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archived: 3 - 9 Apr, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: April 7, 2005 BUSH’S GREENBACK FLU Every TPJ reader should consider the interview comments of Jim Paul, of Global Policy Forum. Paul is stationed at the United Nations and Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, on the price of oil. AMY GOODMAN: Did the invasion of Iraq have any effect?
MICHAEL KLARE: Certainly, it has, because the invasion of Iraq which was supposed to produce greater stability in the Persian Gulf, and therefore facilitate higher levels of output has had the opposite effect. It has promoted instability in the region. It's invited a massive insurgency, which regularly attacks oil facilities and pipelines. And it's led to terrorism and instability in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. So there's no greater stability, and when things become tormented like this, oil deliveries drop.
AMY GOODMAN: There is a lot of blaming of OPEC. Is OPEC in control of this, Jim Paul?
JIM PAUL: I don't think OPEC is in control of it. These are -- as Mike was just saying, these are forces that are much bigger than OPEC. OPEC 's own production is pretty high in terms of its capacity right now. Only Saudi Arabia has a very, very small amount of swing production left; and so I don't think we can blame it on OPEC at all.
AMY GOODMAN: So what's going to happen right now, Michael Klare, around this issue?
MICHAEL KLARE: You're going to see oil and energy become the central political issue of the coming future. I sense as I travel around the country that people in the United States are becoming much more aware of the issue of peak oil that Jim alluded to before, the notion that we're reaching the moment when global oil output will reach its peak or maximum level and then drop, making oil less and less available, more competition, more stress. People are beginning to understand that this will affect everything in America because we're so dependent on oil that it's going to challenge our way of life; and I think people are beginning to understand this. – Democracy Now (emphasis added) Bush and the radical Republicans have offered virtually no polices to curb America’s consumption of oil or lay a plan for higher oil prices. Oil prices are going to rise over the intermediate term into the long term. Alan Greenspan delivered the Republican line this week, telling Americans that the “markets” would adjust the price of oil without government intervention. At the very time that America needs a strong US Dollar, Bush has let our currency devalue to such an extent that the International Monetary Fund is issuing warnings: The international monetary fund sees a threat both to the dollar and to the world economy from continued huge us budgetary and trade deficits and reliance on Asian banks with dollar reserves to cover them. . . .
There is an emerging view among market participants that currency adjustments on their own are insufficient to reduce the global imbalances and that some reduction in growth differentials between the US and several of its major trading partners is needed.
However, market participants are also acutely aware that financing of the US current account deficit --at least for the time being-- hinges, to a certain degree, on willingness of central banks, especially in Asia, to accumulate further dollar assets. Undue delays in addressing the global imbalances through adjustments in domestic policies or any serious doubts about the willingness of central banks to accumulate dollars could spark strong incentives for investors, private and possibly even public, to reduce future dollar purchases or even to reduce their existing dollar holdings.
This, the IMF said, could trigger a further significant decline of the dollar and an increase in US interest rates that might reduce US domestic demand. These developments could lead to weaker economic growth worldwide. – Financial Times The IMF is essentially warning that if foreign governments stop loaning the Bush administration funds to float America’s trade deficit, the US Dollar will continue fall.
SCHIAVO Simplified Living Will If I am diagnosed to be in a vegetative state, with no reasonable chance of recovery, please allow me to expire without DeLay. _____ Junkie: Jacobson’s imaginative work makes a striking point. The creative humor belies a serious reality that this editorial comment makes: The low point in the politicking over Terri Schiavo came last week when the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, threatened the judges who ruled in her case. Saying they had "thumbed their nose at Congress and the president," Mr. DeLay announced that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today." Coming so close to the fatal shooting of one judge in his courtroom and the killing of two family members of another, those words were at best an appalling example of irresponsibility in pursuit of political gain. But they were not an angry, off-the-cuff reaction. Mr. DeLay's ominous statements were a calculated part of a growing assault on the judiciary. Through public attacks, proposed legislation and even the threat of impeachment, ideologues are trying to bully judges into following their political line. Mr. DeLay and his allies have moved beyond ordinary criticism to undermining the separation of powers, not to mention the rule of law. The Schiavo case was the starkest example of their determination to have things their own way, regardless of the constitutional cost. Conservative elected officials and advocates repeatedly attacked the judiciary's right to decide the legal issues. When they were unhappy with the decisions of the Florida state courts, they rushed a bill through Congress that authorized the federal courts to rule on her case, but not on other cases like it. The bill also told the federal courts not to apply the time-honored legal doctrines that might have led them to stay out. When the federal courts took the case but ended up agreeing with Florida's courts, federal judges became the next target. Mr. DeLay issued a veiled threat, saying: "Congress for many years has shirked its responsibility to hold the judiciary accountable. No longer." Asked whether the House would consider impeachment charges against the judges involved, he responded, "There's plenty of time to look into that." Several bills pending in Congress seek to tell the courts how do their jobs. House Republicans have introduced a resolution declaring that international law should not be taken into account in interpreting the Constitution, something the Supreme Court did just last month in striking down the death penalty for offenders younger than 18. Last year, during a controversy over the "Ten Commandments judge" in Alabama, Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, introduced a bill to bar the federal courts from applying the First Amendment when officials cross the boundaries between church and state.
Last week, Judge Stanley Birch Jr., a conservative member of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, declared that in the Schiavo case, "the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people - our Constitution." Judge Birch is right, but he should not be such a lonely voice. The founders established a system of government in which the three branches - legislative, executive and judicial - act as checks and balances for one another. Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration, unhappy with some rulings of the judiciary, are trying to write it out of its constitutional role. The courts will not always be popular; they will not even always be right. But if Congress succeeds in curtailing the judiciary's ability to act as a check on the other two branches, the nation will be far less free. Which leads to the point – the Bush administration’s threat to constitutional democracy in the United States. It is a point that Dr. Steven Jonas makes in compelling fashion in his TPJ section today in “THE SCHIAVO CASE AND THE LOCUS OF THE ‘POLICE POWER’” Simply a must read. _____________________________________________ UPDATED: April 5, 2005 BUSH’S GREENBACK FLU Still not a word from our President: Oil prices hit all-time nominal highs on Monday, despite attempts by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to stem the rally.
The price of oil has moved more than $3 a barrel higher since last Thursday when investment bank Goldman Sachs released a report saying oil prices might have entered a “super-spike” period that could drive them towards $105 a barrel as demand outstrips capacity.
Adding to concerns were reports that the International Energy Agency is preparing a warning this month that oil-importing countries should implement emergency oil-saving policies if supplies fall by as little as 1m-2m barrels a day. This was much lower than the 6m b/d agreed in the treaty that founded the energy watchdog back in the 1970s. – Financial Times (emphasis added) PRICELESS!
An interesting perspective of the Schiavo case. Living Will is the Best Revenge
Robert Friedman,
Alternatively, a briefer, yet no less poignant directive:
____________________________________ _____________________________________________ BUSH’S GREENBACK FLU Energy prices are high and going higher. The Goldman Sachs warning that oil could top $100.00 a barrel has alarming implications for every American. IF oil approaches that price, the economy will suffer a profound shock: New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in May, jumped to an all-time closing high of 57.25 dollars a barrel, up 1.87 from Thursday's close.
Prices hit an all-time intraday high of 57.70 dollars in afternoon trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
London's Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in May surged 2.22 dollars to a new record high of 56.51 dollars a barrel, topping the March 17 record of 56.15 dollars.
Oil prices, underpinned in recent days by worries about a lack of US refining capacity and a Goldman Sachs study that forecast crude could top 100 dollars per barrel, got a further lift from news of a shutdown at Venezuela's Paraguana refinery, the largest in the world, due to electrical problems. -- Yahoo (emphasis added) Bush remains virtually silent – and the silence is deafening. It is “free market” Republican economic philosophy and Bush will simply not interfere. Bush’s silence and acquiesce is taking a toll on Americans. The economic news this week paints a picture that no “frame” can conceal: The US economy generated 110,000 jobs in March, the government said in a report sharply weaker than economists' forecasts and suggesting cooling economic momentum. The Labor Department figure was half as strong as the 220,000 new jobs expected, on average, by Wall Street economists, and the weakest pace since July. – Yahoo (emphasis added) Readers should recall that it takes 150,000 new jobs each month just to accommodate new workers entering the work force. With prices one-third higher than they were five years ago, the cost of fuel is turning into a dull, but persistent, backache for the American economy. It's not crippling but is certainly noticeable. While the bigger expense doesn't impoverish most people, it drains dollars from their wallets -- dollars that might get spent on other things.
''I don't think it's going to send either the California economy or the nation into a recession,'' said state chief economist Howard Roth. ''But it certainly could slow the growth of the economy.'' – Monterey County Herald Bush is imposing a heavy tax on every American, a tax far greater than the average tax cuts Republicans allotted average Americans. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, admits that higher energy prices acts as a tax: ``Energy is one of those things that is holding back global growth,'' Treasury Secretary John Snow said yesterday. ``It acts as a tax on everyone because you have less disposable income available.'' – Bloomberg If many Americans have not yet gotten the point of what Bush’s economic policies are doing, the former prime minister of Malaysia states the point perfectly: Mahathir Mohamad, has launched into a swingeing [sic] attack on US president George W. Bush and warned that the global economy was heading for a catastrophe with the dollar in danger of imminent collapse.
Mahathir claimed that the only reason the US dollar was keeping its value was because of a widespread fear of global meltdown if it collapsed.
According to a report in today's Taipei Times, the only way to avert such a meltdown in the value of the US dollar was if the Americans replaced George W. Bush with a "more responsible president". Replacing US presidents isn't that simple, we suspect.
The former prime minister suggested one answer to the impending doom was to switch from dollars to a gold standard for international trade. Companies should start demanding that payments be made in Euros, or that US dollar payments should be at the Euro rate. – The Inquirer (emphasis added) BOLTON TPJ contributing author, Dr. Steven Jonas has an exceptional analysis on his TPJ current page of Bush’s nomination of Bolton to the UN, “JOHN BOLTON AND THE NUCLEAR OPTION.” If you have not read Dr. Jonas’ piece, it is a must read. Fifty-nine former American diplomats have issued a call to Congress to decline Bolton’s confirmation. The diplomats, both Republican and Democrats: "He is the wrong man for this position," they said in a letter to Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Indiana Republican has scheduled hearings on Bolton's nomination for April 7.
"We urge you to reject that nomination," the former diplomats said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press and dated Tuesday. . . .
Their criticism dwelled primarily on Bolton's stand on issues as the State Department's senior arms control official. They said he had an "exceptional record" of opposing U.S. efforts to improve national security through arms control.
But the former diplomats also chided Bolton for his "insistence that the U.N. is valuable only when it directly serves the United States."
That view, they said, would not help him negotiate with other diplomats at the United Nations. . . .
They ticked off a number of treaties they said Bolton had opposed and said he had made "unsubstantiated claims" that Cuba and Syria were working on biological weapons.
Also, they said Bolton had worked as a paid researcher for Taiwan and supported recognition of it as a sovereign state, and said he was skeptical of U.N. peacekeeping operations.
"Given these past actions and statements, John R. Bolton cannot be an effective promoter of the U.S. national interest at the U.N.," the former diplomats concluded. "We urge you to oppose his nomination." – Yahoo In an encouraging sign, it appears Democrats will unite to oppose the nomination: Democrats are likely to vote unanimously against John Bolton when his nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations comes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next week, according to Democratic and Republican lawmakers and aides.
It would mark the first time committee Democrats unanimously opposed a Bush diplomatic nominee and would put the nomination in peril if Republicans defected to vote against him. – Chicago Tribune Democrats should be encouraging every Senator to vote no and filibuster is necessary. REPUBLICANS HOSTAGE The multifaceted lessons of the Terri Schiavo case continue to become apparent. Former Republican Senator James Danforth cogently observed of his own Party: "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians." . . . "High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms Schiavo, including departures from Republican principles ... can rightfully be interpreted as yielding to the pressure of religious power blocs[.]" -- Guardian Unlimited TPJ readers may recall that Danforth is an ordained minister who Pres. Reagan selected to officiate at his state funeral. The Republican Party is a hostage to the theocratic right. The question for America is whether we can save constitutional democracy.
Last Update: 03/27/2006 |