"I was told if I voted for Gore, the economy would be a mess. It's true. I voted for Gore and the economy is a mess."

- Paul Begala, host of CNN's Crossfire

"We've got to do whatever it takes - if it takes sending SWAT teams into journalists' homes - to stop these leaks."

- James B. Bruce, vice chairman of the CIA's Foreign Denial and Deception Committee

Editorial from:  

Millions of American families have lost much of their savings in the stock market decline that was caused partly by corporate scandals.

President Bush is calling for a crackdown on boardroom crooks - but a Newsweek poll last week found that half of Americans think both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney previously engaged in shady business tactics themselves.

Federal investigators are probing Cheney's tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co. The Washington Post noted that he made $18.5 million profit by dumping his Halliburton shares on unwary buyers just before bad news became public and sent the stock value plunging.

As for Bush, many reports have been written about his similar, suspicious dumping of Harken stock. However, few national observers have noted a remarkable pattern: Almost the entire Bush family has been accused of various corporate schemes over the years.

By: Jennifer Loven  

Lawmakers criticized White House action on a brand-new law cracking down on corporate fraud, saying President Bush appeared to be weakening the measure mere hours after signing it.

Bush turned the legislation into the law of the land in a grand East Room ceremony Tuesday, with tough talk against boardroom crooks and promises that his administration would pursue them as aggressively as it has hunted terrorists.

Eight hours later, the White House quietly issued a statement outlining how it was interpreting several provisions, including one that grants federal protection to corporate whistle-blowers who present Congress with information that books had been cooked or investors misled.

Bush spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the White House views the provision as shielding whistle-blowers from company retaliation only if they talk to a congressional committee "in the course of an investigation". The protections would not apply when evidence is provided to individual lawmakers or aides, she said.

By: Timothy J. Burger  

Harken Energy Corp. set up an offshore subsidiary in the Cayman Islands tax haven while President Bush sat on Harken's board of directors in 1989, the Daily News has learned.

The revelation comes as Republican lawmakers are roundly criticizing the practice of U.S. companies setting up offshore subsidiaries, usually to skirt American disclosure laws or corporate income taxes on foreign income.

Even White House spokesman Ari Fleischer condemned the tactic yesterday, saying: "The President is concerned about corporations in America who take advantage, set up operations outside of America, in an effort to lower their taxes."

A spokesman for Bush said the offshore company did not save any taxes because it failed to find oil or make a profit.

Editorial from:  

The latest and most cynical manifestation of this impulse is a proposal by several Republican senators from Western states to suspend basic environmental laws in order to permit logging on up to 24 million acres of national forest land. The senators describe this as necessary to prevent further fires. Conservationists, quite rightly, see the proposal as an excuse to engage in widespread commercial harvesting in remote areas where wildfires pose no threat to people or property but where the opportunities for profit are substantial.

Two years ago, in what amounted to a summit meeting on forest fires, the Clinton administration and six Western governors agreed on a fresh approach to firefighting. The strategy consisted of controlled burns - that is, fires deliberately set to prevent even larger blazes - plus an aggressive program of "thinning". Thinning, it was generally agreed, meant removing underbrush and small-diameter trees near at-risk populated areas. The biggest and most fire-resistant trees would be spared, as would more remote areas of the national forests.

By: Paul Krugman  

But the responsibility era is over. Even as state governments face up to the consequences of cooked books in the 1990's, the Bush administration is following in their footsteps.

The latest antics of the White House Office of Management and Budget have even the most hardened cynics shaking their heads. It's not just that projections for fiscal 2002 have gone from a $150 billion surplus to a $165 billion deficit in the space of a few months; it's not just that the OMB projects a much smaller deficit next year, when everyone else - including the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee - says the deficit will increase. It's also the fact that OMB officials simply lie about what their own report says.

"The recession erased two-thirds of the projected 10-year surplus... The tax cut, which economists credit for helping the economy recover, generated less than 15% of the change." So reads the agency's press release. Yet as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, the actual report attributes 40% of the budget deterioration to tax cuts, only 10% to recession. Maybe dishonesty in the defense of tax cuts is no vice.

"These [Bush] people ran on responsibility, but as soon as you scratch them they go straight to blame. Now you know, I didn't blame his father for Somalia... I didn't do that."

"We had seven years of progress toward peace in the Middle East, and they tried to blame me for trouble in the Middle East. That's just what they do. Republicans have always done that. But it's bad form, and it's bad for America, and they should stop it."

- Bill Clinton

By: David S. Broder  

Every administration makes certain compromises - in policy and appointments - to satisfy important political constituencies. But most administrations draw the line at compromises that cost lives. The Bush administration now has crossed that line - not accidentally but deliberately.

The decision announced last week to withhold the $34 million United States contribution to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) will cost uncounted women and children their lives. This organization supports family planning and maternal health programs in more than 140 countries, including education programs to prevent HIV and AIDS. Its projects have a proven track record of reducing mortality rates for mothers and infants as well as limiting population growth.

If historical patterns hold, UNFPA says that the loss of the U.S. contribution - 12% of its $270 million budget - will translate to 2 million more unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 more abortions, 4,700 more dead mothers and 77,000 more deaths among children under 5...

By: Andres Oppenheimer  

It doesn't look pretty: The United States ranks last among the world's 28 top foreign aid donor countries, and its foreign assistance levels have dropped dramatically over the past 10 years, according to a United Nations report released this week.

The United Nations Human Development Report 2002, a wide-ranging report that includes both fascinating country statistics and a questionable development ranking of 137 nations, puts the United States well below Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, and even Spain and Portugal on the list of the biggest foreign aid donor countries relative to the size of their economies.

"Mr. President, I rise today to express my very deep regret that the Bush administration has decided not to release the $34 million allocated for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. I would ask the White House to reconsider its decision. At stake here is vital assistance for needy individuals throughout the developing world, living under the threat of HIV infection and deteriorating health conditions. Indeed, it is a shame that such assistance - assistance that can save lives - is being held hostage by domestic politics, and the misconceptions of the anti-choice wing of the Republican party."

- Senator D. Feinstein (D-CA), July 24, 2002

By: Tim Francis-Wright  

The American stock market last week had a horrible week: stockholders lost hundreds of billions of dollars on their investments. Underlying the sudden loss in value were a number of pieces of bad news. Worldcom, the latest villain of Wall Street, let slip that it would file for bankruptcy. The latest in a series of corporate scandals concerned fraud at a pharmaceutical plant owned by the respected medical firm Johnson and Johnson. In addition, a number of companies announced gloomy prospects for increased profits in future quarters. The poor results have properly been the focus of the financial press and of Congress. But the glare of the financial spotlight will likely miss some stories that underlie both the boom of the Clinton years and the bust of the Bush years.

Four stories will get little to no attention in the mainstream media. First, the Republican Party will make little effort in the near term to privatize Social Security, but it still views privatization as a goal. Second, Congress will debate the proper treatment of stock options but will mostly ignore the real problem with the current treatment of options. Third, Congress will also ignore an accounting gimmick that companies used to fuel the stock market boom of the 1990's but might rue using nowadays. Finally, no one in Washington will dare broach one idea that might forever squelch most corporate malfeasance.

By: Carol Muske-Dukes  

Judging by the number and alarmed tone of the e-mail messages, the threat is significant and ongoing. It has certain members of the military - both active and retired - on high alert, cautioning each other to remain attentive. A ubiquitous "pass it on" at the end of each message telegraphs an urgency about getting the word out to others.

What is this menace keeping so many of our nation's self-declared patriots awake at night? Osama bin Laden? Saddam Hussein?

No, it's our former First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. As a feminist and longtime casual admirer of the New York Senator, I am probably not a typical recipient of these oddball battlefield communiques. But through the dubious courtesy of my late husband's estranged relative (a furious-at-the-world retired military man in his 70's), I've been placed on a "copy to" list, presumably in the hope that if I can't be educated I can at least be provoked. In fact, I'm almost grateful for the fascinating glimpse into a bizarre world of overwrought, blitzkrieg-style "bulletins" passed along by a group of furtive character assasins that has focused all its paranoid zeal on one woman...

Editorial from:  

Mr. Powell has some powerful advantages in internal debates that he ought not to be shy about using. The President needs him more than he needs the President. Mr. Powell is a Washington heavyweight - a former national security adviser, four-star Army general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the architects of victory in the Persian Gulf war. Mr. Bush, a foreign-policy welterweight when he assumed the presidency, would be instantly diminished at home and abroad if Mr. Powell were no longer at his side. Reagan aides used to mock Mr. Shultz for his repeated threats to resign, but in the end he won the arguments over Soviet policy by confronting his opponents and persistently lobbying Mr. Reagan for a more constructive approach toward Moscow.

The Bush foreign policy agenda is filled with issues that Mr. Powell is ideally suited to address, including the ongoing war against terrorism, efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and the pending decision about how to deal with Saddam Hussein. Mr. Bush will need Mr. Powell's help if he hopes to secure international support for a confrontation with Iraq.

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