Civil Works and Loans Targeted in Bush Plan President Bush's budget includes proposals to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for rural development, loan guarantees for small businesses, research on advanced technology, public housing and construction of the international space station. The cuts would affect programs at the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Energy and Transportation, as well as the Small Business Administration. In addition, Mr. Bush's budget shows that he wants to slow the growth of Medicare, slicing about 5 percent from the amounts that would be spent under current law in the coming decade. He did not say how he would achieve those savings, other than to promise that he would "modernize and reform Medicare," the health insurance program for 39 million people who are elderly or disabled. While Mr. Bush did propose a substantial increase in spending for the Education Department, Democrats said it was a much smaller increase than Congress approved for the current year. By the administration's reckoning, the department's budget would rise 11.5 percent, to $44.5 billion in 2002, compared with an increase of 35.7 percent this year. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/01/politics/01CUTS.html?pagewanted=all

Panel Calls for Reparations in Tulsa Race Riot "They came in the house with torches, and my mother hid us four wee children under the bed," Mr. Monroe said. "They set the curtains on fire and, as one guy was leaving, he stepped on my fingers. My little sister slapped her hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming out." "That's what I remember most, my little sister's hand slapped over my mouth." And as Mr. Monroe, now 84, watched the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 deliver its final report at a news conference today � recommending that reparations be paid to survivors and their descendants � he was feeling stifled once again. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/01/national/01TULS.html?pagewanted=all

News Analysis: Bush Makes a Narrow Focus on a Few Signature Issues While Mr. Bush in his speech tonight talked about issues like rebuilding the military, encouraging charitable contributions and fighting rising energy prices and racial profiling, he stopped short of offering an array of new programs and mini- initiatives. He talked of a government that was "active but limited." Much the same could have been said of his speech. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/28/politics/28ASSE.html?pagewanted=all

What's His Pledge Really Worth

Bush Underlines Pledge About Social Security But, as Al Gore repeatedly pointed out during the campaign, Mr. Bush presented his plan as all gain and nopain, sidestepping the debate over whether restoring Social Security's health would require steps like cutting the guaranteed benefit, reducing cost of living increases for beneficiaries or raising the retirement age. Mr. Bush also remained quiet during the campaign, and again tonight, on how the government would pay for the creation of the private accounts. Analysts put the cost at $1 trillion over the next decade. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/28/politics/28POLI.html?pagewanted=all

But Yesterday, Before the Speech

The administration's budget anticipates paying down $2 trillion in public debt that matures no later than 2011 out of the part of the projected surplus coming from Social Security � about $2.5 trillion out of the total surplus of $5.6 trillion. The debt held by the public excludes $2.5 trillion the government owes to itself, largely in the form of promises to pay future Social Security benefits. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/27/politics/27BUDG.html?pagewanted=all

Wealthiest Pay Declining Share of Their Incomes in Taxes The richest Americans are paying a declining share of their incomes in taxes, even as their incomes grow more rapidly than everyone else's, according to data that the Internal Revenue Service gave a Republican member of Congress. The 1998 incomes, after taxes, of the top 1 percent of taxpayers increased at more than three times the rate of the bottom 90 percent, according to an analysis of this data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research organization in Washington that seeks to advance the interests of the poor. Over a longer period, from 1989 to 1998, the incomes of the richest 1 percent, adjusted for inflation, grew about eight times as fast. But the share of their income they paid in federal taxes in 1998 was at its lowest level since 1992, the year before Congress added two higher tax brackets that apply only to top earners. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/business/26RICH.html?pagewanted=all

Millions Eligible for Food Stamps Aren't Applying "There is no reason that any American in 2001 should go hungry," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who is chairman of the Agriculture Committee. "States should do everything possible to make certain that those who qualify for food stamps know it and are enrolled if they so choose. That was the intent of the law." Yet that has not happened in most states. Despite studies warning that bureaucratic hurdles discourage the poor from applying for food stamps, states have been wary of streamlining their application processes. A major reason, some critics say, is that states fear they will be penalized by the federal government for giving recipients too much in food stamps � or too little. In 1996, Arizona was fined $21 million because of the high number of errors its social workers made in calculating the size of benefits. Those complicated calculations are based on mandates drawn up by the Agriculture Department to deter fraud. But as a result, many states require the poor to fill out long applications and visit welfare offices every three months to make sure the benefits are correct. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/national/26FOOD.html?pagewanted=all

Interest Groups Are Gearing Up for High-Stakes Tax Cut Fight The organizing goes far beyond the old-fashioned "Gucci Gulch" lobbying for particular corporate tax breaks, and is drawing groups as far- flung as the Food Marketing Institute and the N.A.A.C.P. into the tax cut debate. The Congressional struggle could well turn into the kind of epic fight for public opinion that took place over President Bill Clinton's proposal for national health insurance. "This is the first test," said Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, one of the conservative groups joining the fray. "If Bush gets his $1.6 trillion, two things happen � his stature and power in town is greatly enhanced and it makes the rest of his agenda more likely to pass." Promising field operations against the tax cut all across the country, Ralph G. Neas, of the liberal People for the American Way, said that in swaying Congress, "the most important thing is having the voters outside of Washington � the people who vote � register the opposition to the tax cut." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/24/politics/24LOBB.html?pagewanted=all

Federal Panel Warns Bush of Social Security Problems Beneficiaries must wait two to four hours for assistance at many field offices and often cannot obtain accurate information by telephone, the panel said. Social Security's disability programs, which provide assistance to 10 million people at a cost of $90 billion a year, are in chaos, swamped with a backlog of claims and litigation, the panel said. Eligibility decisions are not made in a uniform or consistent manner, the panel said, and two-thirds of the people who challenge the denial of disability benefits prevail on appeal, overturning the initial decisions of the Social Security Administration. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/politics/19BENE.html?pagewanted=all

Malcolm X Conference Audio proceedings of the conference Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and Legacy of Struggle May 1990, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York City http://www.murchisoncenter.org/malcolm/

Under orders from Congress, the I.R.S. is giving particular attention to returns filed by the working poor�

Rate of All I.R.S. Audits Falls; Poor Face Intense Scrutiny The chance of an individual tax return's being audited last year was less than one in 200, down from one in 112 in 1999 and one in 60 in 1996, new data and revised figures for last year show. Even those figures significantly overstate the risk of an audit for most taxpayers. That is because, under orders from Congress, the I.R.S. is giving particular attention to returns filed by the working poor who apply for a special tax credit. Such returns accounted for 44 percent of all audits. Among taxpayers who did not apply for that credit, the audit rate last year was just one in 370. For taxpayers who make more than $100,000, and who pay 62 percent of all individual income taxes, the audit rate last year was slightly less than one in 100, down from one in 50 in 1998 and down from one in 9 in 1988. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/16/business/16AUDI.html?pagewanted=ally

Dozens of Rich Americans Join in Fight to Retain the Estate Tax Some 120 wealthy Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George Soros and the father of William H. Gates, are urging Congress not to repeal taxes on estates and gifts. President Bush has proposed phasing out those taxes by 2009. But a petition drive being organized here by Mr. Gates's father, William H. Gates Sr., argues that "repealing the estate tax would enrich the heirs of America's millionaires and billionaires while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet." The billions of dollars in government revenue lost "will inevitably be made up either by increasing taxes on those less able to pay or by cutting Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection and many other government programs so important to our nation's continued well-being," the petition says. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/14/politics/14ESTA.html?pagewanted=all

Medical Industry Lobbies to Rein In New Patients Privacy Rules Just weeks before far-reaching new rules to protect the privacy of people's medical records go into force, the health care industry is lobbying the Bush administration to delay, change or kill the regulations. Hospitals, insurance companies, health maintenance organizations and medical researchers said the rules, issued in the final weeks of the Clinton administration, would impose costly burdens. But members of Congress said the privacy protections, while they went further than many lawmakers expected when Congress asked to have them written, were immensely popular with consumers and would be hard to reverse at this point. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/politics/12PRIV.html?pagewanted=all

Some Fault Bush Tax Cuts for Lean Days in Texas While President Bush is lobbying Congress to pass his $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal in Washington, lawmakers in his home state are struggling with budget problems that some critics are tracing to tax cuts Mr. Bush passed here as governor. For the last week, state legislators have grown increasingly testy about budget projections showing that the state will have little, if any, money to spare. Lawmakers in both parties are talking of possible cutbacks after the projections showed that the state's once-healthy surplus might be nearly erased by budget overruns, particularly from health care costs like Medicaid. "There's no doubt in my mind that George W. Bush's tax cuts have put us in the situation we're in right now," said State Senator Mario Gallegos, a Houston Democrat who regularly criticized Mr. Bush in the presidential campaign. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/politics/12TEXA.html?pagewanted=all

Census Officials Ponder Adjustments Crucial to Redistricting Census officials have been tight- lipped about what the panel will recommend, though some experts have said they expect it to find that the net undercount in 2000 will be smaller than in 1990, when it was put at about 1.6 percent of the population. The experts suggested that fewer members of minorities, especially Hispanics and to a lesser extent blacks, were missed in 2000 than in 1990. But both of these trends may be overshadowed by a larger than expected number of people � mainly whites � who were counted twice. Census officials have been concerned for some time that last year's census may include a large overcount, perhaps even bigger than the more than four million people who were counted twice in 1990. Those who are counted twice tend to be children of divorced parents, college students living away from home whose parents list them on census forms and who also fill out census questionnaires on campus, and people with two homes who have received census forms in the mail at both of their dwellings. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/12/politics/12CENS.html?pagewanted=all

I'm Not Making This Up � Really!

Bush's Dubious Victory At Google It turns out that for the past three months, if you did a search on Google for a particularly insulting phrase -- think "dumb Oedipus" -- the top result was to the official George W. Bush campaign store. How on earth did this happen? http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/02-bush.html

Emotions Soar at Vigil on 2nd Anniversary of Diallo Killing This time the crowds did not swell as they did in 1999 in the months after Mr. Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant on his way home from work, was gunned down. Nor did the event have the elevated drama of the first anniversary, last Feb. 4, when Mr. Diallo's parents traveled from Albany during the criminal trial of the four officers. But a two-hour vigil yesterday did not pass without raw emotion and some contentious moments, including remarks by the city's comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, being drowned out by boos. "My life has not been the same," Amadou Diallo's father, Saikou Diallo, told the more than 400 people who congregated outside his son's building, at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in Soundview. Since Amadou's death, he continued, he has "spent every minute of my life searching for justice." http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/05/nyregion/05DIAL.html?pagewanted=all

White fortresses in cyberspace. The face of racism changes on the Internet as preppy professionals join the ranks of the �classic� tattooed skinheads. Will they prove even more dangerous? http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_01/uk/medias.htm

Bush and AIDS George W. Bush, in his first major decision as president, took an action that will increase the spread of AIDS. That was his decision to deny U.S. aid to family-planning organizations abroad that inform women about medical options including abortion. Mr. Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, explaining the decision, said, "The president does not support using taxpayer funds to provide abortions." But that was a non sequitur. Government funding of abortions abroad has been prohibited by law since 1973. The Bush rule says that clinics in developing countries will lose U.S. funds if they even discuss abortion with their patients. What it means on the ground is this: A woman who has AIDS comes to a clinic somewhere in Africa or Asia. Drugs to prevent transmission of the disease to newborn infants are not available there. She desperately wants to avoid bearing the child. But the doctor or nurse cannot advise her on a safe, legal abortion if the clinic wants to keep its American funds. Many family planning groups, knowing that women will not understand a refusal to discuss abortion, will decide to give up U.S. support. That will have drastic consequences, because U.S. dollars may provide most of the contraceptives. The result? Families will not get contraceptives. Without them, more people will be infected with H.I.V. � and in due course develop AIDS.http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/03/technology/03MSN.html

ZDNet: Story: Hey, Dubya! Mr. President. Did you hear the one about...? Have you noticed that we can't seem to elect a president who doesn't seem like a parody of himself? From President "Don't-Confuse-Me-With-The-Facts" Reagan to President "Truth-Is-A-Slippery-Slope" Clinton to President "How-Did-I-Get-Here-And-Now-What-Do-I-Do-Daddy?" Bush, each one is more outrageous than the next. Ask President Bush is a free, Magic-Eightball-like Palm program that takes some of our tongue-tied president's more bizarre statements and issues them as answers to your life questions. (Shareware/Palm) Click for more. http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2679882,00.html

Who Is a Seminole, and Who Gets to Decide? Polly Gentry's skin is black. But she says she is an Indian. A black Indian. For generations, a little-known chapter of America's racial history shows, she and other descendants of escaped slaves have been members of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Even on the tribal council, descendants of slaves have sat alongside descendants of native people. Until last summer. Then, in the middle of a bitter legal battle over $56 million in federal funds, Seminoles with native blood voted to strip the people who call themselves black Seminoles of tribal membership. Suddenly, Ms. Gentry said, "My skin makes a difference." The battle over the place of the black Seminoles is now at the center of two federal lawsuits that challenge basic notions about race in America. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/national/29SEMI.html?pagewanted=all