Stinger, could you please try to go at least one day without posting a new node? Then, maybe you could stretch it to two days... What you are doing amounts to spam, and is distracting from the purpose of this board. Thank you.

Here's some more of that famous "fuzzy math" that Bush has such a disdain for.
From Salon.com:

[...]The budget deficit for 2004 was $412 billion. To cut that in half by 2009, one might think that you have to reduce the deficit to $206 billion. One would be wrong, at least if the White House is doing the math. The White House doesn't use the actual deficit for 2004. Instead, it uses the deficit that was projected for 2004 -- a much higher number, $521 billion. That $521 billion deficit never materialized, but starting with the big number makes it possible (a) to claim progress already, and (b) to make the 2009 target a whole lot easier to hit. If the White House started at $412 billion, it would have to shrink the deficit to $206 billion by 2009; by starting at $521 billion, it only needs to get down to $260.5 billion to claim victory. The White House claims that it's going to get there with money to spare. In the budget projections released today, the White House predicts that the 2009 budget deficit will be just $233 billion.
[...]

Can Bush reduce the decifit by half? No - unless Arthur Anderson is doing the math. And don't laugh because I think that is who is accounting for the White House. They share so many qualities - no ethics, no truth, no accountability, love money, love BIG business, love money.

__________________________

SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDIA INTIMIDATION

The RNC has threatened FCC action against TV stations exposing Bush's deceptive Social Security plans. The letter was intended as an indirect threat suggesting their FCC licenses were in jeopardy. South Bend television stations received the letter from RNC attorney Michael Bayes, stating "As an FCC licensee...this letter places you on notice..." The following is a copy of the story by James Wensits from the South Bend Tribune from February 5, 2005:

http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/2005/02/05/local.20050205-sbt-MW...

"RNC asks stations to kill 'false TV ad'
MoveOn.org defends accuracy of Social Security spot.

By JAMES WENSITS
Tribune Political Writer

SOUTH BEND -- At least part of the Social Security debate focused on the 2nd Congressional District again Friday, as the Republican National Committee sent letters to local television stations asking them not to air what it calls a "false TV ad" promoted by MoveOn.org.

Washington, D.C.-based MoveOn.org immediately issued a statement defending the accuracy of its ad, which began airing on local stations Tuesday and which is critical of the president's plan to revamp Social Security.

The RNC letter drew a mixture of responses. One local station executive said he viewed the tone of the letter as "threatening." Another said he planned to investigate a statement in the ad and might decide to pull the spot if he found it to be misleading.

The national ad, titled "Working Retirement," debuted on local stations Tuesday.

"It has come to our attention that your station is currently airing, or may be asked to air, a false advertisement sponsored by a political organization known as MoveOn.org," said the RNC letter sent to local stations on Friday.

"The advertisement in question falsely and maliciously makes reference to 'George Bush's planned Social Security benefit cuts of up to 46 percent to pay for private accounts ...' "

In his State of the Union address, the president said that "Social Security will not change in any way" for Americans 55 and older."

The RNC letter said that "what MoveOn.org calls 'Bush's planned Social Security benefit cuts' is actually a plan that would hold starting Social Security benefits steady in purchasing power, rather than allowing them to nearly double over the next 75 years as they are projected to do under the current benefit formula."

The letter was signed by RNC Deputy Counsel Michael Bayes.

Jim Behling, general manager for WNDU-TV, said he is neither afraid nor cowed by getting a letter from a lawyer at the RNC, but may pull the spot if he determines that it is inaccurate. The ad contract calls for the spot to end its run on Sunday, according to Behling.

"It's about what's fair," said Behling, adding, "If we made the wrong decision based on insufficient information, then we have to correct ourselves."

Behling said he has reviewed documentation supplied by MoveOn.org in support of the ad, and said the 46 percent figure seems to apply to people who will retire in 2075, and therefore haven't yet been born.

He said he plans to ask MoveOn.org if the 46 percent "applies to anybody living today" and, if not, may decide to pull the spot.

According to supporting documents supplied to the stations by MoveOn.org, the plan which serves as the model for the president's proposal would cut benefits because it changes the basis on which benefits would be calculated from wage levels to consumer price levels.

Based on Social Security Administration data, a worker born in 1977 who earned average wages and retired in 2042 would see benefits 26 percent lower than under the current benefit structure, $14,432 a year instead of $19,423 in 2004 dollars. An individual who retired in 2075 would receive monthly benefits 46 percent lower than under the current structure, the documents said.

Tom Matzzie, Washington, D.C., director of MoveOn.org, said in a statement issued Friday that the information referred to in the spot is based on an analysis performed by the chief actuary at the Social Security Administration, and said his organization stands by the ad.

"Instead of threatening TV stations and trying to infringe on the free-speech rights of MoveOn.org," said Matzzie, the administration should "come clean" and explain how big benefit cuts will be for future retirees, how much new debt will be required and how much financial services corporations will profit from the proposal.

Kevin Sargent, vice president and general manager for WSJV-TV, said he viewed the RNC letter as threatening.

The last two paragraphs of the letter said:

"As an FCC licensee, you have a responsibility to exercise independent editorial judgment to oversee and protect the integrity of the American marketplace of ideas, and to avoid broadcasting deliberate misrepresentations of the facts. Such obligations must be taken seriously and I urge you to decline to broadcast this advertisement.

"This letter places you on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement is false and misleading. Your station should act responsibly and refrain from airing this advertisement."

"When a letter says 'this letter places you on notice,' " Sargent said, "that's kind of threatening."

Sargent said the letter didn't say that the RNC intended to go after the station's license, but "that kind of tactic is done to make you think it's possible."

Asked if he planned to pull the ad, Sargent said he had just begun to investigate, noting, "It's Friday afternoon."

Sargent said that in the meanwhile, he did not plan to suspend the ad, which is scheduled to run through Monday.

Todd Schurz, president and general manager of WSBT-TV, said it is not the role of the station to make political judgments, and to do so would be "grossly inappropriate."

"Our role is to be sure that the laws and regulations are followed and that the public has access to its own airwaves," Schurz said.

Schurz said the station began an investigation after receiving the RNC letter Friday afternoon but did not know when it would be completed.

"These things take a little time," Schurz said, adding that there was no intent to suspend the ad in the meantime. The spot is scheduled to run through Monday on WSBT-TV, whose parent company, Schurz Communications, also owns The Tribune."

The Bush aministration is continuing it's efforts to completely suppress the media. I urge everyone to write to your Congress and the local media about this story. Also, I would recommend republishing this article everywhere possible.

Mike

http://www.unlawflcombatnt.blogspot.com/

_____________

nytimes.com
¶It includes no spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006. Those costs are now running about $5 billion a month and are likely to continue at some level in the 2006 fiscal year and beyond.

australian broadcasting company
Bush's blueprint would leave next year's deficit at an estimated $390 billion, and omits any new money next year for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would be a reduction from last year's record $412 billion shortfall and would still leave Bush on his course to halve deficits by 2009, the White House said.

yahoo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon (news - web sites)'s reliance on supplemental funding requests to pay for the wars in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) masks the true size of the U.S. defense budget and inhibits congressional oversight, analysts said this week.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld readily admits he sent Congress an incomplete budget in seeking $419.3 billion for fiscal year 2006, a 4.8 percent increase.

The Pentagon says it will seek another increase for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan later in the year, and analysts say the amount could reach $60 billion.

"The only way you can look at this budget is to look at the supplementals with it," Rumsfeld told reporters on Monday.

Defense analysts argue that packing the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into a series of supplemental budget requests hides the full scope of defense spending -- and thus saves the Pentagon from making deeper cuts in weapons programs to help pay its soldiers.

"They don't want to do it in a unified budget; then we'd know where all the money was going," said Chris Hellman at the Center for Arms Control and Proliferation.

The supplemental spending requests do not include the same level of detail as in the defense budget, thus hampering lawmakers in their effort to oversee military costs, he said.

The administration plans to send lawmakers next week a supplemental budget request for an extra $80 billion to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30, including about $75 billion in spending for the Pentagon.

Funding ongoing military operations through these emergency funding measures was tantamount to "using that little jar of money you keep for rainy days to buy groceries," Hellman said.

Loren Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute said he expected the administration to seek at least $60 billion in additional funding for Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal 2006. White House budget director Joshua Bolten told reporters more money will be needed in the coming year, but added it is too soon to estimate the amount.

ARMY RESTRUCTURING, NAVY PATROLS

Pentagon officials argue war costs are too unpredictable to include in a baseline budget, and bristle at any suggestion that they are using supplementals to fund non-combat costs.

"That would be wrong, and we wouldn't do that," Rumsfeld said.

At the same time, Rumsfeld noted that a $300 million drop in Army funding would be offset by additional funds to speed up its restructuring into a more agile force, a legitimate "emergency" expense, because the Army was making changes even as it moved troops into and out of Iraq.

Steve Kosiak at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said these changes would occur whether or not U.S. forces were engaged in combat and should be in the regular budget.

Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas said this year's budget for the first time included increased costs associated with Navy patrols around U.S. waters in the regular budget -- items that had previously been part of supplemental budget requests.

Former Pentagon budget chief, Dov Zakheim, now a consultant with Booz, Allen, Hamilton, defended the use of supplementals. He said current troop levels in Iraq were far higher than expected last year at this time, which proved the wisdom of holding off and using supplementals to fund such operations.

The situation in Iraq was likely to remain uncertain, requiring continued use of supplementals for funding the war effort, he said in a telephone interview.

But he said funding for operations in Afghanistan should probably be included in the fiscal 2007 baseline budget, given the relatively stable situation after Afghan elections.

yahoo

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) added Medicare to the government's fix-it list Wednesday after new figures showed the first full decade of the program's prescription benefit will cost taxpayers $724 billion.

"There's no question that there is an unfunded liability inherent in Medicare that Congress and the administration is going to have to deal with over time," Bush told reporters.

"Obviously I've chosen to deal with Social Security (news - web sites) first," he added. "Once we modernize and save Social Security for a young generation of Americans, then it'll be time to deal with the unfunded liabilities of Medicare."

The new figure for years 2006 through 2015 is much higher than the $534 billion cost calculated for years 2004 through 2013. That's because under the previous decade-long projection, the benefit didn't exist for two of the 10 years.

yahoo

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites) said he sees no crisis resulting from the massive US current account deficit and predicted the gap will stabilize or shrink due to market forces and budget discipline.

In a speech prepared for delivery Friday to a conference in London, Greenspan said market pressures "appear poised to stabilize and, over the longer run, possibly to decrease the US current account deficit and its attendant financing requirements."

Moreover, the Fed chief said he does not see a crisis resulting from the imbalance, arguing that the world's largest economy is flexible enough to adapt to the changing circumstances.

Greenspan appeared to step back from comments he made in November suggesting that foreign investors might become discouraged with the twin US deficit and flee from the dollar.

The latest remarks from Greenspan "seem much less jarring than his previous speech," said Kathy Bostjancic, senior economist at Merrill Lynch.

"He now emphasizes that market pressures may cut the current account -- meaning the weaker dollar should boost exports and reduce imports. He also adds that rising rates in the US (short-term rates) may boost savings and lower the current account, and thus reliance on foreign capital."

forbes

yahoo

In November, Greenspan sent the dollar and U.S. stocks plunging when in a Berlin speech he expressed concern about the increasing amount of money that America is borrowing from abroad to finance its record trade deficits.

yahoo

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US economy generated 146,000 jobs in January, the government said, a report that analysts said suggests still-modest economic growth ahead.

The payrolls report, one of the best indicators of economic activity, was well below the average Wall Street forecast of 200,000 new jobs.

Additionally, the Labor Department (news - web sites) report revised downward its estimate of December job creation to 133,000 from an earlier estimate of 157,000.

"The report makes the economy look even less like it is 'building a head of steam,'" said Robert Brusca of FAO Economics.

business week

Unfortunately, no one knows the rate that neither helps nor hinders growth

To the surprise of no one, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates again on Feb. 2 after its two-day meeting to discuss monetary policy. And the Fed offered nothing to change the current broad expectation that it will continue its self-described "measured pace" of hiking rates by a quarter-point at each of the next three meetings scheduled for the first half of 2005.

But after that, the Fed will have to confront two major questions about its goals for monetary policy: What policy rate constitutes a neutral rate, which neither helps nor hinders growth? And when might the Fed have to move policy into the restrictive zone, raising rates so that economic activity begins to feel the pinch, in an effort to preempt building inflation pressures?

To be sure, this is not the typical course of rate-hiking. Usually by the fourth year of expansion, the Fed is raising rates in an effort to choke off budding price pressures resulting from superhot demand, overextended factories, and tight job markets. But the latest data on real gross domestic product, labor costs, and factory activity show no signs of an overheating economy or rising wages.

Moreover, the financial markets have not reacted badly to the rate hikes. That's partly because policymakers have telegraphed their intentions with extraordinary clarity. As a result, investors and traders have been fully prepared for each of the six bump-ups in rates since June, 2004. The central bank's Feb. 2 policy statement contained the same language used after the last meeting on Dec. 14. And with little change in Fed thinking, the financial markets' reaction was muted.

If all goes as expected, by June 30 the Fed will have lifted the federal funds rate to 3.25%, and the bulk of the work in getting to neutral will be done. At that point, the Fed may feel comfortable enough to take a break from rate-hiking to assess the success of their efforts.

THE PROBLEM for the Fed: No one knows for sure what constitutes a neutral funds rate. Economists generally give a target of 3.5% to 4%, but those estimates are usually based on historical averages. In today's economy, the neutral rate may even be higher than in the past. Given that a high-productivity economy generally offers higher rates of return, interest rates across the board can be higher without exerting a drag on the economy. Plus, the current slower rate of job growth means the economy can grow much faster without generating price pressures.

Need duct tape, STAT! Gotta wrap my skull before it explodes. I guess we fixed that problem with people starting too many new threads.

yahoo
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) is asking Congress to set up a $400 million fund to reward nations that have taken political and economic risks to join U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites).