All told, it was a fabulous year to be very rich. The magazine counted 587 billionaires around the world, up from 476 in 2003. Their total net worth jumped to $1.9 trillion from $1.4 trillion in 2003.
"After two years of significantly falling fortunes, we really saw an uptick for just about everybody on the list," said Luisa Kroll, an associate editor who oversaw the project.
This, not the 2.8 million jobs lost, is what Bush means when he talks about economic recovery.
NASCAR in the grandstand, champagne in the private club. Is that a Dom Perignon logo on Dale Earnhardt's car?
CNN anchor Lou Dobbs is on a crusade -- and oddly, his target is the U.S. business establishment. Nearly every night for the past year, in a campaign he calls "Exporting America," Mr. Dobbs has railed against companies that move jobs to low-wage countries.
On recent broadcasts of "Lou Dobbs Tonight," he has called for President Bush to fire a top economic adviser who said outsourcing U.S. service jobs is probably good for the economy, and lauded Congress for considering legislation to limit government work from being sent overseas. On his section of CNN's Web site, Mr. Dobbs has compiled a list of more than 200 companies that he says are "either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers."
The ferocity of Mr. Dobbs's attack has surprised and even angered some observers used to associating the well-known Republican financial journalist with spirited defenses of capitalism and cozy interviews with America's top chief executives.
"It's really one of the most dramatic shifts of attitude and persona that TV has seen," says David Bernknopf, a media strategist and former CNN vice president. "Lou was always seen by corporate America as a reliable and generally friendly journalist. Now he has shifted 180 degrees and has clearly dedicated his show to criticizing a lot of the way that corporate America does business."
[...]
Mr. Dobbs insists he hasn't dramatically changed his tune, saying he just wants the U.S. government to study the consequences of outsourcing so it can make wise policy decisions. "I am an absolute free market capitalist, but I believe in true free markets and the importance of clear, accurate information to create free markets," he says.
On the air, Mr. Dobbs sometimes takes a caustic tone with guests who disagree with him. "What is it with you people?" Mr. Dobbs asked after Mr. Glassman [James K. Glassman, a conservative commentator who sparred with Mr. Dobbs on the air earlier this month] commented on the benefits of a trade deficit. Later in the same show, Mr. Dobbs told Mr. Glassman: "You talk like a cult member."
Mr. Glassman says the interview was "an amazing experience. I knew he was going to be very argumentative, but I think he sort of lost it." Mr. Dobbs now says his comment was aimed at "the orthodoxy amongst too many economists, too many in business who simply say it's free trade and the hell with the consequences."
It may be premature to label Dobbs a "capitalist against Bush" as we have done for Warren Buffett and Seth Glickenhaus. But the sudden politicization of his ordinarily pro-business approach deserves watching.
Side note: "Mr. Dobbs conducted another crusade two years ago. When federal prosecutors went after the accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP for its role in Enron Corp.'s collapse, Mr. Dobbs repeatedly denounced on-air what he saw as the federal government's effort to destroy 'the livelihoods of most of those 85,000 innocent people' who worked at Andersen."
The observation that 85,000 jobs of innocent Andersen employees were obliterated while Ken Lay roams free and wealthy three years later has been a pet peeve here in Skimbleland as well. We repeat what may not be obvious: Andersen was most likely destroyed by the feds not for being Enron's auditor, but for being Halliburton's auditor during the reign of Cheney. No auditor means no evidence, and Cheney's financial shenanigans are lost to history.
(New York-WABC, February 23, 2004) — As New York City scrambles to cover security costs to protect against another terror attack, Eyewitness News has found millions in taxpayer dollars going to protect some of the nation's wealthiest companies.
[...]
Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano says that's money he could use. He's got numerous high-risk targets including the Indian Point nuclear plant and New York City's reservoirs, yet has only received a couple hundred thousand in direct security grants.
Andrew Spano: "Why the federal government would give us something like $200,000 -- which is what we have gotten -- and they give millions and millions to companies that are making exceptional amounts of money this year is beyond me."
Our analysis of Port Security documents show that some of the nation's most profitable oil companies received $66 million in grants. Money from the Department of Homeland Security to pay for fencing, cameras, and gates around big oil's refineries.
[...]
...only 15 percent of the half billion dollars in grants go to oil companies. Still that's $66 million that could go to those who really need it, like the local police chiefs we spoke with. None of whom say they have received any money from Homeland Security.
[...]
We should note that the nuclear power industry, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its own security, has not received any grants from Homeland Security.
This shows how seriously the Bush administration takes its so-called "War on Terror" — not at all.
Tax credits for the poor to buy health insurance such as those proposed by the Bush administration are unlikely to reduce the rolls of the estimated 43 million U.S. uninsured, a study released on Wednesday said.
The struggling economy and corporate layoffs have pushed record numbers of people off health insurance in recent years. Most Americans get health coverage through employers.
A remedy proposed by President Bush offers tax credits to the needy, who would be required to buy health insurance individually. Past Bush plans were projected to cost taxpayers $89 billion over 10 years.
But these people would have to spend significantly more if they took the tax credit option, according to an analysis of some 8,000 low-income Americans without health insurance.
That would lead few to opt for the credits and so would have little effect on health care coverage nationally, the study found. The grim choices facing the poor among food, shelter and health care are part of the reason for this, the report in the journal Health Affairs said.
[...]
For example, an uninsured family that spent $463 out of pocket on health care in 2001 dollars would have to lay out $2,511 if it chose the tax credit option modeled on one proposed by Bush.
Quintupling what the poor spend of their own limited money on health care — that's the Republican definition of "compassion."
So you don’t think there was a genuine interest as to whether or not there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
It’s not about interest. We knew. We knew from many years of both high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to mention the information from the U.N., we knew, we knew what was left [from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn’t know.
The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn’t have these things. Almost a billion dollars has been spent — a billion dollars! — by David Kay’s group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn’t find anything, they didn’t expect to find anything.
Don't forget the blood of the 571 Americans who died to find nothing at all.
There are also positive reasons for dumping Mr Cheney. Bringing in a fresh face as vice-president would suggest that the second Bush term will be more than just a re-run of the first. It would also allow Mr Bush to add someone to the ticket who has a better chance of attracting swing voters than a retired CEO from a solid Republican state.
Who might that be? Rudy Giuliani might burnish Mr Bush's reputation for fighting terrorism, though he is not known for his ability to play second fiddle. Condoleezza Rice might do something to neutralise the Democrats' traditional advantage among blacks and women. But some Republicans would rather turn to Bill Owens, the governor of Colorado. There are signs that Mr Kerry is planning to write off the South in order to concentrate on loosening the Republicans' hold on the south-west. What better way to check this threat than to add the Republican Party's brightest western star to the ticket?
It hardly needs saying that replacing Mr Cheney would have to be done with the utmost finesse. Otherwise, it might seem that the Bush White House was falling apart. Mr Cheney would have to retire gracefully, blaming his dodgy heart (he has already had four heart attacks) and no doubt accepting a post as senior counsellor from a grief-stricken president. Persuading such a powerful vice-president to step aside will be no easy thing, of course. But the Bushes don't have a reputation as the Corleone family of the Republican Party for nothing. The next time Mr Cheney takes that jet to go duck-shooting, he may well find James Baker slipping into the seat behind him, with “a litl' proposal to discuss for the good of the party”.
I'm betting on Giuliani because the convention will be held in New York and because he, like the entire Bush administration, owes whatever political legacy he might have to 9-11-01.
A prominent Houston lawmaker's campaign fund-raising sweep at Reliant Energy has become part of a growing Travis County grand jury probe into possible criminal misuse of corporate funds to finance a Republican takeover of the Texas House.
Rep. Beverly Woolley, R-Houston, swept through Houston corporate offices on Sept. 9, 2002, raising money for targeted House races as well as for Texans for a Republican Majority, according to an itinerary of her travel obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
Notes on her itinerary indicate she spoke to some donors about what types of legislation they would like.
I hope she was wearing a cute little red-white-and-blue Republican waitress uniform while she was taking orders, writing their legislative preferences on her pad.
How safe will Reliant be from a scandal in the House? Another way of asking this: Is Reliant Energy a good enough tipper?
