|
Edited on Fri Oct-15-04 05:49 PM by Carolab
"John Kerry gave a speech in which he claimed Americans are actually paying more taxes under Bush, despite the tax cuts. He gave no explanation and provided no data for this claim." John's point, which was raised repeatedly last year by Howard Dean, among others, is that the "tax cuts" greatly benefited the wealthiest 2% of this country and resulted in minimal (average about $300) "savings" to average American taxpayers. Despite his wife being in this class herself, John promises to rescind this "free pass" for the rich, while not raising taxes on the middle class. Meanwhile, George Bush's base, or as he calls them "the haves and the have mores", want to keep these cuts for themselves, despite the mounting record deficits and massive cuts in taxpayer-sponsored domestic programs. The Federal government under Bush has slashed budgets for public education, police and fire departments, veterans benefits, and other important domestic and community programs, placing the burden for funding these services squarely on the shoulders of Mr. and Mrs. John Doe in the form of escalating state and local (property) taxes. while Bush and Cheney's rich friends get richer and richer on oil, and no-bid defense contracts, plundering the U.S. Treasury, emptying our Social Security "lockbox" and causing a 20% increase in costs of Medicare for seniors, for the first time ever in the program's 40-year history. ************************* "Bush paid $250,000 in taxes this year; Kerry paid $90,000. Does that sound right? The man who wants to raise your taxes obviously has figured out a way to avoid paying his own." As I said above, he wants to tax away the tax cut that Bush gave to the wealthiest 2% of this country's citizens. LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-kerry122.html Teresa Heinz Kerry, responding to repeated calls that she disclose information about her private fortune, said Tuesday she earned more than $5 million last year and has paid about $750,000 toward income taxes, according to her husband's presidential campaign. Heinz Kerry and John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, filed separate tax returns. Earlier this year, he released tax returns showing he had paid federal taxes of $102,152 on adjusted gross income of $395,338. Teresa Heinz Kerry, an heir to the Heinz prepared foods fortune, is worth an estimated $500 million. She was married to Sen. John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican who died in a plane crash in 1991. She married Kerry in 1995. ''While I am not a candidate for any public office, a great deal of my financial information has been disclosed for many years on my husband's Senate ethics disclosures and now that he is a presidential candidate, with the office of government ethics,'' Heinz Kerry said in the statement. ''Today, I am making additional public disclosures by releasing my personal tax information.'' She has said she was reluctant to reveal her finances because of privacy concerns for her children. The campaign reported that Heinz Kerry had an estimated gross taxable income in 2003 of about $2,338,000, along with tax exempt interest income of $2,777,000, largely from state, municipal and other public bonds. She paid $587,000 in estimated federal income taxes for 2003 and $162,777 in estimated state and local income taxes. In April she paid another $280,000 toward expected additional 2003 and 2004 liability, the campaign said. Campaign officials said Heinz Kerry has requested an extension on filing her 2003 income tax returns. She will file her returns in October, officials said, and will make the first two pages of those returns public at that time. ''John and I believe this strikes a balance between my family's privacy and the media's requests for more financial information,'' she said. Heinz Kerry oversaw the distribution of $4.6 million in charitable contributions during 2003, the statement said. AP "Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good ... Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad..." Halliburton is fleecing the U.S. taxpayer to the tune of at least $2 billion dollars (that we know of). "BUSH ADMINISTRATION GIVES HALLIBURTON IRAQ" Imagine if the Clinton Administration like the Bush Administration had pushed for a war in Iraq against the wishes of at least half of the nation. Then imagine that upon entering Iraq, they handed 1.7 billion dollars in no-bid contracts to the company that Gore (vs. Cheney) was the CEO of until the moment he took his position as Vice President. Whitewater is a million-dollar sneeze compared to the amount of money we are discussing here. The Republicans would have been screaming for an explanation. They would have been accusing the Clinton Administration of nepotism or worse and calling for impeachment. But, here we have the Bush administration handing Halliburton (formerly headed by Dick Cheney) over a billion dollar in contracts that were formerly handled by the military itself. Where is the outcry? "The amount of money (earned by Halliburton) is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe," Said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California. "This is clearly a trend under this administration and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money as opposed to less." Step back, phrases such as 'clearly a trend' are not exactly fighting words. What I don't understand is that the Republicans are meant to be the party of free enterprise and the celebrators of capitalism. Why aren't they in favor of fair competition and opening these contracts up to bids? Competition is the reason that the Republicans deregulated all the power companies in California (and why Gray Davis got the boot), all in the name of their beloved free enterprise. I guess competition is only a good thing if you can control who comes out on top. Although the democrats in the US are slow to take up this nearly sexual attraction between the Bush administration and big money, writers in Europe are not. Ed Vulliamy of the Guardian UK writes "No administration has been so closely associated with, and beholden to, corporate America. Backstage, being further tarnished by scandals affecting their friends. Trent Lott, one of Bush's closest confidants on Capitol Hill... WorldCom was seeking political influence at the core of the administration right up to the eleventh hour before admitting its fraud." Vulliamy notes that WorldCom gave $100,000 to the Bush/Cheney re-election fund.
Competition is supposed to allow us as taxpayers to rest assured that our better interests are being looked after. Unfortunately, this administration is so completely in the pocket of big money corporations that there is no room for a semblance of free market economics to work. My only consolation is that for the first time since Bush came to office in a recent poll, more Americans would not vote for him than would vote for him.
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering
I leave you with a little Bush quiz question taken from The New Yorker magazine.
True or False: Barring an economic miracle that would trigger the creation of more than two million jobs in the next eighteen months, George W. Bush will end this term as the first president since Jimmy Carter to oversee a net loss in employment.
Answer-False-He'll be the first president since Herbert Hoover
http://www.doubledarepress.com/2003/04/editoral/editorial-1.shtml
*********************************
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/70154/1
Something Fishy about 'No-Bid' Contracts for Iraq Reconstruction?
Gail Russell Chaddock
Christian Science Monitor
Fri., Oct. 10, 2003
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 10 (CSM) -– Critics on Capitol Hill are taking a hard look at several lucrative U.S. contracts to rebuild war-damaged Iraq.
When Susan Collins was just a staffer in the United States Senate, she used to worry about fat government contracts being awarded in secret. Now Collins is a US Senator--and she can finally do something about it.
Senator Collins is drawing a bead on contracts in Iraq, where the US has begun pouring in billions of dollars to repair war damage and rebuild the country. There are charges in the press that no-bid contracts are squandering taxpayer funds.
"A tremendous amount of money will be spent on contracts to rebuild Iraq," says the soft-spoken Maine senator, a leading GOP moderate. She wants Washington to avoid even the appearance of cronyism or war profiteering in these deals. "We have an obligation to make sure that money is not being wasted," Collins says.
Yet some key Iraq contracts already were bid secretly, or on a sole-source basis, to companies with strong ties to the Bush administration. These included a $1.39 billion contract to a subsidiary of Halliburton, an energy giant formerly chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Another $680 million contract for Iraq's power grid, water system, and airport facilities went to Bechtel Group Inc., after a secret bidding process. Together, the six companies invited to bid on the Bechtel contract contributed $3.6 million to federal election campaigns, two-thirds to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
"These suspect contracts with Halliburton and other companies raise questions about the awarding of contracts to friends of the administration," says Sen. Richard Durbin (D) of Illinois. "Wasn't there someone in the room who said, 'This just doesn't look right.'?"
It's that appearance of wrongdoing that most concerns Collins. In the heat of war, there may be reasons that contracts for fighting oil fires or rebuilding water systems should move quickly - or go to industry giants, she says. Still, anything less than open competition also carries a risk: the integrity of the process, she adds.
Such issues have been a nearly lifelong concern for Collins - one of the rare lawmakers who can do the dog work of a tough investigation herself. As staff director for the government management subcommittee from 1979 to 1987, she led an investigation that found "excessive reliance" on sole-source contracting in Washington. The committee produced a bill that required more competitive bidding, but the law left a loophole: No one needs to account to Congress when they claim one of the seven exceptions in that law, including one for national security.
"The problem is there is no oversight to see that these exceptions are used appropriately," she says. As chairman of the committee she once worked for, Collins wants those loopholes closed. Her "sunshine rule," cosponsored with Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon, was approved by the Senate as an amendment to President Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq.
She claims another influence in this work: Sen. Harry Truman (D) of Missouri, who was spotted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a vice-presidential prospect for his work on war profiteering during World War II. Truman, like Collins, was no grandstander. He said his aim was "heading off scandals before they started." But his conclusions were unambiguous: "The little manufacturer, the little contractor, and the little machine shop have been left entirely out in the cold. The policy seems to be to make the big man bigger and to put the little man completely out of business," Truman said in 1941.
Historian Theodore Wilson wrote in 1975 that the Truman committee is widely viewed as "the most successful congressional investigative effort in United States history." It later evolved into the permanent subcommittee on investigation, now a panel of the Senate Government Affairs Committee that Collins chairs. "Our committee has a legacy of being aggressive in protecting the taxpayer from contracting abuses," she says.
Many of the same Truman-like criticisms are surfacing in the congressional debate over the contracts in Iraq. In all, some $79 billion has already been allocated for war expenses in Iraq, and another $87 billion bill is working its way through Congress - a windfall for companies that can make themselves part of it.
"We're overrelying on large umbrella contracts.... Halliburton has a monopoly on the work in oil, and Bechtel has a monopoly on the reconstruction work," says Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. "There is no incentive to lower costs," he adds.
No contract has riled critics as much as the first and most lucrative: to Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. It started as a 2001 contract for logistical support to the US military, wherever it went, and it was competitively bid. But a decision to expand that contract - from supporting troops to oil-well firefighting, repairing oil systems, and now maintaining and operating oil systems - was not.
"Redefining the contract on a no-bid basis, that's where the Pentagon went awry," says P. W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "All the companies have decided that one way for them to achieve a corporate advantage is to hire former government officials or to make political campaign contributions."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, "The Halliburton contract for oil-field restoration is currently in the process of being recompeted," and that "no new funds are planned to be awarded under the old contract."
The impression of favoritism could be tough to blot out. Recently, a new lobby shop touted its ties to the Bush administration as an asset in helping clients get business in Iraq. New Bridge Strategies, with offices in Washington and Houston, describes itself as "a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq." Its principals include Joe Allbaugh, campaign manager for Bush presidential race in 2000.
"This kind of thing is tawdry and will reinforce the conviction in some quarters that this is all about making bucks and paying off corporate pals," says Andrew Bacevich, director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University.
*******************************
"Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good ... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad... Clinton bombs Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslim Albanian terrorists - good ... Bush liberates 25 million from a genocidal dictator - bad..."
Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and his gang of thugs (not a recognized "sovereign government") were slaughtering all the Muslims in revenge for their "cooperation with Nazis in World War II". It was a big power grab after the Soviet authorities pulled out, and they were committing genocide and seizing their property. Our efforts in Serbia were backed by NATO and the EU. We are there now in a peacekeeping role. Conversely, nobody asked for help in Iraq. We just decided to take over there, and seize the assets (oil) in order to assert military and geopolitical control over the Middle East. The whole thing was never sanctioned by the UN/the rest of the world and was immoral and illegal. What "we" are doing is more like what Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait. There is no security, no sewer and water, sporadic electricity and only about billion of the $61 billion that was set aside for reconstruction has been spent. But the oil fields have been working just fine and dandy since day one--profiting none other than international oil companies and the "puppet government" that the U.S. has managed to install there. Some liberation for the Iraq people. Over 27,000 innocent civilians have died there, most of them women and children.
"Clinton spends 77 billion on war in Serbia - good ... Bush spends 87
billion in Iraq - bad... The money for rebuilding came from the EU, not U.S. taxpayers." and "Clinton bombs Chinese embassy - good ... Bush bombs terrorist camps - bad..." The bombing of the Chinese embassy was a mistake. Someone put the wrong coordinates in and we hit the wrong target. We apologized and made reparations. Bush and Clinton both bombed terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Republicans objected when Clinton did it, saying it was to deflect attention from the Monica Lewinsky affair. In reality, Clinton was trying to kill Osama bin Laden and might have succeeded if he hadn't have been hamstrung by the "witchhunt" led by Ken Starr. No one objected to Bush bombing terrorist camps in Afghanistan or hampered him in doing so. Still, he came up empty-handed and the Taliban is once again in power there.
"Clinton commits felonies while in office - good ... Bush lands on aircraft carrier in jumpsuit - bad..." First of all, these two things do not relate. That said, the number of felonies that Bush and other members of this administration have committed is extensive, including war crimes against a nation that did not attack us or threaten to. The difference is that under Republican-controlled Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, there is nothing being done about it on a Federal level, despite the fact that there have been a number of indictments brought against Dick Cheney for his backroom "energy deals" and Ken Lay for violations of campaign finance laws and dirty dealings with Enron. The truth is, however, coming out in numerous books, and in several private lawsuits being brought by family members of victims of 9/11 on behalf of themselves and the U.S. taxpayers.
"No mass graves found in Serbia - good ... No WMD found Iraq - bad..." The siege of Sarajevo was one of the most horrific acts of mass genocide perpetrated in modern times. Dead bodies were lying all over the soil, everywhere. We didn't "make up" a story to go there, or need to--like saying that there were weapons of mass destruction when there were none, or making up a connection between someone that attacked us and them.
"Stock market crashes in 2000 under Clinton - good ... Economy on upswing under Bush - bad..." This nation enjoyed a period of record prosperity under Clinton and when he left we had a record surplus. Now we have a record deficit. Have you seen the stock market reports lately? The price of oil just hit $50.00/bbl and it appears that there is a shortage in Nigeria's output, so there is apparently no way to bring it down. OPEC cannot keep up. If it hits $55/bbl, experts are currently predicting, interest rates will escalate until we reach double digits and unemployment will soar--as in the 1980s.
"Clinton refuses to take custody of Bin Laden - good ... World Trade Centers fall under Bush - bad..." As mentioned above, Clinton went after bin Laden but was hamstrung by the Republicans who were more concerned with talking about his love life and his real estate dealings (both of which, in the end, amounted to nothing at all of any benefit to our nation, because the President was not allowed to go about the business of protecting us without being accused by Republicans of trying to divert the public's attention from the Lewinsky and Whitewater "investigations"--and which of course also wasted multiple millions of taxpayer money).
I can recommend several books for background on who was president when our government first learned about Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (hint: Bush 41), further information about how Clinton worked to orchestrate intelligence into terrorism on a daily basis (remember that only 50 casualties to "terrorism" occurred in eight years under Clinton's watch), and multiple and repeated warnings to the incoming administration (hint: Bush 43) that were blatantly ignored. One of them has just come out "9/11 Commission Cover-up" by award-winning journalist Peter Lance. It's currently rising in the charts at amazon.com. You might also read Richard Clarke's excellent book, "Against All Enemies" which talks about not only the Bush administration's failure to counter terror, but also Bush's pathological obsession with Iraq and his plans to attack Hussein all along, which had nothing to do with 9/11 and more to do with his father's failures in the first Gulf war.
"Clinton says Saddam has nukes - good ... Bush says Saddam has nukes - bad..." During Clinton's terms of office, Saddam's weapons programs were dead-ended through ongoing and repeated inspections by the UN inspectors, in addition to sanctions and daily flyovers to ensure nothing was being built. By the time Bush decided to invade Iraq there were no WMD, as has been widely reported. The UN inspections by Blix were not allowed to be completed because this administration knew they would find no WMD and it would blow their excuse to invade and occupy.
"Clinton calls for regime change in Iraq - good ... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad..." Regime change, not occupation.
"Terrorist training in Afghanistan under Clinton - good ... Bush destroys training camps in Afghanistan - bad..." We trained the mujahideen in order to help drive the Russians out. Bin Laden is viewed as a hero by the Arab world because of his leadership in driving out the Russians. However, he turned on us because of our military bases in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban is in control again in Afghanistan, and warlords are running the show, with funding provided through a now burgeoning opium trade, and their training camps are going strong there and elsewhere--haven't you heard?
"Milosevic not yet convicted - good ... Saddam turned over for trial - bad..." Hmmm, doesn't seem to be much happening with Saddam yet, either. And where is Osama bin Laden, so that we might try him and get to the bottom of his reported masterminding of 9/11? As I recall, last year the US captured "his #1," Khalid Sheik Mohammed. After the 9/11 Commission's report came out they then issued a supplemental report which didn't get as much "press", in which they stated no one was able to find a direct money trail back to bin Laden. Apparently, the money was managed through Mohammed's nephew Ali, bankrolled from some very high-powered Saudi Arabian connections. The money was being laundered through Riggs Bank, of which the CEO is none other than W's uncle, Jonathan. Riggs bank has been fined multiple millions already for its money-laundering transgressions and the investigations are ongoing as we speak, with the trail leading back to the Saudi royal family (Bush family friends, remember? If not, read Craig Unger's book, "House of Bush, House of Saud", which has been on the New York Times best-seller's list all year.)
FINALLY, you need to spend more time reading the many books that have been written by former government officials and government reporters, such as Paul O'Neill (Bush's former Treasury Secretary)'s "Price of Loyalty", Richard Clarke (former Bush Director of Counterterror operations in the CIA)'s "Against All Enemies" (mentioned above), and John Dean's (Nixon's former White House lawyer)'s "Worse Than Watergate", plus Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack." Your local bookstore can recommend many others like these.
Also there are several very informative alternative websites on the Internet, like www.alternet.org, www.truthout.org, www.buzzflash.com, www.fromthewilderness.com, www.tompaine.com www.commondreams.org, the international news source websites (like www.independent.co.uk or www.guardian.co.uk), and those of independent journalists like Greg Palast (www.gregpalast.com) or Arianna Huffington (www.ariannaonline.com)
Incidentally, for more information about John Kerry and debunking of the lies and distortions being told about him and John Edwards, you can visit www.johnkerry.com.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
