[Mb-civic] Bush's Dishonest Budget...+Haiti....+ Kucinich on Katrina

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060207/george_bushs_
dishonest_budget.php

George Bush's Dishonest Budget
Robert L. Borosage
February 07, 2006

		Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For 
America's Future, a liberal think tank and advocacy group. CAF is a 
co-founder of the Apollo Alliance program to promote clean energy and 
good jobs.

The budget George W. Bush submitted to the Congress yesterday is a 
lie and a moral disgrace. No surprise. Dead on arrival, it provides little 
more than carrion for what will be a long, vitriolic partisan food fight 
that will largely ignore the true challenges facing this country.

The budget is a lie because it shamelessly omits a true accounting of 
the nation’s financial outlook. To cover the costs of his tax cuts, the 
White House doesn’t supply projections beyond 2011. Its budget 
excludes the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan (to say nothing of Iran) after 
2007. It omits the cost of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax—which 
will total hundreds of billions over the next five years.

The budget is a moral disgrace because it shamelessly calls for 
lavishing benefits on the wealthy—$136,000 annually for those earning 
over a million a year—while inflicting pain on the most 
vulnerable—cuts in food programs for the impoverished elderly, in 
child care for poor working mothers, in preventive health care for 
vulnerable children. It would even eliminate Social Security’s token 
death benefit ($225) that helps poor families defray some of the cost of 
burial. It lavishes more than $500 billion—one half of all discretionary 
spending—on the Pentagon, the largest source of waste, fraud and 
abuse in the federal government.

But this is simply business as usual for this administration. The worst 
spending cuts will be resisted and the Congress—while lining up to 
vote for the bloated military—is likely to defer most of the tax cuts. But 
the entire debate will leave Americans even more in the dark about 
how deep a hole we are in.

Much of the vitriol from both conservatives and Democrats will focus 
on the budget deficit. The president claims his plans will cut the deficit 
in half as a percentage of GDP over the next five years. Democrats are 
already exposing the omissions that make Bush’s promises a joke. But 
the ensuing partisan barrages will drown out any mention of the 
staggering deficit ignored by both parties—the investment deficit in 
areas vital to our future.

Consider energy independence. The Apollo Alliance has called for a 
$30-billion-a-year, 10-year investment program that would generate 
more than 3.3 million jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. 
By investing in energy efficiency and alternative energies, we could 
generate good jobs here, reduce our trade deficits, capture the 
growing green markets of the future, help clean our air and reduce 
respiratory diseases and begin to address the real and present danger 
of global warming. The president made a rhetorical bow to this 
imperative when he called for ending our “addiction to oil” in his State 
of the Union address. But there’s no 12-step program in his budget. 
Bush’s budget actually cuts funding for energy efficiency, and for 
research on hydropower and geothermal energy. In an annual budget 
of $2.7 trillion, $30 billion a year is a pittance, but the president is intent 
on putting a lid on domestic spending—not willing to add anything 
beyond the military and homeland security.

Consider education. Every American is taught the importance of 
getting a decent education. Yet, we’re not even providing the basics for 
children—infant health and nutrition, pre-school, small classes in early 
grades, skilled teachers, after-school programs, help for schools that 
aren’t working, and a guarantee that college is affordable. Bush’s 
budget reduces spending on education, training and related social 
services by 20 percent. Poor schools will get less money. The 
president once more breaks his promise to fund his own education 
reforms. He breaks his promise to raise Pell Grants, the basic college 
grant program. In a time when tuitions are soaring, Pell Grants will be 
frozen for the fifth year, and student loans will be more expensive. 
More and more students will be simply be priced out of the education 
that they need and have earned.

This investment deficit—in everything from transportation to modern 
communications to public health— has been building over the last 25 
years of conservative rule. Conservatives are now scorning Bush as a 
big spender. And total federal spending is up as a percentage of the 
economy (GDP) to 20.1 percent since Bush has been in office. But that 
percentage is lower than spending any year from 1960 to 1996. 
Washington is fixated on the budget deficit, but Americans are 
suffering far more from a growing investment deficit.

Similarly, the Bush presentation utterly distorts the debate over 
“entitlements” for seniors. The president is earning praise for 
suggesting cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while warning of the 
impending crisis posed by the retirement of the baby boomers. But the 
true entitlement crisis has little to do with the retiring boomers and 
nothing to do with Social Security. The true problem is our utterly 
broken system of providing health care. We are now devoting more of 
our resources to health care than any industrial nation and suffering 
worse health. The president’s program—paring costs of Medicare and 
Medicaid, subsidizing individualized health insurance—is little more 
than a diversion from the debate we need to have on health care 
reform.

Dishonest figures. Disgraceful priorities. Debates that distort and 
distract. The budget doesn’t even try to estimate the staggering cost to 
the nation of three more years of this lame duck president.


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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/opinion/03fri2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

New York Times     February 3, 2006

Editorial

No Help to Democracy in Haiti

Haiti was a deeply troubled democracy when the Bush administration took
office. Now it is an even more deeply troubled nondemocracy. One thing
contributed to Haiti's present plight, our colleagues Walt Bogdanich and
Jenny Nordberg reported Sunday, was a "democracy building" program
financed by the United States government and run by the International
Republican Institute.

The I.R.I., whose chairman is Senator John McCain and whose president is a
former Bush administration official, is one of four institutes (the others
are affiliated with the Democrats, the United States Chamber of Commerce
and the A.F.L.-C.I.O.) set up during the 1980's to channel taxpayer
dollars toward strengthening democracy in other countries. Congress
intended this financing system to move American support for democracy in
other countries out of the shrouded world of covert intelligence and into
the daylight of political training institutes.

But according to the Times report, which the I.R.I. disputes, much of the
Republican Institute's activities in Haiti from 2001 to 2003 were carried
out in a shadowy world of secret meetings and efforts to isolate and
destabilize the democratically elected government. Diplomats, including
the American ambassador to Haiti in those years, said that the I.R.I.
program worked at cross purposes with the State Department's policy of
promoting compromise between President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his 
many
powerful opponents. It also undercut mediation efforts that appeared
within reach of success.

With all hopes of compromise thwarted, a rebel army led by notorious
criminals and cashiered police officers crossed into Haiti from the
Dominican Republic and drove President Aristide from office. He fled on a
United States-supplied plane after Washington made it clear to him that it
would not protect his life if he remained or defend the democratically
elected government.

That was almost two years ago, and Haiti is worse off today. Murder rules
the slums of Port-au-Prince, and a United Nations peacekeeping force
struggles even to protect itself. Dates for new elections have been
repeatedly postponed. The latest date is now set for next week. We hope
this begins to undo some of the damage done by the kind of I.R.I.
democracy building described in The Times.

***

Juventud Rebelde - Feb 6, 2006 issue
http://www.jrebelde.cu/2006/enero-marzo/feb-2/opinion_elgran.html

The Big Fix

by Dennis Kucinich

"Soon after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans and the Gulf
Coast, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and jobs, President Bush
said the region looked like it had been obliterated by a weapon. It was.
Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction. And the Bush
Administration's indifference to the economic security of New Orleans
residents continues to this day.

"For the 500,000 evacuees still not back in their homes, unemployment is
epidemic: About one-quarter of whites, and one-half of African-Americans,
are still out of work. It's not because jobs are scarce; in fact, there is
a labor shortage in New Orleans. Most of those who have returned from the
Katrina diaspora have found jobs. The massive unemployment is caused by
the lack of housing near the reconstruction job sites.

"The indifferent Bush Administration, through the now-infamous FEMA,
is compounding the unemployment problems of hurricane victims. FEMA
located the largest temporary housing facility for evacuees
ninety-one miles from New Orleans, in Baker, Louisiana. That's hardly a
reasonable commute, especially for low-income folks. Barry Kaufman,
business manager of Local 689 of the Construction and General Laborers,
told the New York Times he had "at least 2,000" evacuees willing to take
cleanup jobs. The trouble was getting them there; the local's hiring hall,
along with thousands of evacuees, has been displaced to Baton Rouge, more
than an hour's drive away.

"So the cleanup jobs are going to out-of-town contractors, young
single out-of-towners and undocumented workers. Not that these folks
are getting a great deal either: President Bush suspended the
Davis-Bacon Act, requiring that the area's average wage be paid on
all federal construction projects. George Miller led the fight in
Congress to roll back that suspension. But the President also lifted
the requirement that all federal contractors have an
affirmative-action plan, and the Department of Homeland Security
granted a waiver to employers from collecting the immigration status
of reconstruction hires.

"Unlike the damage caused by Katrina, these problems are entirely
man-made -- and they can be solved. Several steps can be taken to
address the employment problems the Administration has exacerbated.
First, we need to put housing near jobs. ACORN has recommended that
temporary housing facilities be re-sited in New Orleans, or as near
the city as possible.

"Second, all federal reconstruction contracts, subcontracts and
grants should require corporate recipients to hire locally. A high
standard, such as the 50 percent requirement in Senator Ted Kennedy's
bill, or the 40 percent level in the Congressional Black Caucus's bill,
should be the guide.

"Third, let's recognize that New Orleans today is an extreme
microcosm of America -- saddled with a broken infrastructure and
significant unemployment at a time when federal budget deficits are
peaking and dampening the prospects of adequate rebuilding money.
Nationally, estimates of what it will take to fix our crumbling
infrastructure exceed $1 trillion.

"Where will the money come from? Congress should direct the Federal
Reserve to make zero-interest loans available to states and
municipalities for the express purpose of modernizing and repairing
our nation's schools, water systems, bridges and streets. These loans
would be integrated into the normal open-market operations of the Fed,
which controls the nation's money supply in a similar way.

"I will be introducing the Repairing America's Infrastructure Act, a
bill that already has bipartisan support, in the upcoming session of
Congress. While creatively financing the rebuilding of New Orleans,
we can start rebuilding the rest of America's infrastructure -- and
creating good jobs, with fair wages, in the process."


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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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