November 19, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

TAX CUTS AND MILITARY SPENDING

Tax cuts for the very rich and massive military spending are about all Republicans have to offer. In letters to the editor of The Fresno Bee right-wingers constantly whine that Democrats will raise their taxes. Taxes take a priority over things like jobs, the minimum wage, poverty, health care, and the environment. In fact, about the only taxes Democrats would raise would be on the upper economic elite, who can certainly afford to pay more in taxes. The attacks on 9/11 showed that massive military spending hasn't protected us. Maybe it's time for a new paradigm, an effort to wage peace. This column by Jonathan Chait talks about the Republican claim that they weren't right-wing enough in this last election. The column is at www.latimes.com:

The largest spending increases under Bush, by far, have come in defense and homeland security, which conservatives support. The next biggest item is the Medicare bill. Horribly designed though it was, you can't say it was unpopular. Poll results indicate that about 90% of the public support adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare.

McCain blamed the GOP loss on "the massive programs such as Medicare prescription drug program … our failure to address their priorities as opposed to our own, and there was obviously a reaction to it." But the Medicare bill was the public's priority.

If Republicans really want to recommit to smaller government, they can run on a simple platform of rolling back the Bush spending hikes. Go ahead, Republicans, I dare you: Promise to slash the Pentagon, eliminate homeland security and take away everybody's Medicare drug coverage.

Of course, they won't really do that. What they'll do is promise unspecified spending cuts that they'll never carry out, along with lots of specified tax cuts that they will carry out. Conservatives are in a perpetual vice, squeezed between their vision for the country and the voters' vision for the country. They'll never reduce government to the size they'd like, but they're too fanatical to admit that they can't.

MISSING RFK

The "what if" question arises for me when discussing JFK, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. What if they had escaped assassins' bullets? How much different, how much better, would the world be today? I hope a new movie about RFK will stimulate interest in his message of hope and progress that stands in such contrast to the dark vision of a George W. Bush. This column by Brent Budowsky is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Robert Kennedy served in the Navy and grew up in a family of war heroes, but understood that America must always offer the world hope, opportunity and social justice.

The cardinal sin of George W. Bush is that he lives in a politics of fear, resentment, anger and division that has created more terrorism, more anti-Americanism, more damage to our national values and our global leadership around the world than any President in our history.

The cardinal virtue of Robert Kennedy is that he lived in a politics of hope and believed that politics could be a noble profession where American leaders could lift hearts, lift minds, and lift hopes at home and everywhere.

With the Congressional election ended and a presidential campaign about to begin, every Democrat and every American should reflect on the RFK vision of Americanism, American politics and American global leadership.

When next campaign is in full swing in June of 2008, America will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day Robert Kennedy was taken from us, far too soon, in 1968.