Long article in TIME to come out tomorrow on O'Neill

[gristy]

Confessions of a White House Insider
A book about Treasury's Paul O'Neill paints a presidency where ideology and politics rule the day
By JOHN F. DICKERSON

Saturday, Jan. 10, 2004
If anyone would listen to him, Paul O'Neill thought, Dick Cheney would. The two had served together during the Ford Administration, and now as the Treasury Secretary fought a losing battle against another round of tax cuts, he figured that his longtime colleague would give him a hearing.

O'Neill had been preaching that a fiscal crisis was looming and more tax cuts would exacerbate it. But others in the White House saw a chance to capitalize on the historic Republican congressional gains in the 2002 elections. Surely, Cheney would not be so smug. He would hear O'Neill out. In an economic meeting in the Vice President's office, O'Neill started pitching, describing how the numbers showed that growing budget deficits threatened the economy. Cheney cut him off. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said. O'Neill was too dumbfounded to respond. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms. This is our due."

A month later, Paul O'Neill was fired, ending the rocky two-year tenure of Bush's first Treasury Secretary, who became known for his candid statements and the controversies that followed them. Rarely had a person who spoke so freely been embedded so high in an Administration that valued frank public remarks so little.

Now O'Neill is speaking with the same bracing style in a book written by Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Ron Suskind. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill traces the former Alcoa CEO's rise and fall through the Administration: from his return to Washington to work for his third President, whom he believed would govern from the sensible center, through O'Neill's disillusionment, to his firing, executed in a surreal conversation with Cheney, a man he once considered a fellow traveler. Suskind had access not only to O'Neill but also to the saddlebags he took with him when he left town, which included a minute-by-minute accounting of his 23 months in office and 19,000 pages of documents on CD-ROM.

Whooo-hoooo!!!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040119-574809,00.html

[cthrumatrix]

1. O'Neil should be commended for sticking up for Americans and fiscal

repsonsibility ...he commisioned a report (Fed Resreve Bank of Clev) waring of a $44 Trillion Gap with medicare & soc vs. Tax receipts in the coming years.

The "king for a day - shrub"..didn't care. He only cares about todays power and looting.

If there a fricking media in this country he would "admired and praised"

This thug sent sons and daughter off to war based on lies, deception and is "sheltered by the coprorate media"


you tell me why...who in the hell runs this country anymore!

[gristy]

3. The media sometimes surprises me.

Time should be commended for this article.

[cthrumatrix]

2. 19,000 pages of facts to come out...bush is going down

[SeveneightyWhoa]

4. Rightwing response to this article:

"THE LIBERAL MEDIA IN ACTION ONCE AGAIN!"
Remember guys, an unbiased media doesn't question the government or report important stories!

[Gin]

5. the conservatives..."own the conservative media"...this may not go far.

I hope I am wrong.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

6. TIME is owned by Time-Warner, one of the largest media conglomerates.

So is CBS.
If these entities brought these stories to the forefront, why would anyone else (other than Fox, for example) neglect it? Ratings are usually more important than anything.

[nostamj]

7. "These people are nasty and they have a long memory,"

tonight's 60 Minutes could be very interesting...

and then we'll see what those 'nasty people' do to deflect it

[Wapsie B]

8. Good.

Good for 60 minutes and Time. Intercourse the rest of them. Let Joe Six-pack thumb through it in the doctor's office. May have a more lasting impact than a Sunday news show like disgrace the nation.