| -Caveat Lector-
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Wanderings: Down on Our
Knees - An American Tale
by Dr. Walter Brasch |
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NOTE: Walt Brasch's latest book is "The Joy of
Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era." You may reach him at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Standing
before more than 1,400 loyalists and lobbyists who threw him more than
$3.5 million, President Bush claimed he "got the economy going again � and
laid the foundation for greater prosperity" while defending the country
against terrorism. Assuming he was neither drunk or stoned, he may have
believed what he was spinning.
But, let's look at the record.
First the economy:
-- More than 2.7 million jobs have been lost
during the past two years. More than 10 million are unemployed, the
highest unemployment rate since the Bush I era.
-- The
Republican-controlled Congress failed to pass any significant legislation
to raise the minimum wage or to provide health coverage for 60 million
Americans -- although the Administration says it wants to extend universal
health coverage to all Iraqis.
-- President Bush declared that
leading economists said if the $350 million tax cut was approved, the
economy would grow by 3.3 percent. As Gordon Livingston, writing in the
Baltimore Sun, correctly noted, "no such report exists."
-- What
does exist is a welfare package for the rich. The top one percent, many of
whom live on dividends and stock sales, benefit far more than most
Americans who are paid hourly. Among their benefits are reduced income
taxes, dividend exclusions and capital gains benefits, and a special
deduction of up to $100,000 for any vehicle over three tons. About 50
million lower and middle-class families get nothing; about 20 million get
less than $100. In his original proposal, eventually modified by Congress,
President Bush allocated nothing for military pay increases, or any
provisions to cover military families.
-- The package includes a
"child tax credit." Those with incomes below $26,625 a year get nothing.
In killing the credit for low-income families, House Majority Leader Tom
Delay coldly set the Republican priority. "There are other things that are
more important," he told more than 12 million families.
-- Among
the "more important" items was a $1 million expense to turn around the
U.S.S. Lincoln as it neared San Diego so the flight-suited President Bush
could jet out and pose for several hundred cameras.
-- Although
President Bush declared he wanted corporate reforms, the actions of the
administration proved otherwise. Halliburton, the company that
Vice-President Cheney once ran, got a no-bid contract to help clean up
Iraq -- after American-led forces tried to destroy and are now trying to
"Americanize" one of the world's oldest civilizations. There have yet to
be any prosecutions for Enron or WorldCom, among dozens of other
corporations, which gave multi-million dollar benefits and bonuses to its
executives while the workers lost their savings and retirements.
Let's now look at the President's claims that he is responsible
for reducing the levels of terror.
-- What the Administration has
reduced is the number of airport security screeners, delayed
implementation of port security vulnerability assessments, and given the
Coast Guard even more responsibilities with severe budget constraints.
Nevertheless, we now have a color scheme.
-- In his January 28
State of the Union message to justify his planned war, the President
strongly implied that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda, and claimed
that Iraq already had and was continuing to develop substantial quantities
of biological and chemical weapons. He even cited documents that he said
proved Iraq was buying supplies from African countries. Even as the
President spoke, intelligence agencies had called these documents
suspicious; the documents later proved to be forgeries. Those who argued
there was no justification to go to war with Iraq, no matter how evil its
leader was, were banded by the President's followers to be unpatriotic and
un-American. No intelligence agency claimed there was any connection
between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. In Poland after the war, the President
declared, "We found weapons of mass destruction." But, two months after
the war was officially over, with American troops still dying in Iraq,
Marine Lt. Gen. James Conway, said that extensive searching showed no
weapons of mass destruction exists.
-- At the same time the Bush
administration is de-arming Iraqi civilians -- claiming that guns are too
dangerous for the average citizen -- the NRA-controlled administration is
doing nothing to influence the NRA-controlled Congress to continue the
temporary ban on assault weapons when it expires in September, thus
raising Americans' own terror levels.
-- And then there's John
Ashcroft. The Attorney General, with complete approval and encouragement
from the White House, launched a massive attack upon the Constitution and
civil liberties. Patriot Act I, with its sequel in development stages, has
provisions that make even Saddam Hussein's disregard for human rights look
rather mild. In a scathing report, the Justice Department's own inspector
general blasted the FBI and Justice for massive violation of citizen
rights.
When Bill Clinton came into office, after George H. W.
Bush had led the nation into a series of domestic crises, there were 10
million unemployed, a federal debt that was four times greater than under
Reagan/Bush, higher welfare and crime cases than ever before, massive
environmental and MediCare cuts, and a $290 billion deficit. When Mr.
Clinton left office eight years later, the nation had experienced the
biggest economic expansion in history. More than 22 million new jobs were
created, unemployment dropped to the lowest rate in 30 years, and welfare
cases were down by almost half. He also stopped massive Medicare and
environmental cuts imposed by the previous Republican administration, and
set aside more land for environment than anyone since Teddy Roosevelt a
century earlier. He put 150,000 Americans into AmeriCorps to aid the
impoverished, added the family medical leave policy, special tax credits
for families whose children were in college, provided federal funding for
more than 100,000 teachers and 10,000 police, and allowed two million more
impoverished children to benefit from health coverage. He created stronger
ties to other nations, directed the biggest expansion of the GI Bill of
Rights since World War II, and gave America a $230 billion surplus. A
political witch hunt by conservatives led to several million taxpayer
dollars to investigate Travelgate and Whitewatergate, neither of which had
any substance. A politically-motivated investigation by the incoming
Bushians of theft and malicious violence in the White House and Air Force
One fizzled among massive government documents that proved otherwise.
However, because Intern Monica got down on her knees before Mr.
Clinton who then lied about it, he was disgraced and impeached, though not
convicted.
When George W. Bush gets down on his knees before
corporations and a phalanx of special interest lobbyists who tuck wads of
dollar bills into his elastic campaign fund, then lies about the economy,
innumerable domestic issues, and reasons to send American youth into war,
we just nod our heads and tell him to keep sucking and spinning.
Go figure.
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