Bush is worried about the economy

[Calamity Jane]

It was just on the news... he's "worried about the down turn the economy has taken since the terrorist attacks."

wasn't the economy already on a down turn? he wants 60 billion in tax cuts...

I'm all for tax cuts, but was the man paying ANY attention at all prior to 9/11?

On another note, does anyone else think that this war on terrorism is going to be a whole lot like that oh so successful war on drugs?

 

[koalabear]

War on drugs.....never was one. Can't cut into the CIA's major source of funding!!!

 

[shadowsource]

He's using it -

- which is normal enough. Sure, the economy was already sliding into recesssion before 9/11, and now the attacks are allowing everyone in DC to blow the budget out and try to spend their way out of recession. It makes sense, though it's slightkly unusual for a Republican to embrce it so wholeheartedly these days. Bush has good cover, though the right wing is getting very restive.
It remains very possible that the entire world will be enveoloped by a truly hideous recesssion, even deflation, as in Japan. It's scary enough that we have to hope they take action, adn that they get it right. In that sense, the economy's a bit like the war on terrorism.
Will this become like the war on drugs? I hope not - endless misery, violence, and corruption with very little achieved. If you screen pot busts out of the drug war stats, very little has changed. They criminalize productive members of society, charge them with a phony "crime," and then use that stat to show how well they're fighting crime.

Here are some stats about Giuliani's war on pot, courtesy of New York's Marijuana Reform Party:

The Facts

In 1992 only 720 people were arrested in New York City for smoking marijuana (misdemeanor possession). However, by 2000, arrests for smoking marijuana had risen to 50,830, an astounding increase of 7,060%. But, in stark contrast to this trend, during the same period felony arrests for the sale of hard drugs ("controlled substances") declined by 6.6% from 25,478 to 23,794 and felony arrests for the possession of hard drugs declined by 13% from 14,121 to 12,281. This data clearly demonstrates that the Mayor's policy is targeting low-level marijuana offenders while actually backing off from an aggressive policy towards far more serious drug law crimes. Even more shocking is the fact that in 2000 arrests for possession of marijuana accounted for 15½ % of all arrests in New York City, while in 1992 such arrests were only 0.6 % of the total number of all NYC arrests.

And while misdemeanor arrests for the possession of hard drugs did increase from 19,451 to 41,283, that increase of 120% still pales in comparison to the 7,060% increase in arrests for smoking marijuana. Looking at it a different way, in 1992 there were 24,674 misdemeanor drug arrests and in 2000 there were 102,711 misdemeanor drug arrests, an increase of 78,037. The numbers clearly show that under Giuliani's War on Drugs, 64% (50,110) of the increase in misdemeanor drug arrests can be attributed to the most minimal drug offense of merely smoking marijuana.

In assessing this situation, it is important to keep in mind that in New York State possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana is not even a misdemeanor. However, the act of smoking a very tiny quantity of marijuana in public (far less than the 25 gram misdemeanor possession threshold) elevates the possession charge to the level of a misdemeanor. This represents a flaw in the 1977 New York State legislation that removed the possession of small quantities of marijuana from the criminal justice system.

Also worthy of note is that in 1999 all arrests in NYC declined by 9%, violent felony arrests declined by almost 13%, drug felony arrests declined by almost 13%, total misdemeanor arrests declined by almost 9%, and drug misdemeanor arrests declined by almost 6%. Only one category of arrests did not decline. Running contrary to a citywide trend for all crimes in 1999 arrests for smoking marijuana rose by 3% from the record high level of 1998. Similarly, when total NYC arrests in 2000 increased to 337,852 from 314,275 in 1999, almost 75 % of this increase can be attributed to the increase of marijuana possession arrests(17,412).

So that's one of Rudy's "miracles."