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References: <720D7C3E-652A-11D9-92A8-000A95DA4C4C &AElig umich.edu> 	 <41E6E147.5060002 &AElig umich.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 23:11:36 -0500
To: Andrew Skol <askol &AElig umich.edu>
Cc: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig gmail.com>
Subject: Re: A fiscal conservative, Bush is not, and perhaps this is why?
Status: RO

This didn't make it to my umich account for some reason so thought I'd
reply to make sure people see it.  I think it's very worth reading. 
There's the evidence supporting the Bill Moyer article that I
mentioned in my last email as well as a link to an article about oil
in ANWR (conclusion: there are between 0 and 5.6 billion barrels of
economically recoverable oil there).

Danny

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 15:59:51 -0500, Andrew Skol <askol &AElig umich.edu> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
>     I've attached a funny and scary article by that famed woman of the
> center, Arianna Huffington. It can also be found at:
> http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2005/01/13/future/index.html. It
> criticizes the Bush administrations well honed fiscal policy, aptly
> coined "fucked the future". Here are three wonderful consecutive
> paragraphs that you can use to judge if you want to read the entire
> article (it's really not that long).
> 
> ". . .
> 
> Take the jaw-dropping federal debt, which currently stands at $4.3
> trillion. Just last month the Government Accountability Office released
> a report that found that Bush's economic policies "will result in
> massive fiscal pressures that, if not effectively addressed, could
> cripple the economy, threaten our national security, and adversely
> affect the quality of life of Americans in the future."
> 
> And what was the administration's reaction to this frightening
> assessment? Vice President Dick Cheney shrugged, took a hearty swig of
> the end-time Kool-Aid and announced that the administration wants
> another round of tax cuts. Basically a big "fuck you."
> 
> Then there's our trade deficit, which ballooned to a record $165 billion
> in the third quarter of 2004, when imports exceeded exports by 54
> percent. Thanks to this imbalance, America is racking up a staggering
> $665 billion in additional foreign debt every year -- that's $5,500 for
> every U.S. household -- and placing the nation's future economic
> security in the hands of others. Here is Bush's response to this
> daunting prospect: "People can buy more United States products if
> they're worried about the trade deficit." Sounds like he has really got
> it under control.
> . . ."
> 
>  Unfortunately, the article does not discuss the motivation for the
> administrations beliefs. I thought it could be an interesting topic for
> discussion, especially, if somebody could find some logical
> justification for the rights behavior and perhaps what the democrats,
> independents and fiscally conservative republicans (remember when that
> was an oxymoron) could do to bring the administration (and the public),
> back to the world where we think beyond ourselves in the present.
>     I have some thought on the matter which perhaps I can get down on
> lcd in the not too distant future.
> 
> Enjoy the reading.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> Apocalypse later
> With nearly religious fervor, the Bush administration is mortgaging
> America's future into oblivion.
> 
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> *By Arianna Huffington*
> 
> <http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2005/01/13/future/email.html>
> 
> Jan. 13, 2005  |  Near the beginning of "Saturday Night Fever," John
> Travolta's Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save
> his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, "Fuck
> the future!" To which his boss replies: "No, Tony, you can't fuck the
> future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if
> you ain't prepared for it!"
> 
> Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but America has morphed into a
> nation of Tony Maneros -- collectively dismissing the future. And
> nowhere is this mindset more prevalent than at the Bush White House,
> which is unwavering in its determination to ignore the future.
> 
> <http://oas.salon.com/rmads/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.salonmagazine.com/house_only/content/large.html/1896692943/Right/OasDefault/House_Wired336/wired0603_336.gif/34333236353666653431393031333930>
> 
> The evidence is overwhelming. Everywhere you look are IOUs passed on to
> future generations: Record federal debt. Record foreign debt. Record
> budget deficits. Record trade deficits.
> 
> And this attempt to "fuck the future" is not limited to economics. You
> see the same attitude when it comes to energy policy, healthcare,
> education, Social Security and especially the environment -- with the
> Bushies redoubling their efforts to make the world uninhabitable as fast
> as possible. (See their attempts to gut the Clean Air Act, gut the Clean
> Water Act, gut the Endangered Species Act, gut regulations limiting
> pollution from power plants.)
> 
> And the even bigger problem? They don't see this as a problem. In fact,
> it all may be an essential part of the plan.
> 
> If that last sentence doesn't make a whit of sense to you, then you are
> clearly not one of the 50 million Americans who believe in some form of
> "end time" philosophy, an extreme evangelical theology that embraces the
> idea that we are fast approaching the end of the world, at which point
> Jesus will return and carry all true believers -- living and dead -- up
> to heaven (the "rapture"), leaving all nonbelievers on earth to face
> hellfire and damnation (the "tribulation"). Christ and his followers
> will then return to a divinely refurbished earth for a 1,000-year reign
> of peace and love.
> 
> In other words, why worry about minor little details like clean air,
> clean water, safe ports and the social safety net when Jesus is going to
> give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he
> finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?
> 
> Keep in mind: This nutty notion is not a fringe belief being espoused by
> some street corner Jeremiah wearing a "The End Is Nigh!" sandwich board.
> End-timers have repeatedly made the "Left Behind"
> <http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2002/07/29/left_behind/> series
> of apocalyptic books among America's bestselling titles, with over 60
> million copies sold.
> 
> And they have also spawned a mini-industry of imminent doomsday Web
> sites like ApocalypseSoon.org and RaptureReady.com. The latter features
> a Rapture Index that, according to the site, acts as a "Dow Jones
> Industrial Average of end time activity" and a "prophetic speedometer."
> (The higher the number, the faster we're moving toward the Second
> Coming.) For those of you keeping score, the Rapture Index is currently
> at 152 -- an off-the-chart mark of prophetic indicators.
> 
> Now I'm not saying that Bush is a delusion-driven end-timer (although he
> has let it be known that God speaks to -- and through -- him, and he
> believes "in a divine plan that supersedes all human plans"). But he and
> his crew are certainly acting as if that's the case.
> 
> Take the jaw-dropping federal debt, which currently stands at $4.3
> trillion. Just last month the Government Accountability Office released
> a report that found that Bush's economic policies "will result in
> massive fiscal pressures that, if not effectively addressed, could
> cripple the economy, threaten our national security, and adversely
> affect the quality of life of Americans in the future."
> 
> And what was the administration's reaction to this frightening
> assessment? Vice President Dick Cheney shrugged, took a hearty swig of
> the end-time Kool-Aid and announced that the administration wants
> another round of tax cuts. Basically a big "fuck you."
> 
> Then there's our trade deficit, which ballooned to a record $165 billion
> in the third quarter of 2004, when imports exceeded exports by 54
> percent. Thanks to this imbalance, America is racking up a staggering
> $665 billion in additional foreign debt every year -- that's $5,500 for
> every U.S. household -- and placing the nation's future economic
> security in the hands of others. Here is Bush's response to this
> daunting prospect: "People can buy more United States products if
> they're worried about the trade deficit." Sounds like he has really got
> it under control.
> 
> I guess after the rapture, debts of all kinds will be forgiven. The
> White House is promoting a similar "What, me worry?" attitude with our
> live-for-the-moment energy policy. America currently spends $13 million
> per hour on foreign oil -- a number that will only increase as U.S. oil
> production peaks (within the next five years) and as consumption by
> industrializing nations doubles over the next 25 years.
> 
> So is the president pushing for a long-overdue increase in mileage
> standards or launching an all-out effort to break our dependence on
> foreign oil? Hardly. Instead, he's getting ready to make his umpteenth
> attempt to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
> <http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/01/06/oil/> to drilling.
> 
> And that is just a small part of the president's full-bore assault on
> the environment, best summed up by Sen. Jim Jeffords, the ranking
> minority member on the Environment and Public Works Committee: "I expect
> the Bush administration will go down in history as the greatest disaster
> for public health and the environment in the history of the United States."
> 
> That said, it's not hard to see why Bush has hopped aboard the
> Apocalypse Express. Acting like there's no tomorrow dovetails just as
> neatly with his corporate backers' rapacious desires as it does with his
> evangelical backers' rapturous desires. It offers him a political
> twofer: placating his corporate donors while winning the hearts and
> votes of the true believers who helped the president achieve a Second
> Coming of his own. No small miracle, given his record.
> 
> It's important to point out, however, that the problem does not lie just
> with the White House and the end-timers. Acting as if we have a finite
> future has infected our entire culture. Just look at personal savings,
> which have fallen to next to nothing, with Americans socking away a
> meager two-tenths of 1 percent of their disposable incomes. Meanwhile,
> the average U.S. household carries about $14,000 of credit card debt;
> one in four consumers spends more than he or she can afford; and, as a
> result, every 15 seconds, someone somewhere in America is going
> bankrupt. Which, I guess, in Bush World is how an angel gets wings.
> 
> All this represents a seismic shift in our cultural outlook. Since the
> nation's founding, the American ethos has been forward-looking, geared
> to a bountiful future, with each generation of parents working as hard
> as they can to ensure a better life for their children. Those days are
> clearly gone.
> 
> And it has put our entire civilization at grave risk -- a point echoed
> with great clarity by Jared Diamond, whose new book, "Collapse,"
> <http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/01/08/jared_diamond/index.html>
> looks at the reasons why so many great civilizations of the past have
> failed.
> 
> Although Diamond offers a range of reasons why these societies
> collapsed, one message comes through loud and clear: We've got to stop
> living like there is no tomorrow or "fuck the future" will become a
> self-fulfilling prophecy.
> 
> 


-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  google://"Daniel Reeves"