crisis manufactured by Bush

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(CNN) � The global economy may be undergoing a significant downturn, but the White House's dinner budget still appears flush with cash.

After all, world leaders who are in town to discuss the economic crisis are set to dine in style Friday night while sipping wine listed at nearly $500 a bottle.

According to the White House, tonight's dinner to kick off the G-20 summit includes such dishes as "Fruitwood-smoked Quail," "Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb," and "Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue Chanterelle Jus."

To wash it all down, world leaders will be served Shafer Cabernet �Hillside Select� 2003, a wine that sells at $499 on Wine.com.

The exceedingly pricey wine may seem a bit peculiar given leaders are in Washington to discuss a possible world financial meltdown, but Sally McDonough, a spokeswoman for Laura Bush, said it "was the most appropriate wine that we had in the White House wine cellar for such a gathering.

McDonough also said the White House purchased the wine at a "significantly lower price" than what it is listed at.

"Of course the White House gets its wine at wholesale prices," she said. "Given the intimate size of the group, it was an appropriate time for The White House to use this stock."

The leaders of the U.K., France, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and 11 developing economies have all come to Washington at the behest of President Bush in an effort to express confidence in the fundamental underpinnings of the world's economy.

SUGGESTED SOLUTION TO CARMAKER'S CRISIS, AS WELL AS SOME ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Maybe I've gone off the deep end - but I'm so sick of hearing about the big 3 bailout requests I've come up with a serious suggestion to help them.

I think its environmentally, morally, and financially irresponsible for the government to give tax breaks to those who buy NEW cars (much less bail out the manufacturers). The majority can't afford them anyway (or can't guarantee they'll have a job to make payments on them tomorrow), and we already have enough cars! Backyards and junk yards are full of cars because we can't get parts for them! How many economy cars that were good on gas are sitting in junkyards - because we don't have the parts to keep 'em on the road?

Why can't we get parts? The greedy corporate suits in Detroit figured if we couldn't get them, we'd be forced to buy new cars whether we wanted to or not! So they won't make them. I guess their plan didn't work, because when we bought new cars, we bought them from someone else.

I believe replacement parts manufacturing can be profitable - as the few little companies that make replacement parts for classic cars can prove. It might not restore the bonus of every deprived CEO in Detroit, but it could save quite a few line jobs. There is no longer a big market for new cars - but there's a constantly growing market for replacement parts. Its better than continuing the denial that Detroit has been in for the last decade - clinging stubbornly to the myth that we LIKE what they make, that we WANT it, and that we can AFFORD it, and that every one of us pines away for shiny new giant gas-guzzler in our driveway. We like what they USED to make, the muscle cars, the economy cars, the cars that were our sentimental favorites back in the day, when cars didn't cost the price of a house, and lasted longer than the 5 year warranty! They still have the blueprints to make the parts for those models, as well as parts for later-model cars past their warranty. That's what we want, what we can afford - and the sheer volume of parts purchased would make them a profit as well as helping the little guy with bad credit survive. Not everyone can get a loan for a new car - or even a used one - but those that can't could probably come up with the price of a needed part

I propose we reduce the production of new cars drastically. Instead we revamp a large number of our factories to manufacture parts for the cars that already exist (if we really MUST bail out the big 3, let's insist they put the money toward this). Alternatively, we insist that for every new car they manufacture - they must manufacture a certain number of essential repair parts for their discontinued models (which, according to recent news - will be most of them). This creates jobs, renews the jobs at some of the small non-union subcontracting plants that had to close when told to stop making the parts, or at least saves the jobs of UAW workers who were making unwanted new cars. Let them close their dealerships - but keep the dealer repair shops open. We then give tax credits for anybody who takes classes on repair - this creates jobs, as more people would rather fix it versus junk it (and can certainly afford the part easier than a whole new car). We give tax credits to anyone who gets a non-running vehicle operational again, we give tax credits for anyone who opens a repair/refurbishment shop, we give tax credits to junk yards that reduce their scrap heaps. Much better than a tax credit encouraging people to take on even more debt for a new car!

If some of elderly vehicles are unsafe by today's standards, we could manufacture parts that make them safer and update them, depending on the needs of each model. Surely the powers that be could run a scan for every VIN and get the statistics for how many models of each are currently still on the road (just like they do when there's a safety recall), and decide from there on whatever issues need addressed.

We should also consider legislation that insurance companies stop totalling vehicles without proof that their repair will be more expensive than a new car. "What a car is worth" needs to be restructured - what is the environmental/financial impact of junking it worth - the cost of a new one? If an old paid-off car ran perfectly fine before the wreck - should it be totalled because the damages came to a couple bucks more than the Blue Book value? I really don't think so! In this economy, having a paid-off vehicle with the option of keeping minimal insurance on it is nearly priceless!

We found out during the last couple years that we really can't afford a brand new McMansion, and we don't actually need one either, and we're much better off with less house than our budget can stretch to cover. Many of us know the same thing about the brand new car, but we don't have a choice because we can't fix the old one, and can't trust that the used one we buy will have parts available for it when it breaks down. That needs to change. We need more cost-effective options and we WANT the choice of fixing what we already paid for, instead of being forced to buy ever-more expensive brand new ones again and again and stuffing the landfills indefinitely!

My solution also applies to large appliances. Our landfills are full of them! The manufacturers of refrigerators, washers/dryers, riding lawnmowers, etc. should be required to produce a set number of repair parts for their older models - instead of making commercials about a lady throwing her old one off a cliff simply because she's tired of it!

Do we really want to be a nation of salesmen and consumers? I think we'd have more pride, strength and better ability to make it through these hard times if we replaced our salesmen with repairmen, blind consuming with sensible choices, and learn to one-up the Joneses with how much we saved from the landfill instead of how much we spent. Let's stop planned obsolescence and let the companies that refuse to give up the practice go belly up! They deserve it - they are trashing the environment as well as ripping off their customers - deliberately manufacturing products to break down in a couple years is just morally wrong. Lets make if fashionable to preserve and restore instead of consume and discard! I hope I'm not the only one that's tired of this - so is anybody with me on this? If you're in favor spread the idea! Discuss this with everybody!

9. Ridicule. In an interview with the Washington Post on 07/9/2008, McCain advisor and national campaign general co-chair Senator Phil Gramm was defining McCain's plans to reform the U.S. economy. Gramm explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline." This would be the same Phil Gramm of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which allowed commercial and investment banks to consolidate. The legislation allowed Swiss Bank UBS to purchase several American institutions. Gramm later became a lobbyist for UBS, collecting over 750,000 USD in fees. UBS alone issues over 18 Billion USD in subprime mortgages.

8. Denial. Black Monday, 09/15/2008. John McCain: "The fundamentals of our economy are still sound." A worldwide stock market crash occurred as Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and major investment bank Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America. Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 500 points, which is the biggest point drop (up to that point) since September 2001. FTSE 100 dropped 212 points, and it was the biggest one-day percentage drop since January 21, 2008. Hong Kong, Japan and Korea stock market suspended that day due to public holiday, and they fell over 5% on the following day. Two weeks later, we had a blacker Monday (09/29/2008) with a 777.68 point drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

7. Political grandstanding. Announcement of suspending his campaign to return to DC to "lead" Congress during economic bail-out negotiations. This effort led to a defeat of the measure when the votes were cast. Tried unsuccessfully to use the bailout as an excuse to postpone the presidential debate.

5. Incoherence. Threatens to fire the chairman of the SEC if he were in office, even though the president does not have the authority to do so.

4. Theft of intellectual property. Claiming previously existing mortgage buy-out proposal as his own.

3. Avoid / change the subject. Greg Strimple, a McCain top advisor: If we keep talking about the economy, we will lose."

2. Engage the politics of division, hate, fear mongering and cultural warfare with high-gear Obama smear campaign: Ayers, ACORN, Farrakhan, Rev Jeremiah Wright, Barack Hussein Obama, etc.

1. McCain�s send message to voters is to stop whining about the economy and start focusing on attacking Obama.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

�by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson

"Anyone in my office involved with a leak will be fired" to "Anyone who is found guilty of leaking," I figured he had a handle on what the decision is going to be by the special prosecutor, who, incidentally, was appointed by BUSH.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised no net loss of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection, said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as highly questionable, and boasted, Everybody loves what we're doing.

My administration's climate change policy will be science based, President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as a report put out by a bureaucracy, and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating, Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment, the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease. Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of abstinence. When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan. Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.