February 2003 Archives

James Pinkerton makes an obvious point that some neoconservatives often wish to ignore:

America is the planet's lone superpower, but it still must exist within a web of political and economic relationships. In other words, for all its military might, the United States still can't afford to operate alone.

David Broder writes that when the governors come to Washington, D.C., for their winter meetings, they bring a dose of realism to federal policy debates.

The economic message this year is troubling. The Bush Administration fails to understand the gravity of the fiscal problems state governments are facing. This refusal has real consequences. Broder explains:

The national government is hoping that the combination of low interest rates and very large budget deficits will provide the kind of boost needed to shake the economy out of the doldrums. At the same time, state after state is cutting back its spending -- often by double-digit percentages. And a few are also raising taxes. Such actions not only hurt the people who depend on these state programs and who pay state taxes, they also create a fiscal drag on the national economy that offsets whatever stimulus Washington is trying to provide.

Richard Cohen levels a serious charge, one I fear is growing increasingly true:

Because something truly awful has happened. The looming war has already become deeply and biliously ideological. By that I mean that the extremes on both sides -- but particularly the war's opponents -- no longer feel compelled to prove a case or stick to the facts. As with Vietnam, this is becoming an emotional battle between ideologues who, as usual, don't give a damn about the truth.

But those who are against attacking Iraq do not help our cause by falling back upon distortions and exaggerations.

Talkleft's Jeralyn Merritt points out another example of misplaced federal priorities:

At 2:00 PM today, Attorney General Ashcroft announced a new and major effort to crack down on online drug paraphernalia sales, along with major criminal indictments. Ashcroft criticized former Attorney General Janet Reno for not enforcing the laws with the same zeal that he possesses.

Can he be serious? We are on the precipe of war. The American public is constantly reminded we are under high to very high terror alerts, and Ashcroft and Bush want to go after bong sellers?

Robert Novak reports that senior White House officials want to punish Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. His momentary stance last week against the latest Bush tax cut plan so angered powers within the White House that not a decision not to reappoint Greenspan to a final two-year term is growing more likely.

Candor does not pay. Not with this White House. We may soon have a "large deficits are good" Federal Reserve Chairman. Party on!

Remember...we will not leave problems for future generations to solve. Just huge bills for them to pay.

Jonathan Turley understands why President George W. Bush often seeks to reverse former President Bill Clinton's policies.

He does not accept, however, the White House's attempts to reverse the work of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

Mona Charen, in another detestable column, equates dissent with treason. Again. She writes of those opposing a war with Iraq:

If their policies had prevailed during the Cold War, the Soviet Union would be in business today. And if their policies prevail in this latest war, we must all prepare to don burqas and grow beards.

While many of the tactics of the anti-war demonstrators are counterproductive -- overblown claims that President Bush is a Nazi may play well with others against the war, but they are not going to convince anyone else -- dissent is not treasonous.

Yet.

Robert Kagan believes some in Europe are not comfortable with France's leadership against the United States, even while remaining against war with Iraq. He writes:

On a visit to Berlin last week, I found Germans vehemently opposed to war with Iraq but also wondering aloud whether Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been wise to chain German fortunes so closely to France. French leadership is exhilarating, but it can be unnerving to follow a leader whose motto is "Victory or death, but glory whatever happens." This may provide the opening for the United States and its stalwart allies in Europe. Success in Iraq, both during and, just as important, after the invasion, might help keep and attract some support in Europe. Not everyone finds glory in defeat.

When thinking about the dangers of media consolidation, one often worries about the loss of local control over the airwaves or the concentration of power in fewer and fewer institutions.

Mary Hodder at the Berkeley Intellectual Property Weblog found another danger: the failure of the Emergency Broadcast System. She quotes from a New York Times story that describes a recent incident:

Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, had a potential disaster in his district when a freight train carrying anhydrous ammonia derailed, releasing a deadly cloud over the city of Minot. When the emergency alert system failed, the police called the town radio stations, six of which are owned by the corporate giant Clear Channel. According to news accounts, no one answered the phone at the stations for more than an hour and a half. Three hundred people were hospitalized, some partially blinded by the ammonia. Pets and livestock were killed.

Daniel Schorr makes a troubling observation:

The first measure of a society's effectiveness is its ability to organize itself to respond to its collective needs. The Romans, with the Barbarians at the gate, couldn't. And the Americans, with Al Qaeda at the gate, are having trouble getting their act together.

Maureen Dowd dismisses the Department of Homeland Security's public relations initiatives, noting that Secretary Tom Ridge is failing to inspire much confidence in people. She does not want to be spun on security, she simply would like to get some more of it.

She then makes note of one of the Bush Administration's unconscionable Homeland Security failures:

An upcoming article in The New Republic, contending that the president has not done enough, cites an American Association of Port Authorities estimate that it would cost $2 billion to make the ports secure. But since Sept. 11, only $318 million has been spent. Although Mr. Bush himself endorsed a program to screen cargo at foreign ports, his budget provides no money for it.

Clarence Page wonders:

...how long audiences can listen to what seems like thousands of conservative talkers yammering all across the AM radio dial and various 24-hour cable TV news channels about how conservatives just can't get heard anywhere?

Thomas Oliphant makes the observation that this year's economic stimulus debate will have no relevance to the 2004 presidential election. There's a pretty good chance, moreover, that the Iraq war won't matter much to voters then either.

He gives Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) points for thinking ahead. It is clear that health care insurance has a good chance to be the major domestic issue next year. Gephardt and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean are ahead of their opponents on that issue.

In politics, the hot political issue today is more than often forgotten six months later. Getting ahead of the curve is invaluable. The other presidential hopefuls should take note.

Sacramento Bee Deputy Editorial Page Editor Mark Paul compares the fiscal problems facing California and the federal government. In his mind, those Republicans and conservatives supporting a recall against Gov. Gray Davis (D) are overlooking a real example of fiscal irresponsibility.

Gray Davis may have been terribly late in confronting California's budget mess, but he's finally seen the light. If your quarry is a politician who's both fiscally reckless and deep in denial over his irresponsibility, the Bush White House is where the big game roams.

The General Accounting Office has concluded that Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department is "exaggering" (a code word for lying?) about its prosecution rate in the war against terrorism.

The Associated Press' Laurie Kellman explains:

In the year after the Sept. 11 attacks, federal prosecutors exaggerated their success in convicting would-be terrorists by wrongly classifying three of every four cases originally labeled as international terrorism, congressional investigators said this week.

Overall, almost half of 288 convictions deemed terrorism-related were wrongly classified as such for the 2002 fiscal year that began three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the General Accounting Office, Congress' nonpartisan watchdog agency, said Wednesday.

You can read the report, or a one-page summary, in pdf format by following this link to the GAO daybook. The report is the third listed on that web page.

Robert Novak writes about the deteriorating situation in our forgotten war in Colombia.

The capture and murder by narco-guerrillas of U.S. intelligence operatives in Colombia was a disaster waiting to happen. It was predicted in a report submitted a month ago by visiting congressmen, who described the U.S. government's multibillion-dollar Plan Colombia as an expensive failure. The incident signified that the Colombia crisis is getting worse.

Jane Eisner wishes President Bush would stop comparing war protestors to focus groups.

Also, Mr. President, you might want to avoid mocking focus groups and polls when you use them even more than the Clinton Administration did.

One of the biggest problems I have with my opposition to going to war with Iraq today (I believe we have other priorities) is the fact that the French seem to agree with me.

Paul Krugman yesterday explained in one paragraph why the French are hardly the paragons of virtue they believe themselves to be:

Sorry, I can't applaud the French foreign minister, because I don't believe that France, which sold Saddam his first nuclear reactor, the one Israel blew up, comes to this story with the lofty principles it claims. The French foreign minister, after basking in the applause at the U.N., might ask himself who was clapping for his speech back in Baghdad and who was crying. Saddam was clapping, and all his political prisoners — i.e., most Iraqis — were crying.

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon are the latest analysts to point out that the Bush Administration is not doing or spending enough to protect against terror attacks. It is a problem not just of a lack of will (could we get that promised money to first-responders sometime soon?) but also of poor strategy.

Benajmin and Simon argue that the White House is preparing to fight not just the last war, but a war from an entirely different era. Meanwhile, obvious weak spots are ignored. For example:

Certainly, the administration has rightly poured $12 billion into aviation security, vaccine research and a stockpile of vital drugs that would mitigate the effects of a biological weapons attack. Yet even these efforts remain uneven: no comparable security upgrades have been made for United States carriers at foreign airports — an inexplicable failure given that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an architect of the 9/11 attacks and someone who plotted to blow up a dozen American 747's over the Pacific in 1995, is still at large. Moreover, the effort to equip and train first responders — the emergency personnel who would deal with a catastrophic attack — has fallen woefully behind because of budget wrangling.

Will we spend the money to give our commercial aircraft defense measures that could prove invaluable against a missile attack (like the November incident in Mombasa, Kenya)? How about protecting our ports, improving the public health care system, and the multitude of other needs that must be met?

Granted, it is not a tax cut for the rich or an unnecessary civil liberties curtailment. But if we were spending our money on protecting the nation from future attacks -- instead of on ideological tax cuts and pork spending plans -- then I would not whine nearly as much or as often about the skyrocketing national debt.

It has to annoy some in the White House when facts get in the way of the talking points. But now the Bush Administration acknowledges that the government needs to raise the national debt ceiling again.

Here's the Bush Administration national debt results, comparing the debt today with its level on January 22, 2001 (the first day after President Bush took office that the national debt was reported):

National Debt as of Feb. 18, 2003: $ 6,437,926,287,364.49

National Debt as of Jan. 22, 2001: $ 5,728,195,796,181.57 

National Debt has Increased:         $ 709,730,491,182.92
                                     ($709.730 billion)

Those days are but a memory.

Jules Witcover explains why Congress appropriated -- only last week -- the initial $3.5 billion in funding for first responders that was promised in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

You can blame, of course, healthy doses of politics and poor prioritization.

In the midst of the higher terror warnings and suggestions to purchase duct tape to protect ourselves, Witcover attempted to call the Department of Homeland Security to get additional information. What happened to him also does not inspire confidence:

Before learning all this, and worried about protecting my own family, I tried to call the new department directly. I phoned 411, only to be told that there is no listing for it. Why not? I asked. "The government hasn't given it to us yet," a phone supervisor said. "If they don't give us a number, we can't list it. Would you like the Department of Defense?"

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley exposes our nation's numerous failures to improve its homeland security situation. He writes:

Most of America's population centers, and most of its economic infrastructure, are nearly as vulnerable to attack now as they were on Sept. 11, 2001.

Mayor O'Malley explains just how bad the situation is, some 17 months after Al Qaeda's terror attacks:

The recent Council on Foreign Relations report by former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman concludes: "If a catastrophic terrorist attack occurred today, emergency first responders -- police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel -- in most of the nation's cities are no better prepared to react now than they were prior to September 11." This is a dire observation in light of recent startling warnings from key Cabinet members, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ("The cost of underestimating the threat is increasingly unthinkable.") and CIA Director George Tenet ("There will be another attack. They will take advantage of seams in our security.").

I wish "seams" were all we had to worry about. With the exception of some additional airport security, next to nothing has been invested in protecting America's population centers or its economic infrastructure. If our own teenage graffiti vandals can get to the chemical cars passing through American cities on our railroads, how hard could it be for al Qaeda? Not hard at all, when you consider there are five security guards monitoring CSX tracks between Richmond and Wilmington, Del., two fewer than there were on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has started a new weblog to cover issues related to homeland security and the new Department of Homeland Security.

If you are interested in these subjects, you should consider this a must read.

Kevin Phillips wonders why people are still surprised when a member of the Bush family proposes economic policies that are biased toward the rich and investors. He writes:

If a president who came out of the widget industry spent all his time trying to promote the widget business, it would be obvious — and it would raise major ethical problems. But the magnitude of the Bushes' investment involvement and bias is too little understood.

Great-grandfather George H. Walker was the president of two major New York investment firms: G.H. Walker & Co. and W.A. Harriman and Co. Grandfather Prescott Bush was the managing partner of Brown Bros., Harriman & Co. Presidential uncles Jonathan and Prescott Jr. have been, respectively, the heads of small investment firms named J. Bush & Co. and Prescott Bush & Co. Prescott Bush Jr. has also been closely involved with Asset Management International Financing and Settlement Ltd.

Presidential brother Marvin runs hedge funds at investment company Winston Partners. Presidential brother Neil started an investment deal in Austin, Texas, and both George H.W. and George W. Bush have been in the kind of oil business that is largely driven by tax shelters and financing from friends and relatives.

So far only one major Republican officeholder has spoken out against the latest misguided Bush tax cut plan. Phillips explains how McCain is speaking for an old, but largely extinct, wing of the Republican Party. Moreover, as Phillips points out:

McCain scoffed at the notion that Bush's tax policy embodies compassionate conservatism. McCain's father and grandfather were four-star admirals; he learned a different tradition than that of the tax-shelter salesmen.

It is probably too much to expect Republican McCain to lead the fight against the kind of arrogant misprioritization that earmarks $364 billion, out of a $674 billion economic "stimulus" program, for ending the taxation of stock market dividends. But surely the Democrats must.

Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Hill wonders if Attorney General John Ashcroft's efforts to curtail civil liberties are influenced more by a desire to protect the nation from terror or by opportunities to advance his ideology.

I would go with the latter.

After calling the budget passed by Congress an irresponsible sham in my previous post, I thought it worthwhile to look at some of the items included in the budget.

Thankfully, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his staff regularly chart pork in the budget. McCain has been looking at pork for a decade, and has a set of criteria for deciding whether or not a budget provision is pork.

The budget just passed by Congress has a good share of pork. Of course, given that this budget slights Homeland Security, one wonders if Congressional priorities could be more misplaced. As Sen. McCain told his colleagues:

Not only is our economy in distress, we are also one step closer to war. There are current threats to our national security that must be disposed of. The pressures of security and fiscal challenges confront this great nation at a time unlike any other in history. And yet, in light of all this, the appropriators spend as if they were working in a vacuum. What do they spend the American taxpayers' hard-earned money on? We will soon find out.

• $1 million for a DNA bear sampling study in Montana;
  
• $280,000 for asparagus technology and production in Washington;
  
• $220,000 to research future foods in Illinois;
  
• $250,000 for research on the interaction of grapefruit juice and drugs;
  
• $700,000 for the Midwest poultry consortium in Iowa;
  
• $600,000 for Tri-state joint peanut research in Alabama;
  
• $500,000 for Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois Corn Growers Association for a pilot program to develop "production protocols";
  
• $50,000 to combat "feral hogs" in Missouri;
  
• $500,000 to continue hybrid poplar research in Wisconsin;
  
• $2 million for the Biomass Gasification Research Facility in Birmingham, Alabama;
  
• $500,000 for the gasification of switchgrass in Iowa;
  
• $1,000,000 for the National Agricultural-Based Industrial Lubricants Center;
  
• $10 million to develop a high-speed data transmission between the Library of Congress and educational facilities, libraries or networks serving Western North Carolina;
  
• $500,000 to be split between the Alexandria Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art for activities relating to the celebration of the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Celebration;
  
• $200,000.00 for the replacement of Minton Tile in the Capitol complex;
  
• $319,000.00 for Chandelier Restoration and Crystal Globe Replacement in the Capitol;
  
• $25,000.00 for the maintenance of an outdoor sculpture on the Capitol Grounds;
  
• $108,000 for kitchen exhaust and redesign in the Senate Office Buildings;
  
• Nearly $2 million for Bus Ducts and Switchgear Replacement in the Senate Office Buildings;
  
• $1 million for a company called Culpeper Glass in Warrenton, VA, that produces glass display cases for the Library of Congress;
  
• $989,000 for a Lewis and Clark Exhibition at the Library of Congress. I highly doubt that the whole expedition cost as much as this exhibit does;
  
• $3 million for an award to the National Technology Transfer Center for a coal slurry impoundment pilot project in Southern West Virginia;
  
• $1 million for the Automated Nursery Project in Mississippi; and
  
• $500,000 for Vermillion Community College in Ely, Minnesota for development of a Professional Forest Harvester Program.

Now, this is not to say that many of these items are unimportant. But at a time of increasing deficits and other national priorities, this pork represents high irresponsibility.

Congress has finally completed their 2003 budget (over four months late). As this is the first post-September 11, 2001 budget presented by the President and our Congressional leaders, reporter Jonathan Weisman takes a look at how our elected officials did.

Except for a dramatic increase in defense spending, however, the budget does not look much different from spending plans approved before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And only through budget gimmickry did Congress even come close to adhering to the president's standards of fiscal discipline.

At best, lawmakers and congressional aides from both parties say, the spending plans for this fiscal year represent a good-faith effort to inch the government toward Bush's vision.

At worst, they amount to a sham that at once shortchanges terrorism defense and masks large increases in other spending that will raise the cost of government for years to come.

This budget is a sham. It does not fund Homeland Security. It does not go nearly far enough to help cities and states with the extra expenses caused by their increased security efforts. (A promise that continues to be broken.)

When will Washington decide to take Homeland Security and the war on terrorism seriously?

Today we learn that at least some people in the White House do not buy the Bush Administration's economic and tax cut rhetoric. A problem I am sure will be fixed in the future.

It seems the writers of the Economic Report of the President were unwilling to follow the economic talking points. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank explains:

Bush and his top lieutenants have asserted, as the president did in Chicago on Jan. 7, that the tax cuts will induce economic growth, which "will bring the added benefit of higher revenues for the government." Vice President Cheney said Jan. 30 that the tax cut will "ultimately increase tax revenues for the government." On Feb. 8, press secretary Ari Fleischer said the plan would "pay for itself," an argument Bush also made on Nov. 13 for his first tax cut plan: "the deficit would have been bigger without the tax relief package."

But those assertions are contradicted by a passage in the Economic Report of the President, written by Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and sent to Congress this month. That report said it is not true "that tax cuts pay for themselves with higher output." The passage, discovered on Pages 57 and 58 by Spinsanity, a Web site that debunks political rhetoric, continues: "Although the economy grows in response to tax reductions [because of higher consumption in the short run and improved incentives in the long run], it is unlikely to grow so much that lost tax revenue is completely recovered by the higher level of economic activity."

But that is not all. Milbank continues on another subject dear to me, the deficit:

Finally, Bush's top deputies have argued that there is no relationship between increased deficits and higher interest rates. Speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Jan. 10, Cheney said some people "argue that increased deficits necessarily lead to increased interest rates, which in turn slows economic growth. But the argument has one slight flaw: The evidence of recent years simply doesn't support it."

Likewise, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., White House budget chief, said Feb. 3, "I do not see that correlation" between deficits and interest rates. "There is no evidence, zero," he said, before qualifying that to say there is a "historically very moderate" effect, but "one would not expect an impact" in the current situation.

Even R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, dismissed the correlation was "nonsense" and "Rubinomics," a term that plays on the name of President Bill Clinton's treasury secretary.

But the report released this month by Hubbard's council said there was indeed a correlation. "A conservative rule of thumb . . . is that interest rates rise by about 3 basis points for every additional $200 billion in government debt." The council called it a "modest" effect that would not undermine Bush's plan, but a relationship nonetheless.

J. Bradford DeLong, a former Clinton economist, noted that Hubbard, in his academic writings, argued that in "the late 1990s, an emerging federal budget surplus put downward pressure on interest rates" and that "the large increase in the federal budget in the early 1980s" created "short-run pressures for higher output and interest rates."

More important: will Congressional Democrats, and moderate Republicans, now stand up to stop it?

The New York Times' Michael Janofsky writes about Republican governors and state legislators who are in the process of raising taxes.

They hate the fact that they have to do it. But they are unwilling to destroy education and public health systems at the altar of tax cuts.

One wonders if these governors and state legislators understand that a significant part of their problem lies in the President's economic policies. The White House could do much to eliminate the need for state tax increases.

Instead, the Bush Administration is proposing tax cuts that will make the states' financial positions worse.

Paul Krugman is unhappy about two major issues. First, he notes that one day after earning praise for taking a stand against the Bush tax cut, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan waffled. Krugman wonders about the Fed Chairman:

Surely you aren't going to let rosy budget projections snooker you, yet again, into supporting irresponsible tax cuts? By now you know that this administration always projects big budget improvement two years ahead; but every six months it marks its projection down another $140 billion or so, blaming outside events. Independent analysts, who take into account the stuff the administration pretends doesn't exist — the war, the alternative minimum tax, and so on — think we're looking at deficits of 3 or 4 percent of G.D.P., maybe more, for the next decade. And then it will get much worse.

The U.S. media are soft-pedaling it as usual, but the business of the Osama tape has destroyed Mr. Powell's credibility in much of the world. The tape calls Saddam Hussein an "infidel" whose "jurisdiction . . . has fallen," but says that it's still O.K. to fight the "Crusaders" — and Mr. Powell claims that it ties Saddam to Al Qaeda. Huh? All it shows is that Al Qaeda views a U.S. invasion of Iraq as an excellent recruiting opportunity.

James Pinkerton writes that Osama bin Laden is well on his way to accomplishing the goals he outlined in the Fatwah he issued on February 23, 1998.

Pinkerton, using the old columnist's device of writing as bin Laden to make this point, notes that there have are even some unexpected gains from Al Qaeda's point of view.

Indeed, the Americans are so desperate to destroy Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with the righteous destruction of the World Trade Center - that they don't care if they antagonize the major countries of all Eurasia. Happy is the man who watches his enemies fight each other.

Instead, we use his words to justify a war with Iraq.

Sally Quinn writes that the government must do better than recommend duct tape as a preparation for terror attacks. The government needs to provide more specific information about how to prepare and about what the dangers are we hope to prevent panic when the inevitable attack or attacks come.

Here is what Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge should do: Lead a news conference and provide a specific list of things every household should have in case of any kind of attack, particularly a bioterrorist attack. The government needs to tell the public that everyone should have an N95 mask (which costs $1) with them at all times. The government should indicate that there are easy-to-use, family-friendly gas masks available that could save lives.

Ridge should direct mayors (especially D.C. Mayor Tony Williams) to designate neighborhood facilities or hospitals where people can go for shelter, medical care and supplies. People should be told what to do in case there is an outbreak of smallpox and where to go to be vaccinated. Ridge should talk about the effects of sarin, ricin, anthrax and other agents that require different antidotes and what to do about them.

Ridge should tell us what medicines we need. Should people have iodine tablets, which would prevent thyroid problems in case of radiological attack? What about atropine shots to combat the effects of certain nerve agents? He should designate evacuation routes, and they should be clearly marked. Perhaps people could be advised to have bicycles for evacuation or, for those who live near water, inflatable kayaks. People should be told that the Metro system is particularly vulnerable. Metro riders should have N95 masks.

If the Bush Administration will only ask.

The Washington Post editorial page applauds Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for telling Congress during his testimony this week that the "deficit must be maintained at minimal levels."

Greenspan also reminded Congress of a vital fact, one that President Bush ignores in his budget speeches. "Reestablishing budget balance will require discipline on both revenue and spending actions," Greenspan explained.

Fiscal discipline is not just about spending, Mr. President. Ill-advised tax cuts also harm this nation's fiscal standing. President Bush can rail about Congressional spending all he wants, but there is no way that Congress would propose spending increases that equal the size of the Bush Administration's desired tax cuts.

Talking Points Memo's Joshua Micah Marshall wonders which "of our alliances and security organizations are going to be left" when the Bush Administration is done making a shambles of them.

Trudy Rubin writes that the Kurds in Iraq are wondering if the United States is going to allow them to be gassed again. She explains:

For six months, Kurdish leaders have been asking the United States to help them prepare for the possibility that Saddam may attack them with weapons of mass destruction. They have repeatedly requested mobile clinics, gas masks, antibiotics like Cipro, and antidotes to biological agents such as atropine, all of which they are lacking.

Help has been promised, but nothing has arrived yet. And war may be only a few weeks away.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellows Ivo Daalder, Michael O'Hanlon and Peter Orszag outline the deficiencies within President Bush's Homeland Security Budget proposal.

The budget funds a large array of crucial homeland security efforts. However, it fails to address certain glaring vulnerabilities in this country. And it does not reflect a sufficient sense of urgency given the continued strength of al-Qaida together with the looming likelihood of war against Iraq.

President Bush's budget still focuses too narrowly on preparing for "the last war" - that is, in defeating attacks with planes or anthrax or truck bombs. Should al-Qaida shift tactics, this budget would not do nearly enough to protect against other possible strikes. Nor does it adequately address the needs of first defenders and first responders on whom America's safety ultimately depends.

The proposed budget is at least $5 billion below what is needed to fund activities that should be top priorities. These include more spending on information technology, greater expansions of agencies such as the Customs Service and work with the private sector to protect infrastructure such as skyscrapers and chemical facilities.

Above all, we need an immediate infusion of funds for state and local governments to meet their responsibilities for protecting Americans.

This White House continues to refuse to make Homeland Security a priority. This represents a shocking disconnect given the present "orange alert" and the warnings of a possible terror attack. What will it take to make Homeland Security, and destroying Al Qaeda, the national priorities they should -- and need -- to be?

While the fiscal policies contained within the federal budget are bad enough, it is worthwhile to take a moment to see some of the other games Congressionals are hoping to play as the 2003 budget -- already four months past due -- finally reaches its endgame.

The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum looks at the four-volume budget and explains what can -- and cannot -- be learned from their pages.

One of the things that cannot be learned, however, is what the fiscal 2003 budget appropriations bills will actually contain when they are finally passed by the House and the Senate -- possibly today, possibly tomorrow, certainly long after fiscal 2003 actually began. Nowhere, for example, is it possible to find a sentence stating that "Alaska forests shall be exempt from regulations which apply to forests in other states" or a phrase hinting that "people who object to government policy in Alaska forests shall be forbidden to take their case to the courts." [emphasis added]

If debated on the floor of the House or the Senate, all of these measures would be controversial, at the very least. Passing them in this way, as riders on a bill that members must pass urgently, is no more than an underhanded attempt to avoid public debate. Even if they do not appear in the final version of this legislation, the push to include them -- coming largely from Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee -- is offensive.

The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei reports on some GOP lawmakers' search for ways to punish France and Germany that, in the words of Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) "hurt them without hurting us."

Other analysts are now explaining how this crisis could spell the effective end of NATO and the United Nations. Not to mention the removal of U.S. troops from Germany.

Perhaps it is time to replace the international institutions created in the aftermath of World War II. This fight, however, is not the way to go about creating a new international consensus.

Our national failure to spend the necessary money needed to improve our domestic security and public health systems leaves us woefully unprepared for some of the potential unintended consequences from this transition.

NASA yesterday released the most detailed picture ever of the young universe, a picture that scientists believe will help answer many questions about the birth -- and future death -- of the universe.

The Washington Post's Rob Stein explains:

The image, created from a year's worth of data collected by a NASA probe 1 million miles from Earth, has solved long-standing puzzles, such as what the universe looked like right after it was forged in the violent inferno of the big bang, when the first stars blinked on in the coalescing heavens and what kind of matter makes up the expanding universe that exists today.

Guess what? The Bush Administration is engaged in an involved budgetary shell game that makes it falsely appear that billions more are being spent on Homeland Security efforts. Thomas Oliphant explains:

Next year the administration proposes to spend about $41 billion on homeland security.

The $4 billion to $5 billion increase in the Bush budget, though, is largely illusory. For one thing, the numbers take advantage of the fact that there is still no appropriation for the current year that ends in September. Once this year's spending is set by statute, the actual increase will be roughly half that. Then the shell game takes over. What Clinton noticed is that roughly $2 billion has been cut from the budgets of federal programs that beef up ''first responders,'' those local workers who compose the front lines. The FBI will gets its money for strike forces and intelligence, Ridge's new department will get a new building, and he will get a new office and staff, but cops and firefighters will be neglected.

The successful program her husband promoted in the '90s to help localities hire more officers would be all but eliminated. The national program that assists local fire departments would be cut in half. The administration trumpets a ''new'' proposal to combine federal law enforcement assistance money into one of those block grants conservatives love, hiding the fact that the proposed grant contains well over a half-billion dollars less than what's in the programs it would replace. In all, Clinton estimates the cost at some 4,000 cops not hired nationally, plus untold thousands of firefighters. Clinton proposes that all these federal cutbacks be rejected, a minimalist idea that at least avoids harm.

(When the government goes to Code Orange, local responders go to higher alert, but the federal government -- in what Oliphant calls the "ultimate unfunded federal mandate" refuses to appropriate money to cover the costs.)

The Bush Administration has so far neglected to take Homeland Security seriously. The most prominent sign of this is the White House's refusal to propose appropriate funding for the necessary efforts.

Are tax cuts really a higher national priority?

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is now trying to backtrack after his signature appeared on a fundraising letter that attacked unions -- including firefighters and police unions -- as "presenting a clear and present danger to the United States."

The International Association of Fire Fighters are fighting back. Hence DeLay's need to blame one of his staffers for allowing the use of his signature. (I thought Republicans preached personal responsibility. Oh well.)

E.J. Dionne says that DeLay, and his fellow Republicans, have a lot they need to explain. He writes:

Now, DeLay's decision to disentangle himself from the letter is lovely. But if he's serious, the Hammer has a lot more disavowing to do. After all, DeLay and his party spent the 2002 election campaign suggesting that standing up for the rights of unionized public employees was indeed contrary to the national security interests of the United States.

Clarence Page writes about the seven jurors have have so far apologized to Ed Rosenthal for convicting him of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy charges. A conviction they regret because they were not told he was providing medicinal marijuana under a law passed by California voters. Page explains:

It is no wonder that the jurors feel like, if I may coin an old colloquialism, they got took. After all, they were.

And, of course, it is easy to see why prosecutors did not want Rosenthal's motives to be revealed. In California, which legalized medicinal use of marijuana in 1996, it must be quite difficult to find a jury of 12 people who would convict a man whose only criminal offense was to provide the weed to the sick and the dying.

Californians are hardly alone in this nuanced view. Although fewer than 40 percent of Americans would legalize marijuana for recreational use, recent polls have found that about 80 percent support legalizing it for medicinal use.

Even presidential candidate George W. Bush told reporters in October 1999 that on the medicinal marijuana question, "I believe each state can [make] that decision as they so choose."

Or, maybe not. President Bush's administration is going after California's medicinal marijuana providers with a zeal that is appropriate for the pursuit of Colombian drug cartels.

Thomas Oliphant compares President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell's approaches to making the public case against Iraq.

Oliphant argues that Bush has growing "credibility gap" created by his overstatements of the facts, while Powell builds a stronger case by sticking closer to what is provable. He writes:

By being both so candid and so careful in making clear what is known and not known for certain about Al Qaeda and nuclear weapons, Powell reinforced his credibility on the rock-hard evidence about chemical and biological weapons as well as Iraqi efforts to conceal evidence and lie in official statements.

By overstating the case, by assuming facts known to be in dispute, and by using sketchy information for alarmist purposes, Bush consistently undercuts that credibility.

Maureen Dowd scores a direct hit:

The orange alert made me wonder again why the Bush administration has spent the last year and a half hyping the Iraqi menace instead of singlemindedly hunting Al Qaeda.

Mr. Bush's presidency came into focus when he made his bullhorn vow to get "the people who knocked these buildings down." But we're not getting the creeps who knocked the buildings down. We're getting the creeps whose address we know.

Thomas Friedman has a wonderful idea. He thinks the time has come to replace France with India as one of the five nations holding UN Security Council veto powers. He writes:

Why replace France with India? Because India is the world's biggest democracy, the world's largest Hindu nation and the world's second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it's become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can't see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.

Such a development would give me a rare chance to embrace one of this White House's foreign policy initiatives.

David Broder today writes about the growing "credibility gap" the White House has on economic issues.

Democratic leaders have brought out this old Vietnam War era phrase to help describe the Bush Administration's economic program. As Broder notes, there is perhaps enough evidence for this one to stick.

It is in the domestic arena that his critics find it hard to square Bush's words with his actions. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, sharing the Press Club platform with Daschle on Jan. 27, said that when Bush freezes funds Congress appropriated for homeland defense "but says there is enough money in the wartime budget to create a huge tax cut that benefits the wealthiest in our country, the credibility gap widens."

The budget that Bush delivered last week provides the strongest evidence to support the Democratic charge. The same president who promised in the State of the Union address that "we will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and to other generations" is burdening the future irresponsibly with debts he will not pay.

The budget message disclosed that in the next two years alone, this administration will pass on to the next generation an unpaid bill of at least $611 billion in fresh budget deficits. The five-year total, by the White House's own estimate, will be more than double that record amount.

Meanwhile, the president omits any provision for financing a possible war with Iraq. And he refuses to face up to the costs of retirement and health care benefits for the baby boom generation, which will drain Social Security and Medicare coffers in coming years.

It is possible that even the Bush Administration will see that there are limits. After all, as Broder explains later in his column, they are having problems finding senior Republicans in Congress to carry some of Bush's more loathsome budget proposals.

Remember how during the Clinton Administration Republican leaders, and their allies like Rush Limbaugh, would scream about how "words mean things"? I guess that criticism is not operative when a Republican resides in the White House.

Here we go again.

Did you think the USA Patriot Act set a dangerous precedent against our civil liberties? Are you worried about how far this White House will go?

Then read George Paine's description on his Warblogging.com of the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003.

The original USA Patriot Act allowed the government to do many bad things. It resulted in the government having the power to spy on Americans without so much as probable cause or a search warrant. It led a court — a secret court that issues rulings that cannot be appealed by anyone except the govenrment — to rule that the Fourth Amendment isn't really all that important after all.

John Ashcroft wasn't done. He was just getting warmed up. He is now just finishing up the draft for "Patriot Act II", officially known as the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. The full text of DSEA-03 is available from the Center for Public Integrity. This new law, Patriot Act II, would give the government "broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement perogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information," says the Center for Public Integrity in this article.

Update: Talkleft is also all over this issue. You can start here to learn about why this bill must be stopped.

Paul Krugman is hoping for the return next week of the old Alan Greenspan, the one who rightly cared about fiscal responsibility.

Greenspan needs to inject some sanity into our country's economic conversation. The situation is growing dire, as Krugman illustrates:

But now the fiscal deterioration has reached catastrophic proportions. In its first budget, the Bush administration projected a 2004 surplus of $262 billion. In its second budget, released a year ago, it projected a $14 billion deficit for the same year. Now it projects a deficit of $307 billion. That's a deterioration of $570 billion, just for next year — matched by comparable deterioration in each following year. You know, $570 billion here and $570 billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

Not my fault, says Mr. Bush. "A recession and a war we did not choose have led to a return of deficits," he declared. Really? Will the recession and war cost $570 billion per year, every year? Besides, Mr. Bush knew all about the recession and Osama bin Laden (remember him?) a year ago, when his projections showed a return to surpluses by 2005. Now they show deficits forever — even though they don't include the costs of an Iraq war.

I find it hard to imagine how a sitting United States Congressman would dare defend the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) comments justifying this historic injustice are outrageous. They are also, as the San Jose Mercury News editorializes, extremely alarming:

...because [Coble] is the point person on legislation to expand surveillance and curb privacy protections, as chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

E.J. Dionne explains how the Bush Administration is not only seeking to give the richest Americans tax breaks. His economic plan will also pressure the states to reduce their support for programs helping the poor.

That pressure comes in at least three forms. First, the new programs the Bush Administration proposes will skew away from the lowest income groups. Second, the Bush Administration's economic plans -- like the dividend cut -- will also cost the states billions in revenue, making their economic crises even worse and leading to more cuts in the state's social safety net. Third, the White House is not proposing aid to the states to help them today. It is proposing loans with strings attached. Dionne adds:

Stealthy redistribution upward is the theme of Bush's domestic program. Under the cover of promoting growth, Bush is shifting more and more of the tax burden from the wealthy. That's the effect of his elimination of the dividends tax and the huge new tax loopholes being sold as "savings" incentives.

In the meantime, Bush is creating long-term incentives for states to cut their programs to help the poor. On Medicaid, for example, Bush is in theory giving states modest fiscal relief now -- not anything close to what they need, of course -- but only if they accept the transformation of Medicaid into a block-grant program and cuts in later years. The cuts are disguised by declaring that whatever Medicaid relief the states get now will be a "loan" to be paid back within the next decade.

Dionne also makes an interesting observation about the difference in the domestic policy leadership provided by George W. Bush and Winston Churchill. Churchill gets the better of that comparison.

As someone who has been a critic of the current FCC's failures, it is only fair that I point out that the regulator's problems are not new. The Washington Post editorializes about how the FCC's mistakes in its 1996 spectrum auction have now cost taxpayers $11 billion.

Rhetorica Press-Politics Journal's Andrew R. Cline highlights Slate writer Jack Shafer's initial post in an interesting new series about media bias.

Cline and Shafer are both excellent observers of the way our political media works and their thoughts on the subject are worth considering.

James Pinkerton writes:

Colin Powell proved yesterday that Saddam Hussein is a bad man. But he didn't prove that the American war against Iraq is a good idea.

1. First, if we know with such precision where so many Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are located, why not reserve the option of "surgically striking" them without trying to conquer the country?
   
2. Second, if the whole of Iraq is one big weapons-of-mass-destruction not-so-funhouse, then what will be the benefits of putting American forces "in country"?
   
3. Third, how will we manage the weapons-of-mass-destruction issue once Americans touch down?
   
4. Fourth, is America serious about rounding up weapons of mass destruction in the entire country of Iraq - and are some Iraqis currently allied with the United States really serious about being peaceful "liberatees"?

Deputy Director of the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security David McIntyre writes that people need to start thinking about how to prepare for increased terrorism risk when war begins with Iraq.

We may attempt to anticipate Saddam's actions by changing our national threat status to "Level Orange". And what will happen then? When Level Orange was announced last September, confusion and cynicism followed. What are you and your company, agency, or family going to do next time?

The federal government can only provide you with emergency guides but it cannot tell you exactly what actions to take. Homeland Security demands local decisions and actions.

Marney Craig, one of the jurors who found Ed Rosenthal guilty of growing marijuana last week, writes about the case in today's San Jose Mercury News:

Last week, I did something so profoundly wrong that it will haunt me for the rest of my life. I helped send a man to prison who does not belong there.

As jurors, we followed the law exactly as it was explained to us by Judge Charles Breyer. We played our part in the criminal justice system precisely as instructed. But the verdict we reached -- the only verdict those instructions allowed us to reach -- was wrong. It was cruel, inhumane and unjust.

With everything going on in the world right now, one would think that Attorney General John Ashcroft and the federal goverment would have higher priorities than fighting a war against medicinal marijuana.

For more information: Talkleft is all over this story. You would be wise to examine all of the information and links included on her blog.

Jan Jarboe Russell rightly hopes that "instead of robbing the space program of public support, the questions about what went wrong with Columbia increase our curiosity and commitment to it."

The Daily Kos highlights the confrontation between those in the Bush Administration who want the world to believe that there is a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda and the professionals in the CIA and FBI who do not believe such a strong link exists.

My former colleagues at The Concord Coalition ran a full-page advertisement in today's New York Times to raise the issue of our federal government's long-term fiscal irresponsibility.

Here's the paragraph that gets right at the problem:

A $25 Trillion Fiscal Millstone: Shouldn't the Government Use Honest Accounting Too?

The truth is, future generations are already burdened by an off-the-books obligation of $25 trillion. This fiscal millstone represents the unfunded benefit obligations of federal entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare -- that is, the total value of benefit promises accrued to date for which nothing has been saved. It is equivalent to the total amount of money that would have to be set aside in interest-earning accounts, starting today, to pay for all of the unfunded benefits that have thus far been promised to workers and retirees. No amount of fiscal stimulus or "progrowth" tax cuts will come close to lifting this $25 trillion millstone. If a private corporation an up unfunded benefit promises of $25 trillion someone would go to jail. In the private sector, federal law requires such benefit obligations to be amortized over 30 years and recorded as an annual charge against revenues. Politicians have justifiably criticized recent corporate accounting scandals, but if the federal government required itself to recognize the true cost of the benefit obligations on its own balance sheet, the annual charge would be $1.7 trillion. Recognizing this charge on next year's budget would produce an honest accrual-based deficit approaching $2 trillion -- a sobering perspective for policymakers eager to incur new long-term debt.

As Concord has explained for years, adding to the national debt is not a painless alternative. It shifts the tax burden from today to the future. Sometimes that is necessary. But "deficits as far as the eye can see" should not be standard operating procedure.

The advertisement makes another vital point:

The nation now faces two history-bending challenges: global terrorism and global aging. Meeting the first will require marshalling new resources far above the extra spending already legislated. We know that meeting the second will test the ability of society to provide a decent standard of living for the old without imposing a crushing tax burden on the young. America should not approach this fiscal gauntlet encumbered by deficits as far as the eye can see

You can read the entire text of the advertisement by following the link below.

Thomas Oliphant is concerned about the economy because the Federal Reserve governors were falsely optimistic in their latest announcement. This could come back to haunt President Bush later.

The Bush mantra is that he is not satisfied with this economic performance and won't be until everyone who seeks a job can find one. His policies belie his attitude. Down the road, Bush's reckless ruination of federal finances could produce a contractionary jump in interest rates just as the normal, cyclical improvement in the economy becomes evident.

The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman is unimpressed with conservatives' reaction to the Iraq portion of President Bush's State of the Union address:

But it's understandable that conservatives responded to the speech with their hearts, because it didn't have much to appeal to the brain. All the inflammatory denunciations and ostentatious muscle-flexing couldn't disguise the flimsiness of Bush's case.

This State of the Union address resembled one of those fast-paced thrillers that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat even though the plot is full of holes. It was easy to get swept away by it, but only if you didn't think too much.

Former Senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) levels serious criticisms of President Bush's Iraq policy explanation contained within last week's State of the Union address. Bradley explains the SOTU's defects:

1. The president did not demonstrate that a unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq will help in the fight against the ongoing, more serious, distributed threat of worldwide terrorism.
2. Bush did not acknowledge that a unilateral invasion risks destabilizing Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Egypt -- any one of which would be a major strategic loss for the United States.
3. The president minimized the importance of allies in a war against Iraq, as he has in many other areas.
4. Bush's strong remarks ignored the fact that military actions often have unpredictable consequences.
5. The president did not point out that the prospect of unilateral U.S. invasion has caused Iraq's neighbors to put away traditional animosities and begin to consult on what it could mean for them.

Gregg Easterbrook asks some pointed questions about the space shuttle program.

Easterbrook says it is time to create a safer and cheaper orbital vehicle.

The Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy is not just an American tragedy. Or just an Israeli tragedy. It is a tragedy of all humanity.

Those six U.S. and one Israeli who died did not sacrifice only the interest of science. Or in service to their nations.

They were working for all of us who are humans. The entire species. Doing dangerous work that is often underestimated and underappreciated.

Space is our species' destiny. No place in the universe is safe forever. Humanity must go back to space because our species must not allow its survival to be dependent on one small and fragile place in the cosmos.

As I watched the news of today's shuttle Columbia disaster yesterday, I kept thinking back to the words J. Michael Straczynski put into the mouth of one of his fictional characters (Commander Jeffrey Sinclair) early in the first season of Babylon 5. Answering a question about whether being in space is worthwhile, Straczynski/Sinclair says:

Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics - and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold, and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes - all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars."

We must grieve for the loss of seven heroes. We must remember their sacrifice.

We must find out what went wrong and fix it.

And then we must return to space.