-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 15:15:53 +0000 From: Robert Sterling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Konformist: 8-20 Update: Shrub Still Evil To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ Double-click this line for list subscription options ] Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Chin081401/chin081401.html Part-time White House resident, full-time fascist By Larry Chin August 14, 2001—The average American continues to swallow the stereotype that George W. Bush is a laid-back lightweight papa's boy with limited intellect. It has been reinforced continuously throughout W's political career, and is daily fodder for Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show joke writers. Like all stereotypes, the characterization has elements of truth as well as the substance of absolute deception. The "golfin' and fishin W" image has been used opportunistically as a propaganda weapon by agents of the Bush family, with the express purpose of obscuring dark underlying realities. Yes, George W. Bush is ignorant and lazy. Yes, he is a figurehead. But he is also a vicious opportunist. These things are not mutually exclusive. However inarticulate he is, Bush is well versed in ruthlessness and spite. With a limited knowledge of world affairs and zealous embrace of ideology, he has given free reign to his hatreds, with help from a network of corrupt backers and operatives. Being insulated by privilege and a secret police family has cloaked Bush with a powerful arrogance that is unmistakable in his smirk. One dangerous figure of a prior era possessed a similarly limited intellect and poor work ethic, and more than enough will to bring the world to the brink of destruction. His name was Adolf Hitler. He conducted much of his "work" from his mountain retreat in Bavaria. In the past week, much has been made of Bush's month-long stay in Crawford, Texas. The Jay Lenos and Craig Kilborns of the world have yucked it up over Bush's "laziness," while the rightward corporate media has obediently spun the Bush retreat into a "brilliant" political move to "govern America from the heartland." Lost during this intentional media superficiality is the fact that the Bush juggernaut rumbles on unabated, and barely slowed by a Senate led by centrist Democrats and ignored by the vast majority of average Americans. In just the past week alone, the following occurred during the alleged Bush "break": Bush signed legislation limiting federal funds for embryonic stem cell research, a move designed to appease Christian right-wing/pro- birth zealots, while potentially handicapping medical research for generations. Bush's "decision" came after active huddling with exclusively right-wing lobbyists, and propagandists Karl Rove and Karen Hughes (who wrote his nationally-televised speech). Bush is now pushing to ban private companies from broader stem cell research. Bush and Cheney moved swiftly to expand oil and gas drilling in Western states, including unspoiled lands from the Great Plains to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The great global energy grab continues. The "Plan Colombia" phony counter-narcotics military campaign in Colombia intensified. With Bush administration support, paramilitary forces escalated their murderous attacks on peasant "insurgents" and "left-wing" guerilla forces, while the Bush team has continued pushing for the elimination of caps on federal funds for "civilian contractors" who are fielding private mercenary armies with CIA assistance. That is plenty of damage for one week. Bush is no harmless bungler asleep at the political wheel. He is a dimwitted and vindictive assassin, flung to the top by corrupt forces and mass ignorance, occupying the central role on the world stage. Where he does his dirty work—whether from a golf course, or a stolen Oval Office—is irrelevant. ***** Bush Inc. Releases Quarterly Earnings Report Daniel Kurtzman, AlterNet August 14, 2001 WASHINGTON -- Shares of Bush Inc. (NYSE: SHRUB) moved higher today after the company reported second-quarter results that beat analysts' low expectations, with strength in its energy businesses offsetting weakness in its intelligence and communications divisions. Bush Inc., corporate America's leading financial service provider, reported a record increase in income, fueled by a $1.35 trillion tax cut that is expected to provide a hefty dividend to the company's shareholders for years to come. Skyrocketing gasoline and wholesale energy prices also helped the company post strong gains in its core businesses. Those gains helped the company overcome steep losses in its Arctic and European ventures, as well as a crisis in consumer confidence created by management's controversial decision to give its top corporate investors control over company policy. The company's stock, which has fallen out of favor in recent months after trading at an all-time high at the end of April, rebounded on today's earnings announcement. The stock had been faltering ever since the company's chairman, George W. Bush, made a series of confusing, nonsensical public statements that left analysts wondering whether he had a coherent strategic vision or even understood his company's own business plan. Dick Cheney, president and chief executive officer of Bush Inc., said the company has succeeded by remaining focused on the bottom line. "Even in a down market, we've been able to provide our investors a high rate of return by diverting cash flows away from unprofitable enterprises and offering dividend payments that our competitors simply can't match," Cheney said. The company sought to lower expectations earlier this year when it issued a warning in the face of what it said was a looming recession, prompting media analysts to lower their target for the stock. Analysts had expected the Washington, D.C.-based company to return a net operating loss, but the company instead posted its strongest quarterly gains since the company first released its new corporate service product, Bush 2.0 -- a more easily manipulated, dumbed-down version of Bush 1.0. This marks the 26th consecutive quarter in which Bush Inc. has beat analysts' low expectations, dating back to its initial public offering in 1994, when it was just a fledgling start-up given no realistic chance of competing with industry rivals. Media analysts have predicted operating losses each quarter, but the company has slipped in ahead of consensus estimates every time. The company's rise from obscurity and remarkable run of success has turned it into a Wall Street darling. Following a hostile takeover of its chief competitor last year, the company relocated from Austin, Texas to Washington, D.C., and since then, its stock has skyrocketed. "Expectations rise above that which is expected," Bush said in a conference call with reporters, adding, "They misunderestimated me." Some of the company's remaining competitors, meanwhile, have complained that the consensus estimates for Bush Inc. have been consistently set too low, and that the company has tried to keep it that way in order to easily surpass forecasts. "They've been manipulating the market from day one and benefiting from positive media buzz after clearing the lowest possible thresholds," said one Wall Street insider who asked not to be identified. Cheney defended his company's practices. He said that while being honest with consumers may be a sign of "personal virtue, it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive profiteering strategy." Cheney said he hopes the $1.35 trillion dividend payout will make Bush Inc. an attractive long-term buy, although he acknowledged that the company will actually have to borrow money and possibly begin issuing junk bonds in order to make the payments. Bush Inc., a spin-off of its parent company, Bush Ltd., is owned by Philip Morris, BP (ARCO), Amway, News Corp/FOX, Enron, Citigroup, MCI Worldcom, Federal Express, Pfizer, Chevron Texaco, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Revlon, Limited Inc, Glaxo-Wellcome, Disney/ABC, Anheuser- Busch, ADM, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Schering-Plough and dozens of other corporations with smaller stakes in the company. Today's earnings announcement triggered a strong rally in those stocks, as well as across-the-board gains by energy, tobacco and pharmaceutical stocks. All other stocks fell to new 52-week lows. Daniel Kurtzman is a San Francisco-based writer and former Washington political correspondent. He runs About.com's political humor Web site. ***** Bush's Challenge: Globalization Good for The Poor Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, AlterNet August 7, 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------------- George Bush has thrown down the gauntlet, issuing a public challenge to the anti-corporate globalization movement. When hundreds of thousands last month demonstrated against the G-8 meeting of rich country leaders in Genoa, Italy, George Bush decried the activists, saying it was the advocates of corporate globalization who genuinely are seeking to advance the interests of the world's poor. It's not enough to mock Bush's pretension of being a defender of the poor by pointing out that, through his giant tax cut, the president has overseen one of the history's great transfers of wealth to the rich in U.S. history. Critics must respond to his claims. Unfortunately, that turns out to be a remarkably easy challenge to meet. The last 20 years of corporate globalization, even measured by the preferred indicators of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, have been a disaster for the world's poor. Over the last two decades, Latin America has experienced stagnant growth, and African countries have seen incomes plummet. The only developing countries that have done well in the last two decades are those Asian countries that ignored the standard prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank. The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) has published compelling data comparing growth rates from 1980 to 2000 (during the period of ascending IMF/World Bank power, when countries throughout the developing world adhered to the IMF/Bank structural adjustment policy package of slashing government spending, privatizating government-owned enterprises, liberalizing trade, orienting economies to exports and opening up countries to exploitative foreign investment) with the previous 20 year period (when many poor countries focused more on developing their own productive capacity and meeting local needs). The results: "89 countries -- 77 percent, or more than three-fourths - - saw their per capita rate of growth fall by at least five percentage points from the period (1960-1980) to the period (1980- 2000). Only 14 countries -- 13 percent -- saw their per capita rate of growth rise by that much from (1960-1980) to (1980-2000)." CEPR found that the growth slowdown has been so severe that "18 countries -- including several in Africa -- would have more than twice as much income per person as they have today, if they had maintained the rate of growth in the last two decades that they had in the previous two decades. The average Mexican would have nearly twice as much income today, and the average Brazilian much more than twice as much, if not for the slowdown of economic growth over the last two decades." A follow-up CEPR study used a similar methodology to look at social indicators. CEPR found that progress in reducing infant mortality, reducing child mortality, increasing literacy and increasing access to education has all slowed during the period of corporate globalization, especially in developing countries. The CEPR global comparisons across time show the bottomline, combined effect of the specific policy components of corporate-friendly policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank and enforced by free trade agreements. These include the following: * Trade Liberalization -- The elimination of tariff protections for agriculture and industries in developing countries often leads to mass layoffs and displacement of the rural poor. In Mexico, for example, opening to U.S. agriculture imports has forced millions of poor farmers, who find themselves unable to compete with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, off the land. * Privatization -- IMF and World Bank structural adjustment policies typically call for the sell off of government-owned enterprises to private owners, often foreign investors. Privatization is regularly associated with layoffs and pay cuts for workers in the privatized enterprises. * Cuts in government spending -- Reductions in government spending frequently reduce the ability of the government to provide services to the poor, exacerbating the social pain from rural displacement and industrial layoffs. * Imposition of user fees -- Many IMF and World Bank loans and programs call for the imposition of "user fees" -- charges for the use of government-provided services like schools, health clinics and clean drinking water. For very poor people, even modest charges may result in the denial of access to services. * Export promotion -- Under structural adjustment programs, countries undertake a variety of measures to promote exports, at the expense of production for domestic needs. In the rural sector, the export orientation is often associated with the displacement of poor people who grow food for their own consumption, as their land is taken over by large plantations growing crops for foreign markets. * Higher interest rates -- Attractive to foreign investors, higher interest rates exert a recessionary effect on national economies, leading to higher rates of joblessness. Small businesses, often operated by women, find it more difficult to gain access to affordable credit, and often are unable to survive. Advancing the interests of the poor has nothing to do with the corporate globalization agenda. This agenda is driven first by profit- seeking, and second by ideology. But the corporate globalizers are nothing if not ambitious. They are seeking now to push fast-track negotiating authority through the U.S. Congress, to force all of Latin America into a NAFTA-style trade and investment agreement, launch a new World Trade Organization negotiating round, and intensify the IMF and World Bank's ability to impose structural adjustment through a sham debt relief process. To lessen preventable human suffering, it is imperative that the protesters continue to build the movement against corporate globalization, with everything from street protests to citizen lobbying of Congress. Another world is indeed possible, as the protesters are asserting. But for now the immediate challenge is to stop the corporate globalizers from making the existing one worse. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.- based Multinational Monitor. ***** Published on Wednesday, August 8, 2001 in the San Jose Mercury News Bush Plan Could Turn Phony Crisis Into A Real Social Security Disaster by Theodore Roszak ON July 20, President Bush's Social Security commission issued the most alarmist official analysis of our national retirement system to date. If what the commission says is true, it calls seriously into question the president's $1.3 trillion tax cut. As the economy weakens, a cut of that size is bound to undermine Social Security by eroding the budget surplus created to guarantee its solvency. Or is that exactly what the administration would like to see happen in order to prove its case against Social Security? So far, everything we've heard about Social Security going broke has been ideologically skewed to favor the interests of the brokerage industry and right-wing think tanks like the Cato Institute and Concord Coalition. How do anti-entitlements conservatives conclude that Social Security is in trouble? By choosing statistics deliberately meant to panic the public. They assume a growth rate even lower than Social Security's hyper-modest estimate of 1 or 2 percent. They assume that health care inflation will continue at today's high rate forever. Most frighteningly, they assume the United States government won't be able to honor the Treasury bonds in the Social Security trust fund. They leave unexplained how the Treasury could default on just those bonds and not on all of its bonds held in private portfolios, a catastrophe that would create global chaos. Helped by the news media -- always in search of ``sky-is-falling'' sensationalism -- such predictions have done a superb job of obfuscating the issue. Certainly those who reject big government programs on principle have a right to advocate privatizing Social Security. But surrounding one's proposal with false rumors of doom distorts the historical record. Social Security underwent its last major adjustment in 1982 when Alan Greenspan designed a formula to earmark funds for the retirement of the baby boomers through about 2040. The budget surplus that is now such a political football was generated by that fix. But that fix, which will see every last boomer into retirement, needs to adjust for the longevity Americans enjoy. Starting with the boomers, the life expectancy of future generations may reach to age 90 and beyond. There are several ways to cope with that. The Social Security tax, which is divided between employers and employees, could be gradually raised (say by one-tenth of a percentage point per year) from 12.4 percent of payroll to 14.5 percent. Or we might combine that with removing the $80,400 cap on earnings taxable for Social Security or perhaps with making capital gains taxable for Social Security. The Social Security Administration estimates that such reforms would achieve actuarial balance for the next 75 years. Whenever you hear how ``painful'' it will be to save Social Security, note the extent of that pain: an imperceptible increase in the payroll tax to pay for the many extra years of life modern medicine has given us. That's all it takes. Only those who oppose any increase in taxes can see that as intolerable. The most important fact about the Social Security ``crisis'' is that, as things now stand, there is no crisis. Our economy is more than productive enough to afford a generous retirement for its workforce. That's why Social Security has enough resources (in current taxes and Treasury bonds) to pay its bills for the next generation. Those who would privatize the system are asking us to place more trust in the brokers who gave us the dot-com debacle than in a program boasting a 60-year record of fiduciary reliability and backed by the full faith and credit of the Congress. If there was ever a Catch-22, the Social Security issue is it. Those best qualified to discuss reforming the system are those who recognize there's no need for reform. As financial columnist Jane Bryant Quinn observes, ``Contrary to popular belief, Social Security isn't going bankrupt. . . . The problems are fixable, with incremental changes in benefits, taxes and, eventually, borrowing.'' (For a more detailed explanation of these options, see ``Social Security: The Phony Crisis,'' by Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot.) But by opting for tax cuts and ``star wars'' spending that will devour the surplus, the Bush administration could make sure that the phony Social Security crisis becomes a real one. The president insists the surplus belongs to the people. That's true. So do fiscal obligations like the national debt and the cost of entitlements. The Social Security surplus is the nest egg Americans have quite responsibly set aside over the past 20 years to provide for baby boomer retirement. Squander that money, and dire predictions about the future of the system could come true. Theodore Roszak's latest book is ``Longevity Revolution: As Boomers Become Elders'' (Berkeley Hills Books, www.berkeleyhills.com). © 2001 The Mercury News ***** Americans United for Separation of Church and State 518 C Street, NE Washington, D.C. 20002 202-466-3234 telephone 202-466-2587 fax http://www.au.org WHITE HOUSE SECRETLY ASSURED RELIGIOUS RIGHT THAT FAITH-BASED FUNDING PLAN WILL ALLOW RELIGIOUS GROUPS TO PROSELYTIZE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S 'STEALTH' STRATEGY IS 'SCANDALOUS DUPLICITY,' CHARGES AU'S LYNN The Bush administration has quietly assured conservative Christians that a voucher scheme and other loopholes in the "faith-based initiative" will allow religious groups to proselytize in publicly funded programs, an evangelical news magazine has reported. According to the August 4 issue of World magazine, White House officials carefully manipulated press and congressional scrutiny to divert attention from provisions of the "faith-based" bill that would allow evangelism in government-subsidized social services run by churches. The magazine article, written by Marvin Olasky (a former Bush adviser who coined the term "compassionate conservatism"), quotes a "TeamBush insider" as saying that "biblical and secular teaching could be interwoven [in publicly funded programs], 'as long as you do it right and keep separate books.'" The sources told Olasky that Department of Justice senior counsel Carl Esbeck "is a master at writing vague language" and that the bill would permit proselytism, despite the appearance of tight restrictions against religious pressure. According to World, "The executive said that a homeless shelter that had, say, a short sermon after dinner could still have it by offering those who came a choice between writing a paper after dinner or listening to the message." The story also says the Bush administration sees a little-noticed voucher provision in the bill as broadly opening the door to evangelism with public funds. An "executive close to the White House" told the magazine that the fight over proselytism restrictions on direct grants is "all a show" to distract the attention of the news media and congressional critics. Reported the magazine: "What's truly important in the legislation, he said, is a 'stealth provision' about vouchers: 'Let people argue over grants, but get the vouchers passed.'" Americans United for Separation of Church and State charged the White House with "scandalous duplicity." Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, "This is worse that the White House/Salvation Army deal. Bush administration officials are intentionally running a campaign of deception to get the 'faith-based' initiative through Congress. This is scandalous duplicity. "If administration officials have to stoop to these kinds of tactics to get this scheme through," Lynn continued, "they have truly lost their moral and ethical compass. I hope moderate Senators will reject any such deals with the devil if they take up the faith-based proposal." Americans United, a Washington, D.C.-based church-state watchdog group, has spearheaded opposition to the Bush "faith-based" initiative. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. 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