February 17, 2005
Shooting the Messenger
by Jeremy Scahill

One of the most powerful executives in the cable news business, CNN's
Eason Jordan, was brought down after he spoke out of school during a
panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in January. In a rare
moment of candor, Jordan reportedly said that the US military had
targeted a dozen journalists who had been killed in Iraq. The comments
quickly ignited a firestorm on the Internet, fueled by right-wing
bloggers, that led to Jordan's recanting, apologizing and ultimately
resigning after twenty-three years at the network, "in an effort to
prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy."

But the real controversy here should not be over Jordan's comments. The
controversy ought to be over the unconscionable silence in the United
States about the military's repeated killing of journalists in Iraq.

Consider the events of April 8, 2003. Early that morning, Al Jazeera
correspondent Tareq Ayyoub was reporting from the network's Baghdad
bureau. He was providing an eyewitness account of a fierce battle
between US and Iraqi forces along the banks of the Tigris. As he stood
on the roof of the building, a US warplane swooped in and fired a
rocket at Al Jazeera's office. Ayyoub was killed instantly. US Central
Command released a statement claiming, "Coalition forces came under
significant enemy fire from the building where the Al-Jazeera
journalists were working." No evidence was ever produced to bolster
this claim. Al Jazeera, which gave the US military its coordinates
weeks before the invasion began, says it received assurances a day
before Ayyoub's death that the network would not be attacked.

At noon on April 8, a US Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, home
and office to more than 100 unembedded international journalists
operating in Baghdad at the time. The shell smashed into the
fifteenth-floor Reuters office, killing two cameramen, Reuters's Taras
Protsyuk and Jos=E9 Couso of Spain's Telecinco. The United States again
claimed that its forces had come under enemy fire and were acting in
self-defense. This claim was contradicted by scores of journalists who
were in the hotel and by a French TV crew that filmed the attack. In
its report on the incident, the Committee to Protect Journalists
asserted that "Pentagon officials, as well as commanders on the ground
in Baghdad, knew that the Palestine Hotel was full of international
journalists."

In a chilling statement at the end of that day in Iraq, then-Pentagon
spokesperson Victoria Clarke spelled out the Pentagon's policy on
journalists not embedded with US troops. She warned them that Baghdad
"is not a safe place. You should not be there."

Eason Jordan's comment was hardly a radical declaration. He was
expressing a common view among news organizations around the world. "We
have had three deaths, and they were all non-embedded, non-coalition
nationals and they were all at the hands of the US military, and the
reaction of the US authorities in each case was that they were somehow
justified," David Schlesinger, Reuters's global managing editor, said
in November. "What is the US's position on nonembeds? Are nonembedded
journalists fair game?" One of the BBC's top news anchors, Nik Gowing,
said recently that he was "speak[ing] for a large number of news
organizations, many of whom are not really talking publicly about this
at the moment," when he made this statement about the dangers facing
reporters in Iraq: "The trouble is that a lot of the
military--particularly the American...military--do not want us there.
And they make it very uncomfortable for us to work. And I think that
this...is leading to security forces in some instances feeling it is
legitimate to target us with deadly force and with impunity."

The US military has yet to discipline a single soldier for the killing
of a journalist in Iraq. While some incidents are classified as
"ongoing investigation[s]," most have been labeled self-defense or
mistakes. Some are even classified as "justified," like the killing of
Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, shot near Abu Ghraib prison when his
camera was allegedly mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
Also "justified" was the killing of Al Arabiya TV's Mazen al-Tumeizi,
blown apart by a US missile as he reported on a burning US armored
vehicle on Baghdad's Haifa Street.

There have also been several questionable killings of journalists at US
military checkpoints, such as the March 2004 shooting deaths of Ali
Abdel-Aziz and Ali al-Khatib of Al Arabiya. The Pentagon said the
soldiers who shot the journalists acted within the "rules of
engagement." And Reuters freelancer Dhia Najim was killed by US fire
while filming resistance fighters in November 2004. "We did kill him,"
an unnamed military official told the New York Times. "He was out with
the bad guys. He was there with them, they attacked, and we fired back
and hit him."

The military has faced almost no public outcry at home about these
killings. In fact, comments by Ann Cooper of the Committee to Protect
Journalists have been used to discredit Jordan's statement at Davos.
"From our standpoint," Cooper was widely quoted as saying, "journalists
are not being targeted by the US military in Iraq." But as CPJ's Joel
Campagna acknowledges, the Pentagon has not been cooperative in the
investigations of many of these journalist killings. The fact is that
CPJ doesn't know that the military has not targeted journalists, and
there are many facts that suggest that it has. These include not only
the events of April 8, 2003, but credible accounts of journalists being
tortured by the US military in Iraq, such as Salah Hassan and Suheib
Badr Darwish of Al Jazeera [see Christian Parenti, "Al Jazeera Goes to
Jail," March 29, 2004] and three Reuters staffers who say they were
brutalized by US forces for seventy-two hours after they filmed a
crashed US helicopter near Falluja in January 2004. According to news
reports, the journalists were blindfolded, forced to stand for hours
with their arms raised and threatened with sexual abuse. A family
member of one journalist said US interrogators stripped him naked and
forced a shoe into his mouth.

In many of these cases, there is a common thread: The journalists,
mostly Arabs, were reporting on places or incidents that the military
may not have wanted the world to see--military vehicles in flames,
helicopters shot down, fierce resistance against the "liberation"
forces, civilian deaths.

In his resignation letter, Jordan wrote, "I never meant to imply U.S.
forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed
journalists." The families and colleagues of the slain journalists
believe otherwise. And it is up to all journalists, not just those in
Europe and the Middle East, to honor the victims by holding their
killers responsible. In Spain, the family of cameraman Jos=E9 Couso has
filed a lawsuit against the US soldiers who killed him, and they plan
to travel to the United States for the anniversary of his death this
spring. Will any network have the courage to put them on the air?

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i...07&s=3Dscahill


March 11, 2004
Al Jazeera Goes to Jail
by Christian Parenti


EDITOR'S NOTE: After this story about the abuse of Arab journalists by
the US military in Iraq went to press, there were several further
developments. On March 18, US troops in Baghdad killed two TV
journalists from the Al Arabiya network in what appears to have been an
overreaction at a checkpoint: Ali Khatib, 34, a reporter, and Ali Abdul
Aziz, 35, a cameraman. Two days later, some thirty Arab journalists
walked out in protest at a press conference with US Secretary of State
Colin Powell, who had made a surprise trip to Iraq. On March 29, the US
military acknowledged it was responsible for the killings but held that
the incident was "an accident" and that the soldiers had acted "within
the rules of engagement." Around the same time, six US soldiers were
criminally charged with abusing inmates at the US military's main
prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, where the Al Jazeera journalists profiled
below were held. Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority shut
down a newspaper run by supporters of militant Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr, drawing cries of protest and accusations of hypocrisy.

Salah Hassan looks sad and very tired. The Al Jazeera cameraman, a
33-year-old father of two, is recounting his tale of incarceration in a
soft and matter-of-fact tone. Sipping tea in the lobby of the hotel
that serves as Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau, he explains how on November
3 of last year he raced to the site of a roadside bomb attack on a US
military convoy in Dialah, near the eastern Iraqi city of Baquba. While
he was interviewing people at the scene, US troops who had previously
taken photographs of Hassan at other events arrested him, took him to a
police station, interrogated him and repeatedly accused the cameraman
of knowing in advance about the bomb attack and of lying in wait to get
footage. "I told them to review my tapes, that it was clear I had
arrived thirty or forty minutes after the blast. They told me I was a
liar," says Hassan.

From Baquba, Hassan says he was taken to the military base at Baghdad
International Airport, held in a bathroom for two days, then flown
hooded and bound to Tikrit. After two more days in another bathroom, he
was loaded onto a five-truck convoy of de-tainees and shipped south to
Abu Ghraib, a Saddam-built prison that now serves as the American
military's main detention center and holds about 13,000 captives.

ADVERTISEMENT
Once inside the sprawling prison, Hassan says, he was greeted by US
soldiers who sang "Happy Birthday" to him through his tight plastic
hood, stripped him naked and addressed him only as "Al Jazeera," "boy"
or "bitch." He was forced to stand hooded, bound and naked for eleven
hours in the bitter autumn night air; when he fell, soldiers kicked his
legs to get him up again. In the morning, Hassan says, he was made to
wear a dirty red jumpsuit that was covered with someone else's fresh
vomit and interrogated by two Americans in civilian clothes. They made
the usual accusations that Hassan and Al Jazeera were in cahoots with
"terrorists."

While most Abu Ghraib prisoners are held in large barracks-like tents
in open-air compounds surrounded by razor wire, Hassan says he was
locked in a high-security isolation unit of tiny cells. Down the tier
from him was an old woman who sobbed incessantly and a mentally
deranged 13-year-old girl who would scream and shriek until the
American guards released her into the hall, where she would run up and
down; exhausted, she would eventually return to her cell voluntarily.
Hassan says that all other prisoners in the unit, mostly men, were
ordered to remain silent or risk being punished with denial of food,
water and light.

Elsewhere in Abu Ghraib, Hassan's colleague Suheib Badr Darwish was
also in lockup. He had been arrested in Samarra on November 18 and,
according to a colleague of his at Al Jazeera, Darwish was badly beaten
by US troops.

Meanwhile, on the outside, the network hired a top-flight lawyer named
Hider Nur Al Mulha to start working Hassan's case through Iraq's
largely wrecked court system. Eventually Hassan was brought before a
panel of the Iraqi Governing Council's freshly minted Federal Supreme
Court, which was set up alongside its war crimes tribunal for trying
the likes of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. Salah Hassan, journalist,
was the subject of the Court's first hearing. He was released for lack
of evidence. After three more days in Abu Ghraib, this time in one of
the prison's open-air camps, Hassan, still in his vomit-stained red
jumpsuit, was dumped on a street just outside Baghdad on December 18.
Darwish was released more than a month later, on January 25, again for
lack of evidence.

Military officials did not respond to my requests for a tour of Abu
Ghraib, nor were most of my numerous calls and e-mails about the cases
of Hassan and Darwish returned. The one military spokesperson who did
address relations with Al Jazeera on the record was Lieut. Col. Daniel
Williams of the Coalition Joint Task Force 7; his comment was, "Al
Jazeera is a welcome guest and professional news organization." As one
source at the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority explained,
"Anything about Al Jazeera is very sensitive, so any on-the-record
comment would have to come from pretty far up in the hierarchy. Only a
very senior person can deal with this." But repeated calls to the CPA's
senior spokesperson, Dan Senor, produced no response.

Disturbingly, these two cases fit into a larger pattern of US
government hostility toward Al Jazeera, provoked by the network's tough
reporting on the Iraqi occupation. And this hostility is best viewed in
the context of the escalating, multimillion-dollar regional media war
between Al Jazeera and the US government.

Donald Rumsfeld has called Al Jazeera's coverage "outrageous" and
"inexcusably biased" and implied that he'd like to see the satellite
channel thrown out of Iraq. So far the American military has bombed the
network's offices in both Baghdad and Kabul, killing one employee;
arrested and briefly jailed twenty-one of Al Jazeera's reporters; and
now has imprisoned and allegedly abused and humiliated Hassan and
Darwish in ways that the UN convention on such matters would consider
torture.

At the same time that the US military is harassing Al Jazeera
reporters, other parts of the US government, including the State
Department, are attempting to answer Al Jazeera in its own language and
format. On February 14 the United States launched a nominally
independent, US-funded Arabic-language satellite channel called Al
Hurra, which means "the free one." The purpose of this effort is to
address the lack of popular support for the US occupation in Iraq, as
well as the deepening crisis of American legitimacy throughout the Arab
world; polls from the region indicate that more and more people hate
the United States every day.

Unlike other US-funded forays into Arabic-language media, Al Hurra,
with an annual budget of $62 million, could be quite sophisticated and
possibly effective in reshaping the beliefs of the politically
important and demographically dominant Arab youth scene. The new
channel has a stable of proven Arab journalists--one senior producer is
a Palestinian who was poached from Al Jazeera, while the channel's top
managers are Lebanese Christians with proven journalistic track
records. On the other hand, the channel is based in Virginia, includes
Colin Powell on its board of directors and its first broadcast was a
pre-recorded interview with George W. Bush--none of which bode well for
winning Arab hearts and minds.

Regardless of how well Al Hurra fares, Al Jazeera faces increasing
obstacles to its reporting in Iraq as its correspondents are harassed,
arrested, abused and killed by US troops.

So far, Al Jazeera's management has kept rather quiet about the cases
of Hassan and Darwish. When I interviewed Ceddah Abdelhak, the
channel's general manager in Baghdad, he insisted that the channel had
publicized the cases, and he was clearly upset about the bad treatment
of his staff. But other journalists in Baghdad say that Al Jazeera is
under so much pressure from the Americans that its owners in Qatar are
afraid the channel could be expelled from Iraq if they push too hard on
any issue that upsets the CPA.

This is not an unfounded fear. According to sources that insisted on
anonymity, the coalition called the network's managers in Iraq to the
Republican Palace in Baghdad for a meeting in late January, at which
the CPA's head counsel threatened Al Jazeera with expulsion if the
network did not stop "destabilizing the occupation" with its tough
reporting and intense editorial criticism. Allegedly, the CPA attorney
explained that the coalition needed no legal justification to expel Al
Jazeera and implied that US authorities were even pressuring the Emir
of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, to rein in Al Jazeera, which,
though run independently, is owned by the government of Qatar.

Another Al Jazeera adversary is the US-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council, which recently barred the network from covering its sparsely
attended meetings. The IGC was much more aggressive with the next most
prominent Arabic-language network, Al Arabiya, which it threw out of
Iraq for two months beginning in late December of last year. During
that suspension, Al Arabiya's equipment was seized and its journalists
faced $1,000 fines or possibly a year in prison if they violated the
sanction. The network's offense had been "incitement to murder" by
playing a taped message from Saddam Hussein, who was then in hiding.

Arabs working for other media outlets have also been harassed by US
troops. Mazen Dana of Reuters was shot and killed by an American
soldier outside Abu Ghraib prison in August. Then, in January, elements
of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Falluja jailed and allegedly
beat a three-man Arab-language crew, also from Reuters. The news agency
immediately lodged a formal complaint with the US military, charging
that its journalists had been abused while in detention. A Reuters
freelancer told me that one of the journalists was later hospitalized.

Travel the roads of the so-called Sunni Triangle looking for action,
and one can get plenty of comment about Al Jazeera from US troops who
are lower down in the ranks. More than once I have met soldiers in the
field who respond to requests for interviews or permission to enter
their area of operations with, "As long as you're not Al Jazeera." One
officer with the 82nd Airborne in Falluja claims that Al Jazeera filmed
an attack on his unit in which one of his sergeants was impaled with
debris from a bomb and then burned to death in the ensuing fire.

"We knew something was wrong when we saw people with cameras,"
explained the young lieutenant with a controlled bitterness. "Later my
guys said they saw footage of it on Al Jazeera." When I pushed the
lieutenant and his soldiers on this point, it was unclear whether the
men had actually seen footage of the attack or just of the aftermath,
and whether it was even on Al Jazeera.

A few events like this and the hatred for Al Jazeera builds into a
slow-burning passion among the grunts. Stories of Al Jazeera's perfidy
now circulate among the troops with the tenacity of urban myths. And
while Al Jazeera programming includes Western-style fashion shows and
mainstream business news, it also gives ample time to the views of
anti-American Arab nationalists and political Islamists who hate and
excoriate the occupation. Yet as several well-placed sources explained,
while the fixers and reporters of Al Jazeera are connected enough and
numerous enough that some of them could probably work with the
resistance to film attacks as they happen, they do not, both because
they fear expulsion and because of explicit orders from the network's
highest echelons. Indeed, the coalition has not documented a single
instance of an Al Jazeera journalist conspiring in an attack on the
occupation.

The pressure on Al Jazeera may be having the desired effect. Average
Iraqis increasingly dismiss its news as soft on the occupation. Al
Jazeera's general manager himself says the network's coverage is now
"more balanced" than it once was, because it gives increased airtime to
US claims of steadily increasing peace, progress and prosperity. Al
Jazeera's main spokesperson, Jihad Ballout, was more circumspect in his
comments on relations with the Americans in Iraq. "This war has been
very hard for all of the press to cover. This is to some extent due to
the security concern of the US, the UK and the Iraqis, but it seems
that Al Jazeera has gotten more than its fair share of attention. While
we understand the security concerns, we believe the media should have
the space to do its mandated job."

Today Hassan is back at work, as is Darwish. Al Jazeera is still in
action, and Al Hurra is the public face of America's ideological
offensive in the Middle East. Viewed from outside, the media
environment in Iraq looks open and fair. But the continual abuse of
Arab journalists is the more accurate core sample. Reading this
political sediment one sees that the American project in Iraq is made
of imperial ambition, not liberty and democracy. More broadly, the
intimidation and mistreatment of Al Jazeera by the world's most
powerful army should be seen as a threat to press freedom everywhere.


http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i...29&s=3Dparenti

The more things change, the more things remain the same. It's almost
comforting to see the leisure class (rec.boats) condescending to the
working class about Bush's economy.

Corporations squeezed all of the productivity out of American workers
there is to get. There's nowhere else to scrape obscene profits for the
shareholder (shareholder = somebody who does no labor, but profits off
of the labor of others).

Corporations now must go to third world economies, give Americans' jobs
to those who will do it for pennies on the dollar. As soon as those
workers organize and demand more, corporations move the business to a
new third world country. Under NAFTA, products that used to be made in
America went to Mexico. Those same products are now being made in
China - Mexicans priced themselves out of Americans' jobs.

Outsourcing is a trend that's going to increase unless Congress stops
rewarding companies that move offshore, with tax breaks and incentives.
Yes, corporations are RECEIVING Americans' tax dollars to give
Americans' job to people in other countries.

Jobs are also being automated. There will be fewer jobs available and
more people wanting work. More competition for fewer available jobs.
Even education isn't the solution anymore. Having a higher education
will only get a worker so far - China and India value education and
support their citizens' education. Even with 90% of their population
being peasants, that still leaves 300 million at least as well educated
(if not better educated) as Americans, competing for the same jobs. And
they work cheaper.

September 13, 2004 by the Philadelphia Inquirer
'Ownership Society' is Flawed
by Matthew Miller

George Bush's "ownership society" - a vision most recently expounded in
his Sept. 2 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention -
sounds so fabulous that it's almost a shame to expose it as a hoax. But
here are some facts: Forty-eight percent of households today have no
stock market holdings whatsoever, either directly themselves or
indirectly via pensions or 401(k) plans. Only 40 percent of Americans
hold stock (in any of these forms) worth more than $5,000. And of
households that do own stock, the least well-to-do 40 percent have
portfolios worth $1,800 on average.

OK, that was three facts - admittedly taxing the factual capacity of
public debate nowadays. But these data, drawn from the Economic Policy
Institute's indispensable annual volume The State of Working America,
show that easy talk of how "everyone is in the stock market now"
couldn't be more misleading.

Eighteen hundred bucks in a 401(k) does not a democracy of wealth make.


But it does make Bush's phony ownership agenda a close cousin of the
Marie Antoinette Diet. Why? Because Bush's proposals mainly involve tax
breaks to boost ownership for people who already own everything. For
the rest, compassionate conservatism's new subtitle reads: "Let Them
Own Cake!"

People buy stock with savings. Most lower- and middle-income families
today barely earn enough to make ends meet. They're already maxing out
on their credit cards to pay soaring health and tuition bills. They're
not saving a dime, let alone socking money away in the market.

Offering such folks a theoretical tax break to put cash into a 401(k)
is a sham. The folks who'll devour most of the extra break are people
already well off enough not to need new incentives to save. Draining
the Treasury to fund these new breaks thus becomes a double whammy,
since it makes it harder to bolster programs such as Pell grants that
genuinely ease the burden on ordinary Americans.

This reality should be obvious even to the national press, which
nonetheless stenographically touts Bush's faux ownership agenda as if
it were relevant to most Americans.

An honest (as opposed to a cynical) call to create an ownership society
would indeed be exciting. But the only way to make such a vision
progressive, and give average folks a bigger stake, is to have
government top off the savings of people who can't afford to save.

Don't take some liberal's word for it; take it from Newt Gingrich!

In a conversation the other day, I asked Gingrich about making these
ideas work for everyone. For low-income people to share in the benefits
of compound interest and accumulate assets, I said, don't you need some
kind of redistribution on their behalf to help fund accounts for them?

"Yes," Gingrich said simply.

"And doesn't that make the way that Bush is talking about this a real
charade?" I asked.

"No," he said. "It means the next stage is to see whether or not he has
the nerve to propose real redistribution."

(Now there's an interesting new litmus test for this President, I
thought: Real conservatives have the nerve to redistribute wealth!)

Gingrich points to Britain, which is experimenting with accounts that
assure every child has some assets from day one. Inspired partly by
Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott's book The Stakeholder Society (which
boldly called for every American to receive an $80,000 stake from the
government when he or she reaches adulthood), Tony Blair has introduced
"baby bonds." Blair's team is now weighing whether to increase the
estate tax to fund these modest stakes more adequately as part of his
reelection platform. It's a start.

Similar ideas have been floating around the United States at least
since Bob Kerrey pushed "Kidsave" accounts in the mid-1990s. Today,
Sens. Jon Corzine (D., N.J.) and Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) have a
bipartisan proposal along these lines. The ideologically androgynous
New America Foundation has been beating the drums in Washington for
such innovations.

For his part, Gingrich told me he sees such ideas as "the Information
Age equivalent to the Homestead Act." He's right.

But just as with Lincoln's Homestead Act, a 21st-century ownership
society means government has to help those who have little to build
something real. As it stands, Bush's version puts a new,
pretty-sounding gloss on his enduring economic policy: plunder from
above.

Surely a President whose personal asset accumulation came from various
endowments provided by Bush family friends, plus public financing of
the Texas Rangers' stadium, could wrap his mind around government's
proper role here if he chose.

Matthew Miller is author of "The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's
Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0913-05.htm


While corporations have historically been responsible for over 20
percent of the tax burden, today they are paying just over 7 percent.
Combined with tax breaks for the wealthy, we are left with an economy
in which the middle class is shouldering a staggering load of the
burden.

Ironically, rather than funding the services most of us rely on, taxes
paid by the middle class are going directly into the pockets of the
wealthy in the form of tax breaks. And most working families have much
more to contend with than taxes. Many employers can no longer provide
health insurance; our parents can no longer depend on nutritious meals
delivered to their homes; Head Start cannot accommodate enough
deserving children; and students know that the president's much-touted
$100 increase per year in Pell Grants will not put college within their
reach.

The president has made his choices, and no matter how drastic the
change in circumstance - be it war or recession or his proclaimed
"crisis" in Social Security - he refuses to revisit those
decisions. Yet - as need permeates the middle class and not just the
destitute - it is hard to believe that the American people favor more
corporate handouts and endless tax cuts. And whether they live in red
states or blue states, whether they worship in churches or temples or
not at all, Americans do not want to see their neighbors bankrupted by
emergency medical care or watch military families barely scrape by on
meager salaries augmented by food stamps. Fairness, after all, is a
cornerstone American value.

http://yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_17821.shtml

"Jim," wrote in message
...
JimH wrote:
"Jim," wrote in message
...

John H wrote:

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:57:37 GMT, "Jim," wrote:



"Jeff Gannon's" incredible access
There's evidence he got into White House briefings before he was a
"reporter."



And the only reporter with a decent question!

Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture
of the
U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking
about soup
lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the
economy being
on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social
Security
is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work --
you've
said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to
work
with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Good one, no?

John H

On the 'PocoLoco' out of Deale, MD, on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary
to resolve it." Rene Descartes

NO! the US economy and the SS system are 2 different entities. The
market has yet to reach the level it was when Bush assumed/stole/was
anointed to/ somehow got office. UN employment (in real numbers) -- is
about the same; Millions of jobs have moved offshore, bankruptcies are up

Tell me John -- what IS good about the economy?????


I can answer that:

1. A larger than expected rise in retail sales (.06%)

2. Average hourly earnings up

3. A decrease to 5.2% in the unemployment rate

4. 1% increase in productivity during the 4th quarter 2004

5. Durable goods orders up.
6. 146,0000 new jobs in January 2005

7. 2.7% inflation rate

8. 4.4% growth in the economy

"Overall, reports indicate that the economic recovery is well
established and proceeding at a good pace. "

http://www.dallasfed.org/eyi/usecon/...501update.html, amongst
others.

For you Jim,

http://www.geocities.com/mjloundy/


Up from what point? Where is your baseline? Decrease in Un employment
since when?
How about numbers based on 2000 when Bush took office!

You made the ridiculous statement "What is *good* about the economy?" I
told you what is good. The list was certainly not all encompassing.

Yet you still cannot accept it.

Conclusion: No amount of information is going to change your mind. You
have a hard on for George W Bush and cannot get over the fact that he won.

Get a grip guy and move on.

JimH wrote:
"Jim," wrote in message
...

JimH wrote:

"Jim," wrote in message
...


John H wrote:


On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:57:37 GMT, "Jim," wrote:




"Jeff Gannon's" incredible access
There's evidence he got into White House briefings before he was a
"reporter."



And the only reporter with a decent question!

Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture
of the
U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking
about soup
lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the
economy being
on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social
Security
is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work --
you've
said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to
work
with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Good one, no?

John H

On the 'PocoLoco' out of Deale, MD, on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary
to resolve it." Rene Descartes

NO! the US economy and the SS system are 2 different entities. The
market has yet to reach the level it was when Bush assumed/stole/was
anointed to/ somehow got office. UN employment (in real numbers) -- is
about the same; Millions of jobs have moved offshore, bankruptcies are up

Tell me John -- what IS good about the economy?????


I can answer that:

1. A larger than expected rise in retail sales (.06%)

2. Average hourly earnings up

3. A decrease to 5.2% in the unemployment rate

4. 1% increase in productivity during the 4th quarter 2004

5. Durable goods orders up.
6. 146,0000 new jobs in January 2005

7. 2.7% inflation rate

8. 4.4% growth in the economy

"Overall, reports indicate that the economic recovery is well
established and proceeding at a good pace. "

http://www.dallasfed.org/eyi/usecon/...501update.html, amongst
others.

For you Jim,

http://www.geocities.com/mjloundy/


Up from what point? Where is your baseline? Decrease in Un employment
since when?
How about numbers based on 2000 when Bush took office!


You made the ridiculous statement "What is *good* about the economy?" I
told you what is good. The list was certainly not all encompassing.

Yet you still cannot accept it.

Conclusion: No amount of information is going to change your mind. You
have a hard on for George W Bush and cannot get over the fact that he won.

Get a grip guy and move on.



The comparison might be from 2001 (the first year of Bush when
everything went to hell). I'd like to see things compared to the last
year of Clinton when we were doing pretty good. As I pointed out
yesterday, the DOW hasn't reached it's high point in 5 years. yesterday
it closed at 10.754; almost exactly 1000 points below what it hit under
Clinton. "Proceding at a good pace", might indicate that in 8 years
we'll be even. I don't consider that good at all.

As requested before -- where is your baseline? Shouldn't be all that
hard to tell me.

"Jim," wrote in message
...
JimH wrote:
"Jim," wrote in message
...

JimH wrote:

"Jim," wrote in message
...


John H wrote:


On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:57:37 GMT, "Jim," wrote:




"Jeff Gannon's" incredible access
There's evidence he got into White House briefings before he was a
"reporter."



And the only reporter with a decent question!

Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture
of the
U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking
about soup
lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the
economy being
on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social
Security
is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to
work -- you've
said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going
to work
with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Good one, no?

John H

On the 'PocoLoco' out of Deale, MD, on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and
necessary to resolve it." Rene Descartes

NO! the US economy and the SS system are 2 different entities. The
market has yet to reach the level it was when Bush assumed/stole/was
anointed to/ somehow got office. UN employment (in real numbers) -- is
about the same; Millions of jobs have moved offshore, bankruptcies are
up

Tell me John -- what IS good about the economy?????


I can answer that:

1. A larger than expected rise in retail sales (.06%)

2. Average hourly earnings up

3. A decrease to 5.2% in the unemployment rate

4. 1% increase in productivity during the 4th quarter 2004

5. Durable goods orders up.
6. 146,0000 new jobs in January 2005

7. 2.7% inflation rate

8. 4.4% growth in the economy

"Overall, reports indicate that the economic recovery is well
established and proceeding at a good pace. "

http://www.dallasfed.org/eyi/usecon/...501update.html, amongst
others.

For you Jim,

http://www.geocities.com/mjloundy/


Up from what point? Where is your baseline? Decrease in Un employment
since when?
How about numbers based on 2000 when Bush took office!


You made the ridiculous statement "What is *good* about the economy?" I
told you what is good. The list was certainly not all encompassing.

Yet you still cannot accept it.

Conclusion: No amount of information is going to change your mind. You
have a hard on for George W Bush and cannot get over the fact that he
won.

Get a grip guy and move on.

The comparison might be from 2001 (the first year of Bush when everything
went to hell). I'd like to see things compared to the last year of
Clinton when we were doing pretty good. As I pointed out yesterday, the
DOW hasn't reached it's high point in 5 years. yesterday it closed at
10.754; almost exactly 1000 points below what it hit under Clinton.
"Proceding at a good pace", might indicate that in 8 years we'll be even.
I don't consider that good at all.

As requested before -- where is your baseline? Shouldn't be all that hard
to tell me.

A link was provided in my original post.

You know very well that the economy started on a downward slide during the
last year of the Clinton years. No need to relive that.

But the main point is that I provided facts and figures that shows the
economy is indeed healthy and robust vs your statement asking what is good
about it.

JimH wrote:
"Jim," wrote in message
...

JimH wrote:

"Jim," wrote in message
...


JimH wrote:


"Jim," wrote in message
...



John H wrote:



On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:57:37 GMT, "Jim," wrote:





"Jeff Gannon's" incredible access
There's evidence he got into White House briefings before he was a
"reporter."



And the only reporter with a decent question!

Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture
of the
U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking
about soup
lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the
economy being
on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social
Security
is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to
work -- you've
said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going
to work
with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Good one, no?

John H

On the 'PocoLoco' out of Deale, MD, on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and
necessary to resolve it." Rene Descartes

NO! the US economy and the SS system are 2 different entities. The
market has yet to reach the level it was when Bush assumed/stole/was
anointed to/ somehow got office. UN employment (in real numbers) -- is
about the same; Millions of jobs have moved offshore, bankruptcies are
up

Tell me John -- what IS good about the economy?????


I can answer that:

1. A larger than expected rise in retail sales (.06%)

2. Average hourly earnings up

3. A decrease to 5.2% in the unemployment rate

4. 1% increase in productivity during the 4th quarter 2004

5. Durable goods orders up.
6. 146,0000 new jobs in January 2005

7. 2.7% inflation rate

8. 4.4% growth in the economy

"Overall, reports indicate that the economic recovery is well
established and proceeding at a good pace. "

http://www.dallasfed.org/eyi/usecon/...501update.html, amongst
others.

For you Jim,

http://www.geocities.com/mjloundy/


Up from what point? Where is your baseline? Decrease in Un employment
since when?
How about numbers based on 2000 when Bush took office!


You made the ridiculous statement "What is *good* about the economy?" I
told you what is good. The list was certainly not all encompassing.

Yet you still cannot accept it.

Conclusion: No amount of information is going to change your mind. You
have a hard on for George W Bush and cannot get over the fact that he
won.

Get a grip guy and move on.

The comparison might be from 2001 (the first year of Bush when everything
went to hell). I'd like to see things compared to the last year of
Clinton when we were doing pretty good. As I pointed out yesterday, the
DOW hasn't reached it's high point in 5 years. yesterday it closed at
10.754; almost exactly 1000 points below what it hit under Clinton.
"Proceding at a good pace", might indicate that in 8 years we'll be even.
I don't consider that good at all.

As requested before -- where is your baseline? Shouldn't be all that hard
to tell me.


A link was provided in my original post.

You know very well that the economy started on a downward slide during the
last year of the Clinton years. No need to relive that.

But the main point is that I provided facts and figures that shows the
economy is indeed healthy and robust vs your statement asking what is good
about it.



HA! -- you make me laugh -- from the link YOU provided

"It is important to note that employment has tended to lag production
slightly. Other reports suggest that the economy’s forward momentum may
be rebounding from a temporary pause in fall 2004, particularly as
energy and political uncertainties unwind. For example, the index of
leading economic indicators rose for a second consecutive month in
December after having declined in the five preceding months (Chart 2).
The recent rebound led the Conference Board to conclude that earlier
declines marked “only a pause in the rising trend that has been under
way since March 2003.”

To some extent, swings in manufacturing orders appear to have reflected
developments in oil prices, which dominated the financial news in much
of 2004 and affected the sales outlooks and expansion plans of many
firms. For example, the slide in the ISM index of new orders from very
high levels in early 2004 to lower (but still positive) levels by
October coincided with a sizable rise in oil prices through that month
(Chart 4). The index then rebounded in the following two months as oil
prices partly retreated from their October monthly peak, before sliding
back some in January as oil prices reversed course and rose slightly.
Uncertainty about future tax policies associated with a close election
may have also affected the recent pattern of orders. It is plausible
that some producers temporarily postponed investment decisions until
after October, which would have curtailed orders in the months before
November. Afterwards, any postponements would have likely unwound,
temporarily boosting orders in November and December, as is suggested by
the data.


Fourth Quarter GDP Growth Slower Than Expected, but Likely to Be Revised
The first estimate of GDP growth in fourth quarter 2004 was 3.1
percent—below market expectations of 3.5 percent. The deceleration in
GDP growth from 4 percent in the third quarter to 3.1 percent in the
fourth was more than accounted for by a big decline in net exports. In
the third quarter, net exports trimmed about 0.1 percent off GDP growth,
but cut about 1.7 percentage points off GDP growth in the fourth.
However, soon after the GDP release, a large error in Canadian trade
statistics for November was reported. Because Canada is our largest
trading partner, correcting this error is likely to boost U.S. GDP
growth notably in the fourth quarter, with private economists’ estimates
ranging from an increase of 0.1 to 0.5 percentage points. (The Bureau of
Economic Analysis plans to incorporate this correction and other more
up-to-date data when it releases its revised estimates in February.)


The numbers compare to earlier Bush years, and indicate that his
mismanagement is not as bad as previous years.

I am not impressed!

"Jim," wrote in message
...
JimH wrote:
"Jim," wrote in message
...

JimH wrote:

"Jim," wrote in message
...


JimH wrote:


"Jim," wrote in message
...



John H wrote:



On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:57:37 GMT, "Jim,"
wrote:





"Jeff Gannon's" incredible access
There's evidence he got into White House briefings before he was a
"reporter."



And the only reporter with a decent question!

Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak
picture of the
U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking
about soup
lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the
economy being
on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that
Social Security
is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to
work -- you've
said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going
to work
with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Good one, no?

John H

On the 'PocoLoco' out of Deale, MD, on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and
necessary to resolve it." Rene Descartes

NO! the US economy and the SS system are 2 different entities. The
market has yet to reach the level it was when Bush assumed/stole/was
anointed to/ somehow got office. UN employment (in real numbers) --
is about the same; Millions of jobs have moved offshore, bankruptcies
are up

Tell me John -- what IS good about the economy?????


I can answer that:

1. A larger than expected rise in retail sales (.06%)

2. Average hourly earnings up

3. A decrease to 5.2% in the unemployment rate

4. 1% increase in productivity during the 4th quarter 2004

5. Durable goods orders up.
6. 146,0000 new jobs in January 2005

7. 2.7% inflation rate

8. 4.4% growth in the economy

"Overall, reports indicate that the economic recovery is well
established and proceeding at a good pace. "

http://www.dallasfed.org/eyi/usecon/...501update.html, amongst
others.

For you Jim,

http://www.geocities.com/mjloundy/


Up from what point? Where is your baseline? Decrease in Un employment
since when?
How about numbers based on 2000 when Bush took office!


You made the ridiculous statement "What is *good* about the economy?" I
told you what is good. The list was certainly not all encompassing.

Yet you still cannot accept it.

Conclusion: No amount of information is going to change your mind. You
have a hard on for George W Bush and cannot get over the fact that he
won.

Get a grip guy and move on.

The comparison might be from 2001 (the first year of Bush when everything
went to hell). I'd like to see things compared to the last year of
Clinton when we were doing pretty good. As I pointed out yesterday, the
DOW hasn't reached it's high point in 5 years. yesterday it closed at
10.754; almost exactly 1000 points below what it hit under Clinton.
"Proceding at a good pace", might indicate that in 8 years we'll be even.
I don't consider that good at all.

As requested before -- where is your baseline? Shouldn't be all that
hard to tell me.


A link was provided in my original post.

You know very well that the economy started on a downward slide during
the last year of the Clinton years. No need to relive that.

But the main point is that I provided facts and figures that shows the
economy is indeed healthy and robust vs your statement asking what is
good about it.

HA! -- you make me laugh -- from the link YOU provided

"It is important to note that employment has tended to lag production
slightly. Other reports suggest that the economy’s forward momentum may be
rebounding from a temporary pause in fall 2004, particularly as energy and
political uncertainties unwind. For example, the index of leading economic
indicators rose for a second consecutive month in December after having
declined in the five preceding months (Chart 2). The recent rebound led
the Conference Board to conclude that earlier declines marked “only a
pause in the rising trend that has been under way since March 2003.”

To some extent, swings in manufacturing orders appear to have reflected
developments in oil prices, which dominated the financial news in much of
2004 and affected the sales outlooks and expansion plans of many firms.
For example, the slide in the ISM index of new orders from very high
levels in early 2004 to lower (but still positive) levels by October
coincided with a sizable rise in oil prices through that month (Chart 4).
The index then rebounded in the following two months as oil prices partly
retreated from their October monthly peak, before sliding back some in
January as oil prices reversed course and rose slightly. Uncertainty about
future tax policies associated with a close election may have also
affected the recent pattern of orders. It is plausible that some producers
temporarily postponed investment decisions until after October, which
would have curtailed orders in the months before November. Afterwards, any
postponements would have likely unwound, temporarily boosting orders in
November and December, as is suggested by the data.


Fourth Quarter GDP Growth Slower Than Expected, but Likely to Be Revised
The first estimate of GDP growth in fourth quarter 2004 was 3.1
percent—below market expectations of 3.5 percent. The deceleration in GDP
growth from 4 percent in the third quarter to 3.1 percent in the fourth
was more than accounted for by a big decline in net exports. In the third
quarter, net exports trimmed about 0.1 percent off GDP growth, but cut
about 1.7 percentage points off GDP growth in the fourth. However, soon
after the GDP release, a large error in Canadian trade statistics for
November was reported. Because Canada is our largest trading partner,
correcting this error is likely to boost U.S. GDP growth notably in the
fourth quarter, with private economists’ estimates ranging from an
increase of 0.1 to 0.5 percentage points. (The Bureau of Economic Analysis
plans to incorporate this correction and other more up-to-date data when
it releases its revised estimates in February.)


The numbers compare to earlier Bush years, and indicate that his
mismanagement is not as bad as previous years.

I am not impressed!




What a surprise.

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 13:36:39 GMT, "Jim," wrote:


The comparison might be from 2001 (the first year of Bush when
everything went to hell). I'd like to see things compared to the last
year of Clinton when we were doing pretty good.

It was prosperity based on a lie.

During the last year of Clinton's administration, the bubble started
to burst. Clinton had no interest in regulating, or allowing the SEC
to regulate, the accounting practices which were being used to inflate
stock and bond prices. I present EBITDA - a useful tool to determine
the profitability of companies during the '80s. It morphed into an
accounting gimmick under the lax rule of the Clinton administration.

To wit: As part of EBITDA, companies were allowed to set a "value" on
brands and/or naming trade rights. Thus, something that was totally
ephemeral, was added to the bottom line instead of how much money was
taken in, how much product was sold. It inflated the value the
companies involved in the Tech Rally while influencing few of the Big
Board companies which were a little more circumspect in how they used
this new concept.

By mid-2000, this inflation was becoming highly apparent to money
managers who started pulling back slowly. By the Fall, the whole
thing was starting to fall apart and by the time the election rolled
around, the cracks in the bubble were becoming major fault lines.

As we all witnessed, the bubble burst leaving a lot of ruined
portfolios in it's wake. Add in the aberration of 911 and you have
all the influences available for Depression or worse.

It didn't happen because the economy is basically sound and working.

The economic "failure" of the Bush administration, viewed in
retrospect, can be directly laid at the feet of the Clinton
Administration. That is the way historians 50 years from now will
view it and that is the way it is.

I'm not a big Bush fan, but to blame him for something that wasn't his
fault isn't fair.

Later,

Tom

The economic "failure" of the Bush administration, viewed in
retrospect, can be directly laid at the feet of the Clinton
Administration. That is the way historians 50 years from now will
view it and that is the way it is.

Baloney. Clinton inherited a nation in debt, he paid off the debt and
the nation flourished. Now Dubya is digging the nation back into debt
because of a silly, unpopular and unproductive war, the dollar is
dropping like a rock against other currencies due to that debt and due
to our inbalance of trade, and the economy is teetering. Whoever is in
office after Dubya will have to clean up his mess.

"Juan" wrote in message
oups.com...
The economic "failure" of the Bush administration, viewed in
retrospect, can be directly laid at the feet of the Clinton
Administration. That is the way historians 50 years from now will
view it and that is the way it is.

Baloney. Clinton inherited a nation in debt, he paid off the debt and
the nation flourished.

If you really believe Clinton paid off the national debt.......you are
smoking better stuff than asslicker is growing at home.


Now Dubya is digging the nation back into debt
because of a silly, unpopular and unproductive war, the dollar is
dropping like a rock against other currencies due to that debt and due
to our inbalance of trade, and the economy is teetering. Whoever is in
office after Dubya will have to clean up his mess.