Free Republic

SACRAMENTO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday handed out hefty pay raises to 11 of his closest advisers, including a $32,000 boost to Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy. Kennedy remains the highest paid member of the governor's inner circle, although some of his cabinet secretaries make more. With the latest raise, Kennedy's taxpayer-funded salary will be $175,000 a year. The other 10, including Deputy Chief of Staff Adam Mendelsohn and Daniel Zingale, chief of staff to first lady Maria Shriver, will see their salaries increase 11 percent to $147,900. The pay raises come a week after Schwarzenegger signed a $145.5 billion...

WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals in a last-ditch effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war. They include a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general, and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders. Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys" — smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: Military officers...

White House advisers ready to back Iraq withdrawal By Richard Alleyne (Filed: 17/10/2006) A panel of White House advisers, which includes a former US secretary of state, is ready to recommend large troop withdrawals from Iraq, it emerged today. In what would be a major shift in policy, the experts are said to be ready to suggest the “Redeploy and Contain” option which would mean withdrawing American troops to bases outside Iraq where they could be used against terrorist organisations anywhere in the region. The report is being prepared by a 10-member commission called the Iraq Study Group, headed by...

SACRAMENTO - Two top campaign consultants who helped Arnold Schwarzenegger become governor by casting him as a political reformer are taking new steps to profit from their ties to the administration. One year after the Republican governor sought to create a firewall between his administration and his political team, Schwarzenegger advisers George Gorton and Bob White have launched new Sacramento lobbying operations designed to influence state policy. The moves have critics calling on Schwarzenegger, who vowed to set a high ethical standard in Sacramento, to distance himself from anyone who offers him private political advice and then tries to sway...

Bush Advisers OK Social Security Plan Fri Jan 28, 3:08 AM ET By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush's advisers have settled on a proposal for structuring the personal accounts they hope to create in Social Security, while on Capitol Hill Senate Democrats were launching an effort to defeat the plan altogether. Under a plan recommended to Bush, the private accounts would resemble many company-sponsored retirement plans, with just a handful of investment options. By default, workers would be enrolled in a "life cycle" account, in which investments become more conservative as investors age, if they do...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named a 16-member Council of Economic Advisers on Friday that leans heavily on Stanford University's conservative Hoover Institution and includes major Republican establishment thinkers on supply-side economics and reducing government regulations and taxes. Schwarzenegger named former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz to chair the group of Nobel Prize winners, California economics professors and former advisers to Republican presidents Bush, Reagan and Nixon. Shultz, the former Reagan Administration secretary of state who also headed Schwarzenegger's 18-member Economic Recovery Team during last year's recall campaign, similarly advised former two-term Republican Gov. Pete Wilson during the...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - The idea of a United States independent of Middle East oil is a touchstone of Senator John Kerry's campaign and a huge crowd pleaser, but has divided and exasperated many of his most experienced energy advisers. Some advisers say they worry that Mr. Kerry's focus on freeing the United States from reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf, the linchpin of the energy plan he released on Thursday, is unrealistic and misleading and that hammering away at it would erode Mr. Kerry's credibility with business, the news media and other countries. The advisers, who include independent...

SACRAMENTO - Arnold Schwarzenegger's political career has proved to be more than just a boon for the new Republican governor. It has also turned into a lucrative business for the close-knit group of advisers that has helped transform the former actor into a fast-rising political star. Over the past year, campaign records show, Schwarzenegger's seven top political consultants have earned more than $2.2 million -- and perhaps as much as $3.7 million -- working for the governor. Since making his surprise campaign announcement one year ago today on ``The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,'' Schwarzenegger has enlisted some of the...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld joined other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration March 22 in disputing claims made by a former White House counterterrorism official. Former antiterrorism chief Richard Clarke alleges in a new book and has said in interviews that President Bush and his advisers were slow to recognize the threat posed by al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and were too preoccupied with attacking Iraq to respond appropriately after the attacks. "The (National Security Council) began the process of working through a plan to deal with al Qaeda from the early days of the administration,"...

<p>JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security team has recommended that Israel withdraw from virtually all of the Gaza Strip and up to 24 West Bank settlements, a government official said Thursday.</p> <p>Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said earlier he would welcome a Gaza withdrawal, but he insisted it would have to be accompanied by a simultaneous pullback from the West Bank.</p>

Republicans gather this weekend in Los Angeles for the country club coronation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Will any notice that the former Mr. Universe emperor still has no clothes on? The more one examines the Schwarzenegger campaign, the more nakedly liberal it appears. It appears that the circle of liberal advisers around Schwarzenegger is not contracting but growing wider by the day. Robert Kennedy Jr., a wild-eyed left-wing environmentalist, is "advising him on strategy," reported the Los Angeles Times this week in a piece entitled "Schwarzenegger is the GOP's Green Candidate." Even the Times can put two and two together, observing...

Republicans gather this weekend in Los Angeles for the country club coronation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Will any notice that the former Mr. Universe emperor still has no clothes on? The more one examines the Schwarzenegger campaign, the more nakedly liberal it appears. It appears that the circle of liberal advisers around Schwarzenegger is not contracting but growing wider by the day. Robert Kennedy Jr., a wild-eyed left-wing environmentalist, is "advising him on strategy," reported the Los Angeles Times this week in a piece entitled "Schwarzenegger is the GOP's Green Candidate." Even the Times can put two and two together, observing...

The Associated Press PRETORIA, South Africa July 9 — President Bush suggested Wednesday that any U.S. military help in ending brutal civil unrest in Liberia might consist mostly of advisers and trainers to avoid stretching American forces too thinly around the globe."We won't overextend our troops, period," Bush said at a joint news conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who had pressed him on what role the United States would play in the crisis. African nations want the United States to do more to end the bloodshed in the western Africa nation. But U.S. lawmakers, including some leading...

PRETORIA, South Africa - President Bush (news - web sites) suggested Wednesday that any U.S. military help in ending brutal civil unrest in Liberia might consist mostly of advisers and trainers to avoid stretching American forces too thinly around the globe. "We won't overextend our troops, period," Bush said at a joint news conference with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who had pressed him on what role the United States would play in the crisis. African nations want the United States to do more to end the bloodshed in the western Africa nation. But U.S. lawmakers, including some leading Republicans,...

<p>Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson pulled the plug Friday on contracts with friends, associates and former colleagues who were receiving up to $8,470 per month to provide consulting services to his office.</p> <p>Wesson's decision ended weeks of simmering controversy, inside and outside the Legislature, over open-ended contracts that did not stipulate what work must be done or set deadlines.</p>

An internal White House document outlining President Bush's re-election agenda starts with "War on terrorism (Con't)" and homeland security. It's the latest sign, critics say, that presidential advisers are seeking political gain from the Sept. 11 attacks. The single-page, sparsely worded document titled "Possible '04 Signature Issues" was discussed this month in a White House meeting chaired by chief of staff Andrew Card to fine tune Bush's 2003 legislative agenda, several senior White House officials told The Associated Press. White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the "Signature Issues" list does not portend efforts to make terrorism a political centerpiece...