Month: July 2006

Terror in Indiana: Hoosier State Brings Home the Homeland Security Pork

Jon Ponder
As of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

You probably heard that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reduced funding for security in New York City, partly reclassifying the city’s landmarks as just regular buildings that would be of no interest to terrorists:

The [DHS] formula did not consider as landmarks or icons: The Empire State Building, the United Nations, the Statue of Liberty and others found on several terror target hit lists. It also left off notable landmarks, such as the New York Public Library, Times Square, City Hall and at least three of the nation’s most renowned museums: The Guggenheim, The Metropolitan and The Museum of Natural History.

“I think the facts are clear,” [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg said. “What they’ve really done is taken what was supposed to be threat-based and just started to distribute it as normal pork.”

But where did the terror pork go? Why, Indiana, of course:

It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha.

Globe to Gay Employees: Marry or Lose Bennies

Buck Banks

Shotgun weddings: Massachusetts’ 2004 law sanctioning same-gender marriage has had at least one unintended consequence, as gay and lesbian employees of the Boston Globe are finding out, according to the Boston Herald. Those claiming their partner as a dependent to qualify for dental and health insurance coverage must get married by Jan. 1 or lose their domestic partner benefits.

The irony of the thing is that since gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, companies that offered coverage to same-sex domestic partners because they could not marry in the past now risk being sued for discrimination by straight unmarried employees who are not elligible for domestic partner bennies. Further complicating the situation, employees who work for the Globe in Boston but live in another state are screwed because they can’t legally marry. The Globe said it would continue to offer domestic partner coverage to employees who live outside Massachusetts.

Bush’s Budget News Might Not Be So Good After All

Buck Banks

Mangling expectations: Today the headlines are full of the good news that the Bush administration’s budget-deficit predictions of six months ago were wrong, and that, miraculously, the budget has $100 billion more in it than the Office of Management and Budget thought it would have at this time. So, was the OMB wrong back in March and is it right now? And what if this is not the first, but the third time that a similar pattern of annual Bush budget buggering has occurred?

Felix Gillette points out in the Columbia Journalism Review that this is indeed the third year in a row that OMB has issued dismal deficit predictions early in the year followed by happy-happy, joy-joy announcements that the gloom was premature and there’s actually googobs more money in the budget than we thought there would be six months ago. He offers some examples of how the MSM routinely reports on the OMB’s cash-flow crowing without questioning the predictable pattern, beginning with 2006:

“The White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to announce Tuesday that, because of the increased tax receipts, the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what was projected six months ago,” Bloomberg News reported.

Sound familiar? It should.

That’s more or less the exact trick the OMB trotted out for the media this time last year. Witness the following account in the Financial Times from July 2005.

“After several years of embarrassing budget figures, the Bush administration yesterday had good news to report,” noted the Times. “The administration, which released its mid-session budget review yesterday, boosted its forecasts for tax revenues following stronger than expected tax receipts to date in the fiscal year that ends in September.”

“It cut its forecast for the fiscal 2005 budget deficit to $333bn … less than the forecast it released in February and a sharp reduction from the $412bn deficit in 2004,” added the Times.

That announcement, in turn, came on the heels of the OMB’s cheerful forecast one year earlier that the federal budget deficit in 2004 was turning out to be significantly less than — surprise, surprise — earlier predictions.

“And today, the White House unveiled its midsession budget review estimates,” reported National Public Radio in July 2004. “It showed a budget deficit of $445 billion for this year, up from $374 billion in fiscal 2003. But Joshua Bolten, President Bush’s budget director, presented it as good news because it’s $76 billion less than the White House projected in February.”

So, we can expect the now traditional sight of the Accountant In Chief telling reporters how the deficit is lower than predicted because of job growth and tax cuts and a robust economy due wholly and solely to his whiz-bang economic policies — not because the OMB jiggered the books to make the boss look good.

Trouble is, willing or not, we are all stakeholders in BushCo, but unlike coporations in the real world that are answerable to shareholders, we don’t have the luxury of being able to sell off something that smells like Enron and buy into an alternative that exercises real fiscal responsibility.

Is Katherine Harris Looking for a Way to Bail from Her Campaign?

Buck Banks

Delicate subject: Believe me, the last thing I ever wanted to write about was Katherine Harris’ ovaries. And as much as I don’t like her politics or personality, I would not wish physical illness on her or anyone else.

But the latest announcement from her campaign that she will undergo surgery July 17 to remove an “ovarian mass” got me wondering whether that could provide a convenient excuse to withdraw from the Senate race and avoid a certain shellacking by Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson. It would seem to provide an unassailable reason to abandon what has been a mess of a campaign without losing too much face.

But then again, given Harris’ proclivity to tell tall tales and do the inappropriate, she could turn it into a whacky play for sympathy votes. I mean, that sounds bad, but the woman certainly seems capable of chasing off down the rabbit hole to her alternate version of reality at the drop of a hat.

In the meantime, let’s hope her surgery goes well and her ovarian mass is benign. Then she won’t have any excuse for avoiding the pounding at the polls she so richly deserves.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed. If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies.

— Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in a letter to President George Bush

Fruit Rotting in Florida Thanks to Immigration Threats

Trish

Tough talk about immigration reform is hurting the Florida citrus industry. Fruit is going left unpicked, thanks to rumors about INS crack-downs.

Word had spread through the Hispanic community to return home if they want U.S. jobs in the future

As many as 6-million boxes of oranges may go unharvested in Florida this year because of a shortage of fruit pickers made worse by fears about what changes may come in immigration law.

The citrus season usually ends in late June, but will extend to at least late July this year with juice processors hoping to get as many oranges as possible off trees…

Orange production in the state could become the lowest since 1992…

Growers have reported difficulty finding enough workers. Industry officials say labor supply was tight from the beginning of the season in October, but grew worse by the middle of May when a large segment of the Hispanic labor force seemed to leave the state…

Lake Wales citrus grower Marty McKenna said word had spread through the Hispanic community to return home if they wanted U.S. jobs in the future.

But inflaming us-against-them emotions seemed like such a good idea at the time. Bush’s polls were down and gay marriage was starting to wane as a sure-fire firing-up mechanism. Who would have thought Big Agriculture would suffer in the end? We’ll just add a failed Florida citrus season to the list of unintended consequences the Bush administration couldn’t possibly see coming.

Mary Cheney’s Book: ‘What a Waste’

Jon Ponder
Cheney’s book sold fewer than 6,000 copies in its first month.

The New York Times has a review of “Now It’s My Turn,” by the vice president’s daughter, Mary Cheney:

Her book is neither a manifesto of personal liberation nor an analysis of the gay marriage wars, but a buttoned-up account of a life spent barnstorming for Republicans.

Apparently, Mary is not into gay pride:

[She] describes hissing a furious expletive at the TV when Senator John Kerry referred to her as a “lesbian” in the third 2004 presidential debate (she prefers referring at arm’s length to “my sexual orientation,” as if it were an intransigent military position, perhaps, or a pesky shadow she just can’t shake). She was angry, among other reasons, she writes, because “he had used the word ‘lesbian,’ instead of the more common and politically neutral term ‘gay.’ ”

When exactly did the word “lesbian” become a scathing insult, alongside that other once-glorious, classically derived seven-letter L-word: liberal?

She’s the type of gal who’d rather go along to get along:

Cheney acknowledges that the president’s position on gay marriage gives her “a knot in the pit of my stomach,” so what in the name of Rita Mae Brown stopped her from confronting him? Timidity? Deference? Or her avowed desire to “maintain a low profile” (which raises the question: why write this book at all)? Certainly it is not her God-given responsibility, as a Republican operative who happens to be gay, to be an advocate for gay and lesbian issues. But — with apologies to Dan Quayle and the United Negro College Fund — what a waste.

A waste of good trees, too. The book sold fewer than 6,000 copies in its first month, despite a publicty barrage highlighted by a tour of the talk shows by Cheney herself.

Some people are born to greatness while others achieve greatness. And then there are people like Mary Cheney who pass up a chance at greatness because of self-esteem issues emanating from internalized homophobia.

‘Last Throes’ Insurgents Are Now Shooting Unarmed People in Cold Blood on Baghdad Streets

Jon Ponder

In George Bush’s Iraq, Shiites are killing Sunnis on sight:

Masked Shiite gunmen stopped cars in western Baghdad Sunday and grabbed people off the streets, singling out the Sunni Arabs among them and killing at least 37, police said.

The attack in the Jihad neighborhood apparently was retaliation for the car bombing of a local Shiite mosque the night before.

I guess they didn’t get the memo from the vice president’s office informing them that they are in their last throes.