In 1986 Grover Norquist---republican activists---begun republican "pledge of no new taxes". If violated, promise was to create opposition for violator. At that time---1986---Grover Norquist promised in 25 years federal treasury would be 25% smaller; i.e., in 2011! Documented in David Broder interview in 2003. Facts below:
Cost-of-living figures: October 27, 2004
Gas $2.00 per gallon---Now, its $3.13 per gallon and rumored to stay at this level and $3.22 per gallon in July, 2012; Tomators (Whlse) Case $12.00 skyrocketed to $30---caused by bad weather Milk $1.99 gallon skyrocketed to $2.49 per gallon; milk in 2007 is approaching $5.00 per gallon--caused by Gingrich's 1994 farm bill; Fruits and veggies up 3 times 2003 summer costs--caused by bad weather
Modified: Sat 11/6/2004 5:07 PM
November 2004 there's a historical precedent for believing this is a beginning, not an end.
In 1972, Richard Nixon ran against George McGovern, a progressive populist with a great message about stopping the Vietnam War. McGovern lost in a landslide, winning literally only one state even though the Watergate scandal was swirling around Nixon. But a year and a half later, Nixon resigned; two years later, reformist Democrats won back control of both legislative chambers.
Wall Street Journal---Halliburton (Brown & Root)
KBR so far has billed about $12 billion in Iraq; almost $3 billion of that remains in dispute.
Pentagon records show that $650 million in Halliburton billings is deemed "questionable," a term government auditors use when they see strong evidence of overcharges or contracting irregularities.
Another $2 billion is considered "unsupported," meaning that KBR remains unable to provide sufficient paperwork.
Modified: Wed 10/20/2004 8:39 AM
President Bush declared Iraqi war over in May. L.H., October 20, 2004 No one made this cowboy perform this political act, but he did and its his record!
Bush questionable history
GEORGE W. BUSH FOR PRESIDENT 2000 web sitehttp://geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/4124/issues.html); Dick Stanley, "Bush dodges debris during jog," Austin American-Statesman, Nov. 2, 1999, p. A1; George W. Bush for President web site (http://www.georgewbush.com) Beth Rowen, “George W. Bush: Like Presidential father, like Presidential son?” (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779295.html); Kevin Merida, "Shades of Gray Matter," The Washington Post, January 19, 2000, pp. C1, C9; Jack Calhoun, “The Family That Preys Together,” Covert Action Information Quarterly, No.41 (Summer 1992) (http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html); Richard N. Draheim, Jr., "The Bush Nazi Connection," The Dallas Libertarian Post, December 1999; Ken Herman and Scott S Green Berger, "For Bush, a retreat to a haven for favorites: South Carolina," Austin American-Statesman, February 2, 2000, pp. A1, A11 (http://www.austin360.com/news/features/national/0202nhanalysis.html); Presidency 2000, "Alaska Caucus Results," (http://www.politics1.com/vote-ak.htm).
Budget of mass destruction
June 2, 2004
Courier-Journal
Well, at least the Bush administration, for all its richly deserved problems, remains consistent — consistently deceitful.
For example, a May 19 memorandum from the White House Office of Management and Budget makes clear that the administration plans to follow its established procedure of saying whatever seems popular during the presidential campaign, and then doing whatever suits it once the voting is over.
The document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, instructs executive departments to prepare harsh cutbacks in domestic spending for the 2006 fiscal year. For example, there would be mandated cuts of $1.5 billion for the Department of Education, $900 million for veterans programs and $600 million for the National Institutes of Health.
Sad to say, the least of the problems is that this is the opposite of what President Bush says on the campaign trail. He boasts about increasing federal education spending, and he is hardly going to promise to cut veterans' health benefits and reduce spending on non-military homeland security. But at this point, anyone who expects honesty from George W. Bush is probably uneducable.
The bigger issue — one that could haunt the nation for a generation or longer — is that the memo makes clear the real cost of the President's pander-to-the-rich, soak-the-middle-class tax cuts. Despite what the administration says, in its own inner councils even it understands that popular government programs that help tens of millions of American citizens will have to be cut to ease the tax burdens of millionaires.
As columnist Paul Krugman noted yesterday in The New York Times, the 257,000 families with annual incomes exceeding $1 million received a bigger combined tax cut than the 85 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 60 percent of the population. (Those sorts of numbers — distribution of tax cuts by income level — are no longer released by the Treasury Department in this administration. The Bushies' theory is that what you don't know won't hurt them.)
What little tax breaks middle- and working-class families have received is obviously soon to be engulfed by cuts in programs upon which they depend. And as yearly deficits soar above $500 billion, federal spending will face even starker reductions as money is diverted to pay interest on the nation's debt.
Of course, the White House, embarrassed by the leak, says the memorandum reflected "formulaic assumptions" and that no decisions will be made for months. Sure, sure. And Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction targeted on Ohio.
2004 Corporate Tax Bill -'Attack on tax shelters' passes
By Jeffrey Sparshott
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 14, 2004
At the core of the corporate tax bill is the repeal of export subsidies worth $50 billion over 10 years, and their replacement with $76.5 billion in cuts for U.S.-based "production" and $42 billion to reduce taxes on overseas operations of American firms.
The legislation includes a long list of narrowly focused provisions — from lower duties on imported ceiling fans to funding for shopping mall construction — and attempts to pay for them by closing loopholes and raising some fees.
"In fact, this bill represents the most comprehensive attack on tax shelters since 1986," Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and one of the bill's authors, said before the final vote.
The bill stems from a 2002 World Trade Organization ruling that said U.S. export subsidies are illegal. The decision allowed the European Union to slap duties on American exports. Sanctions rose to 12 percent in October on an estimated 1,600 U.S. products, pricing many out of the 25-nation market.
Congress hopes that punishment will soon end, and that U.S. companies will benefit from tax relief.
Manufacturers, corporate farms, oil- and gas-extraction operations, architects and engineers, builders and other companies engaged in broadly defined "production" would benefit through a tax deduction that effectively lowers the corporate rate from 35 percent to 32 percent.
The overseas operations would benefit through simplification of some rules and a tax holiday on income repatriated from overseas.
"There is a great deal of good in this bill. We can rescue the manufacturing sector. We can end EU sanctions. ... And we can shut down every known tax abuse," Mr. Grassley said.
The European Union had complained that instead of ending the export subsidy immediately, the legislation phases it out over several years. EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said the bloc would study the transition period but added that he was "pleased that Congress has finally taken this step toward U.S. compliance with the WTO ruling."
The bill also saw a series of add-ons unrelated to the original WTO case, including provisions benefiting NASCAR track owners, native Alaskan whalers and tobacco farmers. The grab bag drew ridicule from a handful of lawmakers.
"On issue after issue in this legislation, elite corporate interests are the winners at the expense of average Americans," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.
The tobacco provisions dramatically alter rules governing crop production. Since 1938 farmers had worked under a system of quotas that limited where and how much tobacco could be grown.
Those production quotas — which could be rented, bought, sold or inherited — were thrown out in return for a $10 billion buyout.
Several senators tried to attach the buyout to proposed Food and Drug Administration rules that would regulate tobacco manufacturing and marketing, but House leadership blocked the FDA provision.
"Our FDA provision would have made a real difference ... it would have saved lives," said Sen. Mike DeWine, Ohio Republican and a proponent of the new rules. Mr. DeWine called the buyout without the FDA package a "disgrace."
Sat 9/25/2004 7:23 AM
Republicans Con Tax cut; 9/25/04, C.J.
An Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center study cited by The Boston Globe says that the bill will provide households in the middle 20 percent of income an average tax cut of $169 next year. Those with incomes in the range of $200,000 to $500,000 will receive $2,172 on average.
The rich, whom this bill helps get richer, will not be hurt as the mounting deficit pushes up interest rates and threatens Social Security, Medicare and other government programs.
The middle class may decide $169 doesn't begin to compensate for their vulnerability.
One fall day in 1973, when Mr. Bush was a new student at Harvard Business School, he was wearing a Guard jacket when he ran into one of his professors. The professor, Yoshi Tsurumi, says he asked Mr. Bush how he wangled a spot in the Guard.
"He said his daddy had good friends who got him in despite the long waiting list," recalls Professor Tsurumi, who is now at Baruch College, part of the City University of New
York. Professor Tsurumi says he next asked Mr. Bush how he could have already finished his National Guard commitment. "He said he'd gotten an early honorable discharge,"
Professor Tsurumi recalls. "I said, 'How did you manage that?' "
"He said, oh, his daddy had a good friend," Mr. Tsurumi said. "Then we started talking about the Vietnam War. He was all for fighting it."
Professor Tsurumi says he remembers Mr. Bush so vividly because he was always making outrageous statements: denouncing the New Deal as socialist, calling the S.E.C. an
impediment to business, referring to the civil rights movement as "socialist/communist" and declaring that "people are poor because they're lazy." (Dan Bartlett, an aide to Mr. Bush, denies that the president ever made these statements.)
So in this muddle of competing witnesses and suspect documents, what do we actually know about Mr. Bush and the Bush and Air National Guard service?
It's pretty clear that Mr. Bush got into the Guard because of his name but did a fine job in his first few years. "He was rock-solid as a pilot," Dean Roome, a pilot in the same unit who was briefly Mr. Bush's roommate, told me. Mr. Roome adds that Mr. Bush inquired in 1970 about the
possibility of transferring to Vietnam but was turned down - and, if so, that's a credit to him.
Then, in 1972, something went badly wrong. My hunch is that Mr. Bush went through personal difficulties that he's embarrassed to talk about today. In addition, Mr. Roome suggests that changes at the Texas air base were making it more difficult for junior pilots, so sometimes Mr. Bush's only chance to fly was as a target for student pilots - not the most thrilling duty.
For whatever reason, Mr. Bush's performance ratings deteriorated, he skipped his flight physical, he stopped flying military planes forever, he transferred to Alabama, and he did not report to certain drills there as ordered. The pilots I interviewed who were in Alabama then are
pretty sure that Mr. Bush was a no-show at required drills.
The next year Mr. Bush skipped off to Harvard Business School. He still had almost another year in the Guard he had promised to serve, but he drifted away, after taxpayers had spent $1 million training him, and he never entirely fulfilled his obligations.
More than three decades later, that shouldn't be a big deal. What worries me more is the lack of honesty today about that past - and the way Mr. Bush is hurling stones without the self-awareness to realize that he's living in a glass house.
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
Wed 9/15/2004 6:04 PM
Kerry's Dubious Economics
He says new jobs are paying $9,000 less than the old ones. That's not a fact. Modified: Fri 9/3/2004 6:42 AM
Investment tax credit used by states to attract industry ruled "unconstitutional". 9/3/04
The ruling stems from a Toledo case in which a group of taxpayers and small businesses sued over an investment tax credit that Ohio granted Daimler Chrysler to build a Jeep plant employing 3,800 workers. The plant, which opened in 2001, produces the sport utility vehicle Jeep Liberty.
Teets said that while Ohio could simply take the money it uses in tax incentives and divert it to other incentives that "pass constitutional muster," it would be harder to compete against states like Indiana and others outside the circuit.
"In Ohio, it's a very widely used tax credit, and certainly states use every tool that they have to make their state as competitive as possible," he said. "It makes it difficult to compete on a broad scale if you are the only (region) being penalized."
Strong said that for many states, such incentives are crucial to enhancing their competitiveness.
"If all things are equal, then companies tend to locate where they can make the most money," he said. "States need to compete at that level. We don't all have the same tax structure," or start out with the same natural or economic amenities.
He added, "Some states have major airline hubs, or higher educational attainment levels. States need the flexibility to compete for opportunities for their people."
In the Daimler Chrysler case, the investment tax credit accounted for about a quarter of $280million in total tax incentives, which included a 10-year local property tax exemption.
"The business that chooses to expand its local presence will enjoy a reduced tax burden, based directly on its in-state investment, while a competitor that invests out-of-state will face a comparatively higher tax burden because it will be ineligible for any credit against its Ohio tax," the plaintiffs argued.
The ruling could be cited to challenge similar tax-break programs used by states outside the circuit to promote economic development, said a lawyer who argued against Ohio's program.
"This particular form of corporate welfare is no longer constitutional in Ohio," said lawyer Terry Lodge of Toledo.
"It is a tremendous win for taxpayers, for small businesses that are just local and couldn't qualify for something like this as an incentive," Lodge said.
About 35 of the 45 states with a corporate income tax had some type of investment tax credits, according to a 1996 report by the state of New York, said National Taxpayers Union spokesman Pete Sepp. He said the appellate court's ruling could hamper many states in their competition to use tax breaks to lure corporate investment.
"The one silver lining in this ruling might be that states might be encouraged to have more broad-based, low-tax systems rather than taking piecemeal approaches to lure firms," Sepp said.
Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro could ask the full 12-judge appellate court to rehear the case or request review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tue 8/31/2004 1:31 PM
Reagan Tax Legacy
However, Paul Krugman wrote "Some point out that Ronald Reagan ran even bigger deficits as a share of GDP. But they hope people won't remember that in the face of those deficits, Reagan raised taxes, reversing part of his initial tax cut."
THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY---Palest
p.144 "Friedman is talking---figuratively, of course---abut the latest economic fashion, "tailored by Margaret Thatcher," Ronald Reagan, he adds, "sewed on the buttons." There are about a dozen specific steps, but the key ones are: cut government, cut the budgets and bureaucracies and the rules thy make; privatize just about everything; deregulate currency and capital markets, free the banks to speculate in currency and shift capital across borders. ....Open every nation's industry to foreign ownership without limit; wife away national border barriers to commerce; let the market set prices on everything from electricity to water; and let the arbitrageurs direct our investments. Then haul those old government bureaucracies to the guillotine; cut public pensions, cut welfare, cut subsidies; let politic shrink and let the market place guide us."
In 2007 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment began phase out of chlorofluorocarbons and several other chemicals that have ripped a hole in the earth's ozone layer, the part of the stratosphere that helps screen out dangerous ultraviolet radiation.
Rid America of the Brady Law passed in 1993 but our outlaw leaders do not want to keep guns out of criminal hands.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (1953) Get rid of BEA because analysis provides information to the state of the Economy, from the rate of economic growth to the size of the trade deficits. This would keep in the dark Congress, executive branch, federal reserve, stock and bond markets, private industry pretty much everything our economy depends to work.
Eliminate Consumer Product Safety (1972) Outlaws want to eliminate it so no new consumer-product standards will be forthcoming.
Cooperative Extension Service (1914) Our Outlaws leadership cut more than $11 million from this agency in 2004; an agency that gives farmers the best information and latest research on agriculture.
Direct Student Loans (1992) Our outlaw leadership denied 2.5 million students direct-loan opportunities. Our outlaw leadership went to bat for the banks who do not want to loose this lucrative business.
Family & Medicaid Leave (1993) Our Outlaw leaders are trying to cut enforcement budget. This is a middle class law attempting to protect family workers'. Our Outlaw leaders say its a goner if they have anything to do with it.
Food labeling (1990) Our Outlaw leaders want a regulatory moratorium that would stifle this kind of regulatory innovation. They don't care if we know what we eat.
G.I. Bill (1944) Our Outlaw leaders made an effort to hinder this bills help to G.I.'s by increasing fees for those attending college on the G.I. Bill by $400 per person.
Green Lights Program (1991) Our outlaw leaders wanted to stifle a program promoting energy savings through motivating industry to use energy saving lights saving $53 billion for companies---The portion of that more than enough to pay for the program's modest cost.
Human Genome Project (1990) This is a human genetic code program our Outlaw leaders produced House legislation making shocking cuts to this program. Civilian research would fall over 5 years from about $32 billion to $25 billion, a 35% cut. Medical research, other than for AIDS, would fall by more than 25%.
Interstate Highway System (1956) Our outlaw leaders don't like one of the best Republican leaders to lead; i.e., General Eisenhower who succeeded in getting the '56 Federal-Aid Highway Act passed. Today over 42,795 miles of interstate highways exist without a crossing or stoplight! So far, they have left it alone.
Meals-On-Wheels (1972) Outlaw leaders are groping to cut program 10%---this program fights serious malnutrition about elderly, This program has already served over a million senior citizens. Recipients of these meals have contributed $171 million in 1993 alone.
Mine Safety and Health Administration (1969) Makes sure miners are protected from hazards such as fires, cave-ins, explosions, and black-lung disease. Our Outlaw leaders propose to eliminate the entire program. Their opposition to MSHA is an affront to all working people.
Motor Voter (1993) Our Outlaw leaders allows citizens to register to vote when they get their drivers' license. Our Outlaw leaders do not like this because its their thinking it will help the opposition party more than theirs. Who cares about the voter? They don't!
National Health Service Corp (1970) Our Outlaw leaders did not want to help the desperately poor areas of Kentucky and West Virginia, or frigid Alaska get enough doctors to service their medical needs. Our outlaw leaders tried to cut program in half!
National Parks (1916) 369 parks, covering 83 million acres. Our outlaw leaders want to open more of these pristine lands to logging and mining. They tried to cut Parks budget by $100 million. One outlaw congressman wanted to form a national park closing commission.
National Weather Service: (1890) Our outland leaders wanted to privatize the National Weather Service---they don't think government ought to be in business of giving such vital information to farmers to keep from losing crops or airplanes from flying into a thunderstorm.
Peace Corps (1961) Our Outlaw leaders wanted to skip out on most of America's foreign-aid commitments. Our Outlaw leaders went after their budget trying to get a 10% cut.
Reemployment Screening (1993) Outlaw leaders under funded the unemployment insurance program and employment services.
School lunches and Breakfasts (1946) Again, our outlaw leaders tried to eliminate nutritional requirements, scrap the requirement that children in poverty receive free school lunches, allow 20% of funds to be spent by states on other, unrelated block grant program, causing millions of children served less-nutritious meals.
School To Work (1994) American leaders leaders supported by many top corporate executives tried to cut budget 25%.
Sesame Street (1969) Our outlaw leaders wanted to eliminate funding for PBS. When they could not get that done they're after 25% cut in funding.
Smokey Bear (1944) Our Outlaw leaders really wanted to get rid of Smokey since we've still got fires, so the bear must not be working.
Social Security (1935) Our outlaw leaders plan would eventually skyrocket elderly poverty! We all watched our outlaw leader spend millions of our taxpayer dollars flying all over the US trying to get us to let them give it to financial companies in private enterprise so they could gut it while making unconscionable profits. People killed the outlaw leaders' proposal.
WIC (1972) Our outlaw leaders tried to limit the number of people who could be helped by WIC; then they voted to replace WIC entitlement with a portion of a block grant. They got rid of competitive bidding in the WIC program---just one more way they found to help special interests at our expense.
Maybe this is why so many people can't stand G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove because they've declared war on the middle class.
Reaching the 25 year goal has slipped a bit since 2011 has already expired. However, republicans under G.W. Bush administration---who changed republican economic policy from moderate to right wing (ultra conservative) made great strides in downsizing federal treasury from 2000-2008. Their economic policies destroyed $12 TRILLION DOLLARS of America's stock and real estate market wealth in 13 months!
Election of Romney could bring about republican party's elimination of 25% of federal treasury in 30 years,at the expense of America's middle class.
