Here's your raise, Yepsen
David Yepsen asks in his May 22 Register column, "Democrats, Heed the Errors of Losing Class of '84," "Isn't repealing a planned tax cut the same thing as increasing taxes?"
If Yepsen worked for me, I'd say, "We plan to cut your salary by 10 percent starting July 1." Then, on July 1, I'd say, "We've decided to repeal that salary cut we planned. So enjoy your salary increase."
Dick Heimer
Sheffield.
Basu dishonored men and women in uniform everywhere by implying the rescue of a prisoner of war behind enemy lines was nothing more than an elaborate theatrical performance.
Robert Zeis Jr.
Des Moines.
"He keeps promoting people up from the farm club to jobs that once were reserved for giants," said Paul C. Light, a specialist in bureaucracy who is a New York University professor of public service. "That means a relatively green team, but one that will take direction from the coach. It could be interpreted as a sign of extraordinary hubris."
Aides said Bush's preference for promoting from within gives him a hardworking, committed team beholden only to him, without their own agendas. But other people close to Bush used the term "echo chamber" as they described their worry that a culture so driven by "loyalty for loyalty's sake" could produce a White House that was deaf to brewing political or governing crises
Bush aides said they were standing by their earlier predictions that the package will add 1 million jobs to the U.S. economy
"When ideological people find themselves in a hole, they ask for a bigger shovel."
-former President William Jefferson Clinton
According to the White House's own numbers, the federal government is looking at deficits from now until, well, basically forever. (Today's Financial Times reports that the Treasury Dept. commissioned a study, since downplayed by the White House, that found that the government is now facing "chronic" deficits.) As for jobs, as Slate's Daniel Gross, among others, has noted, the one million or so paying gigs that Bush predicts will be created are 1) not all that much considering the number of jobs the economy has been shedding 2) darn expensive on a per job basis.
Against Iran
The drumbeat against Iran has begun.
I see George Bush's econoomic plan.
Perpetual war.
Robert Price
Prairie City.
No Iraqi smoking gun
The weapons of mass destruction (WMD)were the main reason for waging the Iraqi war.
Now our troops can't find any WMD.
Will WMD come to stand for "Words of Monstrous Deception," lies told by President Bush and his henchmen and women?
Robert W. Gernes
Des Moines.
"Rarely," said Rumsfeld, "had so many been so wrong about so much."
And if one shifts the focus of his remarks, he was absolutely right! The whole rationale for the war put forwarded by Rumsfeld, President Bush, Colin Powell and all their cohorts was wrong.
WASHINGTON -- The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were made possible by gaping holes in airline security, government cover-ups that prevented problems from being fixed and a failure to respond to a growing threat that terrorists might use airliners as weapons, witnesses told an independent commission this week.
"The notion that these hijackings and terrorism were an unforeseen and unforeseeable risk is an airline and FAA public-relations management myth," said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general at the Department of Transportation, in testimony Friday.
The papers all lead with the Israeli cabinet's narrow, but expected, approval of the U.S.-backed peace plan between Israelis and Palestinians, otherwise known as the "road map." The vote marks the first time the Israeli government has officially accepted the Palestinian claim to statehood, but some on the cabinet made clear they had only voted for the plan to avoid a standoff with the U.S., and they expect, or perhaps even hope, that it will fail.
Some tourists aren't even aware of the city's myriad regulations, Fuller said, such as the one prohibiting loud car stereos or Ordinance 22-10, otherwise known as the Thong Law, which prohibits exposure of "buttocks, with less than a fully opaque covering."
"I really am outraged. I express that to you with the respect and affection you know I have for you. This is not the way democracy is meant to work." - Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., to Grassley at the single meeting of the GOP-run conference committee on the tax cut, which lasted a half-hour.
