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Politics
Bush and the Environment: Four More Years
"Environmentalists See Trouble Ahead" -- John Heilprin (AP) in The Washington Post, 11/30/04:
WASHINGTON - Environmentalists see some of their worst fears playing out as President Bush moves to cement a second-term agenda that includes getting more timber, oil and gas from public lands and relying on the market rather than regulation to curb pollution.
Bush's top energy priority - opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling - is shaping up as an early test of GOP gains in Congress.
"This is going to be a definitional battle, and we're ready," said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters.
Though the election didn't emphasize such issues, administration officials believe the results validated their belief that many environmental decisions are better made by the marketplace, landowners and state and local governments.
James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the administration will continue a "partnership with the oil and gas sector" but also will work with conservation organizations - as long as they are "willing to engage constructively on defining priorities and practices in domestic production."
Bush's environmental priority is to rewrite the Clean Air Act to set annual nationwide limits on three major air pollutants from power plants and to allow marketplace trading of pollution rights rather than regulation to meet those goals.
He does not plan to change his mind on his rejection of the Kyoto international climate treaty that would impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions. "Kyoto's unworkable," Connaughton said. . . .
Republicans in Congress plan to re-examine other landmark 1970s laws: the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, and the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.
One area where environmentalists and the White House could find agreement is ocean issues. The administration is looking at setting catch quotas for individual fish species, new protections for fragile coral reefs and ecosystem-based management of rivers and streams, Connaughton said.
Some huge regional issues also will get attention. They include restoring the Florida Everglades, aiding the recovery of Pacific Northwest salmon, improving water quality in the Great Lakes and dealing with drought in the West and coastal erosion in Louisiana.
The administration put off until after the election a final decision on a plan to allow road building and logging on 58 million acres of remote forests where both are now banned.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton's agency is rewriting 162 plans for managing about one of every 10 acres in the United States. The decisions will affect whether wildlife protections or new oil and gas drilling projects are favored. Norton wants to give local governments more say.
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Congress Is Busted
"Hastert Launches a Partisan Policy" -- Charles Babington in The Washington Post, 11/27/04:
In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.
Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.
Senators from both parties, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and others have sharply criticized the policy. The long-debated intelligence bill would now be law, they say, if Hastert and his lieutenants had been humble enough to let a high-profile measure pass with most votes coming from the minority party.
That is what Democrats did in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."
Such bipartisan spirit in the Capitol now seems a faint echo. Citing the increased marginalization of Democrats as House bills are drafted and brought to the floor, Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) said, "It's a set of rules and practices which the Republicans have taken to new extremes."
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No Intelligence Reform Bill
"Intelligence Overhaul Bill Blocked" -- Charles Babington and Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 11/21/04:
Long-debated legislation to dramatically reshape the nation's intelligence community collapsed in the House yesterday, as conservative Republicans refused to embrace a compromise because they said it could reduce military control over battlefield intelligence and failed to crack down on illegal immigrants.
The impasse, which caught congressional leaders by surprise, was a blow to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and others who had personally asked House conservatives to accept the measure proposed by House-Senate negotiators early yesterday. It also marked a major setback for the Sept. 11 commission -- whose July report triggered a drive toward overhauling the nation's intelligence operations -- and for many relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The sidetracked bill would have created a director of national intelligence and a counterterrorism center, along with scores of other changes to the nation's approach to gathering intelligence and battling terrorism. The measure would have given the new intelligence chief authority to set priorities for the Central Intelligence Agency and 14 other agencies that gather intelligence, including several at the Defense Department. Hastert refused to call the proposal dead, saying Congress may reconvene Dec. 6 to try again, although lawmakers had planned to close out the 108th Congress this weekend.
Even some key Republicans, however, said prospects appear slim for producing a compromise that the House and Senate can pass. "I don't now see a process for which we can get this done in the next few weeks," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee and the House's top GOP negotiator.
Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the committee's top Democrat, said, "I think those who are vehemently opposed are not going to come around." She said it is up to Bush, Hastert and other GOP leaders to overcome the House conservatives' resistance. If a bill is not enacted by year's end, efforts would have to start anew in the 109th Congress that convenes in January.
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The Republican Spending Bill
"$388 Billion Bill Is Show of GOP Power" -- Alan Fram in The Chicago Sun-Times, 11/21/04:
WASHINGTON -- Republicans whisked a $388 billion spending bill through Congress on Saturday, a mammoth measure that underscores the dominance of deficit politics by curbing dollars for everything from education to environmental cleanups.
The House approved the measure 344-51 margin, while Senate passage was by 65-30. . . .
From its tight domestic spending to the Democratic-backed provisions on overtime and other issues that were dropped, the bill is a monument to the GOP's raw power controlling the White House and Congress.
Even Bush's initiatives were not immune to cuts as the bill's GOP chief authors heeded his demands to control spending. His request for development of new nuclear weapons was rejected; his budget for the AmeriCorps volunteer program was sliced 12 percent, and the $2.5 billion he wanted to aid countries adopting democratic practices was slashed by $1 billion.
Passage would crown the lame-duck session of Congress, which began Tuesday. Lawmakers hoped to leave town for the year Saturday night, but Senate delays on the spending bill and the collapse of bargaining over a measure reorganizing U.S. intelligence agencies left timing in doubt.
Also enacted during the post-election session was an $800 billion increase in the government's borrowing limit. The measure was yet another testament to record annual deficits, which reached $413 billion last year and are expected to climb indefinitely.
Congress made it a little easier for hospitals, insurers and other to refuse to provide or cover abortions. A provision in the bill would block any of the measure's money from going to federal, state or local agencies that act against health care providers and insurers because they don't provide abortions, make abortion referrals or cover them.
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Congress Is Broken
"Republicans Red-Faced over Measure Allowing Tax Returns to Be Disclosed without Penalty" -- Matt Yancey (AP) in The Boston Globe, 11/20/04:
Congress passed legislation Saturday giving two committee chairman and their assistants access to income tax returns without regard to privacy protections, but not before red-faced Republicans said it was all a mistake and would be swiftly repealed.
The Senate unanimously adopted a resolution immediately after passing a 3,300-word spending bill containing the measure, saying the provision ''shall have no effect.'' House leaders promised to pass the resolution next Wednesday.
''We're going to get that done,'' said John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
The spending bill covering most federal agencies and programs will not be sent to President Bush until the House acts on the resolution repealing the tax returns language.
''There will be no window where this will be law,'' Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said. He referred to the provision as the Istook amendment and congressional aides said it was put in the bill at the request of Rep. Ernest Istook Jr., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's transportation subcommittee.
The provision and the inability of Hastert, R-Ill., to get the votes he wanted on an intelligence overhaul bill left Republican leaders chagrinned on a day they had intended to be a celebration of their accomplishments.
''This is a serious situation,'' said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. ''Neither of us were aware that this had been inserted in this bill,'' he said, referring to himself and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla.
Questioned sharply by fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Stevens pleaded with the Senate to approve the overall spending bill despite the tax returns language.
But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said that wasn't good enough. ''It becomes the law of the land on the signature of the president of the United States. That's wrong.''
Conrad said the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it.
Stevens, who repeatedly apologized for what he characterized as an error, took offense at Conrad's statement. ''It's contrary to anything that I have seen happen in more than 30 years on this committee,'' he said.
Pounding on his desk, Stevens said he had given his word and so had Young that neither would use the authority to require the IRS to turn over individual or corporate tax returns to them. ''I would hope that the Senate would take my word. I don't think I have ever broken my word to any member of the Senate.''
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A Conservation Consensus
"It's Easy Being Green" -- Will Rogers in The New York Times, 11/20/04:
Though nobody seemed to notice, Republican and Democratic voters seemed to be of similar minds on one issue this election: the environment. Across the country, in red states and blue states, Americans voted decisively to spend more money for natural areas, neighborhood parks and conservation in their communities. Of 161 conservation ballot measures, 120 - or 75 percent - were approved by voters. Three-and-a-quarter billion dollars were dedicated to land conservation.
In Florida, for example, President George W. Bush won at least 60 percent of the vote in Lake, Indian River and Collier Counties. On the same ballot, more than two-thirds of the voters in each of those counties approved local park bonds worth $126 million, by margins as high as 73 percent. In Gallatin County, Mont., where the president beat John Kerry by 56 percent to 41 percent, 63 percent of voters approved $10 million in bonds to buy conservation easements to preserve ranchlands. In Chesterfield County, Va., which Mr. Bush carried 63 percent to 37 percent, voters passed a $20 million park bond by 76 percent to 24 percent.
It was the same in the states where Mr. Kerry prevailed. In Massachusetts, 10 townships approved extra taxes to support conservation and historic preservation. In Los Angeles, which Mr. Kerry won by 73 percent to 26 percent, 76 percent of voters approved a $500 million water-quality bond that included $100 million for conservation. And in both Burlington, Vt., where Mr. Kerry won 75 percent of the vote, and in Kendall County, Tex., where the president won 81 percent of the vote, voters approved $5 million to protect open spaces.
So what's the story? Simply put, these measures unify Americans. It's hard to be against new parks and trails, or to disagree with wanting to protect farms and forests from development. What's more, voters have learned that these measures often provide local solutions to water-quality problems: preserving natural lands in watersheds can help protect drinking water sources or reduce storm-water runoff.
It helps that success is contagious. For example, more than a decade ago, New Jersey created a program to provide extra money to local communities that had approved measures to raise money for local conservation programs. The program has enjoyed sustained support from Republican and Democratic legislators and governors. Now, every county in New Jersey has a program to finance land conservation, along with more than 200 of the state's cities, townships and boroughs.
True, this year's election didn't turn on environmental issues. But the voters sent a message anyway: whether we're red or blue, we all have a little bit of green in us.
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Ohio Recount Goes Forward
"Lawyers Say They'll Challenge Election Results" -- Andrew Welsh-Huggins (AP) in the Canton Repository, 11/20/04:
COLUMBUS -- Lawyers who have been documenting voting day problems in Ohio say they’ll challenge the results of the presidential election as soon as the vote is official.
The lawyers say documented cases of long lines, a shortage of machines and a pattern of problems in predominantly black neighborhoods are enough evidence to bring such a challenge.
"The objective is to get to the truth," said Cliff Arnebeck, a lawyer who said he’ll represent voters who cast ballots Nov. 2. Arnebeck said the effort is bipartisan.
"What’s critically important, whether it’s President Bush or Sen. Kerry, whoever’s been actually elected, is to know you won by an honest election," he said. "So it’s in the interest of both sides as American citizens to know the truth and to have this answered."
Ohio Republican Party chairman Bob Bennett said it was a joke that the effort was being billed as bipartisan.
"This is nothing but an absurd attempt by a handful of radical front groups to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Bush presidency. The election is over, the Democrats have conceded and the outcome will not change," Bennett said in a statement.
"This is an egregious waste of time and taxpayer money. It’s time to move on."
More than 200 people in Columbus voiced their complaints Nov. 13 about voting problems on Election Day, some accusing the state of voter suppression. Many were Kerry supporters.
A similar hearing was scheduled Friday in Cleveland.
The Columbus hearing was organized by Robert Fitrakis, a lawyer and political science professor at Columbus State Community College, who is also involved in filing the challenge.
"The sworn statements that we’ve received should give everyone cause to go forward in terms of this inquiry," Fitrakis said.
Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell will certify the election results by Dec. 6, spokesman Carlo LoParo said Friday.
A ruling in favor of the challenge could lead to a recount or even having the results set aside, although Arnebeck hinted that such an event was unlikely.
A statewide recount of the presidential vote is already inevitable because a pair of third-party candidates said they have collected enough money to pay for it.
Libertarian Michael Badnarik and the Green Party’s David Cobb said Monday they raised more than $150,000 in four days, mostly in small contributions. Ohio law requires payment of $10 per precinct for a recount, or $113,600 statewide.
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Charming Superstition
"X = Not a Whole Lot" -- John Allen Paulos in The Guardian, 11/18/04:
Excuse my mathematician's obsession with coin flips, but consider this. There is a large bloc of people who will vote for the Republican candidate no matter what, and a similarly reliable Democratic bloc of roughly the same size. There is also a smaller group of voters who either do not have fixed opinions or are otherwise open to changing their vote.
To an extent, these latter people's votes (and thus elections themselves) are determined by chance (external events, campaign gaffes, etc).
So what conclusion would we draw about a coin that landed heads two or three times out of four flips (or about a sequence of two or three Democratic victories in the last four elections)? The answer, of course, is that we would draw no conclusions at all.
One reason we tend to draw far-reaching conclusions about elections is the charming superstition that significant events must be the consequence of significant events.
This psychological foible is illustrated by an experiment in which a group of subjects is told that a man parked his car on a hill. It then rolled into a fire hydrant. A second group is told that the car rolled into a pedestrian.
The members of the first group generally view the event as an accident; the members of the second generally hold the driver responsible. People are more likely to attribute an event to an agent than to chance if it has momentous or emotional implications. Likewise with elections.
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Bush Second-Term Tax Agenda
"Bush Plans Tax Code Overhaul" -- Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum in The Washington Post, 11/18/04:
The Bush administration is eyeing an overhaul of the tax code that would drastically cut, if not eliminate, taxes on savings and investment, but it is unlikely to try to replace the existing tax code with a single flat income tax rate or a national sales tax, according to several sources familiar with ongoing tax deliberations. . . .
To shepherd through its second-term agenda, the administration is seeking new muscle for its economic team. President Bush's top economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, will likely be leaving early next year, as will his economic policy director, Stephen Friedman.
White House officials are pursuing prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist James Poterba to replace Mankiw at the Council of Economic Advisers, according to several White House economic advisers. Tim Adams, the policy director of Bush's reelection campaign, is a top candidate for Friedman's job, but he has also been mentioned as a deputy White House chief of staff for policy or deputy Treasury secretary.
John F. Cogan, an economist at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a veteran of the first Bush administration, may be called on to help push through Social Security changes. Princeton University economist Harvey S. Rosen briefed Bush last week on tax overhaul options and may be named executive director of the soon-to-be-named bipartisan panel on tax reform.
The personnel changes may be crucial if Bush hopes to realize his twin goals of overhauling both the Social Security and tax systems, advisers say.
"This will all be a function of personnel," said one economic policy adviser and former White House aide.
Pamela F. Olson, a former Bush Treasury official in close contact with administration tax planners, said the president will pursue a tax system where all income -- whether from wages, dividends, capital gains or interest -- is taxed only once. That would mean eliminating taxes on dividends and capital gains paid out of fully taxed corporate profits. Most investment gains are currently taxed at 15 percent.
The administration will also push hard for large savings accounts that could shelter thousands of dollars of deposits each year from taxation on investment gains, according to White House economic advisers who have been involved with the planning. And any tax reform, according to Treasury Department officials, would likely eliminate the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax designed to ensure that the rich pay income taxes but one that increasingly ensnares the middle class.
To pay for those large tax cuts, the administration is looking at eliminating both the deduction for state and local taxes, and the business tax deduction for employer-sponsored health insurance. That would raise nearly $926 billion over five years, according to White House and congressional documents.
Eliminating the state and local tax deduction, for example, would allow the administration to scuttle the alternative minimum tax and raise an extra $400 billion over 10 years, said Leonard E. Burman, a tax policy expert at the Urban Institute. That would be twice what the White House needs to fund the planned tax-free savings accounts, expanded retirement savings accounts and tax-free health savings accounts.
The tax panel will be given roughly six months to make recommendations, according to administration officials. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow would then come up with his own plan before the end of next year. That would give Bush all of 2006 to press Congress to enact the reforms, making the whole effort a two-year process.
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Florida Election Fraud Investigations
"Watchdog Group Seeks Volusia Vote Tallies" -- Christine Girardin in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, 11/18/04:
DELAND -- An activist group investigating possible irregularities in the Nov. 2 election requested copies of all Volusia County voter tallies Wednesday.
It took county elections employees most of the day to complete the job, started at the request of Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.
The watchdog organization, based in Seattle, is gathering similar records from at least three other counties around Florida -- information that may lead to an election challenge, Harris said.
Harris also wants to examine each ballot from up to 50 precincts in Volusia County, to see whether election totals match voter tallies on polling place tapes.
It is these receipt-like documents that Harris sought copies of Wednesday. However, by 6 p.m., after the office had closed, Harris had not returned to pick up the copies, Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe said.
The documents show a printed record of each ballot fed into 179 optical scanning machines used in the election.
Harris went to the Department of Elections' warehouse on State Road 44 in DeLand on Tuesday to inspect original Nov. 2 polling place tapes, after being given a set of reprints dated Nov. 15. While there, Harris saw Nov. 2 polling place tapes in a garbage bag, heightening her concern about the integrity of voting records.
Lowe confirmed Wednesday some backup copies of tapes from the Nov. 2 election were destined for the shredder. She added that originals were still available for Harris, or anyone else, to see. It is those polling place tapes that were copied and provided Wednesday to Black Box Voting for about $125.
'She's not wanting to listen to an explanation. She has her own ideas," Lowe said of Harris.
Lowe said to provide a backup voting record, she routinely asks poll workers to print two polling place tapes on election night. One tape is delivered in one car along with the ballots and a memory card. The backup tape is delivered to the elections office in a second car. Poll workers sign both copies of the tapes, Lowe said.
Harris said she's concerned the tallies might not match up with voter ballots or the memory cards used in the optical scanning machines. She declined to identify which precinct ballots she wants to examine and what led her to choose those precincts, but said many appear to be in minority-dominated precincts.
"I won't give out everything until I've documented it, and with other sources," said Harris, a long-standing critic of electronic voting systems and author of a book about the role they played in the 2000 election. She said her group is looking at election results nationwide.
Harris said she chose to pull records in Volusia County, in part, due to an Election Office computer glitch in 2000 that subtracted 16,000 votes from Democratic candidate Al Gore.
"'Stinking Evidence' of Possible Election Fraud Found in Florida" -- Thom Hartmann at Commondreams.org, 11/18/04.
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