Taxing Thoughts

CBO Expects Deficit to Shatter Record

By ALAN FRAM

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Congressional Budget Office now expects this year’s federal deficit to exceed $400 billion, shattering the previous record even as President Bush and lawmakers consider creating expensive new prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients.

Only a month ago, the budget office – which is Congress’ top nonpartisan fiscal analyst – said for the first time that it believed this year’s shortfall would exceed $300 billion.

But that projection excluded this year’s price tag of the tax reductions enacted three weeks ago, which totaled $330 billion through 2013. It also failed to reflect an ongoing softness in the economy, which is generating lower federal revenues than the government had anticipated.

From It’s Still the Economy, Stupid:

The economic revisionism has begun…

So, yes, the US unemployment rate was released this morning, and no real surprises there – up .1% to 6.1%, the highest level in 9 years. Economists actually expect the rate to continue to climb over the next few months, even if the economy turns around, as only phenomenal economic conditions could accommodate the millions of high school and college graduates expected to enter the job force this summer.

From It’s Still the Economy, Stupid:

Cassandra Revisted

Earlier today on Wampum, I hinted as to some developing controversy regarding tomorrow’s unemployment numbers. This has its roots the Cassandra Complex ™ I unfortunately developed back in January, when I first began to read the raw unemployment reports from the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics]. I noted back then that January’s employment picture looked particularly rosy not due to any major upswing in the economy, but because the Administration had altered the way it was collecting and reporting data, conveniently skewing results in the process. February and March’s results were also tampered with, but decidedly less so than January’s. Then, in April, I noticed that the BLS had planned in June to once again institute major changes to the employment reports. Whether these changes will effect the spinning of tomorrow’s unemployment report, I can’t say. But it’s also a question I noticed was asked by at least two media sources today:

The Guardian has retracted a quote that I posted yesterday at Who Cares About WMDs, It Was About Oil!!! Wolfowitz did not say that the war was about/for oil.

Here is the retraction.

Corrections and clarifications

Thursday June 5, 2003

Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil

George Wright
Wednesday June 4, 2003

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz – who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war – has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is “swimming” in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Well, the FCC decided to give away the public airwaves today, apparently the FCC thought there was too much diversity. If you really believe that there is too much diversity, then check out this graphic of how concentrated the media community really is.

Remember, as noted earlier at Media Deregulation, the FCC received 11 comments in favor of further consolidation and thousands of comments against further consolidation. So, how is the FCC acting in the public’s interest?

From The 10b-5 Daily:

Second Largest Accounting Firm Settlement Ever – The Associated Press reported on Friday that KPMG has agreed to a $125 million settlement in a securities class action in the E.D. of Pa. The case is based on KPMG’s role in the events leading to Rite-Aid Corp.’s 1999 restatement of earnings. According to one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, it is the second-largest settlement by an accounting firm in a securities class action (after the Cendant case, in which Ernst & Young agreed to pay $335 million). U.S. District Judge Dalzell’s ruling on the settlement is expected next week.

From The Register:

Court confirms DMCA ‘good faith’ web site shut down rights

…

InternetMovies.com had asked the District Court for the District of Hawaii to require that copyright holders investigate infringing Web sites before shutting them down. This rational request was rejected by the court, as its granted the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and any other DMCA zealot the right to put the clamp on Web sites at will.

“This decision rules that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not require a copyright holder to conduct an investigation to establish actual infringement prior to sending notice to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) requiring them to shut-down an allegedly infringing web site, or stopping service all together to an alleged violator,” InternetMovies.com said in a statement.

From CBS News:

Halliburton’s $400M Iraq Payday
(AP) The Army has given a Halliburton Co. subsidiary more than $425 million in troop support work related to the Iraqi war in the past 14 months, using an exclusive contract that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company won in 2001.

The previously undisclosed work, awarded without competitive bids, is in addition to the $71.3 million that Halliburton’s subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, has received from the Army Corps of Engineers in no-bid contracts to repair and operate oil wells in Iraq.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who disclosed the troop support work orders Thursday, said the structure of exclusive contract means that “the amount that Halliburton could receive in the future is virtually limitless.”

The Washington Post has an article stating that the FCC has recieved only 11 comments in favor of further media deregulation, as opposed to over 9,000 emails and a petition with 170,000 signitures opposing deregulation.

Also, Reuters has an article describing how the major media sources have neglected to give the potential FCC deregulation any coverage. Finally, there is an article by Paul Krugman (originally printed in the NY Times) detailing how many Americans found themselves watching the BBC instead of American media during the Iraq War because American media outlets were acting like they were state run.