On March 17, 2006, “The Decider” (President Bush II) signed a $70,000,000,000 (billion) tax cut passed by “The Follower” (Congress), which is trying to find another $23 billion for us – well some of us anyway.

The table below, which is based on a recent Tax Policy Center (TPC) review of the new tax cuts, shows how this tax cut is distributed by “income class.”

The green shaded area represents the 14 percent of the tax payers who earn over $100,000 a year and get 87 percent of this cut. In real numbers this means 20,197,000 “tax units” will get about $61 billion. This works out to a little over $3,000 per tax unit.

As represented by the blue shaded area, the remaining $9 billion from this tax cut goes to 125,641,000 less rich “tax units.” That works out to about $72 per tax unit, about enough to fill an average car’s gas tank 1.5 times.

Cash Income Class (1,000 of 2005 $s)	Share of Tot Tax Change (%)	Avg Tax Reduction ($)	Tax Units (1,000)	Tax Units (%)
Less than 10	0.0	0	18,886	12.9
10-20	0.1	3	25,413	17.4
20-30	0.3	10	20,374	13.9
30-40	0.4	17	15,429	10.4
40-50	0.9	47	11,953	8.2
50-75	3.6	112	21,121	14.4
75-100	7.6	406	12,455	8.5
100-200	32.0	1,395	15,196	10.4
200-500	27.2	4,527	3,988	2.7
500-1000	5.7	5,656	668	0.5
>1000	22.3	42,766	345	0.2
All	100	453	146,417	100

Now here is a question on the tax cuts. Since, the Christianists are, by definition, a power player in the political process, to what extent were they affected by this tax cut? Since they support the GOP, they should benefit by their support. Right?

The answer can be found in a 1996 study from Pew Research on religion and politics. This study was a follow-up to another survey from 1987, and potentially, the 1996 study will be updated in the near future.

First of all, let me repeat Andrew Sullivan’s description of a Christianist, “I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.”

Now here are some of the general findings of the 1996 survey that relate to this Christianist description:

• Grown their affiliation with the Republican Party from 35 to 42 percent
• Grown their representation among voters from 19 to 24 percent
• Greater opposition to:
  • abortion,
  • gay marriage,
  • gun control,
  • sending troops go Bosnia, [Remember, this was in 1996]
  • disseminating birth control information to teenagers, and
  • women in the work force

The survey also reported these additional facts on mixing religion and politics for Christianists or the broader category of white evangelical Protestants:

• Twenty percent of white evangelical Protestants reported hearing partisan politics from the pulpit as compared to 12 percent for both mainline Protestants and Catholics.
• Eighteen percent of white evangelical Protestants reported campaign information was made available in their churches compared to 5 percent for mainline Protestants or Catholics.
• White evangelical Protestants think it is okay for churches to be involved in politics by a three to one margin.
• Fifty-eight percent reported being displeased with the media (Note: Fox News went live in 1996 when these survey results were published.).
• The Christian Coalition gets a favorable, 64 percent, rating from white evangelical Protestants.
• White evangelical Protestants surpassed their political opposite, Progressive Catholics, in terms of consistency across a broad range of political issues.
• White evangelical Protestants favor the GOP by 56 percent over the Democrats as the party most concerned about protecting religious values.

Now getting back to the tax cut. Here are some of the raw data from the 1996 survey showing Protestant education and income, which we can relate to the tax cut study above:

Education	White Mainline Protestant	White Evangelical Protestant
College Grad	27	16
Some College	22	24
HS Grad	41	47
< HS Grad	10	14

 

Family Income	White Mainline Protestant	White Evangelical Protestant
$0 – $20,000	19	22
$20,000 – $29,999	18	18
$30,000 – $49,999	27	28
$50,000 – $74,999	13	12
$75,000 +	12	8

Note from Pew Research: Some columns do not add to 100% because not all categories are shown.

From these tables, you can see that white evangelical Protestants average below mainline Protestants on the high end of income and education. They also surpass mainline Protestants on the low end of both scales. In other words, white evangelical Protestants are more likely to get less of the tax cut. (And why do they support the GOP?)

This tax benefit is highlighted in the table below where the tax reduction distribution from the TPC is appended to the raw income data from the 1996 Pew Research survey. Since the TPC table has 11 income groups and Pew Research and only 5 groups, the TPC tax reductions had to be averaged to come up with the numbers in the table below. For example, TPC’s 30 to 40 and 40 to 50 numbers (17 and 47) average to 32 in the table below for the 30,000 to 49,999 range.

Family Income	White Mainline Protestant	White Evangelical Protestant	Average Tax Reduction
$0 – $20,000	19	22	$2
$20,000 – $29,999	18	18	$10
$30,000 – $49,999	27	28	$32
$50,000 – $74,999	13	12	$112
$75,000 +	12	8	$10,950

In conclusion, the white evangelical Protestants get little return from the party they support. Money may not be what they are looking for, but mixing religion and politics isn’t the answer either.

One other comment. In my previous article, I made references to the dependent masses, not the majority of citizens in a country, but the group that is necessary to bring about and maintain a single party state. Are the white evangelical Protestants the masses for some future single party state?

In my research for this article, I also came across another interesting chart. It is from a December 2002 survey and shows that 60 percent of the U.S. population feels that religion is very important to them. It also shows that the US is a considerable exception to the rule that says, the poorer the nation – the more important religion is.

Click on image for the original report.

Here is a look back at what contributed to WWII. Could it happen here?

Nations run by a single party (political, army or dictatorship) tend to become intensely nationalistic, racist, militaristic and imperialistic. They are supported by the ‘masses’ but not necessarily the majority of the national population. Support for this system is enhanced by identifying an ‘enemy’ and its ‘supporters’, labelling them with prejudicial adjectives and urging the masses to support violence against them.

Other characteristics that help create a ‘successful’ single party system include:

• Highly advanced technologically – dramatic changes in high-tech economies help bring on social and economic conflicts that are typically resolved with increasing levels of violence;
• A small group of wealthy entrepreneurs is required to initially fund the system;
• Any democratic institutions like courts and legislatures must be marginalized.

The single party state uses propaganda, i.e. the media, to manipulate the masses and solidify its power. Anxieties over social and economic issues are broadcast, exploited and focused on an enemy and its friends. The supporting masses are manipulated to stay in line behind the single party by being made to feel they are on the verge of losing their central place in the single party state. The media and technology are key to this. — To incite terror and control of the masses, the single party must be well organized, technically highly skilled, and in control of the media.

Success also requires a state of war based on high-tech skills and financial resources. Initially, the war is internal but grows as the power of the single party grows. War, of course, and the needed power requires a strong military. The military favors, by its nature, conformity and thus becomes codependent with the single party. Support for a single party and love of conformity helps with enforcement of conformity of the masses through the military. In other words, the military becomes supportive of both the uniform single party and its goal to unify and control the masses. This need for conformity by both the single party and its military requires high-tech skills and financial resources from the wealthy to spread the word – imperialism is on the rise.

The masses tend to hold the military in some esteem. There is genuine popular support. The masses hope the military can keep the single party from straying too far and the military will oblige the masses – to a point. The single party knows this and has to keep an eye on the military to make sure they don’t stray from the single party line. If the military does stray, the single party will add them to the enemy list and purge the trouble makers in a very public way. This also helps keep the masses in line.

Although not a requirement, an economic depression can facilitate the formation of a single party and its codependent military. Any economic downturn magnifies the economic and social conflicts between the masses and their many enemies. The masses join the unemployed and feel useless, unwanted, and outsiders from the respectable ranks of society. To regain their self respect, they join the military, put on a uniform, rejoin the single party, and become respectable again. Conformity is enhanced by an order of magnitude.

Even without a depression, a high-tech, militarized single party must bring many contradictory social groups together. This is done through great common denominators like insecurity, frustration, and resentment. These common denominators and the military are the substance that promotes conformity in and support from the masses. But there are additional psychological requirements needed to keep the support of the masses.

These masses must feel dependent and that dependence should be based on insecurities that are common across the masses. This dependence requires an authority figure they can believe in, accept without question and regardless of facts, provide comfort for their insecurities and give them a role in the military to help them feel they belong. There dependence allows them to take orders and they in turn issue orders to others just as dependent.

However, the masses are also frustrated because they are denied self-expression and self-assertion. The single party knows this frustration exists and that it will lead to repressed hostility and aggression. This hostility and aggression must be redirected to the ‘real’ enemy. The single party must provide an enemy for the masses to vent their resentment on.

Ideally, this enemy is easily identifiable and, if not, the state will make it easy by applying labels verbally and physically. As long as there is an enemy and the repressed hostility, aggression, and resentment of the masses can be vented against that enemy, the frustrations and insecurities of the masses are assuaged and the single state can maintain its imperialist pursuits knowing the masses are provided an ever expanding supply of enemies.

For the masses who can’t master their own dependent lives, the single state provides mastery over others.

This is some of what happened in Germany and Italy before and during WWII. Could it happen here? Maybe, maybe not. Is there a way to judge if it is or isn’t happening? Maybe, maybe not. But that is what this blog is attempting to do – Where are we going (WAWG)?

This blog is tracking a set of 14 characteristics (blog categories) defined by Laurence W. Britt in 2003. Blog articles are written about possible instantiations of these characteristics. If you want to explore these articles, refer to the various navigational aids on the left side of this web page.

In addition to the blog articles, an index is being tracked and evolved to see if a trend of these characteristics exists.

In this eighth survey of the web, the WAWG index group average was down by 26 percent from April 2006. Of the fourteen items tracked, all 14 were down. The cumulative change for the index is still up 26 percent.

The downtrend for “scapegoats as a unifying cause” and “media control” dropped another 8 percent.

The biggest drop was 74 percent for “disdain and suppression of intellectuals”. This was followed by a 73 drop in “avid militarism,” and a 63 percent drop for “powerful patriotic nationalism.”

Islamists and “Christianists” are a minority in their respective religions and use their religion to promote a political ideology.

In an Andrew Sullivan article, Mr Sullivan suggests, “we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist.” Mr. Sullivan goes on to say,

Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

That’s what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn’t. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It’s time the quiet majority of believers took it back.

In Mr. Sullivan’s blog, he adds the following clarification (bold added for emphasis):

Some readers have objected to my attempt to coin a new word to describe those who would deploy the teachings of Jesus as a political ideology as “Christianists.” They don’t like the analogy to Islamists, and think it imputes to politicized Christians an endorsement of terror or violence. The latter is not in any way my intent. In the war on terror, many have distinguished between Muslims and Islamists. The distinction made is between those who sincerely hold to an ancient faith, and those who are deploying that faith as a political weapon, who see no distinction between state and mosque, and who aggressively foist their religious doctrines onto civil law. And this is a critical distinction. It helps us to criticize regimes like the Taliban or Iran’s, while not tarring all Muslims with that label.

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus Christ

The following is from the New York Times

Christ Among the Partisans

By GARRY WILLS
Published: April 9, 2006

THERE is no such thing as a “Christian politics.” If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: “My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here” (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.

This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, “Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him” (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

Those who want the state to engage in public worship, or even to have prayer in schools, are defying his injunction: “When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square, in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father, and your Father who sees you in hiding will reward you” (Matthew 6:5-6). He shocked people by his repeated violation of the external holiness code of his time, emphasizing that his religion was an internal matter of the heart.

But doesn’t Jesus say to care for the poor? Repeatedly and insistently, but what he says goes far beyond politics and is of a different order. He declares that only one test will determine who will come into his reign: whether one has treated the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the imprisoned as one would Jesus himself. “Whenever you did these things to the lowliest of my brothers, you were doing it to me” (Matthew 25:40). No government can propose that as its program. Theocracy itself never went so far, nor could it.

The state cannot indulge in self-sacrifice. If it is to treat the poor well, it must do so on grounds of justice, appealing to arguments that will convince people who are not followers of Jesus or of any other religion. The norms of justice will fall short of the demands of love that Jesus imposes. A Christian may adopt just political measures from his or her own motive of love, but that is not the argument that will define justice for state purposes.

To claim that the state’s burden of justice, which falls short of the supreme test Jesus imposes, is actually what he wills — that would be to substitute some lesser and false religion for what Jesus brought from the Father. Of course, Christians who do not meet the lower standard of state justice to the poor will, a fortiori, fail to pass the higher test.

The Romans did not believe Jesus when he said he had no political ambitions. That is why the soldiers mocked him as a failed king, giving him a robe and scepter and bowing in fake obedience (John 19:1-3). Those who today say that they are creating or following a “Christian politics” continue the work of those soldiers, disregarding the words of Jesus that his reign is not of this order.

Some people want to display and honor the Ten Commandments as a political commitment enjoined by the religion of Jesus. That very act is a violation of the First and Second Commandments. By erecting a false religion — imposing a reign of Jesus in this order — they are worshiping a false god. They commit idolatry. They also take the Lord’s name in vain.

Some may think that removing Jesus from politics would mean removing morality from politics. They think we would all be better off if we took up the slogan “What would Jesus do?”

That is not a question his disciples ask in the Gospels. They never knew what Jesus was going to do next. He could round on Peter and call him “Satan.” He could refuse to receive his mother when she asked to see him. He might tell his followers that they are unworthy of him if they do not hate their mother and their father. He might kill pigs by the hundreds. He might whip people out of church precincts.

The Jesus of the Gospels is not a great ethical teacher like Socrates, our leading humanitarian. He is an apocalyptic figure who steps outside the boundaries of normal morality to signal that the Father’s judgment is breaking into history. His miracles were not acts of charity but eschatological signs — accepting the unclean, promising heavenly rewards, making last things first.

He is more a higher Nietzsche, beyond good and evil, than a higher Socrates. No politician is going to tell the lustful that they must pluck out their right eye. We cannot do what Jesus would do because we are not divine.

It was blasphemous to say, as the deputy under secretary of defense, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, repeatedly did, that God made George Bush president in 2000, when a majority of Americans did not vote for him. It would not remove the blasphemy for Democrats to imply that God wants Bush not to be president. Jesus should not be recruited as a campaign aide. To trivialize the mystery of Jesus is not to serve the Gospels.

The Gospels are scary, dark and demanding. It is not surprising that people want to tame them, dilute them, make them into generic encouragements to be loving and peaceful and fair. If that is all they are, then we may as well make Socrates our redeemer.

It is true that the tamed Gospels can be put to humanitarian purposes, and religious institutions have long done this, in defiance of what Jesus said in the Gospels.

Jesus was the victim of every institutional authority in his life and death. He said: “Do not be called Rabbi, since you have only one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, the one in heaven. And do not be called leaders, since you have only one leader, the Messiah” (Matthew 23:8-10).

If Democrats want to fight Republicans for the support of an institutional Jesus, they will have to give up the person who said those words. They will have to turn away from what Flannery O’Connor described as “the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus” and “a wild ragged figure” who flits “from tree to tree in the back” of the mind.

He was never that thing that all politicians wish to be esteemed — respectable. At various times in the Gospels, Jesus is called a devil, the devil’s agent, irreligious, unclean, a mocker of Jewish law, a drunkard, a glutton, a promoter of immorality.

The institutional Jesus of the Republicans has no similarity to the Gospel figure. Neither will any institutional Jesus of the Democrats.

Garry Wills is professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University and the author, most recently, of “What Jesus Meant.”

According to THE BRAD BLOG “Republican extremist/hate-monger, Ann Coulter may be on the verge of being tossed from the Voter Rolls in Palm Beach County, Florida.”

The Brad Blog also reported:

Coulter, who appears to have committed a third-degree felony by knowingly giving an incorrect address on her voter registration form in Palm Beach, Florida, and then knowingly voting at the incorrect polling place last March, could face up to $5,000 in fines and five years in prison if convicted.

In light of Coulter’s apparent voter fraud felony, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, Dr. Arthur Anderson, had sent her a letter last March (posted in full [on THE BRAD BLOG]), giving her 30 days to explain her actions, before possibly referring the matter to the state attorney for prosecution. So far, Coulter has failed to reply at all. Officials now say she may be removed from the voter rolls.

The incident was first reported to county officials by Precinct Advisor James Whited (incident report posted in full [on THE BRAD BLOG]) who had informed Coulter that her true home address, at 242 Seabreeze Ave., did not match the one on her voter registration. Coulter, had inexplicably used her Real Estate agent’s address on the voter registration form which includes a signature next to an oath which says, in part, “All information on this form is true” and acknowledges the third-degree felony penalties for lying.

For more on Ann Coulter,

• “The mind of Rush Limbaugh in the body of Lisa Kudrow” (James Meek, The Guardian),
• “unacceptable a hank of flesh draped on a hanger ever to be foisted upon an ignorant populace hungry for more ignorance.” (James Wolcott)

Ann is another shouting head who is out to label the enemies of the ‘righteous’.

Probably very little.

In searching the internet I have only found details on blogs. I couldn’t even find Ray McGovern in the recent NPR archives! Why is the media, like the AP, only covering the surface of this story? Why aren’t we presented with the entire exchange by multiple sources instead of just one source?

Maybe the “truthiness” of what Stephen Colbert said to reporters at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29, 2006, will provide some insight:

As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president’s side, and the vice president’s side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they’re super-depressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery accomplished.

Over the last five years you people were so good — over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!

In other words, the Administration has a well developed system to control the media and Fox News leads the way, especially when the Administration is on the defensive. Just look and listen to the response of the correspondents at the dinner. They were dumbfounded and, I think, embarrassed.

As I mentioned above, I found only one source with the complete exchange. If you are interested and want to be your own judge and jury instead of just believing what Fox News believes, here is the transcript from “Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann.” He not only played the entire exchange, but also interjected evidence to back up McGovern’s statements.

OLBERMANN:  Good evening.

There have been many explanations offered for why, in one of the times of the greatest political turbulence in American history, there has been comparative apathy in places that have been past venues for public protest.  One answer, that the administration has been outstanding in cherry-picking not just intelligence but also the makeup of the crowds that greet or interact with its key players.

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, that latter component, the governmental equivalent of the Cone of Silence from the old TV series “Get Smart,” this afternoon broke down again, for the second time in six days.

First, the president’s lambasting by Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and now, today’s vivisection of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, with only Rumsfeld’s own words as weapons, at a speech in Atlanta, one of several interchanges with critics, in this case a former CIA analyst, lasting four minutes.

Here it is in its entirety, with fact-checks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF ATLANTA MCGOVERN/RUMSFELD EXCHANGE)

MCGOVERN:  I’m Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

I would like to compliment you on your observation that lies are fundamentally destructive of the trust that government needs to govern.  A colleague of mine, Paul Pillar, who is the top agency analyst on the Middle East and on counterterrorism, accused you and your colleagues of an organized campaign of manipulation, quote.  I suppose by some definitions—

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Could you get to your question please?

MCGOVERN:  –that could be called a lie.
Atlanta, September 27, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld said, and I quote—

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (INAUDIBLE)–

MCGOVERN:  –”There is bulletproof evidence of links between al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein.”  Was that a lie, Mr.  Rumsfeld?  Or was that manufactured somewhere else?  Because all of my CIA colleagues disputed that, and so did the 9/11 commission.

And so I would like to ask you to be up front with the American people.  Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary, and that has caused these kinds of casualties?  Why?

RUMSFELD:  Well, first of all, I haven’t lied.  I did not lie then.

Colin Powell didn’t lie.  He spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence Agency people and prepared a presentation that I know he believed was accurate.  And he presented that to the United Nations.

The president spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence people, and he went to the American people and made a presentation.

I’m not in the intelligence business.  They gave the world their honest opinion.  It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

MCGOVERN:  You said you knew where they were.

RUMSFELD:  I did not.  I said I knew where suspect sites were, and we were—

MCGOVERN:  You said—

RUMSFELD:  –just a minute—

MCGOVERN:  –you said you knew where there were, near Tikrit, near Baghdad, and northeast, south, and west of there.  Those are your words.

RUMSFELD:  My words, my words were that–  No, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute.  Let him stay one second.  Just a second.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN:  Just a second indeed.  Rumsfeld’s words about WMD, March 30, 2003, on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” were, quote, “We know where they are.  They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, west, south, and north somewhat.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF ATLANTA MCGOVERN/RUMSFELD EXCHANGE)

MCGOVERN:  This is America, huh?

RUMSFELD:  You’re getting plenty of play, sir.

MCGOVERN:  I’d just like an honest answer.

RUMSFELD:  I’m giving it to you.

MCGOVERN:  We’re talking about lies, and your allegation that there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN:  Did Rumsfeld make that allegation?  Indeed, he did.  September 27, 2002, to the Chamber of Commerce right there in Atlanta, quoting, “We ended up with five or six sentences that were bulletproof.  We could say them.  They’re factual.  They’re exactly accurate.  They demonstrate that there are, in fact, al Qaeda in Iraq.  But they’re not photographs, they’re not beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Still, Mr. Rumsfeld again had to face his own words quoted back to him.  How to do that?  Change the subject.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF ATLANTA MCGOVERN/RUMSFELD EXCHANGE)

MCGOVERN:  Was that a lie?  Or were you misled?

RUMSFELD:  Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period.  That is a fact.

MCGOVERN:  Zarqawi?  He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule.  That’s where he was.

RUMSFELD:  He was also in Baghdad.

MCGOVERN:  Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital.

Come on, these people aren’t idiots.  They know the story.

RUMSFELD:  You are–  Let me give you an example.  It’s easy for you to make a charge.  But why do you think that the men and women in uniform every day, when they came out of Kuwait and went into Iraq, put on chemical weapon protective suits?  Because they liked the style?  They honestly believed that there were chemical weapons.

Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons on his own people previously.  He’d used them on his neighbor, the Iranians.  And they believed he had those weapons.  We believed he had those weapons.

MCGOVERN:  That’s what we call a non sequitur.  It doesn’t matter what the troops believed.  It matters what you believed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I think, Mr. Secretary, the debate is over.  We have other questions, in courtesy to your audience.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

After reviewing the above details and coming to your own conclusion about whether the United States Secretary of Defense is lying, here are some selected quotes from the widely distributed AP article by Shannon McCaffrey on the same exchange. You would probably come to a different conclusion or no conclusion if this was what you read. There are few details about the exchange and it concludes with a happy homey perspective.

In recent weeks, at least a half dozen retired generals have called for Rumsfeld’s resignation, saying he has ignored advice offered by military officers and made strategic errors in the Iraq war, including committing too few troops. However, he has received strong backing by Bush, who repeatedly has indicated that he will keep Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

When security guards tried removing McGovern, the analyst, during his persistent questions of Rumsfeld, the defense secretary told them to let him stay. The two continued to spar. [Note the lack of detail and the following:]

“You’re getting plenty of play,” Rumsfeld told McGovern, who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.

Responding to another protester who also accused Rumsfeld of lying, the secretary said such accusations are “so wrong, so unfair and so destructive.” At one point, Rumsfeld was praised by an audience member who said he had followed Rumsfeld’s career and wondered what in his upbringing had shaped his positive outlook on life.

“I guess one thing I’d say is that my mom was a schoolteacher and my dad read history voraciously. And I guess I adopted some of those patterns of reading history,” he replied.

So, just how much control of the media is there? Too much. Besides the media, those in power have even got the opposing party shut down, or at least isolated from the media.

One more thing, if you took the time to go through all the above, congratulations, your part of the growing solution.

Every time the issue of oil profits makes the news or is part of a nearby conversation, I wonder why we only get upset with big oil? Why don’t we rant and rave about others who make fast growing profits like the high tech companies that survived the bursting of the tech bubble? Well, I may have stumbled across a possible answer.

Thousands of companies do what they are supposed to do – make money. Most never make the news and are certainly not heard about around the water cooler or over lunch. Some, like the oil and high tech companies, have a string of years where profits grow rapidly. Most of these make the news, but only the oil company profits result in Congressional pandering to the electorate and bad pictures of oil executives.

New companies can go years without making money and never be noticed except by their investors. Some never make money and go away without being noticed except by a few former customers. Some (think Enron) aren’t making real money but cook the books to indicate they are and then the result is real heartbreaking news. But we only get angry at oil profits. Are they really excessive or is there something else more basic that causes raised voices and pontificating politicians? Maybe taking a broader look at the situation might provide another perspective.

The chart below shows a relative ranking of 38 companies including seven oil companies. This ranking is based on the growth in annual earnings per share (EPS) of stock. The time frame for the growth is from fiscal year 2001 to 2005. The scale is logarithmic to graphically normalize the differences. A chart with a linear scale is also viewable.

Click on image to view full size version.

The top eight companies include five high tech, one coal (Peabody), one mining (Phelps Dodge) and one reinsurer (Berkshire Hathaway). The next eight companies include the top six oil companies with one engineering services company (Haliburton) and an agricultural products company (ADM).

The average five year EPS growth for the top eight is 2,567 percent. The average five year growth for just the top 4 oil companies is 258 percent, or about one tenth that of the top eight.

Now let’s take a closer look at number 1, Google. Not only does Google have the greatest five year growth in EPS of 7,486 percent, it also has the highest gross profit per employee for 2005 of $627,020. Compare that to the 2005 average gross profit per employee for ConocoPhillips, Chevron and ExxonMobile – $296,268. That’s less than half. So, if we are that angry with the oil companies, why aren’t we in an outright revolt over the even higher profit growth of the top 8?

Maybe it’s because someone else is paying, willingly, for those profits. Again, if you look at Google, the cost for our use is zero. Advertisers are the ones paying for Google’s profits while we are the ones paying for the relatively smaller, but still high, oil profits.

If we could only get the oil companies to think like Google and figure out how to get others to pay for their profits and take at least some of the burden off us. However, where’s the insentive for the oil companies to change? What would make them spend some of their profits on developing a high tech idea that isn’t oil related? Only one thing.

Oil has to become unprofitable and something else has to replace it. In the mean time, we either pay the piper or change how we live.