One of the women on welfare I worked with at the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, Gerry, once said to me, “What we need to tell Washington is to give us caps and gowns, not wedding gowns.” Washington, unfortunately, isn’t listening. Bush’s new proposal to invest $1.5 billion not in vocational training, or daycare, food stamps, but in pressuring poor women to marry their children’s fathers is as misguided as it is offensive. One particular statistic proponents of such a plan should keep in mind: well over half of women on welfare report having been victims of domestic abuse. In other words, Bush’s proposal would drive women back into abusive relationships.
Tag Archives: George Bush
Bush is now touting declining unemployment numbers:
Unemployment dropped today to 5.7 percent. That’s not good enough. We want more people still working. But nevertheless, it is a positive sign that the economy is getting better.
But as the Baltimore Sun reported:
The nation’s unemployment rate dropped sharply to a 14-month low in December, but underlying that positive number was grim economic news – only a handful of new jobs were created and hundreds of thousands of discouraged people dropped out of the work force.
In other words, the Bush economy is so strong, Americans have given up on even looking for jobs in it.
Incidentally, if you’re checking out the Bush-Cheney site – don’t miss the “Compassion” photo album. See if you can figure out what differentiates the people in those pictures from the ones in the photo albums for “Economy” or “Environment.” Here’s a hint: it’s not the content of their character.
On a related note, the Weekly Standard is aghast at a campaign whose adherents have the gumption to believe that they’re important parts of a movement – how “Bolshevik” and “creepy” of them. Jonathan V. Last takes much more comfort in the Bush Blog:
Perhaps most telling, however, is the Bush blog’s lack of a comment section. There’s no place for readers to jabber and connect. More importantly, there’s no place for Bushies to cultivate a mob mentality (there are plenty of other right-wing sites where this goes on). The Bush blog says what the Bush blog says, and that’s that. Take it or leave it. You’re a citizen, make up your own mind, and cast your vote.
In other words, Dubya’s followers know how to stay in their place.
As Atrios points out, Bush made much the same argument Dean got in such trouble for about leaving it to the judges to render verdicts against the evildoers – and not a peep of outrage from the “liberal media.”
The National Council of La Raza offers a blistering and trenchant critique of Bush’s immigration reform proposal:
The President’s proposal is limited to creating a potentially huge new guestworker program for immigrant workers with no meaningful access to permanent visas or a path to citizenship for those working, paying taxes, and raising their families in the United States. Immigrants would be asked to sign up for what is likely to be second-class status in the American workforce, which could lead to their removal when their status expires or is terminated. Labor rights for temporary workers have historically been weaker than those afforded to workers in the domestic labor force. Under this proposal, workers would be vulnerable during their temporary status, and even more vulnerable when it expires, which would also have a negative impact on wages and working conditions for their U.S.-born co-workers.
That said, President Bush, by adopting the rhetoric of the left to advance a proposal unsatisfying to left or right, has created an opening for those concerned with true progressive immigration reform to hold him accountable for the failings of his proposal to live up to his rhetoric. Left advocates are effectively doing so – it’s time for left politicians to do so as well, particularly because this legislation will never pass without their votes. Let’s keep in mind that Bush pandering for votes by playing at offering more immigrants a path to legalization beats Clinton pandering for votes by throwing them off welfare eight years earlier. The difference has everything to do with the popular movements mobilizing since then for progressive change – and it’s those movements that will bring a reform far better than the one Bush offered today. As the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride coalition argued today:
If there is any reform here, it is of “old” temporary worker programs, including the notorious and discredited “bracero” program…President Bush said our immigration laws must be “more humane.” But a policy that measures an immigrant worker’s stay in America in three-year increments is far from humane. Why buy a house or start a family, why open a business or put down roots in a community, why build up seniority on a job or train for higher skilled work, if you will have to leave it all after three or six or nine years? Why pull yourself up by your bootstraps only to have the boots themselves taken away when you’ve succeeded?
The IWFR Coalition will continue to work for comprehensive immigration reform based on the great American tradition of welcoming immigrants through an open door, not a revolving one.
Josh Marshall just posted a transcript of a conference call between journalists and “senior administration officials” about the contours of the immigration policy President Bush plans to propose tomorrow. I’m glad to see a shift back towards the White House’s September 10, 2001 position on immigration, and have no doubt that the organizing coalition and voting bloc mobilized most visibly through the Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides has been vital in that achievement. The framing of the problem – the imperative of family reunification, the centrality of undocumented labor to our economy, the humanitarian crisis – is improved, and the approach is certainly more consonant with the Freedom Riders demands than it once was. A “temporary worker” status, however, opens up new avenues for abuse and exploitation, and simply creating a legal process for undocumented workers to go “above ground” and air labor grievances does little to change the facts on the ground about employers’ power over immigrant workers. That would require the right to organize, which is conspicuously absent from the discussions of “senior administration officials.” Josh Marshall closes by asking whether “the president expects to or even wants this ‘policy’ to pass.” We’ll have to see. Meanwhile, the coalition for progressive immigration reform will have to keep fighting for an immigration policy that truly enshrines the best values of this country.
For those who think this site has gone too easy on Howard Dean, this article fairly and comprehensively sets forth the episodes in Dean’s record which should leave progressives concerned:
Dean slashed millions of dollars from all sorts of social programs, from prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients and heating assistance for poorer Vermonters to housing assistance funds. In defending his cuts to social programs, Dean said, “I don’t think I have to shy away from that just because I’m supposed to be a liberal Democrat.”
Throughout the 1990s, Dean’s cuts in state aid to education ($6 million), retirement funds for teachers and state employees ($7 million), health care ($4 million), welfare programs earmarked for the aged, blind and disabled ($2 million), Medicaid benefits ($1.2 million) and more, amounted to roughly $30 million. Dean claimed that the cuts were necessary because the state had no money and was burdened by a $60 million deficit.
But during the same period, Dean found $7 million for a low-interest loan program for businesses, $30 million for a new prison in Springfield, VT, and he cut the income tax by 8 percent (equivalent to $30 million)–a move many in the legislature balked at because they didn’t feel comfortable “cutting taxes in a way that benefits the wealthiest taxpayers.” By 2002, state investments in prisons increased by nearly 150 percent while investments in state colleges increased by only 7 percent
Rosenthal takes particular pride in culling that
Dean admits that he recognized early on that the popular anger at Bush is “a raw energy, an energy that I know could be channeled.”
His suggestion is that this shows that Dean is
someone who is sure to repay our support by cutting our living standards and promoting American power abroad…
Alternatively, it could show exactly why Howard Dean might just not. Acknowledging that Howard Dean the candidate is descended more from the popular response to George Bush than from the record of Howard Dean – that he is, like any candidate, a vessel for the forces which have lifted him above the surface – should lead to more soul-searching among progressives than the conclusion either that therefore he’ll be loyal or that therefore he’ll abandon it.
Today the ACLU announced a major lawsuit against secret service limitations on protests at Bush appearances. I saw this in person with the PA ACLU when Bush came to town this summer. The most aggregious and obvious violation is the pattern of allowing pro-Bush activists closer to Bush than anti-Bush activists. This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with imagery. At risk of sounding subversive, I have to wonder, kind reader, if you were trying to shoot the President, which crowd would you be trying to infiltrate?
Ever ask yourself just how dishonest – comparatively – GWB (George W. Bush) has been as President? The Washington Monthly has gone where LWB (Little Wild Bouquet) might fear to tread – stacking GWB’s lies against Clinton’s, Reagan’s, and GHWB’s. If there’s any way to make him look more honest, this would be the way to do it. But Washington Monthly’s “Mendacity Index,” which lines up the top six lies for each of the last four heads of state (“Read my lips,” “I did not have sex with that woman,” “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles,” etc.), doesn’t really leave anybody looking too hot. You can also rank ’em yourself here.
This must be why President Bush doesn’t do press conferences more often.
One highlight would be the implication (in the context of defending himself as tolerant of gay people despite not wanting them to have civil rights like marriage) that homosexuals are sinners:
I am mindful that we’re all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor’s eye when they got a log in their own,” the president said. “I think it is important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts.”
Another would be blaming the failure of massive tax cuts to jump-start the economy on the media’s choice to cover his desire to go to war:
I remember on our TV screens–I’m not suggesting which network did this, but it said: “March to war,” every day from last summer until the spring: “March to war, march to war, march.” That’s not a very conducive environment for people to take risks when they hear “march to war” all the time.
Looks like Bush may be losing support among another traditionally Republican bloc of voters:
“He pats us on the back with his speeches and stabs us in the back with his actions,” said Charles A. Carter of Shawnee, Okla., a retired Navy senior chief petty officer. “I will vote non-Republican in a heart beat if it continues as is.”
“I feel betrayed,” said Raymond C. Oden Jr., a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant now living in Abilene, Texas.
Many veterans say they will not vote for Bush or any Republican in 2004 and are considering voting for a Democrat for the first time. Others say they will sit out the election, angry with Bush and Republicans but unwilling to support Democrats, whom they say are no better at keeping promises to veterans. Some say they will still support Bush and his party despite their ire.
While there are no recent polls to measure veterans’ political leanings, any significant erosion of support for Bush and Republicans could hurt in a close election. It could be particularly troublesome in states such as Florida that are politically divided and crowded with military retirees.
Registered Republican James Cook, who retired to Fort Walton Beach, Fla., after 24 years in the Air Force, said he is abandoning a party that he said abandoned him. “Bush is a liar,” he said. “The Republicans in Congress, with very few exceptions, are gutless party lapdogs who listen to what puts money in their own pockets or what will get them re-elected.”
…Since 1891, anyone retiring after a full military career has had their retirement pay reduced dollar for dollar for any Veterans Administration checks they get for a permanent service-related disability. However, a veteran who served a two-or-four-year tour does not have a similar reduction in Social Security or private pension.
A majority of members of Congress, from both parties, wants to change the law. A House proposal by Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., has 345 co-sponsors.
But it would cost as much as $5 billion a year to expand payments to 670,000 disabled veterans, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier this month told lawmakers that the president would veto any bill including the change.
The proposal is stuck in committee. A recent effort to bring it to the full House of Representatives failed, in part because only one Republican signed the petition.
“The cost is exorbitant. And we are dealing with a limited budget,” said Harald Stavenas, a spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee…
Good for these vets for deciding that the ones who want to deploy them for unjust and unnecessary warfare abroad and then welcome them back to the same shaft designated for every other working-class American are not on their side. The (first) Gulf War, and the official refusal to treat or even recognize the Gulf War Syndrome our soldiers suffered from exposure to our weapons, is only the most disturbing case. On a related note, one of the gratifying changes to see at the most recent round of anti-war protests was a departure from the pitfall too many on the left fell into in Vietnam: targeting the largely working class soldiers who carry out orders rather than the men who sit behind desks who send them. Looks like the latter group may be in for a comeuppance…
Josh Eidelson 