September 28, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY


THE GOP'S RAW DEAL


The problems created by extreme right-wing ideology have been growing exponentially like a snowball rolling downhill. Most of the crises we now see can trace their roots back to the right-wing ideology that has prevailed since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. Our prisons are bulging because of drug laws that are out of touch with reality. We are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science because right-wingers are looking for the Rapture and because they disdain science. We are seeing an increasing climate crisis because right-wingers won't acknowledge the obvious man-made causes of global climate change. We are stuck in a morally reprehensible war because right-wingers wanted to assert American power regardless of the consequences. The U. S. economy is in a mess thanks to the trickle down nonsense that started with Reagan and got ramped up under George W. Bush. This commentary by Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Eric Schlosser calls for a second New Deal. The article is at www.commondreams.org:


Advocates of the free market must confront the fact that both the Great Depression and the current financial chaos were preceded by years of laissez-faire economic policies. Strictly enforced regulations not only protect consumers, they protect companies that behave ethically from those that don't. The sale of tainted baby food in China demonstrates, once again, that when industries are allowed to police themselves, there's absolutely no limit on what they'll do for money.

Third, we need reconstruction, not only of America's physical infrastructure, but also of its society. Today close to 50 million Americans lack health insurance. About 40% of the nation's adult population is facing medical debts, or having difficulty paying medical bills. A universal health-care system would help American families, while cutting the nation's long-term health-care costs. And a large-scale federal investment in renewable energy and public-works projects would build the foundation for a strong 21st century economy.
Contrary to the myth of the free market, direct government intervention has played a central role throughout American economic history, subsidizing the growth of the railroad, automobile, aerospace and computer industries, among others. It will take well-planned government investment to break our dependence on foreign oil and create millions of new Green jobs.


The events of the past month have proven, beyond any doubt, that the federal government must actively address America's great social and economic problems. That necessity was recognized by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the 1930s -- and by his cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, a generation earlier.


BUSH'S SORRY RECORD


When you look back to the days prior to Hurricane Katrina ravaging the Gulf Coast you have to wonder why George W. Bush rode so high in the popularity polls for so long. His record from the very beginning has been stained with corruption. He got into the White House despite losing the popular vote because of his friends on the Supreme Court. His vice president, Dick Cheney, led an energy task force that conducted its meetings in secret, even though the need for energy dictates much about our lives. He was completely absent stopping the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but used that attack to bolster his popularity and to ram through tax breaks for his rich friends and to attack civil liberties. Hurricane Katrina revealed Bush for what he really was all along. Evidence that this war was justified on lies and now the economic crisis are just more proof of Bush's miserable record. This editorial is from The Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com:


As the Bush administration attempts to stabilize the nation's economy, we are witness to the final chapter of a period of perverse and dishonest leadership that has used its own crises to justify the expansion of its own power. This was a president who came to office on promises of modesty -- who championed a "humble nation," scorned nation building and promised a more limited role for government in the lives of its citizens. Then he presided over a six-year attempt to tear down and rebuild the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now has embarked on the most profound expansion of the federal government's role in the private economy since the Depression.


In both cases, the pattern is the same. Ineptitude led to crisis; crisis then became the argument for the radical expansion of executive power. The administration insisted that it exercise its new authority with a minimum of scrutiny by Congress, the courts or the public.

In the so-called war on terror, that has meant the abdication of our most basic American principles. We have forfeited privacy and honor -- the administration has monitored phones and e-mails without warrants and has secreted prisoners in foreign lands, arguing that they deserved none of our protections even while in our custody. As a nation, we have stooped to torture (while debating the meaning of the word) and refused to recognize one of our most basic Anglo-American notions, the principle of habeas corpus (thankfully, the Supreme Court, seven of whose members are Republicans, drew the line at that abomination). We have held prisoners in detention without trial, without charge, without end. In so doing, we have antagonized the world and debased America's moral authority to lead.