In Print & On the Air

IN AN OPINION PIECE IN THE SAN Jose Mercury News, MARIANO-FLORENTINO CUELLAR, assistant professor of law, argued that domestic spending will be the main casualty of the Bush administration's $350 billion in new tax cuts. "Thanks to the tax cut, a household making $1 million would receive about $28,000 in cuts in 2003 alone, while half of all American households -- those at the bottom of the income distribution -- would get $100 or less in cuts," he wrote July 10. "All this at a time when the $5.6 trillion projected surplus built up in the last administration is gone, deficits are growing again, and federal revenue is falling to the lowest level since Eisenhower was president." Cuellar said it is unlikely cuts will be made in homeland security and national defense -- which exceed 51 percent of the budget -- leaving discretionary domestic spending, about 8 percent of the budget, as the only politically feasible target. "That's the money that pays for enforcing laws protecting worker safety, preventing energy companies from defrauding the public, safeguarding the environment and regulating the stock market," he wrote. While Bush said the tax cut would provide "opportunity for millions," Cuellar argued that, more accurately stated, it would provide "opportunity for millionaires."

THE MERCURY NEWS REPORTED July 2 that a federal judge in New York has dismissed a lawsuit by investors trying to blame Wall Street brokerage firms for their Internet-era stock losses. Judge Milton Pollack said investors who lost money were "high-risk speculators" who "now hope to twist the federal securities laws into a scheme of cost-free speculators' insurance." Analyzing the dismissal, JOSEPH GRUNDFEST, the W. A. Franke Professor of Law and Business, explained: "What this judge in effect says is that plaintiffs who present themselves before his court and simply rant that 'We invested money; they told lies, and then we lost money'" won't be permitted to sue.