May 12, 2004

QUOTABLES:

from Air America...

·        “The United States ‘is on the slippery slope to theocratic fascism.’"

·        "The Catholic Church has been secretly encouraging oral sex for years."

·        “Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ‘ought to be tortured.’"

·        “President Bush should be taken out and shot.”

"The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are," Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said . "That means terrorists have access to all of that."

"The prison images from Baghdad are clearly disgusting, but it's harder to find words to describe those whose first instinct upon seeing them is to raise campaign cash with them," said RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie.

“George W. Bush is not having a good month. He was counting on dominating this election by using his $200 million in special interest money to burn a false picture of John Kerry into the minds of voters in 17 key swing states. While he hammered away with months of hateful and dishonest anti-Kerry TV advertising, we were supposed to be silenced, out of money, waiting for general election federal matching funds in July. You proved him wrong.” -- writes Kerry Campaign Manager Mary Beth Cahill.

"We elect people from the mountaintop and from the valley," said Steve Hess, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank. "We elect George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. When we elect somebody from the mountaintop like Washington, we think it is a certain advantage that he won't put his hand in the till. We are not a society that thinks there is something wrong with wealth. We would like it too."

"You've got to spend capital to earn capital," said President Bush. "And if you don't spend it, it fritters away, it dissipates."

"This is a guy [John Kerry] who opposed every major weapons system we used to win the war on terror. This is a guy who, after we were struck in '93 at the World Trade Center bombing, said: 'Let's cut the intel budget,'" said Karl Rove.

"I don't think the press learned as much by what happened in Vietnam as the government did," White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said. "The people who are governing learned from what wasn't done well in Vietnam — starting with political leadership making tactical decisions of war."

JUST POLITICS

No Child Left Behind

President Bush is focusing on education and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The Bush campaign has a web advertisement featuring Laura Bush.

The Bush campaign offers the following as reasons why the No Child Left Behind needs to continue. The basic focus is that unless education takes every child individually, education is not fulfilling its responsibility. The No Child Left Behind:

·        Represents the most significant overhaul of federal education policy since 1965.

·        Requires high standards of student performance so that every child in America will reach proficiency in the core academic areas of reading, math and science by 2014.

·        Resolves that every student will have a highly qualified teacher to help them reach these goals.

·        Provides teachers and parents with the tools and resources to enable our children to reach these goals.

·        Holds schools accountable to parents.

·        Tests students’ reading and math skills every year to help diagnose problems and ensure that students who need more help, get it.

·        Gives parents with children in under-performing or persistently dangerous schools the option of transferring their child to another public school or choosing from over 1,600 state-approved tutoring providers.

·        Increased federal funding for elementary and secondary education by 48% since 2001 – including a 52% increase in Title I funding for low income students and a 75% increase in special education funding.

·        First Lady Laura Bush’s Ready to Read/Ready to Learn Initiative:

·        Prepares our children for school before they enter their first classroom.

·        Recruits new teachers.

·        Focuses on middle school reading skills to get kids the help they need before they get to high school.

·        The President’s education reforms are working:

·        The percentage of 4th grade students at or above the basic level in math achievement increased from 50% in 1990 to 77% in 2003; the percentage at or above the proficient mark increased from 13% in 1990 to 32% in 2003.

·        The percentage of 8th grade students at or above the basic level in math achievement increased from 52% in 1990 to 68% in 2003; the percentage at or above the proficient mark increased from 15% in 1990 to 29% in 2003 – nearly doubling the percentage of students scoring in the two highest achievement levels. (Source: Education Trust, "Closing the Achievement Gap: 2003 NAEP Reading and Math Results Show Real Results and Remaining Challenges," November 17, 2003, NCES, "Nation’s Report Card", November 2003)

·        Schools are improving under No Child Left Behind:

·        "Students in the largest urban public school systems showed improvement in reading and math in the first year under the federal No Child Left Behind Law," according to a coalition of inner-city schools.

·        The study by the Council of the Great City Schools reviewed 2002 and 2003 test scores from 61 urban school districts in 37 states:

·        The report … found that 47% of the 4th graders in the study scored at or above proficiency in reading – a gain of almost five percentage points from 2002. For math, 51% of the students tested at or above proficiency, nearly seven percentage points higher than the year before. For 8th graders, 37% scored at or above proficiency in reading, about one percentage point higher … In math, there was a gain of 3 percentage points, to 39 percent proficiency. (Source: "Students improve in math, reading," AP, 3/22/2004)

·        In an April Chicago Sun-Times analysis, Chicago public school children who transferred from schools in need of improvement to higher performing schools under No Child Left Behind showed substantial improvements in reading and math scores. These transfer students averaged an 8 percent greater learning gain in reading and math than the national average -- compared to their original school where the previous year their gains were 24 percent less in reading and 17 percent less in math than the national average. That is a huge turnaround. (Source: Rosalind Rossi, "Early results on 'No Child': progress," Chicago Sun Times, 4/25/2004)

·        Unprecedented accountability:

·        When President Bush entered office in January, 2001, only 11 states were in full compliance with previous federal education accountability standards. On June 10, 2003, President Bush announced that all 50 states had approved NCLB accountability plans.

Teresa’s income

Teresa Heinz Kerry paid $587,000 in federal income tax on $5.1 million income, which represents 11.5% of her total income. That rate is significantly lower than her husband's or President Bush's.

The LA Times covers the story in depth of how after declaring Teresa’s income taxes off limits the Kerry campaign is now releasing the figures -- that is except for some of the information pertinent to their possible conflict of interest:

With an estimated personal fortune of $500 million, Heinz Kerry also controls various family trusts that are apparently paying taxable income to her three children, experts said. Heinz Kerry's personal financial managers have answered few questions about the trusts.

Money, money, money

The Federal Election Commission lawyers on Tuesday urged the agency to delay for at least three months imposing any financial restrictions on independent groups that have been raising and spending millions of dollars in this year's presidential race.

The 2002 campaign finance law banned unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions to political parties. The 527s contend the law does not apply to them, in part because they are not affiliated with a political party.

527s have helped to keep Sen. John Kerry competitive with Bush ’04. The combination of these 527s and Kerry have raised more money than Bush ’04.

If the Commission bans the use of unlimited expenditures by 527s it would not take effect immediately and would leave the Bush ’04 campaign at a disadvantage.

Expanding battleground

The NY Times covers a story about the Kerry campaign’s plan to expand the battleground states:

It's an objective fact we have expanded the battleground," said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Kerry. "And we intend to further expand it."

Bush ‘04 response in the article is:

"You want to start out with a broader field and pare it down," said Matthew Dowd, one of Mr. Bush's chief strategists. "And we obviously have the resources to start broader."

 

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