The first item is new, or rather not-new, being the fulfillment of the older items following it. Another one of those eternal questions: How come nearly 80,000 of us here (even before we were "here") knew what Shrub-CHEENEE were about since 1999-2000, without the benefit of super-secret-intel or other sources of arcane divination? The 2nd item before the '04 Selection laid out Shrub's rich-against-poor economic strategy the vets are FINALLY beginning to see.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13655044.htmVeterans groups accuse
Pentagon of
planning to cut health benefitsBY DALE EISMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon hopes to reap billions of dollars to pay for ships, aircraft and other weapons by
doubling or tripling health insurance premiums paid by military retirees and
driving 600,000 of those pensioners
out of the military medical system, a coalition of veterans organizations charges.
Groups representing more than 1 million military pensioners - those who served at least 20 years - are organizing a telephone and letter-writing campaign to block the idea if it surfaces in Congress or to persuade the Bush administration to abandon it.
The retirees say the proposal
breaks faith with former
service members and their families and risks alienating thousands of active duty troops who may see it as eroding benefits they expect in retirement.
Because promises of free or low-cost health care are part of the military's recruiting effort,
new fees could be an obstacle to recruiting, the veterans argue.
"
They sort of
pit us against the active duty force," said Michael Barrett, a retired Navy commander living in Williamsburg.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/08/25/bush_second_term/index.htmlAnd you thought his first term was a nightmareWhat Bush has planned for America if he wins.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Charles Tiefer
Aug. 25, 2004 | .... Under Bush's slogan of an "
ownership society," the Republicans intend a long-term effort,
using changes in Medicare, Social Security and taxes to pit
better-off and worse-off Democrats against each other, offering all-but-irresistible incentives for some to desert the others -- and any progressive national coalition. .... A second-term Bush agenda will constantly impale Democrats on the dilemma of abandoning their poorer, sicker, older and minority groups, or seeing their better-off, healthier and younger members lured off to the other party. If it sounds like a political nightmare for the Democrats, that's because that's what it is planned to be. ....
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040906fa_fact.... When the President pledges to create an “era of
ownership,” he is not talking merely about encouraging people to buy their own homes and start small businesses. To conservative Republicans who understand his
coded language, he is also talking about extending and expanding the
tax cuts he introduced in his first term; he is talking about
allowing wealthy Americans to shelter much of their income from the I.R.S.; about using the tax code to
curtail the government’s role in health care and retirement saving; and, ultimately, about a vision that has entranced but eluded conservatives for decades: the
abolition of the graduated income tax and its replacement with a levy that is simpler, flatter, and more favorable to rich people. ....
...the theme of ownership. He may well talk about establishing investment accounts within Social Security, as well as Retirement Savings Accounts and Lifetime Savings Accounts outside of Social Security, and health savings accounts, which his economic advisers view as a step toward individual, portable health-care coverage. .... “The
biggest demographic shift in the past thirty years is not the number of people who speak Spanish; it is the
number of Americans who own stocks,” Norquist told me. “It was twenty per cent of adults when Reagan was elected. Now it is sixty per cent, and seventy per cent of voters.”
...
returning to a balanced budget will be even harder this time around. A decade ago, it took “
tax hikes, a sharp
contraction in military spending, and an unprecedented
economic expansion to achieve fiscal consolidation,” the I.M.F. noted.
None of those things are on the horizon now. ....
“It is the
height of deception to say we can only budget till 2009 but we are going to have massive tax cuts from 2010 onward,” Gale said. “That is what the Administration has done.” ....
...a historic
restructuring of the American system of government. .... If Bush’s economic agenda was fully enacted, the vast bulk of these payments wouldn’t be taxed at all, and
labor would end up shouldering practically the entire burden of financing the federal government. ....
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?file=article&name=News&op=modload&sid=803Bush betrays veteransAs the November election nears, veterans need to realize that President Bush has not been their friend, that
Republicans are anti-veteran.
By Gerald S. Rellick
In the spring of 2003, shortly after the start of the war in Iraq, the state of affairs on veterans funding in the Republican controlled House was by all accounts surprisingly
hostile to veterans. The Bush administration sent to the House its proposal for
cutting $844 million from veterans’ health care from the 2004 budget. Over a
10-year period the cuts would total approximately
$10 billion. When the proposal reached the House Budget Committee,
all 18 Democrats opposed the cuts, and they proposed an amendment to restore the $844 million and add another billion for VA discretionary health care. Led by their chairman, Jim Nussle of Iowa,
Republicans on the committee, in an almost perfect party-line vote, 22-19, rejected the amendment and
proceeded with the Bush proposal. ....
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