Politics

Thanks, Big Government Conservatives

Lessons From The Medicare Prescription Drug Bill Debate
Despite the fact that the successful Republican-led effort to pass the Medicare prescription drug benefit will saddle American taxpayers with an additional $395 billion over the next decade (and probably several times more than that, given the typical accuracy of government spending projections) in social spending that would make Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson envious, there are a couple of positive outcomes of the vote. First, by turning an initially apparent loss on the supposed 15-minute vote into a victory, after the requisite arm-twisting and log rolling during what turned out to be a record three-hour vote, Republicans revealed how things are really done in Washington, D.C. In a striking similarity to the vote on the USA PATRIOT Act, the House majority’s leadership forced a vote on the monumental legislation in the middle of the night.

Bush: No Probe on WMD Intelligence
WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Friday "I want to know the facts" about any intelligence failures concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged cache of forbidden weapons but he declined to endorse calls for an independent investigation. The issue of an independent commission has blossomed into an election-year problem for the president, with Democrats and Republicans alike supporting the idea.

The Birth of the Neocons
“An invisible government”
Sean McMeekin’s recently published biography of Willi Münzenberg, the man rightly dubbed in the subtitle “Moscow’s propaganda wizard in the West” is a useful addition to the small literature on the all-important subject of media manipulation. It, and the other books on Münzenberg and related subjects, enable us to understand how secret services and covert operations are used to control public access to information, and to influence public opinion for political purposes.

Lawmakers Find 'Failures' in U.S. Intelligence
The House and Senate intelligence committees have unearthed a series of failures in prewar intelligence on Iraq similar to those identified by former weapons inspector David Kay, leading them to believe that CIA analysts and their superiors did not seriously consider the possibility Saddam Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction, congressional officials said.

Bush Seeks Big Jump in Missile Defense Spending
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will ask Congress to boost spending on missile defense by $1.2 billion next year and nearly double funding to modernize the Army in the $401.7 billion U.S. military budget for 2005, according to Pentagon documents released on Friday.

News Flash! No WMDs!
Former chief US – not UN, but US – weapons inspector David Kay has admitted there appear to be no WMDs in Iraq. He believes now that Hussein maybe really did get rid of them over the last several years.

Posted by Editor at January 30, 2004 03:05 PM