The union's finances

AUSTIN, Texas -- My fellow Americans, the state of the union's finances is enough to make an Enron accountant gag. When George W. Bush took office, he was handed a going concern. Projected annual surpluses from 2002 to 2011 were $5.6 trillion. In its most recent projection, the Congressional Budget Office says it expects $1.4 trillion in total deficits from 2004 to 2013. Bush's new future spending proposals -- including everything from the goofy manned-flight-to-Mars to the promotion of marriage -- already total an additional $2 trillion.

            When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.7 trillion and his first budget proposed to reduce it by $2 trillion over the next decade. Today, the debt is $7 trillion. Last year, Bush predicted a deficit of $262 billion. According of the CBO, the deficit is currently $480 billion. Bush plans to cut biomedical research, health care, job training and veterans funding, and that still leaves a projected deficit of $450 billion.

Havoc in the cornfields

The prime beneficiary of the Iowa caucuses was the battered Iowa economy, pulling in $100 per voter in the caucuses, spent by the candidates mostly in TV advertising. In terms of political import, history instructs that the victory in these caucuses offers a high likelihood of imminent political extinction. It's true that eons ago, in 1976, Jimmy Carter won there, thus helping to put Iowa on the political map (along with R.W. Apple Jr. of the New York Times, who achieved one of the few contacts with political reality of his entire career by predicting that the peanut broker from Plains would do well).

        Gephardt won in the Iowa caucuses in 1988, and the elixir of that meaningless victory sent the Missouri congressman back to Dubuque time and again, each time to endure humiliation, whose probable finale came on Monday night.

Protect unmarried partners!

HB 272, the Defense of Marriage Act has been assigned to the Ohio Senate Finance and Financial Institutions Committee.  The bill is on an extremely fast track.  The bill is going to have a hearing on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 at 1:00 PM in the Finance Hearing Room in the Ohio Senate AND on Wednesday, January 21, 2004 at 9:00 AM in the Finance Hearing Room.  

THE BILL IS MARKED FOR A VOTE ON WEDNESDAY. We need to take action now!!

Contact via email or phone members of the Committee to let them know that this legislation is bad for Ohio business and would affect unmarried partner households in Ohio, which, according to the 2000 census, make up 5.2% of Ohio's population.  

HB 272 is additionally unnecessary since Ohio law already explicitly states that marriage is between one man and one woman.  This is discriminatory and unnecessary language that will threaten the benefits currently offered by at least 53 public and private employers in Ohio.  Members of the Finance Committee need to vote NO on HB 272.

Members of the Committee:

Senator Bill Harris -- Chair 614-466-8086

Bush and Iraq: the truth at last

Here we have former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill disclosing that George Bush came into office planning to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and MSNBC polls its audience with the question, Did O'Neill betray Bush?

            Is that really the big question? The White House had a sharper nose for the real meat of Leslie Stahl's "60 Minutes" interview with O'Neill and Ron Suskind, the reporter who based much of his expose of the Bush White House, "The Price of Loyalty," on 19,000 government documents O'Neill provided him.

            What bothers the White House is one particular National Security Council (NSC) document shown in the "60 Minutes" interview, clearly drafted in the early weeks of the new administration, which showed plans for the post-invasion dispersal of Iraq's oil assets among the world's great powers, starting with the major oil companies.

Presidential Campaign Fever: Too Much “Vision” Without Hearing

The father of President Bush the Second called it “the vision thing” -- which he was widely presumed to lack. By early 1987, Time magazine reported, George H. W. Bush was using that phrase “in clear exasperation.” Then, as now, journalists seemed to clamor for presidential candidates to seem visionary.

     Many politicians have grandly quoted from the Book of Proverbs: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The biblical invocation plays into the media-fed notion that great leaders succeed when they persevere according to their own lights.

     But such popularized concepts of political leadership -- encouraged by countless journalists -- are long on vision and short on hearing. With apparent self-assurance, politicians often have a way of filtering out the messages they don’t want to hear, even from their own supporters.

     President Lyndon Johnson epitomized the alpha and omega of a leader’s visionary determination. To his enormous credit, he pushed hard for civil rights legislation soon after becoming president. But meanwhile, he plunged ahead with the Vietnam War -- and he didn’t want to hear what many people,

Two posititions available

Students For Recycling is looking for two Coordinator Positions to help out with the innovative program "Dump & Run".  Dump & Run is a non-profit company that is helping OSU and SFR rescue usable items discarded by college students at the end of the school year, selling such items, and donating proceeds to local charities.

We are looking to fill the following positions:

Volunteer Coordinator: We need a detail oriented person to work alongside the Project Coordinator, Sale Coordinator, Publicity Coordinator, and Fundraising Coordinator to help organize 40-60 volunteers.  Primary responsibilities of the volunteers will be staffing drop off locations and collecting goods.  No experience is needed, just an enthusiasm for working with awesome people!

Publicity Coordinator: We need an outgoing person to help out with the Design Contest, press releases, organizing flyering, contacting the media and getting Brutus to our Yard Sale!  This is a rewarding job that gives you great experience!

The Truth is Out: Kucinich is the choice of progressives

U.S. Cong. Dennis Kucinich has scored a resounding victory in the online straw poll held by alternative news site Truthout.org. With almost 25,000 votes cast, the maverick Presidential candidate from Ohio had secured 44.5% of the total, more than 12 points ahead of his closest rival, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. For the Kucinich campaign, this is a significant development. Truthout is frequented by many mainstream progressives, similar to the constituency that gave Dean an impressive victory in last Spring's MoveOn.org poll.

Why are we going to do it again?

 AUSTIN, Texas -- My long-reigning favorite Bushism has now been edged out by a fresh contender I cannot resist. The old fave goes back to Oct. 4, 2001, when Bush, still trying to reassure a shaky nation, said, "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates."

            I didn't think he could top that, but there is something so winningly confused about my new No. 1. This is from Paul O'Neill's report of the large meeting in November 2002 about a second round of tax cuts. O'Neill argued against it, noting that after 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing and the nation faced urgent problems.

            Everyone expected Bush to rubber stamp the plan, but he surprised them by asking: "Haven't we already given money to rich people? Why are we going to do it again?"

O'Neill's Claims Against Bush Supported By 1998 'War' Letters to Clinton Signed By Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz

Anyone who doubts former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's recent claims that President Bush mislead the public and secretly planned the Iraq war eight months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 needs to read the two letters sent to then President Bill Clinton in 1998 and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich by current members of the Bush administration urging Clinton to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq.

Back then, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz and other pro-war hawks lobbied Clinton and Gingrich to remove former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power using military force and indict him as a "war criminal." Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, both of whom were working in the private sector at the time, were affiliated with the right-wing think tank Project for a New American Century, which was founded by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol in 1997 to promote America's foreign and defense policies.

Dean and Kucinich

Like many progressives, I've felt torn between Howard Dean's and Dennis Kucinich's respective strengths. I've resolved this conflict so far by embracing my indecision and giving money to both. Kucinich has spoken out, eloquently and thoughtfully, taking stands that challenge the conventional wisdom of our time, and point toward powerful long-term alternatives. Dean's stands are more cautious, but he's revived the Democratic Party by being willing to challenge Bush on a host of key issues, and brought more ordinary citizens into electoral politics than any Democratic politician in years. When Dean says, "America is not Rome," it contrasts starkly with an administration that's tried its best to make us the world's imperial policeman.

A year ago, a surging global peace movement offered hope, but I saw little to cheer me on the U.S. electoral front. The most prominent Democratic candidates--Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman--had just finished helping give Bush his victory on the war vote. In Gephardt's case, he helped write the resolution, line up the House votes, and take the political postures

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