June 24, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

MAKING THEIR OWN REALITY

The Bush administration has been an astounding mix of arrogance, incompetence, hypocrisy, and greed. The administration didn't like the reality about Iraq, so they created their own reality, even using forged documents to suggest Iraq was buying enriched uranium from Niger. They didn't like the fact Al Gore really won the election in 2000, so they used the Supreme Court to invalidate the will of the American people. If they don't like legislation, Bush will sign the bill and then use a "signing statement" to say he's not really going to enforce the legislation. We have Dick Cheney making the astonishing claim that the Vice President is not a part of the executive branch and not subject to the laws governing the executive branch. This editorial is from www.newyorktimes.com:

President Bush is notorious for issuing statements taking exception to hundreds of bills as he signs them. This week, we learned that in a shocking number of cases, the Bush administration has refused to enact those laws. Congress should use its powers to insist that its laws are obeyed.

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, investigated 19 provisions to which Mr. Bush objected. It found that six of them, or nearly a third, have not been implemented as the law requires. The G.A.O. did not investigate some of the most infamous signing statements, like the challenge to a ban on torture. But the ones it looked into are disturbing enough.

In one case, Congress directed the Pentagon in its 2007 budget request to account separately for the cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a perfectly appropriate request, but Mr. Bush issued a signing statement critical of the rule, and the Pentagon withheld the information. In two other cases, federal agencies ignored laws requiring them to get permission from Congressional committees before taking particular actions.

OVERWORKED AMERICANS

In one of his more infamous gaffes George W. Bush told a woman who was working two jobs, "How uniquely American." Bush seemed to think that having to work multiple jobs was a good thing. While right-wingers chirp about "family values," they have no problem with people working weeks more in the United States than workers do in other industrialized countries, often being denied paid vacation time or sick leave or holidays. Right-wingers even objected to unpaid family leave so people could attend to family emergencies. The United States needs to start treating working people humanely with better wages, health care, vacation time, and holidays. This article by David Moberg is at www.inthesetimes.com:

Why do workers in other rich countries have more paid time off? Mainly because laws demand employers provide it. The European Union requires its members to set a minimum standard of four weeks paid vacation (covering part-time workers as well). Finland and France require six weeks paid vacation, plus additional paid holidays. Most countries require workers to take the time off and employers to give them vacation at convenient times. Some governments even require employers to pay bonuses so workers can afford to do more than sit at home on vacation. On top of that, unions in Europe and other rich industrialized countries—whose contracts cover up to 90 percent of the workforce—typically negotiate additional time off. Meanwhile, the standard workweek is slightly shorter in many European countries, and workers retire earlier with better public pensions.

Until the early ’70s, European and American workers logged similar hours. But the pattern then drastically diverged, with Europeans getting more vacation time, around the same time that U.S. income inequality began growing. In the United States, corporations gained the upper hand against workers and their declining unions, and the Democratic Party started shifting away from working class concerns. In Europe, stronger unions and left political parties pushed for shorter work hours. In some cases, as jobs were lost when traditional industries restructured or work was outsourced, unions saw reduced work time as a way to share work. But more often, unions were continuing the battle to share wealth in the form of more leisure, which had started a century earlier with the movement for an eight-hour day—the goal of Chicago protestors in May, 1886, that ended in the Haymarket Massacre, repression of the labor movement, and creation of May 1 as the international workers’B holiday.