Imagine the Republican-fanned outrage if this had been a group associated with the Democratic Party and, say, James Carville.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | FBI raids pro-Republicans
The target of an anti-terrorist raid in the United States last week provided funds for an Islamic group with close ties to the Republican party and the White House.
The Safa trust, a Saudi-backed charity, has provided funds for a political group called the Islamic Institute, which was set up to mobilise support for the Republican party. It shares an office in Washington with the Republican activist Grover Norquist.
The institute, founded in 1999 to win influence in the Republican party, has helped to arrange meetings between senior Bush officials and Islamic leaders, according to the report in Newsweek magazine. Its s chairman, Khaled Saffuri, and Mr Norquist cooperated to arrange the meetings.

Good short article on Chuck Hegel, one of the few Republicans in the Senate not in thrall to the Orwellian Party Line.

TAP: Web Feature: Hagel vs. Cant. by Brendan Nyhan. March 8, 2002.

However, far too much partisanship these days consists of appeals to emotion or outright irrationalism. Ideologues on both sides assume every action of their opponent is taken in bad faith; viciously stereotype, caricature, and ridicule them; and try systematically to distort policy debates to their advantage. None of this is new, and much of it is inherent to politics. But it has become far more pervasive, and professionalized, in recent years.

That's why we need leaders on both sides of the aisle who can rise above the slash-and-burn partisan tactics that drag down our democracy. That's why we need more Chuck Hagels.

I know accounting can be a problem, but this is ridiculous.

CBS News | The War On Waste | Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:20:05 EST
Its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

EJ Dionne points out how the Enron fiasco should shape out attitudes about government regulation.

End of an Era (washingtonpost.com)

The era that's ending saw regulators as nothing but meddlers getting in the way of genius. But capitalism doesn't work without regulation. Powerful people will take advantage of their muscle unless someone -- like it or not, that usually includes the government -- keeps an eye on them...........

.........That is why Enron has ended an era. For a very long time, we've assumed that the fundamental conflict in capitalism is between the owners and the workers. Enron proves that the real conflict is between insiders and outsiders. The losers in the Enron case are both stockholders and workers.

Jackpot. Enron start to spill the beans.

Yahoo! - Former Employee Says Enron Manipulated California Power Market
LOS ANGELES -- A former Enron Corp. employee has written a letter to U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer claiming that he has knowledge the company's trading arm manipulated wholesale electricity prices in California.

Reality Denial 101. The Bushies continue to push privatization and self-regulation as if Enron and Arthur Andersen weren't still stinking up the landscape.

Utne Reader Online: Money

At a time when the Enron scandal is bringing intense Congressional scrutiny on corporate auditors, SEC chairman Harvey Pitt is quietly proposing to pass the enforcement buck from government back to the private sector. The investing public is sadly mistaken if it thinks that either government, auditors, or companies will back reliable financial disclosure that is legally enforceable.........

..........Don't be fooled. No authority, public or private, now enforces the public's interest in either reliable disclosure or auditor independence-and none will. That's the price of deregulation. But today it's clear that deregulation has backfired. Only a government auditor-regulator as fully independent as the Federal Reserve would have any hope of restoring credibility to the securities industry.

Article by Bill Allison, author of "The Cheating of America", on how American corporations and millionaires legally avoid billions in taxes.TOMPAINE.com - Perfectly Legal
In researching our book, we found that the top 1 percent of tax filers, in terms of income, claimed 15 percent of all itemized deductions. They enjoyed 40 percent of the tax-exempt interest that municipal bonds and the like pay. They claimed half of the write-offs for losses from partnerships and closely held corporations. According to the IRS's most recent statistics, there were 101 returns filed by millionaires who paid absolutely nothing in federal income taxes.

Book excerpt from Lester Brown of the WorldWatch Institute. He points out how market signals ignore both benefits and harms of economic activity that affect anyone but the people directly involved in the transaction.

TOMPAINE.com - Book Excerpt The Value Of A Tree Standing
A forest in the upper reaches of a watershed may provide services such as flood control and the recycling of rainfall inland that are several times more valuable than its timber yield. Unfortunately, market signals do not reflect this, because the loggers who are cutting the trees do not bear the costs of the reduction in services. National economic policies and corporate strategies are based largely on market signals. The clearcutting of a forest may be profitable for a logging firm, but it is economically costly to society.

Jason Vest details the projects that Bush wants to pump more money into, despite their either not being needed or history of (sometimes lethal) mechanical problems. These include the Osprey, the Raptor, the Comanche, and the Crusader.

TAP: Vol 13, Iss. 5. Costs a Bundle and Can't Fly. Jason Vest.

The V-22 Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft under the aegis of the U.S. Marine Corps, has killed more Marines than the Taliban has. It's perennially in an "experimental" stage. Four prototypes have crashed in the past 10 years, killing a total of 30 men, including the program's most experienced hand. Not long after the last crash, which occurred in December 2000, a report from the Pentagon understated in calling the Osprey program "not operationally sustainable." Even Dick Cheney, as defense secretary under the elder George Bush, tried to quash it. The current administration could have followed the March 2000 recommendation by the Congressional Budget Office to find safer and better applications for the technology developed in the program--a move that the CBO estimated would save $6.6 billion over the next decade. President Bush, however, wants Congress to give the Marines another $2 billion for the program. Meanwhile, the Air Force has requested $124 million for work on its own version of the disaster-prone aircraft.

The Bush tax cuts start to hurt national security. As part of the general belt tightening in the Federal government caused by the return of deficits, security funding for the Department of Energy's Nuclear Security Administration is actually being reduced by $51 million. That's right! In the wake of 9/11, Bush is actually proposing to make our nuclear stockpiles less secure.

Nuclear Insecurity - Why is the president's budget downsizing security at our nuclear weapons labs? By Eric Umansky
Maybe the budget cuts are for good reasons. After Sept. 11, nearly every federal agency has had to rethink its security procedures, and maybe the Department of Energy figured out how to tighten security, thwart terrorists, and save a few bucks. Or just maybe, they're penny-pinching in the wrong place.

The Washington Post gives some juicy details about the relationship between Enron and Ralph Reed and some insight into the way lobbyists pimp their political and social connections for clients.

washingtonpost.com: Bush 2000 Adviser Offered To Use Clout to Help Enron
Just before the last presidential election, Bush campaign adviser Ralph Reed offered to help Enron Corp. deregulate the electricity industry by working his "good friends" in Washington and by mobilizing religious leaders and pro-family groups for the cause.
For a $380,000 fee, the conservative political strategist proposed a broad lobbying strategy that included using major campaign contributors, conservative talk shows and nonprofits to press Congress for favorable legislation. Reed said he could place letters from community leaders in the opinion pages of major newspapers, producing clips that Reed would "blast fax" to Capitol Hill.

The Washington Post gives some juicy details about the relationship between Enron and Ralph Reed. Also gives details of how lobbyists like Reed pimp their political and social connections to clients.

washingtonpost.com: Bush 2000 Adviser Offered To Use Clout to Help Enron
Just before the last presidential election, Bush campaign adviser Ralph Reed offered to help Enron Corp. deregulate the electricity industry by working his "good friends" in Washington and by mobilizing religious leaders and pro-family groups for the cause.
For a $380,000 fee, the conservative political strategist proposed a broad lobbying strategy that included using major campaign contributors, conservative talk shows and nonprofits to press Congress for favorable legislation. Reed said he could place letters from community leaders in the opinion pages of major newspapers, producing clips that Reed would "blast fax" to Capitol Hill.

Eric Alterman points out how Bush is using the War on Terrorism in a cynical ploy to push policies that don't have anything at all to do with it.

Axis Me No Questions...
George W. Bush's State of the Union address has laid bare his Administration's political strategy. It is to manipulate the grief, anger and patriotism inspired by September 11 to fit the contours of the right-wing Republican agenda of September 10. What that Day of Infamy means to George W. Bush & Co. is more tax cuts for the wealthy, more money for wasteful weapons schemes and the back of their proverbial hand to those who suffer the misfortune of not being rich in Bush's America.

The Smoking Gun has posted dozens of letters between George W Bush and Ken Lay, going back years. Of course, Bush has inistsed that he hardly knew the guy.

The Smoking Gun: Archive
While the White House has repeatedly described former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay as simply a "supporter" of George W. Bush, extensive correspondence between the two men paints a far cozier picture of their relationship, according to copies of letters obtained this afternoon (2/15) by The Smoking Gun.

Jonathan Chait discusses Bush's budgetary dishonesty. He talks as if we have to make tough choices between national defense, domestic spending, and deficits, but never mentions taxes as part of the equation. Wouldn't an honest person at least mention that he prefers to cut taxes even if it means domestic budget cuts or deficts, rather than pretend that they had nothing to do with each other?

The New Republic Online: Hide and Sneak
Bush and his staffers speak as if tax revenues and defense spending were somehow not fungible. Instead, the administration will only discuss trade-offs between defense, domestic spending, and deficits--never taxes. When they discuss spending cuts or deficits, they take care to associate them with the war........

...........It's true that Bush's budget forecasts just a small deficit next year. So why not just cut a little more and avoid the embarrassment of deficits altogether? Because the president doesn't intend to make the spending cuts in his budget stick. We've seen this before. Last year Bush announced he would allow federal spending to rise at 4 percent, and he made a show of slashing wasteful subsidies. But he put little effort into it, and in the end Congress restored most of his cuts--ending up with a 7 percent hike, even before September 11. This year the White House is again pretending to cut pork, but it has again signaled its lack of seriousness.

Michael Moore hits one out of the park with his indictment of Bush's ties to Enron:

George W. in the Garden of Gethsemane
You not only let Kenny Boy decide who would head the regulatory agency that oversaw Enron, you let him hand-pick the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission--a former lawyer for his accountant, Arthur Andersen!

Kenny and the boys at Andersen also worked to make sure that accounting firms would be exempt from numerous regulations and would not be held liable for any "funny bookkeeping" (don't you wish you were this forward-thinking?). Then the rest of Kenny Boy's time was spent next door with his old buddy, Dick Cheney (Enron and Halliburton, as you'll recall, got the big contracts from your dad to "rebuild" Kuwait after the Gulf War). Lay and Dick formed an "energy task force" (Operation Enduring Graft) which put together the county's new "energy policy." This policy then went on to shut down every light bulb and juicer in the state of California. And guess who made out like bandits while "trading" the energy California was in desperate need of? Kenny Boy and Enron! No wonder Big Dick doesn't want to turn over the files about those special meetings with Lay!

Good article in the LA Times detailing the long relationship between Enron and the Bush family, from George W lobbying the government of Argentina while his father was President to Ken Lay raising millions for Bush Sr in '92 and Bush Jr in 2000.

The Company Presidency
How much the Bush family and its close political entourage actually collected from Enron and its executives since the company was organized is a matter of definition--reportable political contributions, soft money for the Republican Party, finders' fees, joint investments, inauguration funding, presidential-library donations, speech money, capital gains, consulting fees, directors' fees or what? If you combine what the multiple Bush generations received with what loyalists Vice President Dick Cheney, Baker, Mosbacher, political advisor Karl Rove, economic advisor Lawrence B. Lindsey and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick got, you certainly have $6 million to $8 million, and depending on the success of the Baker-Mosbacher-Enron joint investments, perhaps $20 million to $30 million.

Bush has managed to single-handedly torpedo peace between North and South Korea. If I were cynical, I'd say it's been done on purpose as a way of justfying Bush's missile defense plans (which have always been less about defense and more about paying back big donors in the defense industry). If I were a little less cynical, I'd say they just wanted to undo everything Clinton did, and peace in Korea was on the list. I'd guess a little from Column A and a little from Column B with a big splash of clumsy bluster for good measure.

U.S. News: On his Far East trip, the president's harsh words on North Korea will be tested (2/18/02)
If there was any doubt that the era of good feelings had come to an end, it was erased the night President Bush popped Pyongyang during his State of the Union address. After labeling North Korea a member–along with Iran and Iraq–of a new "axis of evil," he proceeded to paint Kim Jong Il's government as "a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens." True to form, Pyongyang responded that Bush's comments were "little short" of a declaration of war and hinted it might reinforce its 1.1 million-strong People's Army.......

.......For eight years, the strategy for managing this goliath has been to talk, not shout. The two Koreas had appeared to be heading toward reconciliation after holding a groundbreaking North-South summit in June 2000. They organized reunions of families separated during the Korean War, their diplomats held a series of high-level talks, and they began to address American concerns about the North's missile program. Pyongyang has imposed a moratorium on the testing of long-range missiles, has apparently honored a 1994 accord to freeze its nuclear weapons program, and agreed to sign United Nations antiterrorism conventions after September 11. The country will also open its doors to unprecedented numbers of tourists during its widely promoted Arirang Festival this spring.

Bad blood. Relations began to falter last March, when Bush voiced skepticism about the North during a Washington summit with the South's Kim. After that, Pyongyang froze talks and called off the last set of family reunions planned for late last year.

Interesting article from the NY Times (requires registartion). George W Bush is trying to duck the public disclosure rules in Texas, which require information to be released within 10 days. He's transferred all the records from his term as Governor to his Daddy's Presidential Library, and is claiming that they aren't subject to the disclosure law since they're on Federal property. In those records are notes of his meetings with fatcat contributors from Enron and elsewhere.

Battling Over Records of Bush's Governorship
In the meantime, news organizations and a public interest group, Public Citizen, have petitioned the Bush library for the 60 or so Enron- related documents believed to be in the governor's files, many dating from 1997 to 1999 when Texas was debating utility deregulation.

Good article on the Enron influence machine. They calculate how any regulation or government action would affect them, then pressure legislators to change any that they didn't like. Also, in what may yet become a big scandal, the executives at Enron were pressured to contribute money to Geroge W Bush and other candidates favored by Ken Lay:

Hard Money, Strong Arms And 'Matrix' (washingtonpost.com)
With each proposed change in federal regulations, lobbyists punched details into a computer, allowing Enron economists in Houston to calculate just how much a rule change would cost. If the final figure was too high, executives used it as the cue to stoke their vast influence machine, mobilizing lobbyists and dialing up politicians who had accepted some of Enron's millions in campaign contributions......

........Sally Ison didn't realize the presidential race had begun until April 1999, when a letter arrived bearing the signature of Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth L. Lay. The letter asked for contributions to the Bush campaign and included what she recalls as a menacing reference to her husband Jerry's compensation as a highly paid vice president.

"We didn't even know if we liked this guy," she said of Bush. "I didn't know if I was going to vote Republican."

Yet there was no debate. Nearing 50, Jerry Ison felt vulnerable in Enron's crushingly competitive culture. The Isons gave $2,000.