What had VeeJay been reading, near the end of 2003? VeeJay recommends, "Read 'The Great Unravelling' by Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at
Princeton, writes a column for The New York Times.
According to the
New Yorker magazine, Krugman has has had his life threatened by the far
right, for writing the truth about the economy. " Please, Lend Us Less
by Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, September 26, 2003
"Someone recently noticed that foreigners have invested heavily in U.S. Treasury securities -- so much so that their money covers the cost of the war in Iraq and much of the exploding U.S. budget deficit. In the first half of 2003, foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury notes and bonds totaled $265 billion. The cumulative foreign holdings of federal debt amount to about $1.35 trillion, or a hefty 36 percent of the publicly held debt. It appears that Americans can have their cake (high government spending, low taxes) and eat it too. Foreigners will pick up much of the tab.
Well, no. Up to a point, this was true, but we have passed that point. The harsher truth is that foreigners' voracious appetite for U.S. treasuries reflects deeper problems of the world economy that, in turn, harm the American economy."
washingtonpost.com/
A Tale of Two Fathers
NYTimes, October 12, 2003,
by Maureen Dowd
Story ...
Holding Our Noses
New York Times,
October 15, 2003,
by Nicholas D. Kristof
"I haven't written about Iraq lately because, frankly, it
felt like shooting fish in a barrel.
It was sporting to write columns opposing the war back in
January, when the White House was conjuring enough Iraqi
anthrax 'to kill several million people,' as well as hordes
of cheering Iraqis casting flowers on our soldiers. These
days, with that anthrax as elusive as Saddam himself, with
the people we've liberated busy killing us, with the bill
for Iraq coming in at $90,000 a minute - well, criticizing
the war just seems too easy, like aiming a bomb at Bambi."
Story ...
On Listening
New York Times,
October 16, 2003,
by Thomas L. Friedman
"There was a headline that grabbed me in The Times on
Saturday. It said, 'Cheney Lashes Out at Critics of Policy
on Iraq.' I thought, 'that must
have been an interesting encounter.' Then I read the fine
print. Mr. Cheney was speaking to 200 invited guests at the
conservative Heritage Foundation - and even they were not
allowed to ask any questions. Great. Osama bin Laden and
Saddam Hussein issue messages from their caves through Al
Jazeera, and Mr. Cheney issues messages from his bunker
through Fox. America is pushing democracy in Iraq, but our
own leaders won't hold a real town hall meeting or a
regular press conference. Out of fairness, my newspaper feels obligated to run such
stories. But I wish we had said to the V.P.: If you're
going to give a major speech on Iraq to an audience limited
to your own supporters and not allow any questions, that's
not news - that's an advertisement, and you should buy an
ad on the Op-Ed page."
Story ...
The Sweet Spot
New York Times, October 17, 2003,
by Paul Krugman
"'What we have here is a form of looting.' So says George
Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, of the Bush
administration's budget policies - and he's right. With
startling speed, we've blown right through the usual
concerns about budget deficits - about their effects on
interest rates and economic growth - and into a range where
the very solvency of the federal government is at stake."
Story ...
Level the Presidential Playing Field
by David S. Broder
Washington Post, 10/20/03
Story ...
Japan Succumbs to Its Own Pork
New York Times, October 25, 2003,
Story ...
Market Cheer, Deficit Worries
New York Times, October 26, 2003
Story ...
Economic View: As Stimulus, Tax Cuts May Soon Go Awry
November 30, 2003, New York Times,
by Louis Uchitelle
Story ...
No Cheer for the Unemployed
New York Times, December 9, 2003
"With a perverse sense of holiday timing, President Bush and
the Republican leaders of Congress are blithely accepting
the expiration of emergency benefits badly needed by the
nation's long-term unemployed. This vital program ends on
Dec. 21, crushing the hopes of an estimated 80,000 or more
jobless Americans each week who will find their state
benefits expiring. The emergency benefits, which provide 13
extra weeks of help, were approved by Congress early last
year as hard-core unemployment became entrenched."
Story ...
One Iraqi's Insights
12/11/03, by David Ignatius,
Washington Post
"Amid the confusing parade of Iraqi politicians vying for influence these days in Baghdad, a little-known figure named Ayad Allawi deserves a special hearing -- for the simple reason that he has been right about the big issues affecting postwar Iraq.
Allawi has argued for more than a decade that a stable Iraq is possible only if most Iraqis believe they have a place in the new order."
Story ... A redhead walks into a sports bar around 9:58 PM. She sits down next to
this blonde at the bar and stares up at the TV. The 10:00 news was on.
The news crew was covering a story of a man on a ledge of a large
building preparing to jump. The redhead turns to the blonde and says,
"You know, I bet he'll jump." The blonde replied, "Well, I bet he won't."
The redhead placed $20 on the bar and said, "You're on!" Just as the blonde
placed her money on the bar, the guy did a swan dive off of the building,
falling to his death.
The blonde was very upset and handed her $20 dollars to the redhead and
said, "All is fair. Here is your money." The redhead replies, "Honey, I can't take your money, I
saw this earlier on the 5 o'clock news and knew he would jump."
The blonde replies, "I did too, but I didn't think he'd do it again."
Bracing for the Blow
New York Times, December 26, 2003,
by Bob Herbert
"I.B.M. has sent a holiday chill through its American
employees with its plans to ship thousands of high-paying
white-collar jobs overseas to lower-paid foreign workers.
'People are upset and angry,' said Arnie Marchetti, a
37-year-old computer technician at I.B.M.'s Southbury,
Conn., office whose wife gave birth to their first child in
August. "
Stroy ... Between Iraq and a Hard Place
by Dave Barry, Washington Post,
12/28/03
"It was the Year of the Troubling Question.
The most troubling one was: What the heck happened to all those weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be in Iraq? Apparently there was an intelligence mix-up. As CIA Director George Tenet noted recently, 'Our thinking now is that the weapons of mass destruction might actually be in that other one, whaddyacallit, Iran. Or Michigan. We're pretty sure the letter 'i' is involved.'"
Story ... Our So-Called Boom
December 30, 2003
by Paul Krugman, New York Times
Story ... Rubin Gets Shrill
January 6, 2004,
by Paul Krugman, New York Times
Story ... Call It the Family Risk Factor
January 11, 2004
By Jacob S. Hacker, New York Times
"On the heels of Friday's glum Labor
Department report, Americans have a right to be confused.
Soaring growth, stocks and consumer confidence have
heartened investors. And yet, the country remains mired in
a jobless recovery. The reality is that the economy has
become more uncertain and anxiety-producing for most of us
- not just over the past three years, but over the past 30.
But by fixating on the day-to-day ups and downs, analysts
have largely missed the more telling trend: an increasing
shift of economic risk from government and corporations
onto workers and their families."
Story ... The Awful Truth
January 13, 2004, by Paul Krugman, New York Times
"People are saying terrible things about George Bush. They
say that his officials weren't sincere about pledges to
balance the budget. They say that the planning for an
invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there
was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that
the war actually undermined the fight against terrorism.
But these irrational Bush haters are body-piercing,
Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who should go back where
they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the
halls of the Army War College.
"
Story ... VeeJay says,"NeoCons create steeper ladders and narrower gates. Guilt feelings? None whatsoever. They have their cake and eat it too. The commons has unlimited potential they insist. There is no game of microeconomic musical chairs. What a perfect world." An Assault on Housing Vouchers
January 20, 2004, New York Times
"The Bush administration, which created a record budget
deficit partly through tax cuts for the rich, is
threatening to make up some of the difference by cutting
desperately needed programs aimed at the poor. One
candidate for the chopping block is Section 8, the federal
rent-subsidy program whose main purpose is preventing
low-income families from becoming homeless."
"Even now, families sometimes wait for years for vouchers,
which become available when current voucher holders die or
get better jobs and become ineligible for subsidies. By
some estimates, only one in four families who actually
qualify for Section 8 vouchers receives them. Given that
the affordable housing crisis is likely to become worse as
time goes by, anything that makes it harder to house poor
families is by definition a disastrous idea."
Story ...
ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS OF BETTER ECONOMY DON'T FOLLOW THE NUMBERS,
January 10, 2004
"While the Bush/Cheney re-election website promotes the idea that the economy
is 'stepping on the gas pedal,' new figures released today by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics showed hiring to be flat in December 2003 with a net gain
of 1,000 jobs. A new report released today by the Economic Policy Institute
finds that the Bush administration's assertion that the president's 2003 tax
cut fell 1.615 million jobs short of its prediction for the year."
"While the rapid growth of the recovery has so far failed to benefit workers,
corporate profits have increased at a rate far beyond those of previous
recoveries. According to the EPI study, previous recoveries provided an
average of 61% of total income growth - and never less than 55% -- to
workers. In this recovery, however, only 29% of the total income growth has
gone to workers' wages and benefits. Meanwhile, corporate profits have
claimed an average share of 46% of total income growth in this recovery,
compared to an historic average of 26%."
Story ... The Only Superbad Power
New York Times, January 25, 2004,
by Serge Schmemann
"For better or for worse, it was left to George W. Bush to
propose that new order, and it hasn't worked out the way
many had expected -- a world in which arsenals would be
sharply reduced and democracies would cooperate in
resolving conflicts, ensuring human rights and protecting
the environment. Instead, Bush and his team disdainfully
chucked out containment and deterrence and declared that
America had the right to ensure its security any way it
deemed proper, including pre-emptive war. The triumphant
America of the 21st century would use multilateral
institutions only when it suited American aims. Not only
that; guaranteeing its safety required that America impose
its democratic values, starting in the Middle East.
Someday Bush may be proven right, and a harmonious chain of
friendly democracies may stretch from Central Asia to the
Mediterranean. For the time being, the new American order
has generated a tsunami of anti-Americanism, with the
United States perceived in some quarters as a greater
threat to world peace than Al Qaeda. Deep fissures have
developed between the United States and its allies;
American policies have threatened to undermine Europe's
drive toward unity; Muslims around the globe have turned
against the United States; many leaders in Asia now look to
China for their economic and political security; and
Americans themselves have become polarized in their
attitude toward the rest of the world. The 'war on
terrorism' has gotten mired in an anarchic Iraq;
Guantanamo has come to represent a willful violation of
civil rights; and tyrants have seized on the concept of
pre-emptive war to justify their own suppression of
opponents, now labeled terrorists.
"
nytimes.com/2004/01/25/books/review/25SCHMEMT.html "Not unexpectedly, the rise of so contentious a new order,
and the man who so unexpectedly launched it, have hatched a
considerable library of condemnation, all the more as his
re-election campaign gets under way. Of the books reviewed
here, two -- 'America Unbound' and 'Crisis on the Korean
Peninsula' -- can be classified as reasonably evenhanded,
though the first is broadly critical of the Bush approach
and the second implicitly so. The others leave no doubt of
what they think, ranging from George Soros's declared hope
that his book will contribute to sweeping Bush out of
office to Robert Jay Lifton's image of a 'malignant
synergy' between the United States and Al Qaeda 'when, in
their mutual zealotry, Islamist and American leaders seem
to act in concert.' From across the Atlantic, Emmanuel
Todd contributes the wistful notion that the United States,
the true empire and axis of evil in his view, is already
near collapse. These are only a portion of a swelling
anti-Bush literature, for now only partly offset by equally
ardent pro-Bush books."
nytimes.com/2004/01/25/books/review/25SCHMEMT.html This Schmemann fellow is typical of sleepwalking Americans.
"Not unexpectedly, the rise of so contentious a new order,
and the man who so unexpectedly launched it, have hatched a
considerable library of condemnation, all the more as his
re-election campaign gets under way."
"the man who so unexpectedly..."? Unexpectedly? Where has this sleepwalker been the last three or four decades? On Mars? Sleepwalking Americans have their mental straitjackets fastened on tightly and have their business-as-usual caps on top of their mental straitjackets. Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson had been the mouth pieces of Bush's brain way before he was appointed to the presidency. There are no moderate Republicans. McCain? Yeah, right. We are sorry to have to pop your bubble on that point. The American presidential election is but a sideshow in which nothing but superfluous superficialities will be discussed. The ruling elites have learned past lessons well. Does JFK ring a bell?
You may not wish to review these pages, WFB.
The next president
Bush, Society
Rush, Society 
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