Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

Dump Duhbya

Too Many Unknown Unknowns

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.

Dump Duhbya

Uncertainty in US 2004 Election

Bush grinsBush’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.”

Dump Duhbya

The name of the game is to get re-elected

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.