Thursday, February 15, 2007

THIS ADMINISTRATION REALLY CARES FOR OUR TROOPS.............Yeah, right.

If this is how this administration cares for the sacrifice the service members have made, then I would not want to see what they would do to them if they did not care so much.
     
 
TRICARE Fees Could Triple in 08
 

The defense budget the Administration submitted to Congress on February 5 significantly upped the ante in the Pentagon's campaign to raise TRICARE fees. It assumes even bigger fee hikes for FY2008 than last year's budget submission assumed for FY2007.

Last year's budget proposed tripling TRICARE Prime and TRICARE Standard fees for retired officers and their family members and survivors over a two-year period, and more than doubling them for most enlisted retirees. It also would have increased retail pharmacy fees for all TRICARE beneficiaries of all ages by almost 70%. View a summary of last year's proposal.

The Administration projected that those fee hikes would save the Pentagon $735 million in FY2007 and $1.86 billion in FY2008, and cut last year's defense health budget by $735 million on the assumption that Congress would accept them.

MOAA and The Military Coalition argued that these dramatic fee hikes would be disproportional and inappropriate, and that the Defense Department had not aggressively pursued other available options to hold down health costs. View the MOAA brochure.

After receiving tens of thousands of tear-out letters, post cards from MOAA members (view photos), Congress agreed with us, barring the Pentagon from increasing fees in FY2007, pending review of alternative options.

This year, the Pentagon hasn't published any specific fee increase plan, indicating they are awaiting the results of a DoD-appointed Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care, which is supposed to provide interim recommendations on cost-sharing and pharmacy copays in May.

But that's disingenuous, because the budget submitted to Congress this week assumes $1.8 billion in savings from TRICARE fee increases. That's almost three times the savings assumed in the FY2007 budget -- and happens to be precisely the amount of savings associated with the second year of last year's fee hike plan. So the budget puts enormous pressure on the Task Force (all of whose members were appointed by the Secretary of Defense and half of whom work for the Secretary) to propose at least the same fee hikes the Pentagon pushed last year - and assumes that Congress will implement them all immediately, without any two-year phase-in.

In essence, the Administration has underfunded the defense health budget by presuming the task force's outcome, and has challenged Congress to either change the law to implement fee increases high enough to save $1.8 billion or to find another $1.8 billion from another source to make up for the underfunding.

MOAA thinks it's wrong to play this kind of budget "chicken" with the defense health program - especially in time of war.

We believe strongly that Congress should establish clear guidelines in law about the unique role of military retirement benefits, including health care, as the primary offset for the extraordinary demands and sacrifices inherent in a military career. We must recognize that military members and families who serve two or three decades under those conditions are making a substantial, in-kind pre-payment for those benefits. The cash deductibles, enrollment fees and copays that they pay in retirement are only a small portion of their very large personal contributions toward their benefits.

To help make this case, we ask every MOAA member to do three things:

  1. Please sign, stamp and mail the four tear-out letters in your February issue of Military Officer magazine (two at page 32 addressed to the House and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairmen and two at page 52 addressed to the Committees' senior Republican). Similar tear-out letters last year helped turn the tide in Congress when Committee leaders stacked them on a witness table at a TRICARE hearing. We need even more participation this year, now that Congress is facing a far greater budget challenge.
  2. Use MOAA's Web site to urge your U.S. representative to cosponsor Rep. Chet Edwards' (D-TX) and Rep. Walter Jones' (R-NC) Military Retirees Health Care Protection Act (H.R. 579). View the language of this bill.
  3. Pass this message to all of your TRICARE-eligible friends and urge them to send the message in paragraph b above.
     
 
Posted by BDT at 09:49:05 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Is this how huge corporations "support the Troops"?

If they think laying off workers in order to increase their profit margins is how, then they know nothing about the sacrifice of the AMERICAN SERVICE MEMBER. I wish some of these CEO'S and others in these huge corporations had just one inkling of the same level of intestinal fortitude the AMERICAN SERVICE MEMBER does. The AMERICAN SERVICE MEMBERS do what they do because of and for the CONSTITUTION and not for the profit margin.

 

 

 Chrysler to cut 13,000 jobs, faces possible sale
Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:52 PM ET

By Kevin Krolicki and Michael Shields

DETROIT/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - DaimlerChrysler said on Wednesday it would cut 13,000 jobs at its Chrysler operation in North America and indicated it could sell or spin off the money-losing unit, which would unwind a troubled 9-year-old merger between Chrysler and Mercedes.

The world's No. 5 automaker said it would shut two Chrysler plants as part of a strategy to make the business profitable by 2008 as it focuses more on building fuel-efficient cars, a sector of the market dominated by its Japanese rivals.

The automaker will also cut North American production capacity by 400,000 units through 2009.

The announcement -- the biggest shake-up of the group since Germany's Daimler-Benz AG and Chrysler Corp joined forces in 1998 -- sent DaimlerChrysler's share price surging to its highest point in more than four years.

"It's hard to say if it's enough ... but the stock is reacting nicely, which is further verification that this is a favorable restructuring move and a much-needed one at Chrysler," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management.

The plan will trigger a 2007 restructuring charge of up to 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) but aims to return Chrysler to profit in 2008 and generate a 2.5-percent return on sales by 2009.

Chrysler has been hit by inventory problems and a growing consumer reluctance to buy trucks and sports utility vehicles, while Mercedes-Benz has been wary of getting too close to its U.S. cousin for fear of diluting its luxury brand.

Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche, who took over the company's top job in 2006, said Chrysler would also explore strategic options with new industrial partners -- a reversal of his position of just three months earlier.

"We do not exclude any option in order to find the best solution for both the Chrysler Group and DaimlerChrysler," he told a news conference. "This means all options are on the table."

Zetsche would not elaborate or say if talks with potential partners had begun or whether the automaker had retained an investment adviser.

The Detroit News quoted unnamed company sources as saying DaimlerChrysler had hired J.P. Morgan & Co. to consider options for Chrysler. A spokesman for the bank could not be immediately reached for comment.

News of Chrysler's strategic review sent the group's stock up more than 8 percent on the New York Stock Exchange to its highest level since June 2002.

It also plunges Chrysler into the maelstrom that has swept up Detroit rivals General Motors Corp and Ford Motor Co. as they cut thousands of jobs and close plants to reflect falling U.S. market share amid an onslaught by Asian rivals.

'PROTRACTED AND MESSY NEGOTIATION'?

The announcement was a departure from the group's clear statement as recently as October that Chrysler was not for sale.

In a note to clients, analyst Stephen Cheetham at Sanford Bernstein cast doubt on prospects for a quick Chrysler sale, citing the complication of looming talks with the automaker's major union.

"Any deal is likely to be the subject of protracted and messy negotiation, especially since the UAW will be keen to ensure that its members' wages and benefits are unaffected. We would therefore not chase the stock here," he wrote.

DaimlerChrysler unveiled its latest restructuring plan for Chrysler almost six years to the day after its first attempt at shoring up profits from across the Atlantic. Zetsche ran Chrysler until taking the top spot in Stuttgart last year.

Although growing ranks of shareholders would like to see Chrysler go, selling it could be easier said than done, analysts cautioned.

Michael Raab, analyst at bank Sal. Oppenheim, estimated it would cost 26 billion euros to separate the two businesses.

Sanford Bernstein's Cheetham said Chrysler's brands, designs and distribution network might attract an emerging auto company, possibly Chinese or Indian, seeking to enter the U.S. market.

"But its plants are unionized, high-cost facilities," he said. "It is probably unattractive to any of the major Japanese carmakers who already have a U.S. presence," he said, adding that 20 billion euros in unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities were also a turnoff.

Linking Chrysler up with Renault or Volkswagen could offer the small-car expertise it lacks.

EARNINGS ECLIPSED

The reorganization plan eclipsed better-than-expected earnings at DaimlerChrysler. Fourth-quarter operating profit rose 79 percent to 1.877 billion euros, despite Chrysler, which swung to a loss of 124 million euros.

Zetsche's credibility is at stake after a surprise profit warning at Chrysler last year after a shift in consumer tastes exposed its reliance on trucks and SUVs as fuel prices rose.

It continued to pump out such vehicles even without dealer orders, inflating inventories that required margin-sapping incentives to deplete.

(Additional reporting by Jui Chakravorty in New York and Eva Kuehnen in Frankfurt)

($1=.7660 Euro)

 

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Posted by BDT at 23:42:24 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Their plans to take over the world

 Please read the following statement of purpose that I took from the "Project for the New American Century" website and then read the names of the members and ask yourself, "Isn't this exactly what is happening?" This group of people made it known what they intended in 1997 and now it is coming to fruition.
 
 I wish I had educated myself more about this group prior to making some of the decisions I did about who I voted for in 2000. I cannot do anything about what I did, but I can damn sure do something about what I am going to do based on the knowledge I now have.  I intend to put as a much pressure on congress and our other elected officials to do the thing necessary to rectify this fiasco we are now in.
 
 I need all of the help I can get to do this.
 

 












 


 

June 3, 1997

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.

We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.

As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?

We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.

Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;

• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

Elliott Abrams    Gary Bauer    William J. Bennett    Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney    Eliot A. Cohen    Midge Decter    Paula Dobriansky    Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg    Francis Fukuyama    Frank Gaffney    Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan    Zalmay Khalilzad    I. Lewis Libby    Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle    Peter W. Rodman    Stephen P. Rosen    Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld    Vin Weber    George Weigel    Paul Wolfowitz

 

 
Posted by BDT at 13:41:31 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Money for war- children, elderly, and veterans be damned.

 

Budget's ups and downs leave big chunk for war

Story Highlights

• President unveils budget that will be presented to Congress on Monday
• Pentagon gets 11 percent increase, plus $235 billion in war costs
• Medicare, Medicaid cuts proposed
• Budget would produce a surplus in five years
 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is the big winner in President Bush's proposed budget for next year, while domestic items such as aid to schools and grants to local governments will get slight increases.

Medicare and Medicaid, the health program for the poor and disabled, would shoulder modest but politically difficult cost curbs in the budget the White House is submitting to Congress on Monday.

Some $18 billion in budget savings would come from farm programs over five years.

Bush's spending plan totals almost $3 trillion for the budget year starting October 1. It would produce a surplus in five years, helped by steady revenue growth and a squeeze on the one-sixth of the budget that covers domestic agencies such as the departments of Education, Energy and Health and Human Services.

Domestic agencies would not face an outright cut, as proposed last year, but would see increases averaging 1 percent, White House Budget director Rob Portman said. That is less than anticipated inflation, but higher costs for veterans' health care probably would result in a larger than average increase.

The Pentagon, which also consumes one-sixth of the overall budget, would get an 11 percent increase, to $481.4 billion in its core budget. And that is before accounting for an additional $235 billion in war costs over the next year and a half.

Bush's plan will get a skeptical reception from the Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats say it meets the president's promise to balance the budget by 2012 by omitting war costs and expensive changes to the alternative minimum tax and assuming politically untenable cuts in payments to doctors under Medicare.

"There's this continuing deception about our real fiscal condition," the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said in an interview Saturday. "Over and over again we see things left out of his budget that we know are going to have to be dealt with," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota.

Democrats also say Bush's estimated cost of about $6 billion for increasing U.S. combat troop strength in Iraq greatly understates the likely total.

For months, Conrad has worked in back channels to establish a group of administration officials and lawmakers who would try to rein in costly benefit programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the president's refusal to consider some tax increases has scuttled the idea, at least for now.

Bush pushed the balanced budget idea -- to applause -- before a meeting Saturday with House Democrats in Virginia. But he seemed to acknowledge that a large-scale budget agreement with Democrats is a long shot. (Full story)

"I'm under no illusions of how hard it's going to be," Bush said. "The only thing I want to share with you is, is my desire to see if we can't work together to get it done."

There is room for some modest steps such as an increase in the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students to $4,600, $550 more than the current cap. House Democrats last week passed an increase in the maximum grant to $4,310.

Health care spending likely to be debated

The federal contribution to the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program would rise slightly to address chronic shortfalls. States, however, would get less money to cover children in families at twice the poverty level or more. Democrats are pressing for far greater increases in the children's health program.

The White House's budget also would trim $12 billion from Medicaid, mostly through lower payments to states for administrative costs. About $5 billion or so would go toward addressing shortfalls in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, according to the White House budget office.

The proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are relatively modest, given the overall size of the programs. The Medicare reductions would come in part from smaller inflation adjustments for hospitals, nursing homes, home health care providers and hospices. More higher-income older people would face increased premiums.

Hospitals in particular are a powerful lobbying group and often are some of the leading employers in lawmakers' districts and states. Smaller Medicare cuts of $36 billion proposed last year went nowhere in a GOP-led Congress, and Democrats quickly pounced on the new proposal.

"I think that sounds like the president is declaring war on us and the poor people in this country," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-California.

Stark and other Democrats probably will go after what they see as excessive payments to private managed care plans that provide care to about 8 million Medicare beneficiaries.

Democrats also must deal with a scheduled 8 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors, a byproduct from a 1997 budget bill. Bush's budget would leave the cut in place, though Congress is virtually certain to provide relief as it has since 2003 with other scheduled payment cuts. Such a move would eat up Bush's proposed Medicare savings and then some.

All told, Bush is seeking $96 billion over five years from mandatory programs providing fixed benefits such as Medicare, farm subsidies and Medicaid and whose spending rises each year.

"Unless we act, we will saddle our children and grandchildren with tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "They will face three bad options: huge tax increases, huge budget deficits or huge and immediate cuts in benefits." (Full story)

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

 

Posted by BDT at 13:39:44 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Saturday, February 03, 2007

DEBT FORGIVENESS

 Read the following stories, if you will, and ask yourself why couldn't this administration forgive the personal debt of all of the service members fighting in Iraq. It was a question I asked in 2004 and I still do not have a good answer. I think the AMERICAN SERVICE MEMBERS have and continue to provide tremedous support to the Iraqi people and to this administration. I think if we can spend nearly 700 billion (at least) to fight a war then the people fighting in it should not have to worry about their bills. Just a thought

 

 

Baker visiting 5 allies seeking Iraq debt relief
by the Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Dec. 11, 2003
Washington: On the heels of a Pentagon directive barring France, Germany and Russia from bidding on prime Iraq reconstruction contracts worth more than $18 billion, former U.S. Secretary of State, James A. Baker, will visit all three countries next week to persuade them to forgive Iraq's debts. Said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "The whole restructuring debt issue is an important priority for the Iraqi people. We all share the same goal of helping the Iraqi people build a better and brighter future, and they should not be saddled with the debt of a brutal regime that was more interested in using funds to build palaces and build torture chambers and brutalize the Iraqi people." Baker leaves Monday for the trip, which McClellan characterized as "an initial fact-finding mission." France, Germany and Russia opposed the U.S. war in Iraq and are among Iraq's largest creditors.
www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9101

Bush asks excluded nations to forgive Iraq's debt
by David E. Sanger and Douglas Jehl, New York Times, Dec. 11, 2003
President Bush found himself in the awkward position Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries, and others such as Canada and China, from $18 billion in U.S.-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects. Countries excluded were seething. Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, when asked about the Pentagon decision, responded by ruling out any debt write-off for Iraq.
http://www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9094

James Baker: Negotiating through a minefield of debt
NewsMax.com, Dec. 6, 2003
Can Iraq's debt be classified as odious? Yes, say many experts. Officials from Iraq and some creditor countries are developing an arbitration tribunal to assess which of the financial claims on Saddam Hussein's regime should legally and justly pass on to the Iraqi people.
www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9107

Iraq debt write-off plea waits for PM
by K.P. Nayar, The Telegraph (Calcutta, India), Dec. 7, 2003
Saying "No" to America on the request for troops in Iraq was easy. For South and North Blocks, the next phase of US pressure on India in sorting out the post-war mess is going to be much more difficult. James Baker III, the Bush family's trusted trouble-shooter and secretary of state to the first President Bush, will arrive in Delhi some time soon to ask Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to write off all the money Saddam Hussein owed Indian companies for the work they did in Baathist Iraq. But if Vajpayee agrees, Indian taxpayers will be the losers, not Indian firms which put up projects in India. This is because a considerable portion of Saddam's dues to these firms has already been taken over by the government.
www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9089

Rebuilding policy is conflicted
Saudi Gazette editorial, Dec. 12, 2003
"Iraqis cannot effectively rebuild their country and rejoin the global community unless they can get out from underneath their government's staggering debt. It, and the war reparations, need to be forgiven."
www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9115

 


Odious Debts Online News Service:

All stories written by Odious Debts Online staff may be reproduced freely, although we ask that you credit Odious Debts Online and provide a link to www.odiousdebts.org.

Publisher: Patricia Adams
Editor: Lisa Peryman

Posted by BDT at 13:28:29 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |