| From: LindyBill | 4/29/2005 9:23:11 AM | | | | | | Heavy taxes, a bloated state - we're marching down the road to serfdom
timesonline.co.uk
Gerard Baker
MUCH INK has been spilt in an effort to explain why this election campaign has failed to engender excitement in the streets. Allow me, as a quasioutsider, to offer a provocative thesis.
I haven’t lived in Britain for more than a decade now, having spent most of my time in the US. But back in the country for the election, I’m not surprised at the palpable sense of futility. The British people are steadily being reduced to a state of cringing dependence on an ever-more voracious and aggrandising Government and a political establishment of almost unconquerable scale that supports and sustains it.
The response of our once competitive political system has been not to offer an alternative to this long march to serfdom but, hemmed in by the tightening constraints of politically permissible debate, to produce feeble dissent around the margins of a vast consensus whose core no one dare challenge.
Take the silence on the most obvious and pressing case — the growing proportion of our national income that will be consumed by the state.
After years in which the UK actually managed to restrict the growth of government, a period not coincidentally that created the conditions for the best economic performance in a couple of generations, the tax take is set to rise sharply. Within three years, taxes will account for more than 40 per cent of gross domestic product, the highest level in 25 years, and beginning to close the gap again with the levels in sclerotic Western European countries.
It will get worse. The Government now backs a more or less open-ended commitment to pouring ever more resources into the demonstrably inefficient bureaucracy of the NHS. Pensions, welfare benefits and education will devour tens of billions more even than current projections suggest. Labour practises ambiguity on this — alternately taking pride in all that money that has been thrown on the NHS bonfire and promising “reform” through the introduction of more choice in public service provision. But does anyone really think that the party intends to reverse the slide towards Scandinavian levels of profligacy?
It is not impossible to stop this train from leaving the station. But what are the opposition up to? The Tories say the answer is — wait for it — a £4 billion tax cut. Mercy! Will the entrepreneurial instincts of the British people be liberated, and the impending socialisation of more than half the UK economy halted, by a measure that will reduce the size of the state by a whopping 0.6 per cent?
The Tories try to cover their hopeless insufficiency to the task by focusing their grubby little energies on immigration, a campaign that includes the depressingly anti-market promise that they will tell companies in search of skilled overseas workers to get lost.
As for the Liberal Democrats, has there been a more inaptly named political structure in the world since some clever North Korean came up with the Democratic People’s Republic? The liberalism that this party favours is the sort that would accelerate the confiscation of private property now in train by returning to some of the punitive tax rates of the 1970s. The democracy they favour is the sort that involves surrendering sovereignty to the EU and the United Nations as fast as possible. Didn’t there used to be something called the Trade Descriptions Act that forbade this kind of mis-selling?
The lack of serious fiscal choice on offer is only a reflection of a broader surrender to the principle that government has the answers and the people should stop worrying their little heads about it. Every conversation one has in this country seems to start from the premise that everything that ails us can be put right by government — whether it is obesity or the decline of classical music.
And what exquisite irony! The one thing in the past four years that the Government really did get right — the deposing of a dangerous dictator and the liberation of 24 million people from tyranny — is now regarded in the closed circle of serious political discussion as an act of pure evil.
Of course, underpinning, sustaining and nourishing this consensus is a new Establishment that holds the British people in thrall to its supposedly progressive ideas. Its stultifying and baleful influence is transmitted by the clammy grip of its three main tentacles: the universities; the “experts”, and, above all, the media.
Most university teachers regard their first duty of course as being to promote and nurture the principle that government has the answers. But spreading from that simple “truth” are a few others: that Israel and America are responsible for the bulk of the bad things in the world; that globalisation is impoverishing; that British history is a matter, mostly, for shame, and that we would all be better off if we would just let Europe run things for us.
Their close allies outside the academy are the ubiquitous experts — in government, in pressure groups, in think-tanks. In a complicated age of information proliferation, these have assumed a kind of sacerdotal eminence: the people listen meekly as they promote their theories — global warming as indisputable fact and that science must take precedence over ethics.
Above them all are the media, the self-selecting and self-perpetuating elite in broadcasting, newspapers, the arts (have you ever heard a novelist express an original political view?). This is the pinnacle of the Establishment that offers its highest recognition to people who make such programmes as The Power of Nightmares, the “documentary” whose tendentious bilge flowed from a manifestly false premise that the terrorist threat was all invented by neoconservatives (did the producer ever speak to a member of the Clinton Administration, which spent its last two years increasingly obsessed with the terror threat?).
As a young man of, I confess, a somewhat more leftish inclination, one of my heroes was Shelley. I can see the shortcomings now of his ideological preferences. But as the British public’s liberty is sold into the serfdom of the British Establishment, Shelley’s words have a curious resonance.
It’s useless in this final week of the election, given the paucity of choice, to expect them to echo to any effect now. But soon enough, maybe, the British people will heed them:
Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many. They are few.
gerard.baker@thetimes.co.uk
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| From: LindyBill | 4/29/2005 9:29:49 AM | | | | | | The Rock Star And The Rest
nationaljournal.com
By James A. Barnes, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Glendower: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep."
Hotspur: "Why, so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?"
John F. Kennedy, who knew a thing or two about connecting with voters and pursuing the presidency, loved those lines from Shakespeare's Henry IV. "But will they come when you do call?" remains the vital question for anyone contemplating a run for the White House.
At this stage in a presidential election cycle, every would-be candidate is usually playing the confident "Glendower" role, at least in private. And 2008 appears to be no exception to that rule -- perhaps with good reason, especially on the Republican side, where for once the party has no obvious front-runner for the role of standard-bearer.
For the past two decades, two families have had hegemony over the GOP presidential-selection process. Now, unless Florida Gov. Jeb Bush changes his mind about not seeking the presidency in 2008, the streak of a Bush or a Dole capturing every Republican presidential nomination since 1988 is almost certain to be broken.
And at the opening gun in the 2008 presidential nominating contest -- the Iowa caucuses -- the lack of an establishment Republican favorite will break an even longer record. Ever since 1980, a Bush or Dole has won the Hawkeye State's GOP caucuses every time the race for the party's crown has been competitive. With the party's line of succession anything but fixed this time around, a dozen men, plus Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, received at least one first-place vote this week when National Journal asked Republican insiders to predict who is most likely to be their next presidential nominee.
Further blurring the outlook for the 2008 Republican race is the fact that the party's conservative wing is far from settling on its choice. Even at this early stage of the "invisible primary," the GOP's traditional-values set usually has a clear favorite or two.
Even though Iowa's caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are still 33 months away, this potential muddle has some Republicans worried about how long their lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will last. "On our side, I think it's the most undefined field I've ever seen. And right now, it looks like the weakest," says Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the GOP's chief deputy whip in the House. "That may not be the case come 2008, but that's what it looks like today."
This kind of uncertainty and worry may well spur even more Republicans to take a look at running in 2008: With no heirs apparent -- establishment or conservative -- they'll figure that the race will continue to be more wide open than normal for their party.
By contrast, the upcoming Democratic presidential sweepstakes seems simple. "On our side, it's kind of Hillary and everybody else," said Democratic National Committee adviser and political consultant Tom Ochs, referring to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. "It's boring, but it is what it is."
To be sure, Clinton is the front-runner. Sixty-eight of the 90 Democrats who participated in National Journal's Insiders Poll this week rated her most likely to clinch their party's presidential nomination. A Gallup poll conducted on February 4-6 for CNN and USA Today found that 40 percent of self-identified Democrats favored Clinton; 25 percent preferred to renominate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party's 2004 choice; and 18 percent supported former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, Kerry's 2004 running mate. All other Democratic possibilities combined drew the support of 6 percent. The remaining 11 percent of respondents had no preference.
If Clinton ends up capturing the Democratic nomination, her success will mark the first time since Adlai Stevenson in 1956 that a Democratic front-runner who was neither an incumbent president nor an incumbent vice president has won after being identified as the leader of the pack in Gallup's first post-election poll of the cycle. Unlike the Republicans, who're in the habit of nominating their early front-runner, Democrats frequently reject theirs.
In fact, more often than not, the first Democratic front-runner doesn't even make it to the starting gate of the Democratic race. That was true of Edward Kennedy in the 1976, 1984, and 1988 election cycles. In 1992, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York was the early front-runner. He didn't run either.
For the 2004 race, Gallup's first post-2000 reading found that the front-runner was former Vice President Gore, followed by Sen. Clinton and former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey; none of them entered the race. Kerry, the eventual nominee, ran sixth in Gallup's first survey looking ahead to 2004. All of that history gives second- and third-tier Democratic wannabes reason to be hopeful about 2008, even in the face of Hillary Clinton's early dominance.
The Republicans
Usually the Republican presidential-selection machinery operates on a hierarchical model. GOP standard-bearers tend to get groomed, first failing to win the nomination in one cycle before bouncing back to take the throne (if not the presidency) the next time it becomes vacant. The process worked that way for Ronald Reagan in 1980 (after his loss in '76), George H.W. Bush in 1988 (after losing in '80), and Bob Dole in 1996 (after his losses in 1980 and 1988). And the only reason the GOP race didn't follow that pattern in 2000 was that the party establishment had a real heir -- George W. Bush -- to carry on its lineage.
The GOP's modus operandi would seem to favor four-term Sen. John McCain of Arizona for the party's 2008 nomination. After all, he is the only one in the probable field who has been around the track before, having finished second in the 2000 race. That invaluable experience has given him contacts in many key states and an enduring base of support. But it may not give McCain what usually comes to a GOP White House hopeful who has been a runner-up -- the sense among party activists that it is his turn.
That's because the outspoken McCain is a maverick who occasionally breaks with President Bush on high-profile issues and, at times, almost seems to enjoy doing so. He has bucked his party on tax cuts, on campaign finance, and on patients' rights legislation.
"He's done a lot of things that conservative Republicans love and a few they just don't like," said Richard Schwarm, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party. "He probably has the most status at this point, but whether that can translate the way it did for Dole or George W. [is] unclear."
And while McCain remains opposed to abortion rights, he started to stray from the GOP fold on other social issues last year, voting against the gun lobby to prohibit the sale of handguns without a safety device and to require criminal-background checks on all firearms purchasers at large gun shows. McCain also voted last July against limiting debate on a Bush-endorsed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
According to National Journal's vote ratings for 2004, McCain's composite conservative score placed him close to the ideological center of the entire Senate. He was tied with Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania as the Senate's third-most-liberal Republican, behind only Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe of Maine.
It's the ideological company that McCain keeps that causes more than a few conservative Republicans to fear that, if elected president, the Arizonan would not govern from as far to the right as they would want. And some of McCain's stands against the Bush administration and the GOP Senate majority, including his recent decision to side with Democrats who are fighting to retain the filibuster for judicial appointments, have caused some Republican stalwarts to wonder whether he's really one of them.
"He's got to stop pulling the elephant's trunk every time you turn around," warned a veteran GOP strategist who requested anonymity. "That gets you on the Sunday talk shows, but I don't think it gets you many activists. He's got to pick a fight with the Democrats, and one where he's a leader. And it would be really good if [Senators] Susan Collins [of Maine], Olympia Snowe, and Lincoln Chafee were on the other side for a change."
Rick Davis, McCain's 2000 campaign manager, bristled at the suggestions that McCain, who campaigned for Bush in both 2000 and 2004, isn't a team player and that he might have to start voting "right" in order to position himself for another run for the White House. "He's been the most outspoken senator in supporting the president and defining the Republican position on the seminal issue of the last campaign, Iraq," Davis said. "The last thing he's ever going to do is gear his position on a national issue to gain political advantage; which, by the way, is one of the reasons that he's the most popular politician in America."
But before McCain could present himself to the nation at large, he would need to win the GOP nomination. Among Republicans, the edge may go to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In the February 4-6 CNN/USA Today poll about 2008, Giuliani ranked first, with 33 percent. He was followed by McCain, 30 percent; Florida Gov. Bush, 12 percent; and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, 7 percent. All other candidates named received a combined total of 6 percent. Twelve percent of respondents chose no one.
Much of Giuliani's popularity comes from his iconic performance on 9/11 and the days that followed. Few politicians get to be Time's "Man of the Year," and few enjoy near-universal name recognition. In this age of Internet fundraising, such assets can almost instantly translate into a huge campaign war chest. The ability to raise mountains of cash has never been more important: Nearly every top campaign operative in both parties says that to be taken seriously, White House contenders will have to opt out of federal matching funds (and their spending limits) for the primary season. (George W. Bush started the trend by opting out in 2000.)
Veteran GOP presidential campaign strategist Charlie Black says that Giuliani "is like a national hero. And on terrorism, he's been very loyal to the president. That being said, I have a hard time figuring out a scenario where he gets nominated, because he is a liberal on social issues."
Being perceived as a national hero didn't rocket Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, into the White House when he ran in 1984. And Giuliani would have to figure out how to defuse his liberal stands on abortion rights and gay rights in the South, where the Republican nomination has been decided since 1980.
Giuliani hasn't always been a staunch defender of abortion rights. Before he made his first run for mayor in 1989, he reportedly favored reversing the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But by the end of that contest, Giuliani was supporting public funding of abortions for poor women, touting the fact that the New York chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League had certified him as "pro-choice." He was also claiming that his stance was identical to that of David Dinkins, the liberal Democrat who defeated him.
GOP pollster Fred Steeper, who worked for Giuliani on his first run for Gracie Mansion, says, "I don't know if the Republican Party can nominate someone who cannot say, 'I am pro-life.' Maybe he can reach some sort of accommodation with the pro-life people in terms of parental notification, but it will be very difficult because they are such purists. This is not like negotiating with a labor union." As McCain looks ahead, one of his strengths is that in a contest with Giuliani, he'd likely garner most of the conservative vote.
Some Republicans have looked longingly to Florida to extend the Bush run in Washington, but Jeb Bush apparently has no interest in following his older brother into the Oval Office, at least not immediately. The governor, who cannot seek re-election in 2006 because of term limits, has said he plans to move back to Miami and has no intention of running for president in 2008.
One Republican National Committee member said, only half jokingly, that it is the "secret fantasy" of some RNC members that Jeb Bush will reconsider. The committee member added, "Too much of a good thing is still good."
Nonetheless, most party insiders take Jeb Bush at his word that he's not running this time. "He told me that, and he's told everybody that," said GOP strategist Black. "He's just not interested, and I don't know what would get him to change his mind." Former President George H.W. Bush told Newsweek last month, "My expectation is that Mrs. Clinton will run and Governor Bush won't in 2008."
Conversely, Bill Frist, who is retiring from the Senate after the 2006 election, is already working to get his next government job. He has traveled to New Hampshire twice this year. And when the Sioux City, Iowa, Chamber of Commerce made its annual trek to Washington this spring, he sought to visit with the group. "Senator Frist is, of course, very anxious to meet with us," said Debi Durham, president of the Siouxland chamber before the trip. "What does that tell you?" To most people, it means he's running hard for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Frist, a former surgeon, is known as being more effective one-on-one than with crowds. "He's not a great campaigner, but Bill Frist is really, really smart," commented a high-powered GOP association chief. "He's very crafty, so I don't count him out." Echoed another well-connected GOP lobbyist: "He's so smart and talented, you've got to believe that he's going to figure out how to connect with people."
Then there's what GOP pollster Steeper calls the "gratitude factor." Frist doesn't have a long history as a member of the "family values" conservative Christian movement. And he's viewed suspiciously in some of its quarters. But his recent efforts to end Democratic senators' ability to filibuster against conservative judicial nominees could pay huge dividends in the contest to become the favorite of the party's right wing.
Gratitude helped get Richard Nixon the GOP nomination in 1968, recalled Steeper, because the former vice president placed Barry Goldwater's name in nomination at the 1964 convention and was just about the only mainline Republican leader to campaign for Goldwater in 1964. Conservatives understood that Nixon was not a true conservative, but gratitude put most of them in his camp for the 1968 primary campaign.
Likewise, Reagan's rise in national Republican politics began with a half-hour television speech he gave on Goldwater's behalf in 1964. Of course, Reagan was the real McCoy for conservatives. Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, was not, but his loyalty to the Gipper earned him his spurs with many rank-and-file conservatives. Their support was critical to Bush's sweep of the Southern GOP presidential primaries in 1988 and his eventual nomination.
Still, Frist won't have the conservative territory to himself. A number of GOP hopefuls are seeking to gain a foothold with that influential part of the party's base.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., making a side trip from a scheduled speech on stem-cell research at Harvard Law School, spoke in mid-April to a breakfast gathering of nearly 150 conservative social activists in New Hampshire. Brownback, reported PoliticsNH.com, said that issues of life, the definition of marriage, and church-state relations were the coming battles of American politics. He's also recently visited Iowa and South Carolina, the states that hold the other two early critical contests in the nominating process.
In North Carolina in March, Sen. George Allen of Virginia addressed the 15th anniversary dinner of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative Raleigh think tank that aggressively promotes free markets. When Allen recruited one of the GOP's top campaign operatives to be his new Senate chief of staff -- Dick Wadhams, who last year managed John Thune's successful campaign to oust Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. -- most Republican operatives assumed it wasn't solely to help with his 2006 re-election campaign.
In South Carolina in February, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney tested the waters with a speech to party activists in which he touted his fights back home against stem-cell cloning and gay marriage.
If Sen. Rick Santorum, an outspoken opponent of gay rights and abortion, can get past what appears to be a difficult re-election race in Pennsylvania in 2006, he can be expected to make a pitch for the Republican Right's support.
Two others who may be in the hunt on the more moderate side of the spectrum are Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who would benefit if McCain doesn't run, and New York Gov. George Pataki, who would benefit if Giuliani stays out.
Meanwhile, even some Republicans who until recently had not signaled much interest in the presidency -- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, for example -- are exploring the possibility of running. A former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Barbour has personal ties to state and local party leaders across the country. A close associate said that when Barbour looked at the Republican field, he wasn't intimidated.
Barbour is not the only Republican to be unimpressed. "How do you stack the lesser-knowns and charisma-challenged up against the likes of Hillary, in spite of her negatives, or John Edwards, to name a couple of Democratic potentials?" asked longtime GOP National Committeeman Steve Roberts of Iowa. "I am not saying all these folks are not capable, just that they are virtually unknown and don't tend to fire people up."
Neither of the party's two early front-runners, McCain and Giuliani, can count on the support of social conservatives, who have a disproportionate influence in the GOP primaries. So, with Jeb Bush unlikely to run and Frist scoring only in single digits in the polls, an ambitious conservative Republican might well see the road to the nomination as none too steep.
Moreover, the lack of an establishment front-runner on the Republican side is probably going to accentuate the importance of retail politics in Iowa, whose process tends to level the playing field among candidates with varying degrees of resources. A GOP establishment favorite can pick up a good many caucus votes because he looks like a winner and a safe choice. But no candidate is likely to be able to play that role in 2008. And for the first time since 1976, when the Republicans began holding Iowa caucuses, no one in the GOP field will have ever competed in the state before.
"People are going to want to see, touch, even pinch candidates before they decide," predicted veteran Iowa GOP stalwart Doug Gross, the party's 2002 gubernatorial nominee.
The Democrats
John Kerry attracted 8 million more votes than Gore had four years earlier, and he raised some $235 million in the 2004 election cycle -- an amount that amazed party leaders and approached the $270 million collected by the Republicans. But when Democrats think about 2008, their 2004 nominee is generally missing from the picture.
"I really haven't heard anybody excited about Kerry running again," said Jerry Messer, director of organizing and political affairs for Local 431 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in Davenport, Iowa, and one of organized labor's top operatives in the state. "The senator has got a great voting record and would have made a good president, but I just don't know if he has the personality."
It's been almost 50 years since a presidential candidate who wasn't an incumbent has won his party's nomination twice in a row. Democrat Adlai Stevenson got his party's nod in 1952 and again in 1956, only to be crushed both times by Dwight Eisenhower. The last failed nominee to even try to bounce back immediately was one of the most beloved Democrats of his generation, 1968 standard-bearer Hubert Humphrey. He was blocked by George McGovern in 1972.
These days, anyone who makes it to the fall classic of politics had better win, because, as Kerry must realize by now, party activists are reluctant to give past nominees a do-over in presidential elections. "I think there's just a general belief that [Kerry] had a shot and that the nation is looking for a different kind of leader in '08," said Sheila McGuire Riggs, a former Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman.
Similarly, in the other early battleground for the nomination, New Hampshire, enthusiasm for Kerry has largely evaporated. "Honestly, I don't think anybody has thought much about him," remarked Democratic House Minority Leader Jim Craig. "The feeling is, he had his shot, came close, but I don't think people would be inclined to do that again."
Yet Kerry has seemingly managed the post-defeat chapter of his presidential campaign far better than Gore did. Rather than going away to lick his wounds, Kerry has hosted thank-you events for supporters and called many of them. And unlike Gore, who dropped out of sight for about seven months, Kerry was back at work in the Senate days after Bush's second inauguration, interrogating Condoleezza Rice and voting against her nomination to be secretary of State. In March, Kerry helped lead the unsuccessful fight to continue barring oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. On top of that, Kerry has doled out leftover campaign cash, including more than $2.5 million to party committees and $250,000 to finance the come-from-behind recount that made Christine Gregoire governor of Washington.
Four years ago, a Gallup poll for CNN and USA Today found that by more than a 2-to-1 ratio, rank-and-file Democrats wanted Gore to run again in 2004. Many Democratic professionals, however, doubt that Kerry would get a similar green light if that question were asked today about him. Even some who worked for Kerry in 2004 aren't sure he would be able to reassemble his troops. "My sense is, beyond the Boston crowd, I don't think he's going to have a lot of support," said a former senior operative on Kerry's presidential bid. "I think he's going to be rudely surprised, but the vast majority of money and energy that went into that campaign was anti-Bush. It's going to be a vastly different dynamic in 2008."
Kerry is not without assets that he can bring to bear to try to bolster his standing in the party. For starters, he has a Web site that he branded with millions of campaign advertising dollars and that has some 3 million names on its e-mail lists. If Kerry can raise significant sums for himself and others over the Internet, he might earn new respect. He also has the experience and standing to campaign for fellow Democrats in the 2006 midterm elections. Perhaps most important, Kerry's got to preserve and nurture the political organizations he built in Iowa and New Hampshire. One early indicator of Kerry's potential 2008 strength will be whether key supporters -- especially those in the early states -- stick with him. Sen. Kennedy said recently on ABC's This Week that Kerry is "my man" if he seeks the White House again in 2008.
But former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, Kerry's 2004 national campaign chair, was much more circumspect when asked at a recent conference on women in politics what she'd do if Kerry asked for her help in making another run. "It's a long time from now until 2008," she replied, according to The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H. Shaheen and her husband, Bill, who publicly signed on with Kerry before the ex-governor did, have a vast political network in the Granite State; the couple is as close as New Hampshire gets to having Democratic kingmakers. "An early bellwether is to see what the Shaheens will do," said Steve Marchand, a Portsmouth City Council member who is a Democratic activist. "If they think he's viable, that's a big factor other people will follow."
In Iowa, where Kerry's unexpected victory in the first-in-the-nation caucuses propelled him to the nomination, state Senate Democratic floor leader Michael Gronstal sees more signs of life in the camp of Kerry's former running mate. "John Edwards has a significant operation here," said Gronstal, who has received "two or three" post-election calls from Edwards, compared with one from Kerry. Gronstal's wife, Connie, recorded a get-out-the-vote message for Kerry last year. Michael Gronstal backed the Massachusetts senator on caucus night, but he's firmly on the sidelines now. "It's not a pretend neutral; it's a really neutral," said Gronstal.
Iowa Democratic consultant Jeff Link, assessing the mood of former Kerry supporters, said, "I don't think there is the energy for a second Kerry run. They may come back to Kerry, but I think they're going to look around first."
During the first week of May, Kerry's advisers say, Kerry will try to ignite interest in his latest cause, health care for poor children [PDF], when he takes a coast-to-coast swing through California, Washington state, Minnesota, Louisiana, Florida, and Boston. In Beantown, he will host a fundraiser for Sen. Clinton's re-election campaign, the second one he's done this year. The six-state swing is funded by Kerry's Keeping America's Promise political action committee. The PAC has set its sights on recruiting 100,000 Democratic volunteers for the 2005 off-year elections and 500,000 for the midterms. "He drew 3,000 people at a town hall meeting in Austin, and folks around the country are very excited about what John Kerry has been doing to promote Democratic values and help Democratic candidates," said Jenny Backus, an adviser to Kerry's PAC. "He is committed to helping Democrats in 2005 and 2006."
Even if Kerry can capture some attention, Sen. Clinton is undoubtedly the potential 2008 contender who is going to get the most looks in Iowa, New Hampshire, and elsewhere. She will be the front-runner unless she takes herself out of the race.
For now, even her modest trips fuel expectations of a White House run. For instance, on April 30, Sen. Clinton is scheduled to address the 100th anniversary dinner of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. But before that, she will also attend an election-reform forum in Cleveland with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, to tout legislation they've introduced to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to change the rules on provisional balloting. And Clinton will attend a Cleveland fundraiser for her Senate re-election campaign, as well as a VIP reception associated with the forum, which is a ticketed event. "The outreach around this makes one feel like it is already 2008," said Cleveland Central Labor Council Director John Ryan. "Although that's not what these events are about, a lot of the interest in the events is about that and her."
Clinton's national stature dwarfs any potential Democratic rivals, and it hurts Kerry most: As a former nominee, he ought to already loom large in the national consciousness -- but doesn't. A former nominee has name recognition, experience, and vital contacts. Clinton, although she's never personally run for national office, possesses all those advantages and more, having shared her husband's trials and triumphs in the public arena, and having benefited from his legendary networking skills.
"Kerry doesn't get the benefit of the normal assets that the former nominee would have over the next field, because there's somebody else that surpasses him in all those areas," noted Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who managed presidential campaigns for Ted Kennedy and then-Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
"People would flip on a dime for her," said former New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman George Bruno, who backed Bill Clinton in 1992. "She's in a very strong position. And, given the big vacuum that exists in the national Democratic Party leadership, she looms very large."
But "dream" candidates often peak the day they declare. And while her husband can be a huge asset to her campaign -- most presidential-candidate spouses can fill a living room in New Hampshire, but he could pack a gymnasium -- Sen. Clinton can't let voters think that it's a team effort, because that would risk putting her campaign in his shadow. "To distinguish herself as a stand-alone candidate in light of his history and their marriage -- I think that's going to be complicated," a veteran Democratic strategist said.
What's more, Sen. Clinton is the quintessential national lightning rod. If she "calls for them," millions of supporters won't be the only ones who'll come. Ever since her husband stepped onto the national stage, she's been vilified by many on the Right. And her ill-fated effort as first lady to revamp the nation's health care system only added to her enemies. Many Democrats, therefore, wonder how she could possibly win enough Bush territory to recapture the White House.
After back-to-back defeats, many Democrats are fixated on nominating a presidential candidate who can put more states into play in the general election. The 2008 hopeful who seems most able to do that could well emerge from the early jockeying as the anti-Hillary candidate. The competition to be Clinton's chief rival is likely to favor moderates, although her Senate record, as National Journal's ratings show, is far more moderate than her liberal reputation would indicate.
Could the un-Hillary be Edwards? Having run last time "gives Senator Edwards an advantage -- having people who know him, know his style, know his issues, and are passionately committed to getting him elected," said New Hampshire Democratic activist Jim Demers. Edwards, who no longer has to deal with roll-call votes and committee markups, has plenty of time to nurture those troops. But one of Edwards's problems in 2004 was the perception that he lacked gravitas. It's hard to see how he closes the gravitas gap while out of office.
The Democratic contest could be a three-layer cake, with a rock-star front-runner (Sen. Clinton) at the top, followed by the two men on the party's 2004 ticket, and the rest of the field starting, literally, at the bottom. The advantage of being in the third group -- to the extent there is one -- is that Democratic primary voters seem to be drawn to fresh faces.
"There is a very strong argument to be made that the front-runner and the 2004 gang will be seen as the past, and others can argue that they are the future," said veteran Democratic media consultant Anita Dunn, an adviser to Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana. If the two-term senator seeks the presidency, expect to hear a lot about his two terms as governor of a very red state.
Govs. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Tom Vilsack of Iowa can also tout their executive experience. And that may be more important to rank-and-file primary voters than the fact that they govern blue states.
Democratic activists, on the other hand, are likely to be impressed by the political skills that being a red-state governor implies. Red-state Govs. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Mark Warner of Virginia would bring vastly different resumes to the 2008 race: Richardson's highlights his time in Congress, as ambassador to the United Nations, and in the Clinton Cabinet as Energy secretary. Plus, Richardson is Hispanic, making him part of the nation's fastest-growing minority group. The experience of Warner, who would argue that he'd make the party competitive in the South, is largely in business.
After three decades in Washington, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware might have a harder time looking fresh, but those years seem to have given him the self-assurance to speak with McCain-like candor.
Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark might also get another look. The more experience he got on the campaign trail in 2004, the better Clark became. And his Vietnam War service is unlikely to spark the controversy that Kerry's did.
And for real experience, Gore's two terms as vice president give him unique qualifications. Just imagine a debate in which Gore turned to Hillary Clinton and said, "While you were in the family quarters -- "
But in the end, Hillary Clinton might be able to defeat any un-Hillary, Democratic or Republican. There's a growing sentiment among Republicans that their party will be up against her in 2008 and that she won't be easy to keep out of the Oval Office. "She projects strength and the capacity to run the country, to pick smart people, to know when to compromise. Those are things that the last few years have proven to me she can do," said GOP Rep. Cole. "I don't see any of our guys who could beat her -- at least not today." |
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| To: LindyBill who wrote (111716) | 4/29/2005 9:35:00 AM | | From: Lane3 | | | | >>A few MSM outlets made this point. The Wall Street Journal reported, "Under his proposal to adjust benefit levels, low-income workers would continue, as they do under current law, to have their initial retirement benefits linked to the growth ofwages in the economy. But the wealthiest seniors would have their initial benefits tied to price inflation, which generally rises more slowly than wages."<<
I wonder where they got this from. It sure wasn't in the speech. Bush didn't say how he was proposing to change projected benefits.
>>So I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off.<< |
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| To: Lane3 who wrote (111722) | 4/29/2005 9:36:36 AM | | From: Lane3 | | | | The President's Preemptive Strike
By Lisa de Moraes
Post
Friday, April 29, 2005; C03
One by one the broadcast networks caved yesterday and agreed to preempt the first night of the May ratings race to make way for President Bush's non-news conference, after ".'Sopranos'-style arm-twisting" by the White House, as one network suit described it.
Here's how it went down:
On Tuesday, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found President Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low of 47 percent, owing no doubt to some combination of a) still no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, b) 60-day tour pitching Social Security "privatization" a bust, c) attempt to use Terri Schiavo for political gain backfired, d) nomination of John "Yosemite Sam" Bolton for U.N. ambassador turning into long nightmare, e) key House ally under attack for alleged ethical improprieties.
What's a president to do?
Hey, here's a great idea! Call a "news" conference for the first night of the May sweeps. That way, tens of millions of hardworking people who had been looking forward to putting up their feet and watching an original episode of their favorite show will instead see the president with his concerned face on, talking about how much he cares about soaring gas prices even if there is very little he can do about it immediately.
And schedule the news conference for 8:30 p.m. so that it doesn't just preempt CBS's "Survivor" but CBS's "C.S.I." as well. And not just NBC's "Will & Grace" and "Joey" (guest-starring Carmen Electra!) but "The Apprentice." Not to mention Fox's "The O.C."
Broadcast networks got word on Wednesday around 7 p.m. that the White House planned to throw a news conference last night.
Fortunately, though Bush runs the country, wiser men run the broadcast networks men who know what it means to preempt "Survivor," "C.S.I." and "The O.C."
So early yesterday, ABC was the only broadcast network that planned to carry the president's show. Viewers could, of course, also catch Bush on CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNN Headline News and PBS.
You should know that ABC, as a rule, can't get arrested on Thursday nights. It already had nuked its prime-time lineup for Thursday and planned to air the flick "Sweet Home Alabama" followed by "Primetime Live."
ABC generally does so badly on Thursday nights, that being able to wipe one off its books might be seen as a sort of gift. (A presidential news conference and the post- and pre-show blather usually run without advertising, so the ratings are not included in the network's averages).
CBS and Fox, on the other hand, are locked in a death match for first place among the 18- to 49-year-olds advertisers covet. Fox has never won a TV season among that demographic in its 18-year history. CBS hasn't won a TV season in the demo since the 1980s. Thursday night is huge for CBS, and "The O.C." isn't chicken feed for Fox either.
NBC is hurting on Thursdays now that "Friends" is gone, but it's still a major night for the network.
"Solidarity" was the word of the day at the three networks.
But six networks just weren't enough for the president's program. So the White House started in with the "Sopranos" stuff, as that network suit described it.
First NBC, which, according to TV industry sources, said it would consider carrying the president's chit-chat with reporters if it started at 8 so the network didn't have to preempt both its 8-9 p.m. sitcom block and "The Apprentice."
The White House agreed, and soon the cable news networks were reporting: "Just moments ago we learned that the press conference was moved from 8:30 to 8 due to complications of network programming," as Suzanne Malveaux told Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
Thus can it be said that Donald Trump forced the president of the United States to reschedule an address to the nation. Way to go, Donald!
Fox caved around 4 p.m., leaving CBS, which went down around 6.
We called the White House press office to ask why they changed the show start to 8 p.m.
Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "We were in touch with some networks and starting on the hour was more accommodating, so we decided to move to 8."
We told McClellan that we thought it was extremely brave of the White House to risk incurring the wrath of "Survivor," "C.S.I." and "The Apprentice" fans, not to mention "The O.C." fans," to hold a news conference that's an attempt to increase the president's approval rating. McClellan laughed and said he didn't know what shows were on, but he also said, "We want to reach the largest audience."
"We have caved," one network suit reported sorrowfully late yesterday, referring to the broadcasters collectively.
And if the White House is hoping this news conference will win Bush back some fans, don't count on fans of the preempted shows.
"Wanna know how you can get those poll numbers up, Mr. President? Don't schedule a press conference during 'Survivor,' 'CSI' and 'The Apprentice,'." wrote one skeptic on the Web site DamianPenny.com. An "O.C." fan observed on that show's Web site: "He started the war in Iraq which was totally wrong, caters to big business ..... , lets big corporations pollute our air & water, but the worst thing he could ever do is pre-empt The OC!"
But here's our favorite part of this story. The president of the United States scheduled his show during TV-Turnoff Week, the one week of the year when the well-meaning folks at the Washington-based TV-Turnoff Network ask people to turn off their sets and spend more time doing something else.
We asked TV-Turnoff Network Executive Director Frank Vespe if the timing of the president's show wasn't unfortunate for his movement.
"It sort of is, particularly because he's spoken many times, and the first lady, too, about the benefits of turning off the TV," he replied.
We asked McClellan if it wasn't unfortunate that the White House had scheduled this event during TV-Turnoff Week, when this nation of obese people was being encouraged to read a book, ride a bike or spend quality time talking to their family members instead of sitting in front of the set.
"All worthwhile endeavors, but I think listening to the president of the United States is as well," he answered.
CBS and NBC cut out about four minutes before the president stopped taking questions, to get their talking-heads commentary done in time for the start of "Survivor" and "The Apprentice" at 9. Fox cut out a couple of minutes later, but ABC stuck with the president till the bitter end.
Finally after CBS and NBC had already cut him off Bush acknowledged what was going on. He said he would take one more question, quipping, "I don't want to cut into some of the TV shows getting ready to air for the sake of the economy." The White House press corps twittered.
Thinking of the lost ad revenues, one network exec retorted to The TV Column: "He took tens of millions out of the economy tonight." |
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| From: LindyBill | 4/29/2005 9:41:54 AM | | | | | | The Vulcan Mind-Meld
belmontclub.blogspot.com
Techdirt has a story on a concept called 'Napster' for news which describes a trend in which individuals have become to reporters as bloggers were to newspaper pundits.
With bloggers getting press passes, citizen journalists creating ambitious open source news networks, and Wikimedia trying their hand at news, newspapers are running scared. Instead of trying to squeeze money from these flailing members, Scripps general manager and editorial director propose that the Associated Press reinvent itself as a digital co-op, a sort of "Napster" for news.
One example it cites is Now Public, where ordinary guys file news and video stories: click a button to "email in footage" it says: and why not you? What has made this possible is widespread Internet connectivity and the availability of cheap consumer video cameras. Readers may recall how the really spectacular footage of the tsunami which swept the Indian was provided by tourists who happened to have been at the disaster sites. That demonstrated how anyone at the site of breaking news could become an instant correspondent. Now Public emphasizes video and has a surprisingly wide collection of stories. Many of those filed from the Middle East focus on the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. And did you know that Scott Ritter predicts a US attack on Iran in June 2005?
While professional journalists may be tempted to poke fun at these early efforts the quantity of these observer-provided stories is likely to grow and its quality likely to improve. The sheer volume of information that will become available is going to make the world both more and less opaque. More opaque because the relatively simple plot lines provided by the mainstream media will be replaced by a flood of filings telling literally all sides of story. Whereas one used to be able to "understand the world" by reading the New York Times lead and grooving into the standard world view, no such simple, consolidated tales will be served up by the oncoming news avalanche. There will be no suggestive lead, no magisterial peroration, no drastic simplification. Instead there will be detail in mind-boggling abundance. The good news is that the world will become more transparent to anyone with the tools and services needed to sift through that deluge of information. The existence of so much collateral information will make it very difficult to lie on any scale. It will be possible to "know" something about an event in detail inconceivable a decade ago. There will never again be a new Walter Duranty who can foist a fraud on a reading public for any length of time from the vantage of privileged access. In short, the world threatens to become a news reader's nightmare and an intelligence analyst's paradise.
The choice of the phrase 'Napster' for news to describe the ways information will flow between these decentralized nodes is extremely apt. When individual nodes are able to transfer information in a peer-to-peer fashion to any other node perception will propagate at rates never before seen. Original presence at an event will be as definite a concept as original music CDs in this age of digital reproduction. It will make the stock phrase "you are there" almost literally true. This surfeit of raw information will overwhelm even the most avid information consumer and will probably spur a demand for aggregation and analysis services of various kinds. Perhaps readers will clamor for the return of Walter Durantys to reinterpret the world in ways that they prefer. Illusion always gave the truth a run for its money. Information, like freedom, is a burden sometimes too great to endure. |
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| From: LindyBill | 4/29/2005 9:48:40 AM | | | | | | Thousands of illegals obtained drivers licenses the old-fashioned way--they found the right person and bribed them
Feds claim thousands got licenses via bribes
No visible terrorist ties: A Florida case leads to 52 arrests; it follows similar ones this week in both Michigan and Maryland
By Lara Jakes Jordan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Thousands of undocumented immigrants have obtained driver licenses in three states, federal authorities said Thursday, highlighting a security hole that the Sept. 11 hijackers exploited.
Three employees of Florida's motor vehicles agency were among 52 people arrested in a bribery scam that put driver licenses in the hands of at least 2,000 undocumented immigrants, officials said. The case, announced Thursday, follows similar arrests in Michigan and Maryland over the past week.
''With a valid driver's license, you establish an identity,'' said Michael Garcia, assistant secretary of the Homeland Security Department.
He said the cases do not appear to be related and there was no evidence of any terrorist connection.
''What we're looking at is the vulnerability and potential here, and we want to make sure that avenue isn't open to criminals or people posing a threat to our national security,'' he said.
Eighteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had valid driver licenses or state-issued identification cards. At least one of those hijackers was in the United States illegally.
Nine of the 19 had Florida driver licenses; three had ID cards issued by the state.
Obtaining driver licenses was a priority for the hijackers, said Janice Kephart, counsel to the Sept. 11 commission and an expert on immigration and border security issues. ''The object was to appear legitimate,'' Kephart said.
So far, 58 people face charges in the three license-for-cash cases. They include:
l An employee at Michigan's secretary of state office who was arrested April 20 with two accomplices from Guinea and Iraq on charges of selling hundreds of driver licenses and other ID documents to illegal immigrants in suburban Detroit. The employee, who issued the licenses, allegedly accepted as little as $25 for allowing applicants to skip a mandatory written driver test. She has been suspended without pay.
l A worker at Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration and two partners who were arrested April 22. They allegedly charged more than $1,000 to provide driver licenses or ID cards to about 150 illegal immigrants and other applicants without requiring proof of identity or citizenship.
l In the Florida case, 23 people were charged with criminal fraud and an additional 29 people taken into custody on immigration violations. Of the more than 2,000 licenses issued, 36 were for commercial drivers to operate trucks, and about six to transport hazardous materials, officials said.
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| From: LindyBill | 4/29/2005 9:51:38 AM | | | | | | Our housing bubble continues unabated. A friend of mine put her Leeward condo on the market last friday. She got an offer yesterday at $25,000 more than she was asking. It included all closing costs.
Sophistical arguments, a continuing series
marginalrevolution.com
By Tyler Cowen on Economics
Are you worried about a housing bubble? Go buy that house anyway.
Let's say you buy and the price of housing then goes up. Surely you are happy.
Let's say the price of housing, including your house, falls. Well, in absolute terms that is not so bad either. You can simply stay put. Even better, you might buy another house. Consider the polar case where houses fall to a nickel a piece. Yes you wasted 600K on an overpriced big box. But now you can buy your favorite mansion for a dime.
In technical terms, consider the changing price as a budget constraint rotating around a fixed status quo point (you can always stay in the house you bought). The rotating budget constraint will put you on a higher indifference curve.
So go ahead and buy that house. Yes, you might be better off by waiting for the price to fall. But don't worry about bursting bubbles, you won't end up worse off.
And let's assume you won't have to move anytime soon.
So buy, buy, buy. And don't stop at homes |
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| To: Lane3 who wrote (111711) | 4/29/2005 9:54:10 AM | | From: Mary Cluney | | | | Last nail in the conservative coffin.
Private accounts is not the answer.
A Private Obsession
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 29, 2005
American health care is unique among advanced countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector. It's also uniquely inefficient. We spend far more per person on health care than any other country, yet many Americans lack health insurance and don't receive essential care.
This week yet another report emphasized just how bad a job the American system does at providing basic health care. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that 20 million working Americans are uninsured; in Texas, which has the worst record, more than 30 percent of the adults under 65 have no insurance.
And lack of insurance leads to inadequate medical attention. Over a 12-month period, 41 percent of the uninsured were unable to see a doctor when needed because of cost; 56 percent had no personal doctor or health care provider.
Our system is desperately in need of reform. Yet it will be very hard to get useful reform, for two reasons: vested interests and ideology.
I'll have a lot more to say about vested interests and health care in future columns, but let me emphasize one key point: a lot of big companies are essentially in the business of wasting health care resources.
The most striking inefficiency of our health system is our huge medical bureaucracy, which is mainly occupied in trying to get someone else to pay the bills. A good guess is that two million to three million Americans are employed by insurers and health care providers not to deliver health care, but to pass the buck to other people.
Yet any effort to reduce this waste would hurt powerful, well-organized interests, which have already demonstrated their power to block reform. Remember the "Harry and Louise" ads that doomed the Clinton health plan? The actors may have seemed like regular folks, but the ads were paid for by the Health Insurance Association of America, an industry lobbying group that liked the health care system just the way it was.
But vested interests aren't the only obstacle to fixing our health care system. We also have a big problem with ideology.
You see, America is ruled by conservatives, and they have a private obsession: they believe that more privatization, not less, is always the answer. And their faith persists even when the evidence clearly points to a private sector gone bad.
I could cite many examples of this obsession at work. But a particularly good illustration of ideology-induced obliviousness is the 2004 Economic Report of the President, which devotes a whole chapter to health care that can be read as a sort of conservative manifesto on the subject.
The main message of that report is that U.S. health care is doing just fine. Never mind the huge expense, the low life expectancy, the high infant mortality; it's a market-based system, so it must be good.
The report even takes a Panglossian view of uninsured Americans - one that is completely at odds with the grim statistics I cited above - suggesting that "many of them may remain uninsured as a matter of choice," perhaps because "they are young and healthy and do not see the need for insurance."
The president's economists had only one criticism of the system: insurance is too comprehensive, which encourages people to consume too much health care. As they see it, insurance covers too large a percentage of medical costs. The answer to this problem is the creation of, you guessed it, private accounts, which have now superseded tax cuts as the answer to all problems.
Indeed, a new paper by Martin Feldstein of Harvard, which clearly reflects the administration's views, suggests that Social Security privatization and health savings accounts - tax shelters designed to encourage people to pay medical costs out of their own pockets - are only the beginning. "Investment-based personal accounts," he says, are the way to go for unemployment insurance and Medicare, too.
O.K., let's not turn this into a Bush-bashing session. President Bush didn't cause the crisis in American health care. His health care policies have made things only a little bit worse.
The point, instead, is that even though all the evidence suggests that we would be much better off under a system of universal coverage, any such move will be fiercely opposed, on principle, by conservatives who want us to move in the opposite direction.
And reform will also be opposed by powerful vested interests - my next subject in this series. |
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| From: LindyBill | 4/29/2005 9:56:12 AM | | | | | | Thirty Years at 300 Millimeters
By Hubert Van Es
The New York Times
April 29, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
PICTURE AT URL - nytimes.com
HONG KONG
THIRTY years ago I was fortunate enough to take a photograph that has become perhaps the most recognizable image of the fall of Saigon - you know it, the one that is always described as showing an American helicopter evacuating people from the roof of the United States Embassy. Well, like so many things about the Vietnam War, it's not exactly what it seems. In fact, the photo is not of the embassy at all; the helicopter was actually on the roof of an apartment building in downtown Saigon where senior Central Intelligence Agency employees were housed.
It was Tuesday, April 29, 1975. Rumors about the final evacuation of Saigon had been rife for weeks, with thousands of people - American civilians, Vietnamese citizens and third-country nationals - being loaded on transport planes at Tan Son Nhut air base, to be flown to United States bases on Guam, Okinawa and elsewhere. Everybody knew that the city was surrounded by the North Vietnamese, and that it was only a matter of time before they would take it. Around 11 a.m. the call came from Brian Ellis, the bureau chief of CBS News, who was in charge of coordinating the evacuation of the foreign press corps. It was on!
The assembly point was on Gia Long Street, opposite the Grall Hospital, where buses would pick up those wanting to leave. The evacuation was supposed to have been announced by a "secret" code on Armed Forces Radio: the comment that "the temperature is 105 degrees and rising," followed by eight bars of "White Christmas." Don't even ask what idiot dreamed this up. There were no secrets in Saigon in those days, and every Vietnamese and his dog knew the code. In the end, I think, they scrapped the idea. I certainly have no recollection of hearing it.
The journalists who had decided to leave went to the assembly point, each carrying only a small carry-on bag, as instructed. But the Vietnamese seeing this exodus were quick to figure out what was happening, and dozens showed up to try to board the buses. It took quite a while for the vehicles to show - they were being driven by fully armed marines, who were not very familiar with Saigon streets - and then some scuffles broke out, as the marines had been told to let only the press on board. We did manage to sneak in some Vietnamese civilians, and the buses headed for the airport.
I wasn't on them. I had decided, along with several colleagues at United Press International, to stay as long as possible. As a Dutch citizen, I was probably taking less of a risk than the others. They included our bureau chief, Al Dawson; Paul Vogle, a terrific reporter who spoke fluent Vietnamese; Leon Daniel, an affable Southerner; and a freelancer working for U.P.I. named Chad Huntley. I was the only photographer left, but luckily we had a bunch of Vietnamese stringers, who kept bringing in pictures from all over the city. These guys were remarkable. They had turned down all offers to be evacuated and decided to see the end of the war that had overturned their lives.
On the way back from the evacuation point, where I had gotten some great shots of a marine confronting a Vietnamese mother and her little boy, I photographed many panicking Vietnamese in the streets burning papers that could identify them as having had ties to the United States. South Vietnamese soldiers were discarding their uniforms and weapons along the streets leading to the Saigon River, where they hoped to get on boats to the coast. I saw a group of young boys, barely in their teens, picking up M-16's abandoned on Tu Do Street. It's amazing I didn't see any accidental shootings.
Returning to the office, which was on the top floor of the rather grandly named Peninsula Hotel, I started processing, editing and printing my pictures from that morning, as well as the film from our stringers. Our regular darkroom technician had decided to return to the family farm in the countryside. Two more U.P.I. staffers, Bert Okuley and Ken Englade, were still at the bureau. They had decided to skip the morning evacuation and try their luck in the early evening at the United States Embassy, where big Chinook helicopters were lifting evacuees off the roof to waiting Navy ships off the coast. (Both made it out that evening.)
If you looked north from the office balcony, toward the cathedral, about four blocks from us, on the corner of Tu Do and Gia Long, you could see a building called the Pittman Apartments, where we knew the C.I.A. station chief and many of his officers lived. Several weeks earlier the roof of the elevator shaft had been reinforced with steel plate so that it would be able to take the weight of a helicopter. A makeshift wooden ladder now ran from the lower roof to the top of the shaft. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, while I was working in the darkroom, I suddenly heard Bert Okuley shout, "Van Es, get out here, there's a chopper on that roof!"
I grabbed my camera and the longest lens left in the office - it was only 300 millimeters, but it would have to do - and dashed to the balcony. Looking at the Pittman Apartments, I could see 20 or 30 people on the roof, climbing the ladder to an Air America Huey helicopter. At the top of the ladder stood an American in civilian clothes, pulling people up and shoving them inside.
Of course, there was no possibility that all the people on the roof could get into the helicopter, and it took off with 12 or 14 on board. (The recommended maximum for that model was eight.) Those left on the roof waited for hours, hoping for more helicopters to arrive. To no avail.
After shooting about 10 frames, I went back to the darkroom to process the film and get a print ready for the regular 5 p.m. transmission to Tokyo from Saigon's telegraph office. In those days, pictures were transmitted via radio signals, which at the receiving end were translated back into an image. A 5-inch-by-7-inch black-and-white print with a short caption took 12 minutes to send.
And this is where the confusion began. For the caption, I wrote very clearly that the helicopter was taking evacuees off the roof of a downtown Saigon building. Apparently, editors didn't read captions carefully in those days, and they just took it for granted that it was the embassy roof, since that was the main evacuation site. This mistake has been carried on in the form of incorrect captions for decades. My efforts to correct the misunderstanding were futile, and eventually I gave up. Thus one of the best-known images of the Vietnam War shows something other than what almost everyone thinks it does.
LATER that afternoon, five Vietnamese civilians came into my office looking distraught and afraid. They had been on the Pittman roof when the chopper had landed, but were unable to get a seat. They asked for our help in getting out; they had worked in the offices of the United States Agency for International Development, and were afraid that this connection might harm them when the city fell to the Communists.
One of them had a two-way radio that could connect to the embassy, and Chad Huntley managed to reach somebody there. He asked for a helicopter to land on the roof of our hotel to pick them up, but was told it was impossible. Al Dawson put them up for the night, because by then a curfew was in place; we heard sporadic shooting in the streets, as looters ransacked buildings evacuated by the Americans. All through the night the big Chinooks landed and took off from the embassy, each accompanied by two Cobra gunships in case they took ground fire.
After a restless night, our photo stringers started coming back with film they had shot during the late afternoon of the 29th and that morning - the 30th. Nguyen Van Tam, our radio-photo operator, went back and forth between our bureau and the telegraph office to send the pictures out to the world. I printed the last batch around 11 a.m. and put them in order of importance for him to transmit. The last was a shot of the six-story chancery, next to the embassy, burning after being looted during the night.
About 12:15 Mr. Tam called me and with a trembling voice told me that that North Vietnamese troops were downstairs at the radio office. I told him to keep transmitting until they pulled the plug, which they did some five minutes later. The last photo sent from Saigon showed the burning chancery at the top half of the picture; the lower half were lines of static.
The war was over.
I went out into the streets to photograph the self-proclaimed liberators. We had been assured by the North Vietnamese delegates, who had been giving Saturday morning briefings to the foreign press out at the airport, that their troops had been told to expect foreigners with cameras and not to harm them. But just to make sure they wouldn't take me for an American, I wore, on my camouflage hat, a small plastic Dutch flag printed with the words "Boa Chi Hoa Lan" ("Dutch Press"). The soldiers, most of them quite young, were remarkably friendly and happy to pose for pictures. It was a weird feeling to come face to face with the "enemy," and I imagine that was how they felt too.
I left Saigon on June 1, by plane for Vientiane, Laos, after having been "invited" by the new regime to leave, as were the majority of newspeople of all nationalities who had stayed behind to witness the fall of Saigon.
It was 15 years before I returned. My absence was not for a lack of desire, but for the repeated rejections of my visa applications by an official at the press department of the Foreign Ministry. It turned out that I had a history with this man; he had come to our office about a week after Saigon fell because, as the editor of one of North Vietnam's military publications, he wanted to print in his magazine some pictures we had of the "liberation." I showed him 52 images that we had been unable to send out since April 30, and said he could have them only if he used his influence to make it possible for us first to transmit them to the West. He said that was not possible, so I told him there was no deal.
He obviously had a long memory, and I assume it was only after he retired or died that my actions were forgiven and I was given a visa. I have since returned many times from my home in Hong Kong, including for the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the fall, at which many old Vietnam hands got together and reminisced about the "good old days." Now I am returning for the 30th anniversary reunion. It will be good to be with old comrades and, again, many a glass will be hoisted to the memories of departed friends - both the colleagues who made it out and the Vietnamese we left behind.
Hubert Van Es, a freelance photographer, covered the Vietnam War, the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |
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| To: LindyBill who wrote (111726) | 4/29/2005 10:02:29 AM | | From: kumar | | | | US house market boom set for bust?
By Stephen Evans
BBC North America business correspondent
Is the current property boom an unwelcome replay of the dot.com bubble of the late Nineties and destined to burst in the same way, showering a lot of people with a lot of pain?
In financial crazes, there's usually a general frenzied belief that the old rules of economic gravity have been superseded - but are we about to (re)learn the hard way that prices that go up can come down with a bump?
Certainly, the anecdotes indicating there's a boom with at least an element of speculation are starting to echo those of the red-hot Nineties.
Official figures just out show that the housing market is as hot as ever: the sales of new homes rose by twelve per cent last month despite widespread gloom about oil prices and debt.
Stories abound of property in Florida being bought and sold within the same day to make a killing on the rising price, and the "how to" guides to trading real estate are selling as fast in the book shops as, well, as fast as a new condominium in Florida.
Golden opportunity
Just like in the Nineties, cheerleaders are urging buyers to believe that staying out of the market means foregoing easy money.
Home-price speculation is more entrenched on a national or international scale now than ever before
Robert Shiller
Professor of economics
Yale University
David Lereah, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, says in his new book, "Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?" that investors should "experience substantial and satisfying wealth gains".
He calls the current boom a "once-in-every-other generation opportunity".
Sharp price rises
In New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego (fastest of all), the price of an average family home has pretty well doubled in the last five years.
Twenty years ago in the United States, the price of a middle of the range home would have represented about five years of income for the house-holder.
Now, it's nearly eight years.
No crystal ball
But there are some signs that the peak may have been reached: the seemingly relentless rise in applications for mortgages has shown signs of wavering recently.
Certainly, one of the best observers of markets believes that the rise in property prices has been driven by speculation.
Yale economist Robert Shiller wrote at the end of the 90s about the bust that was waiting to happen.
His book "Irrational Exuberance" was published in March 2000 as the market started to turn.
He's now up-dated it with a focus on the property market.
"There is no hope of explaining home prices solely in terms of population, building costs or interest rates. None of these can explain the 'rocket taking off' effect starting around 1998.
"So what did cause this real estate boom in so many parts of the world? My conclusion: home-price speculation is more entrenched on a national or international scale now than ever before," Mr Shiller observes.
None of which means that the market is about to turn or even crash tomorrow. Nobody - nobody - can predict market behaviour.
And a change in sentiment in the housing market may just mean stagnant prices as incomes rise.
Limited upside?
But caution does seem to be in order.
There can't be any certainty that property prices will continue their steep, relentless rise, particularly since interest rates are going up, perhaps higher than previously feared if oil starts to inject inflation into the economy.
And rising interest rates ought to give some pause for thought to anyone thinking of borrowing big sums to buy assets that may not rise in price.
Big debts when asset prices are falling is bad arithmetic.
Story from BBC NEWS:
news.bbc.co.uk
Published: 2005/04/26 22:34:49 GMT
© BBC MMV |
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