Year: 2004

But first . . .

Craig: ‘Even when the facts don’t support your claim on the Reagan Administration and AIDS, with support for research doubling every year from 82 to ’86, what did you want the President to do, look into the microscope himself? Any Poly Sci 101 student knows laws are originated in the House with lobbying help coming from special interest groups such as ACT-UP. It seems to me that government was working and responding rather well.’

☞ I hear your frustration, Craig. What do these people want from us? But there’s frustration on the other side, too. As you know, tens of millions people, each one as real as you or me, are now infected with AIDS. As recounted in Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, President Reagan did not publicly discuss AIDS in any meaningful way until late in his second term, after more than 20,000 mostly-young Americans had died and the disease had spread to 113 countries. Another President might have sounded the alarm, or expressed concern, after just five or ten thousand deaths.

According to the Chronicle piece:

Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan’s surgeon general, has said that because of “intradepartmental politics” he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” The president’s advisers, Koop said, “took the stand, ‘They are only getting what they justly deserve.'”

Some people still feel this way. That’s a topic for another day.

As for laws originating in the House, I was under the impression that either the House or the Senate could introduce legislation – but that not infrequently the impetus for legislation, and spending priorities and budgets, come from the White House.

From June 1981 to June 1982 [recounts the cheerfully titled Encyclopedia of AIDS], the period generally considered the first twelve months of the epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spent $1 million on AIDS, compared with $9 million in response to the much smaller problem of Legionnaires’ disease. In late 1982, Congress allocated $2.6 million to be targeted for the CDC’s AIDS research, but the Reagan administration claimed that the CDC did not need the money and opposed any congressional supplemental appropriations designed to fund federal governmental AIDS policy efforts.

In the absence of presidential leadership, Congress was forced to ascertain on its own how much money doctors working inside government needed to address the AIDS epidemic. The Reagan administration resisted these efforts but refused to exercise an on-the-record veto of supplementary AIDS funding efforts. In the crucial early years of the epidemic, when federal resources could have been profitably spent on basic research and prevention education, federal AIDS researchers relied on supplemental funding in the form of continuing resolutions initiated by Congress. Year after year, Congress significantly increased AIDS funding relative to the Reagan budgetary proposals.

For those really interested in the early years of this plague – which could reach into the hundreds of millions of victims in the decade ahead – there is Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played On.

Okay . . . tomorrow: The Presidential Debates – An Interesting Preview

This is an interesting editorial on the media (emphasis added):

Published June 3, 2004
Minneapolis Star Tribune

For some time, much of American journalism has suffered from a professional blind spot that caused poor service to listeners, readers and viewers. Many practitioners of the craft somehow lost the difference between being neutral and being objective. That’s beginning to change now, and it’s a very good thing for this democracy.

The difference between neutrality and objectivity is this: Neutrality requires that you give equal billing to people who say the earth is flat and those who say it is round. Objectivity allows you to point out the evidence that the flat-earth folks are wrong. In political reporting, neutrality stops at saying candidate X says this and candidate Y says that, without any attempt to explain who is right and who is wrong and in what degree.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is the most prominent example of the newly rediscovered requirements of objectivity. In Sunday’s Post, Milbank and reporter Jim VandeHei had a story headlined, “From Bush, unprecedented negativity.” The two chronicled the attacks on Sen. John Kerry the week before:

• Vice President Dick Cheney said Kerry “has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all” and said Kerry “promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office.”

• Bush’s campaign aired an ad “saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps that are needed to hunt terrorists.”

• The Bush team asserted “that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.”

• Another Bush ad said that “Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.”

Then came the essential paragraph: “The charges were all tough, serious — and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.”

The two reporters went on to report that “scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts.”

This kind of truth-telling has been aided by the emergence of Web sites such as the nonpartisan factcheck.org, run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It documents exaggeration and outright lies by both parties. By far the most examples, and the most egregious ones, this year have come from the Bush campaign.

In pointing to the qualitative and quantitative difference, the two Washington Post reporters also avoided another problem of slipshod reporting that has bugged people for years. Democratic strategist James Carville put it this way in 1992: “We say one plus one equals three, and the Bush folks say one plus one equals three thousand, and you write, ‘both campaigns wrong.’ “

In the Milbank-VandeHei piece, one expert says the Bush campaign is so negative because it has no choice: “With low poll numbers and a volatile situation in Iraq, Bush has more hope of tarnishing Kerry’s image than promoting his own.”

But this “devil made me do it” defense is far too kind. The Bush family has always campaigned this way reflexively; it’s what they do, along with smearing anyone who disagrees with them. Just consider the smears of the past year, of people like Ambassador Joe Wilson, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick and ABC newsman Jeffrey Kofman (he’s Canadian and he’s gay, so don’t believe his reports about low morale in Iraq).

Democracy, the old saying goes, is a contact sport. You expect vigorous give-and-take, and you allow for a certain amount of rhetorical spin. But blatant lies and smears are an attempt to undermine democracy by presenting Americans with a false choice, in this case with a false John Kerry. It will take journalism of the Milbank-VandeHei variety to ensure you understand that.

© Copyright 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

And this is an interesting piece on the dollar.

I always felt that Ronald Reagan turned out to be the right man at the right time in one crucial way (though I hadn’t expected it when he was elected). Namely, in the power of his friendly optimism. ‘Don’t worry, be happy,’ was the unspoken theme of his economic policy at a time when we had lots to worry and little to be happy about. And yet – in tandem with a strong hand from Fed Chairman State Paul Volcker – it proved self-fulfilling.

You’ve likely seen this already; it has been shooting around the Internet for nearly three years now. I just got it again yesterday. It’s not quite what it purports to be (see below). But it is affecting nonetheless, and perhaps fitting to the memory of President Reagan, who always chose to see America at her best.

What Is an American?

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what an American is, so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya, mate!!!!)

An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, Pakistani, or Afghan.

An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as Native Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that, he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American is from the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need. When Afghanistan was overrun by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!

As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.

Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the least.

The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America. Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. I’ve been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did Generals Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself.

Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

Author unknown

This was ‘not penned by an Australian (or a dentist),’ in point of fact, as snopes.com informs us, ‘but by Peter Ferrara, an associate professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law in Northern Virginia.’ It appeared in the issue of National Review following September 11.

Even so, ignoring our imperfections and sometimes humongous missteps, it calls on us to be our best. Ronald Reagan would have liked that.

I was going to leave it there, ignoring the several less than laudatory e-mails I got today on the passing of our 40th President. There is a time and a place. But having lost more than 100 friends myself to AIDS, I was particularly affected by this one.

Rest in peace, Ronald Reagan – and Steven Powsner.

MUNICIPAL BONDS

If you expect long-term interest rates to head back up, this could be a better time to be selling long-term municipal bonds than buying them. And it is on the sale that your broker may be most tempted to take advantage of you. How do you know what they should sell for?

This site gives you a sense of what the prices of thousands of the more widely traded issues should be. Your broker will count on your inertia, figuring you will not likely go to the trouble of selling the bonds elsewhere. But at least this site may give you an argument to get a better price.

And here are two municipal bond specialists you could call for a competing bid: Stoever Glass and Lebenthal. You might find your broker will to match it to keep from losing a chunk of your assets.

SMELLY CAT

This is Phoebe’s song, most of you know, from ‘Friends.’ But what if you are a smelly cat? Or you have smelly dogs? (Feet, that is.) I was trying to have a serious conversation with you about global climate change and the hole in the ozone layer – which 25 years of global cooperation in banning chlorofluorocarbons* seems now to be mending – and all you can think of is RightGuard.

Kathryn Lance: ‘With regard to CFCs and deodorants, check out nomoreodor.com, which offers a completely natural, extremely effective way to eliminate underarm and foot odor without any impact on the environment. You have to pay some trivial amount for the formula and promise never to reveal the secret. I tried this two years ago and have not had to spend a cent on deodorant since.’

☞ I feel the need to tell you that, as your faithful correspondent, I clicked the link and even paid the $19.95 to learn the secret and make sure I wasn’t turning you on to some sort of Satanic odor-eater cult. I came to the site looking to save hundreds of dollars a year on deodorant. But what I took from the experience (because it occurred to me that a year’s supply may not cost me more than $10), is that this site would be of interest primarily to those who have a problem – as when, for example, removing their shoes at airport security the guards faint dead away. In which case, incidentally, you will learn how to fix not just your feet but also the smelly shoes they inhabit.

*I can see but one way to use this word in Scrabble, and now that you have raised the issue, I think I will spend the rest of my life hoping someday to do so. Terminating flush right on the triple word score if possible, you play the word CARBONS – 92 points. Then, at some point, you or your opponent lays down FLU on the same row, the requisite number of spaces to the left. Later, to the left of that, OR. So now you have _ _ _ O R _ F L U _ _ _ C A R B O N S. Note there are seven letters left and you have seven tiles on your rack. It’s your turn. Down go those seven letters, and you’ve done it! Although actually, if you really want to take a gamble, you could lay down CARBONS to terminate one short of the triple word score. This could be 86 points, nearly as good, if you began on the top or bottom ‘center’ triple word score. Then, when you laid down your triumphant seven letters to complete the word, it would start on a triple word, for a score, I am immensely please to tell you, of . . . oh, no! The Scrabble board is only 15 spaces wide! We need a shorter molecule!