Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie

Bad Night for Oregon

Oregon's Measure 30 is going down to defeat according to KGW.

It's been a long campaign.

The worst is yet to come.

Listen to Liz

Liz did another talk show and you can listen to it online. Look for the Feb. 2nd show.

A Big Kerry Night

Liz and I voted here in Missouri today - both for Howard Dean. They use punch-card ballots here. So we think we voted for Dean. It's possible we voted for Al Sharpton by accident. It was a little confusing.

The best news tonight: Joe Lieberman is out of the race. My sincere hope is we never hear from him again.

John Edwards is now an official Gamecock. It was a good win for the North Carolina senator.

Congrats to John Kerry.

Note to our friend Dr. Dean: I hope you do great next week, but if you don't get behind the winner.

George W. Bush: AWOL

Was George W. Bush AWOL when he should have been in the National Guard?

Yes.

But that isn't nealy as important as being AWOL when the elderly and poor need a President who stands up for them. His new budget will hurt a lot of people.

The proposed cuts, in dollar terms, will have little impact on the budget deficit, which the White House put at $521 billion this year. But the names of several programs on the chopping block -- housing assistance for the elderly, vocational education, lead-hazard reduction, local law enforcement grants -- allow the president to argue that he has put forth a tough-minded spending plan for 2005.

The budget calls for $1.24 trillion in additional tax cuts over the next decade, much of it aimed at the wealthy, critics say. Fiscal discipline, they say, is expected on only one side of the ledger.

Meanwhile, the programs Bush seeks to eliminate will follow him on the campaign trail. Under his budget, the $247 million Even Start family literacy program would be eliminated. The Eisenhower regional math and science consortiums and the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Math and Science Education would be killed. HOPE VI, a $149 million program to revitalize blighted housing projects, would go.

Also gone: dropout-prevention efforts, elementary and secondary school counseling assistance, aid to migrant and seasonal farmworkers, the Smaller Learning Communities initiative, and a bevy of local law enforcement assistance programs.

Even as the economy fails to generate significant job growth, Bush would slice federal vocational and adult education funding by 35 percent, from $2.1 billion to $1.4 billion. Assistance for workers dislocated by the North American Free Trade Agreement would be eliminated. Rural development assistance would be cut, as would housing aid for Native Americans and the elderly. The foreign aid budget would dramatically boost funding to combat the spread of AIDS, but it would also slice $404 million from child-survival and child-disease programs.

These are the real issues we should be concerned about.

Yachts: cheap ride?

This week, more than 50,000 boat enthusiasts are expected to attend the St. Louis Boat and Sports Show at the America's Center. Those looking to buy a bass boat or ski boat might be surprised to learn this dirty little secret: They'll pay state taxes at a lot higher rate than someone wanting to buy a yacht.

When the super-rich want to buy a $1 million yacht, they pay $14,500, or 1.45 percent in taxes, in the form of a watercraft fee. When anyone buys a ski boat for $20,000, they'll pay $1,465 in taxes, or 7.325 percent. The boat buyer pays taxes at a rate five times higher than the yacht buyer.

This yacht loophole is well protected by Republicans in the Legislature at a great cost to our state. Had the millionaire paid sales taxes on his million-dollar purchase, our state would have gained an additional $73,250 - enough to pay the starting salary of more than 2.5 teachers in a school district like St. Charles. Yacht buyers have been given an unfair tax break by the Legislature that robs our state of funds that could go to education.

Liz Smith Currie
Webster Groves

Printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Ricin in DC?

This afternoon a mail clerk in a Senate Office noticed white powder and called for help. Early tests confirm that the substance was Ricin - a biological weapon. There's not a lot more to know at this early date, but this could be the start of something very bad.

E-Mail Back Online

E-mail away.

And what's going on in DC?

E-Mail Down

My e-mail has been down since Friday. So if you've written and I haven't gotten back with you now you know why.

PS I am not the President of CBS.

Those Cute Kids

We went back to the doctor this morning for another scan of the twins. Both are doing great. They're both the same size and at about 15 weeks. This means we are now in the second trimester. Only six more months to go!

"The Wardrobe Malfunction"

"I am sorry that anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance of the Super Bowl," Timberlake said in a statement. "It was not intentional and is regrettable."

This guy should run for office. Wardrobe malfunction?

Politics More Important Than Safety

The President is finally agreeing to a bi-partisan commission to look into why there are no WMD in Iraq. Great. When will the report be finished? After the election, of course.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — President Bush will establish a bipartisan commission in the next few days to examine a broad overhaul of American intelligence operations, using the case of what went wrong in their assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as part of a look at the difficulties in penetrating secretive regimes and stateless groups that target the United States, senior administration officials said today.

Mr. Bush will issue an executive order establishing the group in coming days, but it will not report back until after the November elections and may take a year and a half or more to reach its conclusions, officials said.

This commission will needs lots of time to do their work. On the other hand, the Bush folks want the 9/11 Commission to wrap up their work now - so that they won't be releasing their report anywhere near the November elections.

The commission is scheduled to finish its work on May 27. But panel members this week asked Congress for a two-month extension, citing a need for full analysis of reams of documents about the disaster.

The Bush administration and Republican House leaders oppose any extension, saying the longer the process takes the more politicized it becomes.

George Bush: More concerned with politics than the safety of Americans.