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May
Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press! Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary
The Morning Murmur – Tuesday, May 02, 2006
1. PROBLEMA - New York Post Op-ed
The organizers of yesterday's "Day Without Immigrants" have betrayed not only
the people they claim to be helping but everyone else who is trying to find
a rational and civil answer to an incredibly complex issue.
2. Bolivia Military Told to Occupy Gas Fields - Associated Press
President Evo Morales ordered soldiers to occupy Bolivia's natural gas
fields Monday and threatened to evict foreign companies unless they give
Bolivia control over the entire chain of production.
3. Finances of Social Security and Medicare Deteriorate - New York Times
The financial condition of Medicare and Social Security deteriorated in the
last year, the Bush administration reported Monday, and it warned again that
the programs were unsustainable in their current form. To keep them solvent,
Congress would need to take action.
4. Bolten Says White House to Regain 'Mojo' - Associated Press
It's time for the White House to go on offense and "get our mojo back" Josh
Bolten said Sunday in his first interview since taking over as the
president's chief of staff.
5. Media Ignores the Nation's Heroes - RealClear Politics
In "Home of the Brave," President Reagan's secretary of defense and
co-author Wynton Hall tell the stories of American heroes in the War on
Terror the news media should be telling, but mostly haven't.
For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov
FULL ARTICLES BELOW:
1. PROBLEMA - New York Post Op-ed
By JOHN PODHORETZ
May 2, 2006 -- THANKS a lot, amigos.
The organizers of yesterday's "Day Without Immigrants," who are also
responsible for other recent demonstrations demanding special treatment for
illegal aliens, have betrayed not only the people they claim to be helping
but everyone else who is trying to find a rational and civil answer to an
incredibly complex issue.
With their psychotically provocative behavior, these radical lunatics of the
Left are moving the ideological goalposts of this debate toward the
restrictionist Right. Unless they wise up, by the time they're through every
politician in this country outside the inner cities will be paying lip
service at the very least to a serious crackdown on illegal immigration.
You can see it happening already.
Even before yesterday's shameful frolics, Hillary Clinton had begun talking
about building a border fence - where, back in March, she was taking a soft
line, complaining about Republican legislation in shockingly grand terms and
comparing illegal immigrants to Jesus Christ.
With her finger stuck way high up in the air to feel the distant breezes of
2008, Hillary realized that the air currents were changing.
Maybe a few months ago it seemed like good politics to be courting Hispanic
voters by offering words of support for illegals. But Americans in both
parties are now paying far more attention to the issue, and polling shows
they just don't like the idea that the laws of the United States are being
violated with impunity.
Being soft on illegal immigration is beginning to look like the new
millennium's version of being soft on crime. In truth, it's considerably
more complicated than that. But the Democratic Party went down the
soft-on-crime road once before, with disastrous results.
I have long counseled Republicans and conservatives to resist the temptation
that anti-immigration policy represents, both morally and politically. I
still think it is profoundly ironic that many on the Right are talking about
the terrible costs presented by illegal aliens at a time when the economy is
growing at a rate near 5 percent, personal incomes are up, manufacturing is
skyrocketing and unemployment is near historic lows.
But if I were a paid political consultant right now, I'd be hard-pressed to
talk any Republican into taking an expansive view of the benefits of
large-scale immigration. Instead, I would be trying to figure out just how
to capitalize on the Democratic Party's embrace of the most irresponsible
and reckless liberal rhetoric on the subject of immigration ever heard in
this country.
The organizers of yesterday's nationwide demonstration's chose to convince
illegals not to go to work. To what end? For what purpose? The industries
that employ such workers have spent decades engaged in lobbying activities
designed to loosen restrictions. Why would the organizers choose to punish
them?
I have an answer. They are doing so for the same reason they encourage the
use of Mexican flags at demonstrations, the singing of the National Anthem
in Spanish, and the insistence that lawbreakers be given immediate and
unconditional citizenship.
They are doing so because they are secretly in the employ of the
anti-immigration lobby.
The only people participating in the political debate at the present moment
who were overjoyed by yesterday's despicable rallies were anti-illegal
activists like Reps. Tom Tancredo and Dana Rohrabacher and behind-the-scenes
Washington guys like Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.
"Thanks for the boycott!" wrote a jubilant Krikorian. Jubilant he should be.
The debate is moving in his direction at the speed of light.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/67809.htm
2. Bolivia Military Told to Occupy Gas
Fields - Associated Press
May 1, 7:16 PM (ET)
By ALVARO ZUAZO
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - President Evo Morales ordered soldiers to occupy
Bolivia's natural gas fields Monday and threatened to evict foreign
companies unless they give Bolivia control over the entire chain of
production.
Morales sent soldiers and engineers with Bolivia's state-owned oil company
to installations and fields tapped by foreign companies - including
Britain's BG Group PLC and BP PLC (BP), Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR),
Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF SA, France's Total SA (TOT) and U.S.-based
Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) The companies have six months to agree to new
contracts or leave Bolivia, he said.
Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said troops were sent to 56 locations
around the country.
Soldiers took over major gas fields and refineries and, in the eastern city
of Santa Cruz where much of the industry is based, occupied some oil company
offices, said Tuffi Are, news editor at the El Deber newspaper, one of
Bolivia's largest. He said about 100 soldiers were guarding the Petrobras
refinery just outside the city.
Morales, a leftist allied with Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo
Chavez in seeking to blunt U.S. influence in the region, had pledged to
exert greater state control over the industry since winning election in
December, becoming Bolivia's first Indian president.
"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes
absolute control of our natural resources," Morales said in a speech from
the San Alberto field in southern Bolivia operated by Petrobras in
association with Repsol and Total SA.
"The looting by the foreign companies has ended," Morales declared.
Brazil is Bolivia's biggest natural gas client, followed by Argentina, and
Brazil's demand has been rising rapidly due to power generation, cooking and
automotive needs.
Landlocked Bolivia must sell to its neighbors because it lacks a pipeline to
ship gas to the Pacific Ocean and from there to Asia, Mexico or the United
States.
The announcement follows a trend by oil- and gas-rich Latin American nations
to exact a larger share of profits from extraction of the fossil fuels.
It comes as Ecuador argues with Washington over a new oil royalties law and
less than a month after Chavez ordered the seizure of oil fields from Total
and Italy's Eni SpA when the companies failed to comply with a government
demand that operations be turned over to Venezuela's state oil company,
Petroleos de Venezuela SA.
Bolivia has South America's second largest natural gas reserves after
Venezuela, and all foreign companies must turn over most production control
to Bolivia's cash-strapped state-owned oil company, Yacimientos Petroliferos
Fiscales Bolivianos, Morales said.
An Army spokesman did not immediately return telephone requests for comment.
Multinational companies that produced 100 million cubic feet of natural gas
daily last year in Bolivia will be able to retain only 18 percent of their
production, with the rest being given to YPFB, he said. Morales did not name
the companies.
A Repsol spokesman said the company could not respond because it had not
received official word of the announcement. Petrobras officials did not
immediately return messages seeking comment on Monday, a national holiday in
Brazil.
"We are monitoring the situation very closely," said Bob Davis, a spokesman
for the world's largest oil company Exxon Mobil Corp., which has a 30
percent interest in a non-producing field called Itau, which is operated by
Total.
Morales said the government would begin negotiations immediately with the
companies to make sure they are willing to comply, but said they could be
stripped of their privilege to operate in Bolivia if they don't sign new
contracts within six months.
In the past, YPFB produced Bolivia's natural gas, but it was reduced to an
administrative role in the mid-1990s after the country's gas exploration and
production business was privatized. Experts have warned that the company is
incapable of becoming a producer again without a massive infusion of cash.
Morales has repeatedly said the country's natural resources have been
"looted" by foreign companies and must be nationalized so that Bolivians
could benefit from the profits that were being sent overseas.
But he has also said that nationalization will not mean a complete state
takeover, because Bolivia lacks the ability to tap all its natural gas on
its own.
Last week, Morales told Brazil's Valor Economico newspaper that Bolivia
would have to "set up a new battalion, a new army of oil and gas specialists
to exert the property right" for a complete state takeover of petroleum
production.
Morales chose May 1, International Day of the Workers, to announce the
nationalization plan, wearing a YPFB helmet as he gave his speech.
Morales also said the state would retake majority control of Bolivian
hydrocarbons companies that were partially privatized in the 1990s.
Morales is following the path of Chavez, his populist political mentor, said
Pietro Pitts, editor-in-chief for the Venezuela-based LatinPetroleum.com.
"You can call Bolivia Venezuela Part II because it seems like he (Morales)
is going to try to do the same thing that Chavez is doing," said Pitts,
referring to giving the state majority control of hydrocarbons.
Ecuador's Congress last month ratified a hydrocarbons reform law designed to
cut into windfall profits of foreign crude producers, among them U.S.-based
Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY)
The law would give the government 50 percent of oil company profits whenever
the international oil market exceeds the prices established in existing
contracts. Most of those deals were pegged to 1990s oil prices when crude
was worth a fraction of today's market.
AP Business Writers Frank Bajak and Alan Clendenning contributed to this
story from Bogota, Colombia and Mexico City; and AP writer Jeanneth
Valdivieso contributed from Quito, Ecuador.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060501/D8HB9DRG0.html
3. Finances of Social Security and
Medicare Deteriorate - New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, May 1 - The financial condition of Medicare and Social Security
deteriorated in the last year, the Bush administration reported Monday, and
it warned again that the programs were unsustainable in their current form.
Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund, a widely watched gauge of the
program's solvency, will run out of money in 2018, two years earlier than
projected in last year's report, the trustees said.
And the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2040, one year
earlier than projected last year, the trustees said. At that point, in 2040,
Social Security tax collections would be adequate to pay only 74 percent of
scheduled benefits.
Lawmakers said they would never allow the trust funds to run dry. But the
insolvency dates are a vivid way of showing that the programs are
unsustainable. To keep them solvent, Congress would need to trim benefits,
raise taxes or take some combination of such steps.
"The systems are going broke," President Bush said Monday in a speech to the
American Hospital Association.
Almost every element of the programs reflects a political judgment, but Mr.
Bush said, "It's time to set aside politics and restructure Social Security
and Medicare for generations to come."
Republicans and Democrats seized on the reports to renew the political
battle over Social Security and Medicare, with an eye to Congressional
elections this fall.
The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said the reports showed
that "despite White House scare tactics, Social Security remains sound for
decades to come." Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said the
administration had worsened Medicare's problems by promoting managed-care
plans, which he said often "cost more than traditional Medicare."
The administration urged Congress to approve the president's proposals to
slow the growth of Medicare by curbing payments to hospitals. Under current
law, the trustees said, doctors already face a cut of 4.7 percent or more in
Medicare fees in each of the next nine years.
The trustees' reports are authoritative documents prepared by career civil
servants, mainly actuaries, and are full of data used as a basis for policy
making and political debate.
In the report on Medicare, the Bush administration reduced its estimates of
the number of people who would sign up for the new prescription drug
benefit.
The trustees now predict that 31.4 million people will have signed up for
the drug benefit by the end of the initial enrollment period in two weeks,
and that monthly enrollment for 2006 will average 29.2 million, down from an
estimate of 39 million published in last year's report.
Likewise, the administration now predicts enrollment of 34 million for 2007,
down from an estimate of 39.8 million in last year's report.
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said Medicare's financial problems were more
severe than those of Social Security because of "steady large increases in
underlying health care costs."
The new report estimates that the basic Medicare premium - what a
beneficiary pays for coverage of doctors' services and other outpatient care
- will be higher than predicted last year. The premium has increased more
than 50 percent in the last three years, to $88.50 a month, from $58.70 in
2003, and the Bush administration predicts that it will rise to $98.20 next
year.
By contrast, in last year's report, the administration predicted that the
basic 2007 premium would be $87.70.
But the average premiums for drug coverage are lower than expected: $32.20
this year and $35.86 in 2007. The comparable figures in last year's report
were $37.37 and $41.22.
The administration lowered its estimate of the cost of the drug benefit for
the period from 2006 to 2014. The administration now puts the cost at $872
billion, down from $1.1 trillion last year. (The figures do not reflect
premiums paid by beneficiaries or compulsory payments by states to help
defray the costs.)
In a joint statement, the public trustees of the two programs, John L.
Palmer and Thomas R. Saving, said the projected costs of the drug benefit
were "significantly lower than those in the 2005 report due to recent slower
growth in overall prescription drug spending and lower enrollment in
stand-alone prescription drug plans than was expected a year ago."
Still, the administration said, the cost of the drug benefit will grow an
average of 11.5 percent a year in the next decade, more than twice as fast
as the economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/washington/02benefit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
4. Bolten Says White House to Regain 'Mojo'
- Associated Press
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's time for the White House to go on offense and "get
our mojo back." Josh Bolten said Sunday in his first interview since taking
over as the president's chief of staff.
Bolten made no promises of pulling up President Bush's all-time low approval
ratings, but he said he and Bush have decided they want to be more open with
the media and the public.
"We've taken advice from a lot of folks that we ought to put the president
out more in ways that the American people can see what he's really like,"
Bolten said on "Fox News Sunday."
But he said that does not mean the president's policies are going to get an
overhaul. "I don't think we need to change, but we do need to refresh and
re-energize," Bolten said.
For example, he said the White House is "thinking actively" about
immigration and putting the president out front on an issue that has split
him off from some in his own party. Bolten added that it is vital that the
White House communicate effectively about the importance of the fight
against terrorism so Americans will support the mission.
Bolten, Bush's former budget director, took over for longtime chief of staff
Andy Card on April 14, amid administration tensions with Congress, waning
public support for the president and calls for fresh ideas in the White
House.
"What the change does provide is an opportunity for the White House to step
back, refresh, re-energize at a time when we're 5 1/2 years into an
administration - normally a slow point, a low point, in many administrations
- and a chance for us to get our mojo back, to go back more on the offensive
and to get people within the White House to look at our operations,
re-energize them for the next six months up through the election, the next
1,000 days through the end of this president's term," Bolten said.
As part of his goal of changing the communications strategy, Bolten has
replaced press secretary Scott McClellan with Fox News commentator Tony
Snow. The move means that an experienced conservative television
personality, who at times has been critical of the president, is the public
face of the White House.
Bolten said it may be worth considering whether to end the daily televised
press briefings where reporters and the press secretary frequently air
disputes in front of the cameras, but he will leave that decision up to
Snow.
"I think that will be Tony Snow's first test - to see what kind of power
player he really is and whether he's able to establish the right kind of
relationship with the press that we need going forward," Bolten said,
appearing on the same show that Snow hosted for seven years.
On other staff changes, Bolten said Bush political aide Karl Rove remains an
important voice on White House policy even though Bolten reassigned
day-to-day oversight of policy to a new West Wing hire.
Bolten said Rove was not getting his wings clipped and that he is as engaged
as ever despite his recent fifth appearance before a grand jury
investigating the leak of classified material.
Bolten did not directly answer questions about whether Bush will replace
Treasury Secretary John Snow.
"We're all serving at the pleasure of the president, and the president has
full confidence in every member of his cabinet, including John Snow," Bolten
said.
Bolten, who said Bush calls him "Yosh" and several other unrepeatable
nicknames, said he has the benefit of experience with Bush and is prepared
to deliver Bush bad news he may not want to hear sometimes.
"He doesn't necessarily change his mind, but there's no penalty internally
for disagreeing with the group or with the president," Bolten said. "But I
say internally, because he's very much a CEO, and when he makes a decision,
then everybody within the White House should salute and get in line, at
least publicly, with that decision."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSHS_NEW_CHIEF?SITE=KHOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
5. Media Ignores the Nation's
Heroes - RealClear Politics
By Jack Kelly
The last of Cap Weinberger's many services to his country, completed just
days before his death, is the book "Home of the Brave."
In "Home of the Brave," President Reagan's secretary of defense and
co-author Wynton Hall tell the stories of American heroes in the War on
Terror the news media should be telling, but mostly haven't.
One story that has been reasonably well told is that of Sgt. Leigh Ann
Hester of the Kentucky Army National Guard, the first woman to be awarded
the Silver Star, America's third highest combat decoration, since nurse Mary
Louise Roberts in World War II.
Sgt. Hester, 23, won the Silver Star for her role in repulsing an ambush by
more than 50 insurgents of a convoy her military police squad was escorting
on March 20, 2005. When the day was over, 27 of the insurgents were dead,
seven more were prisoners.
"Raven 42" of the 617th Military Police Company was one together group. In
addition to Sgt. Hester, two others of the ten member squad won the Silver
Star for their actions that day; three were awarded the Bronze Star, and two
the Army Commendation Medal with combat V. Not bad for weekend warriors.
Thanks mostly to the efforts of Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times, the
story of Sergeant First Class Paul Smith, the only Medal of Honor recipient
in the war so far, has also been told pretty well.
At the Baghdad International Airport on April 4, 2003, SFC Smith held off,
essentially by himself, an attack by 100 or more insurgents, killing nearly
50 before he himself was mortally wounded.
But Sgt. Rafael Peralta, LtCol. Mark Mitchell, Staff Sergeant Stephen Achey,
Hospitalman Luis Fonseca and the 13 others profiled by Mr. Weinberger and
Mr. Hall are household names chiefly only in their own households, and in
the units in which they served.
Of the 19 heroes whose exploits are recounted in this book, eight are Army
soldiers; eight are Marines; two are Air Force tactical air controllers, and
one is a Navy corpsman who serves with Marines. Three won their awards in
Afghanistan; 16 in Iraq.
The story that caused me to tear up the most is that of Marine Sgt. Peralta,
who has been recommended, posthumously, for the Medal of Honor.
Sgt. Peralta was killed on Nov. 15, 2004, during the second battle of
Fallujah. His squad was clearing a house. Sgt. Peralta was the first into a
room where at least three insurgents lay in ambush. He was shot in the chest
and the face, but still had the presence of mind to jump into an adjoining
room to give the Marines behind him a clear field of fire.
Four Marines maneuvered into the room where Sgt. Peralta lay when an
insurgent tossed a grenade into it. Sgt. Peralta pulled the grenade to him
and smothered it with his body, saving the others from death or serious
injury.
Sgt. Rafael Peralta died for a country he loved, but of which he was not yet
a citizen. A Mexican immigrant who lived in San Diego, Sgt. Peralta enlisted
in the Marines the day he received his green card.
"Be proud of being an American," Sgt. Peralta had written to his younger
brother in the only letter he ever sent him.
Of the 19 heroes described in the book, three others besides Sgt. Peralta --
Army Sergeant First Class Javier Camacho; Marine Sgt. Marco Martinez, and
Luis Fonseca, the Navy corpsman -- are Hispanics. This is a fact that I
think has some relevance in the current immigration debate.
In an afterword, Secretary Weinberger and Mr. Hall say they wrote "Home of
the Brave" to compensate in part for the lack of coverage in the news media
of the good things our servicemen and women are doing in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
"The dearth of hopeful or heroic stories reported has given viewers a
lopsided perspective," they wrote.
Soldiers who misbehave make the front page. Soldiers who perform nobly do
not. When SFC Smith was awarded the Medal of Honor, the New York Times put
the story on page A-13.
I did a Nexis search on "New York Times and Abu Ghraib." It came back with
more than 1,000 hits. The Times has run exactly one story that mentions Sgt.
Peralta, and he had to share billing in it with SFC Smith and Sgt. Hester.
"A nation that ignores, or, worse, attacks its heroes erodes and disparages
its own ethos," warn Mr. Weinberger and Mr. Hall.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/05/post_6.html
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