"N.M. Hands Over Millions," says a headline in today’s Albuquerque Journal.
The sub-head says "Ohio firm to dole out state’s investment cash without the ‘Monday-morning quarterbacking’ of public comment.
Wow! Handing over millions. Without public comment. Sounds scandalous, no?
Turns out that the state has hired a private investment firm (Fort Washington Group Capital Partners) to handle the direct investment program. about $200 million of the state’s permanent funds of $12 billion. That the private firm cannot make any money until it pays the state $30 million. That if an investment goes south, the firm has the fiduciary responsibility. That it manages similar programs for Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
Oh, and about that "Hands Over Millions" part – the story says Fort Washington cannot make an investment without unanimous agreement of a board that includes one or two officers from the State Investment Council.
Good headline writing? I don’t think so.
Turning to page B4, we find this headline:
"Outsourcing is a Tonic for U.S."
Not "Industry Report Backs Outsourcing," which would be accurate. The headline doesn’t even say there’s a report; that’s in the sub-head.
In the story, we learn that the Information Technology Association commissioned the report. There is no identification of this industry group, no hint that it may have a vested interest in the conclusions.
In fact, the story tells us that the US has lost 104,000 job to low-paid foreigners and that the demand for American software engineers will continue to decline through 2008. That’s a tonic? Oh, turns out that the head of the ITAA says, "assuming the recovery continues…." the number of IT jobs will actually increase. He doesn’t say when.
So where did this headline come from? Not from the reporter's lead, which is the traditional place to work from. She said there was a report and that it contained a prediction. Did it turn the industry leader’s prediction into a truth? Or was it based on the report’s projection – translation, "guess" - that outsourcing will create 317,000 U.S. jobs in 2008?
Whatever the case, how can a professional come up with "Outsourcing is a Tonic for U.S."
PS The reporter never referred to the ongoing debate on outsourcing, never thought it worthwhile to get another view.
Understandable, I guess. She has a job.
A. The lead story in today’s Albuquerque Journal ranks New Mexico institutions of higher learning according to their "major crime and in liquor and drug law violations." The statistics come from the US Department of Education.
So the federal government distinguishes between alcohol and other drugs. And the state’s major newspaper accepts the distinction.
There is one, of course – alcohol is (mostly) legal, the others illegal. But alcohol is a drug and this unthinking practice of distinguishing it from the other drugs is obfuscation, pure and simple.
B. "More than two years after the Bush Administration won pledges of support from dozens of countries eager to join the war on terrorism, Washington and its allies still keep a jealous hold on intelligence – snarling the information-sharing needed to shut down alQaeda."
That is the lead sentence of an Associated Press story also on the Journal front page this morning.
If the author, one Dafna Linzer, were in my employ or my journalism class, we would first discuss clunky prose, then move on to the virtues of rewriting.
Also, why Ms. Linzer chose not to put quotation marks around "the war on terrorism."
I would have to concede that she is not alone in failing to question that formulation.
And compliment her on writing an important story.
Sharon a Crook?
Israel’s state prosecutor is charging Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister, with taking bribes from a local businessman.
I don’t like Sharon. His policy toward the Palestinians is short-sighted, almost as bad as the PLO policy toward Israel.
This news item, however, reminds me that Israel is a democracy. Can you imagine anybody charging Arafat with corruption? And living, I mean.
The Pentagon contract for the 100 aerial refueling tankers was worth $23.5 billion.
First, the Air Force gave Boeing five months to rewrite the specs.
It gave Airbus, a competitor, 12 days to bid on the deal.
Boeing’s bid met only seven of the 26 original capabilities the Air Force required.
Airbus met 20 of them.
And Airbus said it would do the job for $10 billion less than Boeing promised.
Guess who got the contract? Right.
How do we know this? Sen. John McCain, chairman of Senate Commerce, demanded the documents in the case, which has been under investigation for more than two years.
Who runs the Pentagon? That upstanding defender of the American Way of Life, Donald Rumsfeld.
In fairness, Pentagon procurement scandals go way back and have happened under Democratic and Republican administrations. And McCain is a Republican, too.
Fact is, the military-industrial complex is just that and its corruption is endemic.
This weekend, Musical Theater Southwest inaugurated an intimate space, the Ana Chavira Theater, just west of its big auditorium. The first production "Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill", will play for two more weekends.
It’s one of those shows that relies on singers (four) and an onstage pianist; a very few spoken words trace Weill’s musical career from his native Germany to New York City.
The first act leaned on "Three Penny Opera", "Happy End" and "Mahogonny" The second revived Weill’s work for shows like "Johnny Johnson", "Knickerbocker Holiday", "Street Scene" and "Cry the Beloved Country".
Act One seemed very long. Act Two was pleasant.
I sensed that the performers, three of them young Americans, failed to grasp the pessimism and cynicism of the Weill who wrote in Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s.
They did better, I think, with his American music in the second half. Not that he became a cockeyed optimist – there is plenty of sadness in September Song, Lonely House and Lost in the Stars. But that’s sadness, not despair, and a far cry from Pirate Jenny and Surabaya Johnny.
I love Weill’s bluesy decadent early work; what might he have done with Cabaret? But as an American, I cannot help but thank my lucky stars I grew up singing "I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy."
Hope gets you pretty far in life.
I have just finished reading "The Price of Loyalty," Ron Suskind’s book on "the education" of Paul O’Neill, the first Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush Administration.
You remember that it created a brief stir earlier this year. Newspaper and magazine reports focused on O’Neill’s revelation that the White House was exploring war on Iraq even before 9/11 and his sense that George W. Bush was unresponsive, almost disengaged in meetings.
But there’s more. O’Neill describes an Administration where, in his view, ideology trumps the facts, particularly in economic policy. Where there are no systems set up for rational consideration of policy. No give-and-take discussion. And the Vice-President is brilliantly, quietly, in charge.
You may remember the White House response to O’Neill – ridicule. I get the sense he was a bit naïve, but given what the President and his men are trying to do to Richard Clarke, O’Neill’s impressions are worth reading.
Incidentally, there are a few pages on Saudi Arabia. In the aftermath of 9/11, O’Neill’s operatives set about tracing the financial backers of terrorism. There were a few successes, but their efforts to penetrate the Saudi Arabian connection ran into a stone wall.
In mid-November, 2001, O’Neill hobnobbed with representatives of "virtually the entire American power structure…" at a party at Prince Bandar’s estate. He remembers the Saudi emissary saying his nation was "doing everything possible to help America in these trying times."
Given the complexity of issues, the political gamesmanship and the White House’s fierce attack on his credibility, it can be difficult to zero in on the essentials of Richard Clarke’s testimony.
Here it is:
"The reason that I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is that by invading Iraq - something I was not asked by the commission - but by invading Iraq, the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Clarke said that yesterday.
He said a lot more about the Administration’s mindset when it came to power (interested in old issues, uninterested in alQaeda) and its expressed desire to go after Iraq from the outset.
(Note that Paul O’Neill, the Bush Administration’s first Secretary of the Treasury, said the same in the recent book by Ron Suskind, "The Price of Loyalty.")
But the key point is that Clarke - professional counter-terrorism guy and Republican - says Iraq weakened the war on the terrorists guilty of 9/11.
This is obviously true. It is also why the White House is doing what it can to destroy Clarke.
Will Americans understand this? It’s too early to tell.
.
I always do things backwards.
Having finished a four-weekend run in the Musical Theater Southwest production of "South Pacific" – I played a crusty but good-hearted Navy Captain - I borrowed James Michener’s "Tales of the South Pacific" (1947) from the library.
It’s a heck of a book. Michener, who was in the Navy during WW II, tells a bunch of short stories about US Navy personnel, French expatriates and natives of the Pacific that ring true and keep one reading. (I’m not sure they add up to a novel, but that’s an academic concern.)
The experience at MTS was instructive. I was very impressed with how well organized the director and assistant were; in two months they mounted a musical with lots of actors, singers and dancers and two little kids, all this on a stage not yet converted from movie-to-playhouse and lacking a pit for the musicians.
The number and importance of volunteers was new to me. Albuquerque Little Theater and Adobe use very few by contrast. MTS was a tiny bit bureaucratic, too, compared to those smaller operations. But the bureaucracy was supportive.
My fellow cast members were the most fascinating. What a talented bunch! I remain surprised that a not-very-big town like Albuquerque has a persuasive Emile de Becque running a family insurance agency. That there’s a splendid Nellie Forbush studying business ethics at UNM. (She tried to study her text between scenes.) Also, a handsome young ministerial student up to the challenges of Lt. Cable. And it is little short of mind-boggling that the town boasts a day-trader (yeah, he uses the Net to gamble on Wall Street’s up-and-downs) capable of a superior performance as Luther Billis, even when that Seabee belly dances!
Most of the Seabees and Nurses were young and it is my sense that they found "South Pacific" a foreign land. If so, that’s understandable. It was 60-odd years ago and looking back at that last "good" war, Americans were naïve and romantic.
These kids would be at home in "Cabaret" and "Chicago" shows etched in the acids of skepticism and cynicism, portraying human frailty and disintegration, big on cruelty and sex. So they did well coping with the hope, transcendence, sacrifice and love that Rodgers and Hammerstein lifted from Michener’s less idealistic portraits and landscapes.
I wrote my item on the White House's major effort to undermine Richard Clarke's credibility too soon. Before Vice President Chaney's intervention, that is.
How wonderful that he made his comments on the Rush Limbaugh show!
I was struck by the way Jon Stewart dealt with the story on the Daily Show last night. He reedited comments from National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and the White House press secretary to show how they used almost the exact same words and phrases in their separate attacks on Clarke.
The Daily Show bills itself as a fake news program. Seems to me that exercise was real journalism.
In his syndicated column published this morning, John Leo, one of the Albuquerque Journal’s kinder conservatives and a serious basketball player in his youth (see "Note" below) says he thinks Christians and Jews see a different movie when they watch Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ."
He’s probably correct though I think he might have broadened the point by saying "believer" and "unbeliever."
I don’t know if my own views of the film are worth expressing; unable to take the brutality, I left the theater early.
It is worth noting, however, that many Jewish critics – even those very worried that Gibson was fanning the flames of anti-Semitism - did not say the film should be banned or boycotted. (At least, I read nothing of the kind.)
In a democracy, we have the right to critique, complain, criticize. But we undermine our society each time we limit the free expression of ideas.
Jews understand that.
I wish all Americans did.
Note: John Leo and I worked for the Bergen Evening Record, now The Record, in 1959, I think. We played hoops once or twice. He was good.
The White House has come out, guns blazing, to undercut Richard Clarke. Condoleeza Rice herself, her top aide and the White House press secretary have gone before the TV cameras. Rice said he didn't know what was going on. The press secretary said Clarke's charges were ridiculous. Off-camera, it’s being suggested that Clarke has personal and political reasons for what he’s done.
What has Clarke done? He has written a book saying that Bush and his top advisers paid little or no attention to alQaeda before 9/11. That after 9/11, Bush and Rumsfeld wanted to go after Iraq, even pressured him to find an Iraq- alQaeda link.
Worse yet, Clarke says Bush’s war on Iraq weakened the war on terrorism.
I don’t find any of this new. So why the quick, powerful response?
Because Clarke has credibility. He worked in counter-terrorism under Reagan, the first Bush, Clinton and the current Bush. And nothing threatens the President’s hope for reelection as much as the idea that he has been weak in fighting terrorism.
Clarke is scheduled to testify before the "independent" commission this week.
I expect the members of that panel loyal to Bush will treat him roughly. How will he stand up to it? Will anybodycome to his defense?
The plot thickens.
The FDA, worried, wants new warnings affixed to the labels of some anti-depressants. And it wants doctors to be careful in writing prescriptions for them. Why? They may make young people, in particular, suicidal.
Wonder who put these drugs on the market? Wonder no more. FDA did.
I’m so old I remember when the FDA tried to keep dangerous drugs off the market.
Of the three requests for money arriving in today’s mail, I threw out two.
But after reading of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s efforts to protect American wilderness and beauty against the Administration, I threw a few bucks their way. And smiled at myself.
Remember "Beyond the Fringe"? I have never forgotten that funny revue written by and starring Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and a fourth gentleman whose name escapes me. (He and Moore later did a movie together.)
I remember, in particular, a war sketch set not far from the front lines.
A distinguished British officer paces before a line of troops, stops and addresses them, looking for volunteers:
"At this point in the war, men, what we need is a futile gesture."
I’m entitled to my own futile gesture, right?
Charles Krauthammer, the rightist columnist, begins his opus on Spain and terrorism (Albuquerque Journal, 3/21/04) this way:
"When confronting an existential enemy - an enemy that wants to terminate your very existence – there are only two choices: appeasement or war.":
There you have it. Pure moral thinking. Either-or. With us or against us.
Moral thinking is automatic, of course; we all have to work hard to avoid it. But Krauthammer uses it as a political technique, a way to frame the debate so that we do not see alternatives.
First, the idea of a war on terrorism is stupid. Terrorism is a tactic, not a gang or a state, which will survive long after we are all dead.
Secondly, there are ways to combat alQaeda's terrorism without appeasement and without conducting war the way George W. Bush is, in a manner that probably is fostering terrorism rather than diminishing it.
Consider:
He knocked off Afghanistan's Islamic fundamentalist government but let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.
He gave Kabul an acceptable new government but not Afghanistan, which he forgot in order to pursue another agenda. (No wonder the Taliban routinely wage war there two years after their "defeat.")
He attacked the secular tyrant in Iraq, thereby suggesting our war is with all Muslims, not only murderous religious zealots.
He has done little or nothing to change the political and economic realities underlying the birth of terrorism.
Ah, but that might mean focusing on the Saudis, might it not?
Krauthammer doesn’t even mention the Saudi schools that teach anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism.
I am not surprised.
PS To mark the first year of the US attack on Iraq, demonstrators here and elsewhere rallied against the US presence there, calling on President Bush to withdraw our troops.
The war on Iraq was a terrible mistake. It does not follow that US troops should leave Iraq now. There's a new situation. Ah, but the affliction of automatic thinking is not limited to the Right.
Every month I post my Albuquerque Tribune column (New Wrinkles in Aging)
when it appears on the third Thursday.
Sorry to be late. Here it is:
3/18/2004
[Beyond big words, goodness abounds]
[by Arthur Alpert]
Think educators torture the language most? Maybe, but I figure social workers are worse. Steel yourself. Here’s proof:
"In implementing a biopsychosocial model…"
"The particular NORC’s SSP paradigm maximizes the delivery…"
"The methodologies implemented result in efficiencies of scale, reductions in redundancy…"
Still awake? Good, because I found a human story behind the gobbledygook.
Understand, first, that nine out of ten older people want to live out their lives at home. Independently. And that – by moving or staying put – they often wind up living near each other.
The sociologists’ acronym for these places is NORCs, Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities.
So might it be more effective and efficient to bring services to the elderly at NORCs? Healthcare, for example, counseling, transportation, delivered meals, financial management, help around the house.
Enter the Jewish Family Service. Having corralled some federal dollars to test this "Aging in Place" idea, they involved everybody and his brother, including the Department of Senior Affairs, Catholic Charities, UNM, United Way, HealthSouth Rehabilitation, AARP and the State Agency on Aging.
It’s too early to grade the experiment, but visiting the Santa Barbara Apartments, a NORC, I got a feel for it.
Sara Dennett, 64, a retired oil industry accountant, told me "hardly anybody ever leaves" the residence in the heart of Martineztown. Of course, the house is lovely, but it’s also true non-drivers enjoy a shuttle bus and some help with cleaning and shopping.
Dennett herself takes care of a fellow resident who’s 91. "And we’re hoping to help Sara (with him)," chips in Pat Meyer, a NORC case manager.
Tony Lopez, a roofer who worked himself up to general contractor, remembers with pride when he labored 16 to 18 hour-days seven days a week. Those were the good times, before he encountered health problems so tough he’s had 14 surgeries. And his downtown neighborhood was crime-ridden.
Only 61, Tony says Santa Barbara is "best place I’ve ever lived in. No noise. You need a key to get in." He really appreciates the delivered meals, too.
Everybody said "You must see Eliza Armenta’s apartment. It’s always the neatest." Armenta, 67, came to Santa Barbara two years ago from the old family home in Duranes.
Case managers Meyer, Tracy Tucker and Trudy Valdez have visited all eight residents to assess their needs. Their first step – extending meal deliveries from five to seven days. Next, they’d love to connect residents to the Jewish Community Center gym, then swing them into social activities at the Barelas Senior Center.
Pondering this, I kept coming back to the age question. Sara, Tony and Eliza are my juniors. In fact, Tony just missed being a boomer. Yes, the first baby boomers turn 60 in 2006.
Duh! Boomers are the point, which Art Fine, JFS executive director, had tried to get through my skull earlier.
"Whether they go the senior centers or don’t, whether they use SunTran or don’t," Fine said, "they’re all going to be living somewhere, they’re all going to need some level of services. Because the goal is to help people maintain their independence as long as possible, keeping them out of institutions."
Hmm. Sounds rational. Humane. What the community should explore. Where my taxes ought to go.
It’s all so worthwhile, I may forgive the profession for implementing its paradigms and other biopsychosocial cruelties.
Alpert’s column appears in the Neighborhood Tribune the third Thursday of the month. Reach him at alpertstruth.com.
Yesterday, I remarked that the Albuquerque Tribune is abandoning its traditional liberal stance and moving toward balance in both editorials and columnists.
In today’s Tribune, Editor Phil Casaus writes about that very subject. He says (if I read him correctly) that we cannot describe the Tribune as liberal or rightist. And he seems pleased.
It's a reasonable stance on the part of the Tribune. But it is too bad. The Albuquerque Journal, you see, isn’t balanced. It not only carries more right-wing views than left, including some far-out types, but offers only mild liberals.
So, as I was saying, the marketplace of ideas lists to the right.
We used to have a preponderance of rightist editorials and columnists in the morning Albuquerque Journal and mostly liberal arguments in the afternoon Albuquerque Tribune.
Now the Tribune is moving rightward in its editorials and seems to be seeking a 50/50 split of right and left wing columnists.
Result: overall, the town’s marketplace of ideas has moved rightward.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Spain, Newsweek (3/22) wrote a cover story headlined "Europe’s 9/11"?
Here are three excepts:
1. "Now," says Milt Bearden, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, "I think the [terror threat] has metastasized to the point where we haven’t got a clue where it will pop up next."
2. A former senior counter-terrorism official in the Bush Administration points out that "there have been more major terror attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than in the 30 months before. I think we may have cut off alQaeda's head, but the rest of the body is working fine and has spawned 10 more smaller heads."
3. After all the attacks, from NY to Baghdad to Madrid, this much is painfully clear: the threat is spreading over a wider and wider area.
Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe wrote:
"The Spanish lesson is that fighting AlQaeda has clearly been undercut by the preoccupation with Iraq."
Of course, it has, just as some of us warned that it would. Iraq was a major distraction from, not a continuation of any so-called "war on terrorism."
So why – given that President Bush is seen by 50% of Americans as "strong" against terrorism - isn’t the Democratic candidate for President hammering away at that theme?
Because he isn’t Howard Dean.
Because he voted to give the President the right to go to war which makes it kinda tough to explain what Bush did wrong.
Too bad, huh?
Why did we invade Iraq? You and I and others have discussed all kinds of possibilities including fear of Hussein’s WMDs (thus far non-existent), punishing him for helping alQaeda (unproven), US desire for oil (also unproven) and a policy of ignorant idealism perpetrated by a cabal of neo-conservatives.
To my mind, the last is the explanation that most closely accounts for the facts.
But Ian Buruma’s OP-ED piece in today’s New York Times forces me to add another answer to the question of why - lack of intelligence. I use "intelligence" to mean "ability to think."
"One year later," Buruma writes, "most of the stated reasons for invading Iraq have been discredited. But advocates of the war still have one compelling argument: our troops are not there to impose American values or even Western values, but "universal" ones. The underlying assumption is that the United States itself represents these universal values, and that freedom to pursue happiness, to elect our own leaders and to trade in open markets, should be shared by all, regardless of creed, history, race or culture.
…..history shows that the forceful imposition of even decent ideas in the claim of universalism tends to backfire — creating not converts but enemies who will do anything to defend their blood and soil."
Buruma offers lessons from history to back his thesis before returning to the current mess:
"Arab and Muslim extremism may never become as lethal or powerful as the 20th-century German strain, but it has already taken a terrible toll. Once again a nation with a universalist mission to liberate the world is creating dangerous enemies (and once again Jews are being blamed). This is not necessarily because the Islamic world hates democracy, but because the use of armed force - combined with the hypocrisy of going after one dictator while coddling others, the arrogant zealotry of some American ideologues and the failures of a ham-handed occupation - are giving America's democratic mission a bad name."
Buruma’s piece makes me wonder how US policymakers ever thought they could bomb Iraq into democracy, the Mideast into modernity. Ignorance of history? Sure, but that’s not a complete explanation. You would also have to be unable to think to reach the cabal’s conclusions.
So add lack of intelligence to the list of explanations of our nation’s murderous mistake.
I was making the point a couple of days ago that the prosecution of Martha Stewart diverts attention from the system.
Today, the New York Times reports credit analysts on the lending side of three distinguished banks — J. P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America — saw increased risks at WorldCom and privately downgraded the company before they helped WorldCom sell $12 billion in debt and without telling the investors.
It was about a year later that WorldCom collapsed, taking the investors with it.
As I was sayng, it’s not individual crooks, it’s the system.
Martha Stewart sure was guilty of stupidity. Greed, too. She may even be guilty of a criminal charge or two. But she's a scapegoat.
Scapegoats capture our attention. Martha has served brilliantly to draw our eyes away from corporate control of government, which permits major businesses to get away with all kinds of cheating legally.
Martha, whose "crimes" hurt almost nobody but herself, has also diverted attention from business statesmen whose actions cost thousands of employees their jobs and life savings, sometimes hurting whole communities. And others who robbed thousands of stockholders.
Think Enron. Think WorldCom, Global Crossing. Think their distinguished accountants. Think their bankers. And think several mutual fund companies who cheated common investors by allowing special privileges to a favored few.
And no, they have not even charged Ken Lay.
A few days ago, President Bush attacked Sen. Kerry for a vote to "gut" US intelligence services in 1995.
Turns out, reports liberal-ish columnist Matthew Miller today, that Kerry wanted to cut "roughly $300 million a year from a roughly $300 billion annual budget."
That's about 1 percent. What would that "gut?"
Miller's conclusion is that the President's charge is "beyond preposterous" and therefore, an intentional deception. He figures it's either a measure of how dumb the White Houise thinks we are or how anxious it is about the election.
I don't. I think this is a story about a White House that knows how to use the press.
Miller's rejoinder, you see, was late. It wasn't in the first stories. How many voters will ever read it?
Fact is, years after Senator Joseph McCarthy burned them with phony lists of "subversives," reporters still accept the statement or event as news, rather than seek immediate context.
So if the truth gets printed, it's the next day or week or month. Better than nothing, I suppose, but not good news for readers.
Journalism 101, anybody?
It was November, 2003. The vote on the Bush Medicare bill was going to be very close and the White House faced a rebellion in Republican ranks. Some GOP conservatives, 13 to be exact, didn't like the huge price tag - $395 billion over 10 years.
The House had to be kept in session late into the night while GOP leaders twisted arms and finally got enough of those reluctant Republicans to go along to win the day. The bill passed by five votes.
Several weeks later, the Administration released a new cost estimate, $551 billion.
Fast forward. In today's Albuquerque Journal, Tony Pugh of Knight Ridder reports that "The government's top expert on Mmedicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush adminsitration cost estimates that could have torpedoed Congressional passage of the Administration-backed Medicare prescription drug plan."
The story says Richard S. Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told colleagues of the threat last June.
Incidentally, the Journal carries an AP story on the same page about Sen. Kerry's comment that his GOP critics are "the most crooked, you know, lying grooup I've ever seen."
Republican leasders in the House and Senate are quoted as saying they were offended and think Kerry should apologize.
Isn't politics wonderful?
Over the weekend, I bumped into an older, retired couple who were bemoaning the good old days when their newspaper employed professional proof readers. Old fogyism, I thought.
Today's morning paper includes an American Profile tabloid supplement with a story about a town in New York that has restored an old train depot.
"The community has since landscaped the sight," it says, "put in a runaround track..."
Landscaped the what?
My apologies to the retired couple.
Dan Rather, in Baghdad, was making a transition in tonight's CBS Evening News from a story on Iraq to another set in Afghanistan, when he said that American forces are "still" hunting (or chasing or pursuing) Osama bin Laden.
Rather is an exceptionally good reporter, but his "still" was misleading.
In fact, American forces have done little to find bin Laden for two years. The nation's military and intelligence forces have been absorbed instead in the planning and execution of the White House war on Iraq.
After letting bin Laden slip away during the conquest of Afghanistan, the Administration never finished the job of freeing that country from the Taliban, never gave President Karzai control of the country and put the task of finding the man most responsible for 9/11/01 on the back burner.
While I think Rather's "still" was just a careless mistake, he probably wouldn't have made it if Governor Dean was still around arguing that the US took its eye off the (bin Laden) ball when it warred on Iraq.
Maybe Sen. Kerry will get around to it.
Everybody knows Social Security is in crisis and it will collapse if we do not reform it quickly.
Everybody may be wrong.
The US Treasury just reported that Social Security and Medicare are $44 trillion in the red. But Paul Krugman, the economist who writes for the NY Times, notes that only 16% of that sum comes from Social Security. Also, most of the combined shortfall, 62% of it, comes after 2077!
Crisis?
There is a fundamental problem. The number of retirees will soon be a flood – the first boomers turned 58 this year – while the number of workers whose Social Security taxes will support them has fallen with the birth rate. "As a result," writes Krugman, "benefit costs will rise by a bout 2% over the next 30 years, and creep up slowly thereafter."
Panic time? Well, if we make the Bush tax cuts permanent now, we will reduce what the federal government takes in by at least 2.5%, he says.
Erase those tax cuts and you have more than taken care of Social Security for a long while.
Krugman doesn’t really go into this, but we should tinker with Social Security, too. Right now, there is no tax on earnings over $87, 900. Getting rid of that cap will bring in more money. Also, we should investigate improving the return on Social Security dollars.
Incidentally, Social Security runs a surplus today, will continue to do so for several years and is fully funded through 2042.
So why the screaming and yelling and tearing out of hair about the imminent demise of Social Security?
First, the agenda of the Right – in particular, the free market fanatic element - is the repeal of the New Deal. Secondly, the "privatization" of Social Security means "investing" billions of tax dollars in the stock and bond markets. Reverse Robin Hood, it’s taking from the poor (and middle class) to give to the rich.
It is just a coincidence, of course, that CATO and other think tanks championing "privatization," are heavily funded by Wall Street individuals and corporations.
PS The Associated Press reports today on still another Wall Street scandal. Seems as many as two dozen individuals at the New York Stock Exchange were involved in illegal trading in stocks. No matter; the Administration cannot wait to risk Social Security money in the casino, often fixed, that we call Wall Street.
George Orwell warned us about the corruption of language.
From Oslo, Norway, today comes the news that George W. Bush has been nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Please identify the writer by political tendency if not by name:
"But Federal spending has increased by 23.7 percent since Bush took office.
There are more non-defense-related federal employees than ever before.
Education has been further federalized...
Bush pulled out all the stops to get Congress to create the biggest new entitlement program - prescription drug coverage for Medicare - in 40 years.
He's proposed an energy bill that Jerry Taylor describes as 'a smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtualy eveyr energy lobby in Washignton.'
And then, of course, there's John Aschcroft's USA PATRIOT Act and the unprecedented expansion of federal law enforcement and surveillance powers..."
The author is David Boaz. The words come from his editorial in the CATO Policy Report (Jan/Feb 2004). CATO is a libertarian-conservative think tank. Boaz edits the Report.
It's worth noting that Boaz goes on to indict the Republican-led Congress and the Democrats, too, for promoting big government. He concludes that the problem is the "permanent ruling class," that the US needs term limits and a "more open, dynamic campaign finance system" to bring back "limited government."
I enjoy this Libertarian criticism of President Bush, but I do not think it carries much political weight. Having read CATO material for years, I know they take regular potshots at corporate welfare. But that is not what they are about. funded by Wall Street and wealthy individuals, they are about destroying the New Deal in the service of the "free market."
When the chips are down, they will support Bush despite what they consider his errors.
PS I have no idea who Jerry Taylor is, but his characterization of Pete Domenici's energy bill rings a bell with me.
PPS I have an idea that a more "open, dynamic campaign finance system" would free corporations and the richest Americans to give as much as they want to candidates so long as they do so publically.
I would prefer total public financing of all campaigns for federal office, but Boaz is correct in rejecting the current system.
What do you think?
"Though Osama bin laden is on the run, alQaida will carry on because it has grown from a ‘movement to an ideology.’
"This is not an entity that can be defeated on the battlefield."
That is what terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, director of the Rand Corporation, told the New Mexico Anti-Defamation League Sunday, reports the Albuquerque Journal this morning.
How surprising!
I try to keep my limitations in mind. You probably are aware of yours, too. And then along come the "experts," like Mr. Hoffman, to retail the obvious. Only then do I realize, as I did during the Vietnam War, that the "experts" never are.
Sometimes I think democracy fails to the extent that we delegate to those we elect and their "experts, " those who give educated counsel.
We have to, of course; we have other concerns. So we allow them discretion, then forget they’re our creatures and eventually concede to them power and respect. I've heard people say in so many words that they have "faith" in our leaders.
Thus, Vietnam. Thus, Iraq.
Sure there are individuals who know more about certain topics than we do. They are not, however, "objective" (whatever that means), so it's a mistake to respect their authority.
If we can, we should participate, make our own decisions. Failing that, we must cultivate not faith, but skepticism.