The Political Junkies

The spin masters claiming a “disaster” point to (a) two Democratic Party victories for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey; (b) the defeat of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s ballot propositions in California and (c) the defeat of an anti-discrimination law in Maine. Even Larry Sabato of the Chrystal Ball, a highly respected publication, oozes euphoria:

"It really is a disaster for Bush," said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, who called the results "the logical consequence of Bush's growing unpopularity."

"Virginia is Southern and conservative and that's the Republican base," Sabato said. "If they start losing their base, it's easy to imagine both houses of Congress going Democratic." – Yahoo News

A more in depth analysis puts the solid Kaine into better perspective. Governor-elect Kaine indeed won Virginia; 51.74% to 46.01% (third party candidate got approximately 2%). The margin of victory for the Democrats was larger than most of the polls had predicted. Bush campaigned once in the State in an attempt to rally the Republican base. His appearance was obviously not enough.

But Virginia also had statewide elections for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. Both races were close, but REPUBLICANS appear to have won both races.

Office: Lieutenant Governor
Precincts Reporting: 2423 of 2426 (99.88%) Registered Voters: 4,451,072 Total Voting: 1,934,309 Voter Turnout: 43.46 %
Candidates	Party	Vote Totals	Percentage
W T Bolling	Republican	976,625	50.49%
L L Byrne	Democratic	953,931	49.32%
Write Ins		3,753	0.19

Office: Attorney General
Precincts Reporting: 2423 of 2426 (99.88%) Registered Voters: 4,451,072 Total Voting: 1,938,309 Voter Turnout: 43.55 %
Candidates	Party	Vote Totals	Percentage
R F McDonnell	Republican	969,117	50.00%
R C Deeds	Democratic	967,532	49.92%
Write Ins		1,660	0.09%

Virginia also had elections for its House of Delegates. In the 100 member Virginia House of Delegates, Republicans lost two seats with Democrats picking up one seat and an Independent winning one seat. Republicans still control the chamber; 58 Republicans (-2), 39 Democrats (+1) and 3 Independents (+1).

Looking at all of the contests, it appears that Democrats did well, but it would be difficult for one to conclude that Virginia voters were repudiating the Republican Party generally.

Democrat Jon Corzine was elected Governor of New Jersey, defeating Republican Douglas R. Forrester by a decisive 10-point margin, 53%-43%. The margin, again, was a bit better than most polls predicted.

New Jersey also elected its General Assembly, which Democrats have controlled. The Democrats picked up a net of 2 seats out of 80 contests. Democrats now have a 49 to 31 majority.

Again, looking at all of the contests, it was a good night for Democrats in New Jersey. Yet, one cannot conclude that the Republican Party, even in the traditionally “blue” New Jersey, collapsed.

Perhaps the sweetest victory of the night for Democrats came in California. The Democratic Party, labor unions, teachers and nurses led the charge to defeat every proposition sponsored by the Governor. In his concession speech, Arnold conveyed a sense of understanding:

It's time to put the special election behind us, to work together, to stop the fighting. . . . "There is much work to be done," Schwarzenegger told supporters as his wife, First Lady Maria Shriver, stood nearby. "We've got to rebuild our infrastructure. We need more schools. We need more firefighters, more teachers ... Californians are sick and tired of all the fighting and all those negative TV ads." -- Associated Press

In the area of personal rights, several ballot initiatives brought mixed results.

In Texas, voters approved a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages; 76% to 24%. Texas brings the number of states with such bans to 18.

Meanwhile, in Maine, voters defeated an initiative to overturn a state law prohibiting discrimination (but not addressing same sex marriages) against gays. The vote was not close:

One analysis suggests that the trend of “blue” states getting “bluer” and “red” states getting “redder” continued Tuesday night. Democrats did best in New Jersey, Maine and California, both “blue states.”

Republicans dominated the constitutional amendment in Texas. No one was surprised at the result.

In Virginia, Democrats retained the Governorship and ever so slightly cut into Republican dominance of their legislature while losing some executive positions. In all, a very slight positive shift for the Democrats.

It was a good night for Democrats; Democrats showing some signs of real strength. But Tuesday was not the demise of the Republican Party. The Democratic road back to majority status requires sustained effort and a long term view. Democrats simply have to start work today for the 2008 mid-term elections.

TPJ has written a plethora of articles over the past 3 years that Republican economic policies threaten the security of America. Kevin G. Hall of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain has just authored one of the best reviews published to date. It is simply a must read.

Hall, in strikingly frank language (emphasis added), lays out the effect of Republican policy:

[B]udget experts from across the political divide, believe Congress is shifting deck chairs on a sinking financial ship. Lawmakers are making symbolic spending cuts while skirting the real drains on the federal budget.

In addition, Republicans intend to make tax cuts permanent, which would drain $70 billion in revenues through 2010 — more than the spending cuts Congress is struggling to find.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg. The real problem is that the government's unfunded liabilities — items that include everything from public debt to promised Medicare and Social Security benefits — are growing at staggering rates.

Those liabilities totaled $20.4 trillion in 2000. They reached $43.3 trillion by 2004, after President Bush and Congress increased spending and cut taxes.

When the government next reports these numbers Dec. 15, the total is expected to reach $46 trillion to $50 trillion.

How much is $50 trillion? About $166,000 for each of the almost 300 million Americans.

No reader can miss Hall’s analogy of America’s finances to the Titanic. Hyperbole? Hall supports the analogy with these compelling quotes; first from Alan Greenspan:

"Unless the situation is reversed, at some point, these budget trends will cause serious economic disruptions," Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress' Joint Economic Committee on Thursday.

“It's very obvious that something has to give. It's as simple as that," said Stuart Butler, vice president of economic policy for the Heritage Foundation.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), said current congressional efforts to trim spending won't make much difference. "It doesn't change our outlook substantially at all over the long haul," said Holtz-Eakin, who formerly worked for Bush.

"If there's one thing that could bankrupt the country, it's health care," Comptroller General Walker said.

Bush publicly counters by reminding Americans of the cost of war and the cost of homeland security. But war and terrorism do not account for the reckless policies that the Republicans are pursuing (emphasis added):

But it's not just health care and retirement, not just war and homeland security. Congress is spending lavishly on everything, said Brian Riedl, Heritage's top budget analyst.

Spending has grown twice as rapidly under Bush than it had under Clinton. Remove defense and homeland security costs and spending still jumped 22 percent.

Since 2001, spending on education is up more than 100 percent, international programs 94 percent and housing and commerce up 86 percent.

Democrats should be ringing the alarm bells at every opportunity. Americans should recall that the break up of the Soviet Union was an economic implosion.

Radical Republican policies are leading America toward economic ruination. The reckoning is not long away.

The revelations just keep coming. Over the past several weeks, attention has turned to finding the source of the forged “Niger” yellow cake documents. Bush’s FBI concludes:

A set of forged documents outlining an alleged Iraqi deal to buy nuclear materials from an African country -- a claim that famously wound up in President Bush's State of the Union speech in 2003 -- was probably ''part of a criminal scheme for financial gain," the FBI said yesterday.

The FBI said it had ''discounted" widely discussed theories that the documents ''were part of an effort to influence US policy" in the months leading up to the US invasion of Iraq. – Boston Globe

The FBI’s conclusions support the conclusions of the Italian Parliament that SISMI, Italian intelligence, had nothing to do with manufacturing the false documents.

No sooner than the FBI and the Italian Parliament move to “close off” the issue, US intelligence agents claim that the Italian government was quite involved in the Niger forgeries:

Contrary to Italian government denials, a powerful Italian military intelligence agency passed bogus allegations to the United States of an Iraqi effort to buy uranium ore from the African nation of Niger for a nuclear bomb program, U.S. officials said Friday.

The purported deal, which President Bush cited in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, was a key argument that Bush and his senior aides advanced for invading Iraq and toppling dictator Saddam Hussein. It remains unclear, however, who forged the documents, why and how information from such crude forgeries got into a major presidential speech.

Four U.S. officials said the Italian military intelligence agency known as SISMI passed three reports to the CIA station in Rome between October 2001 and March 2002 outlining an alleged deal for Iraq to buy uranium ore, known as yellowcake, from Niger. Yellowcake is refined into the uranium fuel that powers nuclear weapons.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because portions of the matter remain classified.

One of the reports passed by SISMI contained language that turned out to have been lifted verbatim from crudely forged documents that outlined the purported uranium-ore deal, the U.S. officials said. – Knight Ridder

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, a TPJ favorite website, has been covering the Niger forgeries in detail. TPJ readers should follow the story in TPM. It appears that Bush will not be able to close off this issue.

Editor and Publisher has just released an article reporting that the New York Times will break a story today US intelligence agents knew that Bush’s claim that Iraq had trained al-Qauda members to use biological and chemical weapons.

The New York Times . . . reporter Doug Jehl disclos[es] the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It shows that an al-Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.

“The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility,” Jehl writes. “Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as ‘credible’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Bush’s public justifications for war are dissolving in the light of truth, confirming that the Bush administration fabricated the reasons for war. A war so conceived and prosecuted can not bring democracy or justice either to the victor or the vanquished.

Republicans promised Americans that cutting taxes would spur the national economy. As with so many Republican promises, reality is a cruel shadow of their promise.

Employers added only 56,000 jobs in October, well below the 150,000 or so that are needed to keep pace with population growth. The Labor Department also said that 36,000 fewer jobs were added in August and September than previously estimated.

"Job growth has kind of stalled out," said Bill Cheney, chief economist of John Hancock Financial Services in Boston. "It's a puzzle," he added, noting that economic growth, retail sales and other indicators remained strong. – New York Times (emphasis added)

The Government admitted that these numbers were not affected to any appreciable extent by Hurricane Katrina.

In what has been billed as “good” news, individuals who do have jobs earned eight cents an hour more this month. The “bad” news is that:

[o]ver the year, hourly wages are up 2.9%, an acceleration over recent yearly growth rates but still behind consumer inflation, which rose 4.7% in the latest annual reading. – Economic Policy Institute

[J]ob growth in this expansion still remains far behind the historical record. Averaging over recoveries that have lasted at least as long as the current one (47 months), historically payrolls were up 11.9% at this point. In the current recovery, employment is up only 2.4%. In other words, just shy of four years into an expansion, the great American job machine has yet to shift into high gear. – Economic Policy Institute (emphasis added)

Economists are openly discussing the fact that as American business off shore jobs in cheap labor markets, American wages may continue to stagnate:

Past reports show wages rising modestly but not enough to offset higher prices. Blue-collar workers have felt this more so than college-educated employees, who have benefited from other pay like stock option compensation.

Wages and salaries rose 2.3% in the third quarter from a year earlier, the smallest gain since at least 1981, according to last week's employment cost index. That increase lagged consumer prices' 3.9% rise in the third quarter -- 4.7% in September.

"Increasingly, and moving up the education ladder, workers' wages aren't keeping pace with the price of products," said Catherine Mann, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics. . . .

The depression in wages comes as several large industrial unions have agreed to deep concessions. As their automotive and airline employers struggle to compete, they've had little choice.

"The combination of the global economy and offshoring puts pressures on companies not to raise wages, and then you have the decline of the union movement," said Edward Lawler, a professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. "We've got two historical generators of wage-increases not occurring." . . .

“If you’re not going to get wage pressure four years into the expansion, it does beg the question whether it will happen,” said David Rosenberg, North American economist for Merrill Lynch. – Yahoo (emphasis added)

The short answer for Mr. Rosenberg is that “it will never happen” for middle class and lower economic workers under Bush and the Republicans.

The world's five biggest publicly traded oil companies -- Exxon Mobil, BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp. and Total SA -- are expected to combine for a 26 percent gain in profit this year to $106.7 billion, based on average analyst estimates in surveys by Thomson Financial. – Bloomberg

When major U.S. energy companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. announce their third-quarter earnings in the next few days, the results are certain to be staggering.

Pumped up by soaring prices of oil, natural gas and gasoline in August and September, Exxon Mobil alone is expected to report quarterly profit of about $8.7 billion. That would be more than what such titans as Coca-Cola Co., Intel Corp. and Time Warner Inc. earn in an entire year.

For the energy companies, the record results amount to an embarrassment of riches — an invitation for attack by foes and even by some traditional allies.

"The question increasingly is going to be, what is the industry going to do with this money?" said Amy Jaffe, head of the James A. Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University in Houston.

As former President Jimmy Carter delicately concluded this week, “In my opinion this administration, I am not talking about President Bush personally, has committed itself to extol the advantages of the rich."

The Bush administration has just recorded another milestone – one that should shake Americans into action.

President George W. Bush and [Congressional Republicans] have now borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined.

Throughout the first 224 years (1776-2000) of our nation's history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In the past four years alone (2001-2005), the Bush Administration has borrowed a staggering $1.05 trillion.

"The seriousness of this rapid and increasing financial vulnerability of our country can hardly be overstated," said Rep. John Tanner (D-TN), a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition and member of the House Ways and Means Committee. "The financial mismanagement of our country by the Bush Administration should be of concern to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion." . . .

"No American political leadership has ever willfully and deliberately mortgaged our country to foreign interests in the manner we have witnessed over the past four years," continued Rep. Tanner. "If this recklessness is not stopped, I truly believe our economic freedom as American citizens is in great jeopardy." – The Stakeholder (emphasis added)

Republicans can add the latest milestone to an ever growing body of Republican failures. Consider these milestone Republicans have achieved this year alone:

Even as the economy grew, incomes stagnated last year and the poverty rate rose, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first time on record that household incomes failed to increase for five straight years. – TPJ, FIRST TIME

Key US health indicators are far below those that might be anticipated on the basis of national wealth. Infant mortality trends are especially troublesome. Since 2000 a half century of sustained decline in infant death rates first slowed and then reversed. The infant mortality rate is now higher for the United States than for many other industrial countries. – TPJ, ANOTHER BUSH MILESTONE

As Bush’s weak DOLLAR policy taxes your earnings, the sucking sound you hear is even more American textile jobs disappearing. All quotas on Chinese textiles were abrogated in January 2005. The result: China has exceeded all predictions on textile exports to the United States since the lifting of global quotas in January 2005. In the first month of this year, 12,200 jobs were lost in the U.S. apparel and textile industries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. – TPJ, THAT SUCKING SOUND YOU HEAR

Americans should simply ask themselves what milestones portend in three more years of Republican leadership.

Americans rarely get an opportunity see inside the mind of the Republicans who are driving national policies. Republicans have forged their national majority in substantial part with the support of evangelical Christians. The Republican Party has become a marriage of radical right social policy and radical right economic policy.

Michael Scanlon, a former aid to Rep. Tom Delay, left his service to Rep. Delay and began a career as a lobbyist for Indian gambling interests. Scanlon wrote this memorandum to his clients explaining Republican political strategy:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." – Salon

Question 1: People's Veto
Yes	183109	44.88%
No	224884	55.12%

Tumble Weed (Bush) Watch