Tumble Weed (Bush) Watch 

archived: 24 - 30 Jul, 2005         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  July 28, 2005                       

                        A NEED
                        [Authored by Jay Greene*] 

Some on the Right argue today's terrorism equals yesterday's totalitarianism.  Some on the Left protest this as a false analogy.  

The Right's right, but not because they understand analogy better. They know we NEED terrorism.  We need enemies and a handy way to keep that in the forefront is to make our latest enemy analogous to earlier enemies. 

It was often speculated after the Wall came down, what will we do now that there are no enemies on the horizon?  And we found one!  A truly horrific enemy, stealthy and cunning and barbaric enough to keep us occupied for decades, as our Prez assures us. 

Now, the Brits and the Spanish go after terrorists as they do criminals and with diligent, savvy police techniques run 'em to ground.  We have a better answer: declare war on 'em, boost budgets, concoct on over inflated monstrosity called Homeland Insecurity, invent color coded alerts to maintain high anxiety, and you have happy campers in the Pentagon, defense establishment, spook bureaucracy, and wherever paranoia and bureaucratic self protection conjoin. 

Echoing Henry Kaiser's maxim, America has found a need and filled it. 

___________  

_____________________________________________

UPDATED:  July 26, 2006 

                        BULLIES
                        [Authored by Bob Young*] 

Bullies. Detested them in 3rd grade. Abhor, avoid, and despise them even more now that I’ve entered my 7th decade. 

One dictionary defines "bully" as "a blustering browbeating person; especially: one habitually cruel to others who are weaker." How apt for the administration of George W. Bush, which has proven to be a haven for bullies of every detestable stripe. The “benefit of the doubt” -- there must be some decent, modest, admirable men and women at the highest echelons of Republican power, musn’t there? -- dissipated soon after his swearing-in early in 2001. 

A lonely exception was indeed the honorable, thoughtful and (despite a streak of gullibility on the presence or not of WMD in Iraq) genuinely diplomatic Colin Powell. But now, in April of 2005, just look what has happened to the first Secretary of State to serve under # 43 -- a point I’ll come back to. 

There is a swaggering, take-no-prisoners arrogance about the true Bush believers, from Rove to "Rummie," from DeLay to Wolfowitz, from Rice to Frist. The clear signal for his subordinates to behave in a bullying, uber-partisan, hard-assed way comes from G.B.W. himself. While smart enough (just barely) to stop short of overt bullying behavior, there’s no mistaking his utterly un-earned sense of Entitlement to Command. 

In his hectoring push to get a certifiably horrible boss, the widely despised John Bolton confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations, G.B.W. ignores the urging of his very own Secretary of State Colin Powell. Well, of course, Powell is so yesterday! Please help me imagine how this must look to the dignitaries, diplomats, and wise counselors around the world with whom Powell worked between 2000 and 2004, that his ex-boss would shun and snub him so openly. 

It’s wholly in character for a bully. Use people, then discard them when they dare to voice an “off-message” opinion or whose loyalty (read: sycophancy) is in the slightest doubt. 

There’s another aspect of this epidemic of arrogance and bullying that hasn’t been explored. I’m thinking of the disrespect, the contempt, the ig-norance (literally) of those Americans who have gone before. They are our forbears, or our elders if still alive. 

Down through many decades and years of difficult work, thought, caring and often enlightened vision, these forbears and elders have put in place a web of laws and regulations that govern almost every aspect of workplace safety, environmental quality, well-being of mothers and children, and on and on. 

This was done “The American Way,” with a balance and separation of powers, with endless hours of public hearings, with legislation tested through a justice system without precedent in all the world for guaranteeing “liberty and justice for all.” 

Progressing ever westward, these far-sighted forbears of ours established towns with public parks, public libraries, public hospitals and public schools. They founded and endowed public universities. State and national parks, too. 

(There’s a fine word for all this: “civilization”) 

In four short years the Bush administration “neocons” have taken a wrecker’s ball to this carefully wrought edifice. These bullies have, in essence, desecrated the graves of our forbears. In the argot of the streets, they have dissed their elders. 

They have shown at best disregard, and at worst contempt, for the careful work of generations gone before. And this, to a guy named Robert whose American ancestry goes back to the Plymouth Plantation and includes a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is shameful. 

In four short years so much good will, so much hard work, so much civility, so much of the attitude I always thought was deeply American -- of “giving the other person the benefit of the doubt,” of “disagreeing but sharing similar values”-- has gone down the rat hole. 

Bullies thrive upon perceived weakness. They push, they shove, they threaten. The rest of us don’t have to just sit by and take it. And that is why I am writing about . . .  

----The bullies who are going ballistic around the White House and on the Republican side of the aisles in Congress.

----The bullies serving the interests of just about any corporate interest you can name, but never the hard-pressed working man or woman.

----The God-Is-On-Our-Side and He’s white, male and Republican bullies.

----The protect Tom DeLay and Ken Lay at-any-cost-and-lay-waste-to-their-opponents’ bullies.

----The ram-John-Bolton-down-our-throats bullies, who of course can’t see that Mr. Bolton is today’s Poster Boy of bullydom.

----The bullies who show such contempt for those 48 percent of voters who cast their votes for a decent, intelligent United States Senator and un-bully named John Kerry.

----The smear John McCain, Max Cleland, and Swift Boat skipper Lt. John Kerry bullies.

----And now, incredibly, disgustingly, the "out" Valerie Plame bullies. 

The bullies, in sum, who have undercut, sabotaged, and wrecked just about every one of the values I was taught to admire and emulate as boy and man. Values like modesty, and moderation, and basic decency. Values like honoring the motives of those who disagree with us.  

Values like “walking in the other fellow’s shoes,” and “extending a helping hand to those less fortunate.” 

Much as I’d like to believe these values are shared widely among Republicans, the bullying behavior of the current White House crew doesn’t give me any confidence at all. 

____________   

*Junkie:  TPJ welcomes Bob Young’s first, and hopefully not last, contribution to TPJ.  Young describes himself as follows: 

Born and raised in Southern California, now retired and living on the central California coast. Age 70, married, with two grown children. At age 55, I graduated with honors from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, then freelanced as an illustrator for Modern Maturity, the New York Times, Harvard Magazine, and numerous others. Currently I do a lot of painting, mostly sea and landscapes, in oils. 

Degrees from Dartmouth College, Columbia Journalism School, and Harvard Business School. In the early 70s, I was a Los Angeles Times staff writer covering education, then business. Before that, I was a Newsweek bureau correspondent and associate editor. After serving four years on Navy destroyers, my first job in journalism was with McGraw-Hill trade magazines in New York. 

I thought of Paul Revere as I wrote this essay: "The Bullies are coming! The Bullies are coming!" As an American with deep ancestral roots in this precious society I felt an obligation to say what I had been thinking (and feeling) these past months. I was registered as Republican for many years until the likes of Newt Gingrich drove from the Grand Old Party anyone who dared voice even slightly "moderate" or "progressive" views. I changed to Independent long before re-registering as Democrat.

_____________________________________________

                        A SIN ON THE CONSTITUTION 

Republican icon Haley Barbour is Governor of Mississippi and is using that State as a laboratory for radical Republican philosophy.  TPJ has featured several articles that Gov. Barbour is energetically “starving the beast.” 

In May 2004, Mississippi Republicans made the biggest cuts in Medicaid of any State in history – TPJ, “Compassionate Republicans Starve The Beast”  

Mississippi has approved the deepest cut in Medicaid eligibility for senior citizens and the disabled that has ever been approved anywhere in the U.S.

The new policy will end Medicaid eligibility for some 65,000 low-income senior citizens and people with severe disabilities  . . . .

The rollback was initiated by the Republican-controlled State Senate and Mississippi's new governor, Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the national Republican Party. When he signed the new law on May 26, Mr. Barbour complained about taxpayers having to "pay for free health care for people who can work and take care of themselves and just choose not to."  . . .

The 65,000 seniors and disabled individuals who will lose their Medicaid eligibility have incomes so low they effectively have no money to pay for their health care. – New York Times (no longer available online)

Republicans in Mississippi also shifted the cost of paying legal fees for indigents from the State to the counties.  The Mississippi State Supreme Court has upheld the shift.  The results: 

Chris Klotz of Jackson, the [county] attorney . . ., called Mississippi's current system a hodgepodge that can devastate rural counties. The court's decision, he said, "is not good news for poor people or for people who can't afford attorneys. The state needs to seriously revamp (the present system)." . . .

The ruling came the same day the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Southern Center for Human Rights sued the city of Gulfport, accused the Gulfport Municipal Court of routinely incarcerating poor people unable to pay their fines and violating their right to counsel.

As a result of these practices, the Harrison County Jail has become a modern day debtors' prison, said Miriam Gohara, assistant counsel for the fund. "We are very concerned that poor people with old fines for minor violations of the law, such as riding a bicycle without a light, are being jailed for their inability to pay, and worse yet they are not being provided with a lawyer before sentencing, in clear violation of the Constitution."

In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Clarence Earl Gideon that right to counsel in criminal cases was necessary to achieve a fair system of justice. In his initial trial, Gideon represented himself because he could not afford an attorney. After his conviction was overturned, he was retried, and his appointed attorney discovered new witnesses and won an acquittal. – Clarion Ledger (emphasis added) 

Some counties in Mississippi are borrowing money to pay for indigent defense.  The Republican aim is to force such costs on Mississippi counties to take from other programs or practically reducing indigent defense or both. 

Just another example of the radical Republican right’s assault on the right on constitutional principles. 

                        BUSH’S ECONOMY 

Readers regularly following TPJ are acutely aware of the literally thousands of articles published on the radical Republican right’s economic policies.   TPJ’s article above, “A Sin On The Constitution,” clearly portrays that Republican economic policies are designed and destined to create ever widening socio-economic classes.   

Molly Ivins captures radical Republican philosophy in damning prose: 

While we have been absorbed in the silly circus of cultural issues and the riveting questions of the war, we've also been getting our pockets picked. Big time. I am impressed that cartoonist Lloyd Dangle in the strip "Troubletown" managed to get the whole problem into 12 panels, each announcing some piece of economic news accompanied by an American saying, essentially, "What, me worry?" The U.S. is over $7 trillion in debt (no problem); China buys $1 billion worth of U.S. treasury bills a day (thanks for floating us); Americans love the prices at Wal-Mart (made in China, cute!); the Chinese save 50 percent of their domestic product; the average American has $9,000 on his credit cards; our economy is fueled by a fragile housing bubble; the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour ... ; taxpayers who earn over $1 million saved $30K under Bush tax cuts; the war in Iraq costs $9 billion a month; by 2040, our kids will be unable to do more than pay the interest on the national debt ... ; bankruptcy reform makes it impossible to escape your debts; in Darfur [Sudan], people earn $1.25 a day.

For those who prefer to get their economic news from a more respectable source than a cartoon, I recommend Bill Greider's op-ed article in the July 18 New York Times, "America's Truth Deficit." He begins with the startling thesis that we face structural economic problems as serious as those that destroyed the late Soviet Union and that, like the USSR before its breakup, our leaders cannot talk about these problems honestly. "[Our] weakening position in the global trading system is obvious and ominous, yet leaders in politics, business, finance and the news media are not willing to discuss candidly what is happening and why. Instead they recycle the usual bromides about the benefits of free trade and assurances that everything will work out for the best."

It is a curious thing that as the disadvantages and, indeed, perils of globalization become clearer and the subject of ever-more worried books by respected economists, the mainstream media keep treating the whole problem as though it were about a bunch of protesters in turtle costumes at the G8 summit. If it were not for Lou Dobbs on CNN, one would never even hear it mentioned on television.

Forget what the Supreme Court thinks about teaching creationism in the schools: Think about what it will contribute to the spiraling disasters of globalization by dismantling the entire economic regulatory system built up over the past 100 years. As Greider notes, "Washington defines 'national interest' primarily in terms of advancing the global reach of our multinational enterprises." Problem is, our multinational corporations increasingly work against the interests of Americans themselves. In addition to outsourcing jobs, the companies locate sham headquarters in off-shore tax havens to avoid paying taxes. The only restraints we have ever had on multinational corporations are government regulation and the right to sue the bastards for the various kinds of harm they cause. It is precisely those two forms of control that are being not just undermined but tossed out entirely by an increasingly activist right-wing judiciary. – Molly Ivins            

Indeed, reread Ivan’s analysis and truly think. 

Then consider these news headlines just from yesterday: 

Ford spokesman Oscar Suris wouldn't confirm a report in The Wall Street Journal that said Ford may lay off up to 30 percent of its white-collar work force — about 10,500 of its 35,000 salaried workers — in North America over the next few years. – Associated Press

Kimberly-Clark Corp., the maker of Kleenex tissues and Huggies diapers, said Friday it plans to cut about 6,000 jobs and sell or close up to 20 manufacturing plants. – Associated Press

You get immune to it after a while," longtime Kodak technician John Hladis said with barely a shrug when the scythe fell once more at the Rochester-based photography company, slicing away another 10,000 employees. – Associated Press 

Finally, consider these horrid facts: 

U.S. corporations announced plans in June to cut 110,996 jobs — the highest monthly total in 17 months — and July's toll could turn out to be steeper. Overall job cuts are on the rise in 2005, reaching 538,274 through June, according to Challenger's monthly job-cut analysis. – Associated Press 

THERE IS A REASON WE ARE DEMOCRATS

NEXT - THEM DEMS

Last Update: 03/27/2006