Election Day 2006

Some things to keep in mind as we go to vote this November:

President Bush seems to pride himself on running a tight ship modeled after corporate principles, which emphasize process and bottom line results. Unfortunately for us citizens and taxpayers, he doesn’t walk the talk, other than showing up to meetings on time. Take for example Hurricane Katrina, the worst disaster in U.S. history. By any measure, this emergency exemplified incompetent leadership at the highest levels in our Federal government. Yet only Michael Brown, head of FEMA was forced to resign, but not until Bush told Brown, he was doing a “heckava job Brownie”. One year after Katrina, the U.S. government still hasn’t gotten its act together in restoring the Gulf region of our country. The fact that Brown was even appointed to the head of FEMA was extremely poor judgment. Brown was obviously unfit for the job and had zero experience with emergency preparedness. Of course this is not the first time that an unfit person has been appointed to a key leadership position within the Bush Administration. A 23-year-old Republican was appointed to oversee the building of the Iraq infrastructure. This person again had zero experience in such a massive undertaking. Of course the program has been a massive failure. In the interview with her, one of the questions about her qualifications was her stance on abortion. Like what in the world does that have to do with rebuilding Iraq.

In the September 21, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle, we have the story of Department of Interior auditors blowing the whistle on their superiors for not following up on fraudulent activity involving oil leases on public lands. The result has been oil company friends of the Bush Administration enjoying a 30 million dollar windfall savings at the expense of taxpayers.

Next to that story was a report on veterans being shortchanged by 3 billion dollars, because the Department of Veteran’s Affairs used the wrong data to estimate the cost of caring for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the GAO congressional watchdog agency, this shortfall was party attributable because the Veterans Department could not get accurate information from the Defense Department. It sounds like the two Departments don’t play together very well, which hurts our injured veterans.

On the Fox News Saturday September 30, 2006 “Cashin In” financial news program, Jonathan Hoenig of Capital Asset Management took issue with a Democratic Party spokesperson who complained about the billions of dollars wasted each week in Iraq that could be spent re-building America. Jonathan stated that the money was well spent since it protected us from terrorists, and was better than the billions we spend each year on Medicare and other social welfare programs. His comments reminded me of a quote from a speech given by President Eisenhower in 1953:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

My gut feeling is that Mr. Hoenig’s opinion now represents the prevailing philosophy of the Republican Party. Not only would President Eisenhower not recognize the new Republican Party, but “Mr. Conservative” himself Barry Goldwater would also have a hard time stomaching the Republican Party platform. His granddaughter C.C. Goldwater pretty much said exactly that in her HBO documentary on her grandfather.

Then, we have the example of a Republican Congressman, Representative Mark Foley of Florida being forced to resign because of inappropriate e-mails to a congressional page. Mr. Foley now takes his place alongside Mr. Delay and Mr. Cunningham in the Republican Congress Hall of Shame. And these are our elected representatives who have the nerve to talk about “family values”.

We have our President again, who at a GOP fundraiser in Alabama talked about the party of FDR and Harry Truman, becoming the party of “cut and run”. Democrats like former Major Tammy Duckworth who lost both legs in Iraq of took exception to his comment. Her response was to the point:

"Well, I didn't cut and run, Mr. President. Like so many others, I proudly fought and sacrificed," Duckworth said. "My helicopter was shot down long after you proclaimed 'mission accomplished.'"

President Bush is also hell-bent on re-interpreting the Geneva Convention language on torture and suspending habeas corpus for persons we deem as terrorists. Someone should explain to him that the former is about as productive as re-interpreting pornography and the latter is an insult to the Founding Fathers who gave us the precious gift of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which President Bush took an oath to defend.