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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
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"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
What $87 Billion Buys
Instead of a war in Iraq, here�s what America could be getting for its money
By Jonathan Darman
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Sept. 19 � It�s almost an abstract figure. President Bush says he wants $87 billion to fund the occupation in Iraq and limited operations in Afghanistan. But is that a lot when it comes to the pocket books of United States government?
ON THE ONE HAND, Bush�s tax cuts will cost the federal government close to $300 billion this year alone. On the other, $87 billion is more than the gross domestic product of most countries, more even than the combined assets of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. To try to bring some perspective to the number, NEWSWEEK has imagined what the federal government might do in other key policy areas if it had $87 billion lying around.
HOMELAND SECURITY
For $87 billion you could �
More than double the Department of Homeland Security�s 2004 budget
or
Spend 22 times what Congress appropriated to cities and states in aide to first responders this year
or
Spend almost 15 times what President Bush has proposed for bioterrorism preparedness funding nationwide
� �911 does not ring at the statehouse; it rings at city hall,� said James Garner, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in a Sept. 17 statement. �Cities are the first to respond in a crisis, but last in line for funds.�
EDUCATION
For $87 billion you could �
Hire more than 2 million new teachers
or
Spend an additional $1,824 on each child in American public schools
or
Spend seven times more than the President�s proposal for Title 1 education programs in fiscal year 2004.
��The so-called �No Child Left Behind Act� is underfunded by eight billion dollars,� says Kathleen Lyons of the National Education Association, a teacher�s union. �This administration has misplaced priorities about funding.�
HEALTH CARE
For $87 billion you could �
Triple the 2004 budget for the National Institutes of Health
or
Spend 58 times the proposed federal funding for community health centers in 2004
or
Spend $7,909 on each American child without health insurance.
��In the congressional budget resolution � there is $50 billion in expanded health coverage for the uninsured,� says Ron Pollack of the nonprofit health-care advocacy group Families USA. �It does not appear that that money is going to get spent � This issue is being ignored by the White House and the Congress.�
POLICE/FIRE SAFETY
For $87 billion you could �
Hire more than 2 million new police officers nationwide
or
Hire more than 2 million new firefighters
��Two thirds of the fire departments in this nation are understaffed,� says George Burke of the International Association of Firefighters. �Because of cuts in federal spending to the states we are facing the worst crisis since the Great Depression.�
AFGHANISTAN
For $87 billion you could �
Spend 87 times what has so far been promised in American aid to rebuild Afghanistan
or
Spend $5.4 million on each of the 16,000 Afghan women who die in childbirth each year
or
Spend $26.9 million for each square mile of the Kunar region where many believe Osama bin Laden is hiding out.
��We�ve only barely begun the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Less than 1 percent of what is needed has actually been done,�says Peter Bell, CEO of CARE, the international humanitarian group. �In the end it�s a matter of priorities. I suspect Iraq will be given a higher priority.�
IMMIGRATION
For $87 billion you could �
Spend 233 times the current budget for border security
or
Spend $16.4 million on each mile of shared border with Canada and Mexico
or
Spend $26,363 on every immigrant who arrived in the United States between 2000 and 2002
THE ENVIRONMENT
For $87 billion you could �
Increase the EPA�s budget more than tenfold
or
Spend 58 times more than what the president has proposed for research on hydrogen-powered cars
�With $87 billion �we could clean up once and for all America�s worst toxic waste sites and dirtiest power plants and help protect hundreds of communities from wildfires,� says Eric Antebi of the Sierra Club.
AIDS
For $87 billion you could �
Spend 27 times more on AIDS research than the federal government spent in fiscal year 2000
or
Spend $226,029 on each individual AIDS patient in the United States
or
Fulfill the president�s promise of $3 billion in funding for AIDS in Africa this year and have enough left over to make a similar commitment for 28 years to come.
��Full funding of the president�s initiative [on AIDS funding for Africa] would�ve been $3 billion this year. We�re a billion dollars short,� says CARE CEO Peter Bell. �The $87 billion [for Iraq] just skates the issue.�
� 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
~~~
Pride and Prejudices
How Americans have fooled themselves about the war in Iraq, and why they�ve had to
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Sept. 19 � A sturdy-looking American matron in the audience at the American University of Paris grew redder by the second. She was listening to a panel talking about the Iraq war and its effect on U.S.-French relations, and she kept nodding her head like a pump building emotional pressure.
FINALLY SHE exploded: �Surely these can�t be the only reasons we invaded Iraq!� the woman thundered, half scolding, but also half pleading. �Surely not!�
What first upset her was my suggestion that, looking back, the French were right. They tried to stop the United States and Britain from rushing headlong into this mess. Don�t we wish they�d succeeded? (Readers, please address hate mail to [email protected])
Then she listened as another panelist and I went through the now-familiar recitation of Washington�s claims before the war, and the too-familiar realities since: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and the inevitable conclusion that Saddam Hussein was not the threat he was cracked up to be, the fantasy that this war could be waged on the cheap rather than the $1 billion per week American taxpayers are now spending, the claim that occupation�called �liberation��would be short and sweet, when in fact American men and women continue to be shot and blown up every day with no end in sight.
As we went down the list, I could see the Nodding Woman�s problem was not that she didn�t believe us, it was that she did. She just desperately wanted other reasons, better reasons, some she could consider valid reasons for the price that Americans are paying in blood and treasure.
It�s not the first time I�ve come across this reaction. I just spent a month in the States and met a lot of angry people. A few claim the press is not reporting �the good things in Iraq,� although it�s very hard to see what�s good for Americans there. Many more say, �Why didn�t the press warn us?�
We did, of course. Many of us who cover the region�along with the CIA and the State Department and the uniformed military�have been warning for at least a year that occupying Iraq would be a dirty, costly, long and dangerous job.
The problem is not really that the public was misinformed by the press before the war, or somehow denied the truth afterward. The problem is that Americans just can�t believe their eyes. They cannot fathom the combination of cynicism, naivet�, arrogance and ignorance that dragged us into this quagmire, and they�re in a deep state of denial about it.
Again and again, you hear people offering their own �real� reasons for invading Iraq�conspiracy theories spun not to condemn, but to condone the administration�s actions. Thus the �real� reason for taking out Saddam Hussein, some say, was to eliminate this man who rewarded the families of suicide bombers and posed as an implacable enemy of Israel. (Yet the bombings go on there, and surely the chaos in Iraq does nothing for the long-term security of the Jewish state.) Or the �real� reason for invading Iraq was to intimidate Syria and Iran. Yet Tehran, if anything, has grown more aggressive, and may actually have stepped up its nuclear weapons program to deter the United States. (After all, that strategy worked for North Korea.) Or the �real� reason was to secure America�s long-term supply of oil, but the destabilization of the region, again, may make that more tenuous, not less.
But the real problem with such �real� explanations is that they were not the ones cited by President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the compelling reasons to rush to war last March. Then, they talked about weapons of mass destruction, and the fight against terrorists.
Which brings us to the grandest illusion of all: the link between Saddam Hussein and September 11. A Washington Post poll published earlier this month concluded that 69 percent of Americans thought it �at least likely� that the former Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There�s nothing to back this up. So puzzled political scientist and pollsters, with evident disdain for the public, suggested the connection is just the result of fuzzy thinking: Al Qaeda is evil, Saddam is evil, the attacks on 9/11 were evil and folks just draw dumb conclusions. Other analysts pointed the finger at the administration, which spins harder and faster than Hurricane Isabel to convince us the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror begun on September 11, without quite explaining where it fits in.
Yet just this week President Bush himself (and Donald Rumsfeld, too!) admitted that information to substantiate this popular fantasy just doesn�t exist. �We�ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11,� Bush said flatly, almost matter-of-factly, on Wednesday.
Is the president taking a chance here? Will the public recoil in horror, claiming he�s somehow lied to them? I don�t think so.
Bush knows what a lot of his critics have forgotten: the Iraq war is not just about blood and treasure, or even about democracy or WMD or terror. It�s about American pride. And people�perfectly intelligent people�have always been willing to sacrifice sweet reason in order to save face, to protect pride. As George Orwell pointed out, they will refuse to see what�s right in front of their noses. He called this condition a kind of political schizophrenia, and society can live quite comfortably with it, he said, until �a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.�
Well, that�s what�s happening right now. It�s not only American money and lives that are being lost, it�s pride. But people in the United States will try to deny that for as long as they possibly can.
Unfortunately for those of us who live abroad, that�s much harder to do�and that�s why the woman at the American University in Paris the other evening was really so angry. When I stopped her in the hall afterward she said she was terribly upset because even though she�s lived in France for years, and is married to a Frenchman, the behavior of people here in the last few months has made her bitter.
I know just how she feels. The media talk about anti-Americanism, but what�s really noxious right now is an insufferable smugness, a pervasive air of schadenfreude, and I fear it�s a symptom of still worse to come from this Iraq adventure. Because the bitterest contradiction of all may be that this war was waged�first and foremost�to save face after the humiliation and suffering of September 11. It was meant to inspire awe in the Arab and Muslim world, as former CIA operative Marc Reuel Gerecht and others insisted it should be. And in that it truly has failed. Every day we look weaker. And the worst news of all it that it�s not because of what was done to us by our enemies but because of what we�ve done to ourselves.
� 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
~~~
�These Additional Powers Are Not Necessary�
President Bush wants broader powers to pursue terrorists. Civil libertarians have big problems with that
By Arian Campo-Flores
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Sept. 12 � These aren�t happy days for the civil-liberties crowd. In a speech last Wednesday at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Va., President Bush called for broader powers to pursue and hold terror suspects.
AMONG THE ITEMS on his wish list: allowing federal law-enforcement agencies to issue �administrative subpoenas� that wouldn�t require a judge�s approval, expanding the death penalty to cover terror-related crimes, and raising the bar for terror suspects to be released on bail. All of this came on the heels of Attorney General John Ashcroft�s nationwide tour to defend the increasingly controversial USA Patriot Act, which granted authorities new surveillance and detention powers in the immediate aftermath of September 11.
The administration�s offensive has prompted howls of protest from civil-liberties groups. NEWSWEEK�s Arian Campo-Flores spoke to Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, about security and liberty in the post-9/11 world:
NEWSWEEK: If President Bush gets what he asked for in his speech on Wednesday, what are the implications for civil liberties?
Anthony Romero: President Bush�s request for additional law-enforcement powers would go even further than the first Patriot Act. It would minimize judicial oversight in important due-process protections. Several of these powers were originally in Patriot II [a piece of draft legislation�ultimately not passed�that surfaced in February and would have granted authorities additional surveillance and detention powers], and now the president used the anniversary of a national tragedy as a way to grab additional powers, even though there were substantial questions earlier on.
What resulted from the debate over Patriot II?
Patriot II was leaked to members of the press [last February], and there was an enormous outcry over powers in that legislation. The attorney general at that point, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was not seeking those powers. And now what you�re finding is that there�s this ad hoc request where these Patriot II powers are appearing on disparate pieces of legislation. They�re breaking up the Patriot II Act and sprinkling it across various draft bills that are coming before Congress.
Why should average Americans care about this? How will Bush�s proposals affect them personally?
The erosion of judicial oversight and upsetting the system of checks and balances have been our primary concerns with Mr. Ashcroft�s agenda since September 11. Those changes affect all Americans, because they insulate executive-branch action from important congressional oversight, judicial oversight and public debate. Patriot I was not only focused on terrorism. In fact, the �sneak and peek� provisions [which allow authorities to search suspects� properties without immediately informing them] of the Patriot Act apply to ordinary run-of-the-mill criminal investigations. Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to get personal information on individuals�such as your library books, your employment records, your financial records�also applies to American citizens. Many of the powers the government has sought and secured in the aftermath of September 11 affect all persons in this country, not just suspects or immigrants.
Have you found that the debate over the Patriot Act has increased the public�s awareness of civil-liberties issues? What�s the pulse in communities you�ve visited?
Absolutely. Clearly, the Justice Department is on the defensive, where they now realize that larger portions of the American public are now asking them the tough questions we were unable to ask or unwilling to ask in the aftermath of September 11. More than 160 local communities have passed resolutions saying that the Patriot Act went too far, too fast. There are also three statewide resolutions�one in Hawaii, one in Vermont, one in Alaska, a primarily Republican state. You have leading members of the House from within the Republican Party raising questions about the attorney general�s civil-liberties record. Congressman Butch Otter, a Republican from Idaho, sponsored a piece of legislation in the House that garnered overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats alike to repeal the sneak and peek provisions of the Patriot Act.
This is a debate that crosses political ideologies, that crosses generations, that crosses race and ethnicity, and it�s a debate that the attorney general has been trying to squelch in his recent road show. In fact, the attorney general showed very little interest in engaging a public debate and dialogue. In most of the appearances he made across the country, he slipped into his speaking engagements through back doors, avoiding the public and press in the front entrances. He spoke to law-enforcement officials and selected members of the press. At the Washington, D.C., briefing of the American Enterprise Institute, he took not one question from the whole Washington press corps. If the attorney general were truly interested in engaging the public, he�d be speaking in front of churches, school groups, Elk�s Lodges. He�d be taking questions from the public, and he�d be engaging in an important, necessary debate. He seems unwilling to do that. He�d rather preach to the converted and shut down debate as it�s springing up across the country.
It seems that the issue of administrative subpoenas is the most contentious of Bush�s proposals. Can you explain how they work and what you find objectionable?
Under administrative subpoenas, the government can demand�and enforce its demand through civil and criminal penalties�documents and other information from a business or any individual without prior court approval. This includes documents that can be very sensitive, including medical and genetic records. They can be seized without individual suspicion or court review. Judicial oversight is an essential part of our system of checks and balances. The administrative subpoenas would remove an essential check on the executive branch�s power and would relegate the role of a judge to considering challenges to orders already issued. I think that�s the most important part. Our goal is to keep a system of checks and balances alive and well, precisely when they�re needed most.
Shouldn�t law enforcement, as President Bush argued Wednesday, have the same sorts of powers to pursue terrorists as they do to go after drug dealers and perpetrators of fraud?
The government already possesses extensive powers to go after suspected terrorists. It always could have conducted intelligence on them. It already possessed criminal statutes that allowed them to go after suspected terrorists with the full force of law-enforcement powers. These additional powers are not necessary. The government successfully prosecuted many of the terrorists who were responsible for the first World Trade Center attacks [in 1993]. The president and John Ashcroft have not made a compelling case about why these additional powers are necessary. What�s essential is that we remind ourselves what we�re fighting for, not just what we�re fighting against�that the American democratic system is based on some core American principles, such as due process, innocence until proven guilty, judicial oversight. And if, in our effort to keep the country safe, we do great damage to those core freedoms, then we will have fundamentally changed the nation�s core values.
Post-9/11, are we witnessing a permanent shift in the balance between security and liberty, in favor of security?
The attorney general has asked the American people to sacrifice their freedoms in the name of national security. He�s presented the public with a Faustian bargain: we�ll be safe or we�ll be sorry. The ACLU believes that we have to keep both our safety and our freedom as important goals for our government, that you need both. And much of what�s happened over the last two years has eroded these core freedoms. For instance, you have the U.S. government insisting that it has the unilateral authority to arrest and detain an American citizen on American soil and not charge him with a crime and not grant him access to a lawyer. That is patently un-American and cuts at the heart of some of our most longstanding values. The attorney general and other members of the Bush administration have seized upon a national tragedy as a way to push through a partisan ideological agenda. That�s why we heard the president announce the need for these additional law-enforcement powers on the eve of the September 11 tragedy. The first Patriot Act was pushed through Congress within 45 days of the September 11 attacks, with very little debate and input in Congress and the American public. The attorney general seized on that fear in an effort to grab extensive law-enforcement and intelligence powers. Now two years out, with calmer minds in Congress and the public, we�re beginning to see the start of a debate and questions being asked of the attorney general.
What is the administration not doing that it should be doing to protect the homeland?
The administration has yet not implemented all of the necessary changes in terms of preparing the first responders who would respond to a terrorist attack. Many local jurisdictions still complain about inadequate funding for insuring the security and safety of local communities. One good example would be the New York blackout, where the chaos and confusion that gripped the city during that blackout demonstrated that New York was no better prepared to deal with a major terrorist attack than it was two years previously.
Has the Patriot Act damaged the U.S.�s standing internationally on human and civil-rights issues?
The promotion of human rights was a cornerstone of American foreign policy for decades, and now it�s becoming increasingly clear that those values don�t mean as much at home as when we export them. It becomes increasingly difficult for the American government to look at its allies, or even enemies overseas, in the eye and defend human rights, when the U.S. government itself is engaging in efforts that erode personal privacy, that further racial profiling, that limit judicial review, that diminish due-process rights. As other countries struggle to develop antiterrorism policies and programs, they will invariably look to the American experience and see some very troubling policies and programs that have been sanctioned by the supposed leader of human rights across the globe.
How are civil-liberties groups faring in both their legal and public relations battles with the Justice Department?
Many of these issues are still to be determined in our nation�s courts. The ACLU has filed close to 40 cases that deal with the broader issues of civil liberties after September 11. Most of these cases are still to be decided or being appealed to higher courts, and it�s still an open question as to whether the Supreme Court will render opinions that defend freedom even in the midst of a national emergency. Prior Supreme Court decisions such as the ones during the Second World War, with Japanese-American internment, were very disappointing. We�ll see if this court has the courage of America�s convictions. In terms of the public, it�s increasingly clear that there is a public debate that is playing out in communities all across the country. That�s a debate that affects Republicans and Democrats, young and old, immigrants and citizens.
What future battles are you gearing for? What does Ashcroft want next?
The war on terror is a war without end. It�s not like the Second World War, or even the Vietnam War, which had a clear, decisive finish. What worries us most is the insatiable appetite of this attorney general in amassing additional law-enforcement powers. President Bush�s announcement about the need for these additional law-enforcement powers, even though these powers were already very much questioned by Congress and the public, further underscores the zeal with which this administration would erode civil liberties in the name of national security.
Are there any specific proposals you�re preparing to fight?
One of our greatest difficulties has been the lack of information from the administration and our inability to engage in that debate. Many of the powers authorized under the Patriot Act are secret in nature, and this is an administration that has shown significant penchant for secrecy even in its own legislative deliberations. The Bush administration�s appetite for additional law-enforcement and intelligence powers has not been satisfied, and they will keep pushing the envelope as far and as hard as the American public will let them.
� 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
~~~
The Daily Mislead:
BUSH ADMINISTRATION SEEKS TO UNILATERALLY ELIMINATE OVERTIME PAY FOR MILLIONS OF WORKERS
President Bush's Department of Labor (DOL) announced in March a dramatic overhaul to the nation's overtime laws that will cause millions of workers to lose access to overtime pay. The administration claims that 644,000 workers will lose overtime eligibility, but it's really at least 2.5 million and possibly up to 8 million workers who will lose their overtime.
The DOL described the change as "long overdue" two years after they had come to the opposite conclusion. The proposed rule will guarantee overtime pay to 1.3 million workers who were previously ineligible. But the administration is failing to provide the full story or even the correct numbers about the millions of workers who will become ineligible for overtime compensation.
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