The Political Junkies
archived: 17 - 23 Sep, 2006 Back Next
UPDATED: SEP 21, 2006
A LEADER’S VALUES
Citizens expect their leaders to tell them the truth – every day. Democratic government depends on valuing transparency and the truth.
Bush exemplifies that the moral values of his Party have been abandoned. The latest:
In February, there were several press reports about the Bush administration exercising message control on the subject of climate change. The New Republic cited numerous instances in which top officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientists at the National Hurricane Center sought to downplay links between more-intense hurricanes and global warming. NOAA scientist Thomas Knutson told the Wall Street Journal he'd been barred from speaking to CNBC because his research suggested just such a link.
At the time, Bush administration officials denied that they did any micromanaging of media requests for interviews. But a large batch of e-mails obtained by Salon through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the White House was, in fact, controlling access to scientists and vetting reporters. (The e-mails were provided to several members of Congress for comment; Rep. Henry Waxman's office has now published them here.)
In 2005, NOAA press officer Kent Laborde wrote an e-mail that approved Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin's request to interview scientists. "CEQ and OSTP have given the green light for the interview," he wrote. CEQ is the Council on Environmental Quality and OSTP is the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Both are White House agencies that work on science issues. During the Bush administration, numerous critics have charged that CEQ has been particularly aggressive in pushing a pro-business agenda and suppressing inconvenient science.
In another e-mail, Laborde's boss, Jordan St. John, said of NOAA scientist Dave Hoffman, whose work tracks greenhouse gases, "This doesn't say anything new about the data, it's just a new way of tracking it. This was the CEQ-approved release that went on the NOAA Web site earlier this week."
The e-mails also show that after Hurricane Katrina, NOAA press officers had to get clearance from the Department of Commerce for scientists to discuss global warming and hurricanes with the press. (NOAA is part of Commerce.) Regarding the request for a particular interview, Commerce press officer Catherine Trinh wrote, "Let's pass on this one." The response from a NOAA official reads, "Can I please have a reason?"
In another message, Trinh writes, "Let's pass on this ... interview, but rather refer him to BLANK of the BLANK at BLANK. CEQ suggested him as a good person to talk on this subject." The blanks denote passages that were whited out by lawyers releasing the documents.
But Commerce's deputy director of communications, Chuck Fuqua, was happy to have a more politically reliable NOAA hurricane researcher named Chris Landsea speak to the press. At the time, Landsea was stating publicly that global warming had little to no effect on hurricanes. "Please make sure Chris is on message and that it is a friendly discussion," Fuqua wrote regarding a request for Landsea to appear on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." On the show, Landsea downplayed research that linked global warming with more-intense hurricanes like Katrina.
In an e-mail the week prior, Fuqua OK'd Landsea for another interview and asked, "Please be careful and make sure Chris is on his toes. Since BLANK went off the menu, I'm a little nervous on this, but trust he'll hold the course."
The individual who went "off the menu" could have been researcher Thomas Knutson, whose published research indicates that hurricanes will grow stronger because of global warming. But when NOAA press officers asked if Knutson could appear on CNBC, Fuqua asked if Knutson had the same opinion as Landsea. When he learned that Knutson had published research suggesting that hurricanes will be getting stronger, he responded, "Why can't we have one of the other guys on then?"
TPJ reported the Republican strategy as early as 2003, a game plan the Republicans are still following:
The US Republican party is changing tactics on the environment, avoiding ‘frightening’ phrases such as global warming, after a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable. The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has ‘lost the environmental communications battle’ and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases. ‘The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,’ Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organization. ‘Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate. The phrase ‘global warming’ should be abandoned in favor of ‘climate change’, Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as ‘conservationist’ instead of ‘environmentalist’, because ‘most people’ think environmentalists are ‘extremists’ who indulge in "some pretty bizarre behavior... that turns off many voters’.” -- Guardian Unlimited
The Republicans have made an art form out of scrubbing any government reports that would validate global warming. These stories of “scrubbing” have appeared:
A
BLIND EYE – DEADLY IGNORANCE
“The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft
report next week on the state of the environment, but after
editing by the White
House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been
whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.
BUSH’S IRRATIONAL LEADERSHIP (Survey of administration assault on science.)
ASSAULT ON THE MIND (In a wide-ranging and damning report signed by 60 leading scientists including 20 Nobel laureates, the prestigious Union of Concerned Scientists charged the Bush administration with manipulating "the process through which science enters into its decisions.")
HEADLINE (Bush administration privately seeks to keep Pres. Clinton from addressing environmental group.)
DAMN THE FACTS (Bush administration hides, changes and subverts studies of its own government with which it disagrees.)
Does any rational thinking American believe that Bush will move beyond the scrubbing to implement the technology to address global warming? It is time for a new vision for America.
Are these the values of leaders and a Party that can be trusted to level with its citizens?
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UPDATED: SEPTEMBER 19, 2006
DISGRACING BLOOD SACRIFICE
As of Sunday, some 2,682 Americans have sacrificed their lives to achieve Bush’s neoconservative objectives in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. Despite reassurances from Bush and his neoconservative allies, the death toll continues to mount. For example, in the last five days at least 200 more Iraqis have died.
In perhaps the most symbolic admission that Iraqi “freedom” is teetering on collapse, the Iraqi government has announced, and then rather listlessly denied reports, that it will build trenches encircling Baghdad. This assessment from Kofi Annan, United National General Secretary:
[L]ast night [he] warned that current trends suggested Iraq was in grave danger of descending into civil war.
Opening an international support conference for Iraq, Mr Annan said: "If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war.
Did Iraq have to reach this state of affairs? We know that Rumsfeld, as head of the US Military, forbid post war planning in Iraq:
Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.
In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.
Americans have assumed that it was the hubris of the neoconservatives – a quick war and a capitulation of the Iraqis who would “welcome us as liberators.”
The Washington Post has published a major expose by Rajiv Chandrasekaran based on his book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." Chandrasedaran’s expose casts the lack of post war planning in a new and far more malignant light. The reconstruction of Iraq was designed to be a political operation based upon Bush’s political ideology, to create a new Iraq on an American image.
Chandrasedaran’s central thesis is compelling:
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers.
[A]applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
[B]lunt questions [were posed] to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen . . . to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.
Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.
"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."
Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
While America sacrificed its bravest and best soldiers to achieve the “freedom” that Bush espoused, Bush sent political hacks to Iraq. The Washington Post article is simply a must read for every American. It provides a comprehensive look at how Bush politicized post war Iraq deliberately and incompetently.
Americans should simply ask themselves, “Had enough?”
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AVOID EXCESSIVE EXUBERANCE
A small group of dissident Republicans joined Democrats in the US Senate to hand Bush a defeat in committee for unbridled authority over suspected terrorists in US custody. The Senate committee pushed through its own plan providing a modicum of constitutional protections to suspects being held and for those who are ultimately tried (emphasis added):
A rebellious Senate committee defied President Bush on Thursday and approved terror-detainee legislation he has vowed to block, deepening Republican conflict over terrorism and national security in the middle of the election season.
Republican Sen. John Warner) of Virginia, normally a Bush supporter, pushed the measure through his Armed Services Committee by a 15-9 vote, with Warner and three other GOP lawmakers joining Democrats. The vote set the stage for a showdown on the Senate floor as early as next week.
In an embarrassment to the White House, Colin Powell — Bush's first secretary of state — announced his opposition to his old boss' plan, saying it would hurt the country. Powell's successor, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, jumped to the president's defense in a letter of her own.
All this played out after Bush started his day by journeying to the Capitol to try nailing down support for his own version of the legislation — and by issuing a threat to the maverick Republicans.
"I will resist any bill that does not enable this program to go forward with legal clarity," Bush said at the White House.
The president's measure would go further than the Senate package in allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials, using coerced testimony and protecting CIA and other U.S. interrogators against prosecution for using methods that may violate the Geneva Conventions.
"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell, a retired general who is also a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his letter.
Powell said Bush's bill, by redefining the kind of treatment the Geneva Conventions allow, "would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."
TPJ’s Contributing Author, Dr. Steven Jonas, is cautious in judging whether the Committee’s vote will be a comprehensive effort to preserve the United States Constitution:
[T]he Georgites appeared to have lost one when the Senate Armed Services Committee voted against the Georgite wish to unilaterally amend the Geneva Conventions in order to permit torture by US service people. Under Article VI, as I have pointed out many times, the Geneva Conventions are part of the Constitution.
At the same time, the Senate Judiciary Committee appears to be on its way to allow the Georgites to unilaterally amend the Fourth Amendment to permit warrantless wiretapping when the Executive Branch says that it is justified in doing so. I have read the Constitution numerous times and I find nothing in it that permits such amendments, other than going through the amendment process itself. But Bush wants to be able to amend the Constitution on his own and the Republican Congress appears now to be giving him that power.
So why is Bush so upset about the refusal, for now at least, of the Armed Services Committee to approve the use of torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions? Is it that he really thinks that torture is a good weapon in fighting terrorism? Well, Bush himself is a well-known bully from childhood and he personally may like the idea, but as far as Georgite policy concerned, that's not it. Is it that he really thinks that Guantanamo would have to be shut down if torture is not permitted? Well, no, for Guantanamo could well stay in place, just without the use of torture and the provision of due process for its inmates.
No, what the Georgites are really upset about is that if the Senate Committee decision stands, the Congress will have re-asserted itself, for the time-being at least over the Executive Branch and will have, most tenuously to be sure, re-established some balance of powers within the Federal government. So far, Bush has been on his way, at a leisurely pace to be sure, to establishing a dictatorship for himself. The Supreme Court threw up a roadblock in Hamdan, but Supreme Court justices, like the rest of us are mortal. One more Supreme Court seat and Bush will have his majority there.
So having the Senate, especially say "hold on there" even on a relatively minor matter (except to those being tortured) about the use of this useless technique in fighting the war on flanking maneuvers Bush views as a serious setback. And it could be. Or the seemingly pro-Constitution Republicans could just fold. (They are not using Constitutional arguments anyway, for the most part. The focus is on "morality" [as if the Geneva Conventions did not exist] and what might happen to captured US service people in the future if the torture system stays in place.) Or this could be the only roadblock they put up and then the Georgites will just proceed upon their merry way to creating that "Unitary Executive" of their dreams.
There are many more moves in Congress before the struggle to defend constitutional democracy is won or lost. The bi-partisan Senate Committee vote is encouraging, but Bush and most Republicans are determined. Avoid excessive exuberance.
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Junkie: In light of the developments in the US Senate, please visit Dr. Jonas’ section for his call for Democrats to make preservation of the US Constitution the “Big Issue” of the 2006 mid-term elections. Dr. Jonas’ article was written before the vote this week, but it identifies the crucial constitutional issues that Americans are facing.
BUSH’S ECONOMY
The price of gasoline has fallen and Bush is touting America’s strong economy.
Following on the heels of Bush’s glee, Ford Motor announced that it is cutting another 10,000 jobs, mostly in the United States, and shutting 2 more manufacturing plants, one in the United States. The fallout since January:
Reduce the number of hourly
workers in North America by 25,000 to 30,000 by the end of 2008. That is four
years earlier than previously announced.
Reduce the vehicle production capacity of its North American factory capacity by
26 per cent compared to 2005 levels. Ford said in January that it would close 14
plants by 2012.
Close a Maumee, Ohio, stamping plant in 2008 and the Essex engine plant at
Windsor, Ont., in 2007, bringing to 16 the total number of plants to be closed.
Move up the previously announced closing of a Norfolk, Va., assembly plant from
2008 to 2007.
While the number of Ford’s job cuts grabs the headlines, Ford’s announcement exemplifies larger trends resulting from Republican economic policy. The Chicago Tribune (emphasis added) has published a wonderful account of the human tragedy that has infected the workforce in America:
This
underworld is now the reality, or a disheartening look into the near future, for
thousands of workers as the industrial Midwest undergoes the most wrenching
economic transformation since the bad old Rust Belt days of the 1970s.
With the forces of globalization leading companies to slash costs, move out of
the country or go under, workers who don't bring a clear competitive advantage
to work every day are vulnerable to having their pay cut. . . .
But look at any number of industries where American factory hands are
competing against the Chinese or the Cambodians, whether in textiles or
furniture or appliances, and the fallout is the same: The standard of living for
the Americans slips.
"For the United States, it's the end of labor as we once knew it," Stephen
Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote recently.
Republican economic policy rubs salt into the wounds of hard working Americans. Since Bush came to office, median income has fallen in America during the Bush administration. The national average is -2.8%. This chart demonstrates the dramatic effect in many states:
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Last Update: 09/24/2006