Political Interest

GOP Leadsrship is Out to Lunch

The Congresssional wing of the GOP may be even more out of touch than the Bush administration.  In an ideological reation to Katrina, which exposed the economic and racial divides in 2005 America so starkly, the conservatives have embraced a big political loser in casting about for offsets. 

The house has fixated on the total number of $50 billion.  But, instead of going after bloated highway projects, farm subsidys, or oil company give aways, they have gone after groups without lobbyists, groups that don't give campaign contributions.  This from the NY Times:

The House plan, to be approved by the Budget Committee this week, will present lawmakers with some tough decisions through its potential reductions in spending on food stamps and school lunch programs, Medicaid and farm subsidies, among others.

In the Senate, the Republican leadership also urged committee chairmen to look for more than $35 billion in savings, and the $39 billion plan to be debated this week before an expected vote on Thursday is a result.

Sorry poor kids, no lunch today, you have to be the ones to pay for Katrina.

While having a positive agenda is sometimes nice, after the Bankruptcy Bill, the Energy Bill give away, and now this, throw these bums out would be enough of a positive.

In a sense the outing of CIA agent Valerie Wilson, aka Plame, is just another part of the entire triumph of politics over substance in the Bush White House.  This administration is driven by the desire to obtain and wield power, but has little understanding of what to with it.

So the appointment of political cronies to public safety positions is tollerated, or sycophant staffers as Supreme Court nominees, huge budget deficits are driven up as political "due," and national security assets are attacked if that advances the administartion's political interest.  The Boston Globe picks up on the connection in an analysis piece:

This leadership strategy involves rallying intense groups of supporters and striking out against critics. It helped win President Bush many close votes in Congress in his first term and a narrow, hard-fought reelection victory.

But when the White House applied the same approach to building the case for the Iraq war, it found itself in battles not just with Democrats but also with parts of its own government, including the CIA.

The fierce prowar leanings of Libby, combined with the partisan warfare perfected by presidential adviser Karl Rove, led to a legal and political disaster for the administration.

The Plame scandal is a dirct product of the Bush/Rove political strategy and part of a larger pattern of failure only now unforlding.

Wrong Way George

An astoundingly high percentage of the population thinks we are headed in the wrong direction.  The numbers from the SurveyUSA poll show a dissatisfaction that goes across the board.  Donkey Rising, has the details:

SurveyUSA recently released a set of fifty statewide surveys that show just how large the constituency for change is becoming. In each state, these surveys asked “In general, do you think the country is headed in the right direction or wrong direction?” When combined and weighted by population, these surveys indicate that, nationwide, just 29 percent of adults think the country is going in the right direction and 66 percent think it is going in the wrong direction. But it is the state-by-state results that provide the really interesting findings. As the SurveyUSA report notes:

In not a single state do 50 percent of adults think the country is headed in the right direction.

In only five states (Utah, Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska) do 40 percent of adults think the country is headed in the right direction.

In twenty-five states, fewer than 30 percent of adults think the country is headed in the right direction.

Wal-Mart: No Diabetics Need Apply

Wal-mart, according in an internal memo, is taking some extreme steps to lower health care costs, including discouraging 'unhealthy' applicants.  This summary is from the New York Times:

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

As much as it flopped in the general election, actions like these show why Kerry's health care plan, in which the government pays for catastrophic care, or something like it is desperately needed.  The politics too may be changing as Americans watch cynical contortions like Wal-Mart's and companies profits get squeezed.

Bush Launches Global War On Satire

OK, the Bush White House is officially in full blown Nixonian paranoia mode. According to the NY Times the Bush administration is going after the Onion, ostensibly to protect the official Presidential seal.

You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (www.theonion.com/content/node/40121), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

Miers Nomination Adds to Republican Sleaze Factor

Ah, the snowballing incompetence of the Harriett Miers nomination.  It looks like we may be able to add sleazy to the charges of being unqualified and having unknown/non-existent legal views.

Knight Ridder reports that Miers may have gotten a sweetheart from her political allies deal selling some land to the state of Texas.

The windfall came after a judge who received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Miers' law firm appointed a close professional associate of Miers and an outspoken property-rights activist to the three-person panel that determined how much the state should pay.

The resulting six-figure payout to the Miers family in 2000 was despite the state’s objections to the "excessive” amount and to the process used to set the price. The panel recommended paying nearly $5 a square foot for land that was valued at less than 30 cents a square foot.

Mediation efforts in 2003 reduced the award from $106,915 to $80,915, but Miers, who controls the family’s interest in the land, hasn’t reimbursed the state for the $26,000 difference, even after Bush appointed her to the Supreme Court.

Bush Mad Libs it on Immigration

The Bush administration proposal on Immigration is exactly the kind of proposal that comes out of a group that only cares about politics and has no interest or understanding of the policy.  They take two competing proposals, in this case by Ted Kennedy and John McCain on one side and Conservative Republicans Jon Kyl and John Cornyn that both have least some policy cohesion and end up with a vague mishmash that makes no sense.  The Washington Post has the details:

Under the proposed temporary worker program, outlined for the first time this week at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing by Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, an estimated 8 million to 11 million illegal immigrants in the country and foreign nationals outside the country could register with the government to work in the United States for three years and later sign up to work for three more.

They would be given biometric identification cards that allow them to travel freely between the United States and their home countries. But at the end of the program, they would be sent home.

Asked by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) how much it would cost to deport 11 million people, Chertoff said "billions and billions and billions of dollars," adding that the idea is not feasible.

But sooner or later, under the administration's proposal, there would be an immigrant exodus of historic proportions.

"It would assume that 11 million would register right away and that at the end of six years 11 million would have to go, " said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the liberal American Immigration Lawyers Association. "People aren't going to report to deport."

The proposal as the asinine feel of something a junior staff came up with by using the Cut and Paste feature on his Word program right before the hearing. 

The Bush White House has reached a state of advanced intellectual decay, which admittedly wasn't a far fall, but every American should be embarrassed by the drivel coming out of this administration.

Bush Foreign Policy Bites: Page A12

Perhaps it is the saddest commentary on the lowly state of the Bush Presidency that fierce attacks by a high ranking and respected former administration members no longer makes much news.  For example, in the washington Post Dan Froomkin picks up what stir there was from the latest blasts, this time from former State Department official Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.

This tellingly via the Financial Times of London:

"In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: 'What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.'

" 'Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.' . . .

While part of the reason this broadside hasn't been more widely covered, compared to Richard Clarke's, is likely that there is not an impending Presidential election and no matter how much Bush sucks were pretty much stuck with him for the next three years.  The other part is that the fact that Bush's foreign policy is clueless is no longer news, the fact that Dick Cheney is running the clueless foreign policy in a secret cabal is no longer news, and the fact that even people formerly within the administration recognize this is no longer news.

Heads They Lose, Tails Thet Lose

This is a big moment leading up to the 2006 elections.  The GOP conservatives are going through a crises in confidence and as a result are going to try to push through some serious cuts in some popular programs combined with yet more tax cuts, according to the NY Times.

Either way this is a loser for GOP. Ff they fail to push it through, they demoralize their base even further.  If they do pass it the Democrats are likely to be able to use this as a very effective rallying point to bludgeon some vulnerable Republicans.

Investment Advice for Stagflation

James Cramer thinks the US is in order for some serious economic come-uppens thanks to Bush's free spending ways.  What's more he's got some investment advice to help you come out on top by investing in natural resources and foreign companies, read it here.