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May 8, 2003 Update

                               BUSH (TUMBLE WEED) TO THE STATES – DROP DEAD! 

            Over the past several weeks The Political Junkies (TPJ) has highlighted a number of stories about the dire economic condition of the states.  TPJ – TW’s Economy; TPJ – Destroying America From Within  The most recent news confirms that the economy is staggering.  Consider the following:

       “The number of job cuts announced in April soared 71 percent from March, marking the highest monthly number of layoffs since November, according to a survey released Monday. Announced job cuts jumped to 146,399 last month from 85,396 in March, said Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm. The public sector shed the most jobs 57,927 accounting for 40 percent of the month's total, as state and local governments continued to trim their work forces amid large budget shortfalls.” – Boston.com

       “A spreading fiscal crisis at the state and local government level in the United States is having a measurable effect on the national economy, analysts say. Spending habits rooted in the giddy times of the 1990s have clashed with falling tax revenues and now 47 out of 50 state governments face budget deficits in the current fiscal year. States are facing a 'perfect storm': deteriorating tax bases, an explosion in health care costs and a virtual collapse of capital gains and corporate profit tax revenues, the National Association of State Budget Officers said recently.” – Reuters

            What is TW’s response?  Not only is TW unwilling to assist the states with financial aid – TW is actually off loading more federal programs onto the states when they can least afford it. “Bruce Katz, director of urban and metropolitan studies for the Brookings Institution, has charted decades of federal urban policy; he says he's seen nothing quite like Bush's approach. ‘It's really quite striking; they are pushing more and more responsibilities down on to states in an almost cavalier fashion,’ he said. ‘The Bush administration is fundamentally indifferent to the fiscal crisis of the cities and states.’ – Washington Post

            Another view is that TW and the neoconservatives know exactly what they are doing as a political strategy.  TW and the rolling neoconservative review are off loading federal social programs onto the states realizing that the states will have to drastically cut these programs because of the lack of funds.  Consider the Section 8 housing program.  “[TW[ proposes to replace the $13 billion Section 8 housing voucher program -- the country's main form of housing assistance for the poor -- with one that the states would run. The federal government would provide a lump sum payment to the states each year, but it has offered no assurances that enough federal funding will follow to keep the program whole. Federal officials already whisper their hope that hard-pressed state officials might prune back this "entitlement" program in the future.” – Washington Post

            The Department of Homeland Security and TW’s Leave No Child Behind education program are also examples.  Junkies should recall that Senator Edward Kennedy and TW joined together to lead the fight for the Leave No Child Behind program.  It was a rare moment of cooperation between TW and a leading liberal Democrat.  The political “marriage” ended in a nasty divorce.  Soon after the legislation was enacted, TW backed out of his agreement to fully fund the program which angered Kennedy.  Ultimately, the states were left with the responsibility of meeting the mandates of the act with inadequate funding. “State Sen. Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, chuckles at such terms.”This is trickle-down economics without the trickle," she said. "It's just mandates without money." – Washington Post

            “Conservatives, not least many within the Bush administration, don't argue this point. They say squeezing states and cities will produce better services for less -- or force them to turn to the private sector.  . . .  "It's fair to ask how you provide federal aid without being fiscally irresponsible," says Katz. "But it's odd and ahistorical to do nothing for the states and not expect it to hurt the national economy.   . . .  So maybe the cautionary lesson is that cities and states can drop nearly dead, and if and when that happens, the rest of us feel the pain.” – Washington Post

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May 6, 2003 Update

                               OMAHA SAGE PANS TUMBLE WEED  

                Warren Buffett is the second richest man in America.  He is head of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the biggest business conglomerates in the United States.  Because of his years of success, Buffett is called the “Sage of Omaha.”   Buffett is certainly no “bleeding” liberal. – Times Online

                Buffett assailed Bush’s (aka Tumble Weed’ = TW’s) tax cut plan at the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.  Buffett warned shareholders that TW’s tax cuts “were designed to fleece the poor and reward the rich.  ‘I am not for the Bush plan. It screams of injustice. The main beneficiaries will be people like me and Charlie,’ he said, referring to the Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman Charlie Munger. Mr Buffett said the tax plan was equivalent to ‘us giving a lesser percentage of our incomes to Washington than the people working in our shoe factories.’”

                 Buffett also attacked another mainstay of TW’s political repertoire – law suits against corporations.  “When asked about the increase in dubious litigation in the US, Mr Buffett acknowledged the problem but seemed more concerned about the growing number of plaintiffs with a genuine grievance against a US corporation.”

                Finally, Buffett urged the shareholders to revolt against the excessive pay that corporate executives receive.  His reasoning is that “in the past 20 years there had been “an enormous disparity in the rates of compensation between people at the top and people at the bottom, and a disconnect between people at the top and the shareowners who give them the money.” 

                Buffett’s attack on TW’s policies comes during another week of horrid economic news. “The nation's unemployment rate swelled to 6 percent in April, returning to an eight-year high as employers slashed payrolls even deeper. The ailing economy has lost a half million jobs in three months. The rate was up two-tenths of a percentage point from March, with payrolls falling by 48,000, the Labor Department reported Friday. The bottom line: Employers are handing out pink slips, not job offers, and that's not likely to change soon.” – New York Times

                A few quick facts highlight the terrible state of the economy.  “Marijuana, pornography and illegal labor have created a hidden market in the United States which now accounts for as much as 10% of the American economy, according to a study. As a cash crop, marijuana is believed to have outstripped [corn], and hardcore porn revenue is equal to Hollywood's domestic box office takings.  Despite laws that punish marijuana cultivation more strictly than murder in some states, Americans spend more on illegal drugs than on cigarettes. And despite official disapproval of pornography, the US leads the world in export of explicit sex videos, according to Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser. – Guardian Unlimited  

                As one analyst observed, even if TW’s tax cut plan passes and creates the 1.4 million jobs TW claims it will [an assertion that is highly contested by economists] “1.4 million jobs in 18 months isn't many jobs, and it isn't much growth. By historical standards, when it comes to job creation, Bush is shaping up to be more like Herbert Hoover than Ronald Reagan. He stands to preside over the first presidency since Hoover's in which the American economy lost jobs.”  Every Junkie needs to simply needs to “pass” the word!