13 Reasons Not To Vote For Bush
1. Retired Diplomats and Brass Say U.S. Global Role Is a Shambles –
An eminent group of 27 retired diplomats and military commanders believes that Bush must be replaced for the United States to regain credibility and strengthen valuable foreign alliances. “The Bush administration does not understand the world it faces and is unable to handle in either style or substance the responsibilities of global leadership.” “Our security has been weakened…. Never in our two and a quarter century history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted.” A consistent theme of the statement and the news conference at the National Press Club was that the Bush administration has taken steps that have alienated allies and undermined U.S. interests – ultimately making the world a more dangerous place for Americans. Bush from the outset “adopted an overbearing approach to America’s role in the world, relying on military might and righteousness, insensitive to the concerns of traditional friends and allies, and disdainful of the United Nations. Motivated more by ideology than by reasoned analysis, it struck out on its own.”
2. Global Poll Results –
September 10, 2004 - If America’s allies have anything to say about it, John Kerry would be president. Among 35 nations polled for the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes, 30 preferred Kerry. Only three – the Philippines, Nigeria, and Poland - preferred President Bush. Two – India and Thailand – were evenly split. Thirty nations also said that Bush’s foreign policy made them feel “worse” about the U.S. – with an average of 53% of respondents saying it made them feel worse. Kerry was most strongly preferred by America’s most traditional allies.
3. Patterns of Global Terrorism at 20-Year High –
The State Department had to revise its annual report on global terrorism issued April 29, 2004 to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate, dangerously outmoded and politically manipulated by the Bush administration. Representative Waxman, House Committee on Government Reform told Secretary of State Colin Powell that the number of significant terrorist attacks since 2001 hasn't declined as the department claimed, but had risen by more than 35 percent. And he cited an analysis by two independent experts who used the State Department’s reports own figures to conclude that significant attacks actually had reached a 20-year high in 2003.
4. Nobel Laureates Criticize Bush –
June 21, 2004 – Forty-eight Nobel laureates denounced President Bush for “compromising our future” when it comes to scientific research and the environment. Many scientists have complained that the Bush administration has filled science advisory panels with conservative ideologues rather than individuals with sterling scientific credentials.
5. Scientists Criticize Bush Administration July 8, 2004 - More than 4000 scientists – including 48 Nobel Prize winners and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences accused the Bush administration of distorting and suppressing science to suit its political goals. The administration has been criticized frequently for misusing and ignoring science to further its policy aims. And the long list of signatures collected by the Union of Concerned Scientists suggested that the issue has become worrisome across the scientific community.
6. Taxes –
Over the past three years, the Bush administration and its friends in Congress have enacted enormous tax cuts that benefit most those who need them least. In 2004 alone, millionaires in America will receive nearly $32 billion in tax cuts. In 2003 President Bush gained about $31,000 from his self-prescribed tax cut; Vice-president Cheney gained about $88,000.
7. Education -
Teachers and elected officials from both parties are condemning the Bush administration for failing to adequately fund and properly implement the No Child Left Behind Act. Instead of witnessing “a new era”, millions of American children try to learn in schools with outdated textbooks, crowded classrooms and buildings that are literally falling apart. Reforms without resources are like schools without teachers. They just don’t work.
8. The Bush Administration is Morally Deficient –
Flag Draped Coffins – The government’s stated reasoning is that its photo ban protects the privacy of grieving military families. However, one is at a loss to understand how anyone’s privacy is infringed upon by photographs of anonymous coffins. The Administration’s true concern is transparent. Namely, that casualty photos will galvanize opposition to the war in Iraq. For all the administration’s claims that its photo ban honors the private pain of military families, the truth is that we honor those families more when we share, to whatever small degree we can, the loss they have sustained.
Fear Monger - The claim by Bush and Cheney that the American people must give them four more years in office or else be “hit hard” by another terrorist attack is a sleazy and despicable effort to blackmail voters with fear. They are going back to the ugliest page in the Republican playbook: fear. They know they can’t really convince you to vote for George Bush. Their only hope is to try and make you too afraid to vote for John Kerry. It’s the lowest sort of politics imaginable. It is not worthy of a presidential candidate.
Liar Liar - First, the White House admitted it concealed the true cost of its Medicare bill - $534 billion vs the $400 billion it told Congress – and now it has become clear the law will cost seniors more than understood. The Bush administration intentionally excluded from the 2004 report on Medicare information showing that a typical 65-year old will spend 37 percent of Social Security income on Medicare co-payments, premiums, and other related expenses in 2006.
9. Federal Budget Deficit -
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the estimated shortfall is $422 billion, a record in gross dollars! It’s even worse than it appears. The deficit is actually $574 billion but Washington masks it by using the surplus in Social Security trust fund to help pay for the operating budget. The bottom line: Our government is borrowing one out of every five dollars to pay for the $2.3 trillion it is spending this year.
10. GOP Corruption Helps Polluters –
May 6, 2004 – The thirty companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants and their trade association have raised $6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were given relief from pollution regulations that would have cost them billions of dollars. Once in office, the Bush administration overhauled a key Clean Air Act regulation, making it much easier for power plants to make major renovations and increase pollution without installing modern pollution controls.
11. Neglecting Domestic/Global Issues –
Forced to pour its political capital into justifying and maintaining support for U.S. failing policy in Iraq, the Bush Administration has had less time, energy, and money to invest in other controversial issues. Plans to expand free trade with Australia and Central America have stalled, his proposal to liberalize immigration rules has gone nowhere. His program to promote economic and political reform in the Third World is expected to be under funded because of soaring Iraq costs.
12. Health Insurance –
September 10, 2004 - Annual premiums for the most popular form of family health insurance blasted through the $10,000 barrier this year and more than 80 percent of employers expect workers will have to pay more for insurance next year. Over the past three years, employers have ended coverage for 5 million workers. The latest Census Bureau study showed that 45 million Americans have no health insurance.
13. Conservatives Are Critical of the Bush Administration –
- George Will, May 4, 2004: “This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts.”
- Robert Kagan , a neo-conservative supporter of the Iraq war, May 2, 2004: “All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters understand that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now.”
- Paul O’Neill (former Bush treasury secretary): “Bush is a blind man in a room full of deaf people.”
An eminent group of 27 retired diplomats and military commanders believes that Bush must be replaced for the United States to regain credibility and strengthen valuable foreign alliances. “The Bush administration does not understand the world it faces and is unable to handle in either style or substance the responsibilities of global leadership.” “Our security has been weakened…. Never in our two and a quarter century history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted.” A consistent theme of the statement and the news conference at the National Press Club was that the Bush administration has taken steps that have alienated allies and undermined U.S. interests – ultimately making the world a more dangerous place for Americans. Bush from the outset “adopted an overbearing approach to America’s role in the world, relying on military might and righteousness, insensitive to the concerns of traditional friends and allies, and disdainful of the United Nations. Motivated more by ideology than by reasoned analysis, it struck out on its own.”
2. Global Poll Results –
September 10, 2004 - If America’s allies have anything to say about it, John Kerry would be president. Among 35 nations polled for the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes, 30 preferred Kerry. Only three – the Philippines, Nigeria, and Poland - preferred President Bush. Two – India and Thailand – were evenly split. Thirty nations also said that Bush’s foreign policy made them feel “worse” about the U.S. – with an average of 53% of respondents saying it made them feel worse. Kerry was most strongly preferred by America’s most traditional allies.
3. Patterns of Global Terrorism at 20-Year High –
The State Department had to revise its annual report on global terrorism issued April 29, 2004 to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate, dangerously outmoded and politically manipulated by the Bush administration. Representative Waxman, House Committee on Government Reform told Secretary of State Colin Powell that the number of significant terrorist attacks since 2001 hasn't declined as the department claimed, but had risen by more than 35 percent. And he cited an analysis by two independent experts who used the State Department’s reports own figures to conclude that significant attacks actually had reached a 20-year high in 2003.
4. Nobel Laureates Criticize Bush –
June 21, 2004 – Forty-eight Nobel laureates denounced President Bush for “compromising our future” when it comes to scientific research and the environment. Many scientists have complained that the Bush administration has filled science advisory panels with conservative ideologues rather than individuals with sterling scientific credentials.
5. Scientists Criticize Bush Administration July 8, 2004 - More than 4000 scientists – including 48 Nobel Prize winners and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences accused the Bush administration of distorting and suppressing science to suit its political goals. The administration has been criticized frequently for misusing and ignoring science to further its policy aims. And the long list of signatures collected by the Union of Concerned Scientists suggested that the issue has become worrisome across the scientific community.
6. Taxes –
Over the past three years, the Bush administration and its friends in Congress have enacted enormous tax cuts that benefit most those who need them least. In 2004 alone, millionaires in America will receive nearly $32 billion in tax cuts. In 2003 President Bush gained about $31,000 from his self-prescribed tax cut; Vice-president Cheney gained about $88,000.
7. Education -
Teachers and elected officials from both parties are condemning the Bush administration for failing to adequately fund and properly implement the No Child Left Behind Act. Instead of witnessing “a new era”, millions of American children try to learn in schools with outdated textbooks, crowded classrooms and buildings that are literally falling apart. Reforms without resources are like schools without teachers. They just don’t work.
8. The Bush Administration is Morally Deficient –
Flag Draped Coffins – The government’s stated reasoning is that its photo ban protects the privacy of grieving military families. However, one is at a loss to understand how anyone’s privacy is infringed upon by photographs of anonymous coffins. The Administration’s true concern is transparent. Namely, that casualty photos will galvanize opposition to the war in Iraq. For all the administration’s claims that its photo ban honors the private pain of military families, the truth is that we honor those families more when we share, to whatever small degree we can, the loss they have sustained.
Fear Monger - The claim by Bush and Cheney that the American people must give them four more years in office or else be “hit hard” by another terrorist attack is a sleazy and despicable effort to blackmail voters with fear. They are going back to the ugliest page in the Republican playbook: fear. They know they can’t really convince you to vote for George Bush. Their only hope is to try and make you too afraid to vote for John Kerry. It’s the lowest sort of politics imaginable. It is not worthy of a presidential candidate.
Liar Liar - First, the White House admitted it concealed the true cost of its Medicare bill - $534 billion vs the $400 billion it told Congress – and now it has become clear the law will cost seniors more than understood. The Bush administration intentionally excluded from the 2004 report on Medicare information showing that a typical 65-year old will spend 37 percent of Social Security income on Medicare co-payments, premiums, and other related expenses in 2006.
9. Federal Budget Deficit -
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the estimated shortfall is $422 billion, a record in gross dollars! It’s even worse than it appears. The deficit is actually $574 billion but Washington masks it by using the surplus in Social Security trust fund to help pay for the operating budget. The bottom line: Our government is borrowing one out of every five dollars to pay for the $2.3 trillion it is spending this year.
10. GOP Corruption Helps Polluters –
May 6, 2004 – The thirty companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants and their trade association have raised $6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were given relief from pollution regulations that would have cost them billions of dollars. Once in office, the Bush administration overhauled a key Clean Air Act regulation, making it much easier for power plants to make major renovations and increase pollution without installing modern pollution controls.
11. Neglecting Domestic/Global Issues –
Forced to pour its political capital into justifying and maintaining support for U.S. failing policy in Iraq, the Bush Administration has had less time, energy, and money to invest in other controversial issues. Plans to expand free trade with Australia and Central America have stalled, his proposal to liberalize immigration rules has gone nowhere. His program to promote economic and political reform in the Third World is expected to be under funded because of soaring Iraq costs.
12. Health Insurance –
September 10, 2004 - Annual premiums for the most popular form of family health insurance blasted through the $10,000 barrier this year and more than 80 percent of employers expect workers will have to pay more for insurance next year. Over the past three years, employers have ended coverage for 5 million workers. The latest Census Bureau study showed that 45 million Americans have no health insurance.
13. Conservatives Are Critical of the Bush Administration –
- George Will, May 4, 2004: “This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts.”
- Robert Kagan , a neo-conservative supporter of the Iraq war, May 2, 2004: “All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters understand that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now.”
- Paul O’Neill (former Bush treasury secretary): “Bush is a blind man in a room full of deaf people.”
posted by R7 | 10/12/2004 08:53:00 AM
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