October 14, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

END THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY

"Illegitimate" might be a kind word to describe the entire Bush presidency. He was appointed to the White House by a partisan Supreme Court. The methods used in Florida to even make it possible for the Court to get involved were illegitimate, sleazy tactics like butterfly ballots and purging voters from the voter rolls. Bush has used "signing statements" to get around the Constitutional process of vetoing bills and possibly having vetoes overridden by Congress. He has spied illegally on Americans. He lied about the danger posed by Iraq and launched a war based on those lies. He has suspended habeas corpus,one of the most enduring and important concepts in the law. He has sanctioned torture. Now even some conservatives want a check on the "unitary executive" power grab by George W. Bush. This article by Bob Egelko is at www.sfgate.com:

President Bush's drive to expand executive power over surveillance, detention, interrogation and the meaning of new laws has drawn largely ineffectual protests from Congress. But a group of liberals and a handful of prominent conservatives are pressing would-be successors to renounce those powers before they take office.

Both the liberal American Freedom Campaign and the conservative American Freedom Agenda have adopted platforms complaining of administration muscle-flexing on issues ranging from the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Justice Department's threats to prosecute reporters for espionage.

The liberal group also has asked all presidential candidates to sign a pledge of limited executive authority, reading, "We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people's phones and e-mails without court order, and above all we do not give any president unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any president."

None of the nine Republican candidates has responded. The pledge has been signed by five Democratic hopefuls: Sens. Barack Obama and Chris Dodd, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Sen. Mike Gravel.

R.I.P. THE AMERICAN DREAM

The idea that anybody can make it in America should go alongside fairy tales like Cinderella and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It's been mostly a sham all along. But in the era from the end of the Second World War until the early 70's there was a thriving and growing middle class. Thanks to the reforms of the New Deal and programs like the G. I. Bill, there was actually some hope that people could advance from poverty to the middle class. It was still difficult for African-Americans even then. But even a modest rise in the standard of living was too much for the greedheads at the top of the economic pyramid and their rabid free-market supporters on the political right. They've been deliberately trying to reduce us to a state of peonage. This article by Joshua Holland is at www.alternet.org:

The American Dream is Dead, gone along with the era of good union jobs, comprehensive employer benefits and real upward mobility, and most working people are fully aware of the fact.

That's the takeaway from the latest installment of the American Dream Survey, a study of working Americans' views of the political-economy released in late September.

It paints a picture of an increasingly frustrated working majority who are having a harder time raising their families than the generation before them did, and who believe that things will be even worse for their kids. They have reason to believe it -- a 30-year assault on organized labor, neglected minimum wage increases, fewer educational opportunities and the constant tide of pro-business propaganda being pumped out by right-wing think tanks and business roundtables that enforces the idea that working people are faceless "inputs" -- costs that need to be controlled -- have left Americans with far less social mobility than they had a generation ago. Contrary to common belief, Americans have less opportunity to move up the economic ladder than Canadians and Western Europeans (except for those in the UK).