American News | 12/23/2003 | United States leaps back into nuclear arms race Daniel Sneider, San Jose Mercury News

Buried in the energy bill signed by the president earlier this month are three little lines. The amounts are small, but together they do nothing less than put the United States on the road to developing and eventually testing new nuclear weapons for the first time since the end of the Cold War. …

The administration portrays this as part of a revamping of our nuclear arsenal to meet new threats, including the spread of weapons of mass destruction to so-called rogue states. But the military has never asked for nuclear weapons to meet that threat. …

”This administration has made it clear that they’ve gone back into the nuclear weapons business, big time,” says Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., one of the most knowledgeable members of Congress on this issue….

The advocates of this shift are now firmly in command of nuclear policy in the Bush administration and are moving rapidly to implement their views. And while there is room to carry out research in these areas, there are great dangers as well. …

Battlefield nuclear weapons blur the line between nuclear and conventional weapons, undermining the firebreak against nuclear use that held since 1945. This is even more troubling given the administration’s declaration that it won’t hesitate to strike first if it believes rogue nations or organizations have weapons of mass destruction. It lends credence to North Korea’s propaganda that it needs its own nuclear weapons to counter this threat.

Countless articles refer to the Bush administration “moving rapidly” on various radical changes. It’s as if they’re afraid they’ll be found out and thrown out and, therefore, must change everything NOW. mjh

Administration Is Exempting Alaska Forest From Protection By JENNIFER 8. LEE, NYTimes

The Bush administration announced on Tuesday that the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the largest in the country, would be exempted from a Clinton-era rule, potentially opening up more than half of the 17 million-acre forest for more development and as many as 50 logging projects. …

The roadless rule was put in place after a two-year process that included 600 scientific studies and two rounds of public comments that generated almost two million responses, most of them in favor of the rule. …

The Tongass National Forest, with 16.8 million acres, has been particularly contentious because of its environmental symbolism as the only temperate rain forest on the continent.

“This is the rarest forest type on earth and it needs to be protected,” said Jeremy Paster, a forest campaign organizer for Greenpeace.

Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/21/2003 | Trudy Rubin | Are we safe? We can’t know

Has the capture of Saddam Hussein made Americans safer?

Howard Dean’s claim to the contrary set off a political firestorm last week as other Democrats flayed him and Republicans watched with satisfaction.

But Dean’s question is more complex than either party admits. …

“If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you,” he told Diane Sawyer, as she kept asking whether the weapons of mass destruction threat had been imminent or hypothetical.

“What’s the difference?” the President asked.

The difference, of course, is that the administration based the war on the claim that Hussein had the weapons already. In reality, the White House rallied Americans to fight an unknown unknown.

Ironically, however, the invasion of Iraq and Hussein’s fall have unleashed their own future dangers – more unknown unknowns.

Iraq is unstable, its political direction unclear. … Democracy? Iraqis have no civil society, no democratic institutions – and it will take decades to build them. …

Things may get better. … Or it may prove a lost opportunity, and terrorism may worsen. We just don’t know yet. That’s why Dean’s question is relevant – and hard to answer. There are too many unknown unknowns.

Today’s Headlines

On Dec. 24, 1992, President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Like father, like son, still linked to underbelly of the Reagan Revolution. mjh

Bush’s re-election seen linked to state of U.S. economy and security in Iraq BETH GORHAM

If there’s anything shaping U.S. politics these days, it’s uncertainty. …

With a $200 million campaign chest and the incumbency, it is Bush’s election to lose.

And it’s hard to say how the American public’s love him or hate him attitudes will play out in a country so evenly divided that Cook’s public opinion surveys find most months that the two parties are within a point of each other.

Cook predicts a 90 per cent to 95 per cent chance that Republicans will hold onto the House of Representatives and an 80 per cent chance that they will keep a majority in the Senate.

“But the presidential race, I’m increasingly convinced, is just going to be very, very, very, very close,” he says.

“It would be very difficult for it to be any closer than last time, but I think it’s going to be very close.”

Bush’s bonus depreciation perfectly fits election cycle Jay Hancock, sunspot.net

Only three decades after Yale economist William D. Nordhaus proposed the existence of what he called ”the political business cycle,” Bush and his allies have perfected the art of short-term economic manipulation. …

[C]ompanies rushing to take advantage of the ”bonus depreciation” provision in the recent tax bill are expected to spend billions of dollars on capital equipment next year, revive the sleepy business-investment sector and — not incidentally — ensure Bush’s re-election.

Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg expects bonus depreciation to be “wildly stimulative” in 2004 — so stimulative, he suggests, that even comatose technology spending will sit up, stretch out and take a few laps. …

“The name of the game is to get re-elected,” Rosenberg says. Bonus depreciation, he adds, “is going to bring forward activity that otherwise would have taken place in 2005 into 2004.” And, because it affects big projects taking months to complete, it will spur economic energy well before the November election.

You probably know the bad news. Rosenberg’s research and Nordhaus’ theory both suggest that once the polls close and stimulus stops, a slowdown or even recession are more likely.

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