December 2003 Archives

The San Jose Mercury News continues its California government reform series by calling for an extension of California's draconian term limits.

California law currently only allows for three two-year terms in the State Assembly and two four-year terms in the State Senate. That is simply too strict to allow for a functioning government.

As the Mercury News' editorial notes:

They have also decimated legislative expertise on other socially or technically complex issues such as school funding, mental health services or oversight of state spending on information technology.

Term limits perpetually drain institutional memory. They also make it hard for legislators to build the relationships needed to compromise when issues get thorny.

California's limits of three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year terms in the Senate are among the strictest in the nation. They ought to be stretched.

Stretch them not only for expertise, but for accountability. Legislators ought to be around long enough to experience the consequences of their decisions.

(Given some of the conservative anti-government backers of the term-limits law, one does not have to be too cynical to think that they hoped their efforts would create a disfunctional -- or non-functional -- state government.)

If term limits cannot be repealed, they do need to be loosened. I think that the only term limits necessary are term limits for leadership or committees. Such limits would keep one person from gaining too much power over time.

The Mercury News calls for "Five terms in the Assembly, three in the Senate." I think 12 years in each body (six terms in the Assembly, three in the Senate) makes good sense, but the Mercury News' suggestion is far better than what California has now.

I hope Californians will have the opportunity to approve such a change.

Some people believe that the anger Democrats direct at President George W. Bush is somehow horrible, even psychotic. (Dissent, after all, is now somehow bad.)

E.J. Dionne does not think such thoughts are out of line. In fact, he argues that it is a natural reaction to how the Bush Administration has treated the Democrats this past year.

It's hard to think of any other president who has gone so quickly from being so unifying to being so divisive. There was hardly a soul this side of Noam Chomsky who didn't support Bush for some time after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and didn't support the war on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Even Democrats who never conceded that Bush had legitimately won the 2000 election wanted to give Bush a chance to lead the country out of crisis.

So what went wrong? Unrequited bipartisanship. Implicitly, the Democrats expected that the new situation would produce a new Bush, less partisan and less ideological. For a few months after the attacks, that was the Bush who showed up to work every day. He and the Democrats did a lot of business together, and the country seemed happy.

It could not last, because Bush didn't want to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, a nonpartisan leader who unified the country without being much help to his party. Ticket splitting began in a big way during the 1950s when millions of Democrats went for Ike but stuck with their party on the rest of the ballot. Bush wanted to realign the country and create a Republican majority for bold conservative policies at home and abroad.

There's nothing that says I have to like it. Or not argue that Bush should be denied a second term because of it.

The Washington Post editorializes today that the Justice Department or the House Ethics Committee should investigate whether the lobbying efforts targeting Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) on the night of the Medicare vote were unethical or criminal.

THAT SOMETHING UGLY happened to Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) on the long night of the House Medicare vote last month seems beyond dispute. With his party lacking the votes to muscle the prescription drug bill through, Mr. Smith was subjected to intense -- and quite possibly criminal -- pressure to induce him to abandon his opposition. As Mr. Smith related it the next day, "members and groups" offered financial and political support for his son, Brad, who is running for his father's seat, if only he would vote for the bill.

But as I noted last month, the threats made against Rep. Smith and his son's political career were absolutely inexcusable. Does Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) really condone these putrid activities?

Regardless, it was yet another example of how empty the Republicans' family values rhetoric can be.

I know other entertainment stories from the weekend may seem quite important, but I cannot help but think that this story should have a much higher priority for us today. The New York Times' Carlotta Gall reports:

The Taliban claimed responsibility today for a bombing that killed five Afghan intelligence officers and himself near Kabul's international airport on Sunday afternoon, casting a shadow of concern over the grand assembly meeting in Kabul to approve a new constitution.

We really cannot afford to lose the battle in Afghanistan. I continue to worry that the war with Iraq drained needed resources and focus from the effort there -- one, after all, that is on the front lines of the war on terrorism.

The San Jose Mercury News opens its week-long series on California government reform by calling for a reduction in the vote requirement to pass a budget from the current two-thirds to a simple majority.

The two-thirds rule gives a legislative minority the power to veto the budget. It gives the majority, which ought to be held responsible for the way it directs the state, a ready-made excuse for a bad budget -- namely, the minority made them do it.

The two-thirds rule is a case where suspicion of government has made government worse. While in theory it requires legislators to find the prudent middle ground, in practice it produces last-minute budgets with goodies for everybody, instead of a sober, coherent plan of action.

An initiative on the March ballot would change the majority need to pass the budget to 55 percent. A simple majority would be even better.

The opposition is rallying under the slogan ``No blank check.'' Granting a majority the right to make decisions on budgets, or on taxes, is not a ``blank check.'' It's the American way.

The two-thirds rule is actually minority rule. Not only is majority rule more fair, it permits voters to know whom to hold responsible for good and bad budgets. And they can pass judgment in the voting booth.

The Washington Post's Lee Hockstader reports today on how the Army is keeping its soldiers from leaving the service even after their enlistment time or retirement date has passed. Hockstader writes:

According to their contracts, expectations and desires, all three soldiers should have been civilians by now. But Fontaine and Costas are currently serving in Iraq, and Eagle has just been deployed. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 -- the payroll computer's way of saying, "Who knows?"

The three are among thousands of soldiers forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.

"It reflects the fact that the military is too small, which nobody wants to admit," said Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a leading military sociologist.

To the Pentagon, stop-loss orders are a finger in the dike -- a tool to halt the hemorrhage of personnel, and maximize cohesion and experience, for units in the field in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Through a series of stop-loss orders, the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were briefly blocked from retiring or departing the military at some point this year.

(It is worth pointing out again the Center for American Progress' chart that illuminates the gulf between the Bush Administration's claims and the reality of its policies affecting our troops.)

We should understand that with each broken promise and extended deployment, the probability that someone (or many someones) will not reenlist grows.

This will prove especially true in our reserves and National Guard. We have misused our reserves and National Guard for several years now. Many rightly see this as an undeclared draft. The bill for this abuse will soon come due as many of these experienced soldiers leave the service.

But, I would be remiss to blame only the Bush Administration for this problem. Members of Congress, from both political parties, should share a significant part of the blame because of their refusal to increase the size of our military to fight the war on terror and the largely unrelated Iraq invasion.

While the government has the right to treat our soldiers this way, we all need to underestand that such decisions will have future consequences.

I would also suggest that our political leaders should tone down their "I support our troops" rhetoric unless they are willing to back it up with some policy changes.

The Department of Homeland Security is now requiring international air carriers to have armed officers on board selected flights to and from the United States.

This is a good idea. Especially considering the reasons behind our current Orange Alert.

But, I do have to wonder if a nation that was serious about airline security would have waited until over 27 months had passed since the September 11 terrorist attacks to implement such a policy?

The San Jose Mercury News is going to spend the next week outlining six proposals to reform California's state government. The proposals include:

• Permit the state budget to be approved on a simple majority vote in the Legislature, instead of the current two-thirds majority.

• Ease California's legislative term limits, which are among the strictest in the nation.

• Take the power to draw legislative districts away from the Legislature and give it to some neutral body, so there are fewer politically safe districts.

• Simplify the way the state funds schools, to make it fairer and to give local school districts more flexibility.

• Redesign the relationship between the state and local governments -- principally cities and counties -- to give the locals more independence and certainty in their financing.

• Alter the mix of taxes that fund state government, to make the revenue stream less volatile; then require the budget to actually balance, instead of merely requiring the governor to propose a balanced budget.

California needs reforms in each of these six areas, and making these needed changes would go a long way to helping the state government function more effectively. California voters are going to have a chance to begin implementing a couple of them in the March election.

Hopefully they will pass, and more of these ideas will follow them to the ballot.

Sacramento Bee Deputy Editorial Page Editor Mark Paul urges Democrats to look towards the future. He writes:

Someday in the last year of the next presidential term, most likely Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008, a 62-year-old man or woman will walk into a Social Security office somewhere in the country and apply for early retirement benefits. After that first baby-boomer retirement, the United States will never be the same again.

You'd never know it, though, from the presidential election that formally begins 22 days from now, in the Iowa caucuses. To listen to the candidates so far, you'd think that governing is something you do by looking in the rearview mirror.

But on the question of what the American future looks like, the president is at his most vulnerable. The $500 billion deficit Bush will run up this year is the emblem of economic and fiscal policies that are simply unsustainable. Even as he tells the country that the war on terrorism will be prolonged and expensive, he's putting the cost of fighting it on the national credit card at the very moment the country and its finances are about to be transformed by the retirement of the baby boomers.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are vital programs. Their future priorities should not be left to chance. The window of time for planning for the baby boomers' retirement is rapidly closing.

Will our legacy be a mountain of debt and a failure to take action to ensure that these programs can protect the most vulnerable in our population well into the future?

Thomas Oliphant writes that President George W. Bush is telling less than the truth about the prescription drug discounting promised in the recently passed Medicare bill.

According to Bush and all administration underlings, retired people and others eligible for Medicare are about to get "discounts" on their drug purchases. The price breaks, the president has solemnly assured television cameras, will last between this year and the moment in 2006 when the new law takes full effect. Every person entitled to coverage will be getting a discount card, Bush goes on to note in his standard remarks, and the result of that card will be discounts ranging "from 10 to 25 percent" off the retail price of prescription medicines.

That is the official line.

From the fine print of the law itself, however, it appears to be a lie. When the first batch of regulations under the new law was issued by the Bush administration, the fine print described a system under which "discounts" are a goal, not a requirement. Retired people have a statutory right to "share" in savings that result from bulk purchasing of drugs, but whether that share is puny or substantial is a matter the Republicans and Bush are leaving up to private corporations.

But, much to my chagrin, no election has been won while focusing on generational equity. But if seniors feel they are getting a bad deal, or less than they were promised, President Bush will be held responsible.

The Boston Globe's editorial writers are pleased that President George W. Bush is being reminded that executive power in this nation is limited.

AMERICA HAS always thought of itself as a nation of laws and not men, but that comforting assumption is under challenge from President George W. Bush. In a series of recent reversals, Bush has been forced to back off of several of his key initiatives in both foreign and domestic arenas because they violated the US Constitution, federal law, or international agreements. The pattern is even more troubling than the individual cases, suggesting a belligerent disregard for the law until brave judges call the administration to account.

Now, when you read that headline you may have been thinking that I was going to be writing about some dictatorship or outlaw regime.

I wish.

Instead, this story regards the United States of America. That's right: us.

An Australian journalist comes to our nation to interview Olivia Newton-John for a story about breast cancer, and agents of our government take it upon themselves to abuse, handcuff, body search, and refuse for hours to provide food and drink to Sue Smethurst when she arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.

To say that this is outrageous would be an understatement. Given that this happened to a journalist, you might think that our great media might take an interest in it.

Wrong again. There has been precious little coverage of this travesty.

I guess the so-called liberal media is too busy examining the clothing styles of the Democratic presidential contenders to take note at how one of their colleagues became a victim of an horrendous abuse of power.

(Thanks to Behind the Homefront for the link.)

Not planning is good! At least that's what David Brooks tries to argue today. He writes:

Our government couldn't even come up with a plan for postwar Iraq — thank goodness, too, because any "plan" hatched by technocrats in Washington would have been unfit for Iraqi reality.

I know all about how politicians sometimes try to redefine failure into a success. But Brook's illogic would be laughable if it were not for the 336 U.S. soldiers who have died since President Bush's Mission Accomplished photo-op.

Update: Others take well-deserved shots at Brooks today. They include:

• CalPundit
  
• Talking Points Memo
  
• Matthew Yglesias
  

Taegan Goodard's Political Wire includes a note about how deficit hawks might react to the fact that the government will reach its national debt ceiling sometime this summer.

Paul Krugman writes:

During the 2000 election, many journalists deluded themselves and their audience into believing that there weren't many policy differences between the major candidates, and focused on personalities (or, rather, perceptions of personalities) instead. This time there can be no illusions: President Bush has turned this country sharply to the right, and this election will determine whether the right's takeover is complete.

But will the coverage of the election reflect its seriousness? Toward that end, I hereby propose some rules for 2004 political reporting.

Krugman's rules, which he explains well in this column include:

coverage of the election reflect its seriousness? Toward that end, I hereby propose some rules for 2004 political reporting.

• Don't talk about clothes.

• Actually look at the candidates' policy proposals.

• Beware of personal anecdotes. (And its collarary: If a reporter must use anecdotes, they'd better be true.)

• Look at the candidates' records.

• Don't fall for political histrionics.

• It's not about you.

Alas, an election this important calls out for a substantive policy discussion.

While House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) issued a premature eulogy about Al Qaeda's terrorist capabilities on last week's Meet the Press (just hours before our national terrorist threat level was raised), others are thinking far more seriously about the war on terrorism.

The New America Foundation's Peter Bergen, for example, analyzes what recent terror attacks around the world can tell us about Al Qaeda's potential future strategies. He writes:

These various attacks may well represent the future of "al Qaeda" operations: Some attacks will continue to be planned by the terrorist organization itself, others will be carried out by affiliate groups acting in the name of al Qaeda and additional operations will be executed by local jihadists who have little or no direct connection to al Qaeda.

The last is perhaps the most worrisome development, because it suggests that al Qaeda has successfully turned itself from an organization into a mass movement -- one that has been energized by the war in Iraq.

I was surfing the internet this morning, and stopped by Matt Drudge's site to see to what he was linking this morning.

In the red font he uses from time to time, I noticed the following link in the upper left hand corner of the page:

Dean not ready to pronounce Osama bin Laden guilty...

Unfortunately for Drudge. You see, since the link was provided we could, if we read to near the end of Lisa Wangsness' story in today's Concord Monitor, see what Dean actually said.

But wouldn't most Americans feel strongly that bin Laden should be tried in America - and put to death?

"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found," Dean said. "I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials. So I'm sure that is the correct sentiment of most Americans, but I do think if you're running for president, or if you are president, it's best to say that the full range of penalties should be available. But it's not so great to prejudge the judicial system."

Dean is saying that he thinks that people running for executive office, or holding executive office, should refrain from passing judgment or sentences on people who have been accused of something. Even in the midst of this conversation, he says that Osama is "very likely to be found guilty" and that "this is the correct sentiment of most Americans."

Sorry, Drudge. Try again.

Now, if I were working on Dean's campaign would I feel a bit frustrated by this? Yes.

Because while Dean is absolutely correct from a civics point of view (the executive branch should refrain from passing judgement about potential judicial cases), it is the type of statement that is easily twisted into something else.

In the media shorthand that shapes today's elections, the false "Dean does not think Osama is guilty" attack could be repeated so many times that many Americans eventually could believe it is true. Former Vice President Al Gore could speak from experience about how difficult it is to defend oneself against false attacks that have nonetheless entered the public conciousness.

Which is why such statements are to be avoided. It is much easier to make such an attack than it is to defend against it.

Josh Marshall analyzes some media reports about the cancellation of flights from Paris to Los Angeles and makes an important observation that all of us should keep in mind during the coming weeks. He writes:

But, assuming nothing terrible ends up happening, I'll be very curious to find out more about just how this was all handled. Because few things are more important than effective liaison and coordination between ours and our allies intelligence services. And if the choppy political waters are getting in the way, on either side, that's a big problem.

John Atcheson analyzes our government's fiscal policies and the economic "rebound" they have generated:

Before America allows President Bush to take bows on the economy, let's take a closer look at this recovery. A simple thought experiment will help.

Imagine for a moment that you took all your credit cards and maxed them out. Now take your mortgage and borrow the maximum on it. Cash in the kid's college fund, your rainy day savings, your 401(k) retirement savings. While you're at it, stop paying for your health insurance and the maintenance on your house, your car and your yard. Now take all that money and spend it. Feeling pretty flush? Sure you are. You just pumped tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars into your pocket.

But you'd never do that.

Because you know that just because you'd be living large for the time being, you wouldn't be wealthier. In fact, you'd be getting poorer by the minute. And yet, that's exactly what Mr. Bush's recovery is - a giant borrowing binge.

This, dear friends, is apparently the Republicans' rather perverse idea of family values. Do you really want to give them four more years to run up more red ink?

Why is the Bush Administration punishing U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers for telling the truth about her understaffed department?

Oh yeah. It's the Bush Administration. Telling the truth clearly is not looked upon as a virtue.

One of my favorite columnists, Matt Miller, takes a look at the Congressional Budget Office's recently released Long Term Budget Outlook and decides to take both major political parties on a well-deserved trip to the rhetorical woodshed. He writes:

A Christmas gift from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in the form of a report entitled, "The Long-Term Budget Outlook," offers a depressing reminder of how deep our fiscal crisis will be when the baby boomers start to retire in a few years - and how both President Bush and his potential Democratic foes are ignoring the hard choices ahead.

Without making your eyes glaze over with the numbers, here's the CBO's basic message. The trajectory of federal spending in health care, when combined with the lower revenue path implicit in the tax cuts President Bush has enacted, is leading America toward an explosion of debt that is unsustainable. The current "plan" would also leave us with a government able to do little more than fund health care and pensions for seniors.

After outlining the problem, the CBO thankfully provides an overview of some solutions. As Miller reports:

Unfortunately, the CBO's analysis, with options coolly laid out to address the coming crisis, isn't echoed anywhere on the campaign trail - where both parties operate on the principle that some facts are simply too unpleasant (and thus too risky) to share with the American public.

Take Social Security, where the "debate" has been predictably unhelpful. The Republican Party has pledged, most recently in the 2002 election, "to oppose any proposal that would cut benefits, raise taxes, or raise the retirement age." Democrats hold these positions, too.

Sounds great, except that, as the CBO report points out, to keep Social Security solvent we'll soon have to do some of the following: cut future benefits, raise taxes and raise the retirement age. It's comforting to know both parties have categorically ruled out anything that might solve the problem - and to see them bristle at the notion that any scoundrel would suggest otherwise.

The Medicare debate, if anything, is even worse.

Yes, senior citizens vote at higher levels than do younger adults. Children, of course, cannot vote at all. So some try to explain away these pandering policies in terms of pure political calculus.

But at some point our political leaders, as the late Paul Tsongas argued, need to look past the next election to what is good for the next generation.

Over $2 billion a day in new national debt is not good. Neither is our failure to prepare for the inevitable aging of the baby boom generation.

Our fiscal policies are not just stupid. They are immoral. We should not be surprised by the condemnation future generations are sure to level at us for our irresponsibility.

The Washington Post's Walter Pincus reports:

The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has concluded that the White House made a questionable claim in January's State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain nuclear materials because of its desperation to show that Hussein had an active program to develop nuclear weapons, according to a well-placed source familiar with the board's findings.

Pincus continues to summarize the FIAB's findings:

After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board -- chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was "no deliberate effort to fabricate" a story, the source said. Instead, the source said, the board believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable.

But I do not think that just because there was "no deliberate effort to fabricate" evidence that we should excuse the Bush White House for being so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" when the president and his advisors were in the process of trying every possible rationale in their efforts to get the American people and the world community behind the Iraq invasion.

Imagine for a moment conservatives and Republican leaders accepting such a distinction about former President Bill Clinton and his personal ethical troubles.

To repeat what I have argued before, I believe that the process used to justify a war is far more important than any of the personal foibles revealed about President Clinton. Clinton's lie to the grand jury, while serious, is not as serious as this lie about Iraq's nuclear program.

While the Bush Administration is trying to sell a new, more humanitarian justification for going to war with Iraq today, people with memories can recall that the White House had a far different argument last winter.

That is why we cannot forget this lie. Either now, with Pincus' report, or with the forthcoming reports promised by an ongoing Senate investigation.

Dr. Andrew R. Cline has a few reasonable Christmas wishes that I hope Santa will bring him (and, by extension, us).

The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage writes:

As the nation stepped up security yesterday with extra police on the streets and fighter jets in the sky, a broad range of specialists warned that the color-coded terrorism alert system should be replaced because it frightens people and wastes public resources even in those cities not mentioned as possible targets in intelligence reports.

I have never liked the color-coded system, although it may have been excused as a quick initial effort. But the Department of Homeland Security really should try to develop something better before people begin to completely ignore changes from yellow to orange.

The Congressional Budget Office recently released its latest Long-Term Budget Outlook.

Its conclusions are more than a little sobering. Here are some of the highlights:

• Unless taxation reaches levels that are unprecedented in the United States, current spending policies will probably be financially unsustainable over the next 50 years. An ever-growing burden of federal debt held by the public would have a corrosive and potentially contractionary effect on the economy.

• Fiscal policy could be financially sustainable if the growth of health care costs slowed significantly from historical rates. But even in those circumstances,
  tax revenues would probably need to be higher than they have been in the past.

• If taxation is restricted to the levels that prevailed in the past, the growth of entitlement spending will have to be substantially reduced. Restricting the growth of outlays for defense, education, transportation, and other discretionary programs would not be enough to ensure fiscal sustainability.

• Likewise, economic growth alone is unlikely to bring the nation’s long-term fiscal position into balance. Moreover, issuing ever-larger amounts of debt or dramatically raising tax rates could significantly reduce growth.

We are putting off tough choices. We are making our situation worse by running up huge amounts of debt through poor tax cut and spending choices. The baby boom generation, however, with each passing day gets closer to reaching the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare payments.

Decision time is coming. Sooner than we think. As the CBO report explains:

Because the aging of the population is inevitable, it is important to consider what level and type of benefits the public wants or needs to give the elderly as the ratio of workers to retirees declines and what level of taxation the U.S. public will accept on a sustained basis.

I wish we would start this conversation.

TAPPED's Matthew Yglesias does a wonderful job taking apart all of the inaccuracies uttered by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) during his interview Sunday with Tim Russert.

As Yglesias explains, DeLay's answers on the budget and economy were quite pathetic -- why misrepresent things that are so easy to look up, Mr. Majority Leader?

But it is a TAPPED reader who comes up with the DeLay statement that most takes a detour from reality:

UPDATE: Reader C.S. notes that DeLay also said "We've upset the al-Qaida networks to the point that they can't do anything right now" -- I guess someone forgot to tell Tom Ridge who just raised the terror alert level.

I continue to marvel at how Rep. DeLay continues to get a mostly free pass from the so-called liberal media. I know from experience, that Russert knows the federal budget. Was it "liberal bias" (hah!) that kept Russert from calling DeLay on his factual errors?

Really, when is someone in the national electronic media going to give DeLay the questioning he so richly deserves?

Why is the Justice Department inflating the total number of terrorists it has detained by including dismissed and unrelated cases in the total number? A figure, one must remember, that officials often use to justify their efforts in the war on terrorism?

This report by the Los Angeles Times' Richard B. Schmitt is a must-read.

(Thanks to Behind the Homefront for the link.)

Columnist Froma Harrop makes a wish for manufacturing jobs this holiday season.

A recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York study says that most manufacturing jobs lost in recent years are gone forever. There will be no replay of the Japanese threat to American industry, which reached its heights in the '70s and '80s. The problem then was not sweatshop competition. The Japanese were simply making better products using newer technology. Americans followed suit and prospered.

China's economic weapon is something else: an enormous workforce toiling for fractions of an Americans wage. When labor becomes a significant cost in manufacturing, Americans are sure to lose out. Add to that the Wal-Mart mentality - whereby discounters replace American suppliers with any foreign sweatshop that can shave a few pennies off the price - and we have a disaster in our industrial sector.

Wishful thinking, however, does not a policy make. Will someone make this an issue this upcoming election year?

The Department of Homeland Security just raised the terrorism threat level to ORANGE or HIGH. CNN reports:

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the move was the result of a "substantial increase" in the volume of intelligence pointing to "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11."

Okay, that is a cheap shot. Unlike some of his colleagues in the White House, Ridge has always seemed to take this homeland security stuff seriously.

Now we can all hope this is a false alarm, since among other things, our airline security and public health institutions are not prepared for such an attack.

Thomas Oliphant takes a look past the recent controversy over Tom Kean's comments about how the September 11 terrorist attacks may have been prevented to see what else the commission's investigations may be uncovering. He writes:

From what I could find out about what remains an appropriately confidential and sensitive (as well as massive) inquiry, what is most important about the current views of the chairman of the 10-member, bipartisan body has nothing to do with one-dimensional blame.

What really counts, I'm told, is the growing view that the basic narrative of facts that most Americans think they know about 9/11 is in many, if not most respects inaccurate. I am not referring to the notion still spread by administration officials like Cheney that Saddam Hussein is implicated, a proposition believed by more than half the people surveyed in a post-capture poll.

Rather than speculate, it is enough for now to note that Bush did not listen to the insistence of departing Clinton administration officials (themselves culpable for other reasons) in 2001 that Al Qaeda was the most serious, imminent threat to the country, that high-level fears persisted through that summer in the counter-terrorism world, that money from Saudi Arabia was going to Al Qaeda operatives, that the hijackers and their supporters left clues that the existing US network should have picked up, and that real concerns about the use of hijacked airplanes as missiles went to Rumsfeld and Bush at a minimum.

Kean and his fellow commissioners appear to be seeking the truth. One hopes Congress and the White House will let them do so with a minimum of political gamesmanship and without the roadblocks that our government has at times created for them.

The Baltimore Sun's Michael Hill examines the many questions that must be answered in preparation for Saddam Hussein's upcoming trial. As Hill writes:

The trial of Saddam Hussein will not only determine the future of the deposed dictator, it will also have a great influence on the future of Iraq, laying the foundation for its legal system while helping to write the history of three decades of darkness, telling the story that Iraqis will take into their future.

This trial is so important that it is no surprise it is a microcosm of the problems and possibilities that accompany almost every aspect of the United States' occupation.

One hopes that the Bush Administration recognizes the dangers -- and opportunities -- this trial can create, not just in Iraq but throughout the Arab world.

Since our federal government spends at least eight dollars on a senior citizen for every dollar it spends on a child, Timothy M. Smeeding's analysis of income data and poverty should not come as a surprise. He writes in today's Washignton Post:

According to data in the Luxembourg Income Study, child poverty is significantly higher in the United States than in wealthy European nations and in Canada and Australia. In 1997 -- in the midst of a robust economy -- one in five American children lived in poverty. This is about double the rate in other wealthy industrialized nations, such as France, Germany and the Nordic countries.

We in America have high child poverty rates because we choose to, not because we cannot do anything about it. Other nations make different choices and get different results. For example, Tony Blair lifted Britain's spending on poor families with children by 0.9 percent of GDP. The result? Britain's high child poverty rate is ebbing as ours continues to climb. The United States could commit half the effort of Tony Blair's government and see a seismic shift in the well-being of millions of children.

The truth is that America tolerates -- even accepts -- persistent child poverty. Our education system reflects it, as do our tax policy, child care policy and child support policy.

The other fronts in that conflict are growing worse. Our unsustainable senior entitlement programs that will soon begin to feel the weight of the impending baby boom generation's retirement.

Guess to whom we are leaving that bill?

Eventually we may wake up to the Bush Administration's irresponsible accumulation of trillions in national debt.

Guess to whom we are leaving that bill?

At a minimum you would think that since we are leaving these huge liabilities for young people to confront in their lifetimes, we might take measures to give more of them the tools to escape poverty so they can help pay for them.

Nah. That would require being rational thinking and planning ahead. Both traits are notably absent today as our political leaders craft federal fiscal policies.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean takes exception with a recent Washington Post editorial that argued his foreign policy ideas are out of the mainstream.

As Dean writes:

More important, The Post's editorial comes close to equating the Bush administration's foreign policy -- including its signature doctrine of "preemptive war" -- with the American foreign policy mainstream. In fact, the Bush agenda represents a radical departure from decades of bipartisan consensus on the appropriate use of U.S. power and our leadership in the world community.

And, as you might recall, there was nothing like this preemption policy discussed in the 2000 presidential campaign. Then Governor George W. Bush spoke about a "humble" foreign policy at the time.

I guess that was just a bit of misdirection.

The Democratic nominee must be prepared to engage Bush on foreign policy and national security issues. Recent speeches by Dean, Wesley Clark, and Sen. John Kerry show that this necessary process has begun.

Paul Krugman takes note of reports that class mobility has fallen and combines them with others showing how the wealth gap is widening to note that the United States is becoming a class-based society.

Worse, as writers like Kevin Phillips have explained, the public policies pursued by the Bush Administration and its GOP allies across the nation are making both of these problems worse. Krugman writes:

Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?

One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You'd also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you'd try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.

Meanwhile, on the spending side, you'd cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.

And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you'd do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you'd privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.

It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?

It is probably not a surprise to see the Republicans cultivate a new plutocracy. But must the Democrats prove so impotent in efforts to thwart this destruction of the American Dream?

Ruy Teixeira puts the small bump in the polls President George W. Bush enjoys into some needed perspective.

How quickly they forget. You’d think the press could at least remember–oh, say back to last April–when they assess the meaning and probable durability of Bush’s latest bump in the poll ratings. They seem to have difficulty with that, since they’re falling all over themselves talking about how much this political boost will help Bush get re-elected.

Mark Schmitt notes on his Decembrist blog that President George W. Bush's reelection campaign managers apparently think that it is okay to criticize for cheap fundraising gain the war crimes prosecution against one of the worst despots of the past decade.

I am sure that this cheap shot is consistent with the White House's Iraq policy in some alternate neocon universe.

Just a few weeks ago President Bush gave a nice little speech about spreading democracy throughout the world.

I guess those thoughts are no longer operative now that we are saying nice things about Libyan despot Moammar Ghadafi.

Billmon asks the right questions about this new policy and statements expressing how Libya can, in President Bush's words, "achieve far better relations with the United States":

And that unpleasant business about blowing an American airliner out of the sky? Or that disagreeable incident with the bomb in the Berlin disco? All forgotten and forgiven. Heck, what's a few minor acts of terrorism between friends, anyway.

And the one-party police state? The cult of personality? The torture chambers? The aggression against neighboring countries? Old news. It's time to "move on."

But what about the poison gas?

Maybe it is just random.

But I do not forget Ghadafi's past. And he can never be a true friend of this nation after what he has done.

If President George W. Bush thinks he can, that fact just provides another example about how important it is to work against his reelection.

Christopher Lydon has another interesting interview on his web site, this one with Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig. Lydon summarizes the interview (available for download in mp3 format):

For the famously gloomy prophet Larry Lessig, two blessed events in 2003 have forced a smiling reappraisal: the birth of his child and the growth of the blogosphere. In conversation it seemed he could not speak of one procreation without alluding to the other. In politics and in culture, in the Lessig view, after a more than a century of mass media and 50 years of television, we have stumbled on a technology that prompts more, not less, citizen engagement. In the 2004 campaign underway, he observed, "there will be a change that comes from the fact that people are participating in the construction of the political story around them. That in my view will be the most important political event in the last hundred years."

Let me know when the foreign policy grown-ups arrive at the Bush White House. On top of all of the misrepresentations (lies) and sundry mistakes that have marked this Administration's Iraq policy, we can now add some good old fashioned political cronyism. Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway write in the Washington Monthly:

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.

I think this could be a sign of a bad case of projection.

Let's review.

In his first act as California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) determined that the state had sufficient revenues to allow him to trigger a reduction in the vehicle license fee that funds local government services.

This allowed Schwarzenegger to fulfill a campaign promise, even though it blew a $3 billion hole in California's state budget. Legislative Democrats have been asking since then how the new governor plans to finance his irresponsible fiscal decision.

The Governor and his staff have refused to answer that question. But Schwarzenegger now plans to declare an emergency to replace the revenue local governments lost when Schwarzenegger cut the so-called car tax. Mark Gladstone and Aaron C. Davis report:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today plans to invoke emergency powers to ensure that cities and counties immediately can start to receive up to $2.6 billion in car tax payments for police, fire and other services, administration sources said Wednesday.

Local governments stand to lose the money between now and the end of June because of Schwarzenegger's first act as governor last month -- the repeal of the tripling of the vehicle license fee, which flows to cities and counties.

The funds would come from a variety of sources: a surging economy, unexpected tax revenues and budget cuts, including 5 percent reductions from such programs as transportation, health and higher education.

Senate President pro tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) aptly summed up the impact of Schwarzenegger's decisions, telling Gladstone and Davis that:

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, questioned where the money would come from to compensate cities and counties, saying the governor is "looking at taking money away from poor people to give a tax cut to people with Rolls Royces. That doesn't seem right."

But it fits in with the Republicans' tax-cuts-at-all-costs policy mantra.

So, to recap, Schwarzenegger cuts the vehicle license fee thereby making worse the state's fiscal crisis. He then uses this fact to declare an emergency allowing him to use extraordinary powers to cut social service spending in order to keep that tax cut in place.

Other Republicans around the nation must wish they had thought of this idea first.

Anyone remember the war on terrorism?

If you do, and if you care about it, you will find this story by the Washington Post's Douglas Farah quite troubling.

Governments around the world are not enforcing global sanctions designed to stem the flow of money to al Qaeda and impede the business activity of the organization's financiers, allowing the terrorist network to retain formidable financial resources, according to U.S., European and U.N. investigators.

Several businessmen designated by the United Nations as terrorist financiers, whose assets were supposed to have been frozen more than two years ago, continue to run vast business empires and to travel freely because most nations are unaware of the sanctions and others do not enforce them, the investigators said. Several charities based in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that were reportedly shut down by the governments there because of the groups' alleged financial ties to Osama bin Laden also continue to operate freely, they said.

As a result, al Qaeda continues to receive ample funding not only to carry out its own plots but also to finance affiliated terrorist groups and to seek new weapons, the investigators and terrorism experts said.

If we do not disrupt -- no, make that cut off -- Al Qaeda's finances, they will attack us again. We remain their enemy. Only this attack, one fears, will include biological or chemical weapons.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean sat down for interviews about his foreign policy stances yesterday.

It is important that the Democratic candidates make their positions clear and have a rational conversation about how our party's ideas differ, and are better than, the policies followed by President George W. Bush.

This Glenn Kessler article is worth reading in its entirety. And one comment made to him by Dean seems particularly worth highlighting:

"Nuance matters in foreign policy," Dean said. "Not only does this administration have a tin ear and want to push through whatever they want to do without regard to people's feelings or thoughts, I think nuance escapes this administration."

United States forces captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein yesterday in a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit.

This is a wonderful development. Good news.

I have argued for months that it is important to take out the leader of a state or organization one has declared an enemy. Once the choice was made -- bad or good -- to invade Iraq, capturing Saddam was a priority.

It is impossible to declare victory (oops, allow me to rephrase) it is impossible to win without taking out the leader of the other side. The importance of finding Saddam and ensuring that his ability to wage war or insurgency against us was eliminated cannot be overstated.

I hope that Saddam's capture will lead to a weakening of the insurgency that is killing our troops in Iraq on a daily basis. But, as my father, a retired military man, has often mentioned to me in other contexts: hope is not a plan.

But this is progress. It brings new opportunities and challenges. Are our planners up to the challenge?

Calpundit Kevin Drum writes:

Still, enough's enough: linking Howard Dean to Osama bin Laden isn't criticism, it's political porn. I hope every Democratic candidate loudly and unequivocally denounces this kind of crap and makes it clear that it has no place in the campaign.

Democrats have an obligation to condemn this ad, and those who are behind it. This ad has no redeeming value. It pollutes our politics, attempting to make a rational conversation impossible.

Many people on the left rightly complain when the Bush Administration and conservatives engage in these tactics. Beating them in an election does not require becoming them.

Nathan Newman posts a Ted Rall cartoon that offers a clear explanation about productivity growth.

Yale Law School Professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres write another article advocating for their Patriot Dollar public campaign financing idea.

Paul Krugman makes a troubling charge in his colum today:

James Baker sets off to negotiate Iraqi debt forgiveness with our estranged allies. And at that very moment the deputy secretary of defense releases a "Determination and Findings" on reconstruction contracts that not only excludes those allies from bidding, but does so with highly offensive language. What's going on?

Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation.

That said, I agree with Krugman -- it is likely the latter.

Remember how California Republicans used former California Governor Gray Davis' signature on SB 60 (the recently repealed bill that would have allowed undocumented persons to receive drivers' licenses) as a club in the recent recall race?

Remember how California conservative talk radio hosts made it seem that this issue could harm the United States' national and homeland security?

Oops. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge appears not to have gotten that memo. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel's Tanya Weinberg reports:

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told a Miami audience Tuesday that the country should legalize millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country.

"The bottom line is, as a country we have to come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford them some kind of legal status some way, but also as a country decide what our immigration policy is and then enforce it," Ridge said at a town hall meeting at Miami-Dade Community College.

I wonder, however, just how big a security risk illegal immigrants can be if the Homeland Security Secretary thinks we should find a way to grant them some kind of legal status, even if it is short of citizenship?

Except, of course, the debate has little to do with national security and much to do with some cheap demagoguery.

(Thanks to TalkLeft for the link.)

It is about time someone in Congress made these points. Reuters' Vicki Allen reports:

Two Republican U.S. congressmen just back from a trip to Iraq urged President Bush on Tuesday to accept an independent panel to audit U.S. operations there, and called on him to acknowledge mistakes that they said set back Iraq's recovery by months.

Reps. Frank Wolf of Virginia and Christopher Shays of Connecticut also urged the administration to give Iraqis a bigger voice in rebuilding their own country, and to show more "humility" in sharing power and being open to differing ideas.

(Thanks to Behind the Homefront for the link.)

While the Supreme Court has ruled that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law is constitutional, the problems caused by money in politics will not end.

Money always finds a way around the rules. But parties are in the process of exploiting the loopholes in McCain-Feingold.

As readers of this space know, I support public campaign financing. The Clean Elections idea, a voluntary public campaign financing program used today in Maine and Arizona, is something I endorse.

Matt Miller today writes about another interesting idea: Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman's "Patriot Dollars." Miller explains:

Ackerman's idea is simple: Give every registered voter a $50 voucher that he or she can spend to support candidates or political organizations in federal elections. Ackerman would issue voters a special "Patriot" ATM card. Each election cycle the government would automatically credit their Patriot accounts with $50 each.

Candidates and organizations that met some minimal threshold of legitimacy would be eligible to solicit and compete for the funds. Citizens would "vote" their dollars from any ATM machine, where new software will have facilitated this use.

You can see instantly the beauty of this idea. Instead of limiting political "speech" (which most plans to cap private money do, perhaps unconstitutionally), it increases it. Instead of having some central bureaucracy manage public funds, it lets individuals make their own choices.

There are details to work out, and Miller outlines some of them. But discussing a big idea now and then is a good idea -- especially when the need for reform is so great.

In October 2002, the United States government deported a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, to Syria on unexplained charges related to the war on terrorism. Charges Arar denies.

That's right. To Syria.

A country that is known for torturing its prisoners. A country that we had every reason to believe would torture him. I wrote about it at the time. Syria released him earlier this year, and Arar confirmed his months of torture.

A commentary by Arar appears in today's Los Angeles Times. It is a must read -- if only so you can see how our government is culpable for a heinous action. He writes:

In the early hours of Oct. 8, 2002, I was formally notified that the U.S. government had classified information about me that it would not reveal — and it would be deporting me that very day, without a word to my family, to the long-forgotten place of my birth, Syria.

To this day, unnamed American officials continue to allege that I have ties to Al Qaeda, although I have not seen the details and I have not been charged with a crime.

I hadn't been to Syria since moving to Canada with my family when I was 17. For half my life I have had no connection at all to that country. Yet I would surely be tortured, I told my New York captors, because I'm a Sunni Muslim; because my mother's cousin had been accused of being in the Muslim Brotherhood and imprisoned for nine years; because I had left the country before undertaking my military service.

My arguments were useless. Soon I was in a small private jet, chained and panic-stricken; then in a succession of cars in Jordan and Syria, blindfolded and beaten repeatedly; and finally placed in that shallow grave.

I describe my cell in Syria as a grave because it was just 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high and unlit. While I was there I sometimes felt on the verge of death after beatings with a black electrical cable about two inches thick. They mostly aimed for my palms but sometimes missed and hit my wrists. Other times, I was left alone in a special "waiting room" within earshot of others' screams. At the end of the day, they would tell me that tomorrow would be worse. In those 10 1/2 months I lost about 40 pounds. I never saw, but only heard, the agony of my fellow prisoners. I was so scared I urinated on myself twice.

As I wrote last October, I do not know whether the need to deport Arar was justified.

I do know, however, that there was absolutely no excuse for our government to deport him to one of the worst nations on this planet -- a nation where torture was a guarantee. None.

Is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger retreating on key campaign promises to protect education and ensure that local governments were kept whole after he cut the vehicle license fee that funds local government services?

It sure appears that way based on his interview with Judy Woodruff yesterday on CNN's Inside Politics.

On Education:

WOODRUFF: But you've also taken education off the table. Are you still saying there will be no cuts in education whatsoever?

SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, we're working with, you know, the education community to see how we can work together in order to -- for them to help with us this budget crisis. So we're again in the middle of negotiating with them also.

WOODRUFF: In other words, it sounds to me like you're saying you could end up...

SCHWARZENEGGER: To maybe have a suspension or to have some relief there so we can pull out of these next two years and then pay bay it back, maybe.

More ominously, Schwarzenegger decides to blame the State Legislature for the impact of his first action after taking the oath of office: his pander on the vehicle license fee.

WOODRUFF: Meantime, the car tax which you did get the repeal of the increase of the car tax, added $4 billion to the state deficit.

Now we read in the newspapers this morning there is panic on the part some of local governments around the state of California because they don't have a way to make up this revenue that they're losing that the state is giving back to individuals. What are you saying to these local governments?

SCHWARZENEGGER: They should put pressure on their state legislators because they've spent their money. It's not me taking anything away from them, it's they've spent their money.

The way it works is that the only way to increase the car tax is if there's an emergency. There was no emergency. The legislators knew a year ahead of time that they were spending money they don't have. So they could have stopped themselves, and there would have never been an increase in the contacts. It was not right to punish the people because they cannot stop spending money. (emphasis added)

The state budget was balanced until Governor Schwarzenegger blew a $3.5 billion hole in it by reducing the vehicle license fee, which provides funding for local governments in this state -- a constitutionally protected source of funding thanks to a proposition in the mid-1980s.

Many concerned Californians have been asking Schwarzenegger how he plans to pay for this pandering mid-year tax cut. There have been no specifics from his Administration.

Passing the buck does not make the problem go away, Governor. Californians may not have liked the fact that the vehicle license fee had returned to its pre-1998 level. But Californians like police and fire protection, along with other local government services funded through VLF dollars.

That could have been explained and the VLF cut postponed until the next fiscal year. Instead, the fee was cut immediately, and retroactively, and now the Governor appears more willing to pass blame onto others instead of taking responsibility for his actions.

No wonder Moody's reduced the state's bond rating yesterday.

One wonders what California's finances would have to look like before he would call it an emergency. So, let's just saw that the state is in the midst of a serious crisis.

The first step towards getting out of a hole is to stop digging. Schwarzenegger made the problem $3.5 billion worse with his first act in office. Blaming others does not -- and will not -- change that fact.

Youth04 Executive Director David M. Anderson is impressed with how Gov. Howard Dean's (D) presidential campaign is utilizing the internet in its strategy.

He thinks, however, that people could use similar internet strategies to engage the undecided.

What would truly be amazing is if the Internet could be used to bring people together who had not made up their minds. Rather than enlisting activists, these gatherings would center around dialogue and debate about the different candidates, their backgrounds and their positions on the issues.

Aided by the Internet, small groups of the undecided could meet in public places to talk politics. If the gathering took place in a coffee shop or restaurant with a wireless Internet hot spot, anyone with a laptop could get online and do research right then and there, combining face-to-face contact with the breadth of the Net's resources.

But there is little doubt that our Republic needs such a renewal of interest in our civic life.

Update: I originally misidentified David Anderson in this post as the Center for Democracy and Technology's Executive Director. The Center's Executive Director is Jim Dempsey. Youth04 is based at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The Washington Post editorial page has harsh words for the Medicare package President George W. Bush signed into law yesterday.

With the stroke of a pen, he created a new entitlement, promising that the federal government will pay for $400 billion worth of prescription drugs for seniors over the next decade, a figure that could rise to $2 trillion in the subsequent 10 years. At the signing ceremony, the president congratulated himself for making this promise: "Each generation has a duty to strengthen Medicare. And this generation is fulfilling our duty."

Indeed, for President Bush's generation -- the baby boomers, born in the decades after World War II -- this bill represents a great achievement, because it will add to their bank balances well into the future. But for the baby boomers' children and grandchildren, who will be paying the tax bills, it represents real financial loss.

But those facts do not seem to matter to our Washington, D.C.-based political leaders. As the Post's editorial explains:

When given the choice, successive Congresses and administrations have consistently chosen the old over the young, though poverty and a lack of health insurance are now more prevalent among children than among the elderly. Politics is about winning votes, of course; children don't vote and young people don't give big campaign donations. But votes notwithstanding, politicians often speak of "our children" and "our future." In the case of this Congress and this president, we now know exactly what that kind of talk is worth.

David Gelernter argues that future generations will thank us for saddling them with trillions of dollars of debt.

Really. He does.

He tries to compare the national debt with a mortgage, arguing that adding debt has "no moral implications." He also says that a government running surpluses (as it did at the end of the Clinton Administration) is "holding us up."

The breakdown in this logic, of course, is that a mortgage is not a burden on future generations because payments are made to it to reduce the debt and eventually pay it off. Our government, according to Gelernter, must not run surpluses to pay down the debt.

That means that we are leaving a permanent legacy to our children, Mr. Gelernter. We are using resources today for which we are unwilling to pay -- resources that our children and their children will not be able to use as they pay the interest on our profligacy.

It is true that there are times when the government has to run deficits. But then the government should run surpluses when times are good. And governments -- in times of war -- should not add to the deficit burden by passing irresponsible tax cuts that target the most affluent among us.

But conservatives argue for tax cuts in bad economic times and for more tax cuts in good economic times. All they argue is for tax cuts. That is their only policy. They never seem to argue for the opposite policy.

The bill never comes due. At least while they are in office.

David Broder highlights a harsh critique of Congress' refusal to declare war before the president sends our troops into combat. He writes:

Louis Fisher, the authority on congressional-executive relations at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, is one who argues that the failure was not personal but institutional. While joining those who challenge the intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the preemptive attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, Fisher is even more critical of the lawmakers who sanctioned the action.

In the fall issue of Political Science Quarterly, he writes: "Month after month, the administration released claims that were unproven" about weapons of mass destruction and links between Iraq and al Qaeda. "For its part, Congress seemed incapable of analyzing a presidential proposal and protecting its institutional powers."

"The decision to go to war," he concludes, "cast a dark shadow over the health of U.S. political institutions and the celebrated system of democratic debate and checks and balances. The dismal performances of the executive and legislative branches raise disturbing questions about the capacity and desire of the United States to function as a republican form of government."

That may seem to you, as it does to me, too broad an indictment.

I think Fisher's analysis is absolutely correct. It is a warning all of us should heed.

Congress has a necessary role to play in our national life. One of those roles is its solemn (and sole) right to declare war.

We have fought wars since World War II, but Congress has not taken up its share of the burden. With Iraq, Congress passed a vague authorization resolution that everyone short of certain Democratic presidential candidates knew would inevitably allow President George W. Bush to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

If Congress does not stand up for its prerogatives, then our form of government is in peril. It is a harsh critique, but Fisher is right to sound this alarm.

This Washington Post editorial slaps the wrists of the Democratic presidential candidates for their pandering ways:

AMONG THE DEMOCRATIC presidential candidates, Howard Dean wants to spend $110 billion over 10 years for children's health care and early education, while Wesley Clark antes up $70 billion for universal preschool, plus another $100 billion over two years for job creation. Richard Gephardt would dedicate $150 billion in the next five years for states and cities to spend on homeland security protections, on top of his $250 billion-a-year health care plan. John Kerry would give students four years of public college tuition in exchange for two years of national service (for $6 billion); John Edwards goes him one better, offering the first year free at public universities and community colleges, at an annual tab of $5 billion. In other words: Come on down!

But the Post is correct to note that the federal government does not now have the resources even for these good ideas because of those tax cuts.

Which, as I and others wiser than me have argued, was part of the point behind the Republicans' tax cut policy.

Many of the GOP's leaders hate the government so much that they would rather bankrupt it so that others who see a constructive role for it will have no chance to implement their ideas.

One doubts future generations will celebrate that policy success.

One of the main reasons I am in politics, work in politics, and write on this blog is because I believe we have a responsibility as stewards of this great nation to ensure that we pass along a country that is in better shape than we found it at our birth.

Based on the policies for which they fight, it is clear that not everyone shares this view. Paul Krugman explains how in just a few short paragraphs:

Nothing in our national experience prepared us for the spectacle of a government launching a war, increasing farm subsidies and establishing an expensive new Medicare entitlement — and not only failing to come up with a plan to pay for all this spending in the face of budget deficits, but cutting taxes at the same time.

Recent good economic news doesn't change the verdict. These aren't temporary measures aimed at getting the economy back on its feet; they're permanent drains on the budget. Serious estimates show a long-term budget gap, even with a recovery, of at least 25 percent of federal spending. That is, the federal government — including Medicare, which Mr. Bush has given new responsibilities without new resources — is nowhere near solvent.

Then there's international trade policy. Here's how the steel story looks from Europe: the administration imposed an illegal tariff for domestic political reasons, then changed its mind when threatened with retaliatory tariffs focused on likely swing states. So the U.S. has squandered its credibility: it is now seen as a nation that honors promises only when it's politically convenient.

What really makes me wonder whether this republic can be saved, however, is the downward spiral in governance, the hijacking of public policy by private interests.

But make no mistake: President George W. Bush's White House is the driving force behind this tsunami of bad long-term policy decisions. It simply is not right for us to tax the future and squander the goodwill this nation has enjoyed throughout much of its existence.

I wrote the following on June 11, 2003, but I think the thought bears repeating:

A Call to Economic Arms, the campaign book Paul Tsongas presented for his 1992 presidential run, remains one of the most important political works I have read. It is a book -- and Senator Tsongas a man -- who has much to do with my journey away from my youthful support of the GOP.

In that book, Tsongas asked a question of the Reagan/Bush 41 years from the perspective of the younger generations who were being left the burden of a large and growing national debt. A question that unfortunately has relevance to today's political world. He wrote that as these young generations age they will wonder:

How could they lull the American people into accepting such staggering debt without widespread revolt?

More pointedly, they will ask, why did people allow this enormous accumulation of debt which now burdens their generation? This, of course, raises the pointed question of generational morality.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer authored an attack piece on Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean yesterday.

The Daily Howler explains just how dishonest Krauthammer was in his editing of the transcript on an interview between Chris Matthews and Dean.

Since Krauthammer will not be ashamed, the Washington Post should be.

Update: TAPPED's Nick Confessore reminds us that Krauthammer has previously argued that it was wrong for pundits to psychoanalyze politicians. Apparently only Krauthammer and conservative pundits are allowed to indulge themselves.

Daniel Weintraub offers a good analysis of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's first legislative defeat.

Arnold Schwarzenegger considers himself a master strategist. But in the heat of his first legislative battle, he seems to have lost sight of what his goal really was. He ended up losing while fighting for something he didn't really need and might not have even wanted. Having morphed from Arnold Schwarzenegger into Gov. Schwarzenegger, he allowed himself to get sucked into the very kind of non-sensical partisan deadlock that, as a private citizen, he used to decry.

People warned that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) was making a mistake when he decided to hire Donna Arduin to be his Director of Finance.

Many people feared that it signaled a move to slash programs for the neediest in our society. Those fears have proven accurate. The Sacramento Bee's Marjie Lundstrom explains:

If California wants to be just like Florida, then sure, let's start denying health insurance for poor children, as our new governor suggests.

Let's let Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger help balance our books on the backs of kids who wake up with an earache and can't see a doctor because their parents earn too much for Medi-Cal, and not enough for private insurance.

This is the governor who asserted during the September debate that "we have to make sure that every child in California is insured," then turned around and proposed capping enrollment in the state's Healthy Families program, which provides low-cost insurance for low-and moderate-income children.

Actions are more important than rhetoric. What kind of Governor does Schwarzenegger want to be?

It was easy for President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and their political allies to overextend our military with their neoconservative scheming.

But while calling up National Guard troops and reservists for a year, 18 months, or two years at a stretch may not matter to them, those orders have a major effect on the families of those called out of their mostly civilian lives.

President Bush says many words about how much he cares for our troops. Perhaps he could find a way to treat them in a fashion that lives up to that rhetoric.

The ACLU has posted the disciplinary forms that show what happens to a seven-year-old when he truthfully explains to his peers that his parents are gay.

Marcus McLaurin was waiting in line to go to recess on November 11 at Ernest Gallet Elementary School when a classmate asked him about his mother and father. He responded that he didn’t have a mother and father; instead he has two mothers. When the other child asked why, Marcus told him that it was because his mother is gay. The other child then asked what that meant, and Marcus explained, “Gay is when a girl likes another girl.”

Upon hearing this, Marcus’s teacher scolded him in front of his classmates, telling him that “gay” is a bad word and he should never say it at school, then sent him to the principal’s office instead of letting him go to recess. The following week the school required Marcus to attend a special behavioral clinic at 6:45 in the morning, where he was forced to repeatedly write “I will never use the word ‘gay’ in school again.”

The principal, teachers, and others responsible for this outrage cannot be fired quickly enough.

The Bush fiscal legacy continues: another $52 billion was added to the national debt in November.

E.J. Dionne gives President George W. Bush's fiscal policies an appropriately rough analysis.

President Bush likes to talk about the need for "fiscal sanity in Washington." His decision to run up the national debt is entirely sane -- as long as you understand his real purpose. Bush doesn't care a whit about deficits. That's because he is not a fiscal conservative. He is a political conservative out to buy himself a majority in 2004 and spending the next generation's money to do it.

Some act mystified, as if conservatives are always more responsible with the people's money than liberals. But it's possible to be generous toward social needs and pay as you go. That's what liberals have usually done. Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page editor, once called this approach "balanced-budget liberalism." It's conservatives, not liberals, who twice over the past quarter-century have created extravagant deficits. (emphasis added)

Dionne's column also explains how this debt binge has created a de facto public campaign financing system for the Republican Party. Many of the benefits of this new deficit spending, after all, have been showered on President Bush's leading fundraisers. They are now returning a small percentage of their profits.

It does not take courage to use the next generation's money to score political points. They are not yet able to protect themselves.

But as stewards of this nation we should care -- and seek to reverse -- the Bush Administration's irresponsible and immoral fiscal policy. There is no justification today for adding over $2 billion a day to the national debt.

Not even making easier the reelection of the current president.

Paul Krugman today analyzes touch-screen voting's potential problems and conflicts of interest:

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.

Leaving a paper trail should be a minimum requirement for touch-screen voting. There is simply no reason not to include it since it would help ensure voting accuracy and preserve the opportunity for a recount in close elections.

Thanksfully, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley (D) recognizes this simple fact. He recently announced that he is requiring all touch-screen voting systems to include an "accessible voter verified paper audit trail." (Link to a pdf document.)

I hope the nation will choose to follow California's lead on this vital issue.

Did the White House mislead reporters and the American people with its story about how radio chatter from a British Airways pilot almost forced President George W. Bush to abort his recent trip to Baghdad?

British Airways thinks so. Reuters reports:

British Airways said yesterday that none of its pilots made contact with President Bush's plane during its secret flight to Baghdad on Thanksgiving, contradicting White House reports of a midair exchange that nearly prompted Bush to call off his trip. Honor Verrier, a spokeswoman for British Airways in North America, said two British Airways aircraft were in the area at the time and neither radioed the president's plane to ask if it was Air Force One.

"We have spoken to the British Airways captains who were in the area at the time and neither made comments to Air Force One nor did they hear any other aircraft make the statement over the radio," Verrier said.

The White House had no immediate comment on the discrepancy.

But given that record, I would like to know if President Bush's team felt the need to lie to add suspense to his Baghdad trip.

Behind the Homefront, the blog sponsored by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, notes that while President George W. Bush has celebrated the beginnings of a free press in Iraq, his Administration is restricting some photojournalists from taking newsworthy photographs.

TAPPED's Nick Confessore points us to this important Norman Ornstein column that must not get lost in the holiday breaks many people took from political news. Ornstein wrote:

The Medicare prescription drug vote -- three hours instead of 15 minutes, hours after a clear majority of the House had signaled its will -- was the ugliest and most outrageous breach of standards in the modern history of the House. It was made dramatically worse when the speaker violated the longstanding tradition of the House floor's being off limits to lobbying by outsiders (other than former members) by allowing Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson on the floor during the vote to twist arms -- another shameful first.

So, do not let your Republican friends create a "but the Democrats did it" myth to justify this travesty. That story simply is not true.

If you are a progressive or liberal worried about our seeming inability to frame issues or to tell our story, I urge you to listen to Christopher Lydon's interview with George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute. (The interview is available in MP3 format.)

As Lydon explains:

George Lakoff is a devout progressive with cold comfort for liberals. Conservatives, he says, have won the fight over political language. It's a central argument of Lakoff's book Moral Politics that for the last 30 years, left-wing foundations have been doing what comes naturally, "helping people who need help," while right-wing foundations have put a network of thinkers and writers to work honing symbolic phrases like "tort reform" and "tax relief." Even with Al Franken on your side, there is no winning an argument around "tax relief" that sounds like mercy and justice for the afflicted. "If you use their language," Lakoff said, "you use their mode of thought; you use the way they think about the world."

His ideas are worth considering -- and embracing.

The Los Angeles Times' Ronald Brownstein has put together an important column about the staggering bill we are leaving future generations. He writes:

Seniors with big prescription drug bills, health maintenance organizations awaiting lucrative new subsidies, upper-middle-class families anticipating a fat tax refund, and Iraqi cities expecting new schools or hospitals all have reason to be thankful about President Bush's extraordinary success at pushing his agenda through the Republican-controlled Congress this year.

There may be less celebration among the young people who will inherit the tab for these initiatives. Bush is funding every penny of every one of these goodies by increasing the national debt. Which is another way of saying that he's sticking the bill to the next generation.

We are supposed to be stewards of this magnificent Republic. We are supposed to strive to leave a better nation to the next generation.

Instead, we are leaving a pile of IOUs for our children and future generations to pay. Not that we asked for permission. As Brownstein explains:

To call this behavior a breakdown of fiscal responsibility misses its true nature. This is a stunning abandonment of generational responsibility. Washington is behaving like a father who steals his kid's credit card and goes on a bender.

Individually, America's parents make sacrifices every day to provide opportunities for their children; but collectively, the nation is now pursuing precisely the opposite course — indulging itself even at the price of reducing opportunity for its children.