25 Years Later, Rumsfeld's Dream Is Alive Again In his first three months on the job, American warplanes bombed Iraq, a Navy submarine sank a Japanese fishing boat, killing nine people aboard, and 24 Americans were detained in China after their Navy spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/18/world/18MILI.html?pagewanted=all

The Details: Excessive Regulation Is Blamed for Energy Woes The 170-page policy paper devotes the bulk of its text, which reads in parts like a nonpolitical academic study, to examining how to reduce energy demand and cultivate clean sources of energy like wind and biomass, as agricultural, human and animal waste are known. The administration has emphasized that of its 105 specific recommendations, highlighted throughout the text with blue stars, 42 deal with conservation, efficiency and renewable energy sources, while only 35 address supplies of traditional energy sources. But the report's priorities are evident from the start. The first chart in the report, which illustrates how energy consumption is outpacing production, uses a mix of government statistics to make the future shortfall in production seem more acute than it might turn out to be. Among the many regulations it has vowed to review, streamline, expedite or eliminate are land-use restrictions in the Rocky Mountains, lease stipulations for off-shore and coastal zones where oil and gas are plentiful and environmental reviews required when utilities want to retool power plants or oil companies want to expand refineries. Thttp://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/18/politics/18ENER.html?pagewanted=all

News Analysis: A New Focus on Supply Under federal law, anyone wanting to drill oil wells, lay pipelines or build power plants has for decades been required to prepare an environmental impact statement clearing the project on environmental grounds. Now, as a central part of his new energy plan, President Bush is calling for attention to the flip side of that approach. Under an executive order that Mr. Bush is to issue on Friday, any federal agency considering steps that might adversely affect the nation's energy health would have to issue a new kind of impact statement, this one on energy grounds. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/18/politics/18ENVI.html?pagewanted=all

Education: Government Internet Subsidy Stretched to Its Limits "The point of the program is to make things more affordable," Hershman said. "There's been more demand than they thought there would be. There are still very poor schools that haven't been able to make the cut off." With help from e-rate discounts, 98 percent of U.S. public schools now have Internet connections, according to new statistics issued this month by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics. But only 77 percent of instructional classrooms have Internet connections, and the number drops to 60 percent for schools with the highest concentrations of poverty. Despite continued demand for education technology funding, lawmakers and advocates for the e-rate are not clamoring for more money, nor are the telephone companies that have been contributing to the fund offering to ante up more. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/technology/16EDUCATION.html?pagewanted=all

Lott Rebuked for Delaying Campaign Finance Bill Senator John McCain pushed through the Senate a rebuke of the Republican leader today for acting to "thwart the will of the majority" by failing to send to the House the overhaul of the campaign finance law that was handily approved by the Senate last month. The resolution, which was attached as an amendment to education legislation, did not mention Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader from Mississippi. Because the education bill is still being debated, the resolution has no immediate effect. But Mr. McCain made quite clear in debate that it was directed straight at Mr. Lott and was a repudiation of his quiet delay of campaign finance legislation. "What we are seeing here is a minority of one stopping the will of this body," Mr. McCain said. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/politics/16DONA.html?pagewanted=all

Bush Task Force on Energy Worked in Mysterious Ways

"It's an incredible insult to the consumers of this country that, to the best of my knowledge, none of the consumer organizations were invited to the meetings or otherwise participated."

Among those who said they felt shut out was the Consumer Federation of America, the nation's largest consumer-advocacy group. Howard Metzenbaum, a Democrat and former senator from Ohio who is now chairman of the group, said, "The energy crisis is first and foremost a price crisis affecting consumers." Juleanna Glover Weiss, Mr. Cheney's spokeswoman, said no invitations were issued and groups had to request meetings. "We didn't invite anybody to meet with us," she said. The leaders of about two dozen environmental groups had asked to see Mr. Cheney, whose office turned down their requests. Instead, midlevel staff members from the groups met with Mr. Lundquist and Ms. Knutson. Alys Campaigne, legislative director of the National Resources Defense Council, said that that meeting lasted about 40 minutes but that the size of the group inhibited substantive policy discussion. "We asked who the deputies were on different issues so we could have more in-depth conversations, and they wouldn't tell us," she said. "They said, `Just send us paper, we'll take a look at it.' The meeting felt like window dressing for us, but they got to check off the box that they consulted with stake-holders." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/16/politics/16LOBB.html?pagewanted=all

The Fine Print: Senate Tax Bill Isn't All That It Seems Under the tax bill the Senate Finance Committee will take up on Tuesday, the federal estate tax would be repealed in 2011. Yet most people with estates large enough to owe taxes before the repeal date would owe more in taxes after the repeal. That is one of several anomalies in a bill that was jury-rigged to include all the different tax cuts President Bush campaigned for, more tax relief for low- and moderate-income taxpayers than the president proposed and a total cost of no more than the $1.35 trillion over 11 years that Congress allotted in the budget plan adopted last week. Another oddity relates to how the bill would increase the amount of income exempt from the alternative minimum tax. The purpose is to make sure that millions more people do not have to pay this alternative tax and thus be worse off than they would have been without the bill's cut in income-tax rates. But the increased exemption would only be in effect from 2002 through 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/15/politics/15TAX.html?pagewanted=all

Far From Dead, Subsidies Fuel Big Farms Surveying the farm that he carved out in the Panhandle landscape of dry mesquite and sagebrush, Mr. Bezner says the key to his family's prosperity is federal farm subsidies. "We're successful primarily because of government help," said Mr. Bezner, 59, an entomologist who grew up on a farm outside Amarillo. Although Mr. Bezner hesitated to discuss the size of those subsidies (and refused to divulge how much he makes without federal help, or what his expenses are), government documents show that in the last four years of the 1990's, he received $1.38 million in direct federal payments. Most remarkably, Mr. Bezner and the other big farmers here in Hartley County and across the country received those record-breaking payments in an era when farm subsidies were slated for extinction. Far From Dead, Subsidies Fuel Big Farms

White House Is Denying Pulling In Welcome Mat "Up until this administration, we normally got 8 to 10 busloads of tourists into the White House four, five times a week," Mr. Patterson said. "Now we're lucky if we get one in once a week. Today we needed 80 tickets; we got 10. I got drivers who have been here 30, 35 years and all they talk about is how the White House is letting fewer people in. It's just not right; we are the people and that is our house." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/politics/13TOUR.html?pagewanted=all