January 17, 2004
The Other State Of the Union
In three days President Bush will issue his State of the Union speech. What he won’t say is any truth about the state of our nation that would put any negative light upon his administration. The number of items he won’t want the American people to focus on are many. Some of the major items he won’t mention or will spin appear below.
The Economy - A jobless economic recovery is a fact to date. Yes, there was a fluke two months ago when net job creation spiked only to be followed by another indicating only 1000 jobs created. The Washinton Post states:
More than 2 million manufacturing jobs have been lost nationwide over the past three years. Administration officials knew that job creation would be the last part of an economic recovery to kick in, but they were taken aback by a Labor Department report last week showing that only 1,000 jobs were added to payrolls in December.
The Post further states the Administration will use tax dollars to shore up job growth numbers with government spending - this from a President who used to say Government should be downsized and businesses should create jobs. The President also will not mention that the Greenville, Michigan-based Electrolux factory announced it was laying off 2,700 workers.
Nor will the President indicate what manufacturer's had to say this week in a NY Times article which states:
In an otherwise buoyant report, the National Association of Manufacturers predicted that factories would add 250,000 jobs in the next 12 months - less than 10 percent of the 2.8 million they cut in the last three years.And even that outlook may be optimistic. Manufacturing companies added barely that many jobs during the previous two economic recoveries, and productivity increases have been so high over the last year that demand for workers could climb more slowly than in the past.
And it just keeps getting worse as we may be discovering the white collar jobs may be going the way of manufacturing jobs as reported by Robert J. Samuelson in an editorial entitled The Specter of Outsourcing.
The President also won't mention the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) warning appearing on Jan. 7 that our national debt being created by this Administration and Republican Congress threatens not only the U.S. economy but that of the entire world's.
Iraq - The President is not going to reveal that the Iraqis have one plan for a direct vote to install what is hoped will be a lasting democracy, but his Administration is telling them no, you can't do that, we want caucuses that will involve far fewer Iraqis voting and provide more control over the voting process. Additionally. the Presdent is not going to discuss another setback in Iraq, the desire of the Iraqi's to decide if and how long American troops remain in Iraq. NY Times.
Nor will the President mention the soaring suicide rates among our troops in Iraq, nor many troops scoffing at a proposed $10,000.00 reenlistment bonus: strong evidence that our troops morale is falling and GI sentiment toward the Administration is changing as it extends tours of duties dashing troop's hopes of coming home when they thought they would.
Health Care - The Bush Adminstration did reveal on Jan. 8 that health spending accounts for nearly 15 percent of the nation's economy, the largest share on record. What the President won't mention is that the Medicare overhaul bill which he refused to veto contains language preventing any negotiations by Medicare administrators to reduce prescription drug costs for senior citizens. And the law prevents middle class Medicare recipients from purchasing private insurance to cover the gaps that Medicare does not provide for. Those gaps will be substantial for a great many recipients.
Education - The President will not reveal to the American people the criticisms of his No Child Left Behind initiative like these reported in the CS Monitor.
The requirements don't come with enough new money to pay for them. The new focus on the worst-off kids means the gifted children are now being left behind. The law is prompting some states - which must each create their own tests - to game the system by setting low standards.Nor will the President have much to offer students facing rocketing college costs because the pressure is on to trim the deficits caused by Iraq, starwars research, putting towns on Mars, 1.5 Billion for promoting heterosexual marriages, and tax cuts, upon tax cuts, upon tax cuts.
War on Terrorism - Nor will the President mention the scathing report from the Army War College. A Washington Post writer Ricks states:
A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.
Reversals - The President will not discuss how he is having to back down from so many of his original positions evidencing claims of his being a student President, learning from mistakes which others must pay for. Some of these reversals are: White House Wants U.N. to Return to Iraq. Reversal of his steel tariffs imposed upon China. Acting Conciliatory, U.S. Seeks to Revive Global Trade Talks. After years of steps toward improvement in U.S.- Cuban relations, Jan. 8 finds this headline: U.S. Halts Cuban Immigration Talks; Worsening of Ties Seen. The Bush Adminstration made headlines when it announced there would be no Iraq contracts for the coalition of the unwilling. Recent headlines indicate reversal on this mistaken position as the U.S. announces Canada can bid on contracts and Germany, France and Russia are being reviewed for reversal as well.
Posted by David R. Remer at January 17, 2004 03:53 AMWhile Bush believes that his philosophies are simply common sense, the truth is, the principles at work in his administration are just as academic in their own right as any Democrat’s
What Bush lacks is a clear picture of both the results and underlying mechanisms of the theories he offers forth.
It is disingenous to act as if the Republicans do not depend on academic theories as much as the Democrats. How is Supply-Side Economics not theoretical? How is Neo-Con political philosophy not theoretical?
Why criticize Democrat theories as ivory-tower intellectual? Because it is a restraint on our ability to compete. Whether it’s the claim of liberal bias in the media, or the use of executive privilege or post-war patriotic fervor on those who dissent from Bush’s policies, the point is not to bring a balance, but to negate it all together. In short, the National GOP works to stifle intellectual competition, so their theories will not have to withstand the strong criticism of their political opponents.
The GOP fails to realize that this competition is both necessary to their credibility, and to the prevention of mistakes due to their own dogmatism. The perpetual danger of that lies in the dogmatists unwillingness to part with theory when fact contradicts it. This country has survived because in part political fortunes depended on not straying so far from the truth that voters or one’s own party thought one out of touch, incompetent.
But because the parties will not call their favorite sons in for accountability on those things, because the focus is on the image and the marketing of the candidate instead of his interface with reality, the parties are being no help in bringing candidates down to Earth.
The value of a democracy, even an impure one like ours is that governments can be obligated to give us the bad news, to admit, in the data, if not the words out of their mouths, that they’re plans have failed.
This is what Bush fails to realize in his quest to quell and tame the press. That no matter how well he stays on message, no matter how well he spins the figures, and seals his White House up tight to reporters, people will be able to see the facts and come to their own conclusions.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at January 17, 2004 10:07 AMBefore heading back to college after winter break I read an article by the associated press telling of more job loses.
- Fannie May chocolates company is going bankrupt which will leave 900+ out of jobs when the plant closes.
- Catapiller, a construction company, will have its Joliet, IL headquarters to close leaving 200+ out of work.
That is another 1000+ people out of jobs in the Chicago-land area. Forget about the pixies, where are the jobs?
Posted by: Adam at January 17, 2004 11:15 AMI don’t even think I want to know what the Bush administration thinks of the “State of the Union”.
- Spending up 26% (even with Republican reign)
- Patriot Act & “Watch what you say”, Ari Fliescher.
- Federal Control of Schools (NCLBA)
- Cost of Iraq War: $87 Billion and hundreds of American lives
- More and more power going not just to the feds but the executive branch of the feds
To top it all off, almost every Democratic alternative to Bush is proposing either Universal Health Care or expensive reforms for Medicare. Here they are telling us not to trust Bush with anything, but then trust “them” with our health and livelyhood. Go screw yourself. I don’t know who to trust anymore.
No wonder 40% of Americans don’t vote. Both parties produce crappy candidates with stump speeches like “Take Your Country Back”. Go home Dean.
Where’s Mr. Ventura when we need him? He’d be better than Bush or any of the other candidates.
Posted by: Dave at January 17, 2004 08:48 PMWhat does the President know about the State of the Union? You be the judge.
TomPaine.com has launched a State of the Union scorecard (www.tompaine.com/scorecard) — you can download your own copy, and use it to grade the President’s performance on Tuesday. There are three choices: did he avoid, spin or accurately depict the state of our nation on the issues in his annual speech (you can, of course, write in the margins if you need to).
The scorecard includes background on six key issues, as well as quotations from some of the most influential progressive political thinkers and doers in the country today — Dean, Kerry, Clark, Podesta, Sweeney, the NRDC, etc.
The topics are:
Health Care: 44 million Americans, 15 percent of population, including 8.5 million children, don’t have health insurance …
Jobs and Economic Recovery: Two million fewer jobs than when Bush took office. Tax cuts promising 300,000 new jobs a month never reached one-third of that goal. In December 2003, only 1,000 new jobs created. New jobs pay less than those lost …
Funding Education: No Child Left Behind law $7 billion short …
Environment: Landmark environmental laws weakened. Allowable levels of mercury from power plants tripled. Superfund clean-up costs shifted from polluters to public. Clean Air Act rules for dirtiest power plants relaxed …
State & Federal Spending: States face largest budget crises in decades. Federal deficit has hit a new high. $87 billion spent on Irag as U.S. non-defense domestic spending plummets. Meanwhile, White House pushing for new space program, costing estimated hundreds of billions …
War on Terror: No WMD found. No link between Iraq and Al Qaeda found. Osama bin Laden still at large. Rebuilding Iraq marred by terrorism, corporate profiteering and failure to restore basic services.
Log on to www.tompaine.com/scorecard and download your own copy. Users are invited back to the www.tompaine.com/scorecard webpage on Tuesday night to record their scores.
Posted by: TomPaine.com at January 18, 2004 07:49 AMPicky point - We don’t have a jobless economy. (I’m still employed…) We have jobless growth.
The problem with most Americans is that they are too consumed with “self” at the expense of society and “others”. This is obvious within many decisions made by the ” imperialistic five” (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Ashcroft, and Rice) who seem to want to dominate the world. However, it is also an aspect of all too many members of the middle class. We better focus on the future and not so much on what is good for “me” in the present.
Bush’s State of the Union address is only a marketing gimmick with more of the same distortions, lies, and exaggerations that we have been hearing since the Florida debacle put him in office. This is testimony to the idea that the middle class better get out and vote. Our democracy is at risk, more so now than ever before in our great nation’s history. If he is actually elected in 2004, (unlike in 2000) we have no one to blame except ourselves. We need more than one party for our democracy to survive. Anybody but Bush in 2004!
Posted by: Michael Lowery at January 18, 2004 02:49 PMMichael, you have hit upon a central theme of mine provided by a former professor, Nikhil Bhattacharya, who led me to following reasoning. Vocationally specialized societies lead to a citizenry who relegate the most important of issues and tasks to others, so called experts, who should better know than we what to do. A relatively comfortable and fulfilled middle class in the same society leads to apathy, complacency and a structuring of priorities that fits neatly into the vocationally specialized structure of society reinforcing the idea that if one is not an expert in the area it is pointless to waste time on the matter.
To date, their appears to be no remedy for such a malady of society save collapse and reinvention. However, I am still convinced that if equal time and effort were spent on generalized education as there is on specialized education, an informed and intelligent voting citizenry could be an answer for salvation.
Posted by: David R. Remer at January 18, 2004 05:36 PMA little side note; in that same article I mentioned in my post above it mentioned that though unemployment has dropped it is not for the right reason. People have just stopped looking for jobs pulling out of the job market completely and no longer going to unemployment offices.
They have given up.
Posted by: Adam at January 18, 2004 06:12 PMWoody, thank you. You are quite right, it should have been jobless economic recovery.
Posted by: David R. Remer at January 18, 2004 07:13 PMAdam, this is a very important point. We have no agency providing numbers of how many people have just dropped out of the job market altogether. Their are anecdotal stories of folks trimming back on quality of life and living off one spouse salary instead of two, or moving into the off books cash services market which is huge, in which handymen, gardeners, etc. are able to bring in income on a cash basis such that there are no records of their income.
I suspect we are fueling the growth of this tax dodging cash services market. But, I find it hard to blame many of those folks, who were driven to it as a last ditch effort to maintain their income.
Posted by: David R. Remer at January 19, 2004 10:02 PMIndeed, you really cannot blame those people for turning somewhere else. The sheer cost of anything has risen to the point where many jobs are not even enough to cover the cost of living comfortably.
However, I doubt that the amount of people working said jobs is enough to cover even half of those who have dropped out of the market.
Posted by: Adam at January 20, 2004 12:17 AMDavid, you have stolen my topic…but be that as it may, you are right on the money. The State of the Union airing tonight will be anything but the true state of the union. Left out will be everything that is wrong with America and her leadership. Woo is us…great job David…
Posted by: V. Edward Martin at January 20, 2004 01:17 PMAdam, you may be right, I have no research source to say one way or another. Anecdotally, I have a sister and nephew who are unemployed, and I know two others whom I have been told work on a cash basis.
Posted by: David R. Remer at January 20, 2004 05:52 PMAppreciate the kudo, Mr. Martin. :)
Posted by: David R. Remer at January 21, 2004 09:52 PMThere are several critical issues that Mr Bush failed to mention: in the International side, the US has never been so despised for it foreign policy as now;
In Latin America the mayority of the important countries (Brasil, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela) accounting for more than 50% of the population and territory south of the border, have fall out of ranks on: free trade, Cuba, war on terror, etc. The obvious turning to the “left” on South America´s elections is a response among other things to the IMF/WB policies, many of them still sponsored and supported by this administration.
The only friendly governments still are: Colombia (as long as the administration keeps the Plan Colombia alive),where the President has lost the support even of his own party; Peru, where a desperate President, with less than 10% support after one year in power, tries without success to bring his Harvard pals to invest in the country; and obviously many Central America “Banana Repúblics” that after lifting all restrictions to US imports,were paid back with the promise to lift the quotas and restrictions to their agricultural exports in TEN YEARS, nice loyalty with US friends!.
The famous (infamous to others) fight against terrorism has failed in the internal field. Today 80% of port facilities have missed the Jan 1st deadline to give the USCG their Risk Assessments and Port Security Plans, and 60% of US Flagged vessels are in similar situation; needless to say they do not have the money to implement such measures, nor has the USCG and the Homeland Security enough budget to comply with the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.
The UN (since 1972)has failed to define terrorism, because the threat of veto due to the consideration of “state terrorism” (a.k.a. Israel)on the definition and the exclusion of “freedom fighters” (Palestinians groups)on such definition. In my opinion both should be considered.
Mr. Sanchez, I agree with your perspective. You raise a fundamental flaw of the organization process of the U.N. Terrorism however, is one of those terms I don’t think can be defined for the purpose of international concensus save to say, that it constitutes violence against civilians as a means of attacking another target, usually a state or state policy, or state official.
There is no question, the this administration is bribing its way into the appearance of having allies, and you and I are footing the bribery cash.
Posted by: David R. Remer at January 27, 2004 08:30 PM
