"No, people will always be angry," he says. "There's no shortage of things that people will get angry about."
©2001 Kerry Lauerman

Media Silence Greets Rove's Shady Meeting
by Joe Conason

A major high-tech corporation is promoting a billion-dollar merger between one of its top U.S. suppliers and a foreign firm, against the wishes of Pentagon officials who believe the deal will jeopardize sensitive satellite technology. The new President, in office only a few months, had vowed during his campaign to tighten industrial security in the wake of alleged leaks to hostile countries. Members of the President's party in Congress are worried by the proposed merger, too.

But then the big American company that wants the deal to go through wangles a private meeting for its executives with the President's chief political adviser. They explain their plight to the adviser, whose assistance one of them later describes as "quite useful."

Despite continuing opposition from the Defense Department, the White House soon approves the merger. The high-tech corporation's stock shoots up as a result.

Within a few weeks, the Associated Press reports that the President's political adviser still owned between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of the high-tech firm's stock at the time he met with its executives to discuss the merger. Questions are raised as to whether the adviser, one of the most powerful officials in the administration, has blatantly violated the Ethics in Government Act.

Apprised of this embarrassing news, the President insists that his confidence in his political adviser "has never been higher." His press secretary brusquely dismisses a proposed Congressional investigation of the incident. "I think the American people are tired of these open-ended investigations and fishing expeditions .. The White House does not believe that would serve the public well."

Those remarks sound as if they'd been made sometime during the Clinton years, but they are, of course, the words of Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer. He and his boss were speaking in defense of Karl Rove, whose meeting with Intel executives seeking approval of a controversial merger has caused all of them some mild shame lately.

It isn't hard to imagine the thermonuclear blast of outrage that would have consumed George Stephanopoulos or John Podesta if they had ever done what Karl Rove admittedly did. In fact, it isn't hard to imagine the entire scenario as the replay of a Clinton-era scandal, except that in this case there might be substance behind the suspicions.

And there is another obvious difference as well: Had a Clinton adviser conducted himself with so little attention to ethics statutes, the Congressional investigation would already be under way, encouraged by righteous editorials and ceaseless ranting on talk radio and cable television. But then we all know that the Clinton-era rules don't apply to the people who promised to return "honor and integrity" to the White House.

Conservatives in Congress were worried about the national-security implications of the merger between Silicon Valley Group, an important Intel supplier that produces optics for spy satellites, and ASM Lithography, a Dutch company. According to a report in the Washington Times on April 25, they viewed the White House response as a test of the President's "campaign promise to tighten the spigot on American weapons-related technology flowing overseas." The right-wing daily quoted a senior Republican staffer as saying, "We will learn a lot about this administration from this decision."

How prophetic that anonymous staffer was. Not only did we learn a lot about the Bush White House, but we have also learned something about Congressional conservatives, who have remained silent ever since Mr. Rove's ties to Intel were exposed. Apparently there's no reason to worry about national security and export controls when a big-time Republican is getting richer.

Likewise, the leading pundits and editorial sages who scorched Clintonian ethical breaches haven't been able to fire themselves up about Mr. Rove and Intel. While The Washington Post, for example, chided the Bush adviser for failing to divest his stock in a timely manner, its editorial warned against any Congressional investigation sponsored by Democrats. The Post editors noticed that the Intel case is only one among several instances when Bush officials have evidently breached ethical standards. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who thinks Social Security and Medicare should be abolished, made millions by holding onto his Alcoa stock in defiance of those standards. Mr. Rove and others held Enron Corporation stock while they consulted the energy giant's executives on national policy.

But The Post sees no need for anything more than self-policing here. "Having rightly announced high standards," the paper pleaded, "these folks should just live up to them."

Unfortunately, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle agrees. He has promised not to do anything that resembles "payback" for the Republican investigative abuses of recent years. He evidently hopes this milquetoast approach will herald a new golden age of bipartisanship.

That kind of whimsical pap must make Mr. Daschle's adversaries laugh. They think he is telling them that they can get away with anything, and they will surely take him at his word.
©2001 Joe Conason

How much longer I can hold the line if abandoned by the Guardian’s Scott Trust - which is cracking under the weight of legal bills - I cannot say. And the consequences of capitulation to our source and defender, Tundu Lissu and his Tanzanian human rights organization, we cannot imagine.
©2001 Gregory Palast

Bush Administration Resurrects Nuclear Boondoggle
By Guy Gugliotta

Deep in the Bush administration's energy plan is a reference to an alternative approach to disposing of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. "Reprocessing," the plan asserts, could help alleviate one of the major drawbacks to nuclear energy.

This statement has set off alarm bells among those concerned about nuclear proliferation. That's because reprocessing reactor waste can create plutonium, the raw material for nuclear weapons.

"We're not sure what mischief the new administration is up to here, and who's pushing it," said Paul Levanthal, president of the anti-reprocessing Nuclear Control Institute. "Whatever the U.S. does on something like this really resonates throughout the rest of the world."

If the United States embraces the reprocessing of nuclear waste -- something it has refused to do for the last 24 years -- it could lead to the proliferation of technologies that produce plutonium, and boost the amount of plutonium available around the world. That, critics say, could make it much more likely that weapons-grade plutonium could fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations.

Administration officials argue that they are sensitive to concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation, and have no immediate plans to change long-standing U.S. policies. Their intentions, they say, are merely to solve the problem of nuclear waste, which is accumulating across the country.

The energy plan said that the administration "will continue to discourage the accumulation of separated plutonium worldwide," and administration sources said that meant the United States would maintain a national moratorium on traditional reprocessing, which extracts plutonium from spent fuel.

But at the same time, the plan encouraged research into another kind of reprocessing, which makes fuel that must be burned in "fast reactors" potentially capable of creating, or "breeding," more plutonium than they use. That's what has critics most concerned.

"It sets off a lot of alarm bells," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank specializing in strategies to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.

"The very strange thing is that the question seems to have been opened very casually by the Cheney plan," added Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, another reprocessing opponent. "The true consequences of this have to be debated, even if you like nuclear power."

An administration source, who asked not to be quoted by name, said, "Not too much should be drawn from this," because the Cheney report "in and of itself is not a change in policy.

"We did not say we wanted to proceed with construction of this [fast] reactor," the source continued. "We want this research to go forward, but that's a far cry from saying it will reach fruition. It would be a long way away."

No government agency or business has ever recycled nuclear waste for commercial use on U.S. soil, a policy begun when President Jimmy Carter renounced reprocessing and plutonium breeder research in a secret 1977 executive order.

The order, Presidential Directive 8, was declassified in 1994 and survives today as President Bill Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 13. For reprocessing research to resume, the directive would have to be either rescinded or reinterpreted. The Bush administration has not yet decided how to proceed.

Currently only France, the United Kingdom and Russia reprocess spent fuel, and only France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany burn the resulting finished plutonium oxide in nuclear plants.

The limited market is due in part to proliferation concerns. Germany, whose coalition government includes the Greens party, formally agreed early this month to phase out nuclear power altogether, and reprocessing has only limited public support in several other nations.

But the main reason is expense.

Makhijani estimated that France, the world leader in recycling, could produce a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of recycled fuel for about $6,000, while a kilo of enriched uranium fuel like that used in U.S. reactors costs about $1,200.

The chief consequence of reprocessing's poor economics is that over the years the world has accumulated about 210 tons of commercial -- and weapons-usable -- plutonium that does not have a market.

"You can't give it away," said Thomas Cochran, who heads the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a reprocessing opponent. "And if that's the case, how economic is it to reprocess?"

In traditional reprocessing, spent fuel is dissolved in acid, separating the uranium, plutonium and other fission products. The uranium can be re-enriched and recycled. The fission products are encased in glass and stored. The plutonium is recombined with uranium 238, made into rods and put into reactors. The fuel is called "mixed oxide," or "mox," and essentially substitutes plutonium 239 for the fissile uranium 235 in first-generation fuel.

Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 13 continues the 24-year moratorium on a domestic mox reprocessing cycle because of the proliferation risks associated with isolating plutonium 239. Administration sources said the Cheney plan endorses this view.

Independently of the energy plan, however, the Bush administration intends to move forward on a Clinton initiative to enlist Russia in a joint program to each convert 34 tons of surplus plutonium from nuclear weapons into mox.

If the deal is closed, the United States would make its mox at an Energy Department facility in South Carolina, and Duke Power, a commercial utility, would burn it in two reactors in the Charlotte, N.C., area. The Energy Department will reimburse Duke for plant modifications and sell them mox at a subsidized price below what Duke would have to pay for enriched uranium fuel.

Although "this program is not intended to create a plutonium economy," an Energy Department official said, it remains somewhat controversial because it requires the United States and its allies to build Russia its first mox plant, and puts Russia in the plutonium recycling business.

"The mox plant is the very first piece of infrastructure that both U.S. and Russia are missing for a plutonium economy," Makhijani said. "It is a pretty big camel's nose issue."

Still, burning weapons-grade plutonium is a policy with many advocates: "What is the philosophical question here?" asked James Lake, immediate past president of the American Nuclear Society, which supports reprocessing research. "My feeling is that burning up weapons is a good thing to do for world peace."

The search for a proliferation-resistant alternative to mox has led several nations to consider a recycling technique called "pyroprocessing," mentioned favorably in the Cheney plan as a way to "reduce waste streams and enhance proliferation resistance."

In pyroprocessing, spent fuel is recovered as a metal, dissolved in a metallic salt and passed through an electric current. Lightweight fission products remain in solution, while the uranium goes to one electrode and plutonium and heavy metal byproducts go to another, where they are formed subsequently into fuel rods.

Because the plutonium is never isolated, it is always radioactive, dangerous and "less and less attractive" to thieves, Lake said. "In theory, you can recycle tens of times, so that the technology becomes almost renewable."

But for pyroprocessing to work even once, utilities would have to abandon today's nuclear plants in favor of "fast" reactors that allow neutrons to move about freely in the core. Fast neutrons are the best way to maintain a chain reaction among impure plutonium fuel rods.

The trouble with fast reactors, however, is that when the core is surrounded with a blanket of uranium 238, the neutrons will combine with it to create more plutonium 239 than the reactor is using. For a rogue state, a fast breeder of this type can become a virtual plutonium factory.

Advocates point out, however, that even if the Bush administration embraces the technology, it will take decades to mature, allowing plenty of time to work out the kinks. "What we do is store [spent] fuel for 20 to 30 years while we develop an entirely different infrastructure to use the technology," Lake said.
©2001 Guy Gugliotta

Quotable Quote

The Supreme Court has ruled that Johnny Penry, a retarded man on Texas death row, should get a new sentencing trial. The Court says, when in doubt, they tend to rule in favor of the mentally debilitated. You know, like they did in the election." --Bill Maher

The wholesalers also are the targets of similar investigations by Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and the state Public Utilities Commission.
©2001 Carl Ingram

"Everybody," said Bush Communications Director Katie Baur, "is sick and tired of the half-truths that have been bandied about for the last couple of months."
©2001 Tim Nickens

Bush The Divider Not The Uniter
By Dan Balz

President Bush has failed to ease the partisan divisions in the country during his first months in office, frustrating administration efforts to enlarge his fragile political base and prompting advisers to look for ways to redefine his presidency, according to polls, administration officials and party strategists.

Despite passage of the biggest tax cut in two decades and substantial progress on an education reform bill, Bush's approval ratings have declined over the past 60 days, and the electorate remains as sharply divided as it was at the end of last year's election.

The drop in public opinion, coupled with the fact that Democrats now control the Senate, has emboldened the president's Democratic opponents in Congress. And in recent days, many Republicans in the House have abandoned the administration on key votes involving energy and the environment, as lawmakers weigh their own political fortunes against loyalty to a president who is bucking public opinion on some critical issues.

Publicly, the president's advisers say the situation represents no cause for concern. Privately, they are said to be studying the polls carefully and looking for ways to sharpen Bush's image as a "compassionate conservative" in an effort to lure more independents to his coalition. White House officials anticipate a bipartisan signing ceremony this summer on the education bill nearing final approval in Congress, and they recently stepped up efforts to win support for his proposal to promote religious-oriented social service groups.

The administration also has begun planning for a fall offensive that one official said will be aimed at "carving out a different kind of orthodoxy for the party." The effort, led by senior adviser Karl Rove, is still in the formative stages, but administration officials hope to assemble a list of proposals that will showcase the president as more than an advocate of big tax cuts and a friend of corporate interests.

One official said Rove is working with White House policy advisers to pick issues to highlight. Possible candidates include cultural or values issues, particularly those related to parents, adoption initiatives, new mentoring programs and possibly additional education proposals.

In the longer term, Bush remains committed to an ambitious agenda that includes national missile defense and overhauling Medicare and Social Security. But his failure to break through the partisan polarization within the electorate and secure stronger support among political independents could weaken his hand in those battles.

Bush pulled off a political makeover last year after his bruising primary challenge from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), aggressively moving to the center before the Republican National Convention. But Democrats and some independent analysts said that, given the first impressions he has made in office, the president faces a far more difficult challenge now than when he was a candidate in changing his image.

"The White House has been extremely deft at fixing short-term problems but refuses to confront their over-arching problem, which is that the president campaigned as a centrist and is governing as a conservative," said Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council and domestic policy chief in the Clinton administration. "They won't broaden their appeal until they do."

Bush's approval rating has declined over the past two months, according to polls released in recent weeks, with the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll putting his approval at 50 percent, the lowest mark for a president in five years in that poll. Surveys by The Washington Post and ABC News; CBS News and the New York Times; and the Pew Research Center also have recorded declines in his approval rating during that period.

The polls also indicate that Bush's energy and environmental policies have put him on the wrong side of public opinion. Those surveyed say that Bush favors oil companies at the expense of the environment and that they want greater emphasis on environmental protection and energy conservation than they believe Bush favors. Several polls also found that Americans do not believe Bush understands their problems.

Bush advisers play down the recent round of polls. Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, chairman of the Republican National Committee, staged a conference call with reporters on the day the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll was released. "The president is popular; he remains popular. His policies are doing very, very well," Gilmore said.

Matthew Dowd, the RNC's director of polling, said that when viewed over a longer period of time, Bush's approval rating has remained relatively steady. He also argued that the sharply polarized electorate -- which he said predates Bush's presidency -- means that the president will rarely have approval ratings above 60 percent and that about one-third of the country will say they disapprove of how he is doing his job. "We're never going to be out of that box," he said.

Bush, like former president Bill Clinton, has proven to be a president who generates fierce support within his own party and strong opposition in the other party. But he campaigned on a pledge to "change the tone" in Washington after the partisan rancor of the Clinton years. Polls show Bush receives some credit from the public on that front, but it has not spilled over into other assessments of his presidency.

"We're five months into his presidency, and he hasn't won anybody over who wasn't with him at the beginning," Democratic pollster Geoff Garin said. "He had every opportunity in the world."

A Republican strategist agreed: "His situation is the same as Clinton's. There's a segment of the population that won't like him no matter what he does. We had hopes in the first 100 days that we might get some crossover, but that's not going to happen anymore."

Bush's image as a traditional conservative has been shaped by both success and failure. Administration officials count the tax bill as a major accomplishment. "If we hadn't gotten the tax bill, we'd be in really bad shape," an official said. But officials acknowledge that the time and effort that went into passing the bill forced Bush to talk much more about a conventionally Republican issue than about education, the issue he used most successfully in his campaign to demonstrate his independence from GOP doctrine.

Other Republicans are more critical of the administration's failure to highlight education more systematically. "In the campaign when he got too far to the right, he talked about education and went right back to the center. I would argue we're not trying very hard" now, a GOP strategist said.

At the same time, Bush has suffered from the administration's mistakes in the areas of energy and the environment. Some involve policy choices the administration has made in its energy package, and some come from failures to explain decisions about environmental regulations early in his term, administration officials said.

"The compassionate conservative agenda doesn't receive a lot of attention," said Dan Bartlett, deputy counselor to the president, citing Bush's proposal to fund religious-based social service organizations. "They have not received as much attention as the tax cut did or the regulatory entanglement. . . . And we probably didn't do as good a job in characterizing who this president was early on, particularly on the environment."

But some Republican strategists argued that far more is needed to undo some of the early damage. One strategist said the administration must make some decisions on energy and the environment that go directly against the interests of the oil industry. "The only way you really deal with it is you've got to look like you've offended somebody," this strategist said.

What troubles some Bush advisers is that the president's standing with the public may hinder his efforts to enact an ambitious agenda on defense and entitlement programs. One official argued that with the passage of the tax cut, near-passage of the education bill and the prospect for other legislative successes, Bush can still point to a record of accomplishment in his first year in office.

But one White House official said that would fall far short of Bush's goal: "His ambition was greater than that. It was to reposition the Republican Party as the party of hope and inclusion and progress for the poor."

Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who, along with Republican Robert Teeter, conducts the polling for NBC and the Wall Street Journal, said there is no simple explanation for Bush's standing, which he described as "mediocre and probably pretty disturbing" to Republicans and the White House.

Hart also questioned whether Bush is a commanding enough leader to pull off the kind of redefinition some Bush advisers are talking about. Arguing that Bush spends too much time poking fun at himself and is less visible than some recent past presidents, Hart said: "The bottom line in all this is that he's become a president where there's less than meets the eye rather than more than meets the eye."

Teeter offered a more positive view of Bush's current situation. "It's not that he's in great shape or in trouble," he said. But Teeter said the implications of public opinion are that stitching together a governing coalition in the current environment will not be easy. "We don't appear to have a unified governing coalition, and that makes it hard to govern," he said. "That's why he's down. If I were them, I wouldn't panic over that."
©2001 By Dan Balz

DeLay Says GOP House Will Goose Step On
By Juliet Eilperin

Facing a Democratic-controlled Senate for the first time since Republicans captured Congress in 1994, House GOP leaders are eschewing any talk of compromise, vowing instead to serve as the conservative bulwark for President Bush's agenda.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and his colleagues, although speaking of the need for bipartisanship, have promised to press ahead with Democratic initiatives on such issues as health care and the minimum wage. Republicans say these measures would encounter fierce resistance in the House.

"Nothing has changed," said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who described Daschle's agenda as "leftist."

"We're not going to stop and worry about the Senate," he said. "We're going to keep moving. As a matter of fact, we're going to speed up."

After spending the past six years driving much of the policy agenda in Washington, House Republicans are still adjusting to the balance of power created by November's election, which left the White House in Republican hands and the Senate evenly divided.

With the Senate returning to Democratic control, albeit by a one-vote margin, many House GOP leaders say they have regained some momentum. They contend they now serve as the president's best chance for advancing his conservative policies.

The decision by Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords to leave the GOP and caucus with the Democrats as an independent "has upped the pressure on the House," said Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.). "We need to be defining the conservative position more and earlier."

Rep. Rob Portman (Ohio), a close Bush ally who is House GOP leadership chairman, said the Republicans should continue to promote their agenda rather than react to proposals from the Senate.

"We need to continue to be the pitcher rather than the catcher," Portman said.

Top Republicans predicted they would push for more tax cuts, for example, even as Daschle has suggested the Senate may attempt to reconsider some provisions in the tax reduction package Bush signed into law last week.

House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) announced on Wednesday the House would take up legislation to make permanent the Bush tax cut, which is slated to expire at the end of 2010.

DeLay warned that the Democrats' goal of boosting the minimum wage would come at a price.

"They want to do a minimum wage?" he asked. "We'll load it up with tax cuts."

But this hard-line strategy could pose risks for House leaders, who still must accommodate more than two dozen GOP moderates in the chamber.

So far this year, the moderates have voted with the leadership, even on such issues as tax cut legislation, ensuring a comfortable majority for Republicans in the chamber in which they hold 221 seats to the Democrats' 210. There are two independents and two seats are vacant.

The impact of Jeffords's defection is unclear, but some moderates warn that the party's predominant conservative wing cannot afford to ignore the changes in the Senate.

"When the tectonic plates shift, you can't be oblivious to that. This is a big deal," said Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.). "Clever leadership in the House needs to recognize the change in leadership in the Senate and modify the strategy accordingly."

New York Rep. Jack Quinn, another Republican moderate, said House leaders "can't afford" to bottle up legislation that comes over from the Senate.

"To try to stonewall the process is detrimental," Quinn said.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has made overtures to Daschle, paying him a courtesy call on Tuesday. In a brief interview last week, Hastert said he welcomed Daschle's calls for bipartisanship.

"I'm certainly willing to be bipartisan, too," Hastert said, adding the public would welcome such a sentiment. "They want this Congress, both House and Senate, to do what's right for the country."

Even so, House Republicans have a decidedly different view from Democrats on how to tackle issues such as prescription drug coverage for the elderly or managed-care reform.

Republicans are wary of establishing an entitlement program for drug benefits under Medicare or allowing patients the right to sue HMOs, as Democrats suggest.

House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts (Okla.) said Republicans outlined their positions in the last Congress and were unlikely to shift their approach this year.

"When they talk about prescription drugs and managed care, I want to say, 'Been there, done that,' " Watts said, adding that during more than six years in Congress, "I can't even think of a time that we did something in the House, or initiated something in the House, based on what they're doing in the Senate."

But even congressional leaders such as DeLay acknowledged that neither Democrats nor Republicans could predict who will have to show more flexibility now that Democrats control the Senate and Republicans the House, and a Republican sits in the Oval Office.

"None of us, in the House or Senate, has ever served under this situation," he said
©2001 Juliet Eilperin

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Gruppenfuhrer Moore,

Congratulations you have just been awarded the Vidkun Quisling Award for 2001. Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling and last year’s winner Volksjudge Antoni (light-fingers) Scalia.

Without your help splitting the young liberal vote and thereby getting the RNC close enough to steal power our Coup D' Etat would have been impossible. With the help of our mutual dear friend and 'Hero of the Revolution' Ralph (Darth) Nader you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account.

Along with this award there will be an Iron Cross 2nd class presented by our glorious Fuhrer Herr Bush at a gala celebration in der Wolf's Lair (formerly Rancho de Bimbo) on 9-03-2001. We salute you Herr Moore! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

Bush Keeps Protecting His Friends In Business
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- Look at it this way: The good news is there's at least one thing about which George W. Bush is consistent. George W. Bush does not believe in doing anything to hurt big business.

He especially doesn't believe in letting anyone sue business. He is opposed to a patients' bill of rights for that reason; he tried to keep the lawyers who won a $17 billion case for the state of Texas from getting their fees for that reason; and tort reform, which is another way of saying you can't sue corporations that injure or kill you or your family, is a burning passion with him.

So it should come as no surprise that the federal government has decided to settle its case against the tobacco companies. According to anti-smoking groups, in the 2000 elections the tobacco companies gave $8 million in campaign contributions, 80 percent of it to Republicans. Bush certainly knew when he appointed John Ashcroft attorney general that Ashcroft was one of the leading senators in stopping anti-smoking legislation in 1998 that would have toughened regulations and increased prices.

Administration officials have been saying they don't think they can win the case, even though one state after another has won, which means the tobacco companies go into settlement negotiations with little reason to pony up. The government was claiming $20 billion in damages for money it has spent on health care for its employees, veterans and those on Medicare with illnesses caused by smoking.

Knowingly making and marketing a poisonous, addictive product could be considered of dubious legality. I fail to see the difference between that and Murder, Inc. (As one who has quit smoking many, many times, I speak with some feeling on the issue.) The idea that smokers have a "choice" about the habit seems to me a legitimate argument: I can't imagine suing a tobacco company because I was stupid enough to start smoking. But an addiction you already have is not a problem that can be solved by just saying no.

The government was suing to recover the cost to everybody else of treating smoking illnesses and would then have used much of the money to educate young people about why they shouldn't smoke. Given the amount the tobacco companies spend on marketing their poison, it makes some sense to have a counter-force out there, unless we all want to continue paying these staggering health costs, while the tobacco companies make billions.

Nothing in the world is easier to make fun of than an overreaching lawyer, but this is not a case of trial lawyers versus big business. It's a case of our right to get recompense when we have been hurt by corporate behavior. I'm not defending lawyers -- though I know some righteous ones. Just the other day, a few Texas lawyers were found to have been keeping quiet about unsafe Firestone tires for a couple of years to guard their clients' interests, possibly costing additional lives. But the patients' bill of rights and tort reform in general are not about the rights of lawyers -- they're about our rights.

The media love to focus on outrageous verdicts, of which we have seen many over the years. What is almost never reported is the nutty verdicts are almost invariably overturned on appeal. The system of civil litigation actually works quite well -- for example, in the famous case of the 81-year-old woman who suffered third-degree burns after spilling a cup of McDonald's coffee on her lap.

The jury first awarded her $2.9 million, after learning that McDonald's had ignored 700 such complaints over the years. But the judgment was reduced to $480,000 on appeal and was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum (she had initially sued for $20,000). And McDonalds no longer heats its coffee to a point that produces third-degree burns, thus improving the public safety.

For hilarious straight talk, I hope you did not miss Bush last week explaining that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did not impose price caps in the West. The official administration line is that this is a "market-based mitigation plan." Herewith Bush's version: "They're not talking about firm price controls. They are talking about mechanism to -- as I understand it, a mechanism to mitigate any severe price spikes that may occur, which is completely different from price controls." Glad he understands it.
©2001 Molly Ivins

Reproductive Shame
By Tally Briggs

Hey! Guess what???? On Tuesday, June 12th, a district court judge ruled that the company Bartell was guilty of sex discrimination for not including birth control measures in the comprehensive health plan it offers to its employees.

Think that's impressive? Are you ready? A flight attendant from American Airlines is having to do the same thing.

We are almost halfway through this first year of the new millennium and (for those of you still under the delusion that it started in 2000, again, take a math class), sexual discrimination is still making headlines. In a recent Los Angeles Times article: House Upholds Ban on Aid to Foreign Abortion Groups From Associated Press: "WASHINGTON -- The House voted today to preserve President Bush’s policy of banning aid to foreign organizations that discuss or advocate abortion rights abroad." …..Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer indicated the president could support the overall bill now that the abortion issue has been resolved "unless there’s something else in there." (WHAT???? Nice thinking there Ari - have you even READ the bill?) "Democrats attacked the policy as detrimental to global family-planning efforts. "The issue here," said Democratic leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri "is do we empower women and families across the globe with the ability to plan for the number of children they will have? Or do we pull the rug out from under these important efforts?"

Again, Gephardt starts the thought with "empowering women". Don't get me wrong, I am all for being "empowered", but by using those words in that way, it again is the WOMAN'S PROBLEM.

Then Last week - Jane Martinson of the Guardian UK writes - "Some US health insurance schemes pay for men to improve their sexual performance while refusing to fund the birth control pill. A court victory for a 27-year-old pharmacist this week is likely to change this iniquity. Women's rights campaigners also believe that the ruling against Bartell Drugs, a Seattle-based pharmacy, could help in their increasingly bitter fight against President Bush and his attacks on birth control." Again - Women's Right's campaigners.

Bush’s fight against birth control is beyond mind boggling, but there is a larger issue here: How is it possible for any insurance company anywhere, to lawfully discriminate in this way? Not only that, but why would they want to? Childbirth, and all the medical care it entails is far more costly than the cost of all forms of birth control. The decision of any company to deny such care is bad business in the strict economic sense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the 21st Century???? How is it then, that we, not only as a country, but a society as a whole, have become so discriminatory when it comes to reproduction? One of Bush’s first actions was to stop funding Planned Parenthood overseas.

NEWS FLASH: All women do not suffer from Immaculate Conception. Yes, that is true, and bears repeating. We, as in females as a collective, and as individuals do NOT get pregnant ALONE. Yes, a woman can CHOOSE to get some anonymous sperm, and become a single parent. But as a species the females cannot reproduce by themselves. We are not Earthworms. Perhaps I am overstating the obvious, and if you are wondering where I am going with this, then you have become sucked into the accepted complacency we have adopted as part of Western Culture: What is accepted by the many, must be ok. Shame on you. Now as for reproduction basics, all, or at least, most of us, learned this in biology class. So here is my question: Why have the females been given, allowed, forced to take on 99 percent of the responsibility? Please don't write and whine that you are a man of conscience, and do not think like this. Good for you. But as you must realize, you are out of the ordinary.

Let me give just a few examples: - Men do not take any form of Birth Control, chemical or implanted. Why? That is the "WOMAN'S Job". Some men DO wear prophylactics, but most only do at the female's insistence, and many would rather swallow glass, never mind the HIV/AIDS factor. Many chose to get vasectomies, but only after they have had all the children they desire. This is great, but hardly addresses the larger issue of taking control of prevention in the long run, as women are expected to do. - Men do not lobby the medical community for a male contraceptive. What for, when women already take them? - Abortion is largely a Woman's Right's issue. Men do not sue for control over their own bodies or reproductive rights. Why should they really, when they aren't in jeopardy of losing them? Think they might if sterilization become mandatory? A male friend of mine recently made a comment when speaking in general terms on this issue, that he felt it unfair that men had so little control after conception. I asked him why he didn't feel the need to take more control BEFORE conception. I know I do. I have been on the Pill since I was 21, and wouldn't dream of relinquishing my control over such an important issue, especially since I cannot count on men to be responsible, even though I have spent many a year not knowing what the highs and lows of my own natural cycle actually feel like.

So why don't men take more control? Why is abortion and reproduction solely a "woman's right's" issue? Are we to believe that men are just out doing their Biblical duty of going forth and multiplying?

If men want more control, they need to take more control of their own reproductive rights. If they don't want to get slapped with a paternity suit or childcare payments, then they need to take more responsibility of their sperm. Do you think that abortion would really be the hot subject if men took an equal responsibility toward reproduction?

It is shameful that a civilization that believes itself to be so advanced can have such a backward outlook on such a basic principle.
©2001 Tally Briggs ... bardgal@yahoo.com

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of Mike Thompson.

Thick As A Brick

Sung to the tune of "Thick As A Brick"
With apologies to Jethro Tull

(instrumental intro)

We would be surprised if Bush thought something out.
His lies but a whisper -- his deafness a SHOUT.
We may hear his schemes but we can't make him think.
His mind's in the gutter -- his fraud's from the drink.
So he hides himself from what is real and
He makes all his corporate deals and
His wise men don't know how Bush feels -- to be thick as a brick.

And the countries real virtues are all swept away in
His right wing destruction.
His moral decay.
The moderates retreat from the hate of the day
As at last they uncover right logic - mangled way.
But his new shoes are worn at the heels show
Those crushed by the rabid weasels and
His wise men don't know how Bush feels --
To be thick as a brick.

And the rights that we have seem so far away:
He's a bad dream that we just have today
And you shake your head and say it's a shame.

Spin us back down the years and the days of his youth.
Draw the lace and black curtains and shut out the whole truth.
Spin us down the long ages: let them sing their song.

See there! A son is born
And they pronounce him fit to fight.
There's a blank head on his shoulders,
And he pees on himself in the night.
GOP makes a man of him
Show him the trade
Teach him
Power monopoly and
To spin their refrain.

Dick Cheney and Colin Powell casting their shadows on us all
As the son plays with the infantry returning from overseas.
The do-er and the thinker; no allowance for the other
As the failing right illustrates their mercenary's creed.
Power trips yearning; the people always toiling
While the bastard of the White House naps away.
Bush, their bills stamping, his empty mind clouding
In a fog and his minions rule the day.
And Dick Cheney lifts his pen while the soldiers sheath their sword.

And the eldest of the family is flaunting his authority.
Builds his castles by the sea,
He dares the liberals to wash them all aside.

The people quietly gazing as the press drones out their drivel
Their heads swelling, mountains out of mole hills, for all to see.
The builders of the rumors, rebuke their age-old purpose
And contemplate our bilking, press whores after their own needs.
The young man of the White House is never at our service and
Has set low expectations - four long years.
The insolent young bastard, thoughts spinning ever faster
Has formed the plan to hide the man he seems.
And Dick Cheney sheaths his pen while the soldiers break their swords.

And the eldest of the family is flaunting his authority.
Coming from across the sea, new challenges for the son,
Puts him on the run.

What will he do when
His old man's gone - do you want to be him?
And his real self sings the song.
Do you want to free him?
No one to help him get up steam
And the whirlpool turns him `way off-beam.

Bush comes down from the upper class to show you rotten days.
His father was a man-of-power whom everyone obeyed.
So come on, all you criminals!
Bush is to spin out hate just like he did with his old man
His four years, long wait.
Your bread and water's going cold.
Your hair is too short and neat.
H'll judge you all and make damn sure that no one judges him.

Bush crushes his foes for fun,
He smiles at everyone,
Just see him stare.
You're unaware that his doings aren't done.
And he laughs most ruthlessly as he tell us what not to be.
But how are we supposed to see where we should run?
We see him shuffle up the courtroom with
His glorified right wingers and
His supply side laddies and
His silver-tongued losers.
Plying Ronald Reagan's case,
He follows the example of the comic-paper idol
Who we let bend the rules.

So!
Come on his childhood hero!
Won't you rise up from the pages of your comic-books
His super crooks
And show us all the way.
Well! Make your will and testament. Won't you?
Join your local government.
We'll have Stupid man for president
Let Cheney save the day.

He put his bet on brother Jeb and he came through every time.
The Democrats have all backed down and they put him first in line.
And so you finally ask yourself just how screwed you are
And take your place in an empty world of bigger moral stars.
And you wonder who to call on.

So! Where the hell was Al Gore when you needed him on election day?
And where were all the reporters who always told the truth?
They're all choking down the hog wash
Writing up their memoirs for a paper-back edition
Of their Boy Scout Manual.

See there! A idiot - and we pronounce him fit for peace.
There's a load lifted from his shoulders with the
discovery of his disease.
Dick'll see the child that's him
Put him to the test
Teach him
To be a wise man
How to fool the rest.

We will be geared to the average rather than the exceptional
God is an overwhelming responsibility
We walked through the maternity ward
And saw 218 women now called felons
Morals on the upgrade
Upgrade? Our grave. Oh, my.

In the clear white circles of the boy wonder,
I take my place with the lord of the hills.
And the blue-eyed soldiers stand slightly discoloured
(in neat little rows)
With their jock-straps pinching, they slouch to attention,
While looking for queenies at the office canteen.
Saying -- how's your honey and
Good old Cheney, he coughed up a tenner from corporate bond wins.
The legends (worded in the ancient tribal hymn) lie cradled
In the seagull's call.
And all the promises they made are ground beneath the sadist's fall.
Dick Cheney and Colin Powell stand behind the gun,
And signal for the crack of dawn.
Light the sun.

Do you believe in the day? Do you?
Believe in the day! The Dawn Creation of the Kings has begun.
Deft Laura (lonely maiden) brings the ageless one.
Do you believe in the day?
The fading hero has returned to the night
And fully pregnant with the day,
Wise men endorse Dick Cheney's sight.
Do you believe in the day? Do you? Believe in the day!

Let me tell you the tales of your life of
Under the gun and the knife
The tireless oppression
The wisdom now stilled
The desire to kill or be killed.
Let me sing of the losers who lie in the street as the
last bus goes by.
The pavements are empty: the gutters run red
While the fool toasts his god in the sky.

So come all ye young men who are building castles!
Kindly state the time of the year
And join your voices in a hellish chorus.
Mark the precise nature of your fear.
Let me help you pick up your dead
As the sins of the father are fed
With the blood of the fools and
The thoughts of the wise and
From the pan under your bed.
Let me make you a present of song as
The wise man breaks wind and is gone while
The fool in the white house is cooking our goose and
Their old tired crime winds along.

So! Come all ye young men who are building castles!
Kindly state the time of the year
And join your voices in a hellish chorus.
Mark the precise nature of your fear.
See! The brother hiding the cast ballots there from you
And the hour of judgement draweth near.
Would you be the fool who stands up to the hammer or
The wiser man who clutches fear?
So! Come on ye childhood heroes!
Won't your rise up from the pages of the comic-books
Just super-crooks and
Show us all their ways.
Well! Make your will and testament.
Won't you? Join your local government.
We'll have Stupid man for president
Let Cheney save the day.

So! Where the hell was Al Gore when you needed him on election day?
And where were all the reporters who always told the truth?
They're all choking down the hog wash
Writing up their memoirs for a paper-back edition
Of their Boy Scout Manual.

But his new shoes are worn at the heels show
Those crushed by the rabid weasels and
His wise men don't know how Bush feels
To be thick as a brick.
New lyrics ©2001 skisics surus … skisics@yahoo.com