Latest Snow job backs outsourcing benefit
   Looks like we can all relax now. Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose $175,700-a-year job is protected by the Constitution, politics and tradition, tells us outsourcing is part of a global trading system, which makes America strong.
   The news story about this doesn't say whether anyone asked Snow exactly how racking up more than a decade of record-breaking trade deficits, capped by this year's incredible $541.8 billion dollar deficit, makes America strong.
   Snow made his remarks in Cincinnati. He should've made them in Chicago, in front of the 40-plus workers losing their jobs at the Radio Flyer plant where little red wagons have been manufactured for 87 years (story). The wagons will henceforth be made in China, with which the U.S. scored its biggest single-country trade deficit last year. Most of the company's other products are already being made in China, but its owner says he still considers it a Chicago business. He apparently spared his departing workers reassurance that their unemployment will make Chicago stronger.

   President Bush, meanwhile, was on the hustings in Wisconsin, which has reportedly lost some 80,000-plus of the more than 3 million manufacturing jobs that have gone away since mid-2000 — most of them outsourced to other countries. Bush's message is that we mustn't turn toward "economic isolationism," which apparently means anything other than unobstructed gutting of the U.S. economy and a wholesale sellout of America's middle and working classes.
   Bush and Snow both regularly assure us that we must have free trade, but that they're working to make sure we have fair trade. However, the "level playing field" they mention is always somewhere off in the indefinite future. They never mention how they intend to get us there. And the supposedly liberal media somehow never manage to press them very hard to come up with specifics.
   Bush sent Snow to China last year, in part to urge the Chinese to stop pegging their currency to the U.S. dollar at an artificially cheap rate. Chinese currency policy helps make its goods cheaper to U.S. consumers, which boosts its exports to the U.S. At the same time, it helps make American goods more expensive to Chinese consumers, discouraging importation from the U.S.
   Snow's visit was one of at least three occasions when he and Bush pressed the Chinese about currency policy last year. The Chinese haven't budged and the matter seems to have been dropped.

   Oh!pinion's view: It becomes more clear with every passing month that the only way to make the U.S. economy stronger, create more jobs and really move toward fair trade is to permanently lay off Treasury Secretary John Snow and the guy who hired him.
   They are clearly part of the problem, not the solution. Both men lack what it takes to do any better than they've done so far, which is to grow the budget and trade deficits astronomically, lose millions of jobs, and make lame excuses and inane pronouncements.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 12:28 PM

 
Post-9-11 coincidences keep piling up
   Every so often things come along that make us stop and utter a pregnant, "My, what a small world!" Here's a good example.
   Like many Americans, we're pondering former Bush administration anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke's revelations about the administration fixation with Iraq in the wake of al Qaeda's Sept. 11 attack.
   Al Qaeda was clearly responsible. It's true the first response was to invade Afghanistan and rout the Taliban there. But even before that, even the day after the horrendous sneak attack that took the lives of some 3,000 innocent Americans, we're learning, there was this inordinate focus at the highest levels of the Bush administration on Iraq, on getting Saddam Hussein.
   We're aware that one of the main get-Saddam hawks in the administration was Vice President Dick Cheney. We're aware that Cheney is a former CEO of Halliburton.
   We're also aware that Halliburton is a megacorporation that's raking in hundreds of millions' worth of business in contracts in postwar Iraq, many of those contracts being of the no-bid variety. We're also aware that Halliburton and its subsidiaries have been in trouble or under suspicion for their performance in fulfilling some of those contracts in Iraq.

   Then we read Bob Herbert's excellent March 26 column in the New York Times. We were especially interested in this passage:
   Now, what made this particularly interesting is that Bechtel does the same kind of business fulfilling contracts for the U.S. government, especially overseas, as — guess what? If you said Halliburton, you get a gold star.
   Cheney, Halliburton. Shultz, Bechtel. Both men said nothing would do but to invade Iraq now, ask questions later, so to speak. The huge corporations both Cheney and Shultz have had such lucrative, high-level ties to are now raking in huge sums off taxpayer outlays for all manner of work in Iraq.
   Is this a small world or what?
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 8:54 AM

 
Newspaper suspension pretty tame stuff
   Quagmires make for awkward situations. So, it comes as no surprise that U.S. soldiers have had to squelch a troublemaking newspaper in a land they're fighting and dying to turn into a democracy.
   According to an Associated Press story, the Al-Hawza weekly of Baghdad was being put out by followers of a hostile Shiite Muslim leader. Coalition leaders decided the newspaper's stories were so inflammatory as to increase the threat of violence against coalition forces, and also interfered with restoration of peace and order. Thus, the shutdown, which is to last 60 days.
   The story quotes Hussam Abdel-Kadhim, 25, a vendor who took part in a demonstration against the shutdown: "What is happening now is what used to happen during the days of Saddam. No freedom of opinion. It is like the days of the Baath."
   We expect critics in this country and elsewhere will rush to the same muddle-headed judgment. They should slow down and think.
   First, there's an important distinction in what's being done to the Al-Hawza crew. They are simply being told to cease and desist for the time being. They are not being subjected to violence. They are not being fined or thrown in jail. They are not being harmed in any way for anything they have already published. According to the story, if they violate the closure order, they face fines of up to $1,000 and as much as a year in jail.
   As we understand what passed for justice under Saddam Hussein's Baath Party rule, people who publicly crossed the government were subjected to torture, dismemberment, indefinite imprisonment, impoverishment and even death. What's more, their women were subject to being raped, tortured and imprisoned, and their children were subject to being thrown into prison as well.
   Coalition major domo Ambassador Paul Bremmer gave these people a polite slap on the wrist. We'd be willing to bet he dreaded having to do even that, given the potential for negative publicity and a lot of carping about creating democracy with one hand and crushing freedom of expression with the other.
   Bremmer's action appears to be temperate, warranted and wise in the current circumstance. Shortly, it will be time to hand over authority to Iraqis. Then, and we hope from then on, the shutting down of a newspaper should only be possible in exceptional circumstances. And only then under provisions of some established legal process that brings into play clearance from a truly independent judge.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 10:36 AM

 
Heads up, folks, the game has changed
lmost a half century ago, while testifying before Congress, then-General Motors CEO Charlie Wilson said, "What's good for GM is good for the country." Back then there was plenty of reason to agree.
   Unfortunately, Wilson's GM, his America and the symbiosis between them are history. Today, what's good for huge multinational corporations and a fast-growing number of smaller outfits is clearly bad for most Americans and this country. The damage includes declining wages, fewer and poorer job opportunities, eroding and disappearing benefits, declining revenues for important government programs, and ominous compromising of both our national security and national integrity.
   TV's best business journalist, Lou Dobbs, has won a loyal viewership among middle class Americans dissatisfied with what's going on, who faithfully watch his "Exporting America" reports on CNN. Dobbs also writes for U.S. News & World Report. His current column, "The imbalance of trade," gives an excellent rundown of the current situation, along with insight into how thoroughly pigheaded free-trade and globalization true believers, including the Bush administration and Congress, are being.
   Here's what Dobbs has to say about today's General Motors and U.S. economic policy:
   There may be good news in these developments for Americans who still have a job and can afford a new GM car at all, along with foreign workers who will get jobs. But what about all the Americans who are being dumped and marginalized through no fault of their own? As Dobbs points out, the only answer the free traders have for that is to say that in the great bye and bye, somehow, it will all work out.
   That's cold comfort for the 55- or 60-year-old ex-assembly line worker who's too old to start all over again and lacks the resources and maybe the knowhow to start his or her own business. The prospects for the large and growing number of Americans in this situation are typically few and unappealing.
   Economically, socially, with respect to national integrity and security, the status quo cannot and must not be allowed to continue. Take away the American middle class and you'll have a Third World country at war with itself amid eroding infrastructure it cannot maintain, and escalating crime and social unrest that will drive away the few people of good sense and good will who could save it from itself.
   That's not Charlie Wilson's America — and it shouldn't be ours or our children's.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 1:07 PM

 
Kin of war dead nonentities to WSJ's Taranto
   In a piece-of-work post titled, "Kerry's Great American Joke-Out," Wall Street Journal Opinionjournal writer James Taranto tries to pose President Clinton's recent weapons of mass destruction comedy routine as just good fun.
   That, and portray Sen. John Kerry and others who've expressed outrage as hypercritical spoil sports and political opportunists. Taranto tells us:
   Like Bush and whoever concocted this hurtful travesty, Taranto evidently lacks the decency to appreciate a crucial distinction for attempts at self-deprecating humor. Poking fun at a situation that has left the joke-maker with egg on his face is one thing. Poking fun at a situation that has left the joke maker with blood on his hands is quite another.

   Despite vigorous efforts by the Bush administration, its patrons and apologists, to rewrite history, the genesis of Bush's elective, pre-emptive, gratuitous war remains indelibly clear. This misadventure was predicated on Iraq posing an imminent threat to U.S. national security because of the weapons of mass destruction Iraq was said, with absolute assurance, to possess. Those weapons and, of course, the alleged links with al Qaeda that were referred to a bit more tentatively but always in a way that advanced the prospect of a more-ominous threat just up ahead.
   A year after the invasion's opening "shock and awe" bombing campaign, nearly 600 U.S. service men and women have lost their lives in Iraq. The death toll of allies' troops, noncombatant westerners and Iraqi civilians pushes the grand total to levels that can only be guessed at.

   Mourners of the dead are dealing with the grief of recent loss. It's human nature at such a time to ask why and to want to know that somehow this irretrievable loss, this unspeakable pain, has been sustained for some transcendent good purpose.
   For that reason, there's no vindictive joy in pointing out now how Bush & Co. have tried with all their might to reconfigure the war's justification, ex post facto, as one of regime change, liberation and planting the seeds of democracy in the Middle East. That's balm for the grieving and cover for the authors of their grief all rolled into one. How very convenient.

   Incredibly, Taranto doesn't bother himself with the grieving at all:
   How neatly Taranto utterly disregards the wives, children, parents, etc., of those "soldiers who've personally sacrificed." Why, it's all just a case of lost soldiers and loser politicians and writers, in his view.
   We have a different take. As a Navy officer and river patrol boat skipper during the Vietnam War, Kerry probably had to write to the loved ones of men in his unit who had been badly injured or killed. Somehow, we doubt Taranto or Air National Guard Lt. George W. Bush ever had to do that.
   Taranto also notes, "A crowd of about 1,500 politicians, journalists and celebrities generally laughed along with the president's presentation."
   People laugh in many ways and for many reasons. We suspect more than a few in that crowd laughed out of nervous embarrassment. At least, we'd prefer to believe that was the case.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 11:12 PM

 
Right at home with class warfare, literally
   "Bush promotes homeownership," the headline in today's paper says.
   This immediately struck us as fitting and ironic at the same time, given the current state of our war situation. No, not that war — the other one — our class war.
   The AP story covered the president's trip to Albuquerque, N.M., to talk up the wonderfulness of his tax cuts and how they're saving the economy. It begins: "President Bush on Friday promoted his efforts to help Americans, especially minorities, `realize their dreams' of homeownership, as he wooed the large Hispanic population of a state he barely lost four years ago."
   Bush is quoted, "We want more people owning their own home in America." The story goes on to tell how the percentages of minority and nonminority Americans who own their own homes are both at all-time highs, which is certainly good news.

   However, a recent day's paper brought news of a different sort, where Bush and people's roof-over-their-head situation is concerned. In that story, we learned that Bush's budget calls for cutting upwards of $1.6 billion in the 2005 budget from a program that helps the poorest people in our community afford to have a roof over their head at all.
   A person from the local agency distributing those funds to help keep people from living out of cars, on the street, in cartons under bridges, in tents pitched wherever, says many recipients have jobs; they just don't earn enough to make ends meet. Most are disadvantaged, one way or another. Some are old, some are handicapped, many have children. Some, of course, have screwed up their lives with drugs, drink or other folly and are trying to get back on track.
   Now, thanks to Bush's budget cut, 540 people/families hereabouts will be told there will be no more help. Or, they will be told they'll have to come up with another $569 a year, on average, to remain wherever they're living. It's not clear from the story, but it would seem the $569 increase will apply to all the 4,485 families receiving this help. Beyond those, we learn, our community has another 4,080 who've applied and are on a waiting list. With the cut, they're basically out of luck.
   Moreover, this painful funding cut is not a one-time thing. Bush and his conservative Republican troops in Congress plan to whittle the program by 30 percent by 2009.
   This, from the people who fought tooth and nail to run up the biggest deficits in U.S. history so people making millions could tuck away $185,000 tax refunds. (Or better yet, we suspect, so they could perhaps send some of that largesse to the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign.)
   This, from the people who, when they're called on this kind of reverse-Robin Hood style of governing, this wholly un-Christian approach to dealing with the least among us, raise the indignant cry of "class warfare."

   Indeed, there is class warfare going on in America. If you're someone with a good job, good credit, the tens of thousands in savings required for a down payment on a home, you're Bush's kind of people and he's in your corner, 110 percent. If you're the kind of person who qualifies for tens of thousands of dollars in tax refunds, he feels your joy and will do all he can to add to it.
   But if you're, say, an old woman who has worked all her life, caring for other people's kids, waitressing, cleaning houses, never making much but always at least holding your own, until age, health problems and a run of bad luck caught up with you, well, tough luck about you. Maybe family can keep you from living in a homeless shelter. No relatives? Maybe a church will help you out.
   Sorry, lady, but Bush couldn't see you from the Washington, D.C., townhouses, the rich-man's ranch house in Texas or the Kennebunkport compound, when he was coming up. Struggling to make ends meet isn't part of his life experience. He doesn't know about you or your situation and, as his decisions make clear, he could not care less about what happens to you.
   One thing he does "know," because his conservative ideology tells him so, is that your tough luck shouldn't be the government's concern or expense.
   The truth about Bush and his Republican troops in Congress is that they wage class warfare out of a toxic combination of ideology, ignorance and arrogance. And, it's not the only war that combination of traits has gotten us into.

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 12:39 PM

 
`Nightline' zeroes in on Medicare bill scandal
   Last night's edition of ABC's "Nightline" should be required viewing for every American who plans to vote in this year's election — especially those who plan to vote for an incumbent Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
   The program's title: "The Medicare Scandals: Accusations of Bribery, Lying, Intimidation Cloud Bill's Success."
   "Nightline" covered territory already gone over by print and broadcast journalists, but brought the story together with a continuity and clarity that add up to an extremely valuable service.
   Detailed were the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress' "anything-to-win" onslaught to pass the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003.

   Capping a recent run of arguably awful legislation molehills, the so-called Medicare reform bill qualifies as the Mt. Everest of bad deals, ill serving the senior citizens it purports to help and outright victimizing U.S. taxpayers on into future generations, all for the benefit of major pharmaceutical companies. And, those drug makers, not surprisingly, rank among the most generous campaign contributors to Republicans in the White House and Congress.
   From inception to passage, this bill's progress to passage was propelled by deceit, distortion and outright blackmail. The fallout includes recriminations over wholesale abrogation of House procedure and a rare ethics investigation. The taint of suspicion about being parties to bribery and extortion extends all the way up to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
   Months before it was taken up in earnest, preparations were jiggered by suppression of information — a hallmark tactic of the Republicans in control in the nation's capital. Here from the transcript is an excerpt concerning that aspect of this important story.
   How emblematic of Republican-controlled Washington in the era of George W. Bush's presidency, that a conscientious and trusted longtime public servant would be threatened by a political crony with being fired for just doing his job honestly.
   Of course, there's much more to the story. If you did not view this broadcast, we urge you to take the few minutes necessary to read the entire transcript. Better government than the one responsible for this travesty is only possible if an informed electorate votes for positive change. Here's a chance to be much better informed.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 4:44 PM

 
Dinner for a party with its act together
   In many presidential campaign years past, that big D in "Democrats" could as well have stood for "disarray," "disunity" and, ultimately, "donnybrook." But not this year.
   You could see and hear it last night, as Democrats from all over the country, representing many eras, factions and unsuccessful 2004 candidacies, gathered in Washington, D.C., for a unity dinner that truly lived up to its name.
   The unity theme brought together former Presidents Clinton and Carter, both of whom spoke eloquently and with purpose. Carter admonished independent potential spoiler Ralph Nader to go back to umpiring softball games and examining the rear end of cars. Clinton, who purposely avoided military service in the Vietnam War era, went out of his way to salute de facto nominee Sen. John Kerry's voluntary and medal-winning service in that war.
   Former Vice President Al Gore called on Democrats to recall their anxiety and resentment over the outcome of his arguably stolen 2000 bid for the presidency, and channel their feelings into the strongest possible effort to elect Kerry.
   Both former presidents saluted Gov. Howard Dean for prodding Democrats out of the doldrums and onto the warpath. An Associated Press story on the event quotes Clinton saying, "Howard Dean was the first person who legitimized it for all of us to say we don't like what's going on here."
   If anything, that was an understatement. An overriding desire to dislodge President George W. Bush from the White House has served to weld Democrats together to an extent rarely seen in the last half century.
   Clinton amply demonstrated he hasn't lost his charismatic touch when it comes to stump speaking. In one theme, he called attention to Republican efforts to reduce a candidate of good ideas and solid achievements to a mere cartoon.
   Kerry's own speech was good but not great. He presents really good ideas and sound positions, all right, but typically without lifting his listeners up or sufficiently reaching down inside them to strike a chord. As we've said before, his campaign would benefit greatly from the skills of a Theodore Sorensen.
   That said, Kerry hit the nail on the head with his line, "Never has the Democratic Party been more united than it is today."
   By way of another measure of unity, the dinner reportedly raised a much-needed $11 million.

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 11:43 AM

 
Can your vote be bought for cheap?
   So very typical ـ and so disgusting. Motormouth Chris Matthews discussed the unfolding campaign with reporters Howard Fineman and Karen Tumulty on "Hardball" this evening.
   Matthews mentioned the Bush campaign having spent tens of millions in recent weeks on TV advertising. Fineman chimes in about how it's working, about how a recent poll shows an eight- to 10-point swing in results toward Bush.
   It's not as though these polls were being conducted in an environment in which most people aren't paying attention. Later in the show it was mentioned that people are as engaged now, eight months from the election, as they were in October 2000. That is truly remarkable.

   Ohpinion's view: Given George W. Bush's record, his results, his consistent reliance on bait-and-switch, on suppressing information that should be made public, on downright dishonesty, if a few tens of millions of dollars worth of TV ads can buy Bush four more years in the White House, then a majority of Americans deserve what four more years of Bush will do to them.
   That's the thing about democracy, folks: Be careful what you vote for because you just might get it.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 9:37 PM

 
Clarke reiterates critique, fends off attack
   Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism aide to President Bush and the author of a book critical of Bush's pre-9-11 handling of the terrorism threat, testified today before the commission investigating the worst-ever such attack on U.S. soil.
   Clarke reiterated his charge that his warnings about the urgency of the problem had not been taken with sufficient seriousness by Bush and his top national security people.
   He told the commission that, during its first eight months, "the Bush administration considered terrorism an important threat but not an urgent threat."
   Clarke also posed going after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as a distraction that detracted from the war on terrorism.
   A 30-year civil servant, now retired, who had worked his way up to the highest levels in a particularly sensitive area, Clarke spoke at all times in a relaxed, straightforward way. Neither pointed questions nor the openly hostile assertions of some on the commission disturbed his composure or caused him to retreat into the bureaucratic phrasing that too often amounts to hedging, dodging and dissembling.
   Former Navy Secretary John Lehman appeared to be the designated hit man tasked with eroding, if not destroying, Clarke's credibility. Although Lehman sandwiched his verbal assaults between expressions of deference and praise, there was no mistaking his gist: Clarke, after all, has a book to sell; and Clarke surely has political ambitions.
   It didn't work.
   Unruffled, Clarke matter-of-factly said he's worked for Republicans, voted Republican, and worked for a Democratic administration. He insisted he's just calling it as he sees it. Clarke was forthcoming about having a close friend and longtime associate who's with the Kerry campaign. But Clarke said that doesn't make him (Clarke) a part of the Kerry campaign. Then, emphatically, he said that if asked to serve in a Kerry administration, he would decline.
   Some on the commission continued to lament the lack of public-session testimony by Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security advisor (AP story here).

   Oh!pinion's view: Clarke comes off as someone deeply committed to this country's security interests, not a partisan operative with an axe to grind. His statement of political non-ambition is as unequivocal as can be. He's had a chance to see several administrations in operation from the inside and high up. His criticisms of the current one gain credibility from some facts apparent all along and others that have emerged only recently.
   Those on the 9-11 commission intent on assailing Clarke, on the other hand, did appear to be pursuing a partisan, obviously political agenda. Their attack questions contributed little or nothing toward accomplishing the commission's mission.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 4:09 PM

 
Sheik's demise in keeping with his leadership
alestinians mourning the death of Sheik Ahmed Yassin ought to take time out from vowing to exact vengeance from Israelis and Americans to ponder a couple of timely questions.
   Yassin, 67, is credited with founding Hamas, a terrorist organization whose specialty is suicide bombings. It's reported that over the years he praised young Palestinians, male and female, who strapped on bombs and gave their lives for the cause, thus encouraging others to do the same.
   Those are key reasons the Israelis sent a helicopter a couple of days ago to fire missiles at the car Yassin and three others were riding in.
   The first question for angry Palestinians is, if suicide bombing is such a valiant and noble act, why didn't Yassin lead by example, strapping a bomb onto himself so he could take some hapless Israelis with him?
   Perhaps in some corner of his mind Yassin realized that decades of suicide bombings have proven futile, where wresting the former Palestine from the Israelis is concerned. Perhaps, deep down inside, he had doubts about the certainty of an eternity in paradise as a reward for reaching out to kill some men, women and children who happened to be riding a bus or standing in a public square in Israel.
   Yassin and other advocates of violent intransigence, of all or nothing, among the Palestinians have effectively destroyed more than the lives of hundreds of Israelis over the years. They have also sabotaged every opportunity for their own people to create a homeland, to develop an economy, to work toward peace and the prosperity that can only come once peace is achieved.
   Indeed, whenever it has appeared that events were moving in that direction, they have done their damnedest to foment more hatred, incite more violence and ensure more reprisals. Perversely, ratcheting up the violence and escalating the level of murdering and suffering are the only things these sorry excuses for a Palestinian leadership have ever succeeded at.
   That's some legacy for the Yassins of the West Bank, of Gaza, of the whole Middle East.
   This brings us to our second question: When will Palestinians make an honest, clear-eyed assessment of what more than a half century of following these people into wars, jihads, intefadas, suicide bombings, vengeance killings and all such measures have brought them?

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 11:23 AM

 
Clarke sparks latest evidence the truth hurts
   President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator is being treated to the politics of personal destruction, as practiced by the Republican/right-wing propaganda machine.
   Richard A. Clarke earned this hail of ire, first, by writing a book, "Against All Enemies," that reportedly depicts Bush and his top national security staff as woefully uninterested in and unfocused on the threat posed by radical-Muslim terrorism prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
   As if that wasn't bad enough, Clarke went on CBS' "60 Minutes" last night, saying things not helpful to Bush's much touted image as our ever-vigilant, flag-wrapped savior in chief. Third, Clarke is to testify tomorrow before a federal panel looking into matters related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, where's he's likely to say more and worse, from the Bush viewpoint.
   People such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Council of Economic Advisors chief Laurence Lindsey, former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, and Gen. Eric Shinseki have been treated to the wrath of Bush & Co. for one strike, whereas Clarke has in less than a week racked up three. Heaven help him.

   News of Clarke's revelations began surfacing at the end of last week. By Saturday, the news and squawk shows were crowded with Republicans saying all sorts of things about Clarke, all negative, all questioning every aspect of his competence, past performance, honesty, integrity, friendships, future career ambitions. They haven't gotten around to calling attention to halitosis and soup stains on his tie, but this POPD operation is still in the initial stages. A top White House spokesman even came in to work on Sunday so he could deny, refute, take exception to and harrumph about everything Clarke has ever had to say about anything.
   The Associated Press' Ted Bridis quotes Clarke (story) as saying: "I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me. But frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something."
   Whew.
   And on "60 Minutes" Clarke recalled how, face to face, Bush pressured him, just barely short of coming out and saying it, to find a connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.
   Bush's vehement defenders are especially vehement about denying that charge, perhaps because it's so perfectly in keeping with the recollection so many of us have of Bush's repeated in-so-many-words attempts to weld al Qaeda, the Taliban, Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein together in the public mind. (An effort aided by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz et al.) Those attempts were so successful that six months after the connection contention had been thoroughly debunked by the CIA, news media and European intelligence sources, 60-some percent of Americans polled were still indicating they believed there was a connection.
   One Clarke detractor waxed sarcastic, referring to "Dick Clarke's American Grandstand." Another zeroed in on the shocking fact a good friend of Clarke's is active in Sen. John Kerry's campaign, charging that Clarke is just bucking for a good job in a Kerry administration.
   On CNN's "Crossfire," James Carville pointed out Clarke, who retired from 30 years of public service last year, has been a registered Republican and worked for three Republican presidents and one Democratic president, being promoted to increasingly important positions, presumably because he was a good man and doing a good job.

   Based on their past words and actions, Bush and the principals of his administration fit perfectly the description Clarke provides. Time and events alone have worked to bring their credibility into question — a charge we cannot apply to Clarke.
   Oh!pinion just hopes someone will get Clarke some asbestos-lined long johns, a sturdy skullbucket and a four-leaf clover. He's going to need them.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 6:09 PM

 
Let's have the universal health we're paying for
   Why should health care be considered any different than the common-good needs we all have for police and fire protection?
   That question is a key feature of Rep. Jim McDermott's excellent set of arguments for at long last legislating honest and above-board universal provisions for quality health care for all Americans. His arguments particularly support his own bill, H.R. 1200, the American Health Security Act.
   On March 4, McDermott, D-Wash., made his case on the House floor — and it is a good one that everyone should read, consider and discuss. Here, from the Congressional Record, is a near-complete excerpt of McDermott's speech.

   "Madam Speaker, I want to reassure my colleague from Massachusetts that there is hope after all. The Bush administration has endorsed and even funded universal health insurance. The thing is, the president's universal health insurance program is for the people of Iraq, not anything for the 44 million Americans.
   ". . . We already pay enough for universal health care in this country, but we are not getting it. The administration misleads the American people by having the secretary of Health and Human Services say, and I quote, `You are still taken care of in America. That certainly could be defined as universal coverage.' The truth is that every other industrialized nation in the world has a universal health system except the United States. Half the bankruptcies in this country are due to health care costs.
   "The United States spent $1.6 trillion on health care in 2003. That is an average of $4,900 per person for the entire country. The average of the next 29 industrialized countries is less than half that amount, about $2,100 per person. Switzerland, at No. 2, spends $3,106. That is $1,800 less per year per person than the United States. Every one of these countries has universal health insurance except us.
   "We have 44 million uninsured and 40 million underinsured, and premiums are going up. At the same time, employers are shifting more of their health care costs on to their employees. Every strike has as the No. 1 issue of contention their health care benefits. They just settled a grocery strike in California that has been going on for six months and it was all about that.
   "Seventy-two percent of the uninsured are in families where there is a full-time worker. Sixteen percent have two full-time workers. Only 62 percent of all employers even offer health insurance, and only 60 percent of employees can take advantage of it. How bad does it have to get before we begin to do what is necessary?

   "Not many years ago opponents and an army of lobbyists turned back the last great hope for real reform. We were told managed care in the marketplace would save the health care system. It never happened. All through the 1990s when the economy was hot, the number of Americans without health insurance went up. When the economy tanked under President Bush, the number of Americans with health care kept going down. How bad does it have to get?
   "A long time ago we made some decisions in this country: Police, fire protection, national defense, education, and highways would be issues of the common good. We would do them together. It is time for health care to be done as a common good. We have the power and ability to take care of everyone, from patient to physician to provider.
   "National health care does not mean government medicine.
   "It means a guaranteed revenue stream to give a stable set of benefits for everyone that cannot be taken away.
   "At the present time, government at all levels already finances 60 percent of all the health care spending in this country. That's over $2,600 per person. Remember, the international average is $2,100 per person so we are already spending enough. If we were tight-fisted, we could have that kind of a system.
   "The fact is that we simply do not have the political will to establish the common good. If our costs were in line with other industrialized nations who have a national health care system, government spending in this country alone would cover our costs.

   "I can hear the chorus already. Do not let anyone tell you that health care in England or Germany or Sweden or Norway or France or Japan is not as good as ours. Ours is good if you are lucky, with the right piece of plastic in your pocket when you get sick. But if you do not have insurance, it is a real crapshoot. It is a real roll of the dice.
   "Americans deserve universal health care, just like everybody else from the industrialized nations, all the way to Iraq. Yes, most people would actually save money, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because if we tightened up the system and got rid of the millions of forms, the hundred billion dollars' worth of paper that we put in every year, we would have a cheaper system than we presently do with guaranteed benefits and guaranteed revenue.
   "The President has said, ``These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care.'' He said it right here in the well. Every health insurer in the United States dictates coverage. That is how they do business, and America is rationing care. The time has come to change that.
   ". . . We need a solution. I have introduced H.R. 1200, the American Health Security Act. I also support other plans to reform our health care system.
   "Reform will not change how health care is delivered, only how it's paid for. Health care providers will continue to do business as they already do, competing with one another, striving to be the best.
   "Under my plan people can choose their doctor and hospital, an incentive for innovation and a reward for excellence. For health care providers, national health insurance means a guaranteed revenue stream. For Americans, national health insurance means coverage for everyone.

   "America was founded on the premise of working together for the common good. Our society recognizes this responsibility every time a fire truck responds to a fire or a police car responds to a call for help.
   "Today, there is an urgent call for help from voices across America. We have it in our power to respond. Come on, Mr. President. We are already paying for universal health care. Let's make sure Americans get it."
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 9:39 PM

 
Chinese bloggers run afoul of reality
   China may have a booming, westernizing economy, but the day's news brings a reminder it's still a centrally controlled communist dictatorship with a long way to go before the Chinese people enjoy western-style freedoms.
   Two Web sites that host blogs have been shut down in recent days, although one is said to be back up. "Content problems" was the reason cited for one of the shutdowns.
   How would China's government know what bloggers are saying about it? By monitoring their content, of course. It's what regimes fearful of the scrutiny that goes with freedom of expression always do. We can well imagine the sort of content the regime would deem a problem — namely, anything even remotely critical of the regime, its leaders and policies.

   A few brave Chinese bloggers aren't the only ones on China's case, however. In a better-late-than-never move, the Bush administration this week filed a charge against China with the World Trade Organization. The gist of it is that China bumps up taxes on U.S. semiconductors brought in from the U.S., while giving a sizeable tax break to its domestic semiconductor producers.
   Back when the free trade evangelists were pushing for China's entry into WTO, along with ongoing most-favored-nation status, the country was made to sound like the best-behaved Boy Scout in the world. The reality of how free trade with China really works comes off more like a longtime gang banger's rap sheet.
   Time will tell whether the charges filed this week represent a bid for election-year appearances in the U.S. or are part of a systematic, continuing campaign to get China to actually conduct trade fairly. Up to now, the Bush administration's efforts along those lines have been few and uniformly lame. In any case, U.S. semiconductor producers shouldn't hold their breath awaiting a change. These things can take years to resolve.

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 11:45 AM

 
What's with the $200k for private security?
   Back in the 1970s, President Richard Nixon spent a fortune on costumes for a special White House ceremonial honor guard. The outfits he selected would've been right at home in the court of a 19th century Austro-Hungarian emperor.
   As best we can recall, the pretentiously tacky and utterly un-American getups were debuted at a welcoming ceremony for a visiting dignitary. Media coverage showed the soldiers looking uncomfortable in their gaudy regalia. Media commentators had a field day poking fun and criticizing. The out-of-place outfits were quietly and permanently retired after only one or two occasions.
   That Nixon gaffe came to mind while reading an eye-opening report at Dailykos about the Bush campaign hiring a paramilitary-type security service for $200,000.
   The item details the firm's capabilities, which go way beyond whistle-stop crowd control, to include all manner of high-tech surveillance and recording, etc. This, mind you, presumably for the protection of two of the most thoroughly and expertly protected human beings on the planet, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
   While it's true that roughly half the voting-age population of the U.S. is in a high state of enthusiasm, not to mention anticipation, for bringing Bush's White House days to an abrupt end, we've yet to hear anyone voice a desire for him to come to any physical harm.
   No, the widely held desire is to replace Bush with someone capable of more and better thinking, genuine respect for basic honesty and a desire to serve the interests of the greatest number of Americans, but only by casting ballots in November. Beyond that, there probably is a yen for the poetic justice of having him experience our job-loss recovery in a personal way. No need for private storm troopers to deal with that, is there?

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 10:12 AM

 
Ivins has Bush's number — and shares
   Columnist Molly Ivins' latest is a trove of well-aimed barbs and astute observations about the fledgling general election campaign.
   Especially on target are Ivins' comments on the Bush campaign's spendy TV ads distorting Sen. John Kerry's voting record on defense:
   But the main thrust of her column reinforces Kerry's charge that during Bush's presidency regard for the U.S. has plummeted all over the world:
   There's much more, all of it a rollicking hoot, so click here to enjoy the whole thing.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 11:43 AM

 
`Fiasco' aptly describes postwar Iraq
   Spain's newly elected prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, today called management of postwar Iraq "a fiasco," according to news reports.
   At the scene of a bombed-out Baghdad hotel where as many as 40 people of various nationalities may have lost their lives today, CNN's Walter Rogers said Iraq was actually much safer for westerners in the first days following the invasion than it is now, a year later.
   And in another CNN report from Iraq, we learned today that Iraqis training to become police officers hide their activities from neighbors for fear of reprisals. Worse, those serving as Iraqi policemen still complain of going for months without pay.
   Most disturbing of all, Iraqi police injured on the job are on their own getting and paying for medical care. The reporter said she's heard complaints that family members of injured police officers were having to sell furnishings and personal belongings to raise money for treatment.
   It doesn't take a degree in criminal justice to know this is a setup for disastrous morale and discipline problems, and a wide-open invitation for corruption — something all too common in the Middle East to begin with.
   The odds against genuine western-style democracy taking root in any Middle East country are daunting. In a country wrecked by war and wracked daily with violence and uncertainty, chances seem especially slim. Nonetheless, Vice President Dick Cheney today offered assurance that the terrorists aren't going to be allowed to win.
   Cheney's word is as credible now as it was last month, when he insisted, yet again, the weed-spraying trailers found in Iraq were proof positive Saddam had roving labs for weapons of mass destruction — a contention utterly refuted by CIA Director George Tenet, U.S. weapons inspector David Kay and U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.

   Oh!pinion's view: It's going to take a lot more troops providing much better violence suppression and security, if the terrorists are to be denied their ends. And a considerable number of the additional troops had better be medical personnel who can backstop Iraq's fledgling police and military forces with the certainty of no-cost medical treatment for injuries sustained in the line of duty.
   What's more, we're going to have to commit to much more than 100 days before handing off authority to the Iraqis, no matter how inconvenient doing so might be for President Bush's re-election campaign timetable.
   We'd like to join Sen. John Kerry in calling for shared responsibility with more countries in stabilizing Iraq. Unfortunately, as long as Bush is president and the violence in Iraq continues largely unabated, we see no likelihood other countries will agree to send their people in.
   Unfortunately, Zapatero's word, "fiasco," rings true.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 8:48 PM

 
Bush, don't you have some real work to do?
emo to President George W. Bush:
   The American people are paying you a tidy annual sum to conduct their business. They provide you a beautiful home with luxurious amenities, stock it with fine furnishings, sumptuous food, excellent wines, a superb staff and matchless security. Anything you need — people, equipment, information — just say so; it will be provided.
   When you want or need to travel, as in your series of trips to states where Democrats have just held a primary, American taxpayers get you to and fro in first-class vehicles. Otherwise you have a helicopter and executive jet that are in a class by themselves.
   Mr. President, you head a remarkable instrument, the federal government, with tremendous potential to make the world a worse or better place for billions of human beings, here and abroad. On your command troops march, governments survive or fall. On your say so concerning a hundred thousand things people will do better or not so well in their daily lives, maybe for the rest of their lives.
   Right now, some 15 million of the citizens you're sworn to serve are out of work. Between January and the end of June, some 2 million of them will have reached the end of their unemployment benefits — something you and your foot soldiers in Congress refuse to do anything about. Your record to date is of having presided over the loss of more jobs than any president in 74 years.
   Many of the jobs lost have gone to places like China, which have chosen to ignore, bend or break the free-trade agreements you so ardently support. Case in point: China's pegging its currency to the dollar at an artificially low level, the better to keep its goods cheap to U.S. consumers and U.S. goods dear to Chinese consumers. You had your crony Commerce secretary Don Evans ask China's leaders to remedy this situation at least twice since last spring. They basically laughed him out of the office. What have you done? Nothing.
   You bill yourself as strong on homeland defense and national security. Yet, on your watch, the program to put 100,000 more police on the nation's streets was scuttled. All over the country police, fire, paramedic and civil defense authorities complain you've shortchanged them some $98 million, making it impossible to carry out the homeland defense plans your own administration has laid out.
   Our borders are still porous, fewer than 5 percent of cargo containers coming into our ports are properly inspected and only 2 percent of packages sent by air are scrutinized.
   Meanwhile, virtually every day, more of our young men and women die in the ill-conceived aftermath of the unnecessary war you sent them off to. All the while, to the tune of $187 billion and counting, we pay through the nose for your screwup.

   So, what are you concerning yourself with? Well, you're wrought up because gays and lesbians want to get married, a matter traditionally dealt with by the states. You want Congress to make permanent your lavish tax cuts that have saddled the next couple of generations with $2 trillion in debt, without having created a single net new job.
   What's more, you seem to have lots of time and attention to devote to kvetching about your opponent, Sen. John Kerry, refusing to name foreign leaders who've voiced dissatisfaction with your leadership — the same thing you'd do if the situation were reversed.
   With all due respect, Mr. President, if you were to work 14-hour days, six days a week between now and November just trying to unscrew what you've screwed up, doing differently pretty much everything you've done so far, you'd be hard put to begin to straighten things out.
   No, we harbor no illusions you'll undertake such a task. But the least you can do for us is quit your damn bellyaching and get back to work.

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 4:17 PM

 
Kerry fails the line-our-pockets test
   Big Business largely hedged its bets during the 1990s, contributing more to Republicans, but still donating a lot to Democrats, especially to Bill Clinton when he sought re-election in 1996.
   Despite enjoying an unprecedented boom, in part due to the profit-maximizing advantages provided by Clinton's free-trade and globalization-friendly policies, business interests swung heavily toward backing George W. Bush in 2000.
   This time around the tilt is drastically toward Bush, providing him a record-setting war chest of more than $120 million with which to bash Sen. John Kerry. Why the shift? Bush's policy decisions: Every time there's been a choice between serving the long-term best interests of the greatest number of Americans versus the profit-maximizing desire of business, especially big business, Bush has favored his financial backers.
   A panel of business types on Lou Dobbs' Friday, March 12, program provides good insight into the motives and thinking of corporate and big-money financial interests concerning the presidential race. Here's an outtake from that show's transcript:
Indeed, they do, Lou. That's because your guests know that with George W. Bush in the White House, the lion's share of profits and gains will go to the wealthiest few, like themselves, while middle-class and working-class Americans will get to spend the next generation or two paying the $2 trillion bill.
   Kerry insists his plans include repealing the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year, not the middle class.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 2:15 PM

 
Spanish voters dump pro-invasion leader
   The people of Spain have spoken, delivering a resounding rebuke to Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his Popular Party. In Sunday's election, Spanish voters rejected Aznar and his party by a substantial margin.
   Aznar's enthusiastic support of President George W. Bush's pre-emptive war in Iraq has been a bone of contention in Spain, with polls showing large majorities in opposition all along. That sentiment caught up with the Aznar government, which will be replaced by a coalition government headed by Spain's Socialist Workers Party. The Popular Party has held power since 1996.
   According to an Associated Press story, the Socialist Party's leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has said Spain's 1,300 troops in Iraq will be withdrawn by the end of June unless the United Nations is in charge by that time.
   The change in government officially aligns Spain with most of Europe in opposing a war widely seen as unnecessary and unwise. While many in Europe, including the leaders of France and Germany, have supported the war in Afghanistan, and worldwide efforts to counter terrorism, the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein has been condemned as a questionable act of aggression.
   News reports indicate voting against Aznar's Popular Party was strengthened by reaction to the bombings last week in Spain that killed more than 200 and injured another 1,500. There is reportedly a feeling that Spain's support for the Iraq invasion provoked al Qaeda or sympathizers to seek reprisals.

   Oh!pinion's view: Add Spain to the list of countries, now including most of Europe, plus former stalwart ally Turkey, that will receive future U.S. calls for concerted military action against a perceived threat with great skepticism and reluctance.
   For decades, when a U.S. president has said we have solid intelligence indicating a serious or imminent threat, most foreign leaders have been receptive, if not always fully cooperative. Thanks to President George W. Bush's perfidy, the next president will have his work cut out for him, trying to rebuild this country's badly damaged credibility.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 11:00 AM

 
Just outside Windows, an alternative
   Linux is coming on stronger than ever, showing the potential to provide Microsoft real head-to-head competition in the broad marketplace for PC operating systems and software.
   This struggle has been a long time in the making, punctuated at times by the premature pronouncements of some Linux enthusiasts that "this is the year" when their favorite will take over desktops at home and in businesses large and small.
   Repeatedly, however, reviewers and nonpartisan observers have checked out the situation by installing a major Linux distribution and test driving it for anywhere from a few days to a few months. Most recently, an editor at PC World magazine did this. He, like others before him, praised Linux's remarkable stability and the huge strides its code-writing wizards have made in developing a wide array of really topnotch programs and utilities. OpenOfficeorg, for example, offers all the power and features 95 percent-plus of Microsoft Office users want and ever use. The biggest difference between the two most people would notice is cost: OOo is free, in the open source sense, whereas MS Office costs hundreds of dollars.
   However, the PCW editor, like others before him, called attention to still-nettlesome problems and a steeper learning curve as reasons he won't rely on Linux as his main, full-time OS after his experiment. Key applications important to him, or their full equivalents, simply weren't available under Linux. Problems that did arise using Linux required more time, study and effort to deal with than under MS Windows.
   Last but not least — and this is always mentioned when these OSes are compared — installing third-party programs under Linux can be, and sometimes is, easier than under Windows. But more typically, it's a frustrating struggle that ends in defeat for the user. There are several reasons this is so, including the many different programming languages Linux coders use and the several approaches to installation they employ.
   A Linux strength is that it and its programs will run on ancient Pentium 90s and on the latest 64-bit Athlons. A Linux weakness is that if you need or want a particular program that is available only as source code and it requires some obscure component, it's up to you to find the component, to download and install the component, then to compile and install the program you're after. Along the way, you may learn you really need to know quite a bit about various kinds of scripts and one or two programming languages you've never heard of.
   It's at this point that many people look back longingly at all those applications, handy utilities and click-and-its-done installations of new programs they left behind in Windowsland. They look back and decide now is not the time to change OSes after all.
   What's more, we can attest that despite its being much more stable than Windows, Linux is subject to the occasional freeze up. It even crashes fatally — screen, keyboard, mouse — now and then, so that there's nothing to do but reboot and hope for the best. Operator error? Maybe sometimes, but not always.

   The compromise approach is to install Linux alongside Windows, on the same PC. It's called "dual boot" and is made practical by today's huge hard drives. It's also made fairly painless by the fact that most major Linux distributions, including Redhat/Fedora, Mandrake and SuSE, have powerful setup and installation facilities that make partitioning space for Linux and installing it about as easy as installing Windows. What's more, it's now the rare exception, not the rule, that Linux will fail to find and properly work with hardware components such as sound and video boards, monitors and mice. (Modems, through no fault of Linux, represent a mixed bag.)
   That ability to accurately find and accommodate hardware was developed through vast amounts of hard work and dedication on the part many incredibly bright, talented people in many countries. All the more remarkable is how that landmark improvement occurred when the universe of hardware was expanding and changing at a break-neck pace.

   Oh!pinion suspects that these same determined, brilliant and diverse Linux wizards will in the next two to four years overcome the third-party software installation bugaboos (maybe through greater standardization), at the same time building in more graphical interface-based features to reduce the need for in-depth command-line savvy.
   If we're right about that, the game will be forever changed. Microsoft won't be looking with slight nervousness at a few hundred thousand PC users making room for a Linux tenant on their Windows machines. MS will instead face the real possibility of millions adopting Linux in place of Windows.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 8:30 PM

 
Bush ad employs Enron accounting
   The latest Bush attack ad accuses Sen. John Kerry of wanting to raise taxes by $900 billion.
   That figure doesn't originate in fact, going by what most of us understand the word "fact," to mean. It was arrived at using the same kind of arithmetic that has put us 2 million mythical jobs to the good since last July. It's from the same school of fun-with-numbers that provided us a $390 billion Medicare "reform" bill that magically became a $520 billion bill after the legislation made it through Congress and Bush had signed it.
   And — hold onto to your wallet — that made-up $900 billion sum is the product of the same mathematical maestros who are predicting Bush's all-time-high budget deficit will be cut in half in five years. Yeah, right.
   Apparently, the great minds at the Bush-Cheney campaign think they can just make things up and America's voters will open wide and swallow whole. The last time that approach really worked for them was in January 2001, when their fast-talking Federalist Society lawyers flim-flammed the Supreme Court into stopping the vote recount in Florida.
   Since then, people — who knows, maybe even the Supremes themselves — have gotten wise. At least, that turn of events would explain Bush's poll numbers.

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 9:57 PM

 
January trade deficit hits $43.1 billion
   Well, folks, we kicked off 2004 by racking up a record trade deficit for one month: $43.1 billion, $11.5 billion of it with China, a sharp uptick from our December trade deficit with that country of $9.9 billion. (News story here.)
   Keep in mind, that $43.1 billion isn't just what Americans bought from foreign sources during one month, it's the difference between how much we sold to the world and how much we bought.
   That gigantic IOU wouldn't be so ominous if weren't just the latest link in a chain of trade deficits that stretches back more than 20 years, almost unbroken. That's right, the U.S. became a debtor nation, buying and borrowing more than we sold or lent, back during the Reagan presidency. But our trade woes received a thousand-volt jolt when the Clinton administration signed us up for NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.
   We now have between 14 million and 15 million unemployed, overall, many of them long-term unemployed now, thanks to our job-loss recovery. And our manufacturing sector is hurting badly, as are the nearly 3 million workers dumped out of well-paying manufacturing jobs.
   But never mind about all that. The Bush administration, which insists free trade is good for the U.S. economy, is no doubt ecstatic about the latest trade numbers. These economic Darwinists believe in what economists call "creative destruction." That cute term refers to, for an oft-cited example, ex-buggy whip makers turning their talents to making, say, starters for automobiles.
   There's a slight problem today, however. When buggy whip makers turned to other work about a century ago, the U.S. marketplace wasn't laid wide open and the U.S. labor force wasn't pitted against the world's poorest people, in their billions.
   So nowadays, when Joe, long the ace debugger at MondoSoft, gets dumped out of his $95,000-a-year job with benefits, goes jobless for months, then takes a temporary, make-do spot minding the servers overnight at a midsize ISP for $3,000 a month, no benefits, he's not just moving on, certainly not moving up. No, in the aftermath of today's creative destruction, Joe, like large numbers of U.S. workers, is moving backward and downward.
   But surely somebody is benefiting, you say. Oh yes, that would be Sanjay, in far-off New Delhi, who is doing Joe's work now, for $24,000 a year. And MondoSoft's CEO is getting a raise and an extra-big bundle of stock options because he cut costs drastically and so boosted the bottom line. An outsourcing-facilitating company that helped arrange for Sanjay to do Joe's work is also getting a piece of the action.

   Now, we all know Bush is deeply concerned about the fact that every last American who needs a job still hasn't got one. We know because he or his surrogates tell us almost daily. But people like Joe, who've completely lost any sense of job security, their benefits, a big chunk of their life savings and are settling into jobs that pay a lot less, aren't even on Bush's radar.
   In Bush's view, in the pro-corporate neoconservative view, some get the gold mine and some, like Joe, get the shaft — which is just the healthy workings of the almighty free market. It's an ideology thing.

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 8:12 PM

 
Evans interview perversely revealing
   Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, Western correspondents stationed in Moscow used to joke about the futility of interviewing Soviet and Communist Party officials. That's because, 99 percent of the time, those officials spouted the official party line, lapsed into Marxist dogma or clammed up. Think robots.
   We were reminded of that situation today, when CNBC's Allen Murray interviewed Commerce Secretary Don Evans. No matter the question, its import or ramifications, Evans was ready with his talking-points-prepped response. His delivery combined preprocessed blandness with superficial glibness, conveying nothing in the way of news or insight.
   Today President Bush went to Ohio, which thanks to his lame economic policy is no longer a sure win for Republicans. Job losses in that manufacturing state have been substantial, with the ripple effect spreading the pain. So, Ohioans got Bush's rendition of "I feel your pain."
   Murray asked Evans why, in discussing jobs in Ohio, Bush never mentioned outsourcing. Unbelievably, Evans asserted that Bush did — in discussing trade. Specifically, Bush got into this by assuring everyone how important free trade is.
   Evans also blandly repeated how the president knows the unemployed person's situation, how Bush has said that as long as one American wants a job and can't get one, then there's more work to do.
   Murray mentioned talk on Capitol Hill about requiring companies to give workers 90 days' notice before outsourcing their jobs away. Is that something the Bush administration would support?
   Evans glibly said a good company will do that anyway but the government shouldn't be in the business of micromanaging what corporations do.
   Murray said some in Congress want a law requiring call center operators to state where they are located — say, Bangalore, India — at the beginning of calls. Does Evans favor such a move?
   No, of course not. Why, these companies that outsource their call center jobs are just trying to be more efficient, more competitive, to save time which is money, and that kind of thing would waste valuable time and drive up costs for American consumers. Evans ran out of time before getting to the sky falling, but we got the idea.

   It's been written Evans is one of Bush's closest friends and about even with Vice President Dick Cheney in being one of the most trusted and valued Cabinet members — virtually an alter ego.
   We're not at all surprised, after nearly four years of seeing what Bush has come up with for policies and pronouncements. It's all been that completely one-sided toward whatever corporate interests want. It's all been that shallow, that lacking in genuine appreciation of second or third dimensions, of human impacts, of considerations of economic decency and balance.
   Reform? Fair play? Disclosure? Nyet or nothin' doin', podner — it's all the same: "We're going to do what we're going to do and all I've got to say is what the president has already said."
   Spaseba, comrade Evans.

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 7:41 PM

 
Item shows who really dropped the ball
   With President Bush and his proxies spending much of the week bashing Sen. John Kerry as someone who has sought to deny funding for weapons systems, intelligence services and the military, we set out on the Web seeking some balance.
   We soon landed at the Center for American Progress site, where we found an insightful article that provides balance aplenty. Try this:
   "While Vice President Cheney has derided questioning of the Administration's pre-9/11 behavior as `thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war,' serious questions remain about whether the White House grossly neglected counter-terrorism in the lead-up to 9/11."
   Among highlights are instances and evidence of gross negligence on the part of the Bush administration where dealing responsibly with what was in the administration's earliest days perceived as a substantial and intensifying terrorism threat.
   It's titled, "Setting the Record Straight." If you're up for some balance, check it out.


  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 7:33 PM

 
Palestinian murderer Abbas dead
   The world is a better place today, being rid at last of Abul Abbas, the Palestinian thug responsible for hijacking a small cruise ship in 1985 and murdering an old man in a wheelchair, supposedly in pursuit of the Palestinians' cause.
   Abbas died at age 56, in custody in Iraq, according to the Associated Press story. U.S. officials say he apparently died of natural causes and that an autopsy is planned.
   Just so he's actually dead — something long overdue.
   History holds many examples of individuals who have fought valiantly and honorably against daunting odds seeking freedom and independence for their people. It is a company to which Abbas and his like can never belong.
   That he continued to live as long as he did, escaping for years the consequences of his villainly, stands as a black mark against several nations. That Abbas was not renounced by other Palestinians and handed over at least to Italy, which had sentenced him in absentia to life in prison, stands as a clear indication of what the Palestinians are like and discourages sympathy for their cause.
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 10:09 PM

 
Dodd scores win against outsourcing
   Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., offered an amendment to a corporate tax bill last week to block federal agencies from buying from businesses that are outsourcing and offshoring jobs. That Dodd, a good friend of free trade, would initiate such a move is significant, although some would deem it the least the federal government could do.
   And, the measure is not ironclad. As govexec.com's story explained: "In a last-minute deal, the senators made exceptions for the Defense and Homeland Security departments, as well as intelligence agencies and security programs at the Energy Department. The amendment also allows agency heads to make exceptions for some security-related purchases and for items or services only produced or available outside of the country."
   Still, Dodd's amendment is a breakthrough, acknowledging what most of the nation's lawmakers have seen fit to ignore or deny through three-plus years of increasingly large and steady job losses that have broadened from manufacturing to a wide range of white-collar categories.
   Although the Senate passed Dodd's amendment on March 5, 70-26, it remains to be seen whether President Bush will go along with it. He is radically pro-corporate and laissez-faire.

   The day before his measure passed, Dodd spoke forcefully and at times eloquently about the situation that has evolved in this country during its torrid fling with so-called trade liberalization. Notably, he mentioned the potential for trouble in the area of national security, should we discover in a time of conflict that foreign sources of vital manufactured components and goods oppose our policy and so cut us off.
   Dodd also mentioned how the Bush administration's budget plan will be anything but helpful to today's jobless and others who will join them in coming months and years: "Putting aside whether one agrees or disagrees on how we got to this situation, we have a terrible fiscal situation on our hands. And yet, even in the area of job training and assistance we are wiping out the manufacturing extension partnerships; we are cutting the SBA by millions of dollars; we are cutting vocational education by $316 million; we are cutting the Workforce Investment Act by $448 million."

   Here, from the Congressional Record, are excerpts of Dodd's remarks.

   "On every front, we seem to have nothing to say to this issue right now, except this is the way life is; get over it, America. You just have to live with this. This is the way the world is going to be.
   I do not think it has to be that way. I think we can do better. I think that is what the American people ask us when we come here — try to do better.

   "I have to look in the eyes of my own child, an infant, and I wonder what kind of a century she is going to grow up in. She will look back someday and ask herself, or hopefully me, what did you do back at the turn of this century when you knew this was going on, when you saw thousands of jobs leaving our country, when you saw manufacturing declining, what did you do? This was not some sneak attack. You were all aware of it. Your local papers wrote about it every day. Did you offer any ideas and suggestions on how we might compete in a global marketplace — because we should, we must — while simultaneously not losing the human investments, the human capital, that are critical for any successful society to succeed? What did you do?
   "I am afraid if we go back and she looks at what we are doing at the outset of this century, then she would be startled to learn we are cutting back in the areas that might provide some educational opportunity for people in vocational areas, that we had nothing really to say to a hemorrhaging of jobs going out of the country, and that we were basically silent except to bemoan the fact that 2.8 million manufacturing jobs in 36 months disappeared in the country. And there is every indication those numbers are going to increase, and the impact on other sectors of our economy will be very profoundly affected.

   "I mentioned already we are now being told the outsourcing of American jobs will probably exceed 3 million, close to 4 million over the next decade, unabated. That is a loss of $136 billion to $140 billion in salaries and wages in the United States, not to mention the human and societal impact.
   So I do not apologize to my colleagues for feeling as strongly as I do about this. I am a free trader. I voted for NAFTA. . . . I have not been exclusively for them, but I believe in free and fair trade. I also believe a self-respecting nation cannot allow its human capital intelligence to be lost without standing up and trying to do something about it.
   The subject matter of this amendment very simply says, at this juncture, look, let's stop. At least when it comes to the expenditure of federal taxpayer money, those dollars ought not to be used to pay for outsourcing jobs until we figure out a better way to answer this problem. I do not think that is complicated.
   "Now, I gather K Street in town is going ballistic at this very hour because obviously major corporations, 400 out of 1,000 top ones in the country, are doing it. Forty of fifty states are doing it right now. So they want to continue doing it because it is a great saver of money if you are focused on quarterly reports.
   "That is their job on K Street and that is their job in the corporate board rooms, to worry quarter by quarter by quarter. I don't think that is right, but that is what they do. Thank the Lord there are many corporations who do think longer than that.
   "Our job is not to think in quarters, not to be unmindful that corporations should and must. But our obligation is to have a broader, deeper vision; to think about longer term effects of decisions we make, no matter how attractive and how appealing they may be to someone who has to explain to a group of shareholders why it is that they have or have not exceeded last quarter's profit margins — bottom line.

   ". . . But my question is, What does America look like? What does our Nation look like in the coming generation? In fact, if we lose these jobs, which are critical to our own well-being and success, if we lose manufacturing that we cannot replace, if we squander the ability to produce vital components and parts that are essential to contribute to our national defense structure, what does my country look like in five years, 10 years, 20 years down the line?
   That is the question I am asking. That is why I am offering this amendment, to see if we cannot at least step up and say when it comes to the taxpayer's dime, that we should not be taking your tax dollar and subsidizing this outsourcing of jobs. . . . You cannot use that dime to lay off somebody and hire someone 14 time zones away to do a job that a hard-working American ought to be able to hold and do in order to provide for their family.
   "I don't think that is outrageous. I don't think that is isolationist or protectionist. I think that is standing up for the people of this country who expect nothing less from those of us who represent them in this chamber.

   ". . . I look at the 2.8 million who have lost their jobs in manufacturing, the close to 3 million who will lose their jobs to outsourcing in the coming days, maybe as many as 14 million, we are being told, over the next couple of years. . . . Those people want to know whether or not we have anything to say to them.
   ". . . My hope is we will be able to do so first thing in the morning and say with a very loud, clear, and my hope is, a unanimous voice, that we stand with those who worry about whether America is squandering its wealth and its treasury — not just the treasury of dollars and cents but a far more important treasury: the human capital that is the American workforce."
  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 9:29 PM

 
Dobbs, take WSJ's bashing as a compliment
onths ago, when almost no one else in the major media would get involved, Lou Dobbs began reporting regularly and insightfully on how a selfish, well-placed, relative few were selling out their country and their fellow Americans.
   With his ongoing series, "Exporting America," CNN's best journalist has described the depth and breadth of damage being done to millions by so-called free trade and globalization — sanitized terms for greed run amok and selfishness raised to the level of religious dogma.
   Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, sees things differently. That's no surprise. But the way Henninger expressed disagreement Friday, in "Lou Dobbs Takes On the World," is remarkable for its low quality of thought and writing, not to mention sloppy copy editing. No self-respecting community college journalism teacher in the country would give this piece of work a gentleman's C.
   Dobbs deals in news. He presents facts, details, reports and analyses, his and others', to back his statements and positions. Not so with Henninger. His exposition is a purely subjective hatchet job studded with sarcasm, innuendo, disdain and pathetically lame "examples."
   In fact, million of out-of-work Americans, along with others who care about them, have good reason to kvetch about seeing their livelihood sent out of the country. Same goes for people who've been obliged to train their own replacements brought in from places like India, to take their jobs for half price. In fact, the most comprehensive study of NAFTA shows it's been a lose-lose for the U.S. and Mexico, and a less-than-stunning gain for Canada. Maybe that's why so many Mexicans — some estimate as many as 1 million a year — enter our country illegally, taking jobs from and driving down wages for the poorest of America's workers and would-be workers.
   We'll put it this way: Knowing what they know now, hold a national vote on NAFTA and watch how fast people will dump it like yesterday's Wall Street Journal.
   Dobbs actually provides a good index of how widespread the selling out is and is helping people who want to favor companies not exporting jobs. Good for him. The beef question is a valid one; enough is produced here to meet our needs and still export plenty.
   Dobbs has mentioned, not mocked, Smith and Ricardo's thinking many times, pointing out how drastically the game has changed since they wrote their groundbreaking treatises on economics. Insisting on maintaining the sense they made of things then as holy writ for how economic policy should be conducted now is inexcusably stupid. It's as stupid as it would be for a current-day doctor to resort to leeching to rid the body of disease or for a psychiatrist to try beating the demons out of his patients.
   Henninger's sophomoric nonsense winds on, through referring to Montana Sen. Max Baucus as a fire-breathing liberal, to this gem:
   Eventually, Henninger gets to the point of his rant: Dobbs is grubbing for ratings, which makes him no better than or different from the greed-driven corporate executives grubbing for dollars.

   CNBC carries a roundtable discussion show featuring the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Of the hundreds of news and public affairs programs we've viewed over the years, it's the driest, dullest and least informative. We're not privy to Nielsen ratings, but we'd be willing to bet that on their worst days, Dobbs and his "Exporting America" earn ratings the WSJ editorial board will never achieve. Watch each once and you'll know why.


  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 10:07 AM

 
Little need for Bush to actually buy ad time
   Why should the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign spend millions putting commercials on cable news channels? All that's necessary is to create a potentially objectionable ad, put it on a time or two and let nature take its course.
   The much-heralded first round of Bush ads ran this week, showing scenes from the Sept. 11, 2001 attack aftermath. New York City firefighters and 9-11 victims' relatives promptly cried foul. They believe use of this recent, painful tragedy in their lives to promote a politician's campaign is calloused and tacky. Adding to their displeasure is the fact they don't support Bush and don't want him re-elected.
   So, the New York-area families and firefighters spoke out, creating a controversy. What ensued was a week in which every news and talk show chewed repeatedly and at great length over every aspect of the ad - always after showing the ad, of course.
   This situation created an exposure, with runaway multiplier effect, far Beyond what Bush & Co. could've bought had it chosen to try to blanket the cable channels with its ad all week.
   Did this come about by accident or design? There's no telling. Either way, it was a cornucopia of promotional freebies for a campaign well able to pay its own way.
   We will caution CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, et al, of the old saw about not paying for what can be had for free. After this week, we fully expect the Bush-Cheney campaign is at work on its next TV ad campaign. This time . . . ? Hmmm, maybe something about all the people finding good jobs thanks to Bush's brilliant economic policy. Or, maybe it should be a paean to cleaner skies and rivers, and greater energy independence.
   Yes indeed, those ought to generate some real cost-saving controversy!

  — By S.W. Anderson
¶ 5:51 PM

 
Bush racks up another trickle-down failure
resident George W. Bush has looted the treasury to make the wealthiest Americans wealthier, to the tune of charging all of us a half trillion dollars now, $1.5 trillion in the out years. He's thrown fiscal responsibility out the window and showered corporations with every kind of advantage, all in a colossal gamble that trickle-down nonsense would grow the economy like crazy.
   Unless you believe economic growth means making the richest Americans richer and the biggest corporations bigger, period, Friday's Labor Department jobs report delivers just the latest evidence Bush's gamble has gone bust.

   Jobs added in February, 21,000. Monthly job growth required to keep up with growth in the labor force, 150,000 — which, if realized, would do nothing about the backlog of 2.7 million long-term unemployed, including the 375,000 who dropped off the radar in January alone, for instance.
   Jobs added in December and January, we now learn, were 23,000 fewer than previously reported.
   A good Reuters story on the jobs situation included this: "In addition, the report showed pay gains have slowed, while the average length of time workers who had lost jobs stayed unemployed climbed to its highest level since January 1984."
   For the past month Republicans have been touting the household survey as a more-accurate measure of the employment situation, as opposed to the payroll survey used for decades. The household survey includes junior's job mowing neighbors' lawns and mom bringing a few bucks doing some hairstyling jobs in the kitchen. This, while tens of thousands of blue- and wh