The GOP's Pulpit, Er, Podium

Check out the place where people speak at the GOP Convention. Is it a church pulpit or a podium?

Swift Boat Payoff?

William L. Schachte is one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. He claims that he was on the boat when Sen. John Kerry was wounded and subsequently received his first purple heart. Kerry and others on the boat all dispute that he was there. And according to the Washington Post today, Schachte’s story may be motivated by his deep connections to the Bush administration.

SCHACHTE JUST SECURED A $40M CONTRACT FROM BUSH: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Schachte has been a registered lobbyist for Fastship, Inc, which has been pushing for millions of federal dollars to develop is products. Schachte works at Blank Rome, LLP – a lawfirm that lobbies for Fastship. At Blank Rome, Schachte lists his specialty as “government contracts and defense contracts.” In February 2004, the Bush administration gave a massive $40 million contract to Schachte’s client Fastship.

SCHACHTE ORGANIZED VETS AGAINST MCCAIN FOR BUSH: In a 2000 letter to the editor in the Charleston Post and Courier, Schachte urged veterans to support George W. Bush (R) over Vietnam war hero Sen. John McCain (R) in the Republican presidential primary. [Source: Charleston Post & Courier, 2/17/2000]

SCHACHTE IS LONG-TIME FINANCIAL SUPPORTER OF BUSH: Schachte has given $1,000 to President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns. He has also donated generously to other Republican Party candidates.

CLAIM vs. FACT: Bush & War on Terror

NOW:

"I don't think you can win [the War on Terror]."
- President Bush, 8/30/04

THEN:

"I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror."
- President Bush, 7/19/04

"People say, ‘Can you win the war on terror?’ Of course we can."
- President Bush, 5/14/04

"One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we're asking questions, is, can you ever win the war on terror? Of course you can…it's essential we win this battle in the war on terror."
- President Bush, 4/13/04

"We're going to win the war on terror."
- President Bush, 2/12/04

See here for more examples showing how unbelievable this flip-flop really is.

Florida Redux?

According to the Miami Daily Business Review, Gov. Jeb Bush's (R-FL) political appointee to head the Broward Elections Board has hired the same lawfirm whose head is the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Broward County, Florida. The partner, Justin Sayfie, was also previously a spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush. The lawfirm will represent the "nonpartisan" elections supervisor's office in the upcoming elections, in one of the same counties where there were contested votes last election.

Another partner at the law firm, James Blosser, "was the local finance chair for Jeb Bush's 1998 gubernatorial campaign and is a top fund-raiser for President Bush's re-election campaign."

See the article here.

Usurping State/Local Power

AP says a recent Bush executive order is "in keeping with Bush's goal of having the government defer as much as possible to local interests." While that may be the White House's rhetoric, it is not its record:

RESTRICTING STATE/LOCAL POWER TO LOWER PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES: The White House is opposing bipartisan legislation to allow state/local government to purchase lower-priced, FDA-approved medicines from abroad. The administration took the extraordinary step last month of deploying federal agents to seize shipments of lower-priced medicines headed to a prominent seniors group in Minnesota - a state whose GOP governor is fighting the White House over reimportation. Vermont's GOP governor has filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration, demanding it allow states to proceed with reimportation.

RESTRICTING STATE/LOCAL POWER TO PROTECT CONSUMER PRIVACY: The President is backing banks in their legal efforts to deny California and other states to pass more stringent consumer privacy laws than the federal government has. White House allies in Congress have already passed bills aimed at restricting state rights in this area as well.

RESTRICTING STATE/LOCAL POWER TO CONTROL EDUCATION: Republican and Democratic state governments have condemned the President's No Child Left Behind Bill because it includes strict federal requirements, while not providing adequate funds for implementation. In other words, it is an unfunded federal mandate that takes away state/local control of education.

RESTRICTING STATE/LOCAL POWER TO REGULATE MARRIAGE: When running for President in 2000, George W. Bush said he believed marriage was an issue that states should regulate. Now, President Bush is pushing a federal constitutional amendment taking that power away from states and banning gay marriage.

GOP to NY: Drop Dead

House Speaker Dennis Hastert's recent attack on New York City highlights a pattern of Republicans slamming the Big Apple. As the GOP prepares for its convention there, here are just a few other examples:

WHITE HOUSE ATTACKS NYC AS 'MONEY GRUBBING': New Yorkers "treat [post-9/11 reconstruction funding] as a little money-grubbing game." - White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels, 2/4/02

GOP ATTACKS NEW YORK AS ANTI-AMERICAN: On 3/13/03 Former GOP Congressman and MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough said "New York City, the city hit hardest by September 11, now takes a big stand against the war with Saddam. Is the Big Apple sending a bad message to our men and women in uniform?...New York City is the latest city to back war as a final result. Is the Big Apple being anti-American?...New York City, hit the hardest on September 11. Now the very same city is working against the president in his showdown with Saddam...But up next, New York City, ground zero in the attack on America. Now that city's not standing by us in the looming attack on Iraq."

GOP SAYS NYC HAS 'CULTURE OF WASTE': On 9/16/95, House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused New York City of having "a culture of waste for which they expect us to send a check." He claimed New York takes more federal money than it receives – a stat that was untrue when he said it and untrue today. As the New York Metro notes " In 2002, the last year for which data are available, New Yorkers sent $65.9 billion in federal taxes to Washington, and yet the federal government sent only $54.5 billion back. In one year, more than $11 billion was sucked out of New York and redistributed across America by the Republicans in Washington who control the federal budget."

GOP LAMBASTES DEMOCRATS FOR HOLDING CONVENTION IN NYC: On 8/6/90, Newt Gingrich said "I would personally be very comfortable having the Democratic party going to New York City, standing in the middle of the collapse of the welfare state, and explaining that we, too, could resemble New York City."

GOP SAYS GIVING FEDERAL AID TO NYC IS LIKE GIVING IT TO THE MOB: In April 1989, Newt Gingrich said "Congress ought to ask whether we're subsidizing the Cosa Nostra when we aid New York."

Bush Lied About His Military Service

There is no more debate about it - we now know Bush deliberately falsified and lied about his own military service:

BUSH TOOK OUT AD LYING ABOUT HIS MILITARY SERVICE: “A pullout ad from The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal of May 4, 1978, shows a huge picture of Bush with a ‘Bush for Congress’ logo on the front. On the back, a synopsis of his career says he served 'in the U.S. Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard where he piloted the F-102 aircraft.'” [Source: AP, 7/14/99]

BUSH INSISTED THAT HIS LIE WAS TRUE: When confronted with questions about why he lied about serving in the Air Force, Bush claimed “The facts are I served 600 days in the Air Force.'' That is not true. Bush served stateside in the Texas Air National Guard, not the Air Force. [Source: AP, 7/13/99]

AIRFORCE CONFIRMS THAT BUSH LIED: Bush served stateside in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. The Air Force says that “Air National Guard members are considered 'guardsmen on active duty' while receiving pilot training. They are not, however, counted as members of the overall active-duty Air Force.” [Source: AP, 7/14/99]

See more from David Corn.

CLAIM vs. FACT: Snow & Campaign Activity

CLAIM:
“[Treasury Secretary John Snow] is not engaged in campaign activity, and that hasn't changed.”
- U.S. Treasury Department spokesman, 8/24/04

FACT:
“U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow will visit Grand Rapids, Michigan on Friday, August 27 to meet with local business leaders and discuss the President's efforts to strengthen the economy and create jobs.”
- U.S. Treasury press release, 8/25/04
Source:

FACT:
“Snow has touted the benefits of the administration's tax cuts and economic policy during visits to 21 states so far this year…Of the 21 states Snow has visited, 13 have been ‘battleground’ states that were among the most closely split between Bush and former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election.”
- Dow Jones Newswires, 8/24/04

Mitch Daniels (R-Hypocrite)

From the Indianapolis Star:

Daniels: State needs more U.S. grants; Mitch Daniels called for an increased emphasis on winning federal grants today...Daniels, the Republican nominee for governor, said "We're dead last in education and Health and Human Services grants. This is very unfortunate (and) symptomatic of state government."

So let me get this straight - Daniels, the former Bush administration budget director who slashed federal grants to states in most key areas (example A, B, C, to name just a few) says the problem is that the state is not getting enough federal grants, and that as governor he will lobby for more state grants from the federal government.

Sure, Daniels says this is because his state isn't getting enough of the federal grants out there, but that's transparent BS...he spearheaded the effort to slash billions out of state grants, meaning there has been far less overall money available for his state - and others - to get. Now he's crying that his state doesn't have enough to make due. Maybe he should have thought about what he was doing to his home state when he was busy hamming it up in the White House.

Shameless Plug

The Washington Post is holding a contest for the best political blogs on the web. I hope some of you would consider nominating www.davidsirota.com.

Click over to the Washington Post's blog contest site and check it out.

The Kerry Record Bush Doesn't Want You To See

Here's a new piece Jon Baskin and I published in the Washington Monthly. Despite the Bush-Cheney attacks on Kerry's record in the Senate and on national security, the record shows Kerry was at the forefront of fighting terrorism - well before it was in vogue. At almost the very same time Bush was doing business with a very shady bank, Kerry was working to take that bank down.

See the article here.

THEN & NOW: Bush & the Great Lakes

THEN:
Even though experts say "diverting any water from the Great Lakes region sets a bad precedent" Bush "said he wants to talk to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien about piping water to parched states in the west and southwest." He said, "A lot of people don't need [the water], but when you head South and West, we do need it."
- AP, 7/19/01; Bush statement, 7/18/01

NOW:
"We've got to use our resources wisely, like water. It starts with keeping the Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes Basin. You might remember what my opponent said earlier this year about Great Lakes water diversion. He said it would be a delicate balancing act. It sounds just like him. My position is clear: We're never going to allow diversion of Great Lakes water."
- President Bush, 8/16/04

Bush Is The One "Living in the Past"

CLAIM:
"I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system really don't understand the threats of the 21st century. They're living in the past. We're living in the future. We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country."
- President Bush, 8/17/04

FACT:
According to nonpartisan congressional auditors, the ballistic missile system the administration is pushing is completely unproven. Furthermore, it is set up to shoot down Cold War era Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM's) - a threat experts long agreed since the fall of the Soviet Union was significantly smaller than that of terrorism. Nonetheless, in the months before 9/11 when the White House was receiving warnings of an imminent attack, the President opted to fully fund missile defense while simultaneously vetoing an urgent request to divert $800 million from the program into counterterrorism. Today, even as terrorism remains the top threat to America, the White House continues to fully fund missile defense, while underfunding homeland security and nuclear non-proliferation. Among other shortfalls, the President has actually proposed major cuts to the Nunn-Lugar program, which is seen as the most effective tool to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear material.

The Big Squeeze

I just finished a cover story for this month's American Prospect magazine about how average Americans are getting squeezed in a whole host of economic areas. It is particularly relevant to today's release of a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report showing that the Bush tax policies have actually shifted more of the tax burden onto the middle class.

The bottom line: the major problem we face today is not necessarily that government spending is being cut (though that is a problem) - it is that the government no longer excercises its authority to regulate the market to protect average people. Laws that once protected the middle-class have either been gutted, or are going unenforced. And serious proposals to reverse that trend have been repeatedly shot down.

Read the story here.

More Selling Out to PhRMA

You may have heard about the Australian Free Trade deal the Bush administration just signed - it was a massive giveaway to the drug industry which funds the Bush campaign. Specifically, the Bush administration used the deal to force the Australian government to raise the price of medicine there. The trade pact also included provisions to impede future legislative efforts permitting seniors to reimport cheaper prescription drugs from Australia.

Now, just months later, news reports reveal that the top Bush administration trade officials who negotiated the deal are going to work for the health care and drug industries. Specifically, the Sydney Morning Herald reports Ralph Ives, assistant US trade representative for pharmaceutical policy, next month "becomes vice-president for global strategy at AdvaMed," a medical products industry group. Simiarly, Claude Burcky, who was Ives's head negotiator on the Australia deal, "is now director of global government affairs at the pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories." Not surprisingly, Abbott has already started to exploit the industry-backed patent provisions in the trade deal.

This is, of course, nothing new for the Bush administration. The White House has extremely close ties to the drug industry and allows it to continue charging Americans the highest prices for medicines in the world. For instance, Bush Medicare administrator Tom Scully immediately departed to become a health industry lobbyist after he made sure the new Medicare bill was a massive giveaway to the industries he was going to work for. The move raised still unanswered questions about whether Scully was actually negotiating the new lobbying job while still working on the Medicare bill.

Similarly, the White House has appointed key pharmaceutical industry figures to top positions that regulate that industry. For instance, Bush appointed Eli Lilly executive Mitch Daniels as his budget director from 2001-2003, "even though Daniels had no full-time job experience related to the federal budget." During Daniel's tenure, the White House took the extraordinary step of attaching provisions protecting Eli Lilly from lawsuits to the bill creating the Department of Homeland Security.

Bush also hired Daniel Troy as chief counsel for the FDA, despite the fact that he represented Pfizer as a lawyer. Under Troy's leadership, FDA is intervening in court to block liability lawsuits against drug makers.

Even the international AIDS fund is not immune to the Bush-pharmaceutical industry nexis. Bush nominated Ex-Eli Lilly CEO Randall Tobias to manage the international fund. Under Tobias, U.S. funds to fight AIDS are only allowed to buy brand-name drugs from the major pharmaceutical companies. The decision effectively shuts out cheaper generic medicines that could be provided immediately to the developing world.

Where is Bush's Outrage Now?

THEN:

On 7/14/92, the Washington Post reported that George W. Bush wrote a letter on behalf of his father's presidential campaign to 85,697 campaign contributors condemning a similar smear operation against Bill Clinton and encouraging those donors not to contribute to the effort.

NOW:

Unlike Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), President Bush refuses to repudiate an ad sponsored by his own top donors that slanders John Kerry's war record, without proof. Even though the ad has been discredited by non-partisan sources, and veterans in the ad itself, Bush has stayed silent.

THEN & NOW: Bush on Tax Enforcement

THEN:
“[I want] to make sure that tax cheaters are found, make sure the IRS gets after those who don't pay taxes; make sure that the system is fair for those of us who do pay taxes. We want everybody paying their fair share.”
- George W. Bush, 4/15/04

NOW:
“The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway.”
- George W. Bush, 8/9/04

At least he's telling us the truth now about his attitude toward his rich friends ripping off the government, while the rest of us get stuck having to pay our fair share. Not surprisingly, under Bush audits of wealthy corporations have dropped, while audits of individuals and working families have increased.

Cheney Blocked Intel Reform

The nonpartisan Federation of American Scientists reports that in 1992, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney refused to implement many of the key intelligence reforms that the 9/11 Commission is proposing:

In a March 1992 letter to Congress, Secretary Cheney defended the status quo and objected to proposed intelligence reform legislation, particularly the DNI position. "The roles of the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence have evolved in a fashion that meets national, departmental and tactical intelligence needs," Cheney wrote. The intelligence reform proposals "would seriously impair the effectiveness of this arrangement by assigning inappropriate authority to the proposed Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who would become the director and manager of internal DoD activities that in the interest of efficiency and effectiveness must remain under the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense," he wrote...Secretary Cheney successfully torpedoed the initiative with his warning that "I would recommend that the President veto [the measure] if [it] were presented to him in its current form."...Cheney's unyielding opposition stifled the first initiative for post-Cold War intelligence reform. As a result, we now face many of the same problems, and the same proposed solutions, more than a decade later.

Cheney's full letter is here.

They Knew

Please read the new cover story I wrote with Christy Harvey in this month's In These Times that goes through all of the declassified documents and shows how the Bush administration knew it was misleading America to war in Iraq. This piece proves that the White House not only did not tell the truth, but KNEW they were not telling the truth about the supposed Iraqi "threat."

The article is here, with all the links to source materials.

Bush on Racial Profiling

THEN:
"I've asked the attorney general and the deputy attorney general to examine racial profiling. It's wrong in America and we've got to get rid of it."
- President Bush, 7/30/01

NOW:
"President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney."
- Arizona Daily Star, 7/31/04