HI Ed, My cousin Thom Irwin reminded me that the best deal all around is LA Times' Calendar Live which gets him access to the whole paper and its archives for $10/yr. Comics are separate so he subscribed to Comix.com, gets most of what the times carries for another $10/yr and no paper at all! That's the best deal of all! and nothing to recycle (which is all the paper is good for just about anyway - happy chanukah - Judy [and to all, Ed No afternoon mailing today - fam time]
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit NY Newsday - Dec 11, 2004 http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/newyork/politics/nyc-anal1212,0,3886499.story?coll=nyc-homepage-headlines Guiliani Political Stock in Doubt by Glenn Thrush Staff Writer The short, embarrassing nomination of Bernard Kerik ended with a whimper and so, too, has Rudolph Giuliani's Teflon period -- a three-year stretch when his status as "America's Mayor" largely obscured his own shortcomings and the foibles of close associates. Giuliani is still regarded as a serious presidential contender in 2008, but his political stock seems to have taken its first major tumble since he emerged as a national figure after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The Kerik debacle has also raised doubts about Giuliani's judgment in pushing his protege's nomination, considering Kerik's nanny troubles and an emerging string of unflattering business, personal and legal entanglements. "It's an embarrassment for Giuliani if Giuliani wants to be president," said GOP consultant Nelson Warfield, who was Bob Dole's press secretary during the 1996 presidential campaign. "He's Kerik's biggest promoter and either he was reckless or uninformed, and neither of those things qualifies you for president. You'll never find anyone to say it, but this is a big negative with the Bush White House." The Kerik firestorm, fueled by a New York media all too familiar with Giuliani and his aides, may portend even more intense scrutiny of Giuliani if he seeks national office. The contrite former mayor, who was practically welded to President George W. Bush during the final weeks of the campaign, seems to have gotten the message. At a Manhattan news conference yesterday, Giuliani said, "It's an embarrassment to me and to Bernie and those of us who supported him." On Friday night, he apologized directly to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. "I'll speak to the president a little later," Giuliani said yesterday. "I told Andy that this is our responsibility. I'm sorry, we don't want to do anything to distract the administration." Giuliani and Bush won't have to wait long to hash things out face-to-face. Both are scheduled to attend a holiday function at the White House later today, according to a source close to Giuliani. Although local politicians publicly crowed about the former NYPD commissioner's nomination, many also expressed private doubts about Kerik's fitness to run a department that oversees 22 agencies with a total of 180,000 federal employees. Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed Kerik's selection. But Kerik's feud with current city police Commissioner Ray Kelly, a former high-ranking member of the Clinton administration, was one of the city's worst-kept secrets. No single figure has been so closely associated with Giuliani during or after his City Hall tenure as Kerik. The 49-year-old former top cop, who served as Giuliani's majordomo, confidante, corrections commissioner and business partner, has enjoyed Giuliani's patronage and protection. One national Republican strategist who supports Giuliani said that was part of the problem. "I'm sorry, but the people around him are the Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight," said the strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I've had this conversation with U.S. senators and other party leaders and they all say the same thing: Rudy's got to hire a team of people who are ready for prime time and have a plan." Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. *** Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/12/02/pentagon/print.html The New Pentagon Paper A scathing top-level report, intended for internal consumption, says that Bush's "war on terrorism" is an unmitigated disaster. Of course, the administration is ignoring it. By Sidney Blumenthal Who wrote this -- a pop sociologist, obscure blogger or antiwar playwright? "Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic-- namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is - for Americans -- really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves." This passage is not psychobabble, punditry or monologue. It is a conclusion of the Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, the product of a Pentagon advisory panel, delivered in September, its 102 pages not released to the public during the presidential campaign, but silently slipped onto a Pentagon Web site on Thanksgiving eve, and barely noticed by the U.S. press. The task force of leading strategists and experts within the military, diplomatic corps and academia, and executives from defense-oriented business, was assigned to develop strategy for communications in the "global war on terrorism," including the war in Iraq. It had unfettered access, denied to journalists, to the inner workings of the national security apparatus, and interviewed scores of officials. The mission was not to find fault, but to suggest constructive improvements. There was no intent to contribute to public debate, much less political controversy; the report was written only for internal consumption. The task force discovered more than a chaotic vacuum, a government sector "in crisis," and "Missing are strong leadership strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources, and a culture of measurement and evaluation." Inevitably, as it journeyed deeper into the recesses of the Bush administration's foreign policy, the task force documented the unparalleled failure of its fundamental premises. "America's negative image in world opinion and diminished ability to persuade are consequences of factors other than the failure to implement communications strategies," the report declares. What emerges in this new Pentagon paper is a scathing indictment of an expanding and unmitigated disaster based on stubborn ignorance of the world and failed concepts that bear little relation to empirical reality except insofar as they confirm and incite gathering hatred among Muslims. The Bush administration, according to the Defense Science Board, has misconceived a war on terrorism in the image of the Cold War -- "reflexively" and "without a thought or a care as to whether these were the best responses to a very different strategic situation." Yet the administration seeks out "Cold War models" to cast this "war" against "totalitarian evil." However, the struggle is not the West vs. Islam; nor is it "against the tactic of terrorism." "This is no Cold War," the report insists. While we blindly and confidently call this a "war on terrorism," Muslims "in contrast see a history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration" against "apostate" Arab regimes allied with the U.S. and "Western Modernity -- an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a 'War on Terrorism.'" In this conflict, "wholly unlike the Cold War," the Bush administration's impulse has been to "imitate the routines and bureaucratic responses and mindset that so characterized that era." So the U.S. projects Iraqis and other Arabs as people to be liberated like those "oppressed by Soviet rule." And the U.S. accepts authoritarian Arab regimes as allies against the "radical fighters." All of this is nothing less than a gigantic "strategic mistake." "There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies -- except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends. (Original emphasis.)" Rhetoric about freedom is received as "self-serving hypocrisy," daily highlighted by the U.S. occupation in Iraq. "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies." The "dramatic narrative since 9/11" of the "war on terrorism," Bush's grand justification, his story line connecting all the dots from the World Trade Center to Baghdad, has "borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars." As a result, jihadists have been able to transform themselves from marginal figures in the Muslim world into defenders against invasion and attack with a growing following of millions. "Thus," the report concludes, "the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim World is not one of 'dissemination of information,' or even one of crafting and delivering the 'right' message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none -- the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam. Inevitably therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the 'loud and clear' channel: the enemy." Almost three months ago, the Defense Science Board delivered its report to the White House. But a source on the board told me it has received no word back at all. The report has been studiously, willfully ignored by those in the White House to whom its recommendations are directed. For the Bush administration, expert analysis as a rule is extraneous, as it is making clear to national security professionals in its partisan scapegoating of the CIA. Experts can only be expert in telling the White House what it wants to hear. Expertise is valued, not for the analysis or evidence it offers for correction, but for propaganda and validation. But no one -- not in the Bush White House, the Congress, or the dwindling "coalition of the willing" -- can claim that the ever-widening catastrophe has not been foretold by the best and most objective minds commissioned by the Pentagon -- perhaps for the last time. [Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.] To subscribe: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr *** U.S. Money has Helped Opposition in Ukraine By Matt Kelley The Associated Press Saturday 11 December 2004 Washington - The Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite an exit poll indicating he won last month's disputed runoff election. U.S. officials say the activities don't amount to interference in Ukraine's election, as Russian President Vladimir Putin alleges, but are part of the $1 billion the State Department spends each year trying to build democracy worldwide. No U.S. money was sent directly to Ukrainian political parties, the officials say. In most cases, it was funneled through organizations such as the Eurasia Foundation or through groups aligned with Republicans and Democrats that organized election training, with human rights forums or with independent news outlets. But officials acknowledge that some of the money helped train groups and individuals opposed to the Russian-backed government candidate - people who now call themselves part of the "Orange Revolution." For example, one group that received grants through U.S.-funded foundations is the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, whose Web site has a link to Yushchenko's home page under the heading "partners." Another project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development brought an official with Ukraine's Center for Political and Legal Reforms to Washington, D.C., last year for a three-week training session on political advocacy. "There's this myth that the Americans go into a country and, presto, you get a revolution," said Lorne Craner, a former State Department official who leads the International Republican Institute, which received $25.9 million last year to encourage democracy in Ukraine and more than 50 other countries. "It's not the case that Americans can get 2 million people to turn out on the streets," Craner said. "The people themselves decide to do that." White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, "There's accountability in place. We make sure that money is being used for the purposes for which it's assigned or designated." Since the Ukrainian Supreme Court invalidated the results of the Nov. 21 presidential runoff, Russia and the United States have traded charges of interference. A new election is scheduled for Dec. 26. Opposition leaders, international monitors and Bush's election envoy to Ukraine have said major fraud marred the runoff between Yushchenko and current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was declared the winner. Yushchenko is friendlier toward Europe and the United States than his opponent, who has Putin's support and backing from the current Ukrainian government of President Leonid Kuchma. Putin lauded Yanukovych during state visits to Ukraine within a week of the Oct. 31 election and the Nov. 21 runoff. Yushchenko's backers say Russian support for Yanukovych goes beyond Putin's praise and includes millions of dollars in campaign funding and other assistance. Putin has said Russia has acted "absolutely correctly" with regard to Ukraine. Documents and interviews provide a glimpse into how U.S. money was spent inside Ukraine. "Our money doesn't go to candidates. It goes to the process, the institutions that it takes to run a free and fair election," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. The exit poll, funded by the embassies of the United States and seven other nations and four international foundations, said Yushchenko won the Nov. 21 vote by 54 percent to Yanukovych's 43 percent. Yanukovych and his supporters say the exit poll was skewed. The Ukrainian groups that did the poll of more than 28,000 voters have not said how much the project cost. Neither has the United States. The four foundations involved included three funded by the U.S. government: The National Endowment for Democracy, which receives its money directly from Congress; the Eurasia Foundation, which receives money from the State Department, and the Renaissance Foundation, part of a network of charities funded by billionaire George Soros that receives money from the State Department. Other countries involved included Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Grants from groups funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development also went to the International Center for Policy Studies, a think tank that includes Yushchenko on its supervisory board. The board, however, also comprises several current or former advisers to Kuchma. Craner's Republican-backed group used U.S. money to help Yushchenko arrange meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and GOP leaders in Congress in February 2003. The State Department gave the National Democratic Institute, a group of Democratic foreign policy experts, nearly $48 million for worldwide democracy-building programs last year. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is chairwoman of the institute's board of directors. The institute says representatives of parties in all the blocs that participated in Ukraine's 2002 parliamentary elections have attended its seminars to learn skills such as writing party platforms, organizing bases of voter support and developing party structures. It also has been a main financial and administrative supporter of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, an election watchdog group that said the presidential vote was not conducted fairly. The institute also organized a 35-member team of election observers led by former federal appeals court Judge Abner Mikva for the Nov. 21 runoff vote. Craner's group sent its own team of observers. The U.S. Agency for International Development also funds the Center for Ukrainian Reform Education, which produces radio and TV programs aiming to educate Ukrainian residents about reforming their nation's government and economy. The center also sponsors press clubs and education for journalists. *** State Power Agency Shuts Down The authority was set up in 2001 at the end of the California energy crisis to build plants to generate electricity. But it did not construct any. By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer Sunday, December 12, 2004 SACRAMENTO - State government rarely shrinks, but last week California's 3-year-old public power authority disappeared. Created by Democratic lawmakers in the tumultuous days of blackouts and price spikes, the agency sputtered to a halt after Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed its funding. At least one prominent power expert considers the governor's action a serious mistake because Californians are using more electricity than ever: Peak consumption broke records this year - and some experts warn of tight supplies in Southern California next summer. Spurred by a crisis in which companies such as Enron exploited California's ill-fated attempt at deregulation, making the state the butt of jokes nationwide, the power authority was set up to build electricity generating plants to protect consumers from price-gouging. But it disbanded without constructing a single unit, buying any transmission lines or exercising its ability to borrow up to $5 billion. The Consumer Power and Conservation Financing Authority leaves behind $8 million in debt to utility customers and a couple of clean-energy programs handed off to California's remaining electricity bureaucracy. Its chief accomplishment, observers say, was not the "steel in the ground" promised by early leaders, but something best appreciated by bureaucrats: It helped hostile California energy agencies work together to calculate how much of an electricity reserve the state should have. Launched in the summer of 2001 just as power prices and supplies stabilized, the agency soon became an unhappy reminder of perhaps California's most expensive public policy mistake: a flawed attempt to deregulate the electricity industry that led to blackouts, a utility bankruptcy and billions of dollars of additional electricity costs that residents will shoulder for years. The deregulation disaster helped lead to the historic recall of Gov. Gray Davis last year. Departing power authority Chief Executive Laura Doll said the agency became associated with California's collective shame. "The quest to put a crisis behind you - whether it's a personal crisis or a statewide crisis - is a very strong human instinct," she said, "and California, by the time the power authority really got going, was determined to be beyond the crisis. "There really wasn't an appetite for a major state assertion into the power market," Doll added. Talking on her personal cellphone last week because the authority's telephones had been shut off, Doll said she found it ironic that the authority had been eliminated by a Republican governor even though it had never attempted the "socialist" endeavors Republicans had feared, such as using eminent domain to seize existing power plants, and it worked hard - though unsuccessfully - to help private companies finance the construction of power plants. "We were the agency that was more in line with many of the market issues that the new governor was wrapping his arms around," Doll said. Elimination of the public power authority is consistent with Schwarzenegger's year-old vow to "blow up the boxes" of state government, said Joe Desmond, the governor's top energy advisor. The structure isn't needed, he said, and the programs it began have been spun off to other agencies and utilities. The power authority never had more than three employees and a dozen contractors. It was financed mostly by tapping two long-standing charges on the monthly bills of all utility customers. Though the authority was supposed to pay for itself eventually, the $8 million spent on administration can't be repaid by a defunct agency. In its early days, Davis called the authority a "circuit breaker" that could prevent price-gouging by private companies by guaranteeing that the state would always have more power than it needed. In the end, the agency's accomplishments were much more modest. It played diplomat to the historically hostile Energy Commission and Public Utilities Commission. The authority persuaded state agencies to buy electricity from solar panels that private contractors would install on state buildings. And it spent at least $21 million for a program that pays electricity users to curtail consumption during power shortages or price spikes. The biggest client of that program, the government-run State Water Project, has been paid $14.3 million over the last two years for cutting power use for a total of 14 hours. State regulators have asked Pacific Gas & Electric to manage the program until 2007. State Treasurer Phil Angelides, an early and strong proponent of a public power authority, said he would have liked to see the agency build plants and compete with private generators to the benefit of ratepayers. Just as government intervenes in the healthcare and housing industries to protect the poor, elderly and disabled, he said, the state should protect the people's interest in the power industry. "This is all about the state having some control at the margins," said Angelides, who has expressed interest in running for governor in 2006. Schwarzenegger, he said, "doesn't support public power, doesn't believe in it, and does believe in a fundamentally deregulated market." S. David Freeman, the former head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power who was chairman of the electricity authority from its inception until October 2003, called it "imprudent" to halt the agency's work. He suggested that lawmakers preserve the law that created the agency - just in case. "In my view, it's 1999 again and we're between crises," said Freeman, a public power proponent who played several key energy roles for Davis. "One way to look at it is, these are the kind of agencies that need to be on standby so they can be energized right away. "The governor ought to remember," he said, "that one of the reasons he's governor is that Gray Davis waited too late to do anything." Desmond said Schwarzenegger is determined to head off trouble. Two months ago, the PUC advanced a key Schwarzenegger energy reform by voting to require the state's three big investor-owned utilities to have available by 2006 at least 15% more power than anticipated demand. "It certainly could be tight [next summer]," Desmond said, "but we're not waiting for a problem to happen." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. 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