Fw: Take action now!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Connie Mancini Haack"
To:
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 8:02 PM
Subject: Take action now!

I just wrote a letter about Iraq, and I hope you will do the same.

Click on this URL to take action now
http://capwiz.com/fconl/utr/2/?a=7092416&i=32117441

If your email program does not recognize the URL as a link,
copy the entire URL and paste it into your Web browser.

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It's Called Torture

A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 28, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST

By BOB HERBERT

As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?

When I interviewed Maher Arar in Ottawa last week, it seemed clear that however thoughtful his comments, I was talking with the frightened, shaky successor of a once robust and fully functioning human being. Torture does that to a person. It's an unspeakable crime, an affront to one's humanity that can rob you of a portion of your being as surely as acid can destroy your flesh.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft's Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Mr. Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture.

Mr. Arar was not charged with anything, and yet he was deprived not only of his liberty, but of all legal and human rights. He was handed over in shackles to the Syrian government and, to no one's surprise, promptly brutalized. A year later he emerged, and still no charges were lodged against him. His torturers said they were unable to elicit any link between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was sent back to Canada to face the torment of a life in ruins.

Mr. Arar's is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?

President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."

Someone should tell that to Maher Arar and his family.

Mr. Arar was the victim of an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That's a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture.

A Massachusetts congressman, Edward Markey, has taken the eminently sensible step of introducing legislation that would ban this utterly reprehensible practice. In a speech on the floor of the House, Mr. Markey, a Democrat, said: "Torture is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it is captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people."

Unfortunately, the outlook for this legislation is not good. I asked Pete Jeffries, the communications director for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, if the speaker supported Mr. Markey's bill. After checking with the policy experts in his office, Mr. Jeffries called back and said: "The speaker does not support the Markey proposal. He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries."

Surprised, I asked why suspected terrorists should be sent anywhere. Why shouldn't they be held by the United States and prosecuted?

"Because," said Mr. Jeffries, "U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs."

It was, perhaps, the most preposterous response to any question I've ever asked as a journalist. It was not by any means an accurate reflection of Bush administration policy. All it indicated was that the speaker's office does not understand this issue, and has not even bothered to take it seriously.

More important, it means that torture by proxy, close kin to contract murder, remains all right. Congressman Markey's bill is going nowhere. Extraordinary rendition lives.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Don't Blame Wal-Mart

A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 28, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

By ROBERT B. REICH

Berkeley, Calif. — BOWING to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.

But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there.

Instead, Wal-Mart has lured customers with low prices. "We expect our suppliers to drive the costs out of the supply chain," a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said. "It's good for us and good for them."

Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are manufactured in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back-office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is "offshored" to India, so our dollars go even further.

Meanwhile, many of us pressure companies to give us even better bargains. I look on the Internet to find the lowest price I can and buy airline tickets, books, merchandise from just about anywhere with a click of a mouse. Don't you?

The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities.

We can blame big corporations, but we're mostly making this bargain with ourselves. The easier it is for us to get great deals, the stronger the downward pressure on wages and benefits. Last year, the real wages of hourly workers, who make up about 80 percent of the work force, actually dropped for the first time in more than a decade; hourly workers' health and pension benefits are in free fall. The easier it is for us to find better professional services, the harder professionals have to hustle to attract and keep clients. The more efficiently we can summon products from anywhere on the globe, the more stress we put on our own communities.

But you and I aren't just consumers. We're also workers and citizens. How do we strike the right balance? To claim that people shouldn't have access to Wal-Mart or to cut-rate airfares or services from India or to Internet shopping, because these somehow reduce their quality of life, is paternalistic tripe. No one is a better judge of what people want than they themselves.

The problem is, the choices we make in the market don't fully reflect our values as workers or as citizens. I didn't want our community bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., to close (as it did last fall) yet I still bought lots of books from Amazon.com. In addition, we may not see the larger bargain when our own job or community isn't directly at stake. I don't like what's happening to airline workers, but I still try for the cheapest fare I can get.

The only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social choice as well as a personal one. A requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance, for example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and services. My inner consumer won't like that very much, but the worker in me thinks it a fair price to pay. Same with an increase in the minimum wage or a change in labor laws making it easier for employees to organize and negotiate better terms.

I wouldn't go so far as to re-regulate the airline industry or hobble free trade with China and India - that would cost me as a consumer far too much - but I'd like the government to offer wage insurance to ease the pain of sudden losses of pay. And I'd support labor standards that make trade agreements a bit more fair.

These provisions might end up costing me some money, but the citizen in me thinks they are worth the price. You might think differently, but as a nation we aren't even having this sort of discussion. Instead, our debates about economic change take place between two warring camps: those who want the best consumer deals, and those who want to preserve jobs and communities much as they are. Instead of finding ways to soften the blows, compensate the losers or slow the pace of change - so the consumers in us can enjoy lower prices and better products without wreaking too much damage on us in our role as workers and citizens - we go to battle.

I don't know if Wal-Mart will ever make it into New York City. I do know that New Yorkers, like most other Americans, want the great deals that can be had in a rapidly globalizing high-tech economy. Yet the prices on sales tags don't reflect the full prices we have to pay as workers and citizens. A sensible public debate would focus on how to make that total price as low as possible.

Robert B. Reich, the author of "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America," was secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

W.'s Stiletto Democracy

A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 27, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

It was remarkable to see President Bush lecture Vladimir Putin on the importance of checks and balances in a democratic society.

Remarkably brazen, given that the only checks Mr. Bush seems to believe in are those written to the "journalists" Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Karen Ryan, the fake TV anchor, to help promote his policies. The administration has given a whole new meaning to checkbook journalism, paying a stupendous $97 million to an outside P.R. firm to buy columnists and produce propaganda, including faux video news releases.

The only balance W. likes is the slavering, Pravda-like "Fair and Balanced" coverage Fox News provides. Mr. Bush pledges to spread democracy while his officials strive to create a Potemkin press village at home. This White House seems to prefer softball questions from a self-advertised male escort with a fake name to hardball questions from journalists with real names; it prefers tossing journalists who protect their sources into the gulag to giving up the officials who broke the law by leaking the name of their own C.I.A. agent.

W., who once looked into Mr. Putin's soul and liked what he saw, did not demand the end of tyranny, as he did in his second Inaugural Address. His upper lip sweating a bit, he did not rise to the level of his hero Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Instead, he said that "the common ground is a lot more than those areas where we disagree." The Russians were happy to stress the common ground as well.

An irritated Mr. Putin compared the Russian system to the American Electoral College, perhaps reminding the man preaching to him about democracy that he had come in second in 2000 according to the popular vote, the standard most democracies use.

Certainly the autocratic former K.G.B. agent needs to be upbraided by someone - Tony Blair, maybe? - for eviscerating the meager steps toward democracy that Russia had made before Mr. Putin came to power. But Mr. Bush is on shaky ground if he wants to hold up his administration as a paragon of safeguarding liberty - considering it has trampled civil liberties in the name of the war on terror and outsourced the torture of prisoners to bastions of democracy like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. (The secretary of state canceled a trip to Egypt this week after Egypt's arrest of a leading opposition politician.)

"I live in a transparent country," Mr. Bush protested to a Russian reporter who implicitly criticized the Patriot Act by noting that the private lives of American citizens "are now being monitored by the state."

Dick Cheney's secret meetings with energy lobbyists were certainly a model of transparency. As was the buildup to the Iraq war, when the Bush hawks did their best to cloak the real reasons they wanted to go to war and trumpet the trumped-up reasons.

The Bush administration wields maximum secrecy with minimal opposition. The White House press is timid. The poor, limp Democrats don't have enough power to convene Congressional hearings on any Republican outrages and are reduced to writing whining letters of protest that are tossed in the Oval Office trash.

When nearly $9 billion allotted for Iraqi reconstruction during Paul Bremer's tenure went up in smoke, Democratic lawmakers vainly pleaded with Republicans to open a Congressional investigation.

Even the near absence of checks and balances is not enough for W. Not content with controlling the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and a good chunk of the Fourth Estate, he goes to even more ludicrous lengths to avoid being challenged.

The White House wants its Republican allies in the Senate to stamp out the filibuster, one of the few weapons the handcuffed Democrats have left. They want to invoke the so-called nuclear option and get rid of the 150-year-old tradition in order to ram through more right-wing judges.

Mr. Bush and Condi Rice strut in their speeches - the secretary of state also strutted in Wiesbaden in her foxy "Matrix"-dominatrix black leather stiletto boots - but they shy away from taking questions from the public unless they get to vet the questions and audiences in advance.

Administration officials went so far as to cancel a town hall meeting during Mr. Bush's visit to Germany last week after deciding an unscripted setting would be too risky, opting for a round-table talk in Mainz with preselected Germans and Americans.

The president loves democracy - as long as democracy means he's always right.

E-mail:

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Thrown To The Wolves

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Thrown to the Wolves
By BOB HERBERT

OTTAWA

If John Ashcroft was right, then I was staring into the malevolent,
duplicitous eyes of pure evil, the eyes of a man with the mass murder of
Americans on
his mind. But all I could really see was a polite, unassuming, neatly
dressed guy who looked like a suburban Little League coach.

If Mr. Ashcroft was right, then Maher Arar should have been in a U.S.
prison, not talking to me in an office in downtown Ottawa. But there he was,
a 34-year-old
man who now wears a perpetually sad expression, talking about his recent
experiences - a real-life story with the hideous aura of a hallucination.
Mr.
Arar's 3-year-old son, Houd, loudly crunched potato chips while his father
was being interviewed.

"I still have nightmares about being in Syria, being beaten, being in jail,"
said Mr. Arar. "They feel very real. When I wake up, I feel very relieved to
find myself in my room."

In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself
caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has
substituted
for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change
planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation
in
Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into
jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with
anything, but his life would be ruined.

Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and
then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit,
underground,
rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was
tortured.

He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions
he was told to sign. He prayed.

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying
in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman
pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured.

"I used to ask God to help them," he said.

The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence
whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow linked to, Al Qaeda. If
that's
so, how can the administration possibly allow him to roam free? The Syrians,
who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to
terrorism.

And the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a sometimes-clownish outfit that
seems to have helped set this entire fiasco in motion by forwarding bad
information
to American authorities, is being criticized heavily in Canada for failing
to follow its own rules on the handling and dissemination of raw classified
information.

Official documents in Canada suggest that Mr. Arar was never the target of a
terror investigation there. One former Canadian official, commenting on the
Arar case, was quoted in a local newspaper as saying "accidents will happen"
in the war on terror.

Whatever may have happened in Canada, nothing can excuse the behavior of the
United States in this episode. Mr. Arar was deliberately dispatched by U.S.
officials to Syria, a country that - as they knew - practices torture. And
if Canadian officials hadn't intervened, he most likely would not have been
heard from again.

Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known
as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American
authorities
and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in
the art of torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this
policy
may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not make it any less
repugnant.

Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain
from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.

"It was so scary," he said. "After a while I became like an animal."

A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by
the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a
lawyer
with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of
Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the
revelation of state secrets."

This is a government that feels it is answerable to no one.

E-mail:
bobherb@nytimes.com
Posted by Miriam V. 2/25

HIV prevalence in blacks doubles to 2 percent

A Call To Action


The Associated Press

BOSTON — The HIV infection rate has doubled among U.S. blacks over a decade while holding steady among whites.

Such numbers offer stark evidence of a widening racial gap in the epidemic.

Other troubling statistics indicate that almost half of all infected people in the United States who should be receiving HIV drugs are not getting them.

The findings were released Friday at the 12th annual Retrovirus Conference, the world's chief scientific gathering on the disease.

“It's incredibly disappointing,” said Terje Anderson, director of the National Association of People With AIDS. “We just have a burgeoning epidemic in the African-American community that is not being dealt with effectively.”

Researchers and AIDS prevention advocates attributed the high rate among blacks to such factors as drug addiction, poverty and poor access to health care.

The HIV rates were derived from the widely used National Health and Nutrition Examinations Surveys, which analyze a representative sample of U.S. households and contain the most complete HIV data in the country. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compared 1988-1994 data with figures from 1999-2002.

The surveys look only at young and middle-age adults who live in households, excluding such groups as soldiers, prisoners and the homeless. Thus, health officials think the numbers probably underestimate true HIV rates.

Still, they show a striking rise in the prevalence of the AIDS virus from 1 percent to 2 percent of blacks. White rates held steady at 0.2 percent. Largely because of the increase among blacks, the overall U.S. rate rose slightly from 0.3 percent to 0.4 percent.

Susan Buchbinder, who leads HIV research for San Francisco, recommended a stronger focus on treating drug addiction.

The lead CDC researcher, Geraldine McQuillan, said she was encouraged to see the HIV rate among younger blacks holding steady at just under 1.5 percent.

“It tells me we're making some headway,” she said.

Ashcroft's Legacy

A Call To Action
AlterNet

By Nancy Talanian, AlterNet
Posted on February 16, 2005, Printed on February 24, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21280/

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal – well-meaning but without understanding." (Justice Louis D. Brandeis)

When President Bush chose former Sen. John Ashcroft to be attorney general in 2001, a common refrain among Missourians was that had they known, they would not have elected a dead man (Gov. Mel Carnahan) as their senator over the incumbent, John Ashcroft.

Several of Mr. Ashcroft's former colleagues in the Senate shared Missourians' doubts about him when they confirmed him on Feb. 1, 2001, as attorney general with only 58 votes, the fewest in the history of the office. (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales received the second-fewest votes – 60.) At Ashcroft's Judiciary Committee hearing prior to the vote, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, said: "We know that while serving in high office, he has time and again aggressively used litigation and legislation in creative and inappropriate ways to advance his political and ideological goals. How can we have any confidence at all that he won't do the same thing with the vast new powers he will have at his disposal as attorney general of the United States?"

Before Sept. 11, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft failed to make counterterrorism a priority or to grant the FBI the counterterrorism funding it claimed to need. (See his May 10, 2001, memo.) After Sept. 11th, under the guise of fighting terrorism, attorney general Ashcroft and his Justice Department drafted laws and enacted policies that granted sweeping new powers to the executive branch while reducing the powers of the judiciary and Congress and curtailing the rights of the people. To avoid meaningful debate, he capitalized on fears of terrorism and characterized himself and supporters of the new laws and executive branch policies as the true patriots who were doing everything possible to protect their country. In contrast, he accused those who cast doubt on the constitutionality of the new laws and policies of aiding the terrorists.

The naming of the USA Patriot Act was Mr. Ashcroft's "doublespeak" at its best. It was a resounding success in Congress, where it helped speed the Act's passage without committee mark-up or debate. But after its passage, as people gradually began to see the act's name as a disguise concealing its un-American contents, "USA Patriot Act" became synonymous with all the unjust laws, orders, practices, and policies the administration used after 9/11 to deny people their constitutional rights. Ashcroft and the DOJ staff have used the misleading phrase "terrorism related investigations" to give the American people the false impression that the thousands of men whom it detained had some connection to terrorism. In an article in The Nation, Georgetown University Law Center Professor David Cole notes that Mr. Ashcroft's record in so-called "terrorism" cases is "0 for 5,000" (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041004&s=cole).

Recognizing that knowledge is power, Mr. Ashcroft alternately concealed and revealed information to bolster his image. In November, he claimed his department was holding al-Qaeda members and would soon release their names. When none of the detainees apparently turned out to be members of al Qaeda, he simply classified the list of names, claiming that he didn't want to reveal to al Qaeda which of their members were in U.S. custody (http://www.cnss.org/agrelease.htm). On the other hand, he declassified a DOJ memo from the Clinton era written by 9/11 Commission member Jaime Gorelick to support his claim that the Clinton Administration had erected "the wall" between intelligence and law enforcement, and therefore, deserved blame for failing to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.

At his frequent news conferences, Mr. Ashcroft was a master of hyperbole, trumpeting his department's successes in unraveling imaginary terrorist threats and sleeper cells, such as Jose Padilla's foiled "dirty bomb" plot that was never actually planned, and probably didn't involve a dirty bomb. But when things did not go his way, such as when the Detroit convictions he had touted were overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct, he was silent. When silence wasn't an option, he simply lied. He assured the American people that the post-9/11 detainees were allowed access to attorneys, a claim later refuted by a DOJ Inspector General's report. And just days before a copy of the DOJ-drafted Domestic Security Enhancement Act (AKA "Patriot II") landed in the hands of the Center for Public Integrity, Mr. Ashcroft denied to a member of Senator Leahy's staff that his department was drafting such a bill.

Mr. Ashcroft believes his greatest failure was not fully explaining to the American people how the USA Patriot Act has helped in the "war on terrorism." Many more would say he failed his country by placing his loyalty to the president and personal ambition above his duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. system of justice. His loyalty even caused him to argue forcefully for policies he personally opposed, such as the indefinite detentions at Guantanamo without legal recourse and military tribunals. Toward the end of his term, he prevented the Senate from seeing documents that might have shed light on Alberto Gonzales' and Michael Chertoff's actions, positions, and statements on the use of torture in interrogations.

But through his many failures, Mr. Ashcroft has reminded millions of us that, as Thomas Jefferson warned, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Across the country, nearly 400 communities and four state legislatures have passed resolutions or ordinances affirming the constitutional rights of their 56 million residents. Hundreds more resolutions are in progress. Grassroots groups across the country will participate in a national debate this year over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act's portions that sunset and other civil liberties abuses.

They are the legacy of John Ashcroft.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21280/

Bipartisan Study Assails No Child Left Behind Act

A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 23, 2005

By SAM DILLON

A bipartisan panel of state lawmakers that studied the effectiveness of President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative assailed it today as a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform effort that had usurped state and local control of public schools.

While the report, based on hearings in several cities, praised the legislation's goal of ending the gap in scholastic achievement between white and minority students, most of its 77 pages was devoted to a detailed inventory and discussion of the initiative's flaws.

It found that the law undermined other school improvement efforts already under way in many states, and it said that the law's accountability system, which punishes schools whose students fail to improve steadily on standardized tests, relied on the wrong indicators.

"Under N.C.L.B., the federal government's role has become excessively intrusive in the day-to-day operations of public education," the National Conference of State Legislatures said in its panel's report. "The task force does not believe that N.C.L.B. is constitutional."

Several educational experts said the task force had accurately captured the views of thousands of state lawmakers and local educators. If so, then the Bush administration may face a growing chorus of challenges to the law and to the Department of Education's implementation of it over the coming months.

Nine state legislatures are currently considering various challenges to the law, and the Utah Senate is poised to vote on a bill already passed by its House that would require Utah education officials to give higher priority to state education laws than to the federal law.

Several business and other groups that strongly support the federal No Child Left Behind legislation took issue with the report, saying that the report's authors had overstated the quality of the state programs that they said the federal government had hampered.

In preparing their report, task force members worked for 10 months and held a series of public hearings in Washington, Chicago, Salt Lake City, New York, Santa Fe and Portland. The panel also met for deliberations in Savannah, Ga.

"They went out and heard lots of things from different people around the country, and this report reflects the breadth and depth of what they heard," said Patricia Sullivan, director of the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, who attended hearings in two cities.

An assistant secretary of education, Ray Simon, met with members of the task force in Washington today to discuss the report.

"The department will continue to work with every state to address their concerns and make this law work for their children," the Education Department said in a statement. "But the report could be interpreted as wanting to reverse the progress we've made."

It added, "No Child Left Behind is bringing new hope and new opportunity to families throughout America, and we will not reverse course."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

South Korean report sparks currency sale

A Call To Action


- Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 23, 2005

The dollar fell against the euro, the yen and other currencies Tuesday as traders dumped greenbacks after a report that South Korea's central bank plans to increase its nondollar reserves.

Against the euro, the dollar lost 1.5 percent, falling to $1.3260 from $1. 3068 in afternoon trading in New York, according to EBS, an electronic foreign- exchange system. It was the biggest drop since Aug. 6. The U.S. currency slid 1.3 percent to 104.13 yen from 105.54.

Central banks hold reserves to defend their currencies from speculative attacks and to help finance international borrowing and trade. The dollar has long been the world's leading reserve currency, although its position has been eroding.

A report from Reuters news service earlier this week disclosed the confidential diversification plan of South Korea's central bank, which holds roughly $200 billion in dollar reserves, making it one of the largest holders of U.S. currency. That spooked traders, who have been hearing a steady stream of bad news about U.S. budget and trade deficits.

"People really got excited, and a lot of them felt it was a significant statement,'' said Ray McKenzie, director of foreign currency products at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The Australian and Canadian dollars also gained. The South Korean central bank statement that sparked the U.S. dollar dumping specifically cited the Australian and Canadian dollars as diversification candidates.

Economics Professor Don Nichols, a foreign-currency expert with the University of Wisconsin's La Follette School of Public Affairs, said Tuesday's sell-off reflects the market's reaction to fundamental weaknesses in the U.S. economy -- big federal budget deficits coupled with big foreign trade imbalances. These have forced the United States to borrow more, with foreigners holding a big share of U.S. debt.

The dollar's fall makes U.S. exports cheaper and could lessen the trade imbalance.

Authorities such as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have questioned when foreign buyers would lose their appetite for dollars, Nichols said.

Other dollar holders in Asia have hinted they were reluctant to keep buying. In January, for instance, the chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said that other countries would not finance U.S. deficits indefinitely.

Barbara Rockefeller, a Connecticut foreign-exchange expert and newsletter publisher, said the Korean statement provided the catalyst for traders to act.

The dollar, which has been sliding for about three years, had regained some strength relative to the euro and other leading currencies at the start of the year. That trend recently reached a critical point that analysts had been watching closely for. Rockefeller said this turning point caused traders to start buying foreign currency, which added force to Tuesday's dollar slide.

"Traders were looking for an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway, '' Rockefeller said.

No one knows how far the dollar will slide and how this will affect its position as the world's dominant currency, said Brian Bethune, director of financial economics with the Massachusetts consulting firm Global Insight.

Europe and Japan, the economic powers whose currencies are the strongest challengers to the dollar, have lower growth rates than the United States, he noted. They have even larger problems related to funding retirement and health care programs, he added.

Rockefeller said that while the dollar will probably continue to slide, she does not expect it to lose its position as the world's reserve currency, principally for reasons of global politics rather than economics.

"You have to be a military power,'' she said, adding that no other nation can match American might.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.E-mail Tom Abate at tabate@sfchronicle.com.

Now He Has the Power

A Call To Action
AlterNet

By John Nichols, The Nation
Posted on February 21, 2005, Printed on February 21, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21304/

With the selection of Howard Dean as its chairman, the 213-year-old Democratic Party has become something it has not been for a long time: exciting. A measure of that came three days before the 447 members of the Democratic National Committee chose him, at a pre-victory party Dean held in a microbrewery just blocks from DNC headquarters. Hundreds of his mostly young, mostly liberal supporters packed the place to hear Dean declare the Democrats to be the "party of the future." They also got a signal that he remained "their man," not the neutered version of himself that party insiders were still hoping he might become in his new role. When a backer bellowed the updated Harry Truman slogan that became a mantra for Dean's presidential campaign – "Give 'em hell, Howard!" – a wicked grin rippled across Dean's face. "I'm trying to be restrained in my new role," he chirped. "I may be looking for a three-piece suit." Then he burst into laughter and exclaimed, "Fat chance!"

The crowd cheered. Reporters flipped open notebooks. A faint shudder was heard from the offices of Congressional Democratic leaders. And Republicans, recalling the Iowa caucus incident that so damaged Dean's presidential prospects, repeated their tired take on the Vermonter's political resurrection: "It's a scream."

But unlike past DNC chairs, Dean won't have to scream for attention. Taking over as chairman of a party that is locked out of the White House and unable to muster anything more than a "minority leader" to flex its legislative muscle, Dean has positioned himself as the most camera-ready Democrat in the country. As such, he is in a position to make his party – as opposed to an individual candidate or faction – more newsworthy and potentially more dangerous than it has been in decades. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Dean's tenure will prove merely a wild ride or a ride into the flourishing future the new chair promises: with huge gains in the 2006 elections and a Democratic President marching down Pennsylvania Avenue on Jan. 20, 2009.

Dean has become the Democratic Party's Rorschach test. Frustrated grassroots activists and donors see him as the tribune of their anti-war, anticorporate and anti-Bush views. Big thinkers see him as an idea filter who understands the potential of neglected issues and strategies. State and local party officials recognize him as a former governor who understands that Democrats can compete in all 50 states and is more likely to listen to them than Congressional leaders who remain obsessed with "targeted" states and races. Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson sums up the pro-Dean sentiment when he says Dean will "bring new spirit and new energy to the party, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time." But his enthusiasm is not echoed by the Democratic insiders in D.Cc who have gotten so used to playing politics by GOP rules that they see Dean as a "madman" on a suicide mission that will wreck everything they know. New Republic commentator Jonathan Chait put their fears into words when he grumbled that "Dean, with his intense secularism, arrogant style, throngs of high-profile counterculture supporters and association with the peace movement, is the precise opposite of the image Democrats want to send out."

The fact that Dean inspires such diverse passions among Democrats says as much about the party's current troubles as it does about him. The truth is that his is a fairly conventional story of political progress. He was a successful, if not particularly progressive, Vermont governor who – in the tradition of small-state governors making big splashes in national Democratic politics – mounted an innovative run for the presidential nomination that inspired bedraggled party cadres. That campaign was doomed not by Dean's anti-war rhetoric or advocacy of domestic reforms but by his bumbling transition from insurgent to frontrunner. Were it not for another candidate's bumbling, that might have been the end of his story. "If Kerry had won, he would have picked the chairman and it wouldn't have been Howard," says Mike Tate, a former DNC member who worked for Dean's presidential campaign. "What happened in November opened up a debate about the party's future that Dean could be a part of. In fact, he'll be leading it."

Historically, the DNC has rubber-stamped as chairman the choice of whatever establishment figure was calling the shots – a president, former president, Congressional leader or big contributor. But with Kerry defeated, Bill Clinton retired and Democratic Congressional leaders struggling to remain afloat in the GOP tide, the way was clear for something Democrats hadn't seen in years: a genuine contest. The competition suited Dean and the activists, but it horrified Beltway Democrats. Much of the griping about Dean by the party's Washington elites and their amen corner in that city's punditocracy was rooted in their faith that the DNC chairman was supposed to be someone like them: a D.C. veteran who knew more about where to grab lunch near K Street than about the best diner in Keokuk, Iowa. Thus, they cheered as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (as well as Kerry) all moved to block Dean's return to the fray. They never quite figured out that Dean was going to win because he'd been to that diner in Keokuk, and he'd met there with beleaguered grassroots Democrats who appreciated his saying, "We need to be proud to be Democrats" – and appreciated even more his suggestion that the way to express that pride is as a genuine opposition party.

"Dean understands that the essence of a good political communicator is somebody who can execute strong message contrasts," says former DNC chair David Wilhelm, a Chicago-based pol who never quite fit into the Washington scene. "Maybe what seemed wild in a presidential candidate will seem much more normal in a chair of a national party." As such, Dean picked up lots of support from Democrats who were never Deaniacs but knew the party had to change. "The Washington axis tends to cast the question in terms of right versus left, but the better way of looking at it is outside versus inside," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich told a reporter. "The Republicans have somehow managed to root themselves outside of Washington, and it's worked to their advantage. But the Democrats are rooted now essentially inside the Senate. Ugh. The argument for Dean is that he'll help change that."

A story line being developed by Dean's critics, and some Dean enthusiasts, says his people took over the party. They didn't. Dean won the contest by doing what he did best during the 2004 campaign: relentlessly working the phones to connect with the people who do the heavy lifting in the party (he called the Arizona Democratic Party chair at 10:30 on a Saturday night to discuss the DNC race) and getting local activists in neglected corners of the country excited. "I was not going to vote for Howard Dean," says Randy Roy, a Topeka hotel owner and Kansas representative on the DNC. "Then I heard him and he won me over. He doesn't put his finger up in the wind. He says we are the party of social justice. We are the party that evens the playing field for the little guy. And he recognizes that we need to say that again and again and again."

The Washington-insider line on Dean was that he would be anathema to Democrats from "red" states like Kansas, where Kerry won only a single county. The reality was the opposite: Some of Dean's first major endorsements for chair came from party leaders in Alabama, Mississippi and, yes, Kansas. When Reid suggested that Justice Antonin Scalia would be an acceptable chief justice, Dean disagreed. That created a stir in Washington, including an "it's not your job to set policy" admonishment from outgoing chair Terry McAuliffe. But it didn't hurt Dean with DNC members. "That, to me, is one more reason to elect him chairman," says Roy.

Now that Dean is chairman, he'll have to strike a balance between grassroots Democrats, who want the party to be more muscular in opposition, and Congressional Democrats, who tend to believe, as Pelosi has argued, that the chair will "take his lead from us." Dean, who once ran the Democratic Governors Association and knows a lot about party etiquette, won't go to war with the Congressional leaders. But, as one Dean backer said, "He has to prod them. I mean, what's the point of making Dean party chair if he isn't going to get these people to use their backbones?" Dean's aides say he will lie low initially, looking for fights where he can put a charged-up party to work for Congressional Democrats, perhaps in defense of Social Security, perhaps in opposition to a Supreme Court nominee.

Dean will paper over a lot of tensions if he can make the DNC as essential for Democratic candidates as the RNC is for Republicans. Even before Dean's election as chair, the DNC made a major commitment to aid party nominees in 2005 contests for mayor of New York City and governor of New Jersey and Virginia. And the DNC will be all over the 2006 fights for the Senate, where Democrats will struggle to defend more seats than the GOP, and the House, where Democratic prospects should be somewhat better. But Dean's best chance to prove himself will be at the state and local levels, where three dozen governorships, attorneys general slots, control of state legislatures and thousands of county posts that are vital to rebuilding the party's infrastructure will be at stake. Dean's pledge to transform the party into a grassroots organization "that can win in all 50 states" will be put to the test. Dean – energized by the success that Democracy for America, the successor organization to his 2004 campaign, had in aiding successful local campaigns in places like Salt Lake County, Utah, and Montgomery, Ala. – relishes the prospect, an attitude that distinguishes him from predecessors who seldom found time for legislative races, let alone county commission contests.

Dean starts with a DNC that is financially sound – McAuliffe left a surplus, and Kerry just kicked in another $1 million from unspent campaign funds – and that has developed a broadened base of small donors. But Dean will need to expand that base, not only because it will free him and the party from the constraints placed on it in the 1990s by an overreliance on big donors and special interests but also because his ambitious program will require him to move a lot of money out of the D.C. headquarters, which McAuliffe spent so much time renovating. Dean's plan to spend at least $11 million annually to beef up state parties will be his most expensive early initiative. But he has a lot of big ideas. "The tools that were pioneered in my [presidential] campaign – like blogs and Meetups and streaming video – are just a start," he says. "We must use all of the power and potential of technology as part of an aggressive outreach to meet and include voters, to work with the state parties, and to influence media coverage."

One of the most intriguing measures of the difference between Dean and his DNC predecessors is the excitement his election has generated among people with big ideas about strategy and policy. Internet innovators like Zach Exley and Zephyr Teachout have already made smart proposals for how to push the technological envelope [see Katrina vanden Heuvel's Feb. 13 "Editor's Cut" weblog at www.thenation.com]. But where Dean could cause the greatest stir is in championing bold new approaches that will again make the Democrats a party of ideas. He still converses with the wide circle of academics and activists who, during the 2004 campaign, transformed an initially cautious candidate into a champion of innovative proposals to create a national commission on how to restore democracy, break up media conglomerates and force corporations to provide not just a full financial accounting but also a social accounting of their adherence to environmental, labor and community standards. After the campaign finished, Dean kept talking to public intellectuals like Benjamin Barber, who introduced him to progressive leaders from around the world on a trip to Rome last year, and whose ideas about how America can relate to the world offer the party a framework for a positive internationalism.

What's genuinely exciting about the Dean chairmanship is the prospect that the party might come to mirror its new chief's enthusiasm for bold stances and strategies. Dean's best applause line in the race for DNC chair was, "We cannot win by being Republican-lite. We've tried it; it does not work." For all the important talk of rebuilding state parties and using new technologies, what matters most about Dean's election as DNC chair is his recognition that Democrats have to be serious about holding out to Americans the twin promises of reform and progress, and that they are not going to do that by tinkering with the status quo. "We just can't let the Republicans define the debate anymore. We have to be the party of ideas," Randy Roy says from Topeka. "Dean understands that we have to be the party that shakes things up."
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21304/

A New Target for Advisers to Swift Vets

A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 21, 2005

By GLEN JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.

The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.

"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them."

Though it is not clear how much money USA Next has in hand for the campaign - Mr. Jarvis will not say, and the group, which claims 1.5 million members, does not have to disclose its donors - officials say that the group's annual budget was more than $28 million last year. The group, a membership organization with no age requirements for joining, has also spent millions in recent years vigorously supporting Bush proposals on tax cuts, energy and the Medicare prescription drug plan.

So far, the groups dueling over Social Security have been relatively tame, but the plans by USA Next foreshadow what could be a steep escalation in the war to sway public opinion and members of Congress in the days ahead.

Already, AARP is holding dozens of forums on the issue, has sent mailings to its 35 million members and has spent roughly $5 million on print advertisements in major newspapers opposing private accounts. "If we feel like gambling," some advertisements said, "we'll play the slots."

AARP is spending another $5 million on a new print advertising campaign beginning this week.

To help set USA Next's strategy, the group has hired Chris LaCivita, an enthusiastic former marine who advised Swift Vets and P.O.W.'s for Truth, formerly known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, on its media campaign and helped write its potent commercials. He earned more than $30,000 for his work, campaign finance filings show.

Officials said the group is also seeking to hire Rick Reed, a partner at Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, a firm that was hired by Swift Vets and was paid more than $276,000 to do media production, records show.

For public relations, USA Next has turned to Creative Response Concepts, a Virginia firm that represented both Swift Vets - the company was paid more than $165,000 - and Regnery Publishing, the publisher of "Unfit for Command," a book about Senator John Kerry's military service whose co-author was John E. O'Neill, one of the primary leaders of Swift Vets.

Swift Vets captured headlines for weeks in last year's presidential race, when it spent millions of dollars on incendiary commercials attacking Senator Kerry's war record. Because federal law prohibits outside groups from coordinating with presidential campaigns during elections, the organization came under fire when it was revealed that a lawyer for Mr. Bush's campaign was also advising Swift Vets.

Mr. Bush criticized groups like Swift Vets last year, and his campaign kept its distance from the groups' attacks on Mr. Kerry. In policy battles like the one looming over Social Security, though, there is no prohibition against coordination. Several huge business lobbies, like the Business Roundtable, have become closely linked to Mr. Bush's plans for Social Security and have assembled coalitions to promote the proposals across the country.

In the case of USA Next, the group and the White House say they are not working together. Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said the administration was familiar with the group and has interacted with it on issues in the past, but said that it had no input on its current efforts. USA Next says it has taken pains to disassociate itself from the administration, even declining to join the large lobbying coalitions the White House is working with to pass Social Security legislation.

"We don't like asking anyone for permission to do anything," Mr. Jarvis said. "We totally support the president's boldness on Social Security, but we don't coordinate with the White House or the Hill. We know the people at the White House agree with us and we agree with them."

.

USA Next has been portraying AARP as a liberal organization out of step with Republican values, and is now trying to discredit its stance on Social Security. USA Next's campaign has involved appearances by its leaders, including Art Linkletter, its national chairman, on Fox News and various television programs. Its commercials are to be broadcast around the country in coming weeks.

AARP, the largest organization representing middle-aged and older Americans, is considered a major obstacle to Mr. Bush's Social Security plan in part because of its size and influence with the elderly. Though it is officially nonpartisan, and it stood beside the administration to help pass a prescription drug bill in 2003, many Republicans have long characterized the group as left-leaning.

Officials at AARP say that their organization has weathered attacks and allegations of partisanship over the years and that they were not overly concerned about the current barrage.

"I don't ever want to see someone attack us, but we haven't found they had a significant impact in the past," said David Certner, the group's director of federal affairs.

One USA Next official predicted that this time around, the campaign would be so aggressive that the White House might not to want to associate with it.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the White House doesn't want anything to do with a group that is attacking the AARP," the official said, adding, "We are not going to drag them into this mess."

At one point recently, USA Next was also talking to Terry Nelson, the former national political director of Mr. Bush's campaign who is a partner at Dawson McCarthy Nelson Media, about working as a consultant. But Mr. Nelson was already employed by Compass, a coalition of major trade associations working with the White House to support Mr. Bush's plan, and that stopped the deal. "They wanted to maintain absolute independence," Mr. Nelson said. "They felt it was a conflict for them."

Mr. Jarvis said the group's goal is to peel off one million members from AARP, by presenting itself as a conservative, free-market alternative. He says USA Next surveys show that more than 37 percent of AARP members call themselves Republicans.

"We are going to take them on in hand-to-hand combat," said Mr. Jarvis, who is biting in his remarks about AARP, calling the group "stodgy, overweight, bureaucratic and out of touch."

Formerly known as the United Seniors Association, USA Next was founded in 1991 by Richard Viguerie, a Republican pioneer and mastermind of direct mailings, who raised millions of dollars from older Americans using solicitations that sent alarming messages about Social Security. In 1992, there were allegations that the group was used as a device to enrich other companies owned by Mr. Viguerie, drawing criticism from watchdog groups and Democratic lawmakers.

Mr. Jarvis, who joined the group in 2001, said he knew little about the allegations, and Mr. Viguerie could not be reached for comment. The group persevered and has grown in the years since then. The group spent years primarily working with direct mail before changing to a model that emphasized the use of heavy television and radio advertising to get its message across, fueled by millions of dollars from wealthy donors, trade associations and companies that share its views.

Mr. Jarvis said donors have included food, nutrition, energy and pharmaceutical companies, which have given money to support various advertising campaigns.

In previous years, and often during elections, the money was used to saturate the airwaves with advertisements. In 2002, for example, the group relied partly on money from the pharmaceutical industry to spend roughly $9 million on television commercials and mailings supporting Republican prescription drug legislation and the lawmakers who backed it.

The group spent more money than any other interest group on House races that year, according to a study by the Wisconsin Advertising Project, and drew charges from Democrats that it was a stealth campaign by the pharmaceutical industry to support House Republicans. The group denied the allegations. Critics contended that the group was a front for corporate special interests. In a 2002 report, Public Citizen's Congress Watch denounced it, calling its leadership "hired guns."

In 2003 and 2004, USA Next was again heavily represented, spending roughly $20 million, according to the group's own numbers. It sponsored more than 19,800 television and radio advertisements last year alone.

To USA Next, the battle lines have already been drawn, and it does not shy away from comparisons to the veterans' campaign against Senator Kerry. "It's an honor to be equated with the Swift boat guys," Mr. Jarvis said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Democrats Grass Roots Shift The Power

washingtonpost.com: Democrats' Grass Roots Shift the Power

jump/wpni
washingtonpost.com
Democrats' Grass Roots Shift the Power
Activists Energized Fundraising, but Some Worry They Could Push Party to
Left

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 20, 2005; Page A04

The bloggers have been busy on the Democratic National Committee Web site
since Howard Dean was elected party chairman a week ago.

"Paul in OC" and "Steviemo in MN" wrote that they had made their first-ever
contributions to the national committee. Someone identified as "J" pleaded
with
Dean to come to Florida, "home of Baby Bush," to "heal the irritating red
and help us become a cool blue state again." "Donna in Evanston" wrote,
"It's
sad, but it is up to the grassroots to set the example for our
representatives in Washington. Howard gets it. Maybe some day the beltway
bunch will get
it too."

Those sentiments square neatly with Dean's call for "bottom-up reform" of
the Democratic Party and the further empowerment of grass-roots activists
who
flexed their political muscle in his unsuccessful presidential campaign.
They later became the backbone of organizing and fundraising efforts by John
F.
Kerry's campaign and the DNC's election-year efforts.

But the rising of this grass-roots force also signals a shift in the balance
of power within the party, one that raises questions about its ultimate
impact
on a Democratic Party searching for direction and identity after losses in
2002 and 2004.

At a minimum, say party strategists, the shift will mean a more
confrontational Democratic Party in battles with President Bush and the
Republicans. But
some strategists worry that the influence of grass-roots activists could
push the party even further to the left, particularly on national security,
reinforcing
a weakness that Bush exploited in his reelection campaign.

It was Dean during the presidential primaries who argued that it was time
for the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" to reassert itself, an
implicit
criticism of strategies that guided President Bill Clinton in his battles
with Republicans in the 1990s. Clinton recently warned Democrats not to
assume
that the policies he pursued are incompatible with a vibrant, progressive
wing of the party.

As Dean takes the helm as party chairman, Democrats now face a competition
between what might be called the Dean model and the Clinton model, between
confrontation
and triangulation. This amounts to a contest between a bold reassertion of
the party's traditional philosophy that fits the polarized environment of
the
Bush presidency vs. a less provocative effort to balance core values with
centrist ideas that proved successful in the 1990s but has since produced a
backlash
within the party.

Dean recognizes the difficult job ahead as he tries to welcome a cadre of
political outsiders, many of them turned off by the party's recent
leadership,
into the institutional party he now heads. His first steps have sought to
bridge the ideological divisions with a call for a party that is fiscally
responsible
and socially progressive.

Tom Ochs, a top Dean adviser, said the challenge is less about ideology than
the political culture of the audiences to whom Dean is speaking. "It's
clearly
an insider-outsider thing that I think crosses ideological terrain, where
there are people who haven't been involved who want to be involved and see
in
Governor Dean someone who wasn't part of an existing enterprise," he said.
"I'm very optimistic about our ability to do what a lot of people think will
be hard to do, which is to get a lot of people involved, regardless of their
ideology, to get Democrats elected."

But other Democrats, a number of whom declined to be quoted by name because
they wanted to be more candid about the problems they see, said there are
ideological
overtones to the growing significance of the grass roots. They said the
belief by some of those activists that Democrats can solve their problems by
playing
more directly to their core constituents ignores several realities,
particularly the question of whether voters see Democrats as strong enough
to win the
war on terrorism. One strategist called that the "one scab" where
differences may be difficult to resolve.

Another Democrat, firmly in the party's centrist camp, said, "It's striking
to me how reluctant the party is to come to terms with the fact that we have
a painfully obvious national security threshold that we're going to have to
cross if we're going to rule this country again."

It is no surprise that Democratic leaders are paying much closer attention
to grass-roots activists. In 2003 and 2004, those activists became
prodigious
contributors to the Democratic Party, to Kerry and to Dean, who first tapped
into their potential through the Internet during his campaign for the
Democratic
nomination.

Figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that in 2003 and
2004, the DNC raised $171 million in contributions of less than $250. That
represented 42 percent of the $404.5 million raised from all sources by the
committee. Four years ago, before large soft-money contributions were banned
by the new campaign finance reform law, the DNC raised a total of $260
million from all sources. Kerry's campaign raised an additional $84 million
in contributions
under $250.

In the 1980s, Democrats courted corporate interests for political
contributions, and that marriage helped influence party policy on economic
and tax issues.
But it also produced complaints by liberal Democrats that the party was
selling out its principles for campaign cash. Gauging the ideological
complexion
of the small donors who opened their wallets in 2004 is much harder, but
their participation in the process has diminished the power of business
interests
within the party and likely will produce some shift in the party's ideology
as well.

"If the choice is between the grass roots and the big soft contributors of
the prior period, I prefer the grass roots," said Stan Greenberg, a
Democratic
pollster who did considerable polling for MoveOn.org before shifting to the
Kerry campaign last year. "What McCain-Feingold [campaign finance
legislation]
did was produce a shift away from soft money to grass-roots support. The
great fear was it wouldn't happen, that Democrats would be left without
resources.
But starting with Dean and extending to outside groups like MoveOn, but also
John Kerry and the DNC, there was a surge of giving and engagement that I
can't believe isn't healthy."

Eli Pariser, who runs the MoveOn political action committee, said the rising
power of the grass roots will make establishment Democrats uncomfortable and
has helped reinvigorate the progressive wing of the party. But he said more
than that, it has brought about a rethinking of how Democrats should
organize
themselves against Republicans.

"I think it's pretty clear that the era of triangulation is over," he said.
"The reason for that is that if you step halfway between Republicans and
Democrats,
you get your head cut off by Republicans. There's no compromise and no
mercy, so I think it's pretty clear that Democrats need to be an opposition
that
can explain why we believe the current administration is corrupt and
misleading the country. It's not something you can do easily by putting
yourself somewhere
between the poles."

Many Democrats see the choice between nurturing the base and reaching out to
expand the party's coalition as a false choice. "I find the 'base versus
swing
' conversation not only to be a false choice but to be a deadly choice,"
said Mark Mellman, a pollster and adviser to Kerry's campaign. "If somebody
is
forcing that choice on us, they are forcing us to lose elections."

Clinton recently told Democrats not to succumb to the idea that they must
choose between a vibrant progressive wing and the strategies he followed as
president.
Mark Penn, Clinton's pollster in 1996 and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton (D-N.Y.), said he sees a greater desire on the part of Democrats to
reach a consensus around that model. But he said Democrats have to view the
grass roots more expansively.

"I think [Clinton's] remarks represented the view that there is a synthesis
here for Democrats that is not left or right, but the right kind of
grass-roots
movement will take that into account," he said. "I think the Republicans
organized a wide diversity of people [in 2004]. It wasn't just religious
people
but a wide diversity of people they coaxed to the polls."

Simon Rosenberg, founder of the centrist New Democrat Network and a
challenger to Dean in the race for DNC chairmanship, said he did not know
the ideological
implications of an energized grass roots but urged centrists not to fear
such a development. "Who can be scared at having millions of people giving
money
and fighting?" he said. "But it's not enough for us to win."

The spike in activity on the DNC Web site in the past week shows that Dean's
election has excited grass-roots activists, but keeping them happy may not
be as easy as he thinks.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Miriam V Feb. 20

Democrats' Grass Roots Shift the Power

A Call To Action
washingtonpost.com
Activists Energized Fundraising, but Some Worry They Could Push Party to Left

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 20, 2005; Page A04

The bloggers have been busy on the Democratic National Committee Web site since Howard Dean was elected party chairman a week ago.

"Paul in OC" and "Steviemo in MN" wrote that they had made their first-ever contributions to the national committee. Someone identified as "J" pleaded with Dean to come to Florida, "home of Baby Bush," to "heal the irritating red and help us become a cool blue state again." "Donna in Evanston" wrote, "It's sad, but it is up to the grassroots to set the example for our representatives in Washington. Howard gets it. Maybe some day the beltway bunch will get it too."

Those sentiments square neatly with Dean's call for "bottom-up reform" of the Democratic Party and the further empowerment of grass-roots activists who flexed their political muscle in his unsuccessful presidential campaign. They later became the backbone of organizing and fundraising efforts by John F. Kerry's campaign and the DNC's election-year efforts.

But the rising of this grass-roots force also signals a shift in the balance of power within the party, one that raises questions about its ultimate impact on a Democratic Party searching for direction and identity after losses in 2002 and 2004.

At a minimum, say party strategists, the shift will mean a more confrontational Democratic Party in battles with President Bush and the Republicans. But some strategists worry that the influence of grass-roots activists could push the party even further to the left, particularly on national security, reinforcing a weakness that Bush exploited in his reelection campaign.

It was Dean during the presidential primaries who argued that it was time for the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" to reassert itself, an implicit criticism of strategies that guided President Bill Clinton in his battles with Republicans in the 1990s. Clinton recently warned Democrats not to assume that the policies he pursued are incompatible with a vibrant, progressive wing of the party.

As Dean takes the helm as party chairman, Democrats now face a competition between what might be called the Dean model and the Clinton model, between confrontation and triangulation. This amounts to a contest between a bold reassertion of the party's traditional philosophy that fits the polarized environment of the Bush presidency vs. a less provocative effort to balance core values with centrist ideas that proved successful in the 1990s but has since produced a backlash within the party.

Dean recognizes the difficult job ahead as he tries to welcome a cadre of political outsiders, many of them turned off by the party's recent leadership, into the institutional party he now heads. His first steps have sought to bridge the ideological divisions with a call for a party that is fiscally responsible and socially progressive.

Tom Ochs, a top Dean adviser, said the challenge is less about ideology than the political culture of the audiences to whom Dean is speaking. "It's clearly an insider-outsider thing that I think crosses ideological terrain, where there are people who haven't been involved who want to be involved and see in Governor Dean someone who wasn't part of an existing enterprise," he said. "I'm very optimistic about our ability to do what a lot of people think will be hard to do, which is to get a lot of people involved, regardless of their ideology, to get Democrats elected."

But other Democrats, a number of whom declined to be quoted by name because they wanted to be more candid about the problems they see, said there are ideological overtones to the growing significance of the grass roots. They said the belief by some of those activists that Democrats can solve their problems by playing more directly to their core constituents ignores several realities, particularly the question of whether voters see Democrats as strong enough to win the war on terrorism. One strategist called that the "one scab" where differences may be difficult to resolve.

Another Democrat, firmly in the party's centrist camp, said, "It's striking to me how reluctant the party is to come to terms with the fact that we have a painfully obvious national security threshold that we're going to have to cross if we're going to rule this country again."

It is no surprise that Democratic leaders are paying much closer attention to grass-roots activists. In 2003 and 2004, those activists became prodigious contributors to the Democratic Party, to Kerry and to Dean, who first tapped into their potential through the Internet during his campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that in 2003 and 2004, the DNC raised $171 million in contributions of less than $250. That represented 42 percent of the $404.5 million raised from all sources by the committee. Four years ago, before large soft-money contributions were banned by the new campaign finance reform law, the DNC raised a total of $260 million from all sources. Kerry's campaign raised an additional $84 million in contributions under $250.

In the 1980s, Democrats courted corporate interests for political contributions, and that marriage helped influence party policy on economic and tax issues. But it also produced complaints by liberal Democrats that the party was selling out its principles for campaign cash. Gauging the ideological complexion of the small donors who opened their wallets in 2004 is much harder, but their participation in the process has diminished the power of business interests within the party and likely will produce some shift in the party's ideology as well.

"If the choice is between the grass roots and the big soft contributors of the prior period, I prefer the grass roots," said Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who did considerable polling for MoveOn.org before shifting to the Kerry campaign last year. "What McCain-Feingold [campaign finance legislation] did was produce a shift away from soft money to grass-roots support. The great fear was it wouldn't happen, that Democrats would be left without resources. But starting with Dean and extending to outside groups like MoveOn, but also John Kerry and the DNC, there was a surge of giving and engagement that I can't believe isn't healthy."

Eli Pariser, who runs the MoveOn political action committee, said the rising power of the grass roots will make establishment Democrats uncomfortable and has helped reinvigorate the progressive wing of the party. But he said more than that, it has brought about a rethinking of how Democrats should organize themselves against Republicans.

"I think it's pretty clear that the era of triangulation is over," he said. "The reason for that is that if you step halfway between Republicans and Democrats, you get your head cut off by Republicans. There's no compromise and no mercy, so I think it's pretty clear that Democrats need to be an opposition that can explain why we believe the current administration is corrupt and misleading the country. It's not something you can do easily by putting yourself somewhere between the poles."

Many Democrats see the choice between nurturing the base and reaching out to expand the party's coalition as a false choice. "I find the 'base versus swing ' conversation not only to be a false choice but to be a deadly choice," said Mark Mellman, a pollster and adviser to Kerry's campaign. "If somebody is forcing that choice on us, they are forcing us to lose elections."

Clinton recently told Democrats not to succumb to the idea that they must choose between a vibrant progressive wing and the strategies he followed as president. Mark Penn, Clinton's pollster in 1996 and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said he sees a greater desire on the part of Democrats to reach a consensus around that model. But he said Democrats have to view the grass roots more expansively.

"I think [Clinton's] remarks represented the view that there is a synthesis here for Democrats that is not left or right, but the right kind of grass-roots movement will take that into account," he said. "I think the Republicans organized a wide diversity of people [in 2004]. It wasn't just religious people but a wide diversity of people they coaxed to the polls."

Simon Rosenberg, founder of the centrist New Democrat Network and a challenger to Dean in the race for DNC chairmanship, said he did not know the ideological implications of an energized grass roots but urged centrists not to fear such a development. "Who can be scared at having millions of people giving money and fighting?" he said. "But it's not enough for us to win."

The spike in activity on the DNC Web site in the past week shows that Dean's election has excited grass-roots activists, but keeping them happy may not be as easy as he thinks.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

White House Bond

43, 41 and 42 Hit It Off
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - Former President George Bush calls them "the odd
couple," and this weekend one of the most unlikely teams in modern American
politics
is on a four-day humanitarian air odyssey to the Asian nations hit hard by
the tsunami last year.

On Thursday night in Houston, Mr. Bush boarded an official blue-and-white
Boeing 757 jet with "United States of America" on its side in Houston and
flew
to Los Angeles to pick up former President Bill Clinton.

By 10 o'clock, the two were headed toward Phuket, Thailand, to make their
first appearance to help raise money for tsunami victims on Saturday
afternoon
local time.

From there, the former presidents were scheduled to visit Banda Aceh,
Indonesia, on Sunday and Sri Lanka and the Maldives on Monday.

Neither of their wives, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Barbara Bush,
were on the trip.

"It's just the two guys," Jean Becker, Mr. Bush's chief of staff, said.

Ms. Becker said before leaving on Thursday that she did not know where Mr.
Bush or Mr. Clinton would sit on the plane, or whether they would have
separate
compartments, but that both would be up front.

"I know there are couches and beds, and they'll figure out the sleeping
arrangements when they get on the plane," she said.

The trip is the most dramatic example in recent months of what staff members
for both men describe as a growing friendship that seems to have erased the
bitterness of the 1992 election, when Mr. Clinton ousted Mr. Bush from the
White House.

When Mr. Clinton was in the hospital for quadruple bypass heart surgery last
September, aides say, the 41st president was almost instantly on the
telephone.

"President Bush immediately picked up the phone and said, 'Bill, what the
hell happened to you?' " Ms. Becker recounted.

When Mr. Bush went to the dedication of Mr. Clinton's presidential library
in Little Rock, Ark., with the current president and former President Jimmy
Carter
in November, the 41st and 42nd presidents talked at times with such
familiarity that former staff members were taken aback.

"President Clinton was walking with all the presidents, and former President
Bush says, 'Bill, what are you doing with this property back here?' " said
Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat was a top aide to Mr.
Clinton. "It only sticks with me because it seemed so 'friendlike.' "

More recently, Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton, whom President Bush appointed last
month as his representatives in raising money for tsunami relief, were seen
joking with each other as they sat side by side at the Super Bowl, where
they had been invited by the National Football League.

Former staff members said the friendship could offer political advantages
for the Bush and Clinton families, softening the edges of a political
rivalry,
as Mr. Bush's son begins his second term and as Mrs. Clinton considers a run
for president in 2008.

Former staff members also said the friendship seemed genuine and was
ultimately not that surprising given that there are only five men alive who
know what
it is like to go through the crucible of the American presidency. At the end
of the day, the staff members said, partisan differences were overcome by
the power of that shared experience.

"It has its own little Outward Bound quality to it," Mr. Emanuel said.

The new warmth arises as President Bush and Mr. Clinton, who had little love
for each other in the past, have grown closer.

"Frankly, President Bush likes Clinton a lot," Roland Betts, a close friend
of the president, said. "He says he thinks he's a terrific person. He's not
judging his administration. He just likes being around him."

Mr. Betts, who made those remarks in an interview in December, added in a
brief interview this week that in his view the current president and Mr.
Clinton
were charismatic people and that they "saw a little bit of themselves in
each other, and they liked it."

Staff members for the three men say they first noticed the thaw last
Memorial Day, when the 41st, 42nd and 43rd presidents, on stage after the
dedication
of the National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, shared
private laughs. At one point, George H. W. Bush gave Mr. Clinton a playful
but
vigorous shove as a reaction to something Mr. Clinton had said. Aides could
not recall this past week what it was, but one person did say the current
president
joked at the time that Mr. Clinton's biography, "My Life," was so long that
he would have to read one half and his father the other.

The warming trend continued a few weeks later, when the president unveiled
Mr. Clinton's official portrait at the White House with such gracious words
that
aides said Mr. Clinton was stunned. Mr. Bush praised Mr. Clinton as a man
"with far-ranging knowledge of public policy, a great compassion for people
in
need and the forward-looking spirit the Americans like in a president."

Mr. Clinton reddened and his eye teared as he acknowledged: "I had mixed
feelings coming here today, and they were only confirmed by all those kind
and
generous things you've said. Made me feel like I was a pickle stepping into
history."

By the time of Mr. Clinton's library dedication, he and the Bushes were
falling over one another with accolades. But the 41st president spoke about
the
man who bested him in 1992 in personal and revealing terms.

"It always has to be said that Bill Clinton was one of the most gifted
American political figures in modern times," Former President Bush said.
"Trust me.
I learned this the hard way."

Mr. Bush added that "seeing him out on the campaign trail, it was plain to
see how he fed off the energy and the hopes and the aspirations of the
American
people."

"Simply put," Mr. Bush said, "he was a natural and he made it look easy.
And, oh, how I hated him for that!"

Since being named tsunami relief envoys, they have appeared in public
service advertisements and other appearances.

"In January," Ms. Becker said, "when we needed to get the two in the same
city, it was: 'I'll come to your city.' 'No, I'll come to your city.' "

When they are together, she added, they joke about the 41st president's
skydiving and which one is in the best health.

"President Bush likes to say, 'I'm 80, for God's sake,' " Ms. Becker said.
"And President Clinton says, 'Well, you're the one jumping out of
airplanes.'
"

Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 19

Poorest Face Most Risk on Social Security

A Call To Action

washingtonpost.com

Bush Plan's Success May Hinge on Perceived Safety

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 19, 2005; Page A01

No group of Americans would be affected more by President Bush's Social Security plan than those earning the least. Just ask 46-year-old Brent Allen.

Allen, who recently lost his job at a Massachusetts paper mill, faces a retirement financed exclusively by the money he has been paying into the Social Security system for the better part of 30 years. Like nearly half the U.S. population, he has no pension or savings to speak of. And his brief flirtations with the stock market have largely flopped.

So Allen, who lives on less than $15,000 a year in disability payments from Social Security and income from his live-in girlfriend, is distrustful of Bush's plan to allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal investment accounts.

"I have had stocks, and have had them for six years, and I have lost money continually," Allen said this week. "What's going to happen to people when they retire when the market is down? There is no guarantee [Bush] can make. There is a guarantee now," under the current system.

More than 60 million Americans 25 to 64 years old reported incomes of less than $25,000 in 2002, the latest year for which government figures are available. Like Allen, most of these workers have small or no pensions, scant savings, and serious concerns about their retirement years, according to government statistics and polling results.

Bush sees personal accounts as the gateway to their financial security -- giving them a chance to join tens of millions of Americans with significant investments in stocks and bonds for their retirement. But unless he can convince Democrats and skeptical Republicans that the personal accounts would be a wise and relatively safe investment option for low-income workers, his proposal is likely to fail, many lawmakers agree.

Bush is lobbying Congress to allow Americans younger than 55 to eventually put 4 percent of their income subject to Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, in exchange for a reduction in guaranteed benefits, if they choose. Those who opt to divert a part of their payroll tax would invest the money in a small menu of stock and bond funds that they could not touch until they retire. Unlike in the current retirement system, they could pass on the money accumulated in the personal account to family or friends when they die.

The president says Americans would end up with a stronger Social Security system and bigger nest eggs under his proposal, although the White House has yet to release full details of the plan.

"We can build a better system for low-income workers based on the power of investment and the magic of compound interest," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

Critics, including most Democrats, say individual investment accounts are too risky, they would impose restrictions on the way lower-income retirees could spend the proceeds from their accounts, and they would require unwise and costly reductions in the guaranteed benefits offered by the current system.

Because Social Security is often the biggest or the only source of retirement money for the poorest Americans, low-income workers would be hit particularly hard if the markets plunged and they were left with smaller benefits than they would have received under the current system.

Under the Bush plan, low-income workers would be required to purchase an annuity, which pays a fixed stream of money until the person dies, or set up an alternative way that keeps them above the poverty level until death using their personal account funds. The administration said such mandates are needed to keep seniors from falling into poverty by emptying out their accounts upon retirement.

Fay Lomax Cook, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, called the accounts "much too risky."

"The whole purpose of Social Security has always been to ensure basic income to those no longer able to work. That basic income can no longer be guaranteed" under the Bush plan, she said.

Responding to suggestions from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and a small group of Senate Democrats, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview that he will lead an effort to pressure Bush to provide more generous benefits to the working poor to win passage of the president's top domestic priority. "I am trying for a plan that will meet with legitimate concerns. People worry [the accounts] will put low-income workers at risk because they cannot afford to lose money," he said.

Graham said he will soon propose a federal guarantee that those who earn less than $30,000 will do better under a partially privatized Social Security system. He would do this by cutting scheduled benefits only for those making more than $30,000 a year, offering a $500 government contribution to the individual accounts of the low-income workers and providing additional protections against precipitous market drops. "I am trying to get a bipartisan beachhead and have the administration react to it," Graham said. Bush is open to the ideas, Duffy said.

David C. John of the Heritage Foundation, which supports the Bush plan, said the president will eventually have to embrace significant protections and incentives for low-income workers, perhaps allowing them to put a much higher percentage of their income in personal accounts than everyone else, to win support of Democrats.

Social Security provides more than half of retirement benefits to nearly two-thirds of the nation's elderly, according to the latest Social Security Administration data. It is the only source of income for 20 percent of retirees. For those struggling to get by, Social Security is often their only safeguard.

As a result, many experts think the debate over the Bush Social Security plan will come down to one question: Is it a good deal for the neediest people? The system was created 70 years ago during the Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide a safety net for those who could no longer work. Critics contend that Bush cannot create individual accounts without cutting the benefits promised under today's program.

Bush argues that personal accounts are the only way to guarantee all workers -- but especially those with low incomes -- generous Social Security benefits in the future. The reason, he says, is there is no way the government can fulfill its current promises without raising taxes or borrowing trillions of dollars because, starting in 2018, Americans will be taking more money out of the system in the form of benefits than they are contributing through payroll taxes. Bush envisions the personal accounts generating enough profit from investments in stocks and bonds to offset future reductions in guaranteed benefits.

In guidelines he presented to lawmakers, Bush proposed structuring the program to allow the working poor to benefit the most in the early years of the system. Starting in 2009, only those making $25,000 or less could contribute the full 4 percent of their income subject to the Social Security tax. Annual contribution limits will be set at $1,000 and rise $100 each year thereafter. It will take richer Americans as long as 32 years before they can contribute the full 4 percent of their salary, said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

To limit risk, the White House supports only a small menu of relatively conservative investment options. "The narrow menu would certainly help," said Lomax Cook, a critic of the plan. "But what if some stocks and bonds don't do well? The federal government cannot guarantee performance of stocks." The senior White House official said history shows stocks and bonds are wise long-term investments. Moreover, he said, "no one is exposed to risk that does not want any risk" because the program is voluntary.

Bush has not ruled out additional protections, including a minimum guaranteed benefit regardless of how a person's investments perform.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company