Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

timber, It seems to me at least that you also fail to see the difference between this administration's claim that we wish to bring democracy to Iraq, but this country also will not allow that same democracy to work for Arabs and Muslims in this country. Please explain the rational you use to equate the two.

I agree with the core values I believe he holds

The Unlocked Box
How Bush is plundering Social Security to close the deficit.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, Jan. 9, 2004, at 10:51 AM PT

The International Monetary Fund, which usually frets about runaway fiscal policies in developing countries, yesterday released a report that warned of the dangers to the global economy posed by the United States' lack of spending discipline, its reliance on foreign creditors, and its failure to plan adequately for future government liabilities.

Earlier this week, even as he called for making the Bush tax cuts permanent, Treasury Secretary John Snow pooh-poohed the deficit problem and insisted the government has a plan to improve matters:

Our fiscal situation remains a matter of concern. With major expenditures to protect our nation's homeland security and fight the war on terror, coupled with a recovering economy, we still face a deficit in the $500 billion range for the current fiscal year?-larger than anyone wants. But that size deficit, at roughly 4.5% of GDP (compared with a modern peak of 6% during the 80s), is not historically out of range; and it is entirely manageable, if we continue the president's strong pro-growth economic policies and sound fiscal restraint. Indeed, with adoption of the President's policies, our projections show a solid path toward cutting the deficit in half, toward a size that is below 2% of GDP, within the next five years.

The genial treasury secretary, a former deficit hawk, seems literally incapable of speaking truthfully about the deficit. (The same holds for National Economic Council Chairman Stephen Friedman.) In fact, if we adopt the president's policies?-which include a host of new tax cuts and massive new spending programs?-the deficit won't fall 50 percent in the next five years. It will grow substantially. And if President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress weren't already quietly using every penny of the massive and growing Social Security surplus to cover operating expenses?-and planning to continue this habit?-the deficits would be even larger.

Back in 1983, as part of a deal to save Social Security from impending demographic doom, Congress enacted legislation to essentially increase payroll taxes and reduce benefits. As a result, the government began to collect more Social Security payroll taxes than it paid out to beneficiaries each year. The theory was that the government would use these surpluses to pay down the national debt. That way, when baby boomers retire?-and comparatively more people are collecting benefits while comparatively fewer people are working?-the government would be in a better position to borrow the necessary funds to provide the promised benefits.

So much for theory. The reality? For the first 15 years, every penny of the surplus was spent, first by Republican presidents and then by a Democratic president. According to figures provided by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the surpluses were relatively insignificant for much of this period. Between 1983 and 2001 a total of $667 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes was spent?-about $35 billion per year. It was only in fiscal 1999 and 2000, when the government ran so-called on-budget surpluses, that excess Social Security funds were actually used to retire debt.

In the 2000 campaign, Vice President Al Gore said we should sequester the Social Security surpluses in a "lockbox" to prevent appropriators from spending them. Bush agreed in principle. But that commitment went out the window soon after the inauguration. In his first three budgets, Bush (who had the good fortune to take office at a time when the surpluses were growing rapidly) and Congress used $480 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes to fund basic government operations?-about $160 billion per year!

By so doing, Washington spenders have masked the size of the deficit. For Fiscal 2004?-which began in October 2003?-if you factor out the $164 billion Social Security surplus, the on-budget deficit will be at least $639 billion, rather close to the modern peak of 6 percent of GDP. And according to its own projections (the bottom line of Table 8 represents the Social Security surplus), the administration plans to spend an additional $990 billion in such funds between now and 2008. That year, according to the Office of Management and Budget's projections, the on-budget deficit will be about $464 billion. Only by using that year's $238 billion Social Security surplus does the administration arrive at a total, unified deficit of $226 billion. And the ultimate on-budget deficit will almost certainly be worse. OMB has proven in the past few years that its projections can't be trusted.

The accounting for Social Security surpluses has always been dishonest. But in the past few years, the Bush administration has made this shady accounting a central pillar of its fiscal strategy. The unprecedented reliance on these funds hides the failure of the administration to ensure that there is some reasonable correlation between the resources it has at its disposal and the spending commitments it makes. Bush & Co. have redesigned the tax system so that collections of the progressive taxes that are supposed to fund government operations?-like individual income taxes?-have plummeted. Instead, with each passing year we rely for our current needs more on the regressive payroll taxes that are supposed to fund our collective retirement.

The persistence of the administration and its credulous allies in eliding these facts is flabbergasting. Of course, for the Bush administration to give an honest accounting of the deficits, and of the role that Social Security surpluses play in keeping them down, would be to admit the fundamental bankruptcy?-no pun intended?-of its adventuresome fiscal experiment.

He didn't free the slaves.

He didn't rid the world of Hitler.

He didn't even - like his father - preside over the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

Yet George W. Bush tells New Yorker writer Ken Auletta: "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

With stunners like that, no wonder he spends so little time with journalists.

Ya know what just adds to that statement from Dubya? The fact he has a BSc in history from Yale. How did THAT happen????

Scrat, It's a simple as the following link. http://www.thehawaiichannel.com/news/1985179/detail.html Whether you can understand it or not, we were treated similar to the Arabs/Muslims in the country over fifty years ago, and put into concentration camps. I am angry at this administration for what this admnistration is doing. You are probably a WASP and don't give a ****, but I do.

In the wake of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government is requiring all men from Middle Eastern countries in the United States to register, and be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed.

"There are many laws that have passed that are targeting no one but the Muslims as well as the Arab communities. And the South Asians as well," Ouansafi said.

He said about a half dozen men who are Muslims or Arabs and lived here are voluntarily returning to Egypt, Jordan and Morocco rather than face deportation under the U.S. Patriot Act.

From your citation:

Quote:

In the wake of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government is requiring all men from Middle Eastern countries in the United States to register, and be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed.

I do not believe that statement to be true, and I respectfully ask that you find me any official statement, law, regulation... anything from the federal government stating that this is actually being done.

[...]
The requirement that foreign men, from mostly Muslim nations, register with US authorities is part of the Patriot Act passed by Congress last year. It's a key component of a law designed to help authorities prevent terrorism on home soil. For the INS, it's an opportunity to bridge substantial information gaps shown up by the attack on Sept. 11.

Under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), as its formally known, the agency has photographed and fingerprinted men 16 and older from 25 nations who had arrived in the US by last September. They've conducted interviews and rifled through paperwork to substantiate biographical details such as the registrant's place of birth, current address, and job description.
[...]