any of its 74 apartments. The situation is so desperate that Tomson has decided to put a second block out to global public tender. "

My comment: The article fails to mention that the Chinese government has slammed the brakes on the Shanghai property bubble by imposing high short-term capital gains taxes on the sale of real estate. The Shanghai property bubble would have imploded sooner or later, but monetary authorities need to address asset bubbles in their policy decisions. Not all of China is impacted by a property bubble; mostly the luxury condo and villa market in Shanghai and Beijing. The same also holds true for the United States where property bubble gains in Chicago never matched New York, Boston, or San Francisco.

[Livyjr]

I have just started to read the book Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor ......

And my advice to George W. Bush .....

Before he goes and feeds us any more malarky ....

About the "NEED" .....

For us to be in Iraq ....

And about letting down any alleged "reformists" .....

Anywhere in the world ....

WHICH IS PURE INVENTION ON HIS PART .....

TO TUG AT OUR EMOTIONAL HEARTSTRINGS ...

SO AS TO DISTRACT US .....

IN THIS HOUR ....

OF OUR NATION'S NEED ....

WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES ....

"ADRIFT AT SEA" .....

Over there in Iraq .....

Without any leadership at the helm of OUR national government ...

Is that George W. Bush himself .....

Ought to read this book .....

AND THEN .....

Any national debate that we have on this subject of Iraq ....

And OUR alleged need to be over there ......

Should be based upon the documented AMERICAN HISTORY .....

That is contained .....

In just the first twenty or so pages .....

Of this one book .....

The Iraq Liberation Act

October 31, 1998

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 31, 1998

Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998."

This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers.

Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are:

The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member.

This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home.

I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up.

Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else.

The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life.

My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership.

In the meantime, while the United States continues to look to the Security Council's efforts to keep the current regime's behavior in check, we look forward to new leadership in Iraq that has the support of the Iraqi people.

The United States is providing support to opposition groups from all sectors of the Iraqi community that could lead to a popularly supported government.

On October 21, 1998, I signed into law the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, which made $8 million available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition.

This assistance is intended to help the democratic opposition unify, work together more effectively, and articulate the aspirations of the Iraqi people for a pluralistic, participatory political system that will include all of Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups.

As required by the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for FY 1998 (Public Law 105-174), the Department of State submitted a report to the Congress on plans to establish a program to support the democratic opposition.

My Administration, as required by that statute, has also begun to implement a program to compile information regarding allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes by Iraq's current leaders as a step towards bringing to justice those directly responsible for such acts.

The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 provides additional, discretionary authorities under which my Administration can act to further the objectives I outlined above.

There are, of course, other important elements of U.S. policy.

These include the maintenance of U.N. Security Council support efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons and missile programs and economic sanctions that continue to deny the regime the means to reconstitute those threats to international peace and security.

United States support for the Iraqi opposition will be carried out consistent with those policy objectives as well.

Similarly, U.S. support must be attuned to what the opposition can effectively make use of as it develops over time.

With those observations, I sign H.R. 4655 into law.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

October 31, 1998.

[Livyjr]

Iraq Liberation Act

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338) [1] (codified in a note to 22 USCS § 2151) is a United States Congressional statement of policy calling for regime change in Iraq.

Findings and Declaration of Policy

The Act found that Iraq had, between 1980 and 1998 (1) committed various and significant violations of International Law, (2) had failed to comply with the obligations to which it had agree following the First Gulf War and (3) further had ignored Resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.

The Act declared that it was the Policy of the United States to support "regime change."

The Act was passed in the House [2] and Senate [3] and signed into law by the US President Bill Clinton on October 31, 1998.

Its stated purpose was: "to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq."

Specifically, Congress made findings of past Iraqi military actions in violation of International Law and that Iraq had denied entry of United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) inspectors into its country to inspect for weapons of mass destruction.

Congress found: "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."

Support for Groups opposed to Hussein

This act required the President to designate one or more qualified recipients of assistance, with the primary requirement being opposition to the present Saddam Hussein regime.

Such groups should, according to the Act, include a broad spectrum of Iraqi individuals, groups, or both, who are opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime, and are committed to democratic values, respect for human rights, peaceful relations with Iraq's neighbors, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, and fostering cooperation among democratic opponents of the Saddam Hussein regime.

On February 4, 1999 President Clinton designated 7 groups as qualifying for assistance under the Act. (see Note to 22 U.S.C. 2151 and 64 Fed. Reg. 67810).

The groups were:

(1) The Iraqi National Accord;

(2) The Iraqi National Congress;

(3) The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan;

(4) The Kurdistan Democratic Party;

(5) The Movement for Constitutional Monarchy;

(6) The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and

(7) The Supreme Council for The Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The Act authorized the President to assist all such groups with: broadcasting assistance (for radio and television broadcasting), military assistance (education and training of an army),and humanitarian assistance (for individuals fleeing Saddam Hussein).

The Act specifically refused to grant the President authority to use U.S. Military force to achieve its stated goals and purposes.

Contemplation of Post Hussein Iraq

The Act contemplated the future need for War Crimes Tribunals in Iraq stating, "The Congress urges the President to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law."

A generalized statement of policy toward the post-Hussein Iraq was also set forth stating, "It is the sense of the Congress that once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing immediate and substantial humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, by providing democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals, and by convening Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response to Iraq's foreign debt incurred by Saddam Hussein's regime."

Precursor to War

President George W. Bush has often referred to the Act and its findings to argue that the Clinton Administration supported regime change in Iraq and further that it believed that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

The Act was cited as a basis of support in the Congressional Authorization for use of Military Force Against Iraq in October of 2002 (Public Law 107–243—OCT. 16, 2002) [4].

External links

Original text of act
Statement by the President upon signing the Act into Law

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act