Political Glance
Still, the middle class may have a better shot at making ends meet than at influencing the Middle Class Task Force. That's because no member of the Middle Class Task Force is actually middle class. While defining America's most beloved demographic group has never been an exact science, most academics agree that the term refers to anyone earning between $30,000 and $100,000 a year. (Median household income in the U.S. hovers around $50,000.) Every member of the President's task force - from Biden ($227,000) to Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Romer ($172,000) to energy secretary Steven Chu ($191,000) - makes well over $150,000, putting them in the top 5% of wage earners.
TVNL Comment: So what's new? Welcome to America.
Even though he has yet to complete his investigation, a federal prosecutor has already signaled that he is unlikely to indict any CIA employees for incinerating 92 secret interrogation tapes that purportedly show suspects being waterboarded.
As president, Bush was often dubbed "Incurious George" by his critics. In 2004, the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin noted that "while Bush is indeed assertive, he also often lacks curiosity and patience and has little interest in details." In 2005, the Associated Press reported that "Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29." Even Bob Woodward's State of Denial, published in 2006, described Bush as "intellectually incurious."
In a recent article in The National Interest and a public appearance at the Nixon Center, Perle has tried to sell the story that neither he nor his fellow neoconservatives had any significant influence on the foreign policy of the Bush administration, and especially the decision to invade Iraq. Specifically, he denounces the supposedly "false claim that the decision to remove Saddam, and Bush policies generally, were made or significantly influenced by a few neoconservative 'ideologues.'" He suggests that no one has ever documented this claim, either conveniently ignoring the many books and articles that did exactly that, or misrepresenting what these works actually say.
