Topic: President George W. Bush
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posted by G.M.Heller at Monday, April 04, 2005
Monday, April 04, 2005
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I've been to Washington again, this time to protest the inauguration of President George W. Bush. I don't believe he was fairly elected this time any more than in 2000, but even if he had been I would be standing with others to show how deeply I disapprove of his policies, foreign and domestic.
This is the fourth time I've taken the midnight bus to D.C. since this president took office. There is a certain similarity to these experiences: the cramped ride down with other protesters, talking politics and peace, sharing snacks and songs. Each person has a strategy involving water bottle, sandwich, clothing, and signs. This time some of us wore white armbands to signify mourning for those killed in Iraq.
Washington can be wicked cold in the early January morning, before the sun hits the streets. We had snow in the air this time, and something else, too.
This time, the actual object of our ire would be present. He would not be in Mexico or at Camp David, but driving by in a motorcade. We planned to line Pennsylvania Avenue and then turn our backs as he went by.
After a few hours of marching and singing and waiting at a checkpoint, the moment arrived. I couldn't see a thing except the backsides of thousands of other protesters, but then this incredible roar rose up from everyone and they turned around. (I was now looking at their frontsides.) So I figured the limousine was out there somewhere and I turned my back to it, too.
Many long miles and hours later we got home, all tired out, our sandwiches eaten and our signs a little rumpled. People started asking me right away: What was it like? When you turned your back, do you think anyone noticed?
What a question! I went because I knew someone would notice: me.
Bonner J. McAllester
Monterey, MA 01245
(The letter above was published in the February 2005 issue of the Monterey News newspaper. It is reproduced here by the Blog Editor without permission.)
Back from Washington and all self-righteous and sour-grapes, Bonner McAllester is angry because her candidate didn't win. She's in denial when she says she doesn't believe George W. Bush "was fairly elected this time any more than in 2000" (and of course, she fails to provide any clues to inform us just how she comes to this ridiculous conclusion).
Describing her "cramped" midnight bus ride to Washington with other anti-Bush activists, she details her self-styled ‘protest' at the Inaugural Parade, and bemoans the fact that when it was time for her big moment to remonstrate against the passing election winner, she "couldn't see a thing except the backsides of thousands of other protesters."
Perhaps if Ms.McAllester were to set her sites higher than the backsides of other angry people, she might better understand why Mr. Bush carried both electoral and popular vote this time, and more importantly, why he and the Republicans won hands-down in the national arena of ideas.
From the sound of Ms.McAllester's bitter rant, one would also think a visit to the nation's capital during the latest climax of the four-year presidential election cycle was something to dread rather than to celebrate.
My own experience on Inaugural Thursday was far different than Ms.McAllester's. The swearing-in was exhilarating -- an event giving insight into American history; and immediately following the ceremony were receptions, celebrations, and some good old-fashioned partying.
This may sound corny to the sophisticated effetes in this bluest county in the bluest of states, but it was damn refreshing to witness history -- and especially to witness in person this President taking the Oath.
The morning began overcast and chilly at 27 degrees. When I arrived at 10AM, the air was warmer, but the sky was still overcast and a dank gray. My seat was just left of center with an unobstructed view (not 175 feet from the rostrum) of the Presidential Seal and the spot where George W. was to be sworn. (It was easy to procure what the media said were ‘scarce' tickets. Literally the day before, I simply walked into my Congressman's office and asked his staff whether any tickets remained in his allotment.)
To my left sat a middle-aged husband and wife from York, PA (about three hours north of DC). To my right were two former college buddies, one now lived in Lynchburg, VA while the other had flown in for the event from central Illinois. The Lynchburg guy had driven five hours. Behind me sat three middle-aged women from Michigan whose coats bore big yellow buttons supporting John Kerry. They said they were quite proud of Mr. Kerry and that they were all there as Americans to share the history of the moment.
About twenty minutes before the noontime oath-taking, a welcome Sun broke through clearing sky. It remained bright and cheery throughout the duration of the ceremony. I never found out whether TV commentators made note of Sol's blazing noontime appearance, but to me it immediately held wonderful significance and gave special moment to the occasion, more so than the event already had.
The Sun this day not only warmed, it gave blessing upon the entirety of the proceedings unfolding below. The country was watching and simultaneously going through this quadrennial political ritual, and it was as if the Sun was giving its imprimatur. In that single moment, the historical magnificence and uniqueness of this whole American 'thing' came into perspective, at least for this observer.
Afterwards, as all federal officialdom emptied the upper stands and the band filed out and folks were leaving the section where I sat, I hung out a bit watching people pass by. Then, rather than going over to the overcrowded parade route to wait around for a fleeting glimpse of a moving limo with 2-inch thick tinted glass, I chose instead the party option. I had heard that Members of Congress were having open houses and that these were the places to be after the ceremony.
Did I say there was food? Contrasted with Ms.McAllester's starvation rations of her one sandwich with bottled water, any Washington Inauguration becomes a movable feast courtesy of your local Congressional campaign committee no matter where you're from. All-you-could-eat buffet platters stocked with cold cuts, cheeses, sandwiches, salad fixings, shrimp cocktail, pastries, fruit, fresh-baked cookies, and refreshments were all free for any hungry mouth -- Democrat, Republican, or
Independent -- willing to come in and just say hi.
MOC's, their wives and families, staffs, and constituents and their families from all over the country converged this day within the halls of the House and Senate Office Buildings. There were funny stories, flesh pressing, and a whopping good time. I pigged out. In one MOC's office, I polished-off at least a pound of shrimp before attacking cold-cut sandwiches and finally, of course, the chocolate-chip cookies.
I didn't come across Ms.McAllester amongst this famished throng (though I caught a glimpse of a few T-shirts emblazoned with a variety of protest slogans), but she and her angry comrades would certainly have been welcomed had they just shown-up to partake of the feast. The atmosphere these open houses engendered reminded me of the good humor and exuberance at the annual Berkshire Botanical Garden harvest festival. It was that kind of crowd, except these party goers, far away from home, were augmenting their good cheer with a never-to-be-forgotten living history lesson.
The people I saw in those Capitol Hill buildings that Thursday afternoon did not appear angry nor bitter nor depressed nor victimized. At that point, they were just Americans having a real hoot of a good time. My guess is that that innate American optimism is what will carry us and this President forward through the next four years.
G.M. Heller
Monterey, MA 01245
Washington, DC
(The letter above is published in direct response to Ms. McAllester's letter also above.)
Dear Berkshire Bloggers, News Media, Politicians, & the People:
I have not read the recent case ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Abortion, but I have read and watched news media articles about it. My thoughts on Abortion is that prevention should be job #1. From the time a child enters school, he or she should be taught about sexuality and the consequences of sexual behavior. Children should be counseled about matters of sex by doctors and mental health professionals. Sex should be accepted as part of human behavior.
Archaic rules disallowing religious people, such as male-only Catholic Priest who are the primary opponents of human sexuality and abortion, from marrying should be strongly questioned under law. Our nation should pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting religious people, especially male-only Catholic Priests, who are mandated to abstain from sex, from having any contact with any American Citizens under the age of 18, and when an American Citizen is 18 and older, he or she must receive a course and be certified in the dangers of fringe religious people and groups who mandate abstinence-only programs. Any religious person adhering to archaic rules against sex who has social contact with a child should be arrested and jailed for influencing that child from becoming averse to sex education and behavior. Any religious person adhering to archaic rules against sex who has social contact with an adult who is not educated and certified in the dangers of sex averse religious indoctrination should be arrested and fined for influencing that adult from becoming averse to sex education and behavior.
Instead of criminalizing women for having Abortions, our political elite class should criminalize religious people who put their faith and influence to make sexuality a sin, illegal, and something to be averse to. All of President Bush # 1 and President Bush # 2's picks for U.S. Supreme Court Justices have been Catholic Men with terrible views on human sexuality! I am not Anti-Catholic, but I will always fight Catholic Men tooth and nail over their terrible views on human sexuality. I will always dissent against any and all religious groups and people who want to limit and/or eliminate American Citizens' right to be educated about sex and know that sex is part of human behavior.
Sex has always been used as power by the ruling elites in almost all past and present civilizations. In the industrial revolution when factories were the place to work for the have nots, the haves conditioned the workers around their sexuality so that they could entrap their children to be the next generation of exploited workers. Now, our U.S. Government is criminalizing women for choosing to have certain kinds of Abortions. I WONDER WHAT THE UNDERLYING METHOD TO THE MADNESS REALLY IS?
I DISSENT AGAINST THE U.S. SUPREME COURT's RELIGIOUS RULING ON ABORTION. THE REAL CRIMINALS ARE THOSE FRINGE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE WHO INFLUENCE AMERICAN CITIZENS ON MATTERS OF HUMAN SEXUALITY TO BE FEARFUL AND AVERSE TO THAT WHICH IS PART OF OUR NATURE AND HUMANITY!
In Truth,
Jonathan A. Melle
Bush administration under a cloud
By The Associated Press | April 22, 2007
A rundown of Bush appointees who left under a cloud or face conflict-of-interest allegations
--Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a grand jury investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. His trial also implicated top political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney in a campaign to discredit her husband, Iraq war critic and retired ambassador Joe Wilson. Libby, who plans an appeal, is awaiting a June 5 sentencing.
-- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is fighting to hold onto his job in the face of congressional investigations into his role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Two top aides have resigned in the investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated. Emails and other evidence released by the Justice Deparment suggest that Rove played a part in the process. Other e-mails, sent on Republican party accounts, either have disappeared or were erased.
-- Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank and a former deputy defense secretary, acknowledged he helped arrange a large pay raise for his female companion when she was transferred to the State Department but remained on the bank payroll. The incident intensified calls at the bank for his resignation.
-- J. Steven Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became deputy Interior Secretary J., last month became the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, pleading guilty to obstructing justice by lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with the convicted lobbyist. Abramoff repeatedly sought Griles' intervention at Interior on behalf of Indian tribal clients.
-- Former White House aide, David H. Safavian, was convicted last year of lying to government investigators about his ties to Abramoff and faces a 180-month prison sentence.
-- Roger Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for not reporting tickets he received from Abramoff.
-- Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the top Justice Department prosecutor in the environmental division until January, bought a $980,000 beach house in South Carolina with ConocoPhillips lobbyist Donald R. Duncan and oil and gas lobbyist Griles. Soon thereafter, she signed an agreement giving the oil company more time to clean up air pollution at some of its refineries. Congressional Democrats have denounced the arrangement.
-- Matteo Fontana, a Department of Education official who oversaw the student loan industry, was put on leave last week after disclosure that he owned at least $100,000 worth of stock in a student loan company.
-- Claude Allen, who had been Bush's domestic policy adviser, pleaded guilty to theft in making phony returns at discount department stores while working at the White house. He was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and fined $500.
-- Philip Cooney, a former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist who became chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged in congressional testimony earlier this year that he changed three government reports to eliminate or downplay links between greenhouse gases and global warming. He left in 2005 to work for Exxon Mobil Corp.
-- Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force procurement officer, served nine months in prison in 2005 for violating federal conflict-of-interest rules in a deal to lease Boeing refueling tankers for $23 billion, despite Pentagon studies showing the tankers were unnecessary. After making the deal, she quit the government and joined Boeing.
--Eric Keroack, Bush's choice to oversee the federal family planning program, resigned from the post suddenly last month after the Massachusetts Medicaid office launched an investigation into his private practice. He had been medical director of an organization that opposes premarital sex and contraception.
-- Lurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon at the agency earlier this year with other top GSA political appointees at which Scott Jennings, a top Rove aide, gave a PowerPoint demonstration on how to help Republican candidates in 2008. A congressional committee is investigating whether the remarks violated a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes.
-- Robert W. Cobb, NASA's inspector general is under investigation on charges of ignoring safety violations in the space program. An internal administration review said he routinely tipped off department officials to internal investigations and quashed a report related to the Columbia shuttle explosion to avoid embarrassing the agency. He remains on the job. Only Bush can fire him.
-- Julie MacDonald, who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but has no academic background in biology, overrode recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species and improperly leaked internal information to private groups, the Interior Department inspector general said.
8:07 P.M., 5/24/2007
Dear Honorable President George W. Bush:
I dissent against and politically oppose your escalation of the military conflict in Iraq in order to suppress sectarian conflict (civil war based on religious divisions), while at the same time conducting a covert intelligence and military conflict operation in Iran without Congressional authorization. Moreover, I see the highest gas prices in our nation's history in 2007 as the federal government's use of perverse incentives to add to the already artificially sky high oil company profits.
I am totally ashamed that you are the President of the United States of America. Your military surge in Iraq is impractical, your covert intelligence and military mission in Iran is illegal on many legal and moral fronts, and your support of big oil is unconscionable! You are the fulfillment of George Orwell's writings on political theory in the Oval Office!
I believe you will go down as the worst modern U.S. President in the history of America and the World!
In my strongest political dissent and opposition!
Jonathan A. Melle
Bush, Senate head for showdown on domestic spying By Thomas Ferraro
Thursday, June 21, 2007
President George W. Bush headed toward a showdown with the Senate over his domestic spying program on Thursday after lawmakers approved subpoenas for documents the White House declared off-limits.
"The information the committee is requesting is highly classified and not information we can make available," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said in signaling a possible court fight.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the subpoenas in a 13-3 vote following 18 months of futile efforts to obtain documents related to Bush's contested justification for warrantless surveillance begun after the September 11 attacks.
Three Republicans joined 10 Democrats in voting to authorize the subpoenas, which may be issued within days.
"We are asking not for intimate operational details but for the legal justifications," said Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. "We have been in the dark too long."
Authorization of the subpoenas set up another possible courtroom showdown between the White House and the Democratic-led Congress, which has vowed to unveil how the tight-lipped Republican administration operates.
Last week, congressional committees subpoenaed two of Bush's former aides in a separate investigation into the firing last year of nine of the 93 U.S. attorneys.
Bush could challenge the subpoenas, citing a right of executive privilege his predecessors have invoked with mixed success to keep certain materials private and prevent aides from testifying.
Bush authorized warrantless surveillance of people inside the United States with suspected ties to terrorists shortly after the September 11 attacks. The program, conducted by the National Security Agency, became public in 2005.
WARTIME POWERS
Critics charge the program violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants. Bush said he could act without warrants under wartime powers.
In January, the administration abandoned the program and agreed to get approval of the FISA court for its electronic surveillance. Bush and Democrats still are at odds over revisions he wants in the FISA law.
"The White House ... stubbornly refuses to let us know how it interprets the current law and the perceived flaws that led it to operate a program outside the process established by FISA for more than five years," Leahy said.
Interest in the legal justification of the program soared last month after former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified about a March 2004 hospital-room meeting where then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales tried to pressure a critically ill John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to set aside concerns and sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program.
With top Justice Department officials threatening to resign, Bush quietly quelled the uprising by directing the department to take steps to bring the program in line with the law, Comey said.
Leahy noted that when Gonzales, now attorney general, appeared before the panel on February 6, he was asked if senior department officials had voiced reservations about the program.
"I do not believe that these DoJ (department) officials ... had concerns about this program," Leahy quoted Gonzales as saying. Leahy added, "The committee and the American people deserve better."
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick)
Email on Wed, 11 July, 2007
Dear Honorable President Bush II:
Why don't you just get it over with and declare de jure martial law under whatever false pretenses you can come up with instead of making us all live under your de facto martial law strong armed tactics?
In Dissent,
Jonathan A. Melle
POWER CLASH: BUSH ORDERS FORMER COUNSEL HARRIET MIERS TO DEFY CONGRESS AND REFUSE TO TESTIFY BEFORE A HOUSE PANEL INVESTIGATING PROSECUTOR FIRINGS
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GLOBE EDITORIAL
Bush's unhealthy notions
July 19, 2007
THE Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Finance Committee have given President Bush the chance to leave a positive legacy on healthcare. He should accept their compromise to reauthorize and expand the Children's Health Insurance Program -- and abandon the deeply misguided arguments he has been making against the proposal.
S-Chip, as the federal-state program is known, was originally approved by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1997. Legislators from both parties realized that the private market, on its own, would never provide affordable insurance for families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but are on the edge of poverty. S-Chip has worked well, providing coverage for about 6.6 million people at the latest count, but it hasn't covered every child who needs insurance.
With the program up for renewal this year, it was reasonable to expect Congress to expand it. The compromise unveiled by Finance Committee leaders last week won't go as far as many Democrats want, but it would probably cover an additional 3.3 million children. It would be financed by a 61-cent-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax, which by itself would enhance health by making smoking too expensive for many teenagers.
But Bush is fixated on the idea that the expansion will hurt the private insurance market. "This will have the effect of encouraging many to drop private coverage, to go on the government-subsidized program," Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said Saturday.
The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the plan and concluded that, while it's impossible to prevent all families from switching their children from unsubsidized plans to S-Chip , two-thirds of the new enrollees would be previously uninsured. And S-Chip insurance is usually administered by private plans. The new S-Chip money would supplement, not compete with, the private market.
Bush has made another curious argument: "People have access to healthcare in America," he said last week in Cleveland. "After all, you just go to an emergency room." But these treatment centers of last resort are expensive and unnecessary for routine care. It's far healthier -- and more cost-effective -- when patients get preventive care or early treatment at a doctor's office. That's the kind of care encouraged by S-Chip.
Few politicians would want to rely entirely on private sources, without government help, to pay for healthcare for all Americans. Bush himself proposed a substantial tax break for all families, rich, middle-income or poor, to make health insurance more affordable.
The Senate Finance leadership, however, has given Bush an opportunity to target federal health dollars to those in particular need: poor and near-poor children. Support for this plan would provide a warm coda to Bush's last 18 months as president.
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Bush vows to veto children's health insurance bill
Measure would raise excise tax on cigarettes
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press | July 19, 2007
LANDOVER, Md. -- President Bush yesterday reiterated his threat to veto Senate legislation that would substantially increase funds for children's health insurance by levying a 61-cents-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes.
The tax increase would be used to subsidize health insurance for children and some adults with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but not high enough to afford insurance on their own.
The renewal of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, is considered by many to be the most important health legislation Congress will take up this year.
"Members of Congress have decided, however, to expand the program to include, in some cases, up to families earning $80,000 a year -- which would cause people to drop their private insurance in order to be involved with a government insurance plan," Bush said in a speech in suburban Maryland.
"If Congress continues to insist upon expanding health care through the SCHIP program -- which, by the way, would entail a huge tax increase for the American people -- I'll veto the bill," he said.
Democratic leaders called for adding $50 billion to the program over the next five years. Bush had recommended a $5 billion increase.
On Friday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate signaled its support for a $35 billion increase, which would bring the total funding to $60 billion over five years. The Senate proposal would provide health insurance coverage to current participants as well as an additional 3.3 million uninsured children, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Cancer Society support the increase. But the administration, which consistently refers to SCHIP as government-run health care, says billions of dollars in insurance costs will be shifted from the private sector to the federal government under the Senate proposal.
Bush spoke after attending a discussion at Man & Machine Inc. in Landover with small-business leaders the president said feel pinched by high health care costs. "They don't like the idea of having to make the decision between providing health care for their employees and not expanding their businesses," he said.
Man & Machine, which employs 20 people , makes water-resistant computer accessories designed for hospitals, medical laboratories, and other industries.
During the tour, Bush typed on a white keyboard immersed in a pan of water. He wrote: "G Tro N was the first president." Clifton Broumand, company president, joked that Bush, who apparently was trying to write "George Washington was the first president," might want to practice his typing.
Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, urged Bush to support the committee's proposal, which he said would keep health coverage for 6.6 million children currently covered by the plan and reach 3 million more low-income uninsured children over the next five years.
"We are preserving the Children's Health Insurance Program for kids and targeting the lowest-income children for outreach and enrollment," Baucus said. "The president should join the effort to build on the success of the Children's Health Insurance Program and get health care to more American kids in need now."
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WILLIAM O'HARE AND CYNTHIA M. DUNCAN
Rural children's health insurance in jeopardy
By William O'Hare and Cynthia M. Duncan | July 18, 2007
THROUGHOUT social history, trends have started in cities and spread to rural areas. Today, however, we may be seeing a case where the reverse is true.
The shift from employer-sponsored health insurance to public-sector health insurance is being led by rural families. Among rural children in low-income families, the share covered by public-sector health insurance increased from 38 percent in 1998 to 54 percent in 2005, while children covered through parents' employers fell by 10 percentage points over the same period.
Quietly, our bucolic Main Street has become a place where too many families struggle to make ends meet -- often without a safety net -- in a rapidly changing economy. Rural areas are hit hard by the loss of stable middle-class employment as foreign competition and lower wages overseas vie for these industries.
While many think of Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh as the manufacturing centers of the country, in fact, manufacturing jobs are a bigger share of rural employment than urban employment. Many of these are small manufacturing companies that are especially vulnerable to the changing economic tide. Too often stable, well-paying manufacturing jobs are replaced with less steady service-sector work with few benefits.
As Carsey Institute research shows, three-quarters of the 1.3 million uninsured children in rural areas are from families where at least one adult works full time, year-round.
Rural children remain the most vulnerable to the inequities that plague low-income families. Nearly half of all children in rural areas live in low-income families, and rural children are more likely to live in poor and near-poor families than their urban counterparts. According to the 2005 American Community Survey, 23 percent of rural children live in poverty compared with 18 percent of urban children.
For rural children, the situation is only getting worse. Between 2000 and 2005 rural child poverty rates increased in 41 states. A new report from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire shows that rural children also depend more on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, and Medicaid than children in urban areas. The rise in such coverage is also more pronounced in rural areas.
As the cost of health care continues to rise, low-wage or part-time jobs -- often the only option for the many low-skilled workers in rural America -- are unlikely to provide health care coverage. Presently 4 million children in rural America receive SCHIP or Medicaid, and nationwide 28 million children receive assistance from these programs.
Congress is planning to spend an additional $10 billion a year over the next five years to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program to reach some of the 9 million uninsured children in this country. The White House is offering an increase of less than $1 billion a year from current levels. Government estimates indicate that the funding level being offered by the White House will result in millions of children losing SCHIP coverage by 2012 as inflation eats away at the ability of the program to cover children .
Sorting out this health care crisis will take political will -- and, no doubt, time. However, for the 9 million uninsured children, many of them with two working parents, we cannot wait a day longer. We have at our fingertips an effective program to insure children of our working families, but its future hangs in the balance.
Run by states with state and federal money, SCHIP today insures roughly 6 million children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but who are often in low-wage jobs that lack health insurance. Enacted in 1997, the program has been a resounding success. Together with Medicaid, it has reduced the rate of uninsured children by nearly a quarter over the past 10 years.
Providing health insurance to children is an investment in the future, and the majority of Americans, according to a recent survey, say the federal government should guarantee health insurance for children, and many are willing to pay higher taxes to do so.
As Congress considers reauthorization and funding of the State Children's Health Insurance Program , it should keep in mind the critical role the program plays in the lives of many children. It is also important to recognize that this program will become even more critical for low-income children living in rural America in the years ahead as economic restructuring continues to diminish the number of stable well-paying jobs for rural families.
William O'Hare is a fellow and Cynthia M. Duncan is director of the Carsey Institute at University of New Hampshire.
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Olver says no more war money
By Evan Lehman
The North Adams Transcript [Online]
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Transcript Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. John Olver joined 69 other congressmen Thursday in telling President Bush they will oppose all future funding for the Iraq war unless it's used to withdraw American troops.
The warning comes as Congress prepares to debate a massive defense-spending bill that would provide $141.7 billion for military operations in Iraq for fiscal 2008.
"We are writing to inform you that we will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during fiscal year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office," the lawmakers told Bush in a letter.
Potential opposition to the defense bill, which could also propose a military pay increase and funding for new war-fighting equipment, is already drawing criticism from Bush as he struggles to maintain Republican support for the war and defeat Democratic proposals for withdrawal.
"The House and Senate are now scheduled to leave for their August recess before passing a bill to support our troops and their missions," Bush said in the Rose Garden on Friday. "Even members of Congress who no longer support our effort in Iraq should at least be able to provide an increase in pay for our troops fighting there."
The House has already passed a spending bill for the Veterans Administration. It provides $43.2 billion — nearly $4 billion more than the president requested — for medical care for veterans.
Olver, an Amherst Democrat who voted against the war in 2002, has opposed past funding measures for the Iraq conflict, including three emergency spending bills and the 2006 defense appropriation bill.
"I voted against the Iraq operations supplemental-appropriations bill earlier this year when redeployment of our troops out of Iraq was removed from the package," Olver said in a statement. "The recent letter to the president, signed by me and 69 of my colleagues, is meant to be a warning that the president can expect more of the same."
Five members of the 10-person Massachusetts House delegation, all Democrats, joined Olver in signing the letter, William Delahunt, Barney Frank, Stephen Lynch, Edward Markey and James McGovern. The congressional threat comes five weeks after the administration's so-called surge reached full strength, adding almost 30,000 American troops into Baghdad and other trouble spots.
Named Operation Phantom Thunder, the troop increase has resulted in more attacks on American and Iraqi forces, except in al Anbar province, where administration officials say attacks against coalition forces have fallen dramatically.
The White House says the operation is having some positive effects, and officials are offering unusually detailed descriptions into the new strategy to buttress their claims. White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters Friday that 175 "high-value targets" have been killed or captured since the operation achieved full strength on June 15. He also said coalition forces have cleared 1,300 makeshift bombs, dismantled eight labs in which those explosives were built and discovered 600 weapons caches.
The assessments come as the White House is struggling to hold together Republican lawmakers as Democrats bombard the administration with withdrawal proposals. Both parties are awaiting an anticipated report by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, on the surge's effectiveness in mid-September.
Snow cautioned on Friday, however, that the effort to bring security to Iraq is a long-term mission.
"And if you listen to what a number of members of Congress said, they understand that there's a long-term mission, but what they don't want is U.S. forces on the front line over the long-term," Snow added.
For Olver, the time to withdraw has already passed. He said Bush has refused to change his approach in Iraq since being reelected in 2006.
"We're simply saying, 'You must change,'" Olver said.
HARVEY SILVERGLATE
Privilege's limits
By Harvey Silverglate | July 31, 2007
THE DEVELOPMENT of the doctrine of "executive privilege" -- the notion that presidential advisers may withhold executive communications from congressional scrutiny -- recalls the Dickensian line that "the law is a ass." Although the public and courts have largely taken the existence of this privilege for granted, they ignore both the text and original understanding of the Constitution. Congress was granted the privilege, not the executive branch.
The Founders never envisioned, and the Constitution does not provide for, a presidential privilege allowing White House advisers to flaunt congressional subpoenas, especially in the context of an investigation of potential executive branch impropriety, as in the US attorneys scandal. By contrast, the Constitution's Article I, Section 6, explicitly prevents the executive and judiciary from inquiring about, much less punishing legislators "for any Speech or Debate in either House."
In other words, although Congress can question the president, his staff, and appointees in the course of an investigation, the reverse does not apply. If the Founding Fathers thought the president needed a privilege, they would have provided for it.
Of course, legal history teaches that presidents have prickled against the Constitution, while courts have enabled our chief executives. Only in politically unpopular cases, as in Richard Nixon's attempt to obscure the White House's criminal role in Watergate, has the Supreme Court tempered the utterly made-up legal doctrine of executive privilege. (Seeing the benefits of shielding a branch's actions and decisions from scrutiny by other branches, the judiciary fashioned its own near-absolute, and extra-constitutional, "judicial privilege."
Borrowing from English parliamentary history, the Founders understood that legislative privilege was instrumental for ensuring the separation of powers. Although the Founders imported legislative privilege almost unchanged from the ancient English Bill of Rights, our courts have sharply limited the extent to which legislators can claim such protection and have bizarrely conferred a made-up privilege on the executive.
A seminal battle over legislative privilege was centered in Boston during the early 1970s, when the Nixon Department of Justice investigated how then-senator (and 2008 presidential candidate) Mike Gravel received the ultra-secret Pentagon Papers that had been partially published in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Those newspapers won a historic battle at the Supreme Court, beating back the executive branches' effort to impose a "prior restraint" against publication. However, the Department of Justice tried to make a post-publication criminal case against the leaker as well as the newspapers. At a Senate subcommittee hearing, Gravel tried to enter the papers into the record, then arranged for Boston-based publisher Beacon Press to publish and distribute them.
The Justice Department subpoenaed Gravel's aides to find the embarrassing leak's source. When the Alaska Democrat invoked his legislative privilege, the Supreme Court issued a lukewarm 1972 opinion weakening the "speech or debate" clause so as to exclude Gravel's receipt of the documents from protection or inquiry. Subsequent court battles have only showcased the absurdity of the judiciary's expansion of made-up privileges to the detriment of the only constitutionally enumerated privilege.
Congress's subpoena power is roomy enough to fry fish larger than the US attorneys scandal, such as the CIA's secret prisons or the Bush administration's institutionalization of torture. But when the president explicates a bizarre interpretation of constitutional law, Congress should not stand by as executive branch officials thumb their noses at subpoenas. The president has threatened that if Congress seeks to hold presidential advisers Harriet Miers or Joshua Bolten in contempt, he will order Justice Department prosecutors to refuse to prosecute them for contempt of Congress.
But Congress has tools and powers at its disposal that can do an end run around such executive branch obduracy. Although the executive and the legislative branches are coequal in some ways, the Constitution instructs that in the area of privilege they are not. Although the courts have been reluctant to recognize congressional privilege, they have conceded that Congress is not powerless to enforce its will without any assistance from either the courts or the Department of Justice. As recently as 1934, in Jurney v. MacCracken, the high court upheld the arrest of a minor executive branch official by the Senate's sergeant-at-arms. Terrance Gainer, who holds that position today, maintains on his office's website that he is "authorized to arrest and detain any person violating Senate rules, including the President of the United States."
This remedy of congressional detention is available in theory, but in practice Congress has preferred to refer contempt cases to the Justice Department. If Bush instructs federal prosecutors to ignore Congress, the Judiciary Committees of each house could reassert their historical rights. If White House advisers keep acting like intransigent children enabled by a misguided parent, the House and Senate could tell their sergeants-at-arms to demonstrate the principle of separation of powers. Perhaps then Congress will get the respect the Constitution says it deserves.
Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge-based lawyer, was cocounsel for Senator Mike Gravel's legislative privilege case.
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New fight over more children's health aid
Bush vows to veto plan to cover three million
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff | July 31, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The politically charged proposal to extend health insurance to more than 3 million poor and lower-income children nationally -- one of the most ambitious domestic health proposals to come through Congress in the last decade -- unfolded yesterday in the Senate under the shadow of a formal veto threat from President Bush.
But unlike previous debates pitting Democrats against Republicans, yesterday's floor action on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, put many Republicans at odds with their president and other members of the party.
The Senate plan would expand children's health insurance by $35 billion over the next five years, while the House is expected to take up a competing proposal later in the week that could boost the initiative by $50 billion during the same time frame.
Bush, however, has vowed to veto either plan, saying that the new coverage would encourage people to leave their private insurers for a government-run program. The White House reiterated its opposition yes terday, condemning the Senate bill as essentially extending "a welfare benefit to middle-class households" earning up to $83,000 a year.
On the Senate floor yesterday, Senator Orrin G. Hatch -- an influential Utah Republican and one of two original cosponsors of the SCHIP bill that became law in 1997 -- said "mistakes" by the administration "have caused us a lot of problems here."
"We are trying to do what is right by our children, who are currently not being helped by our healthcare system," Hatch said. "If we cover children properly, we will save billions of dollars in the long run. Even if we didn't [save billions], we should still take care of these children."
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Jr., a Republican from Kentucky and a staunch White House ally, said that while the children's health insurance program has been a "tremendous success," the Senate legislation was far too generous.
"It will significantly increase taxes . . . and lead to a government-run health insurance," McConnell said. If senators allow states to add families with household incomes 400 percent above poverty levels, it would extend a federally funded benefit to those who can afford to pay for their own health insurance, he said.
The president backs a more modest increase of $5 billion for the health insurance plan over the next five years. But opponents say that as the number of uninsured children continues to climb, many states -- including Massachusetts -- would have to drop more of them from their programs.
Signed into law by President Clinton, SCHIP gives federal block grants to states, which then determine how to spend the money for health insurance on eligible children. Since then, the number of children covered by the plan has steadily increased -- 6.6 million children are now covered under the program, and the Senate proposal would add another 3.2 million. The House Plan would cover 4 million new children, but many of the 9 million children who currently do not have insurance still would not be covered.
Over the last decade, the children's health insurance initiative has "reduced the health disparities among children . . . in communities across the country," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who cosponsored the SCHIP legislation with Hatch in 1997. "This is a matter of enormous importance."
Kennedy added, "If we are interested in educating the children of this country, we have to make sure that children can hear the teacher, that children can see the blackboard."
Officials in Massachusetts, along with those in several states, are anxiously watching the political battle in Washington. The program ends on Sept. 30, giving the White House and lawmakers a deadline just two months away.
Massachusetts' universal health insurance plan depends on receiving funding from a variety of sources, including the SCHIP program. Last July, the state raised eligibility to children in families earning 300 percent of the poverty level, up from 200 percent. Currently, 90,500 children in Massachusetts are covered under the program.
In order to maintain its program and enroll more children who are eligible, the state forecasts it will need $277 million in fiscal year 2008 -- $61 million more than the fiscal 2007 allocation. While Massachusetts officials said they have no projections on the financial assistance from the Senate and House plans, Bush's proposal, by definition, would result in health insurance for fewer children.
The president's proposal would cap insurance at 200 percent of the poverty level.
"We're watching this as closely as we can," said Alison Kirchgasser, director of federal and national policy management at the state office of Medicaid, part of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. "The state is committed to covering as many people as we can. SCHIP is very important."
The measure has largely been funded without controversy until the White House insisted it would reject the expansion in the last few months. The Senate, in particular, has had strong bipartisan support for expanding children's health insurance, but the Bush administration's opposition has created much tension among Republicans.
The Senate bill would be funded by a 61-cent increase on cigarette taxes; the House measure also relies on an increase in tobacco taxes.
Senator Elizabeth Dole, a North Carolina Republican, called the legislation "not only the right policy, but it's the right thing to do." Nevertheless, she said the cigarette tax increase to pay for it was all wrong, predicting that her home-state tobacco industry "may collapse altogether" if the Senate passes the bill.
Michelle C. Bucci, a visiting health policy fellow at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation policy institute, said the tobacco tax unfairly targets families most likely to take advantage of the SCHIP program. "Over 50 percent of smokers are poor and low-income, so this is essentially hurting the people we're trying to help," she said.
But Cindy Mann, executive director at the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, said the child health insurance program is in dire need of expansion.
"We have 9 million uninsured children," she said. "What should happen is to take a program with a strong track record and strengthen it so that we can bring those 9 million uninsured children to as close to zero as possible."
Lew Finfer, director of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network, a federation of faith-based community organizations, said the focus now will be on Bush -- whether he vetoes legislation, and then whether each chamber of Congress would have the two-thirds majority needed to override it. "The deadline is coming up fast," Finfer said.
DOONESBURY/by Garry Trudeau
1 - Fun fact, okay? Since 1776, The U.S. has accumulated a national debt of $9 Trillion...
2 - ...Over HALF of which was incurred when a Bush was on watch! What a family legacy!
3 - If you throw in Reagan, fully 70% of the national debt was created under just 3 Republican Presidents!
4 - What is more, they did not even TRY to restrain SPENDING! Out of 19 submitted budgets, only 2 were BALANCED!
5 - So here is my question, Dude... Where did the myth of GOP fiscal responsibility COME from?
6 - How is this my department? (asks the Easter Bunny). Don't you figments all hang out together? (asks the radio interviewer to the Easter Bunny).
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Friday, 07 September, 2007
Bush's police suppress "Sept. 15" press conference
Plus, read an AFP wire story and see the video
While the momentum for the Sept. 15 Peace/Impeachment demonstration grows, the Bush Administration is going to extraordinary lengths to suppress the mobilizing for this mass demonstration.
Less than 18 hours ago, National Park Service Police turned a September 15 Press Conference, held in front of the White House, into a chaotic scene. On the pretext that there was no permit for a three foot long folding table that the media placed their microphones on, the police intervened in the middle of the press conference to announce that it was an unpermitted activity. Three people were arrested and are still being held in jail. They include Adam Kokesh, an Iraq war veteran; Tina Richards of Grassroots America; and Ian Thompson an ANSWER Coalition organizer.
The Parks Police even rode a horse directly into the crowd of reporters and shocked onlookers. The National Parks Police is an agency in the Interior Department whose Secretary is a member of George W. Bush's cabinet. In recent weeks September 15 organizers have been fined more than $30,000 for putting up posters promoting the September 15 March on Washington.
We encourage ImpeachBush.org members to circulate this email and the important story from the AFP wire story that documents this outrageous assault against Free Speech rights by the Bush Administration. At the end of this email we are also enclosing a link to a video on YouTube that shows some part of the suppression of the September 15 press conference yesterday.
Bush and company want to prevent people from coming out for a mass action led by Iraq war veterans and their families that will expose his war propaganda as a lie. The Administration wants to suppress the growing movement for impeachment. This is a showdown of great magnitude.
Please make every effort to come to Washington DC on September 15. We will not be intimidated. Join the tens of thousands who are coming to Washington, DC on September 15. Buses, car caravans and vans are coming from more than 100 cities.
If you cannot personally come you can help by making a generous donation. The buses, literature, posters, stage, sound and other expenses are immense. Many have already contributed. Please do your part and make a contribution today.
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mounted police charged in to break up an outdoor press conference and demonstration against the Iraq war in Washington on Thursday, arresting three people, organizers and an AFP reporter said.
"The police suppressed the press conference. In the middle of the speeches, they grabbed the podium" erected in a park in front of the White House for the small gathering, Brian Becker, national organizer of the ANSWER anti-war coalition, told AFP.
"Then, mounted police charged the media present to disperse them," Becker said.
The charge caused a peaceful crowd of some 20 journalists and four or five protestors to scatter in terror, an AFP correspondent at the event in Lafayette Square said. No one appeared to have been hurt.
Three people -- Tina Richards, the mother of a marine who did two tours of duty in Iraq; Adam Kokesh, a leader of the Iraq Veterans Against the War group; and lawyer Ian Thompson, who is an organizer for ANSWER in Los Angeles -- were arrested, Becker said.
"A petition calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, allegedly carrying one million signatures and endorsed by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, will also be submitted to officials during the week's activities."
The ANSWER coalition is trying to rally support for an anti-war demonstration in Washington that is due to take place on September 15.
Last month, the movement was threatened with a fine of at least 10,000 dollars unless it removed posters in the city announcing the September 15 march.
Washington city authorities have said the posters had to come down because they were stuck on with adhesive that did not meet city regulations.
"At our demonstration today we were showing the media that the paste we use conforms to the rules," Becker said.
"One of our activists was making a speech when the police barged in and grabbed the podium. At that point, Tina Richards started to put up a poster, so they arrested her and two others."
"This strategy of suppression has not worked. We expect many tens of thousands of people" in Washington for the September 15 anti-war demonstration, he said.
The march has been timed to coincide with the release of a report by the US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and will be part of a week of protests led by veterans of the Iraq war.
A petition calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, allegedly carrying one million signatures and endorsed by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, will also be submitted to officials during the week's activities, ANSWER has told AFP.
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CAPTIONS:
Above, a NPS policeman on horse disrupts today's Sept. 15 press conference. Below, Adam Kokesh, Iraq war veteran while legally putting up a poster for September 15th.
Police break up anti-war meeting in Washington AFP Photo: Tina Richards of Grassroots America being arrested.
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"How about that President Bush, yesterday made a surprise visit to Iraq. . . President Bush was in Iraq for eight hours. Nice to see he has an escape strategy."
DAVID LETTERMAN
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Old Joke:
What is the difference between George W. Bush's exit strategy for Vietnam versus Iraq? He had an Exit Strategy for Vietnam...It was called "AWOL"!
CNN News
Sanchez: Iraq war 'a nightmare with no end in sight'
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Story Highlights
Sanchez: U.S. political leaders' "lust for power" has cost lives
Bush administration, Congress, State Department share equal blame for war
U.S. pullout would cause chaos with global implications, Sanchez said
Partisan struggle for power in Washington needs to end to resolve war
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former commander of coalition forces in Iraq issued a harsh assessment of U.S. management of the war, saying that American political leaders cost American lives on the battlefield with their "lust for power."
Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, coalition commander in 2003 and 2004, called the Iraq war "a nightmare with no end in sight," for which he said the Bush administration, the State Department and Congress all share blame.
Sanchez told a group of military reporters in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday that such dereliction of duty by a military officer would mean immediate dismissal or court martial, but the politicians have not been held accountable.
He said the Iraq war plan from the start was "catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic," and the administration has not provided the resources necessary for victory, which he said the military could never achieve on its own.
Still, he said, the U.S. cannot pull out of Iraq without causing chaos that would have global implications.
"After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism," Sanchez said.
Sanchez pointed to what he said was "neglect and incompetence at the National Security Council level" which has put the U.S. military into "an intractable situation" in Iraq.
NSC spokeswoman Kate Starr issued a short response to Sanchez Friday evening:
"We appreciate his service to the country. As General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker said, there's more work to be done but progress is being made in Iraq. And that's what we're focused on now."
Sanchez, who retired in 2006, said it was his duty to obey orders and not object publicly when he was on active duty, but now that he is retired he has an obligation to speak out.
"While the politicians espouse a rhetoric designed to preserve their reputations and their political power, our soldiers die," he said.
The administration, he said, has ignored messages from field commanders that warned repeatedly that "our military alone could not achieve victory" without corresponding help from the State Department.
"Our National leadership ignored the lessons of World War Two as we entered into this war and to this day continue to believe that victory can be achieved through the application of military power alone," he said.
"From a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan, to the administration's latest surge strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economical and military power," he said.
Sanchez said the current strategy, which included a "surge" of troops into Iraq, was "a desperate attempt by the administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war and they have definitely not been able to communicate effectively that reality to the American people."
"Too often, our politicians have been distracted and they have chosen loyalty to their political parties above loyalty to the Constitution because of their lust for power," he said.
Congress, he said, has failed its job of oversight.
"Who will demand accountability for the failure of our national political leadership involved in the management of this war," he said. "They have unquestionably been derelict in in the performance of their duty. In my profession, these types of leaders would be immediately relieved or court-martialed."
Sanchez was pessimistic about the chances of victory in Iraq unless there is a major change in commitment.
"Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory," he said. "The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat."
"There is no question America is living a nightmare with no end in sight," he said.
The nightmare will not end, he said, until the partisan struggle for power in Washington ends.
"National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising an effective, executable and supportable strategies," he said. "At times, these partisan struggles have led us to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives."
"Overcoming this strategic failure is the first step toward achieving victory in Iraq," he said. "Without bipartisan cooperation, we are doomed to fail. There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope."
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