President Bush likes to talk about accountability, often in regard to educational standards, but it has been a frequent refrain in other areas.
He claims to have signed the most sweeping corporate accountability reforms since Franklin Roosevelt.
After the Enron scandal, he assured us "company executives with power over 401(k)s will be held accountable for treating their workers' assets as carefully as they treat their own."
And when Worldcom played $3.4 billion worth of accounting tricks, President Bush told us people would be held accountable for misleading shareholders and employees.
He applauded the transfer of indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal as "an unequivocal message to those persons who brought such tragedy and brutality to the Balkans that they will be held accountable for their crimes," and he strongly supported Prime Minister Tony Blair in holding paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland accountable for their their use of violence.
He declared that those responsible for the attacks on 9/11 would be held accountable, and although this is not yet the case for Osama bin Laden, it and the above calls for accountability are right and just. We agree with them all, and - particularly in the case of corporate responsibility - would like to see the assurances of accountability manifested as real consequences for those who do wrong.
There are other areas, however, where President Bush's calls for accountability ring considerably more hollow.
He argued that an invasion of Iraq was necessary in order to hold Saddam Hussein accountable to U.N. resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction. When it turned out there were no WMDs, he failed to accept responsibility for the rush to war, and instead found other reasons to justify the invasion.
After the abhorrent acts of torture at Abu Ghraib were revealed, he told the people of Iraq, "In a democracy, everything is not perfect and mistakes are made. But also in a democracy, those mistakes will be investigated and people will be brought to justice." To date, only low-ranking personnel have been prosecuted, despite the fact that a Pentagon-appointed panel has found responsibility at senior levels of the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House. No one at that level has been held accountable. Donald Rumsfeld, who declared the abuses, "occurred on my watch, and as secretary of defense I am accountable for them, and I take full responsibility", is still Secretary of Defense.
President Bush is quick to talk about accountability, but unconscionably slow to provide it within his administration.
We don't claim he's accountable for economic cycles, but he is responsible for the tax cuts that have made the deficit a sorry legacy for the next generation, and for a costly war in Iraq that has carried us all further into debt.
He chose to take the focus of the war on terror off of al Qaeda and instead shift resources to Iraq. He surrounded himself with advisors who relied on poor intelligence and provided short-sighted assessments of what it would take to rebuild the country following the invasion.
Giving him a second term will not make him accountable for his decisions and their consequences.
We believe giving John Kerry an opportunity to lead is a better choice than allowing George W. Bush to continue as he has.
We believe in Kerry's record of public service. We believe his combat experience gives him a better understanding of the quagmire that Iraq has become. He spent twenty years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, giving him experience and credibility with the international community. He can repair the alliances Bush has damaged, and that will leave us better able to fight the global war on terror.
We believe Kerry will take a responsible approach to the deficit, restoring fiscal discipline and asking the wealthiest members of society to bear more of the tax burden, not less.
He is a leader who believes in nuance, who will be able to deal with mistakes and change course when the situation requires it. He is more likely to surround himself with thoughtful, experienced people, not ideologues.
We believe he will nominate Supreme Court Justices who will uphold modern constitutional law, including important decisions like Roe v. Wade.
We can't say the same about George W. Bush.
As citizens in a republic, we Americans elect people to represent us - members of Congress to represent our local interests in the federal government, a President to unify us, and represent us to the world. A president who will make decisions that will affect us, our children, and other nations.
We must hold our leaders accountable for their actions, because ultimately the accountability resides with us.
George Bush claims he's made this country safer. You've heard the words; here are the actions:
June 2003: With weapons of mass destruction as his justification for the war in Iraq, and no WMD found, President Bush suggests they were looted:
"Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world, and in the regime's final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned."
June 2003: In December 2002, Bush announced a program to have 500,000 medical professionals who would be emergency responders in the event of a biological attack receive small pox vaccinations. Five months later, only 36,217 healthcare workers had been vaccinated.
July 2003: Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice have blamed the CIA and its director George Tenet for the inaccurate information that Bush presented in his 2003 State of the Union address regarding Iraq’s alleged attempts to buy uranium in Africa as part of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program. Within hours, Tenet issued a press release accepting full responsibility.
However, in September 2002 the CIA tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British government to remove the uranium claim from an intelligence document. Four months later Bush used the same claim in his annual speech to the nation. Clearly, the CIA had early doubts about the information.
July 2003: The Bush administration pledged for the first time that the United States will not torture terrorism suspects or treat them cruelly in an attempt to extract information, a move that comes as the deaths of two Afghan prisoners in U.S. custody are being investigated as homicides.
The larger of the studies, prepared for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and made public today by the Rand Corporation, found that police officers and firefighters agreed that "they do not know what they need to be protected against, what form of protection is appropriate and where to look for such protection."The report, which surveyed 190 emergency workers in 40 cities and towns in the nation, said a "majority of emergency responders feel vastly underprepared and underprotected for the consequences of chemical, biological or radiological terrorist attacks."
In his May 1 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush declared: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." The headline on the White House site above Bush's May 1 speech is "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended."Since then, a search of Bush speeches on the White House Web site indicates, the president had not spoken of the guerrilla fighting in Iraq as combat until this interview; he had earlier spoken of the "cessation of combat" in Iraq.
The president's comments came in response to a reporter's question about Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press" program that Iraq was the "geographic base" of the terrorists behind the attacks on New York and Washington.
September 2003: After failing to build a substantial coalition for the invasion of Iraq, President Bush heads to U.N. to ask for money and troops:
According to the officials involved in drafting the speech, for an audience they know will range from the skeptical to the angry, Mr. Bush will acknowledge no mistakes in planning for postwar security and reconstruction in Iraq. Privately, however, many officials are acknowledging that the Pentagon was unprepared for the scope and duration of the continuing guerrilla-style attacks against the American-led alliance and the newly appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
October 2003: The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials.
The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said.Despite those findings, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that "we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
Moreover, Vice President Dick Cheney said in April, on the day Baghdad fell, that Iraq's oil production could hit 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year, even though the task force had determined that Iraq was generating less than 2.4 million barrels a day before the war.
Now, as the Bush administration requests $20.3 billion from Congress for reconstruction next year, the chief reasons cited for the high price tag are sabotage of oil equipment — and the poor state of oil infrastructure already documented by the task force.
The money, part of the White House's request for $87 billion in supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been spent on the weapons search, the officials said.
January 2004: President Bush opposes granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
January 2004: The President on Meet the Press on NBC:
Russert: On Iraq, the vice president said, “we would be greeted as liberators.”President Bush: Yeah.
Russert: It's now nearly a year, and we are in a very difficult situation. Did we miscalculate how we would be treated and received in Iraq?
President Bush: Well, I think we are welcomed in Iraq. I'm not exactly sure, given the tone of your questions, we're not. We are welcomed in Iraq.
Clarke, who retired as the White House counter-terrorism coordinator last year, accused the president of putting pressure on him to find evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, despite being told repeatedly that there was no link."I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism," said Mr Clarke.
"Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."
The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.
May 2004: One year ago, Bush donned a flight suit, landed on an aircraft carrier and declared "victory" beneath a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." He said:
"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," he said. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on."While at least 594 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since the carrier speech, compared with 138 beforehand, the White House insisted yesterday that major combat has not resumed in the country.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, pressed repeatedly yesterday on how the fighting could not be considered "major," described the violence as "certain areas in Iraq that are dangerous" and "certain areas in Iraq where there are pockets of resistance."
June 2004: Iraq costs are $119.4 billion and rising., Oh and:
In late 2002, months before the Iraq war started, the Bush administration rebuked its own chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, for publicly estimating that a war in Iraq might cost $100 billion to $200 billion. In December 2002, Mitch Daniels, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the cost more likely would be $50 billion to $60 billion — which now looks like a fraction of the actual expenses.
The first is one of investigation: Major allegations of wrongdoing, including some touching on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, have yet to be explored by any arms-length probe. The second concerns accountability. Although several official panels have documented failings by senior military officers and their superiors in Washington, those responsible face no sanction of any kind, even as low-ranking personnel are criminally prosecuted.
But documents prepared by Defense Department officials and given to lawmakers show that fewer than 100,000 will be trained by the end of this year.The Pentagon also said on Monday that only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty now have undergone training.
The documents, obtained by Reuters, show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. And it will be July 2006 before the administration's new goal of 135,000 fully trained police is met.
October 2004: In the face of a report that confirms there were no weapons of mass destruction, and with over 1,000 American casualties, costs at $160 billion, and the creation of an environment that actually fosters terrorism and anti-American sentiment, George Bush says he'd do it all again:
"Based on all the information we have today, I believe we were right to take action, and America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison," the president said.
And a new study puts the civilian death toll in Iraq over 100,000.
Try to find the acts of compassion from our compassionate conservative president:
“I applaud the Supreme Court for recognizing the value of diversity on our Nation's campuses. Diversity is one of America's greatest strengths.”
July 2003: The Washington Monthly identifies a growing divide between scientific fact and the GOP.
While Bush, who got only 9 percent of the Black vote in 2000, has shunned meeting with established Black groups, he has reached out to carefully chosen minority audiences and to civil rights advocates less critical of his policies.
"I am mindful that we're all sinners," the president said, and borrowing from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, added: "And I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own."
August 2003: Compassionate Conservatism is dead. Long live Calculated Conservatism!
President Bush is running for re-election as a "compassionate conservative" who has sought to bring a new Republican approach to poverty and other social ills.But supporters, some administration officials among them, acknowledge that Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda has fallen so far short of its ambitious goals, in a number of cases undercut by pressure from his conservative backers, that they fear he will be politically vulnerable on the issue in 2004.
November 2003: Bush signs legislation banning late-term abortions, and starts along that slippery slope to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
November 2003: Bush talks big on Veterans Day and then screws veterans over the very next day:
The morning after President George W. Bush delivered his Veterans Day message at Arlington National Cemetery, the administration's Office of Management and Budget - in writing - opposed an additional $1.3 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs health care budget and reiterated its call to charge many veterans seeking treatment at VA a $250 annual enrollment fee and to raise the pharmacy co-payment from $7 to $15.
January 2004: The next big idea from the Bush administration? $1.5 billion for a "healthy marriage" initiative.
June 2004: Three and a half years into his four year term, Bush admits that condoms stop the spread of AIDS.
"I can't believe the president actually used the C-word," said Amy Coen, the president of Population Action International, which has long backed birth control and AIDS prevention in underdeveloped countries. "That's not one that comes easily to him. But it's one thing to use the word and another thing to actually fund it."
July 2004: Bush withdrew $34 million in promised funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) the world's largest international source of funding for population and reproductive health programs in developing countries for the third year in a row, and he does it based on unproven allegations.
August 2004: Federal data shows that children in charter schools are performing worse on math and reading tests than their counterparts in regular public schools. It's official: Bush leaves children behind.
From what is surely the most neoconservative cabinet ever, a cast of characters that never ceases to appall and dismay:
June 2003: It’s a flashback to September 11, 2001, and Dick Cheney is running the government.
July 2003: Donald Rumsfeld is a rabid right-winger, despite his poetry prowess:
Evasion Haiku
I’m working my way
over to figuring out
how I won’t answer.
September 2003: Tom Ridge announces threat inflation:
”... the fact is that our level of security at yellow today is better than it was a year ago, and our level of security at yellow today will be better a year from now. So the threshold to go from yellow to orange will be higher. That does make a difference.”
March 2004: Dick Cheney emerges from his undisclosed location to inform us he’s not going anywhere.
There is "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, according to a new staff report released this morning by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.Although Osama bin Laden briefly explored the idea of forging ties with Iraq in the mid-1990s, the terrorist leader was hostile to Hussein's secular government, and Iraq never responded to requests for help in providing training camps or weapons, the panel found in the first of two reports issued today. (CNN)
September 2004: Dick Cheney, still full of class, announces that the U.S. will suffer a devastating hit if John Kerry becomes president.
Looking for WMD? You won't find them here, since we'll be inspecting President Bush's changing tune on Iraq in Monday's final countdown for War, on Terror and Otherwise. In the meantime, here are some other prime examples of Manipulation and Deceit from the Bush administration:
July 2003: In the last several months, the Environmental Protection Agency has delayed or refused to do analysis on proposals that conflict with the president's air pollution agenda, say members of Congress, their aides, environmental advocates and agency employees.
But supporters, some administration officials among them, acknowledge that Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda has fallen so far short of its ambitious goals, in a number of cases undercut by pressure from his conservative backers, that they fear he will be politically vulnerable on the issue in 2004.At issue is Mr. Bush's willingness to demand financing from Congress on his signature "compassionate conservative" issues, like education reform and AIDS, with the same energy he has spent to fight for tax cuts and the Iraq war.
Critics say the pattern has been consistent: The president, in eloquent speeches that make headlines, calls for millions or even billions of dollars for new initiatives, then fails to follow through and push hard for the programs on Capitol Hill.
November 2003: President Bush flubs a speech about China, so the White House changes the transcript.
December 2003: President Bush nabs a fabulous photo op with the troops in Bagdad and a tasty-looking plastic turkey.
February 2004: We note that you can't find Executive Order 13233 posted on the White House website along with (presumably) all the other Executive Orders President Bush has signed. EO 13233 gives former presidents and their assignees the right to prevent the release of presidential papers. It also allows a sitting president to block the release of a former president's records, even after that former president has signaled his approval.
March 2004: Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.
The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.
September 2004: Research doesn't back your policies? For the Bush administration, the answer is clear: stop collecting the data.
The Department of Education is sharply cutting back on the information it collects about charter schools for a periodic report that provides a detailed national profile of public, private and charter schools.Confirmation of the change, originally relayed in an e-mail message to a university professor, came on Wednesday from a spokeswoman for the Education Department. Last week, the first national comparison of test scores showed students in charter schools largely trailing comparable students in traditional public schools.
The federal report, known as the Schools and Staffing Survey, provides a wealth of information about charter schools, including the location and number of such schools, their share of low-income students, the qualifications of principals and teachers and the ratio of teachers to students.
October 2004: President Bush assures us that Pakistan's A.Q. Khan -- the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program who was caught selling secrets on the global black market -- had been "brought to justice" when in reality Khan is living in a villa and was pardoned this year by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. None of Khan's co-conspirators have been brought to trial.
From perhaps the most goof-prone president in history, a rundown of embarrassing and just plain stupid moments.
October 2003: Paul Krugman identifies the President’s “willful ignorance.”
According to The New York Times, President Bush was genuinely surprised to learn from moderate Islamic leaders that they had become deeply distrustful of American intentions. The report on the "perception gap" suggests that the leader of the war on terror has no idea how badly that war — which must, ultimately, be a war for hearts and minds — is going.Mr. Bush's ignorance may reflect his lack of curiosity: "The best way to get the news," he says, "is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff." Two words: emperor, clothes.
But there's something broader going on: a sort of willful ignorance, supposedly driven by moral concerns but actually reflecting domestic politics. Surely it's important to understand how others see us, but a new, post 9/11 version of political correctness has made it difficult even to discuss their points of view. Any American who tries to go beyond "America good, terrorists evil," who tries to understand — not condone — the growing world backlash against the United States, faces furious attacks delivered in a tone of high moral indignation.
January 2004: In visits to New Orleans and Atlanta, Bush portrays himself as an heir to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., saying that he shared with the slain civil rights leader a belief in the transforming power of faith in American life. Um, G.W.? You ain't no MLKJ. He stood up for the poor and oppressed. You, well, let's just say you do not.
January 2004: Bush’s State of the Union speech rings hollow with the New York Times:
President Bill Clinton always pleased the public when he stuffed his State of the Union address with lots and lots of proposals, many small and symbolic. Mr. Bush, who devoted an entire paragraph to decrying the use of steroids in sports, stands second to nobody when it comes to tiny symbolic gestures. Many of his larger thoughts, meanwhile, were vague to the point of meaninglessness.
February 2004: In the wake of violence in Iraq, Bush tells Tim Russert that the American forces have been “welcomed” in Iraq:
”Well, I think we are welcomed in Iraq. I'm not exactly sure, given the tone of your questions, we're not. We are welcomed in Iraq.”
April 2004: Bush lives the unexamined life. Oh, and he doesn’t make mistakes, either.
President Bush was asked, during a very brief session with reporters yesterday, about the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo he received on domestic terrorism. He responded with the familiar White House complaint about lack of specificity in the C.I.A.'s warnings — although the memo mentioned a plot, possibly involving hijacked planes and New York City. The most striking thing about the president's comment, however, was his bottom line: that he did everything he could. Over the last few weeks we have heard lawmakers and officials from two administrations talk about their feelings of responsibility, about how they compulsively re-examine the events leading up to 9/ll, asking themselves whether they could have done anything to avert the terrible disaster that day. It is beginning to seem that the only person free of that kind of self-examination is the man who was chief executive when the attacks occurred.
July 2004: Bush launched an attack against Fidel Castro and his alleged promotion of sex tourism in Cuba:
"The dictator welcomes sex tourism," Bush told a room of law enforcement officials in Florida, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Here's how he bragged about the industry," Bush said. "This is his quote: 'Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.'"As it turns out, Bush had lifted that quotation not from an actual Castro speech but rather from a 2001 essay written by then Dartmouth University undergraduate Charles Trumbull. In the essay, Trumbull did appear to quote a Castro speech about prostitution. Sadly, the student made the quotation up.
September 2004: President Bush repeatedly confused terrorist Abu Nidal and Abul Abbas in at least campaign speeches.
For a President spectacularly unprepared for the nuances of foreign policy, Bush’s tenure has been marked largely by his actions on the international stage. The list of blunders, big and small, is long and telling.
June 2003: The Bush administration withdraws $34 million in promised funding from the United Nations Population Fund.
The Bush administration withdrew the aid because it claimed the Fund provides aid to Chinese government agencies that force women to have abortions – even though a U.S. State Department fact-finding mission disproved these allegations. Meanwhile, millions of women in the 142 countries that the UNFPA provides family planning and reproductive health services in continue to suffer and die.
This represents an extreme dereliction of duty by the world’s only superpower, the ultimate in international arrogance. The Bush administration would rather have the perpetuators of war crimes go free than face the possibility that American soldiers who commit abuses could be indicted by the international community.
June 2003: Bush’s America acts just like him: childish, arrogant and overreaching.
The President reigns over a Washington that embarrasses itself by renaming French fries in the House cafeteria, lies about a war in which nearly 200 Americans and thousands of Iraqi civilians have died, and, with a post-war Iraq in shambles, moves on with swords drawn towards Syria and Iran.Once again Americans are fearful as they travel throughout the world. Even worse, we are embarrassed to admit where we've come from - disheartened by our government's actions in the world and despairing of the woe we have wrought.
June 2003: Bush turns prisoners of war into “unlawful combatants” and sidesteps Geneva Convention rules on the humane treatment of prisoners. The prisoners are denied rights under U.S. federal law and do not have access to federal courts.
Bush’s actions in Cuba make a mockery of the goodness that he claims America stands for. A country that violates international law and treats prisoners who have not been tried or found guilty with such injustice is no better than the terrorists who violently take the lives of the innocent. This is not how a modern, democratic society is supposed to function. We are no longer victims, but perpetrators as well.
Bush can’t have it both ways. He claims that America is the protector of freedom and democracy, but he refuses to act when human rights are grossly violated, when nations are begging for American help, when Liberians are placing the dead bodies of their loved ones at the gates of the American embassy.The U.S. may be acting according to its strategic interests, but Bush’s rhetoric suggests that the mighty, benevolent America does otherwise.
September 2003: A Congressional report announces that the United States maintained its dominance in the international arms market in 2002, especially in sales to developing nations. No mention of hypocrisy, but the report is dripping with it.
October 2003: We are shocked, shocked to discover that the U.S. has a bad image in the Muslim world. A Bush panel recommends better presentation of Washington’s side of the issues.
We agree with the panel that the root of the problem might very well indeed be the American policies themselves. What are we going to advertise to the Muslim world – that they should like us because we are the protectors of democracy? Bush’s arrogant behavior towards the rest of the world during the build-up to the Iraq campaign and continuing to the present has proven to the world that our commitment to democracy is casual at best. It’s a convenient way to couch our true intentions, which involve oil, American business interests and a conservative plan to oust Saddam Hussein that evolved long before Bush announced he would run for president.Bush’s continuing swagger and outright hypocrisy cannot be explained away by catchy public relations slogans. What will change minds in the Muslim world and beyond is for the U.S. act as a partner instead of a bully, a builder instead of a protector of its own interests and anything other than an out of control occupation force.
December 2003: Bush, terribly misinformed, believes “that the growth of democracy is inevitable. It is not.”
December 2003: Bush restarts the arms race. Because those negotiations are going so well in North Korea and Iran.
December 2003: Three ways to criticize Bush’s foreign policy: Bush as the evil creature of corporate interests; Bush’s preemption doctrine as weakening international legitimacy and fraying global alliances; Bush’s implementation is not up to snuff – his grand strategy is hampered by his lack of follow-through on details.
March 2004: The three pillars of Bush’s foreign policy: First, America will defend the peace by opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes (grade: C minus). Second, we will preserve the peace by fostering an era of good relations among the world's great powers (grade: F). And third, we will extend the peace by seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and prosperity across the globe (grade: D).
May 2004: Bush exhibits a total lack of humility in response to the abuses at Abu Gharib.
May 2004: The WMDs turn up in North Korea, not Iraq.
The discovery that North Korea may have supplied uranium to Libya poses an immediate challenge to the White House: while President Bush is preoccupied on the other side of the world, an economically desperate nation may be engaging in exactly the kind of nuclear proliferation that the president says he went to war in Iraq to halt.Yet to listen to many in the White House, concern about North Korea's nuclear program brings little of the urgency that surrounded the decision 14 months ago to oust Saddam Hussein. When Mr. Bush has been asked about North Korea in recent months, he has emphasized his patience. He does not refer to the intelligence estimates that North Korea has at least two nuclear weapons, or to the debate within the American intelligence community about whether North Korea has spent the past 18 months building more.
Notes on President Bush's stewardship of the environment:
August 2003: The Bush administration relaxed its clean air rules today to allow thousands of industrial plants to make upgrades without installing pollution controls, arguing that other regulations were in place to reduce emissions.
Utilities, which sought the new rule, said it would allow them to make improvements that would ensure the reliability of the power supply, a prominent issue after the Aug. 14 power failure that led to the biggest blackout in the nation's history.In one of its most far-reaching environmental actions, the Bush administration signed a rule that will allow thousands of power plants, refineries, pulp and paper mills, chemical plants and other industrial facilities to make extensive upgrades that increase pollutants without having to install new antipollution devices. The rule, for which industries have lobbied the administration for two years, could save them billions of dollars. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that more than 17,000 plants will be affected.
That would mean hunters and merchants who trade in animal skins, tusks and other body parts would be able to go after their prized prey unquestioned.Administration officials contend revenue generated from the move would help fund conservation efforts both in the United States and abroad.
November 2003: The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture announced an unprecedented plan to entrust testing for water pollution from atrazine, one of the most heavily used weedkillers in the country, to the chemical's manufacturer.
The EPA called the plan for monitoring by Syngenta Crop Protection "an innovative protective approach."
November 2003: A change in enforcement policy will lead the Environmental Protection Agency to drop investigations into 50 power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act, lawyers at the agency who were briefed on the decision this week said.
The lawyers said in interviews on Wednesday that the decision meant the cases would be judged under new, less stringent rules set to take effect next month, rather than the stricter rules in effect at the time the investigations began.
May 2004: As the nation approaches the year's first holiday weekend when families head for the mountains, seashore, and battlefield monuments, there's a groundswell of concern (bordering on revolt) among current and retired US Park Service employees over the condition of national parks.
Despite the efforts and rhetoric of Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Park Service Director Fran Miainella, the backlog of much-needed park maintenance continues to grow, these employees say.Insiders have leaked a Park Service memo ordering park superintendents to refer to budget-driven program cuts as "service level adjustments." Such adjustments, the memo suggests, could include closing visitor centers on some holidays, cutting back on ranger talks and tours, eliminating lifeguard services at beaches, and closing parks two days a week.
June 2004: A research firm that the Bush administration commissioned to analyze its plan to lower emissions from coal-fired power plants compared the plan with two competing legislative proposals and concluded in a report released Wednesday that the administration's plan was the weakest.
At the invitation of the environmental coalition Clear the Air, the international research firm Abt Associates, which often conducts studies for the Environmental Protection Agency, used the same methodology in assessing all three. It found that the administration's plan, called the Clear Skies Act, would save as many as 14,000 lives but that the other bills would save more - 16,000 in one case and 22,000 in the other.
July 2004: Governors would have to petition the federal government to block road-building in remote areas of national forests under a Bush administration proposal to boost logging.
Environmentalists say the proposed rule change, outlined this week in the Federal Register, would signal the end of the so-called roadless rule, which blocks road construction in nearly one-third of national forests as a way to prevent logging and other commercial activity in backcountry woods.
July 2004: The Environmental Protection Agency will no longer have to consult with wildlife agencies before deciding whether pesticides are likely to harm threatened or endangered species, according to rules issued by the Bush administration yesterday.
Under current regulations, the EPA must get written approval from the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service before ruling that a new pesticide would not "adversely affect" imperiled plants and animals. Bush officials said the new rules would streamline the process by entrusting EPA scientists with the job of deciding how pest controls affect endangered species.
August 2004: Mountaintop removal is booming again, and the practice of dumping mining debris into streambeds is explicitly protected, thanks to a small wording change to federal environmental regulations. U.S. officials simply reclassified the debris from objectionable "waste" to legally acceptable "fill."
The "fill rule," as the May 2002 rule change is now known, is a case study of how the Bush administration has attempted to reshape environmental policy in the face of fierce opposition from environmentalists, citizens groups and political opponents. Rather than proposing broad changes or drafting new legislation, administration officials often have taken existing regulations and made subtle tweaks that carry large consequences.
Highlights - or rather, low points - from President Bush's handling of the economy:
July 2003: White House budget director Joshua Bolten says not to worry: “The U.S. economy is poised to return to healthy, sustained growth….There is a substantial stimulative effect to the tax cuts that have been introduced.”
August 2003: He cut the pay raises that most civilian federal employees were to receive in January 2004.
Officials were unwilling to provide cost figures or details and would say only that Bush will direct the government to immediately begin research and development to establish a human presence or base on the moon, with the goal of having that lead to a manned mission to Mars.
January 2004: Bush pushed a package of tax credits that he said would create 2.5 million jobs by February. About 294,000 jobs have been added since the tax cuts took effect last June.
August 2004: The U.S. trade deficit hit a record $55.8 billion in June as the country's foreign oil bill surged to an all-time high.
September 2004: The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.
A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.
And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.
And there's more: during the Bush years, take-home pay, as a share of the economy, has fallen to its lowest level since 1929, when the government started keeping records. Corporate profits have grown faster - and wages and salaries far less - than in all other eight recoveries since World War II.Mr. Bush tries to keep the focus on the job growth in the last year. But that has done little to erase the monthly losses that dominated the first nearly two years of the recovery. And the rate of job creation lately has barely kept pace with growth in the labor force. It has been well below the average of all post-World War II recoveries in all but March and April, when it was just above average. Last month, the economy needed to add about 300,000 jobs, rather than 96,000, just to hit the average.
With ten days left before the election, we offer these sterling examples from President Bush's efforts to take care of his corporate constiuency:
August 2003: The Environmental Protection Agency relied on anecdotes from industries it regulates, not comprehensive data, when it claimed that relaxing air pollution rules for industrial plants would cut emissions and reduce health risks.
September 2003: The Bush Administration applies backdoor techniques to privatize air traffic control.
September 2003: Pharmaceutical companies lobby to ensure that the new prescription drug benefit doesn't allow the negotiation of bulk discounts, as Medicare does.
December 2003: To date, his administration caught and punished fewer polluters per month than the two previous administrations.
January 2004: Under pressure from appliance manufacturers, the Bush Administration tried to weaken energy-efficiency standards for new air conditioners, standards which could save American consumers $20 billion and avoid the need for 200 new electricity plants by 2030.
March 2004: Bush nominated a former lobbyist for the mining and cattle industries with no experience as a judge for a lifetime appointment on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California, which rules on many land use cases in the West.
August 2004: A former top mining company executive is running the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and has rescinded more than a half-dozen proposals intended to make coal miners' jobs safer, including steps to limit miners' exposure to toxic chemicals.
No time to read through 500+ reasons before election day? Here are the highlights from Bullying and Arrogance:
June 2003: The Bush administration refuses to send to the U.S. Senate for ratification the treaty that created the International Criminal Court – a body which uses international law to try individuals charged with genocide, war crimes, and other widespread crimes against civilians.
No doubt Bush believes that American soldiers would not commit human rights violations. But there are some survivors in a village called My Lai who would beg to differ. Perhaps if the American soldiers who slaughtered civilians in My Lai had known they could be indicted for their actions, they might not have shot so indiscriminately. And if policy-makers could have been indicted, they may not have left such unfit soldiers in the field.
That was nearly a year before the abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light.
September 2003: The Justice Department investigates whether Bush administration officials broke the law by revealing the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative whose husband disparaged claims by the White House that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
October 2003: Bush declines a customary joint press conference after his address to the Australian Federal Parliament:
The media event, which normally allows two or three questions from Australian media and an equal number from the visiting press, would have been the only official opportunity for Australian journalists to quiz Mr. Bush on the Iraq war and its aftermath.It would also be the only opportunity to ask the US President about the two Australian citizens being detained without charge at Guantanamo Bay.
Australian journalists have also been denied any place in a so-called "close-up media pool" that will follow Mr. Bush on all his official stops on the day. All positions in the four-member pool have been allocated to members of the White House press corps.
The decision, which ordered that Padilla be released from military custody within 30 days, could force the government to try the "dirty bomb'' plot suspect in civilian courts.In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.
Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel wants the high court to consider whether the government acted improperly by secretly jailing him after the attacks and keeping his court fight private. He is supported by more than 20 journalism organizations and media companies.Solicitor General Theodore Olson told justices in a one-paragraph filing that "this matter pertains to information that is required to be kept under seal."
Justices sometimes are asked to keep parts of cases private because of information sensitive for national security or other reasons, but it's unusual for an entire filing to be kept secret.
April 2004: George Bush campaigns on the taxpayer's dime:
As the deadline for filing tax returns approached, news releases from the Internal Revenue Service included a little something extra, a sentence promoting the administration's tax policies that said, "America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation."
Within months of the Sept. 11 attacks, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales reportedly wrote President Bush a memo about the terrorism fight and prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions."In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Gonzales wrote, according to the report in Newsweek magazine. Secretary of State Colin Powell "hit the roof" when he read the memo, according to the account.
August 2004: In a significant shift in U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear weapons materials:
For several years the United States and other nations have pursued the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. At an arms-control meeting this week in Geneva, the Bush administration told other nations it still supported a treaty, but not verification.
September 2004: White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday that President Bush views America as a ''10-year-old child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a parent.
Lawmakers of both parties say the measures are needed to prevent retaliation against such whistleblowers, who reveal threats to public health, safety and security.But the administration says the bill unconstitutionally interferes with the president's ability to control and manage the government.
George Bush suffered an embarrassing rebellion in the ranks yesterday when the founder of the conservative Christian Coalition said the White House had dismissed the very idea of US casualties in Iraq during the run-up to the war.In an interview with CNN, the movement's founder, Pat Robertson, described a conversation with Mr Bush shortly before the war in which Mr Robertson voiced his fears for American troops, and suggested it was time to prepare the country for loss.
"I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties,'" Mr Robertson said. He said Mr Bush had replied: "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
The rare criticism from Mr Robertson, who otherwise remains an ardent supporter of the White House, was not the only act of betrayal by those claiming proximity to Mr Bush.
Six of the president's kin have created a website called bushrelativesforkerry.com dedicated to the defeat of their famous relative. "Because blood is thinner than oil," the front page says. "Please don't vote for our cousin."
The six are all descendants of Mary Bush House, the sister of Prescott Bush, the founder of the political dynasty and George W's grandfather. None has had any contact with the president, although a few knew his father, the first president Bush.
They accuse their cousin of gross arrogance, a misplaced sense of entitlement, and failing to live up to Christian values.
"As much as I'd like to vote for a relative running for president, I just can't," writes Hilary House.
But the family feud, though annoying for Mr Bush, is unlikely to have anything near the impact of the criticism from a figure with Mr Robert son's influence on the Christian right. (The Guardian)
Greetings, potential Nader voters, Jane here. The first thing you need to know is, I've been there. I was there in 2000 (Washington: Gore 50.16%, Bush 44.58%, Nader 4.14%) and in 1996 (Oregon: Clinton 59.71%, Dole 26.82%, Perot 11.20%, Nader 1.55%). That's right - I voted for Ralph Nader in two of the three presidential elections for which I've been eligible.
This year I'm voting for John Kerry.
In 1996, deciding to vote for Nader was easy. He was running as a Green, and I believe in many of the planks in their platform. Clinton had a massive lead in the polls, and the Republican-driven welfare reform bill he had just signed moved him so far toward the center that he no longer seemed all that different from Bob Dole. It was the perfect time to vote on principle rather than out of practicality.
2000 was a different story. Nader's rhetoric about "the twins" didn't ring as true as it had four years ago. The polls were running close nationally, but Gore was doing well in Washington State, and ultimately I decided it was safe to vote for the candidate who best represented my values. The fact that I even had to stop and calculate whether I was voting "safely" just emphasized the flaws in the two-party, winner-take-all electoral system we have. And then there was Florida.
Like 1996, I have an easy decision this year, not because it's a simple matter to chose practicalities over ideals, but because they've aligned.
I still believe in reform of the two-party system and the value of every progressive vote; I just don't believe in relying on a presidential election every four years to make the point.
A president's administration is shaped by the Congress that supports or opposes him. Apart from the PATRIOT Act passed in a rush of post-9/11 fervor, Bush's agenda - from tax cuts to faith-based initiatives to the invasion of Iraq - didn't really build up steam until Democrats lost control of the Senate in the November 2002 election.
I want to see Kerry in the White House, and by 2006 I want to see a Congress with a Progressive Caucus composed of more than just Democrats. And I want it to have enough members to swing a vote.
I want to see Kerry nominating federal judges and justices to the Supreme Court who won't turn back the clock, and I want to see Congress approving his nominees.
Voting for Nader again won't get me what I want.
If we're serious about changing government, we can't settle for a symbolic vote. We have to put someone in the White House who can work with progressive legislators - and then we need to get busy in our Congressional districts to make sure there are plenty around.
So much for being a uniter:
The enormous wealth gap between white families and black and Hispanic families grew larger after the most recent recession, a private analysis of government data has found.White households had a median net worth of greater than $88,000 in 2002, 11 times that of Hispanic households and more than 14 times that of black households, the Pew Hispanic Center said in the study, being released Monday.
[...]
According to the group's analysis of Census Bureau data, nearly one-third of black families and 26 percent of Hispanic families were in debt or had no net assets, compared with 11 percent of white families. (New York Times)
From an editorial in today's New York Times, "Imagining America if George Bush Chose the Supreme Court":
Abortion might be a crime in most states. Gay people could be thrown in prison for having sex in their homes. States might be free to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money to help spread the gospel. The Constitution might no longer protect inmates from being brutalized by prison guards. Family and medical leave and environmental protections could disappear.It hardly sounds like a winning platform, and of course President Bush isn't openly espousing these positions. But he did say in his last campaign that his favorite Supreme Court justices were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and the nominations he has made to the lower courts bear that out. Justices Scalia and Thomas are often called "conservative," but that does not begin to capture their philosophies. Both vehemently reject many of the core tenets of modern constitutional law.
For years, Justices Scalia and Thomas have been lobbing their judicial Molotov cocktails from the sidelines, while the court proceeded on its moderate-conservative path. But given the ages and inclinations of the current justices, it is quite possible that if Mr. Bush is re-elected, he will get three appointments, enough to forge a new majority that would turn the extreme Scalia-Thomas worldview into the law of the land.
There is every reason to believe Roe v. Wade would quickly be overturned. Mr. Bush ducked a question about his views on Roe in the third debate. But he sent his base a coded message in the second debate, with an odd reference to the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott, an 1857 decision upholding slavery, is rarely mentioned today, except in right-wing legal circles, where it is often likened to Roe. (Anti-abortion theorists say that the court refused to see blacks as human in Dred Scott and that the same thing happened to fetuses in Roe.) For more than a decade, Justices Scalia and Thomas have urged their colleagues to reverse Roe and "get out of this area, where we have no right to be."
If Roe is lost, the Center for Reproductive Rights warns, there's a good chance that 30 states, home to more than 70 million women, will outlaw abortions within a year; some states may take only weeks. Criminalization will sweep well beyond the Bible Belt: Ohio could be among the first to drive young women to back-alley abortions and prosecute doctors.
If Justices Scalia and Thomas become the Constitution's final arbiters, the rights of racial minorities, gay people and the poor will be rolled back considerably. Both men dissented from the Supreme Court's narrow ruling upholding the University of Michigan's affirmative-action program, and appear eager to dismantle a wide array of diversity programs. When the court struck down Texas' "Homosexual Conduct" law last year, holding that the police violated John Lawrence's right to liberty when they raided his home and arrested him for having sex there, Justices Scalia and Thomas sided with the police.
They were just as indifferent to the plight of "M.L.B.," a poor mother of two from Mississippi. When her parental rights were terminated, she wanted to appeal, but Mississippi would not let her because she could not afford a court fee of $2,352.36. The Supreme Court held that she had a constitutional right to appeal. But Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented, arguing that if M.L.B. didn't have the money, her children would have to be put up for adoption.
That sort of cruelty is a theme running through many Scalia-Thomas opinions. A Louisiana inmate sued after he was shackled and then punched and kicked by two prison guards while a supervisor looked on. The court ruled that the beating, which left the inmate with a swollen face, loosened teeth and a cracked dental plate, violated the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. But Justices Scalia and Thomas insisted that the Eighth Amendment was not violated by the "insignificant" harm the inmate suffered.
This year, the court heard the case of a man with a court appearance in rural Tennessee who was forced to either crawl out of his wheelchair and up to the second floor or be carried up by court officers he worried would drop him. The man crawled up once, but when he refused to do it again, he was arrested. The court ruled that Tennessee violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by not providing an accessible courtroom, but Justices Scalia and Thomas said it didn't have to.
A Scalia-Thomas court would dismantle the wall between church and state. Justice Thomas gave an indication of just how much in his opinion in a case upholding Ohio's school voucher program. He suggested, despite many Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, that the First Amendment prohibition on establishing a religion may not apply to the states. If it doesn't, the states could adopt particular religions, and use tax money to proselytize for them. Justices Scalia and Thomas have also argued against basic rights of criminal suspects, like the Miranda warning about the right to remain silent.
President Bush claims to want judges who will apply law, not make it. But Justices Scalia and Thomas are judicial activists, eager to use the fast-expanding federalism doctrine to strike down laws that protect people's rights. Last year, they dissented from a decision upholding the Family and Medical Leave Act, which guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one. They said Congress did not have that power. They have expressed a desire to strike down air pollution and campaign finance laws for similar reasons.
Neither President Bush nor John Kerry has said much about Supreme Court nominations, wary of any issue whose impact on undecided voters cannot be readily predicted. But voters have to think about the Supreme Court. If President Bush gets the chance to name three young justices who share the views of Justices Scalia and Thomas, it could fundamentally change America for decades.
The Indianapolis Star endorsed President Bush. That isn't much of a surprise, nor are the first half dozen paragraphs of the endorsement, which claim, with some truth, that "Kerry is running close with the president mostly because he is not the president."
Then things get interesting:
Most Americans, along with editorials in this space, supported the president's decision to go to war against Iraq.That's when the president's vulnerabilities began to surface. He accepted flawed intelligence about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and when the truth became known, stubbornly refused to acknowledge it. A little more than two months after the war started, he flew to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific and gave Americans the impression the war was all but over. More than 940 of the nearly 1,100 American casualties in the war have occurred since the "Mission Accomplished" sign was displayed on the flight deck of that aircraft carrier.
The task of rebuilding Iraq was poorly planned, and the lack of a coherent approach has been sharply criticized by thoughtful stalwarts of the president's own party, including Indiana's senior U.S. senator, Richard Lugar.
The president adamantly refuses to listen to those who question him. He has insulated himself from voices he doesn't want to hear and suggests that those who question his Iraq policies are playing into the hands of the enemy.
Meanwhile, the president, who now labels John Kerry the master of flip-flops, played politics with steel tariffs, presided over an economic policy that is producing huge budget deficits, and expanded Medicare into one of the more expensive social programs ever known. He has mocked his critics, and in the process has proved to be a divider rather than a unifier, feeding the growing national tendency for Americans to work against, rather than with, each other in developing solutions to common problems.
In spite of this, the editors urge:
This is not a time to take a risk on untested and poorly defined leadership. It is not the time to change course on the economy. It is not the time for new, expansive and expensive government programs and regulations.It is time for experience and resolve, which is why George Bush should be re-elected for a second term. Without a re-election facing him, the president can move to do those things he said he would do in his first presidential campaign:
He can work to unify the country. He can listen to and respect people who disagree with him. He can acknowledge errors, and what he will do to remedy those mistakes. Accomplishing those things are what true leaders do. They are things this president must do during his second term.
President Bush had four years to unify the country, to listen to and respect people who disagree with him, to acknowledge errors and remedy mistakes. He didn't, and we have no reason to believe he would do so in a second term.
From today's Washington Post, "Scowcroft Is Critical of Bush - Ex-National Security Adviser Calls Iraq a 'Failing Venture'":
Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, was highly critical of the current president's handling of foreign policy in an interview published this week, saying that the current President Bush is "mesmerized" by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, that Iraq is a "failing venture" and that the administration's unilateralist approach has harmed relations between Europe and the United States.Scowcroft's remarks, reported in London's Financial Times, are unusual coming from a leading Republican less than three weeks before a highly contested election. In the first Bush administration, Scowcroft was a mentor to Condoleezza Rice, the current national security adviser, and he is regarded as a close associate of the president's father.
Scowcroft declined a request for an interview yesterday. When asked if he had been quoted correctly, his office responded with a statement: "He has been and is a supporter of President Bush and thinks he is the best qualified to lead our country."
Scowcroft's remarks to the Financial Times reflect a sense of unease among some GOP foreign policy experts about the White House's handling of foreign policy -- especially those who, such as Scowcroft, are considered part of what is called the realist wing. Realists, in contrast to those who are called neoconservatives, prefer to deal with other nations on their own terms, whether they are democracies or not, and were skeptical that a war in Iraq would help make democracy blossom throughout the Middle East.
Say, did everyone catch this little item last month?
Attorney General John Ashcroft's 32-city tour last year to promote the Patriot Act kicked up fresh criticism Tuesday after a new review by congressional investigators placed the price tag at $200,000.The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee asked Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine to investigate. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said in a letter to Fine that he thought Ashcroft had violated laws barring taxpayers' money from being spent on grass-roots lobbying and promotional campaigns by executive branch officials without congressional approval.
A Justice Department spokesman said the Office of Legal Counsel had cleared the trips, and that they were designed to help the public understand how the government was fighting terrorism.
"There were gross mischaracterizations out there about the Patriot Act that were not only confusing people but were bringing down the morale of law enforcement," Mark Corallo said. "They were wrong, and we had to correct the record."
A spokesman for Fine said there was no current investigation regarding Ashcroft's travel, and declined to comment on Conyers' letter.
Experts from independent watchdog groups known for criticizing both Democrats and Republicans said the attorney general's Patriot Act tour raised serious questions.
"I do think it breaks the law," said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who runs the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Sloan added that the law is largely ignored. Executive branch officials regularly campaign for initiatives before Congress, such as tax cuts and Medicare, without being penalized.
Ashcroft launched his tour in August 2003 amid mounting criticism of the Patriot Act, the sweeping anti-terrorism law that passed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks increasing the government's police and surveillance powers. The Justice Department had been caught off guard when just weeks earlier the House of Representatives nearly approved a provision by Reps. C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Idaho, and Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent, that would have weakened the Patriot Act.
In addition to Ashcroft's tour, the Justice Department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys instructed federal prosecutors to lobby their members of Congress in favor of the law.
A Web site (www.lifeandliberty.gov) went up to counter what department officials said were inaccuracies about the anti-terrorism law circulating in the media and among advocates for civil liberties.
A new review by the Government Accountability Office, provided in a briefing to Congress, found that expenses for the Patriot Act effort were at least $208,130. The bulk of that was $152,361 for the 16-city Patriot Act tour, which included 15 advance trips by staff.
A second 16-city tour, dubbed the Life and Liberty tour, cost $47,138. In those trips in mid-September, Ashcroft promoted the Patriot Act and also spoke about crime statistics and other Justice Department topics.
The Patriot Act Web site cost $8,630 to create.
Eighty of 93 U.S. attorneys reported that they contacted members of Congress, gave pro-Patriot Act speeches before community groups and made media appearances to whip up support for the measure. The GAO found that the costs for those efforts weren't tracked. (Knight-Ridder)
From last night's presidential debate:
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, I want to go back to something Senator Kerry said earlier tonight and ask a follow-up of my own. He said -- and this will be a new question to you -- he said that you had never said whether you would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. So I'd ask you directly, would you like to?BUSH: What he's asking me is, will I have a litmus test for my judges? And the answer is, no, I will not have a litmus test. I will pick judges who will interpret the Constitution, but I'll have no litmus test.
What he asked was: Will you overturn Roe v. Wade? The President's non-answer shows that 1) he wants the abortion ruling overturned but 2) he's too chicken-shit to say so.
All judges interpret the Constitution, so picking a judge who does so wouldn't be hard to do. The key question is how a particular judge would interpret the Constition, and on that matter, Bush has made his views clear:
"... President George W. Bush has openly and repeatedly avowed the intent to appoint justices in the politically conservative mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas." (Washington Times)
It's also worth noting his response to an earlier question about a woman's right to choose:
"What I'm saying is is that as we promote life and promote a culture of life, surely there are ways we can work together to reduce the number of abortions: continue to promote adoption laws -- it's a great alternative to abortion -- continue to fund and promote maternity group homes; I will continue to promote abstinence programs."
If Bush was serious about "a great alternative to abortion" he wouldn't have allowed the Food and Drug Administration to continue to delay the approval of over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception when the FDA's own scientific advisors voted 23-4 in favor of approval.
If Bush were interested in working together to reduce the number of abortions, he would have included the funding and promotion of contraception along with maternity group homes and abstinence programs and adoption laws.
Forget a litmus test - if it weren't for his policies, thousands of women in this country and around the world wouldn't even have to take a pregnancy test, let alone consider the difficult choice of abortion.
Reducing the number of abortions is a laudable goal, but Bush doesn't want to reduce the number of abortions by giving women more ways to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.
He wants a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade.
The Economy Unspun, op-ed in today's New York Times:Both sides in this campaign have engaged in the usual debate about how much the president can do about the economy, apart from taking credit in good times and denying responsibility in bad times. There is truth to the notion that presidents cannot repeal economic cycles, and that President Bush was not to blame for the recession in 2001, from March to November.
But that's about as far as it goes. With the recession long over, Mr. Bush's other excuses for a recovery that is not producing enough jobs - the Enron scandal, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, his own war in Iraq - are unconvincing. The latest dismal job numbers clearly show that this administration's policies have failed to foster a flourishing economy. Worse, the president has failed to make midcourse corrections even as the job market has stalled.
Of all the economic indicators, the jobs record of the Bush years presents the most disturbing evidence that the forces currently at work in the economy are not merely cyclical. Economic distortions of historic dimensions have developed and can be traced in part to specific decisions. There is scant hope of a significant reversal without new policies.
It is now a certainty that Mr. Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover in 1932 to go into an election with a net decline in jobs over a single term. And there's more: during the Bush years, take-home pay, as a share of the economy, has fallen to its lowest level since 1929, when the government started keeping records. Corporate profits have grown faster - and wages and salaries far less - than in all other eight recoveries since World War II.
Mr. Bush tries to keep the focus on the job growth in the last year. But that has done little to erase the monthly losses that dominated the first nearly two years of the recovery. And the rate of job creation lately has barely kept pace with growth in the labor force. It has been well below the average of all post-World War II recoveries in all but March and April, when it was just above average. Last month, the economy needed to add about 300,000 jobs, rather than 96,000, just to hit the average.
How did we get here? Start with the tax cuts. Originally pitching them as a way to refund the budget surplus, the administration simply recast its tax cuts as a fiscal stimulus when the economy went south. But the tax cuts that may be appropriate for a thriving economy are not right for a recession or a sluggish recovery.
Tax breaks for affluent people, which Mr. Bush's mostly were, theoretically lead to capital growth and higher productivity and, from there, to more jobs. But since Mr. Bush was facing a downturn, not the boom in which he formulated his tax plans, it would have been much wiser to adjust to reality and enact measures to increase consumption, which leads more directly to job and income growth. Fully 37 percent of the cost of Mr. Bush's fiscal policies went to cutting the top tax rates on income, estates, dividends and capital gains, a tactic that does little to spur consumption. Only 3 percent went to aid for state governments - widely believed to be one of the most effective economic stimuli available.
So productivity growth, already strong, got the most support. The other economic drivers - consumption, job growth and income gains - got short shrift, and are now even weaker than they would otherwise have been. Worse, the administration knew what it was doing. Writing in The Times Sunday Magazine last month, Roger Lowenstein recounted a conversation in which Mr. Bush asked Glenn Hubbard, then his top economics adviser, what to do about the sagging job numbers. Mr. Hubbard told him not to let short-term numbers sway him from tax cuts. Those short-term numbers have been bad for nearly four years now.
In the meantime, the tax cuts have blown a hole in the federal budget. Conventional wisdom holds that the deficit - now $415 billion - does not affect employment because its effects are too abstract to be factored into day-to-day hiring decisions. That's only half-true. Hiring reflects confidence, and financial markets certainly watch the deficit. As the job situation fails to improve and the deficit restricts the nation's ability to respond, the markets react. Stocks tumbled last Friday with the job numbers and high oil prices. Even more ominous, the dollar fell against most major currencies, which could make it harder to finance America's outsized deficits and lead to rapidly rising interest rates.
True to the belief that tax cuts will eventually prove to be a cure-all, the administration has offered no meaningful relief to struggling Americans. In fact, Mr. Bush signed another tax cut last week and is expected to sign a deeply misguided corporate tax cut soon. Federal unemployment benefits expired at the end of 2003 and since then, three million people have exhausted their state benefits. Meanwhile, the long-term unemployed increased in September, both in number and as a share of the total unemployed population. The administration has balked at raising the minimum wage, now at its lowest level since 1949, relative to the average wage. And the Labor Department has effectively thwarted the 2002 law that was to have helped Americans who lose their manufacturing jobs to outsourcing.
The truth is, policies matter. Presidents matter. And this president has not done the right things for American workers.
Checking the Facts, in Advance by Paul Krugman in the New York Times:t's not hard to predict what President Bush, who sounds increasingly desperate, will say tomorrow. Here are eight lies or distortions you'll hear, and the truth about each:
Jobs
Mr. Bush will talk about the 1.7 million jobs created since the summer of 2003, and will say that the economy is "strong and getting stronger." That's like boasting about getting a D on your final exam, when you flunked the midterm and needed at least a C to pass the course.
Mr. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in payroll employment. That's worse than it sounds because the economy needs around 1.6 million new jobs each year just to keep up with population growth. The past year's job gains, while better news than earlier job losses, barely met this requirement, and they did little to close the huge gap between the number of jobs the country needs and the number actually available.
Unemployment
Mr. Bush will boast about the decline in the unemployment rate from its June 2003 peak. But the employed fraction of the population didn't rise at all; unemployment declined only because some of those without jobs stopped actively looking for work, and therefore dropped out of the unemployment statistics. The labor force participation rate - the fraction of the population either working or actively looking for work - has fallen sharply under Mr. Bush; if it had stayed at its January 2001 level, the official unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent.
The deficit
Mr. Bush will claim that the recession and 9/11 caused record budget deficits. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that tax cuts caused about two-thirds of the 2004 deficit.
The tax cuts
Mr. Bush will claim that Senator John Kerry opposed "middle class" tax cuts. But budget office numbers show that most of Mr. Bush's tax cuts went to the best-off 10 percent of families, and more than a third went to the top 1 percent, whose average income is more than $1 million.
The Kerry tax plan
Mr. Bush will claim, once again, that Mr. Kerry plans to raise taxes on many small businesses. In fact, only a tiny percentage would be affected. Moreover, as Mr. Kerry correctly pointed out last week, the administration's definition of a small-business owner is so broad that in 2001 it included Mr. Bush, who does indeed have a stake in a timber company - a business he's so little involved with that he apparently forgot about it.
Fiscal responsibility
Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry proposes $2 trillion in new spending. That's a partisan number and is much higher than independent estimates. Meanwhile, as The Washington Post pointed out after the Republican convention, the administration's own numbers show that the cost of the agenda Mr. Bush laid out "is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion" and "far eclipses that of the Kerry plan."
Spending
On Friday, Mr. Bush claimed that he had increased nondefense discretionary spending by only 1 percent per year. The actual number is 8 percent, even after adjusting for inflation. Mr. Bush seems to have confused his budget promises - which he keeps on breaking - with reality.
Health care
Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry wants to take medical decisions away from individuals. The Kerry plan would expand Medicaid (which works like Medicare), ensuring that children, in particular, have health insurance. It would protect everyone against catastrophic medical expenses, a particular help to the chronically ill. It would do nothing to restrict patients' choices.
By singling out Mr. Bush's lies and misrepresentations, am I saying that Mr. Kerry isn't equally at fault? Yes.
Mr. Kerry sometimes uses verbal shorthand that offers nitpickers things to complain about. He talks of 1.6 million lost jobs; that's the private-sector loss, partly offset by increased government employment. But the job record is indeed awful. He talks of the $200 billion cost of the Iraq war; actual spending is only $120 billion so far. But nobody doubts that the war will cost at least another $80 billion. The point is that Mr. Kerry can, at most, be accused of using loose language; the thrust of his statements is correct.
Mr. Bush's statements, on the other hand, are fundamentally dishonest. He is insisting that black is white, and that failure is success. Journalists who play it safe by spending equal time exposing his lies and parsing Mr. Kerry's choice of words are betraying their readers.
From Bob Herbert's editorial in today's New York Times, "Webs of Illusion":
It's understood that incumbents campaigning for re-election will spotlight the good news and downplay the bad. The problem for President Bush, with the election just three weeks away, is that the bad news keeps cascading in and there is very little good news to tout.So the president and his chief supporters have resorted to the odd tactic of claiming that the bad news is good.
The double talk reached a fever pitch last week after the release of two devastating reports - the comprehensive report by Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector, which destroyed any remaining doubts that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; and the Labor Department's dismal employment report for September, which heightened concerns about the strength of the economic recovery and left Mr. Bush with the dubious distinction of being the first president since Herbert Hoover to stand for re-election with fewer people working than at the beginning of his term.
Mr. Bush turned the findings of the Duelfer report upside down and inside out, telling crowds at campaign rallies that it proved Saddam Hussein had been "a gathering threat." It didn't matter that the report, ordered by the president himself, showed just the opposite. The truth would not have been helpful to the president. So with a brazenness and sleight of hand usually associated with three-card-monte players, he pulled a fast one on his cheering listeners.
Vice President Cheney had an equally peculiar response to the report, which said Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpiles in the early 1990's. Referring to the president's decision to launch the war, Mr. Cheney said, "To delay, defer, wait wasn't an option."
The September jobs report, released on the same day as Mr. Bush's second debate with Senator John Kerry, was deeply disappointing to the White House. Just 96,000 jobs were created, not even enough to keep up with the monthly expansion of the working-age population.
The somber findings forced the president's spin machine into overdrive. Reality, once again, was shoved aside. The administration's upbeat public response to the Labor Department report was described in The Times as follows: "The White House hailed it as evidence of continued employment expansion, saying that it validated Mr. Bush's strategy of pursuing tax cuts to support a recovery from the 2001 economic downturn."
In the president's parallel universe, things are always fine.
Mr. Bush sold his tax cuts as a mighty force for job creation. They weren't. The Times article that reported the sunny White House response to the disappointing job creation figures also said: "In September, an estimated 62.3 percent of the working-age population was employed, two full percentage points below the level at the beginning of the recession in March 2001. That difference represents over 4.5 million people without work."
Hyperbole is part of every politician's portfolio. But on the most serious matters facing the country, Mr. Bush's administration has often gone beyond hyperbole to deliberate misrepresentations that undermine the very idea of an informed electorate. If unpleasant realities are not acknowledged by the officials occupying the highest offices in the land, there is no chance that the full resources of the government and the people will be marshaled to meet those challenges.
The president continues to behave as if he's in denial about the war. Iraq remains a tragic mess and the electorate needs to know that.
In yesterday's Week in Review section, The Times's Dexter Filkins wrote movingly from Baghdad about the reporters trying to cover the war. There's been a relentless expansion, he said, of areas that reporters dare not venture into because they are too dangerous. Most European reporters have left the country, and there are far fewer Americans than just a few months ago.
Forty-six reporters have been killed and Mr. Filkins himself has been attacked by a mob, shot at and detained by the Mahdi Army.
If Mr. Bush has a plan to clean up the mess in Iraq, he should say so. If he has a strategy - besides more tax cuts - to bolster employment in the U.S., he should tell us. If he's in touch with the real world in which these and other very serious problems exist, he might consider letting us know.
Spinning gets old after a while. A president who spends too much time spinning webs of illusion can find himself trapped in them.
More from Friday's debate:
MICHAELSON: Mr. President, if there were a vacancy in the Supreme Court and you had the opportunity to fill that position today, who would you choose and why?BUSH: I'm not telling.
(LAUGHTER)
I really don't have -- haven't picked anybody yet. Plus, I want them all voting for me.
(LAUGHTER)
I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. I would pick somebody who would strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States.
Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn't pick.
I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words under God in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.
That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America.
And so, I would pick people that would be strict constructionists. We've got plenty of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. Legislators make law; judges interpret the Constitution.
And I suspect one of us will have a pick at the end of next year -- the next four years. And that's the kind of judge I'm going to put on there. No litmus test except for how they interpret the Constitution.
The Dred Scott case?! We're guessing Bush cited this Supreme Court decision because it's the only one he knows - it certainly doesn't create any confidence in his pledge to nominate strict constructionists.
Here's a classic strict constructionist argument, presumably of the sort President Bush would be in favor of:
No one, we presume, supposes that any change in public opinion or feeling [. . .] should induce the court to give to the words of the Constitution a more liberal construction in their favor than they were intended to bear when the instrument was framed and adopted. Such an argument would be altogether inadmissible in any tribunal called on to interpret it. If any of its provisions are deemed unjust, there is a mode prescribed in the instrument itself by which it may be amended; but while it remains unaltered, it must be construed now as it was understood at the time of its adoption. It is not only the same in words, but the same in meaning, and delegates the same powers to the Government, and reserves and secures the same rights and privileges to the citizen; and as long as it continues to exist in its present form, it speaks not only in the same words, but with the same meaning and intent with which it spoke when it came from the hands of its framers, and was voted on and adopted by the people of the United States. Any other rule of construction would abrogate the judicial character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day.
That's Chief Justice Roger B. Taney writing for the majority in the Dred Scott decision. The full first sentence quoted reads, "No one, we presume, supposes that any change in public opinion or feeling in relation to this unfortunate race, in the civilized nations of Europe or in this country, should induce the court to give to the words of the Constitution a more liberal construction in their favor than they were intended to bear when the instrument was framed and adopted."
In 1857, the liberal construction was anti-slavery. The strict construction was that people of African descent "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can th