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Friday, March 24, 2006 |
What Fiscal Conservatism Means. Andrew Sullivan has been arguing for the past few days that, just because Bush has failed to make sweeping budget cuts during his time in office, doesn't mean that small-government fiscal conservatism has been discredited as an ideology. Strictly speaking, that's accurate, I guess, although I'd like to see more people start discrediting fiscal conservatism, because if a Republican ever came to power who was more willing to cut government programs than George W. Bush, it would be catastrophic.
Just to get beyond numbers here, Rose Aguilar has a good piece in Alternet today that does some reporting on what many of the government discretionary programs that pundits like Sullivan want to cut actually mean for real-life people. Here's an example:
Every month, 80-year-old Sally Shaver pays someone to drive her to the Harvest Hope Food Bank in Columbia, S.C., to pick up a box of fresh produce, baked goods, dry cereals, juice, canned goods and cheese. "It really helps me out because after paying for my rent, phone bill and medication, I barely have enough for food," she says. "If I could work, I would, but I have an artificial knee and a pacemaker, and I can't get around.
Shaver, who worked as a nurse's aide for most of her life, brings in $451 a month in social security. Her fixed income qualifies her for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which is designed to improve the health and nutrition of low-income senior citizens, pregnant women, postpartum mothers, infants and children.
Last year, CSFP provided 536,196 people with a monthly box of food. Bush's proposed budget for 2007 calls for a nationwide elimination of the entire program. Now from reading Sullivan's recent posts, I take it his brand of "fiscal conservatism" would preserve all the "good" programs for the poor[~]perhaps like the one above[~]while cutting all the "bad" stuff, like agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare and entitlements for the middle class and the like. ("[T]he bottom line," writes Sullivan, "is that the middle class and the prosperous elderly are far too pampered by government in this country.")
That's all well and good in theory[~]I'd love to see corporate welfare ended, too[~]but in practice, when "fiscal conservatives" come to power, it's only programs like the CSFP that ever get put on the chopping block, partly because 80-year-old Sally Shaver doesn't have an army of lobbyists working in D.C. That's how fiscal conservatives are always going to operate[~]cut programs for the poor while keeping their grip on power by catering to business interests. There's no "magical" fiscal conservatism that will somehow get voted into office someday and do all the things Sullivan would like to see. [MoJo Blog]
11:56:28 AM 
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Uncle Bucky makes out like a...Bush. George W. Bush's Uncle Bucky (William H.T. Bush), brother of George H.W. Bush, has collected about $1.9 million in cash, plus $800,000 in stocks, from the recent sale of Engineered Support Systems, Inc. ESSI, of which Bush was a director, was sold to DRS Technologies for $1.7 billion at the end of January, after the company experienced record growth from expanded military contracts, most related to activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The contracts, some awarded on a no-bid basis, include a $77-million deal to refit military vehicles with armor for use in Iraq.
Securities and Exchange Commission filings indicate that there are two investigations of ESSI in progress. One involves a stop order from the U.S. government on field generator units. It seems ESSI did not tell its shareholders about the stop order until seven months after it was issued. During that seven month period, several of the company's executives, including William Bush, cashed in millions of dollars worth of stock and stock options.
DRS is not commenting on the investigations (the second one involves an insurance contract), other than to say it is cooperating with SEC officials. [MoJo Blog]
11:29:43 AM
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New Research on Melting Ice Sheets. The current issue of Science Magazine is devoted to ice[~]or, more specifically, the accelerating rate at which the world[base ']s ice sheets are melting. "Glacial earthquakes" have reportedly been rocking Greenland of late, as giant chunks of ice the size of Manhattan, lubricated by melting water, start stumbling into the ocean.
According to the findings in Science, the Earth's temperature by 2100 will probably be at least 4 degrees warmer than it is now, if current warming rates continue. The Arctic Ocean will be warmer than it's been in 130,000 years. Computer models indicate that warming could raise the average temperature in parts of Greenland to above freezing for multiple months, which could have a substantial impact on melting of the polar ice sheets, according to a paper by researchers led by Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. That melting could, in turn, raise the sea level by one to three feet over the next 100 to 150 years.
As Science puts it, "man is doing an experiment with the ice sheets, which is a scientifically interesting experiment, except it is going to have some serious consequences." As a result, island nations could be submerged, cities flooded, and millions of coastal residents could be exposed to destructive storm surges. According to researcher Julian Dowdeswell of Cambridge University, "the changing mass of the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica represents the largest unknown in predictions of global sea level rise over the coming decades," making scientists increasingly concerned that at the rate we[base ']re going, global warming because of greenhouse emissions could raise sea levels to catastrophic proportions. [MoJo Blog]
11:28:42 AM
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New York Times | Secretary of Homeland Insecurity. The editors of the New York Times write: Mr. Chertoff did not chastise the industry for failing to protect their plants adequately. He proposed weak federal safety standards. He did not even fully embrace a recently-introduced bipartisan Senate bill that would create meaningful standards. [t r u t h o u t]
11:25:40 AM
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Specter Lashes Out at Bush Eavesdropping. A vocal Republican critic of the Bush administration's eavesdropping program will preside over Senate efforts to write the program into law, but he was pessimistic Wednesday that the White House wanted to listen. [t r u t h o u t]
11:25:01 AM
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Walter Cronkite | Documentary Sends Warning to Congress. Walter Cronkite writes: Not unlike the Vietnam quagmire on which I reported in 1968, we are today presented with the Iraq quagmire. The threat of world communism has been replaced by international terror as a pretext for another misbegotten and mismanaged war, but the falsehoods, broken promises and withering national faith are too familiar. [t r u t h o u t]
11:24:29 AM
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E.J. Dionne Jr. | In Charge, Except They're Not. E.J. Dionne Jr. writes: Hold on: The president of the United States runs the "big government" he's attacking. This is mysterious. If Bush's "good, hardworking people" aren't responsible for the problem, the villains of the piece must be alien creatures created by some strange beast called Big Government. [t r u t h o u t]
11:23:32 AM
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Bush Say's He's Above the Law Again. When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. [t r u t h o u t]
11:22:52 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.
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