-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: January 10, 2007 4:04:47 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: The Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Dubya
Dubya's Tower of Babel
With half a billion dollars expected from a handful of megadonors,
George W. Bush's 'truest believers' plan the mother of all
presidential libraries and conservative think tanks
"Even Ken Lay, former head of Enron, posthumously donated funds (in
an unspecified amount)"
Bill Berkowitz
January 10, 2007
http://www.mediatransparency.com/story.php?storyID=171
After six years of incompetence and cronyism, a failed war against
terrorism, the quagmire that is Iraq, wars against science, the
environment, corporate regulation and the public's right-to-know, a
chummy working relationship with the country's most reactionary
conservative evangelical Christians, a politicized faith-based
initiative, giveaways to the energy industry, tax relief for the
wealthy, a culture of corruption culminating in the forced
resignations and imprisonment of some of the administrations key
soldiers, and an attack on fundamental democratic rights and
values, the Bush Administration is hatching plans to celebrate
itself with a $500 million library (the costliest presidential
library ever) to be built sometime after the end of Bush's second
term.
Among the donors to Bush 41's library in Texas were a sheik from
the United Arab Emirates, the state of Kuwait, the Bandar bin
Sultan family, the Sultanate of Oman, King Hassan II of Morocco,
the amir of Qatar, the former Korean prime minister, and China.
In what is being called "their final campaign," Bush's "truest
believers" are aiming to raise a half-billion dollars for the
mother of all presidential libraries. The library and an attached
think tank -- which will pay for conservative research -- is being
earmarked for the Dallas, Texas campus of Southern Methodist
University (SMU), where First Lady Laura Bush is an alumna and
trustee.
Inside Higher Ed recently pointed out that SMU, which had been
competing for the library with Baylor University and the University
of Dallas, appears to have cleared the final hurdle to getting the
project when the university "won a court fight over its right to
demolish a condo complex the university had purchased, in part to
have land for the Bush project."
That was before university faculty, administration, and staff
questioned the ideological underpinnings of the project.
Bringing back the Pioneers
In late-November, the New York Daily News reported that "Bush
sources with direct knowledge of library plans" said that "Bush
fund-raisers hope to get half of the half billion from what they
call 'megadonations' of $10 million to $20 million a pop."
According to the Daily News, "Bush loyalists have already
identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry
as potential 'mega' donors and are pressing for a formal site
announcement - now expected early in the new year...The rest of the
cash will come from donors willing to pony up $25,000 to $5 million."
While the donors to Bush 43's library will remain anonymous, in
February 2006, the Associated Press reported that among the donors
to Bush 41's presidential library located at Texas A&M University
in College Station, were a sheik from the United Arab Emirates, who
contributed at least $1 million, the state of Kuwait, the Bandar
bin Sultan family, the Sultanate of Oman, King Hassan II of
Morocco, the amir of Qatar, and the former Korean prime minister.
China also gave tens of thousands of dollars to the library. In
addition, funds were received from the late Kenneth Lay, the former
head of Enron, and Dick Cheney, the current Vice President.
"Presidential libraries," the Daily News pointed out, "are run by
the National Archives and Records Administration, but building
costs must come from private donations. Bells and whistles, like an
institute or an academic program like Bush's father's public
service school at Texas A&M, are also extras."
The really big extra embedded into this project appears to be what
Bush insiders are calling the Institute for Democracy. Modeled
after the Hoover Institution, a long-time conservative think tank
located on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto,
California, Bush's institute would hire conservative scholars and
"give them money to write papers and books favorable to the
President's policies," one Bush insider told the Daily News. This
would effectively be the post-administration version of a policy
they established during his reign - paying columnists to advocate
for administration policy.
According to the newspaper, "The half-billion target is double what
Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other
presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a
massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency
that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of
Americans."
While it may seem counter-intuitive, it isn't all that surprising
that while Bush's popularity continues to plummet, and his
administration's policies gain no traction with the American
people, his handlers would already be hatching the mother of all
redemption plans. Perhaps Bush's close advisors are hoping that he
won't have to spend his entire post-presidency trying to rebuild
his standing amongst the American people and history a la Richard
Nixon.
However, as with many of the Bush Administration's grand ventures,
this one appears to be running into opposition. The SMU faculty,
administrators and staff -- a group that former Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld might call "dead-enders" -- are putting up
a fight.
According to Inside Higher Ed, "Faculty critics say that although
many of them disagree with President Bush's policies, they would
not object to a library-oriented archive and museum -- and they say
that in discussions with professors, the university has discussed a
vision for such a Bush center. But creating an academic center with
a specific goal of boosting the Bush image and agenda strikes many
professors as antithetical to a university's academic values."
In a letter dated December 16 and addressed to R. Gerald Turner,
president of the Board of Trustees, members of SMU's Perkins School
of Theology urged the board to "reconsider and to rescind SMU's
pursuit of the presidential library."
We count ourselves among those who would regret to see SMU enshrine
attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious:
degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming,
flagrant disregard for international treaties, alienation of long-
term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for
gay persons and their rights, a preemptive war based on false and
misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for
the global human community and for this good Earth on which our
flourishing depends.
Another matter that warrants our attention is that whether it aims
to or not SMU will, in the long run, financially profit on the
backs of hard-working Americans who feel squashed by policies
they've now rejected at the polls. Surely it's not the case that
SMU will allow itself to benefit financially from a name and legacy
that globally is associated with suffering, death, and political
'bad faith.' Taken together, all these issues set decision-making
about the Library in a framework of inescapable ethical questions,
and remind us of a key imperative adopted by many leading
universities around the globe: 'to be critic and conscience of
society.'"
"The letter doesn't call for the university to withdraw from the
competition, but to have a full discussion of the library's goals
-- with the clear implication that the university must agree to be
host only to a library without an agenda," Inside Higher Ed reported.
At this point, "critics of the library plans are trying hard to
frame the question as about academic standards for open research
and debate, not about Bush-bashing," Inside Higher Ed pointed out.
Suzanne Johnson, an associate professor of Christian education,
said that she would understand the value of an archive of the Bush
administration, and sees how many SMU scholars would benefit from
having such a collection on campus. But she said that the campus
has been left 'uninformed and naïve' about President Bush's plans
to create a policy center to promote his view of the world."
Johnson was also concerned about the fact that SMU "historically
has had a reputation for attracting wealthy students -- a
reputation that the university has tried to fight in recent years
by offering generous scholarship to low-income students. 'I think
it might be a setback in terms of trying to attract a different
constituency among students,' Johnson said. 'Children of wealthy,
leading Republicans in this state come to SMU, and then they are
groomed here to become Republican leaders in all sectors of
society. We shouldn't be in the business of just replicating
Republicans.'"
Ironically, the fundraising push for Bush's library comes at the
same time many Americans have digested and are debating the
substance of Sean Wilentz's provocative May 4, 2006 Rolling Stone
article title "The Worst President in History." Wilentz wrote that
Bush's presidency "appears headed for colossal historical disgrace.
Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks
of September 11 ... there seems to be little the administration can
do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And
that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now
wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very
worst president in history."
Wilentz, the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and director of
the Program for American Studies at Princeton University, is not
alone in his assessment of Bush. According to an informal survey of
415 historians -- conducted in 2004 by the nonpartisan History News
Network -- 81 percent considered the Bush Administration a "failure."
News of the Bush library has also begun to hit the late-night
television talk circuit: Noting that the president's team was
aiming to raise $500 million for the project, Conan O'Brien pointed
out that would "work out to $100 million a book." Other talk show
hosts, political commentators and comedians will no doubt find both
the humor and outrage in this dishonest project. However strange as
it may seem now, you can be certain that the money will be raised
and the monument will be built
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