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Flashback Friday returns

BUSH ADVISERS SEE REBOUND AHEAD
Boston Globe
June 20, 1991

The US economy is likely to resume growth in the second half of the year at an annual rate of up to 3 percent, President Bush's chief economic adviser said. Michael Boskin, who heads the Council of Economic Advisers, said the administration sees no reason to make major changes in the forecast it issued late last year. That forecast was for growth in the second half of 1991 at a yearly rate of 2 percent to 3 percent "and we pretty much still are looking like that," he told the...

ADMINISTRATION DROPS PLAN FOR SECRET TRIALS ON ALIENS
Helen Dewar, Washington Post
June 21, 1991

The Bush administration yesterday abandoned a highly controversial proposal to allow secret deportation trials for aliens suspected of terrorism in an unsuccessful bid by Senate Republicans to win a largely symbolic victory for President Bush in an early showdown over anti-crime legislation

"It was becoming a distraction, and we have things of a lot higher priority to consider," said Assistant Attorney General Lee Rawls in confirming that the Justice Department dropped the....

FOR BUSH'S SPEECH, A NEW WORD ORDER
COMPLETE SENTENCES SUPERSEDE FAVORED FRAGMENTARY BURSTS
John E. Yang, Washington Post
June 22, 1991

Tony Snow. Writing speeches for the president. Working on that . . .

rhetoric thing.

When he became chief White House speechwriter in March, Snow, 36, a former newspaper editorial writer, faced a formidable challenge in writing for a man who shuns rhetorical flourishes, and whose speaking style, distinguished by short bursts of words, is a running gag on "Saturday Night Live."

One of Snow's first orders to his staff of five was the complete-sentence rule....

BUSH: CONGRESS TOUGHER THAN IRAQ
WHEN IT COMES TO WAGING A WAR, PRESIDENT PREFERS GULF TO HILL
John E. Yang, Washington Post
June 21, 1991

President Bush has always shown a preference for foreign matters over domestic policy, taking a personal, hands-on role in world issues by telephoning foreign leaders while approaching matters at home as a necessary and bothersome chore

Like many previous presidents, he has enjoyed a freer rein to manage foreign affairs without the close scrutiny Congress gives domestic matters. Over the weekend, for example, Bush said that waging war against the forces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was...

TURBULENCE AHEAD FOR AIRLINES AFTER RECORD LOSSES IN 1990
Stanley Ziemba, Chicago Tribune
June 21, 1991

Despite a record number of passengers and cargo, U.S. airlines experienced the worst business year in their history in 1990, according to the annual report issued Thursday by the Air Transport Association, a Washington, D.C.-based airline industry group.

The nation's airlines lost $4 billion, almost all in the fourth quarter, as a result of a doubling of fuel costs and the Persian Gulf crisis, ...

FEDERAL LANDS: USER-FRIENDLY
Ben Brown, USA Today
June 20, 1991

The lesson hasn't been lost at Interior. Targeted by critics for his unsympathetic remarks about endangered species, [Manuel Lujan] now might have found in outdoor recreation an issue that just about everybody can agree on.

Wednesday, Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan told recreation industry leaders, ``Our recreation goals include selecting and promoting at least one new trail in each state this ...

HEALTH INSURANCE HARD TO GET FOR MANY UNDER 65, GROUP SAYS
Associated Press
June 20, 1991

WASHINGTON -- Nearly a third of all Americans under 65, including an estimated 2 million Massachusetts residents, have medical conditions that could make it difficult or impossible for them to get or maintain health insurance, an advocacy group reported yesterday.

"Private health insurance can no longer provide us with security and peace of mind," said Robert M. Brandon, vice president of Citizen Action, a national nonprofit consumer group with chapters in Massachusetts and...

U.S. TRADE DEFICIT RISES TO $4.8 BILLION
AMERICANS SET OVERSEAS SALES RECORD BUT BUY MORE FOREIGN GOODS
Stuart Auerbach, Washington Post
June 20, 1991

Overseas sales by American companies reached a new high in April but Americans also increased their purchases of foreign goods, nudging the U.S. trade deficit upward to $4.8 billion from its eight-year low the month before, the government reported yesterday

Exports totaled $35.6 billion, $1 billion higher than the previous record set in October, as foreign buyers snapped up American-made planes, computers, heavy-duty trucks and construction equipment, and capital goods such as refinery...

THE SCHOOL REFORM FRAUD ...
Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, Inc.
June 19, 1991

Lamar Alexander, the ex-governor of Tennessee and the new secretary of education, is a charming man. Like all education secretaries, he talks tough about the need to raise school standards. But the "education strategy" he's peddling for the Bush administration is mostly a fraud.

Even if the plan were fully adopted, it wouldn't result in better-educated Americans or improved schools.

Grade inflation is the national norm: Through high grades and easy college admissions...

U.S. SEEKS TO VACATE RULING ON IRAQ CASE
DAMAGE AWARD SAID TO CONFLICT WITH ADMINISTRATION WAR CLAIMS PLAN
Tracy Thompson, Washington Post
June 19, 1991

The Justice Department wants to vacate a federal judge's decision awarding $64.1 million in damages from the government of Iraq to a New Jersey firm that sold Iraq several blast furnaces, saying payment would conflict with the Bush administration's plan to process war claims.

The Justice Department made that argument in a brief filed Monday in federal court here in connection with a breach of contract case between Iraq and Consarc Inc. over four blast furnaces that Iraq reportedly...

U.S. OIL PRODUCTION SLIDING: MORE FOREIGN OIL EXPECTED TO FUEL USA
James Cox, USA Today
June 20, 1991

John Herrington, secretary of energy under Ronald Reagan, argues that the gulf war was far from a wasted effort: It demonstrated U.S. resolve in the Middle East and further weakened OPEC - both good for the U.S., he says. ``But we're not more energy independent. That is clear.''

- A continuing slide in U.S. oil production. U.S. crude production, which has dropped ...

SUNNY, WITH A MILD RECESSION
Art Buchwald, Los Angeles Times
June 18, 1991

You hear the figures being quoted by financial reporters. The economy is up -- it's down -- and the big turnaround will be on Babe Ruth's birthday. Where do the forecasts come from?

They are released by government economists like Jim Warner.

Warner works in a small windowless room on the third floor of the U.S. Bureau of Highs and Lows. He has been there for 20 years and has never seen the sun...

BLACKS IN HOUSTON SEE QUOTAS AS WORKING TO THE ADVANTAGE OF WHITES
David Maraniss, Washington Post
June 18, 1991

In the black neighborhoods of the South's largest city, racial quotas have a different meaning than they have assumed in the long debate in Washington over a civil rights bill: They are not an arbitrary way of forcing minorities in, but an all-too-familiar means of keeping them out.

"President Bush is using the Q word as though blacks are now on top and gaining an unfair advantage in society," said MacPherson Uwaifo, an economics student at Texas Southern University.

WHEN THE WORDS GET IN THE WAY
Don Aucoin, Boston Globe
June 20, 1991

The Persian Gulf War is over, but it soldiers on as a political buzzword.

Whenever one of the mayors meeting in San Diego wanted to decry the federal government's abandonment of cities, he or she would unlimber some variation of the following: "If we can spend billions on the Persian Gulf War to save Kuwait, why can't we do the same to save our cities?" Other mayors replaced Kuwait with "the S & L bailout."

GREENSPAN: ECONOMY HAS HIT BOTTOM BUT NOT YET EXPANDING
June 19, 1991
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Recent economic data indicate the economy has hit bottom but any renewed expansion so far is too small to measure, Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, said yesterday.

Greenspan, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, said statistics "over the last several weeks strongly suggested that the bottom is somewhere in the second quarter," ending June 30.

However, he added, "we see no measurable upward thrust" and said employment is likely to...

And this little tidbit, for my friend Jim Capozzola:

PAGLIA GOES BALLISTIC IN BU JOURNAL
Mark Feeney, Boston Globe
June 19, 1991

Camille Paglia strikes again.

Paglia, the literary critic whose scorched-earth prose got her on the cover of New York magazine last winter, goes ballistic for 74 pages in the spring issue of Arion, the Boston University journal of humanities and the classics. An excerpt ran as an essay in the May 5 New York Times Book Review under the relatively demure headline "Ninnies, Pedants, Tyrants and Other Academics." That was fairly tame stuff compared to the full version, "Junk Bonds....