Political Thoughts from JP

Republican Storyline: Fact or Fiction?

2012-01-22T16:26:00.005-05:00

I've been on the sidelines too long. We must elevate the national discourse. Here's my attempt, my latest letter to the editor.

Our country faces substantial challenges. While there will always be differences about the policies needed to surmount them, we can only achieve success through an honest debate based on accurate representation of facts. Sadly, truth is in short supply in the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney says that more jobs have been lost during President Obama’s tenure than any president since Hoover. Newt Gingrich accuses Obama of being the “food stamp president.” Both candidates ignore the fact that Obama inherited an economy in worse condition than any time since the Depression. It is dishonest to hold Obama accountable for the 3 million jobs lost during the first six months of his administration, the disastrous legacy of Bush’s fiscal mismanagement, while not recognizing the economic recovery for which his policies are responsible. Since June 2009, Obama has added 1.2 million jobs to the economy, more than half of what Bush added during his entire eight year tenure.

Romney recently claimed that “I’m not terribly worried about the very wealthiest in our society. They’re doing just fine.” So why does his proposed tax plan, as analyzed by the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, afford the wealthiest 1% tax breaks that are three times larger, in percentage terms, than the bottom 80%?

Republicans say that creating jobs is their top priority, but stood in the way of a payroll tax break for 160 million workers (that Moody’s Analytics estimated would add 750,000 jobs) because it was to be paid by a small tax increase for the wealthiest Americans. Their alternative was to lay off 10% of the federal workforce, which would only exacerbate the problem. And lest one assume that Republican administrations lead to smaller government, the facts prove otherwise. President Reagan increased nonmilitary payroll by nearly one-quarter million. George W. Bush increased it by 53,000. Under Obama, the federal workforce is smaller than it was when Reagan took office, in no small part due to the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton, which lowered the federal payroll by 380,000.

We need to evaluate the Republican storyline carefully; it’s apt to be more fiction than fact.

A local matter: High school auditorium project 'MISA'

2011-03-11T18:12:00.004-05:00

Just like the Republicans in Washington, the local Republicans in my hometown of Greenwich, CT are doing what they can to defund spending on valuable public services, in this case education...

To the editor:

In a town that pays for human traffic lights on Greenwich Avenue, repeatedly plows roads that have already been cleared of snow, and resurfaces roads that are already in good condition, it’s disingenuous for the Republican members of the BET budget committee to claim that Greenwich doesn’t have the resources to afford the Greenwich High School Music Instruction Space and Auditorium project. While I enjoy the relatively low property tax rates in Greenwich, I would gladly pay more to fund worthwhile investments in the Greenwich Public School system.

MISA addresses a well-defined need, with long term benefits for our children and the community at large that have been thoroughly vetted in public forums. It has broad community support among those who care about the quality of public education in Greenwich The unfortunate message coming from Republican BET members is that public education is not a priority in Greenwich. It is time for First Selectman Peter Tesei to show leadership by actively lobbying for the project, and for voters in Greenwich who care about the quality of education to carefully consider who they elect to the BET next November.

Truth about Taxes

2010-10-25T08:11:00.002-04:00

My last letter prior to the mid-term elections. Please don't forget to vote on November 2nd.

Jonathan

I don’t like taxes any more than the next person, but it’s important to make decisions about the upcoming election based on facts.

Republicans are in favor of extending Bush tax cuts to the richest 2% because they claim it will help the economy. But according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, extending high-income tax cuts is the worst policy option currently available for promoting jobs and economic growth.

Republicans want us to think that President Obama and the Democrat-led Congress have raised taxes. That’s not correct. The stimulus package resulted in tax cuts for 98% of working taxpayers in 2009; no one has had a federal tax increase in the past two years.

Republicans claim they want to help “Joe taxpayer” as much as they want to help the rich. It’s not true. They are against extending enhancements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit that help working families, but for extending tax cuts to the richest 2% of taxpayers. So, with Republicans in control, many Americans would actually pay higher taxes than under President Obama’s proposed tax relief.

Republicans want us to think that the Bush tax cuts were great for the economy. Facts show the opposite. In the six years following the Bush tax cuts, jobs grew by 4.8%. In contrast, following Clinton’s courageous move to raise taxes in order to restore fiscal responsibility to the Federal budget, jobs grew by 16.2%, more than three times better than Bush’s performance.

If you want to live in a fairyland of low taxes and no hard choices, vote Republican. If you want to help the vast majority of Americans who need help, and recognize that some sacrifice by the most fortunate of us is necessary to set our fiscal house in order, vote Democrat.

A good article from which some of my facts were confirmed:

Three Good Reasons to Let the High-End Bush Tax Cuts Disappear This Year, Center for American Progress, 7/29/10

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/07/let_cuts_expire.html

Eliminating the Income Tax Draws Opposition -- What Else do They Want?

2010-10-22T00:56:00.002-04:00

Apparently there is some internet swirl around a bill introduced last
February by a PA democrat calling for a 1% tax on financial
transactions, along with abolition of the federal income tax.
Interesting that even a crackpot Democrat who wants to get rid of
income taxes can attract the ire of the opposition. But I felt the
misinformation should be called out.

To the Editor, Greenwich Time
October 19, 2010

John Corrado, in his letter, “Spending is the Problem” urges
opposition to a bill in the House, H.R. 4646, that proposes a 1% tax
on all financial transactions. Mr. Corrado goes on to blame the
Democrat who introduced the bill, Representative Chaka Fattah (D-PA),
of “looking for ways to introduce new taxes on the already heavily
taxed people.”

The problem with Mr. Corrado’s assessment is that it completely
misrepresents the facts. According to the Congressional Research
Service (part of the Library of Congress), the bill offers an
offsetting tax credit for couples earning up to $250,000. More
notably, the bill calls for phasing out the individual income tax, and
is aimed at eliminating the national debt within seven years. Whether
or not the bill has any merit, claiming that Fattah favors “tax and
spend” is ludicrous.

Implying that Fattah’s bill represents a real threat misleads
further. The Congressman has introduced similar legislation for the
past six years, which each time has died without a vote. While Mr.
Corrado reports that the bill is “in committee”, it has not attracted
any co-sponsors nor made any progress in the legislative process.

This is simply another in a sustained effort by those opposed to
Democrats to inject misinformation into the political process as a
primary strategy for advancing their agenda. Caveat emptor.

Here's the letter, published at Greenwich Time online on 10/18/10
(http://www.greenwichtime.com/default/article/Business-versus-
executive-experience-711951.php)

"Spending is the problem"

To the editor:

It seems the tax and spend folks in D.C. just don't get it. Americans,
by a large majority, are fed up with the out-of-touch elected elite
class that populates our government. These officials are still looking
for ways to introduce new taxes on the already heavily taxed people.

I urge everyone to check out H.R. 4646, a bill now in committee and
due out after the November elections, that would impose a new 1
percent tax on all monetary transactions.
Included are ATM transactions, deposits and withdrawals by any means,
and checks written, to name a few. The sponsor is a Democrat.

The country's government does not have a revenue problem. It has a
spending problem. Let's throw out the bums who would continue to bleed
us dry by means such as H.R. 4646. Write your representatives and vote
out the institutionally incompetent who won't listen to the people.

John Corrado
Norwalk

What Republicans Stand For

2010-09-21T16:22:00.004-04:00

Plenty to write about these days...my next letter for local papers, with reference to Fairfield County, CT candidates for state and federal office:

It’s clear from their actions that Republicans have elevated
obstructionism over doing what’s right for the country. As the
midterm election nears, I ask Independents and others on the fence to
be sure they understand the motivations of candidates from the two
parties. I think you’ll find that Jim Himes, Dick Blumenthal and
Democratic candidates for state office have positive ideas for
rebuilding our economy and improving economic security. In contrast,
Republicans are motivated by obstruction and protecting the wealthy at
the expense of the middle class. Just listen to what they’re
saying.

John Boehner, Republican House minority leader, is so unconcerned with
the plight of ordinary Americans that he called financial reform
legislation “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.” In Boehner’s
world, millions of lost jobs, and trillions in lost savings is
inconsequential. All but three House Republicans voted against
financial reform, decrying it as a threat to free markets. The same
free markets that needed Bush’s $700 billion taxpayer-financed
bailout.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican from South Carolina, would rather lose
a senate seat than see a moderate elected who would cross party lines.
Congressional candidate Dan Debicella wants to repeal healthcare
reform, with no cogent plan on how to cover 50 million Americans who
lack health insurance. Representative Joe Barton, ranking Republican
on the House energy committee, was “ashamed” that the Obama
administration secured $20 billion from BP to cover the unprecedented
economic and environmental damage the company inflicted on the Gulf,
calling it a “shakedown.” This is the person who would take over
leadership on energy policy if Democrats lose control of the House.

Senate Republicans stood in the way of an additional $34 billion in
unemployment benefits, claiming the government can’t afford additional
deficit spending. The same Republicans who are willing to spend $700
billion to extend Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.
Over in Alaska, Republicans are trying to “roll back the federal
government” while they take in federal stimulus money at nearly three
times the per capita rate as other states.

This is what Republicans are about. Hopefully it’s not what the
voters of Fairfield County want.

In Response to Greenwich's Former Mayor re "Liberal Politicians"

2010-09-13T23:57:00.002-04:00

The former mayor of Greenwich, CT (where I live), wrote a letter to the editor in our local paper lambasting "liberal politicians" for everything they've done.

My response:

To the editor (Greenwich Post):

In his letter on September 9th, former Selectman Peter Crumbine assailed “liberal politicians” in Washington and Hartford for trillion-dollar deficits, sky-high unemployment and health care reform. The problem with Mr. Crumbine—and the Republican establishment—is that they love to play fast and loose with the facts.

They conveniently ignore that President Bush added nearly $5 trillion to the federal debt, reversing budget surpluses left to us by Clinton economic policies. The unemployment rate started its steady march upward well before President Obama took office. While it has continued to climb, the trend in job losses reversed itself after the Obama stimulus package was passed, supporting the perspective that the stimulus is achieving its goal of restoring the economy to health. If Republicans are so masterful at managing the economy, how is it that under Clinton, four times as many jobs were created as during the following Bush years?

Republicans appear to be pleased with the current state of health care, since they did everything in their power to block any attempt at reform. Apparently 45 million non-elderly uninsured (four out of five of whom are in working households), a steady decline in employer-based coverage and premiums growing four times faster over the past decade than wage increases are facts that don’t matter.

Mr. Crumbine encourages us to send “free market business executives with proven records of success” to Washington and Hartford. The same successful business executives, no doubt, that brought the global economy to its knees with their “fiscally conservative” risk taking and whose banks had to be bailed out by Bush with a $700 billion rescue package.

I suggest the next time a Republican asserts facts about how bad Democrats are for the economy, take the time to do some fact checking. You’ll be surprised at what you find.

2010-02-25T20:45:00.001-05:00

It’s more than disheartening to believe that one vote in the Senate could make the difference between beginning to address the health care crisis in this country or accepting the status quo. Which is why I believe it is particularly important to stand up to Republican obstructionism on the issue, and encourage Democrats to push forward.

I’m off to watch President Obama take on the Republicans for six hours. How delicious!

Any way one looks at it, the evidence demonstrates that Republicans are fundamentally opposed to health care reform that would enable all Americans to actually enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, rights enshrined in our Declaration of Independence. Republicans would have us believe that they are for cutting costs, extending coverage, reducing the deficit, improving health care and working collaboratively with Democrats, but the facts paint a different picture.

Despite months of good-faith negotiation to accommodate Republican demands, only one Republican out of more than 250 actually supported the health care reform legislation passed by the House and Senate. This is despite the fact that Democrats significantly compromised on key priorities: a public option to make insurance affordable and introduce competition into the market, truly universal coverage (millions are still left uninsured in the current proposals) and protection of women’s right to choose.

Republicans are not committed to universal health care and protection from the catastrophic impact of serious illness on working families, leaving the United States alone among developed nations in not protecting its citizens. The latest Republican proposal would cover just three million uninsured, only 10% of what the Democrat’s legislation covers. By their own admission, Republicans question why universal coverage is a priority. Sage Eastman, a spokesman for Republicans on the House and Ways Committee asked, “Why is coverage the dominant theme?” For those who believe that Republicans are on the side of the middle class, consider the facts. Millions of the uninsured that Republican proposals won’t cover are working families and their children; universal coverage is not just about providing insurance to those in poverty.

By their words and actions, Republicans are demonstrating that their primary motivation is obstruction, not solving the health care crisis. They rail about “government takeovers” of health care and burgeoning government expenditures, but stand in the way of Medicare reforms to cut government spending without cutting benefits. John McCain attempted to block nearly $500 billion in planned Medicare savings and costly Medicare Advantage plans that receive unwarranted government subsidies. The Bush-enacted prescription drug benefit prohibits the government from negotiating for lower drug prices. Republicans are fine with government spending when it enriches pharmaceutical companies, but against it when it helps working Americans.

Republicans conveniently ignore the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office analysis that projects that the Democratic Senate plan would reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the next decade, and $1 trillion over the decade following. By contrast, the latest Republican measure, according to CBO estimates, will lower the deficit in the first decade by just $68 billion, while covering only one-tenth as many uninsured.

Republicans are scaring Americans into believing that health care reform will raise their premiums. In fact, the CBO concluded that the legislation won’t have much of an impact on premiums up or down.

If Republicans continue to stand in the way of health care reform, Democrats need to take matters into their own hands and use parliamentary maneuvers to let the majority will be expressed.

Even Some Republicans aren't as Reactionary as Lieberman

2009-11-10T00:20:00.002-05:00

It's been a sad day for health care reform, what with Lieberman vowing to filibuster any Senate health care reform legislation that includes a public option...

Honorable Senator Lieberman: It is truly a sad day for CT and the United States overall to hear you pledge to defeat health care reform if it includes a public option. I can't fathom what misguided values are leading you to take such a counterproductive approach to dealing with one of the most important public policy issues of our generation. Without a public option, meaningful health care reform is impossible, because the RIGHT to have medical insurance means nothing if it isn't affordable. And given that the insurance industry either can't or won't make medical insurance affordable for millions of Americans means those without access to employer-provided insurance (like you, for one) need a guarantee that they'll be able to find affordable options. From what I have seen and learned, the only way to make that happen is through a public option. It's time for you to stand up and represent your constituents, not protect the insurance lobby. I will be watching your position closely.

Is This the Democratic Party I Belong To?

2009-11-09T23:46:00.002-05:00

I was shocked to read about the last minute cave-in to the anti-choice lobby to secure passage in the House of health-care reform. Putting Stupack-Pitts together with the word "reform" has ushered in a new level of spinelessness for the Democratic leadership.

My quick note to Speaker Pelosi:

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

I am greatly disappointed with the health care reform bill you brought to the floor for passage, because of the complete sell-out of the abortion rights of lower income women. It is truly a sad day for the Democratic party—particularly when it enjoys a historically overwhelming legislative majority—that it to so cravenly gave in to the anti-choice lobby and tossed away years of hard-won victories to protect the health and privacy rights of American women.

I truly cannot understand why you allowed this last minute amendment to be offered without raising huge red flags. The efforts to play down the significance of the Stupak-Pitts amendment are disingenuous at best, offensive at worst. To suggest that women, especially those who can least afford it, should have to buy a rider to obtain medical insurance to cover their constitutionally protected right to reproductive freedom is nothing short of obscene.

I urge you to do everything in your power, and what you should have already done, to reverse this dangerous and ill-conceived precedent.

Sincerely,

JP

Are Republicans Opposed to Everything Positive?

2009-08-14T18:06:00.004-04:00

It's hard to know where to begin when it comes to confronting Republican obstructionism to health care reform. Here's my attempt:

There can be little doubt that we are facing a severe health care crisis. And contrary to what some critics of health care reform would have us believe, the crisis is not just about the 45 million non-elderly who do not have health insurance (4 out of 5 of whom are in working households). The high costs and poor quality of health care affect all of us, and represent a very real threat to our health and economic security.

Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have grown four times faster than wage increases over the past nine years. The availability of employer-based health insurance coverage is shrinking, down 8% since 2000. According to a study by The Commonwealth Fund, the quality of U.S. health care ranked next to last compared to the U.K., Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada—despite the fact that the U.S. spends nearly twice the amount of its economic output on health care as other developed nations. As many as 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors, a per capita rate 40% worse than the U.K. and Canada, countries with government run health care systems. The situation is so bad that Medicare refuses to pay for procedures performed on the wrong patient or part of the body.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the “rising costs of health care and health insurance pose a serious threat to the future fiscal condition of the United States.” It goes on to say that without policy changes, “a substantial and growing number of nonelderly people…are likely to be without health insurance.”

The solutions to these problems will be difficult; a healthy debate about alternate approaches is warranted. However, Republican critics of health care reform aren’t showing any interest in having a substantive debate. Rather, just resorting to their usual tactics of spreading disinformation and instilling fear as they block Democratic attempts to help millions of ordinary Americans deal with the real and immediate health care problems they face. These problems are affecting millions of us. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that nearly one-quarter of respondents said they had experienced a serious problem covering health expenses.

Republicans are scaring Americans into believing that the proposed public insurance option is a wicked scheme intended to destroy America. As Karl Rove put it, “If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state.” Contrary to what Republicans would have us believe, the public option is not socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is where the government runs health care facilities and employs health care providers. But as the AARP confirms, the public option proposed by President Obama is a backstop “to give consumers the best value for their money and force greater competition among insurance plans for our business.” It “isn't about a government takeover.”

The facts haven’t stopped critics like the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights from spreading falsehoods about the public option, saying “this government-run plan could crush all your other choices…resulting in 119 million off their current insurance coverage.” In fact, the 119 million figure comes from the Lewin Group (affiliated with insurer United Healthcare) which concluded that, offered a Medicare-like public option, many people and businesses would voluntarily drop their private insurance in favor of the lower cost option. Choice, of course, is not something Republicans like to offer Americans.

The latest misinformation being spread—by Sarah Palin among others—is that proposed legislation would limit end-of-life care and encourage euthanasia, charges that the AARP labels “flat-out lies.” Once again, the truth is closer to the opposite. The provision provides Medicare coverage for optional consultations to receive advice on life-sustaining treatment and hospice care.

Since Republicans believe that the private insurance market is such a great solution for Americans’ health care needs, perhaps they can explain why it is that insurance premiums are growing so much faster than inflation and why the private market can’t make insurance accessible or affordable to 15% of Americans. Or why countries that have single payer, government sponsored programs, such as Canada and the U.K., have lower health care costs and better quality healthcare than the U.S. Or why the price of prescription drugs is substantially higher in the U.S than elsewhere.

Sadly, Republicans believe that it’s more to protect the private sector (which after all is doing such a bang up job) than ensuring the health and well-being of Americans.

GOP Hypocrisy on Student Loans

2009-07-29T19:51:00.011-04:00

Isn't it interesting how all the Republican arguments about protecting the taxpayer fade away when it comes to delivering largess to corporations. It seems that giving subsidies is only irresponsible when it helps citizens. In this case the topic is student loans...

The hypocrisy of the Republican Party knows no bounds. Near daily, Republican leaders rail against a public option for health insurance, saying it represents an unfair intrusion into the private sector, and an unwise use of taxpayers' money.

Yet when it comes to eliminating corporate welfare paid for by taxpayers, they yell "foul." Subsidizing the private sector is acceptable, competing with it is not. Such is the case with the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which eliminates government payments to banks to encourage student loan lending. As it turns out, it would be a much smaller drain on the federal budget for the government to lend directly to students, rather than subsidizing banks to do the same lending. Less expensive to the tune of nearly $90 billion over the next 10 years, as forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

But 17 of the 19 Republican members of the House Education and Labor Committee opposed the bill because it replaces private capital in the student lending market. Here is a clear-cut case where Congress can advance an important social goal -- encouraging higher education -- and save taxpayers billions of dollars. It's a win-win by any measure. This one, simple reform could pay for almost one-tenth of President Obama's proposed health care reform.

It's time to call the Republican leadership to account. If they are so opposed to government spending, why are they in favor of giving nearly $90 billion of taxpayer money to the private sector without getting anything in return?

AIG: It's all about greed

2009-03-21T09:01:00.006-04:00

The news this week of AIG's bonus payments is a disgrace—so I, like many others, need to sound off. But not by losing sight of what really needs to be done. So it's time to start writing again...

AIG wants the country to believe that it had to go forward with bonuses to employees of its failing financial products group based on two arguments. First, it couldn’t risk abrogating the contracts it had with employees, and second, it can’t risk losing these very same employees whose reckless actions led to the largest corporate loss in U.S. history.

It stretches the bounds of credulity to hear AIG talk about managing risk. This is the company that sold one half-trillion dollars of credit insurance without any thought to managing the underlying risk by maintaining adequate capital reserves, leading to a $200 billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

AIG should let more experienced risk managers determine whether abrogating employee contracts in an effort to recoup $165 million of taxpayer money is a risk worth taking. What’s entirely clear is that the issue is not really about risk, it’s about greed. How else can one explain why a company would pay millions of dollars in “retention” bonuses to employees who weren’t even retained? Or how its concerns about meeting contractual obligations didn’t also extend to the customers of the insurance it sold.

For all those free market absolutists who rail against government regulation (because it stifles economic activity), how to explain that it was AIG’s heavily regulated traditional insurance business that generated the capital and profits that were then squandered by the unregulated financial products groups?

There is a proper role for government to regulate a market that is subject to abuse, and when the abuses have externalities. When Congress is finished using the tax code as a means of punishment (a dangerous precedent), hopefully they’ll put their attention to more constructive ways of protecting our economy and taxpayers from the greed of “Wall Street”. Which unfortunately may include the need for further support of the financial institutions responsible for the current catastrophe. But while finding legitimate ways to punish those responsible, Congress shouldn’t let its populist fervor get in the way of doing what needs to be done to get our economy back on track.

"News Flash": Drill, baby, drill won't work

2008-09-06T14:07:00.004-04:00

There were a lot of things that disgusted me about the Republican convention--generally centering on playing loose with facts, mean-spiritedness and hypocrisy. This is one of them, captured in my latest "letter to the editor". More to be covered in upcoming posts.

John McCain, in his nomination acceptance speech, decried the incompetence of his own party over the past eight years. At the same time, he smiled gleefully in response to his Republican delegates’ chants of “drill, baby, drill”. Electing John McCain President will ensure four more years of incompetence, because he so willingly ignores the facts.

The United States has 2% of the world’s proven oil reserves, but consumes one-quarter of global oil production. According to the Energy Information Administration, expanded offshore drilling would not have a “significant” impact on oil production for more than two decades. The EIA also predicts that drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Preserve would reduce dependence on foreign oil, by 2030, only “slightly”. “News flash” for John McCain and Sarah Palin: we aren’t going to drill our way to energy independence.

According to three Nobel laureates in economics, McCain’s proposed gas tax holiday would generate “major” profits for big oil while doing little to lower prices at the pump. Is that what McCain means by “fighting for you”?

We need an administration and Congress that will make policy decisions based on facts, not chants; an administration which defines “you” as average Americans, not large corporations. That’s why I’m voting for Barack Obama for President and Jim Himes for Congress. They have sensible, fact-based energy policies that will move us towards energy independence, create jobs and wean us off of environmentally harmful fossil fuels. And they will promote energy efficiency and conservation, concepts that McCain and Palin aggressively disdain.

Democrats Responsible for High Energy Prices - NOT!

2008-08-08T12:52:00.003-04:00

In our local paper in Greenwich, a reader has written several letters saying "hug a Democrat if you like $4.50 per gallon gas because the Democrats are responsible for it."

My thoughts on the matter:

To claim, as Edward Dadakis did in his letter to The Greenwich Post last week, that Democrats are responsible for high gas prices because they oppose lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling is patently false. The cost of oil has increased dramatically over the past year, well before the discussion about lifting the ban started, so it hardly stands to reason that maintaining the ban is the cause of high fuel prices.

The reason most Democrats, and intellectually honest Republicans, oppose lifting the ban is because it will have no impact on oil prices in the short term, and only a negligible impact in the very distant future, yet has clear environmental risks. According to a report by the Energy Information Administration (the official source of energy statistics from the U.S. Government), expanded offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil or natural gas production or prices before 2030.” Even after 2030, “any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant”, because oil prices are determined on the international market, for which U.S. production accounts for less than 10%.

That hasn’t stopped Republican candidate John McCain from claiming that offshore oil drilling “would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.” Although let’s give credit where credit is due. When confronted by the facts, McCain has since backpedaled (flip-flopped?) to say that expanded drilling wouldn’t provide short term relief, but would have a positive “psychological impact”. Perhaps it doesn’t take much to get McCain’s spirits up, but gas prices being a few cents lower 22 years from now doesn’t do much for me.

The demagoguery about relieving the energy crisis through expanded offshore drilling and suspending the federal gas tax seems merely a convenient way for McCain to reward his big oil patrons—who have donated more than $2 million to his campaign. It’s hard to trust McCain’s independence on energy policy when he has more than 33 former oil lobbyists advising him or raising campaign funds. More than 300 economists, including several Nobel laureates, came out against the gas tax holiday, in part because “research shows that waiving the gas tax would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers.” Of course, consistent with his oil-friendly policies, McCain does not support a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

Casting more doubt on Mr. Dadakis’ accusations are the facts about what energy companies aren’t doing with the federal oil and gas resources already available for development. The House Committee on Natural Resources has documented an extensive array of statistics showing the vast quantity of land and water for which federal leases have been issued—68 million acres—but that are not in production. According to the Minerals Management Service, four-fifths of the oil and gas believed to exist on the Outer Continental Shelf (the offshore area where Bush and McCain want to lift the ban on drilling) are currently open for leasing.

When it comes to energy conservation, McCain apparently thinks ribbing Obama about painless fuel-saving measures such as maintaining proper tire inflation, a position endorsed by AAA, NASCAR and the U.S. Department of Energy, will boost his popularity. Until he realized that once again he was wrong, and recanted.

And then there are the political facts. As McCain himself has said, our “dependence on foreign oil has been 30 years in the making". Mr. Dadakis might be interested to know that over the past 30 years, Republicans have been in the White House for roughly twice as many years as the Democrats, and have controlled the Senate for 16 years compared to the Democrat’s 12 years. As far as who is up for election this year, McCain has been in Congress for 25 years, six times longer than Senator Obama. And closer to home, Republican Representative Chris Shays has 22 years on his Democratic challenger, Jim Himes.

While America’s failed energy policy goes beyond the political failings in Washington, surely the Democrats are not alone to blame, and have more coherent solutions than either McCain or Edward Dadakis.

Enough with Political Allegiance

2008-06-25T23:16:00.003-04:00

As evidenced by the spectacular failures regarding intelligence, the war in Iraq, Katrina, and energy policy, the Bush administration has pursued a policy of rewarding slavish political allegiance ahead of merit and open, constructive debate. In the latest example, the Justice Department’s own inspector general has found that political affiliation has been used, illegally, as a screening criterion for recruiting programs aimed at attracting highly qualified candidates to the Justice Department. The facts are crystal clear—the report found that applicants with Democratic affiliation were turned away “at a significantly higher rate” than candidates with Republican ties.

The relevance of these facts is that Fairfield County’s representative in Congress, Christopher Shays, has steadfastly stood by Bush throughout his tenure in office. While Shays may have expressed muted disagreement here and there, he has not evidenced the independent, principled thinking that we need to solve the many crises that threaten our country. He has strongly supported Bush on disproportionate tax breaks for the wealthy, violating constitutional protections in the name of national security, and waging a war in Iraq that has done anything but made the U.S. more secure. Like so many other Bush loyalists, Shays is unable or unwilling to break free from President Bush and his ill-conceived policies.

Fortunately, it’s within our power to break free from Christopher Shays. With Jim Himes, running for Congress in the Connecticut 4th District, we have an intelligent, independent and socially conscious candidate who can help set America back on course. I urge voters in the 4th District to learn more about Jim Himes in what Time Magazine is calling one of the top 15 Congressional races to watch.

McCain's Economic Illiteracy

2008-04-08T00:20:00.008-04:00

By his own admission (to the Wall Street Journal in 2005 and The Boston Globe in 2007, see John McCain on Meet the Press) John McCain is not an expert on economic policy. If anybody doubts this, he proved it with his remarks about the recent employment report. In response to the loss of 80,000 jobs in March, McCain, in a press release, called for lower taxes and less regulation as a solution to creating job growth.

Under the current administration, overall federal income tax rates are at historically low levels. Yet the overall growth rate of private sector employment during George W. Bush’s administration is the second worst performance since World War II (his dad gets honors for the worst performance). Contrast this with the Clinton record, where despite tax increases, job growth outpaced Bush’s record by a factor of four. This certainly dispels the Republican mantra that the only way to grow the economy is by cutting taxes.

As for less regulation, the cause of the current financial market distress appears to be completely lost on the Republican nominee for president. More, not less, regulatory oversight of the subprime mortgage market could have reigned in the excesses of the imprudent lending and financing practices that are the very cause of the economic downturn that McCain believes less regulation would alleviate.

Regulation serves the purpose of policing markets where the actions of individual players can harm more than just themselves. Surely the current situation, where the reckless actions of companies like Bear Stearns are driving the economy into recession and seriously threatening the stability of financial markets, is proof positive of the need for regulation.

So when John McCain says “The American people cannot afford the Democrats and their economic leadership”, you might want to think twice. It’s time to put somebody in the White House who will put aside dogma in favor of an informed economic policy. Clearly that person is not John McCain.

A Quick Note to Joe Lieberman

2008-02-11T21:09:00.000-05:00

While the Senate is still in the midst of debating how much unchecked power to grant the Bush administration as it continues to trample on our civil liberties, I shot off this note to CT Senator and ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman. I don't have much hope that he'll listen, but that's never stopped me from speaking out...

Dear Senator Lieberman:

As the Senate debates the reauthorization of President Bush's warantless eavesdropping program, I urge you to do everything you can to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. The actions of the Bush administration have been anathema to those of us who believe the President does not have the right to trample on the Constitution in the name of national security. Frankly, I am extremely disappointed in your frequent support of Bush policies. In this case I hope you put the Constitution ahead of Bush's ill-conceived policies to protect the U.S. against the threat of Islamic extremism. And that should include voting against any immunity for telecommunications companies that forked over private records without warrants.

Mukasey: Another Attorney General Like Gonzales?

2007-10-24T21:24:00.000-04:00

There is now well-documented evidence that the Bush administration is running roughshod over the rule of law, demonstrated by actions such as its warrantless wiretapping and repeated court rebuffs on military tribunals. It is also clear that President Bush has seriously damaged the United States’ moral authority through use of torture, withholding the right to challenge detention and extraordinary rendition.

I would have therefore expected that the Democratic-led Congress would demand that Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey unambiguously declare his opposition to these policies. But the apparent green light from the Senate Judiciary Committee to move forward on the nomination is not reassuring.

As it is clear from Mukasey’s testimony that he cannot be trusted to return integrity to the Department of Justice, he should not be confirmed.

Mukasey has been unable to decide if the practice of waterboarding is torture. Despite the fact that the State Department has criticized other countries for using it. Despite the fact that after World War II, the United States prosecuted Japanese soldiers for engaging in the practice against U.S. soldiers. Despite that fact that U.S. military officials have called it torture. Even administration apologist Senator John McCain has called it “very exquisite torture.” If Mukasey’s powers of inquiry are so feeble that he can’t collect the facts he needs to come to a decision, then surely he isn’t fit to lead the nation’s law enforcement activities.

Mukasey’s view of executive privilege has more far-reaching consequences for the principles which are the cornerstone of our country’s moral clarity—namely the rule of law. In his testimony, Mukasey stated that it is acceptable for the President to violate laws written by Congress, as long as his actions are within the Constitution. That is dangerous thinking for a country founded upon the separation of powers. It is precisely this arrogance on the part of the Bush administration—that believes it can ignore, rather than challenge, the legislative branch—that is seriously eroding the protection of our constitutional and civil rights.

Hopefully the Democratic controlled Congress will stand up to Bush’s attacks on our country’s principles—as the electorate signaled they wanted last November—by refusing to support the nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General.

Whose privacy is more important: gun dealers' or American citizens'?

2007-07-13T12:00:00.000-04:00

To recognize just how much sway the National Rifle Association has over the U.S. Congress, consider this: Congress has taken more action to protect the “privacy” of law-breaking gun dealers than it has to protect the privacy of Americans from President Bush’s likely unconstitutional program of secret domestic wiretapping without search warrants.

Led by Representative Todd Tiahrt (R-Kansas), pro-gun legislators in the House continue to block efforts by local law enforcement officials and over two hundred mayors—from red and blue states—to access federal gun sales data collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Until four years ago when Tiahrt and his many gun-loving allies (Democrats and Republicans) restricted access to the data, it was used effectively to track down the 1 percent of gun dealers who are responsible for supplying a substantial majority of guns used in crimes.

Just this week, the House Appropriations Committee blocked attempts by responsible legislators to reduce the Tiahrt restrictions on the use of federal gun sales data to staunch the flow of illegal firearms. Apparently our gun-loving Congress believes the mission of the ATF is to protect the privacy of illegal gun suppliers rather than to reduce the 30,000 yearly gun deaths. So much so that they actually want to criminalize the unauthorized use of gun sales information by law enforcement officials (that is, sharing gun crime data to detect trends that could identify the source of illegal gun sales).

Yet contrast this with the feeble efforts by the House and Senate to get to the bottom of the Bush administration’s secret domestic wiretapping program. That constitutionally suspect program jeopardizes the privacy rights of untold numbers of American citizens by blatantly circumventing legal means to conduct secret wiretapping (as authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).

While the Republican-led Congress (abetted by a not inconsequential number of Democrats) was vigorous in protecting the privacy rights of gun dealers since the passage of the Tiarht amendment in 2003, they were far less vigorous in protecting the privacy rights of the broader citizenry. While still in control of Congress last year, Republicans were more interested in finding ways to legalize Bush’s illegal program than they were in investigating the full breadth of his attack on our constitutional protections. The argument that shutting down the secret eavesdropping program would aid terrorists is a red herring—as the means for conducting secret wiretapping within the law is already in place, using FISA.

Could our elected representatives have their priorities any more confused?

Liberty and justice for all; well, maybe not all.

2006-10-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

I was in my daughters’ school the other day, and overheard the pledge of allegiance: “…with liberty and justice for all.” Unless, of course, you happen to be caught in the Bush administration’s war on terror dragnet. Then, in the name of protecting American values and liberty, you’re pretty much out of luck – it may even cost you your life.

You may be whisked away in secret to a foreign country like Syria to be tortured to give up information you don’t possess, as happened to Maher Arar, an innocent Canadian citizen who fell victim to the CIA practice of extraordinary rendition.

You may be locked up for a month without access to legal counsel through abuses of the material witness statue, as happened to Abdallah Higazy. He is an Egyptian citizen who was staying in a New York city hotel room on 9/11, in whose room the previous occupant left an aviation radio that was deemed suspicious.

Or you may be the taxi-driver Mr. Dilawar, who died in an Afghan prison after being assaulted and tortured – even though investigators had concluded that he was almost certainly innocent of involvement in the attack for which he was being held. Or perhaps you were, until recently, in a secret CIA prison, where the Bush administration wanted to engage in interrogation practices that would not be deemed acceptable by civilized countries around the world.

More likely, you’re one of those still languishing in Guantánamo in legal limbo, not charged with any crime, with no recourse to challenge their detention. Why? Because the right to file for a writ of habeas corpus no longer exists for those deemed to be illegal enemy combatants, thanks to the “new and improved” military tribunals conceived of by the Bush administration (after its first attempt was found to be unconstitutional). Has Bush so terrorized Americans that we don’t think twice about locking somebody up indefinitely, before their guilt has been established?

I don’t consider myself to be soft on terrorists, and I want the U.S. to be aggressive in hunting down and prosecuting them. But I also want our country to be able to look itself in the mirror, and be able to say we are doing so in a manner consistent with our principals. We are not infallible; we do make mistakes, we have already made some egregious ones. Not everybody that we think is a terrorist – even under reasonable assumptions – is. That is why our judicial system is built on a foundation of due process.

Beyond the liberties and lives of innocents that have been lost, the Bush administration policies have cost America’s reputation in the world dearly. As Colin Powell remarked recently, “the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” This, and Bush’s failed strategy in Iraq, have increased the threat from terrorism, as the recent National Intelligence Estimate made clear.

Throughout these past five troubling years, the Republican congress has done virtually nothing to hold Bush accountable for his misguided and incompetent strategies in the war on terror. That is why I’m voting for Ned Lamont for senator and Diane Farrell for representative in next week’s midterm election. It’s time to send legislators to Washington who will alter the disastrous course along which Bush is leading us.

Threatening American values: flag burning and torture

2006-06-27T12:55:00.000-04:00

Which do you think is the greater threat to American values: the protester who burns an American flag, or a President who, by all indications, has consistently and flagrantly violated U.S. laws and international treaties? From the righteous speeches by Republican Senators in support of a constitutional amendment to prohibit desecration of the flag, you would think it was the former.

Would that these same “defenders” of our constitution were equally vigorous in protecting us from the excesses of the Bush administration’s grab for unchecked executive power. Whether it involves warrantless domestic spying, secret investigation of Americans’ phone and banking records, claiming (and exercising) the right to imprison anybody, indefinitely, with no right to due process, or condoning torture, the Republican Congress has acquiesced, even defended, President Bush’s desire to do virtually anything he wants in the war on terror, unchecked by Congressional oversight or judicial review.

To me, that is far more sinister than the individual who chooses to burn the American flag, as unseemly as that is. But the Republican Congress is more intent on finding ways to call its opponents unpatriotic – for anybody who dares to disagree with it – than it is on taking President Bush to task for the enormous damage he has done to our country’s values and reputation.

Impeach Bush? Not yet.

2006-03-17T12:00:00.000-05:00

On the one hand, I would welcome the opportunity see President Bush impeached. Through his willful manipulation of intelligence, condoning of torture and violation of constitutional protections of due process and privacy, he has done more to destroy the integrity of the United States than any president since President Nixon. President Clinton may have embarrassed the office, but he did not threaten our institutions.

However, impeachment is a misplaced fantasy at this time, just as is Senator Russell Feingold’s call for censure of President Bush. What Democrats, and Republicans, should be calling for is a vigorous examination of the facts – which the Republican leadership has been thwarting for months.

Congressional energy should be directed towards getting Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to fulfill his promise to investigate administration misuse of intelligence in the war on terror. Roberts has been stalling the conclusion of his investigation for months. He is a disgrace to the principle of an independent legislative branch of government.

Rather than doing deals to legitimize the NSA domestic spying program, the Republican leadership, and Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, should be demanding a full investigation of that program to determine whether Bush has violated constitutional protections, as the current evidence strongly suggests.

Only then can we know whether censure, or more, is the appropriate response.

How much more Bush can we take?

2006-01-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

President Clinton was impeached for lying about highly inappropriate personal behavior which had nothing to do with how he governed or protected our nation. Fast forward to today, when nearly three-quarters of Americans believe President Bush was “hiding something” or “mostly lying” about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction, and half of Americans believe he “intentionally misled” us into the war in Iraq (The New York Times/CBS News Poll 12/8/05).

That alone should be enough for the Congress to start asking some tough questions about possible deception by the Bush Administration.

Yet this high level of mistrust was before it was disclosed that President Bush secretly authorized the N.S.A. to conduct wiretaps of communications with Americans without court order. There is widespread belief, across the political spectrum, that this program may be illegal. At the very least, Bush has continued to lie to the American people about his conduct of the war on terror. How else to explain a remark he made in Buffalo, NY in 2004 that “a wiretap requires a court order”? That was made more than two years after he authorized the N.S.A. activity.

If that doesn’t send a chill down your back, how about the repeated assertions by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that terrorism detainees are being treated “humanely” – despite case after case of abuse, torture and even death, many too gruesome to mention. The Bush administration claims that this is just the work of a few errant soldiers, yet the ACLU has obtained over 70,000 pages of government documents covering what surely is a much more pervasive problem, for which President Bush is holding no senior officials accountable. In one specific instance, the CIA inspector general found in 2004 that some aspects of his agency’s treatment of detainees might constitute cruel and inhuman treatment as defined by an international treaty to which the U.S. is a signatory.

While Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was busy last December trying to convince Europeans that “the United States does not condone torture,” the Administration was doing all it could to keep the Congress from passing an amendment prohibiting torture. What does that tell you about the President’s commitment to human rights and the truth?

On these critical issues of national security and fundamental American values, it is time for Congress to aggressively and tirelessly work to uncover the facts about whether President Bush has lied and broken the law in prosecuting the war on terror.

Indeed, Congress should go a step further and appoint an independent counsel to conduct this inquiry. It tolerated a 10-year, $20 million Independent Counsel investigation of a Clinton cabinet secretary, Henry Cisneros, for lying about payments to his mistress. Surely it can find the wherewithal to investigate an Administration that is quite clearly taking enormous liberties with the truth, and perhaps more.

What is happening to our country?

2005-09-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

It is time for Americans to start asking ourselves, “what is happening to our country?” As I look around, there are so many signs that President Bush, his administration and the Republican leadership are systematically destroying the values and well-being of our nation through their arrogance, greed and incompetence.

Facing a cost of $200 billion for reconstruction in the aftermath of Katrina, Bush refuses to reconsider his ideological obsession with tax cuts for the wealthy. Don’t be fooled – “no tax increases” doesn’t just mean no new taxes, it means sticking with his plan to make earlier rounds of tax cuts permanent. Burdening future generations with the cost of his largess to the wealthy, through record-breaking deficits, doesn’t seem to concern him. How can we trust a political party where 222 of its congressmen and 46 of its senators have categorically refused to raise taxes (by signing Grover Norquist’s tax pledge)? How is that a sign of fiscal responsibility?

At the core of some of our most challenging security and economic issues is our lack of energy independence. But Bush has shown zero leadership on energy – his is a policy of avoidance – looking for a few barrels of oil in Alaska and relaxing environmental standards. Instead of sending people to Mars (as NASA wants to do), our national quest should be a radical reduction in our dependence on oil, using economic incentives – including a national gas tax – to fund research and encourage conservation.

I am concerned with more than just economic security. Bush policies have deeply damaged the credibility of the United States as a protector of human rights. The very values we are fighting for in the war on terror are being systematically violated. Widespread abuse and torture of prisoners is met with indifference and no accountability, even as it turns those who might be sympathetic to the U.S. away from us. Wholesale disregard for due process (we have held prisoners in Guantanamo for more than three years without bringing charges) is acceptable, because President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have decided they are guilty. Through “extraordinary rendition”, we secretly send suspects, including our own citizens, for interrogation to countries, including Syria, that we know engage in torture.

We agonize about how we are going to protect ourselves against terrorist attacks on our soil, yet the Republicans whom we have put in charge of our executive and legislative, and soon perhaps, judicial, branches of government are beholden to the National Rifle Association, which stymies every reasonable way to restrict access by criminals (including terrorists) to firearms. That’s an organization which invites speakers who profess, “I want burglars dead…no court case. No parole. No early release. I want ‘em dead. Get a gun, and when they attack you shoot ‘em.” (as quoted in The New Yorker, 8/1/05). It is disgraceful that our president, and the majority of our national leaders (Democrats included), take their direction from an organization with so little respect for our values.

If you are disturbed by where our country is heading, I urge you to speak out.

Katrina getting in the way of tax cuts, no way!

2005-09-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

President Bush stated that the federal government will do its share to help the victims of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. But, he also spoke of the importance of having the American people do their share by contributing privately.

While I support charitable contributions, and have myself contributed to the relief effort, perhaps the need for private support would not be so great if President Bush had not given billions of dollars of tax breaks to the very wealthiest Americans, gutting federal resources. As if a deficit exceeding $400 billion (one of the highest on record) is not enough of a wake up call for more prudent fiscal management, the administration and Republican leadership is still pushing for a permanent repeal of the estate tax, an additional $745 billion gift over ten years to the richest Americans.

The next time Bush calls for private support, perhaps he should address just the recipients of his largess, since for the vast majority of Americans, household incomes have failed to increase over the past five years, as reported by the Census Bureau. That’s a new record, neatly coinciding with the term of the Bush presidency.

Bush report on human rights. Look in the mirror.

2005-03-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

Dear President Bush:

I read with astonishment the findings of the State Department's report on human rights, which calls attention to abuses by the Iraqi Government. Your policies and actions in regard to human rights, juxtaposed against
this report, represent the height of hypocrisy. While you point the finger at other countries' human rights violations, you are engaged in similar, if not as egregious, activities.

You send individuals to the very countries cited for torture (Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) in secrecy, with no due process. You have held a US citizen in detention for almost three years without bringing any charges. You are holding hundreds of foreigners at Guantanamo as virtual prisoners of war with little to no evidence that they were in fact involved in terrorist activities.

I want the United States to take an extremely aggressive stand on the war on terror. Yet your arrogant disregard for the values of our country are doing irreparable harm to my country's ability to push for human rights around the world, and are bringing into question the very meaning of being an American. Meanwhile, your obsession with Iraq has left our homeland dangerously unprotected, as evidenced by the recent report on port security.

Court after court have repudiated your belief that the United States can flout the Constitution as you prosecute the war on terror. Yet, oblivious to why your actions are so repugnant, you continue on.

I urge you to reflect on what it means to protect the values of the United States that you insist you are fighting for. You should call for an immediate end to extraordinary rendition, lack of due process and
interrogation techniques that rely on torture. And, you should hold those who have propagated these practices to account, including your Secretary of Defense and newly appointed Attorney General. It is a disgrace to the
reputation of the United States that you would even consider including these two men in your administration, let alone cite them for their service to the nation.

Oppose Gonzales Nomination

2005-01-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

A letter I sent to my CT Senators...

I am writing to urge you to do everything in your power to deny confirmation to President Bush’s nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general of the United States.

It as an absolute disgrace for the Senate to have to even consider the nomination of an administration official who has so little regard for the values embodied in our constitution. While Mr. Gonzales’ exact role is still unclear, it is without doubt that he was party to the deliberations and policies of the Bush administration that created a climate leading to widespread and continuing abuse and torture of prisoners captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. And practices at Guantanamo in which detainees may be held forever without access to due process.

As a recent Op-Ed column in The New York Times stated, “By using torture, the country relinquishes the very ideological advantage – the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights – that the president has so persistently claimed is America’s most powerful weapon in defeating Islamic extremism.”

Granted, the war on terror requires new ways of prosecuting war to be successful. But to subvert the very ideals that we are fighting to protect is not an option.

It is clear that President Bush will not hold members of his administration accountable for their moral, strategic and tactical errors. Nor is it likely that the Republican leadership will force Bush to do so. It is incumbent upon you to bring this administration to account for its moral lapses, and for the tremendous harm it has done to the reputation and integrity of the United States.

You can begin that process by denying confirmation to Alberto Gonzales for attorney general.

Questioning Bush isn't unpatriotic

2004-10-21T12:00:00.000-04:00

There has been a consistent theme running through the Bush campaign that is very disturbing, and should give pause to any voter who is still undecided. Which is: if you disagree with how the Bush administration is prosecuting the war on terror, you are unpatriotic and not supportive of our troops. A cornerstone of American values is the right to challenge our government, enshrined in the first amendment’s right of free speech. While we fight the war on terror to preserve our liberties, Bush is subverting these very values here at home.

I do not question President Bush’s determination to fight the war on terror. But I support John Kerry for president because I believe he has a more sound approach for winning this war – based on the realization that the United States is stronger when it has strong alliances, that we are more likely to succeed when we consider the implications of our actions (planning for the peace, not just the battle), and holding ourselves to the very highest standards of proof and imminent threat when we commit our country to war – which puts our troops in harm’s way and kills innocent civilians.

President Bush has fallen short on all these accounts. There are no weapons of mass destruction – so there was no imminent threat to American security, or the ability to arm terrorists. There is convincing evidence that intelligence was manipulated to make the case for war. Now Iraq is a hotbed of terrorist activity – and over 1,000 Americans have died as a result. Meanwhile, there is a resurgent and very real threat of Taliban and Al Qaeda activity in Afghanistan, where we have only 10 percent of the number of troops that are tied down in Iraq. No progress has been made on disarming North Korea, a real nuclear threat. Insufficient efforts are being taken to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. These facts do not attest to strong leadership in the war on terror.

We are blessed that we have the right to challenge our leaders in order to make the United States a better, safer country – and I will exercise that right by voting for John Kerry for president.

Debunking the Democratic "Tax & Spend" Myth

2004-09-01T21:35:00.001-04:00

Occasionally I pick up the Wall Street Journal when traveling. The reference to "tax and spend" Democrats raised my ire, so I wrote the following, which apparently went into the circular file at the WSJ...

To the Editor/Wall Street Journal:

In your editorial, "A Reform GOP?" (August 31), you raise the question of whether Republicans can accurately call themselves the party of small government, and whether they are being true to their claimed support of fiscal conservatism. But in the next breadth you fall back on the Republican party-line label of "tax and spend" Democrats. The facts suggest a clear interpretation of which party is more fiscally responsible.

Congressional Budget Office projections at the end of the Clinton administration showed the federal debt disappearing by the end of the decade, a result of $5.6 trillion in federal surpluses. Over the past 25 years, 16 of which were presided over by Republican administrations, the only administration to produce a federal surplus was Democratic. Today, under four years of Bush "fiscal conservatism", the CBO is projecting the debt to reach in excess of $1 trillion by 2014 -- thought by many to be understated by several trillion dollars because it assumes no change to the Alternative Minimum Tax (which may impact up to 30 million Americans), and the unlikely sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts at the end of the decade (itself a cynical accounting move to deflate the true cost of those tax cuts).

The implication is clear -- the "tax and spend" policies of the Democrats, if that's what you want to call them, are far more fiscally responsible than the "don't tax and do spend" policies of the current and past Republican administrations -- starting with Ronald Reagan who himself was responsible for the then-largest deficits in history. At least President Reagan had the integrity to recognize his miscalculation, and began to roll back some of his tax cuts towards the end of his administration -- more than can be said for the current administration.

Here's the WSJ op-ed I was responding to...

August 31, 2004

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

A Reform GOP?

Republicans gathered in New York this week will be advertising their accomplishments, and fair enough. Yet if President Bush and the rest of his Grand Old Party want to turn their wispy hold on power into a real governing majority, they'll reassert their ebbing claim as the party of ideas.

Measured in offices held, the GOP hasn't been this strong since the 1920s. Republicans hold the White House and both branches of Congress, albeit narrowly but also by dint of an historic mid-term election victory in 2002. The party also owns 28 of the 50 governorships, including in the large, dynamic states of Texas, Florida and California. With an incumbent President seeking re-election, the GOP has a chance to forge a real mandate to govern.

Yet there is also a sense that the GOP, especially its Congressional wing, has been drifting from the principles that brought it to power. In 2000, Candidate Bush described the GOP as the party of reform -- from Social Security to Medicare, greater accountability in education and the "compassionate conservatism" of faith-based charity. Four years later, Americans are left wondering if Republicans still believe in that agenda, or if they're slowly being captured by the inertia of Beltway incumbency.

Granted, this is not the case on national security, where Mr. Bush has united the party behind the assertive use of American power. In a sense, all Republicans are "neoconservatives" now, or at least they are as long as Mr. Bush prevails in November. The party's realist, Brent Scowcroft wing is waiting to reassert itself if he loses -- represented by the likes of Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel -- but for now those differences are muted.

Under Mr. Bush, the GOP has also become the natural home for cultural traditionalists. Partly this is because the Democrats have so heartily embraced Hollywood and secularism, but it has also been driven by Mr. Bush's heartland instincts. This works to the GOP's political advantage on such issues as guns, where a majority opposes state controls. But it may cost the party on such matters as stem cell research, where science clashes with the party's dominant anti-abortion wing. At least the GOP is debating such vital matters: Democrats long ago banished any anti-abortion dissent.

Perhaps the biggest question is whether the GOP can still rightly call itself the party of smaller government. The GOP Congress -- as well as some of its state parties (Ohio, New York) -- has seemed only too comfortable acting as the party of the incumbent status quo, dolloping out pork to any interest group that might help it remain in power. The result has been the largest farm bill in history, as well as the largest new entitlement (for prescription drugs) since the 1960s. Huge energy and highway spending bills failed not from principled opposition but from internal squabbling.

If Republicans want to see the perils of this strategy, they might look at the blue (Democratic) patches of the electoral map that are Illinois, New Jersey and Long Island. Once GOP strongholds, those areas all turned left after Republican machines grew corrupt and became little different than tax-and-spend Democrats. It's no accident that the dynamic and growing parts of the GOP are in the South and West, in places like Florida, where Governor Jeb Bush has promoted school reform, or Colorado, where Governor Bill Owens has returned tax surpluses to voters instead of growing the government.

Internal GOP resistance to some of President Bush's pro-growth, reform agenda shows that too much of the party still opposes change. A rump group in the Senate have prevented him from making his tax cuts permanent, though without those tax cuts Republicans would be heading for defe a91 at this fall amid a much poorer economy.

Republicans in the House keep telling Mr. Bush to forget about personal Social Security accounts, despite their appeal to younger voters. And a nativist party faction has stood in way of his far-sighted immigration reform that is essential if the GOP is ever going to attract enough Hispanic voters to sustain a majority amid sweeping demographic change.

If voters want to elect the party of the government status quo, they can and probably should turn to the Democrats. Republicans have to stake their claim to govern on individual empowerment and the reform of our unsustainable, New Deal public-sector monopolies. In this information age of global competition and rapid technological change, Americans want a party that will give them more control over their finances and pensions, their health care, and especially their time. We'll be looking for evidence this week that the Republicans want to be that party.

Oppose Ashcroft Nomination

2001-01-01T08:44:00.000-05:00

Letter to Congress opposing the nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney general...

I am writing to you to strongly urge that you oppose the nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney general. His positions and actions on a wide range of legislative issues make him an exceptionally poor choice to uphold and protect the nation’s laws. This is not merely a matter of political philosophies – Mr. Ashcroft’s record demonstrates that he is not fit to be the custodian of our citizens’ rights.

Mr. Ashcroft clearly does not believe in protecting women’s constitutionally protected right to reproductive choice. He has actively pursued legislation that would criminalize abortion even in cases of rape, incest and threats to a woman’s health. He has been so extreme is his quest as to propose legislation that would ban common forms of contraception.

Mr. Ashcroft’s cavalier approach to offering constitutional amendments – whether for banning flag burning, imposing term limits or outlawing abortion make it clear that he would be eager to use our precious Constitution as a tool of partisan politics – hardly the level of integrity that this great country needs in its attorney general.

Mr. Ashcroft has little respect for our citizens’ hard won civil rights – as evidenced in his position against legislation to deal with hate crimes, his opposition to even voluntary busing to support desegregation, his extremely obstructive activities to block confirmation of judicial appointments during the Clinton administration. His integrity is further in doubt when he created blatant misrepresentations of Justice Ronnie White’s positions in order to derail his nomination. Finally, how can we believe Mr. Ashcroft will protect minorities if he accepted a degree from Bob Jones University, whose racial policies are suspect, to say the least.

President-elect Bush promised to unite the country. John Ashcroft for attorney general is about as divisive a nomination as I could personally contemplate. If he is confirmed, it will be sad day for the protection of Americans’ rights – let alone bipartisanship for the next four years.

Again, I urge you to vote against the confirmation of John Ashcroft for attorney general. I’ll be watching the votes closely.