An Enron Echo—According to the Wall Street Journal the federal tax collectors at the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) have belatedly learned enough about corporate tax chiseling from the infamous Enron Corporation big wigs that they are now cracking down on other “highly compensated executives.” The Journal says that what’s at stake is “a range of executive compensation issues, including […]

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The real-estate market seems to have become so unreal that we asked a clear-sighted interpreter of the economy, Perry L. Weed, to explain what’s happening. Weed is a retired Washington economist and lawyer whose 30 years in the nation’s capital included Senate and House staff assignments and a position at the U.S. Commerce Department. His […]

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The Senior Senator—At the age of 87, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) is reported to be preparing for election to his ninth six-year term in what its members like to call the “upper body.” Byrd began his Congressional career in 1952 with four years in the “lower body” and moved from the House of Representatives to […]

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Not many, if any, news reports have focused on the unpublicized connections of this Bush administration’s family members with politically—and financially—sensitive operations. Business Week recently noted that “dads and sons and other relatives reign so widely in this administration that there have never been so many family combos in an administration at the same time.” And the […]

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Social Insecurity—President Bush keeps pushing his Social Security privatization plan, but with a declining chance of passage. Democratic opponents call it “Bushonomics” and a “piratization scheme” that fits what George W.’s father once called “voodoo economics.” The debate has spurred a new vocabulary among Democrats—”chicanery,” “deception,” “subterfuge” and “trickery” that they say is designed to […]

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