I.R.S. to Ask Working Poor for Proof on Tax Credits The Internal Revenue Service is planning to ask more than four million of the working poor who now claim a special tax credit to provide the most exhaustive proof of eligibility ever demanded of any class of taxpayers. The I.R.S., trying to prevent errors and cheating, says it needs greater proof of eligibility months before people claim the credit on their tax returns because its efforts to find errors through audits after the fact have not worked. Treasury officials estimate that $6.5 billion to $10 billion is lost to improper payments each year. But some tax experts criticize the higher burden of proof as unfair and a wasteful allocation of scarce I.R.S. enforcement dollars. They say that corporations, business owners, investors and partnerships deprive the government of many times what the working poor ever could � through both illegal means and legal shelters � yet these taxpayers face no demands to prove the validity of their claims in advance with certified records and sworn affidavits. Others warn that the proposed I.R.S. rules will set a standard of proof so high that it will be difficult, and in some cases impossible, for honest taxpayers to meet it. As a result, some people entitled to the tax credit will no longer receive it. And those who do manage to file successful claims will almost certainly have to pay commercial tax preparers more for helping them with the extra paperwork. "There is this double standard," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research group in Washington financed mainly by large foundations. "The losses are larger in other areas of the tax code, but somehow a different standard gets applied to this." Instead of conventional welfare benefits, the earned-income tax credit provides an offset for the Social Security taxes low-income workers have already paid, along with a credit based on their earnings that is intended to give them an incentive to work. The credits vary according to income and family size, but no household with earned income above $34,692 is eligible. The average tax credit, paid by the government by check, was $1,976 for households with children in 2001. That is less than the average food stamp benefit for households with children that year, $2,904. But the I.R.S.'s proposed rules would make it much harder to qualify for the tax credit than for food stamps. Republicans and Democrats have both supported expanding the tax credit, but as the cost of the program has risen, many Republicans have been vehement in saying that the program is riddled with errors and fraud. President Bush has praised the tax credit. But his administration has also complained about fraud, and the president has asked Congress for $100 million and 650 new employees to identify potentially erroneous claims before any money is paid out. There is a similar effort with federally subsidized school lunches. Eric Bost, the under secretary of agriculture for food and nutrition, has increased efforts to weed out students who officials say are ineligible for free or subsidized school meals. A Treasury official who insisted on not being identified said it was unfair to judge the size of the overpayment problem on the basis of just one year's tax credit, because the overpayments can continue year after year until each minor child listed on a false claim turns 18. "It's a permanent thing," she said. "The I.R.S. tends to take things that are permanent very seriously, and put a lot of resources into them." She added that screening out false claimants in advance could be characterized as a benefit to the poor, because such taxpayers would no longer have to have their claims audited, or scrounge for a way to pay back the money with interest if their claims are denied. The new measures, which are expected to be published for public comment shortly, are scheduled to begin in July, when the first 45,000 taxpayers who fit into a "high-error category" will be asked to submit proof of their eligibility within six months. The program will accelerate to two million taxpayers in 2004. Eventually some four million "high error" claimants � a fifth of the 19 million who now claim the tax credit � will be required to submit advance proof of their eligibility. The high-error category encompasses all claimants except married taxpayers filing joint returns and single mothers; it includes fathers with sole custody of children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, foster parents and others. They will have to provide papers proving that the relationship with the children claimed is as claimed, and that the children lived with them for at least six months of the year. Only a few types of evidence will be acceptable to the I.R.S., and some are documents that will be difficult or impossible for people to get within the six-month deadline. To prove their relationships to children, for example, they are expected to produce marriage certificates, in some cases for other people's marriages; for marriages that took place abroad; and in a few cases for marriages of great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. Even American weddings may be hard to document adequately in less than six months. The State of California, for example, warns on its Web site that it may take "up to two to three years" to issue copies of marriage certificates, "due to budgetary constraints." The State of Ohio does not even issue copies of marriage certificates, only "marriage abstracts," which are not certified documents and take six months to obtain in any case. New York State will not issue certificates to people who were married in New York City. New York City will not issue the certificates to anyone but the husband and wife, "or someone with written authorization from them." The I.R.S. plan does not offer any guidelines for the children of couples in common-law marriages. To prove where a child lived, the I.R.S. will require claimants to produce school records, medical records, leases or similar documents that show both the filer's and the child's names and address, and state specifically the range of dates when they lived there together. Filers who have no such documents will be allowed to produce instead a sworn affidavit from a school official, employer, member of the clergy or other person in a quasi-official capacity, specifically stating under penalty of perjury that he or she has "personal knowledge" that the taxpayer and child lived together during the dates cited. An affidavit from a landlord, who may live far away, would be accepted, but not one from a building superintendent who lives on the premises. An I.R.S. briefing paper on the new rules states that in 1999 the Treasury lost $8.5 billion to $9.9 billion by paying earned-income tax credits to filers who should not have received them. A separate analysis, by two Treasury Department specialists, says subsequent measures may have reduced these erroneous payments by $2 billion. By comparison, corporations managed to sidestep as much as $54 billion in 1998, by hiding about $155 billion in profits in tax shelters, according to a study by a Harvard economist, Mihir A. Desai. The I.R.S.'s most recent attempt to measure tax cheating � based on 1988 data and published in 1992 � showed that the biggest tax dodgers by far were people running their own businesses. They cost the Treasury about $38 billion in lost 1992 taxes by failing to report all their income. The same I.R.S. study found that people who wrongly took tax credits of all types � including earned-income tax credits � cost the Treasury less than $6 billion in 1992. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/25/business/25TAX.html?pagewanted=all&position=

A Flashback to the 60's for an Antiwar Protester At the time, Brett A. Bursey says, he seemed to be having a 60's flashback. There he was at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport with his antiwar sign. There were the thousands of Republicans gathering to welcome a president. There were the police officers arresting him for trespassing. The first time this happened was in May 1969, before a visit by Richard M. Nixon. The charges against Mr. Bursey were dropped after the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that if protesters were on public property � as the antiwar demonstrators were � they could not be charged with trespassing. Last Oct. 24, 33 years later and about 100 yards away, the now graying Mr. Bursey was again arrested for trespassing, this time before a visit by President Bush. The charge was soon dropped. But last month, the local United States attorney, J. Strom Thurmond Jr., brought federal charges against Mr. Bursey under a seldom-used statute that allows the Secret Service to restrict access to areas the president is visiting. He faces six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. This being South Carolina, Mr. Bursey's story includes lots of colorful history, old grudges and improbable plot twists, not to mention the Confederate battle flag. But to some legal experts it is also part of a growing pattern of repression against protesters, demonstrators and dissenters. The American Civil Liberties Union says it has found many examples, like increased arrests and interrogations of protesters and the shunning of celebrities who have opposed the war in Iraq. "When you connect the dots, you see very clearly a climate of chilled dissent and debate," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the civil liberties group. In particular, Mr. Romero said, there is a growing practice of corralling protesters in "free-speech zones," which are often so far from the object of the protest as to be invisible. "It's an effort to mitigate the effectiveness of free speech," he said. And he does not buy the argument that such zones are necessary to protect the president and other officials. "John Hinckley wasn't carrying an anti-Reagan sign when he shot him," Mr. Romero said. It was just such a "protest zone" that got Mr. Bursey in trouble last fall. A spokeswoman for the airport said officials there had established a protest area on the verge of a highway, a good half mile from the hangar where the president would be speaking. (Airport police are not sure if anyone actually protested at the official zone, she said.) Mr. Bursey hoped he and some friends could protest somewhere closer, maybe across the road from the hangar, he said. The police in Charleston and Greenville had been accommodating, he said, when he had asked to avoid the protest zones, which he described as being "out there behind the coliseum by the Dumpsters." It did not work this time. "We attempted to dialogue for a while, them telling me to go to the free-speech zone, me saying I was in it: the United States of America," Mr. Bursey said. Finally, he said, an airport policeman told him he had to put down his sign ("No War for Oil") or leave. " `You mean, it's the content of my sign?' I asked him," Mr. Bursey said. "He said, `Yes, sir, it's the content of your sign.' " Mr. Bursey kept the sign and was arrested; he said he watched Air Force One land from the back of a patrol wagon and spent the night in the county jail. A Secret Service agent was present at the arrest, Mr. Bursey said, but he added that no one could have seen him and his companions as a security threat. "There was no one under 50 in that crowd," said Mr. Bursey, who is 54. "In my mind, at that time, we didn't pose a security threat; we posed a political threat." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/international/worldspecial2/27PROT.html

Democrats Use Job Chart to Try to Skewer Bush The chart, based on standard government statistics, measures the number of jobs created under every president since Harry S. Truman and ranks President Bush as dead last by a wide margin. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/03/national/03MEMO.html

"The new cuts will force more physicians to turn away Medicare patients. That's the reality. Doctors will not have any incentive to accept new Medicare patients. While Medicare reimbursements are going down, our expenses are rising 5 percent to 10 percent a year."

Medicare to Cut Payments to Doctors 4.4% The Bush administration announced today that Medicare payments to doctors would be cut 4.4 percent next year, after a 5.4 percent cut this year. Federal officials predicted that doctors would, as a result, be less willing to accept new Medicare patients. If the cuts are not reversed, Congress and the administration will face the wrath of two politically potent constituencies, elderly voters and doctors who care for the elderly.� http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/21/health/21HEAL.html

In the Name of Security

IN the spring of 2001, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist sounded an alarm. "Technology now permits millions of important and confidential conversations to occur through a vast system of electronic networks," he wrote in a First Amendment case. "These advances, however, raise significant privacy concerns. We are placed in the uncomfortable position of not knowing who might have access to our personal and business e-mails, our medical and financial records, or our cordless and cellular telephone conversations." From the Vietnam and Watergate era until Sept. 11, 2001, legal protection of privacy rights was moving in only one direction, with judges and legislators across the ideological spectrum working hard to create what is in many ways a new legal right. "Before 9/11, the American concern with invasion of privacy was growing," said Rodney A. Smolla, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "The law of privacy was poised to absorb and reflect some of the public concern. It was about to become the new civil right." Sept. 11 changed everything, and last week those changes came into sharper focus, suggesting that any comprehensive rethinking of the right to privacy will have to wait. On Monday, two federal appeals courts endorsed vastly expanded government intrusions into the private affairs of Americans, finding privacy interests less compelling than those of rooting out terrorists and child pornographers. The Pentagon also attracted considerable attention this month for a proposed database of unprecedented scale to help in government antiterrorism efforts. It would collect every sort of information imaginable, including student grades, Internet activity and medical histories. The USA Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, also altered the balance between privacy and government power in countless ways. Public opposition to greater government surveillance has been muted, even as many people continue to voice concerns about the commercial use of data about themselves. That dichotomy is a little hard to explain, given that intrusion by the government can be life-altering while most businesses can do little more than annoy people with phone calls at dinner time. The answer, it appears, is that many people believe the government will invade only someone else's privacy. Privacy for me, they seem to be saying, but not for thee.� http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/weekinreview/24LIPT.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

MotherJones.com | News

The world that produced George W. Bush did not collapse in 2002, but it trembled and revealed the flawed foundation beneath his -- it can't be called a philosophy, but it amounts to a set of unexamined assumptions about his world. And what is that world, what are those assumptions? Too much ridicule of a fake-populist strain is heaped on Bush's pedigree; being the scion of aristocrats would be the best thing about him if only that tradition hadn't decayed and lost its noblesse oblige. He's neither an individualist in the Hoover grain nor an enlightened patrician like Theodore Roosevelt. What made Bush is crony capitalism: business as an end in itself, not as a way of furthering any larger goals, and conducted on the basis of personal connections, so that what matters is trust between "good men," not good institutions (none of this is changed by the fact that as a businessman, Bush wasn't a very good one). Unlike Hoover, whose opposition to government intervention in the economy was so rigid it cost him his job and his reputation, Bush has nothing in principle against it. In fact, his career in both business and politics has been built on a willingness to blur the distinction between public and private spheres -- not to further public goals, but always for private interest.� http://motherjones.com/commentary/power_plays/2002/45/ma_155_01.html

The Writings of Greg Palast HOW GEORGE W. BUSH STOLE THE ELECTIONhttp://www.gregpalast.com/

The Difficult Balance Between Liberty and Security Even more than last year, the Supreme Court's new term begins in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks led Congress to pass laws that increase the ability of federal officials to investigate not just terrorists but all Americans. While the Supreme Court may begin to hear challenges to those laws later in its term, which begins tomorrow, it already has on its docket several cases that could reveal how it draws the line between liberty and security. In hearing these cases, the justices will inevitably face one of the most basic and profound questions for any system of justice: how to ensure that the most serious restrictions on liberty are reserved for those who pose the most serious threats to security. Few Americans would disagree with the principle that the punishment should fit the crime. But whether the Constitution requires some degree of proportionality is unclear. Unfortunately, based on the justices' past rulings, it may be a mistake to rely on the Supreme Court to restore some sense of balance. Of the cases the court has already agreed to hear, three involve laws passed after highly publicized crimes in the 1990's: the Oklahoma City bombing and the murders of Polly Klass and Megan Kanka. Like the Sept. 11 attacks, these crimes created widespread fear and unrealistic public demands for security at the expense of liberty. Although the justices have been eager to expand their own power in relation to that of Congress and the president, they have been reluctant to strike down or modify excessively broad laws adopted in haste after especially dramatic or horrific events. In Demore v. Kim, the issue is whether Congress, in responding to terrorism after the Oklahoma City bombing, acted unconstitutionally when it passed a law in 1996 requiring the attorney general to take into custody all noncitizens who commit certain crimes and hold them without bail before deporting them. The law is being challenged by a South Korean citizen who served three years in prison for petty theft and was seized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service the day after his release. In striking down the mandatory detention, a federal appeals court said the plaintiff's treatment was disproportionate to his crime. How the Supreme Court decides this case may give some indication of its view of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which Congress passed a year ago and which gives the attorney general even broader powers to detain criminal aliens. Two years ago, the Supreme Court narrowly held that the indefinite detention of certain aliens might violate the Constitution, although it made an exception for cases involving terrorism (which it did not define). Yet the court has traditionally given Congress broad discretion over immigration and historically has not insisted upon proportionality between the length of the detention and the seriousness of the crime in cases involving noncitizens. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/opinion/06ROSE.html

Drug Makers Cutting Back on Discounts for the Elderly Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline said that they had raised the prices they offer in a widely promoted discount program out of concern that federal officials will demand similar deep discounts for the government Medicaid program, which provides health care for the poor. But federal officials expressed surprise at the moves and said that they had not taken any action against the discount plans. At issue is whether the discounts by the two companies � as well as those offered by five other drug companies, all under a program called Together Rx � are subject to a federal law requiring drug makers to offer the Medicaid program the lowest price available to any buyer. For some of the 300,000 low-income people participating in Together Rx, the higher prices will hurt. For example, Bristol-Myers said it had been offering a month's supply of the cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol for $15 to elderly people with incomes of $18,000 or less. On Tuesday, the company raised the price to $59. Under GlaxoSmithKline's plan, patients will get roughly a 25 percent discount from retail drugstore prices, the company said, rather than 33 percent. For asthma patients, for example, an Advair Diskus will cost $118. Previously, patients paid $106 for that drug. Thomas A. Scully, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said this week that he was perplexed by the moves to reduce the discounts. "We have had hours of meetings with them trying to make sure we did not impact their discount programs," he said. Mr. Scully said he believed that the two drug companies had decided to raise their prices for a reason unrelated to the government. "Unless I see some solid evidence, I don't believe it is related to Medicaid," he said. At the request of one drug company, Mr. Scully sent a letter to the industry's trade group in June explaining the circumstances in which a discount plan could prompt the government to demand comparable prices. The letter left GlaxoSmithKline executives concerned that their program could force the Medicaid pricing rule to go into effect, said Mary Anne Rhyne, a company spokeswoman. A meeting with federal officials late last month confirmed those concerns, she said, prompting the company to raise its prices to try to avoid enforcement of the law. Extending the discounts to the Medicaid program could cost the drug companies hundreds of millions of dollars. State and federal governments spent $20 billion on prescription drugs last year for the 42 million Medicaid beneficiaries, an increase of more than 12 percent over 2000. A year ago, GlaxoSmithKline became the first company to offer discounts to low-income elderly people who were not poor enough to be covered by the Medicaid program but did not have private insurance to cover their prescription medicines. Under heavy public criticism for high drug prices, other manufacturers followed suit. The seven companies participating in the Together Rx program say that qualifying elderly people receive discounts of 20 percent to 40 percent off the prices they would normally pay at pharmacies. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/05/business/05DRUG.html

Death Toll Rises but Money in Mine Fund Goes Unspent This spring, an 8-year-old boy in western Pennsylvania died when he tumbled down a 60-foot sheer rock embankment, a dangerous vestige of an abandoned coal mine. Dozens of people die at abandoned mines each year in accidents that are supposed to be prevented by a government program intended to clean up such dangerous sites, subsidized by a tax that coal companies have paid since 1977. These tax revenues have collected in a government trust fund that now holds $1.54 billion. But the federal government refuses to spend most of the money, holding it back to help offset the budget deficit, raising continuing complaints from state officials as more people die. The federal government has recorded 78 deaths in abandoned or inactive mines since January 2000, including 26 this year. The numbers are incomplete, and the actual death count is probably higher, the government concedes. "With all these deaths and injuries, I would think that is all the proof you would need to free up this money," said Mike Kastl, director of the abandoned mines program in Oklahoma, where 25 people � 14 children and 11 adults � have died in old mine accidents in recent times. The government taxes coal companies 10 cents to 35 cents a ton for the cleanup fund, and that money is added to the Abandoned Mine Lands Trust Fund, which holds enough money to clean up almost half of the most dangerous abandoned mines nationwide. But this year, like every year since the fund's inception in 1977, the money is caught up in the federal budget battle, though by law it cannot be spent on anything other than mine cleanup projects. "We'd like to use more of the money," said Danny M. Lytton, a senior official in the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining, which administers the fund. "Most years we aren't able to spend even as much as we collect." This is a result of a peculiar federal budget idiosyncrasy. When the abandoned mine trust fund was authorized, it was designated "on budget," as are most government trust funds. That means the money is held in the government's general treasury pool, although it cannot be spent on anything else. When the Interior Department asks to spend part of the fund, the request must compete with those from every other program in the department. Any increase in spending must be offset by a decrease somewhere else. A result, federal officials acknowledge, is that that the money is held back to help lower the budget deficit. "The fund is being used as a budget balancing tool," complained Gary Conrad, director of the Interstate Mining Compact Commission, a multistate government agency. "As with any appropriation bill," said James H. Zoia, Democratic staff director for the House Natural Resources Committee, "if you doubled the abandoned mine lands budget, you'd have to cut that money from someplace else." The appropriation from the abandoned mine fund is routinely cut, "to try to balance things out," Mr. Zoia said. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/politics/26MINE.html

Justice Dept. Balks at Effort to Study Antiterror Powers The Justice Department has rebuffed House Judiciary Committee efforts to check up on its use of new antiterrorism powers in the latest confrontation between the Bush administration and Congress over information sought by the legislative branch. Instead of answering committee questions, the Justice Department said in a letter that it would send replies to the House Intelligence Committee, which has not sought the information and does not plan to oversee the workings of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the panel, and Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, its ranking Democrat, sent Attorney General John Ashcroft a list of 50 questions about the use of the new powers in the act, which the committee worked on before Congress approved it in October. They asked about "roving" surveillance; lists of calls to and from telephone numbers; demands for bookstore, library and newspaper records; and subpoenas under the amended Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act served on Americans or permanent residents. Some simpler questions, about Immigration and Naturalization Service employees the Canadian border, were answered. Mr. Conyers complained that the letter was "yet another shot in this administration's ongoing war against open and accountable government." He said Mr. Ashcroft was telling Congress that "his activities are not to be oversighted." " `Congress, butt out,' " Mr. Conyers said. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/15/politics/15PATR.html

Florida Court Bars Use of Vouchers The judge, P. Kevin Davey of Leon County Circuit Court, struck down a 1999 Florida law that gives money to students from poorly performing public schools to pay tuition at private schools, including ones run by churches. In his decision, Judge Davey wrote that the Florida Constitution was "clear and unambiguous" in prohibiting public money from being used in any sectarian institution. "There is scant room for interpretation or parsing," he wrote. "While this court recognizes and empathizes with the salutary purpose of this legislation � to enhance the educational opportunity of children caught in the snare of substandard schools � such a purpose does not grant this court the authority to abandon the clear mandate of the people as enunciated in the Constitution." Teachers groups and civil rights organizations called the ruling a victory for public schools. "Vouchers violate the Florida Constitution by taking taxpayer dollars from our struggling public schools and diverts them to private and overwhelmingly religious schools," said a statement from Maureen Dinnen, president of the Florida Education Association, which was a plaintiff in the case. About 9,000 students in 10 Florida schools that had received poor performance ratings were eligible this year for the vouchers under the program that was overturned, the Opportunity Scholarship Program, according to the Florida Board of Education. Parents of 659 students had applied for the vouchers for the school year that begins next week. Gov. Jeb Bush, who instituted the program, said the state would appeal. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/national/06VOUC.html

Loophole Lets Lobbyists Hide Clients' Identity It is a fact of life on Capitol Hill that new lobbying coalitions sprout almost every day to try to influence everything from electricity policy to bankruptcy law to health care legislation. But the rising popularity of such coalitions goes beyond simply a desire to influence policy. Thanks to a loophole in the federal lobbying law, some companies and individuals � especially those pursuing controversial or potentially embarrassing causes � are using coalitions to conceal their identities. "You can have unpopular causes such as a tobacco interest or one of these corporations that have renounced its American citizenship hide their interests through this device," said Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas. "You can have foreign interests, if they combine with others, hide their involvement through this device." The Congressional Research Service, a part of the Library of Congress, recently examined lobbyist registration forms, Congressional testimony and media databases and found 135 lobbying coalitions for which it could find only limited information or none at all. One such group, the Section 877 Coalition, has been largely dedicated to keeping Congress from tightening the section of the tax law applying to the estates of wealthy individuals who gave up their American citizenship. The coalition paid more than $760,000 to two firms in 2000 and 2001 to press its case, disclosure forms filed with Congress by the coalition's lobbyists show. But the reports give no clue about precisely who wanted to protect expatriates, and some of the group's lobbyists have hardly been forthcoming. "It is our policy not to comment on client matters, except to note that with respect to the registration of these entities, we are in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of the law," said Steven Silber, a spokesman for PricewaterhouseCoopers, which had been one of the lobbying firms for the Section 877 Coalition. This year, the accounting firm sold its federal tax lobbying operation. Only in recent days, after repeated inquiries from a reporter and a request from a former lobbyist who now is an official at the Treasury Department, did lobbyists say that the coalition was made up of trusts for members of the Arison family. In the 1990's, Congressional Democrats used Ted Arison, the founder of Carnival Cruise lines who saved millions in taxes by renouncing his United States citizenship and returning to Israel, as a case study of why the tax law should be rewritten. Mr. Arison was one of the richest men in the world when he died in 1999. A spokesman for the Carnival Corporation, whose chairman is Micky Arison, a son of Ted Arison's, referred questions about why the Arison family trusts had operated through the Section 877 Coalition to one of the lobbying firms, Alcalde & Fay. At the firm, Hector Alcalde said he had listed the client as the Section 877 Coalition for "simplicity's sake," because PricewaterhouseCoopers had already done so. "There's no hidden agenda," Mr. Alcalde said http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/05/politics/05LOBB.html

In Capitol, Last Names Link Some Leaders and Lobbyists With a pierced tongue, a goatee and previous employment as the owner of a record store and label called Seven Dead Arson, the young man is not a typical buttoned-down Washington lobbyist. But Joshua Hastert, 27, does have something increasingly common in lobbying circles � family ties to a Congressional leader. Mr. Hastert is the eldest son of J. Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House. Chester T. Lott Jr., the son of the Senate Republican leader, Trent Lott, is a registered lobbyist. Linda Daschle, the wife of the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, is a senior public policy adviser at one of Washington's premier lobbying firms, serving aviation interests. Numerous relatives of Congressional and administration officials are employed in lobbying shops around Washington, as they have been for years. Some ethics watchdogs say such arrangements are potentially troublesome, and the fact that relatives of three of the four top members of Congress work as lobbyists illustrates how pervasive and accepted the practice has become. Others say the lobbyists have every right to pursue their line of work as long as they observe ethics rules and keep their professional distance from their powerful relatives. Mr. Hastert and Mrs. Daschle, 47, say that their well-known last names can hurt as well as help, and that they are entitled to pursue their chosen livelihood, especially in a city where so much employment is government-related. "Why should a spouse, just because she is married to a high-profile public official, have to walk away from a career?" asked Mrs. Daschle. No rules prohibit lobbying by relatives, and any effort to regulate it raises free speech concerns. But it has always made ethics groups a little uneasy. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/national/04LOBB.html

Again, Election Confusion for the Florida Secretary of State Here they go again. Florida elections officials and political candidates are confused about another election. And once again, the controversy involves Katherine Harris, who is leaving her post as Florida secretary of state to run for Congress. She did not follow state elections procedures regarding her candidacy and, after realizing the oversight, was forced today to do a bit of damage control. Florida's "resign to run" law requires that elected officials seeking another office submit a letter on the day of qualifying for the upcoming race stating when they intend to resign. If they do not, their resignation becomes effective immediately. Ms. Harris, whose office enforces state elections law, said she did not realize that the law applied to her because secretary of state becomes an appointed position next year.

For Homeland Security Bill, a Brakeman The government's summer urgency to fend off terrorists by reorganizing security agencies seemed to melt away today when Robert C. Byrd walked onto the Senate floor in his seersucker suit and let loose a thundering demand to slow things down. The stripes on his jacket appeared to be trembling as much from indignation as from the infirmities of his 84 years as the senator held out his palm, and the power of parliamentary rules, before the onrushing bulldozer of the proposed Homeland Security Department. "Have we all completely taken leave of our senses?" he said, his tremulous drawl mocking the high-speed world flying by outside his timeless chamber. "The president is shouting, `Pass the bill, pass the bill!' The administration's cabinet secretaries are urging the adoption of the president's proposal without any changes." But that is not the way of the Senate, he argued. "If ever there was a time for the Senate to throw a bucket of cold water on an overheated legislative process that is spinning out of control," he said, "it is now. Now!" It might have been just another of the eight-term West Virginia Democrat's legendary diatribes against executive excess, except for the Senate rules that give a single member enormous power for tossing water buckets. All but single-handedly, Mr. Byrd has slowed the Homeland Security juggernaut by implicitly threatening a filibuster, almost certainly forcing the Senate to postpone debate until after the August recess. Tom Daschle, the majority leader, predicted on Friday, when the House passed its version of the legislation, that given the time needed to cut off Senate debate, a vote would be pushed back to September. That would threaten Congress's self-imposed memorial deadline of Sept. 11 for creating the department, and it did not sit well today with Trent Lott, the minority leader, who said the delay was a "huge mistake" that could be dangerous to the country. "What if we leave town," Mr. Lott said in an interview, "and in August we have some terrorist attack, some disaster, that maybe could have been prevented if we had a way to move people and money and get a focus in an appropriate way? I just think that's unacceptable. This really to me is emergency legislation." Although Mr. Lott's accusation carried with it a potent political threat, Mr. Byrd's plea for deliberation seemed to win some adherents today, particularly because the delay now seems inevitable. Mr. Daschle, eager for his party not to be portrayed as obstructionist, said a little cogitation might not be a bad idea. "This is the single biggest reorganization of the federal government in my lifetime," he told reporters, "and for us to take it up and to pass it in a couple of days asks a lot of our judgment and of our ability to deliberate on something of this import. Senator Byrd and others are suggesting that they may support in the end the proposal, but they want more care, more attention, more careful consideration given to a proposal of this magnitude. And frankly, I don't think that's too much to ask." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/31/politics/31SECU.html

KFF State Health Facts Online Kaiser Family Foundation's State Health Facts Online. This new resource contains the latest state-level data on demographics, health, and health policy, including health coverage, access, financing, and state legislation. http://www.statehealthfacts.kff.org/cgi-bin/healthfacts.cgi?

Red Flags New Fears and Lingering Doubts. The public has faced more bad news about the economy in the past year than it has since the recession of the early 1990s, and public opinion on the economy has become more negative as a result. Only a third of the public says the economy is in good shape, and seven in 10 say they�re concerned about July�s dramatic drop in the stock market. Yet some level of public doubt and dissatisfaction with the economy is normal, even during prosperous times. In the late 1990s, when most Americans were optimistic about both their personal outlook and the overall economy, people still were critical in some specific areas. Many Americans admitted having trouble saving money and keeping up with the cost of living, while large majorities said the gap between rich and poor is widening. http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/red_flags.cfm?issue_type=economy

Clinton Says Republicans Blocked His Audit Reforms "Arthur Levitt, my Securities and Exchange commissioner, tried to stop the Enron accounting issues � using the same accounting company being consultant and accountant � and the Republicans stopped it." Later, Mr. Clinton added that Republicans had fought Mr. Levitt's effort, "and Harvey Pitt was the leader trying to stop us from ending those kind of abuses. That is a matter of record." Mr. Pitt, who was a securities lawyer before being appointed by President Bush to head the S.E.C., counted accounting firms, including Arthur Andersen, among his clients. When asked if he agreed with senators and representatives who have called for Mr. Pitt's resignation, Mr. Clinton demurred. "I don't have to make those decisions anymore," he said. Mr. Clinton also said he had been overridden by Republicans when he vetoed a securities-industry bill he said would have "basically cut off investors from being able to sue if they were getting the shaft." And he recalled that his Treasury secretary, Lawrence H. Summers, had tried to crack down on the use of offshore accounts to conceal corporate financial information, but that Senator Phil Gramm of Texas "and other Republicans stopped that." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/25/business/25CLIN.html

Revised View of 2nd Amendment Is Cited as Defense in Gun Cases �criminal defendants around the nation have asked federal courts to dismiss gun charges against them based on the Justice Department's recently revised position on the scope of the Second Amendment. The new position, that the Constitution broadly protects the rights of individuals to own guns, replaced the view, endorsed by the great majority of courts, that the amendment protects a collective right of the states to maintain militias. While the challenges have been rejected by trial court judges, based largely on appeals court precedent, supporters and opponents of broad antigun laws say the arguments have forced the Justice Department to take contradictory stances. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/23/national/23GUNS.html