Our Views
Doubling the deficit
Sons do try to outdo their fathers, but President Bush probably would have been just as happy not breaking this particular record of his father.The deficit for the 2003 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 is $374.2 billion, more than twice of last year's deficit, and shattering the previous record for red ink, $290 billion set by Bush senior in 1992.
Even so, the White House sought to portray that number as some kind of good news on the grounds that it's not as bad as it could have been. In July, the White House predicted the 2003 deficit would be $455 billion.
Said Bush budget director Joshua Bolten, "The improvement in our budget picture since our forecast last July is an encouraging sign that the economic recovery is gaining momentum."
The Democrats, of course, accused the White House of inflating the July figure so that the final number wouldn't look as bad. But that ignores a reality of deficit forecasts: Because of the way they are calculated, they are almost invariably wrong, and maybe the White House was just plain wrong in July.
What is incontestable is that the Treasury's projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion when Bush took office is now, three years later, gone.
Not all the deficit news is bleak. Tax revenues were $26 billion higher than expected, largely because of a welcome rebound in corporate profits. And spending was slower than expected; in some places because costs were lower and in others, like last spring's $76 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq, Afghanistan and homeland security, because the government didn't get around to spending all the money.
That only moves the red ink from 2003 to fiscal 2004 when the White House projects the deficit will be — drum roll, please — $500 billion. There's nothing like a half-trillion deficit to make a $374.2 billion deficit look like the good old days.
The 2003 deficit may not have been as bad as it could have been, but
it's still bad, very bad.
Governor knows best
Florida's Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature have unconscionably meddled in the case of a severely brain-damaged woman, in a hopeless vegetative state for 13 years, whose husband had finally won the right for her to die peacefully.The decision to remove life support is a difficult one, but there are medical and legal reviews to ensure the decision is a proper one. The case of Terri Schiavo, 39, had passed all those reviews, including judicial scrutiny that reached the Florida Supreme Court twice and the U.S. Supreme Court once. Considered medical opinion ruled out any hope of recovery.
Schiavo's husband, Michael, who was opposed by his wife's family, abided by the rules that govern these decisions and won at each step. He has insisted his wife had never wanted to be kept alive artificially. Last week he won final permission to have his wife's feeding tube removed. Death was to follow in a week to 10 days.
But Bush let ideology trump law and medicine and very likely Terri Schiavo's own wishes. On Tuesday, the Legislature passed a law, tailored to fit this one case, allowing Bush to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted. Bush quickly signed the law and issued the order. So much for the opinions of Schiavo's doctors and court orders and, since a 1990 Supreme Court decision, a matter of settled law.
"This is a response to a tragic situation," said Bush after issuing the order. It is a bad response and a dreadful precedent. Are Florida's politicians now to be the final arbiters of life-and-death medical decisions?
Schiavo's fate will now return to where it has spent most of the last
13 years, the courts, in an attempt to reverse the governor's meddling.
Thanks to him, this painful and protracted process will become even more
painful and protracted.
A taunting tape from Osama
Who knew that Osama bin Laden was a deficit hawk?In the latest audiotape to surface, which the CIA says is probably authentic, the terrorist mastermind twits the Bush administration for running a record budget deficit.
Bin Laden made his usual nonspecific threats against the United States and its allies and urged Iraqis and foreign volunteers to wage a holy war against Americans.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday, "As we stand here today, nearly two-thirds of the al-Qaida known leaders have been captured or killed. Those still at large are living in fear, as they should be. Their fears are well founded, because we are on their trail."
We should certainly hope so because it's hard not to get the sense that finding the evildoer himself is dropping down the list of the administration's priorities.
These periodic tapes from bin Laden are a needed reminder he is alive
and at large and we dare not to forget him because, as the latest threats
prove, he hasn't forgotten us.
Look Back
From Birmingham Post-Herald files:
Bessemer City Commission votes to give employees covered by civil
service 8 percent raise and day laborers raise of 9 cents per
hour.
University of Alabama climbs from fourth to third in both Associated
Press and United Press International football polls.
Your Views
Where did that federal surplus go?
Way back when the Republicans got control of everything, I tried to tell all of you just what would happen. What happened to the surplus in the national treasury?They gave it to the super-rich in the form of tax cuts and rebates retroactive to who knows when. I told you federal funding would be cut for all programs, forcing the states to raise taxes. They did this hoping to get the people to cause state legislators to have to take the heat from taxpayers.
They did not know that the taxpayers were fed up with high taxes. They refuse to let the state raise their taxes. Some states tried to raise taxes by having the people vote on them. Alabama was one of those states where the taxpayers refused to raise their own taxes.
Now when people in high positions try to tell us we don't have any money, and we will have to cut services, or some extra caricature activities, people don't believe them. When people ask where did all the money go, then that's a good question.
We are now calling them to account. Show me (where) the money (went)!
Most of the money is in the bank in someone's else's name! Oh, yes we little people did get a pacifier in the form of a tax rebate and a small tax cut, but the greatest part by far went to the super rich who haven't spent a dime of it yet to stimulate the economy.
Harold L. Smith
Mt. Olive 35117
Plainly evident
Some continue to wonder why the electorate distrust their elected officials. The answers are plainly evident and legion in number. We can begin by looking at the state judiciary for some odious examples.Start with the case of our suspended chief justice. Defiance, in this case, has been magically transmogrified into something benign, even honorable by all-too-clever word-wizards manipulating the misguided.
In an example where constitutionality was not at issue, an appeals judge was smote helpless due to what he incredulously claimed was enigmatic statutory wording. Curiously, no one else including the lower court had any difficulty understanding and applying the required plain and ordinary, constitutional, pro-citizen, meaning of those words.
Lastly, we have a circuit judge, stiffing an appeals court, dismissively asserting a citizen's understanding of the plain, ordinary meaning of that appellate decision was misplaced. The stipulated absence of specific action by a certain device resulted in the appeals court concluding the device was not capable of exhibiting that action.
No wonder our attitudes toward political figures putrefy. What else can one expect when meaning is trivialized through control-seeking word smithery to achieve narrow political objectives. Naturally, these individuals dutifully avoid alienating the monied, special interests who enable them to get out their artfully crafted election messages.
Philip Rabne
Look for suspect
Some folks are beginning to wonder, and rightly so, how terrorists continue to be able to plan, organize, fund, coordinate and conduct detailed and precisely accurate acts of terrorism/murder at will in every corner of the globe.Obviously, there appears to have to be some well-established, international organization in place that somehow facilitates, if not directs, these terrorists acts through the guise of a supposedly legitimate offshoot. A deafeningly quiet, "unsupecting" religious organization using "unsuspecting" branches such as charitable arms of the organization is an obvious suspect.
Now, let's see —
Well, just follow the money, even at the risk of offending.
Armond "Si" Simmons
Pell City 35128
Who stopped it?
Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin says that President George W. Bush was chosen by God to lead the global fight against Satan. The NORC analysis of all votes cast in Florida in the 2000 election shows that Al Gore would have won if all legal votes were counted. Was it God or Satan that stopped the count of votes in Florida?Joe Boyett
Montgomery 36111
Zealots have religious facts wrong
Letters from Christian conservatives regularly appear in Alabama newspapers purporting that: America has turned its back on God; America has become a moral cesspool; and religion is essential to the morality and prosperity of a society.These three assertions are just not supported by the facts. It is obvious zealots are merely parroting the harangues they have heard from the pulpit and from Judge Roy Moore and his minions. "Christians should support Roy Moore" by Jeff Barganier in the Oct. 10 Birmingham Post-Herald is an example of such a letter.
Claim 1: "Federal courts across the land seek to extinguish all references to 'the Creator' from public life in America."
Actually it was the framers who did this when they made no reference or allusion to God, Christ or Christianity in the Constitution. However, God and religion are alive and well in America, especially in Alabama. A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in December 2002 concluded, "Religion is much more important to Americans than people in other wealthy countries." The poll found that 59 percent of Americans said religion is "very important" in their lives. A Gallop poll found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, teenagers are strong believers in God, pray regularly and read the Bible—all without school persuasion. An astonishingly low 2 percent said they didn't believe.
Alabama leads the nation in religiosity. The Scripps Research Center found 82 percent of Alabama residents say religion is "very important" in their lives. Nearly two-thirds say they are "born again," compared to a national average of 39 percent and 24 percent for the Northeast.
Claim 2: We are, "In a land increasingly consumed by whiners, liars and Godless deceivers."
When in our history have Americans been more ethical, moral and prosperous than recently? Was it when some were hanging witches; whipping slaves; "saving Native American souls," sending children to sweatshops and coal mines; lynching African Americans; denying equal opportunities to minorities; destroying lives with communist witch-hunts? All these travesties occurred before America allegedly "kicked God out."
During the "Godless" 1990s the nation's murder rate declined by 33 percent. We lived in peace and harmony with and were respected by other nations. America enjoyed the longest period of prosperity in its history.
Where is the world's evil? It often lurks in the bastions of religious fervor, including: Islamic terrorist organizations; Northern Ireland where God-fearing Christians kill each other; the Bible Belt where intolerance fosters hatred, e.g., gay bashing; and ecclesiastical dens of pedophilia.
Claim 3: "When we can no longer stand for God and his freedom-giving law, it is time we say farwell to freedom for we no longer merit his blessing."
Norway and Sweden are ranked by the United Nations as having the highest standards of living in the world. The percentage of the population attending church at least once per month is: United States, 55; Norway, 13; Sweden, 11. The percentage of atheists in Scandinavia is approximately three times that of the United States. And yet they are blessed with extremely low crime rates (murder rate approximately 20 percent of the United States') and were rated the world's least corrupt nations.
The less religious Northeast has the lowest murder rate in our country, while the Bible Belt's murder rate far exceeds the national average.
There was a time when everyone in Christendom worshiped God. It was known as the "Dark Ages." The period is most notable for serfdom, the Crusades, the Inquisition, suppression of science, and unspeakable cruelty in God's name.
The majority of Americans zealously embraces God and religion. But a society eschewing Christian conservatism and trusting reason rather than religious dogma can be ethical, non-violent and prosperous. Is more religion really the answer for remeding America's perceived ills?
David N. Miles
Orange Beach 36561
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