Introduction: Why I Labor So Hard Against the Bush Administration
IN LATE 2000, George W. Bush and other Republicans stole the White House from Al Gore and other Democrats. Since that time, I have been bombarded with pleas from friends, enemies, media pundits, and others to “get over” that constitutional pilfering, as if they need my acquiescence to further legitimize the theft in their minds and soothe their nagging consciences.
My answer remains unchanged: Bush is not my president and never will be. I am 45 and seriously doubt I will ever get over it. I doubt I will ever stop exposing the ugly truths about the Bush administration and succeeding similar regimes.
Every time I see Bush’s smug smirk – which is way too often – I am reminded of how he enlisted the aid of his right-wing buddies on the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the legal counting of votes in Florida in a stunning, partisan decision and hand him the White House that Gore won in the popular vote by more than 540,000 votes. I am reminded of stories that never received serious play in the national media, such as the roughly 10,000 absentee votes in some 26 Republican-leaning Florida counties that were counted on Election Day despite them being spoiled.
Amazingly, with no impartial scrutiny, the county officials drew up new copies of the 10,000 ballots that the machines did not read and marked them for the candidates when they showed “clear intent,” according to the Orlando Sentinel, one of the few media outlets that covered this story. Bush dominated absentee balloting in Florida by almost 2-to-1, and this sleight-of-hand by election workers that benefited Republicans was a clear contrast to the position Bush & Co. took against hand recounts following Nov. 7, 2000. 1
I am reminded of Margie Schoedinger, a Texas woman who filed a rape lawsuit against Bush in December 2002 that received almost no attention from the mainstream U.S. media. Schoedinger’s tragic death in September 2003 – a gunshot wound to the head ruled a suicide by medical officials – also remains unexamined. Shedding some light on that case and other things the Bush administration doesn’t want you to know is the major impetus behind this book.
To my knowledge, I was the last reporter to interview Schoedinger before her untimely death. I have a duty to not just speak out about her situation, but to speak out about all of the victims of this Bush administration that I can.
For the past three years and counting, I have been haunted by much more than the Schoedinger case. I have lost sleep, friends, and probably months off my life trying to do something to stop the madness emitting from the White House, Congress, and other government institutions. It’s affected my marriage and the time I could have spent with my young son and daughter. Becoming one of the modern-day record 2 million victims of corporate layoffs in 2001 exacerbated my anger toward the Republicans, who talked down the economy and encouraged companies to cut employees to help craft an employers’ job market once again well before Sept. 11.
How I long for the employees’ job market under President Bill Clinton, our last elected president, even with Monica and Republican-instigated impeachment hearings and rabid right-wing dogs sniffing through the alleys and garbage cans for any morsel they could use to get Clinton. How I long to feel proud of my country again, not hear the cries towards those who question the attacks on civil liberties and Afghani civilians and Iraq and other places to “love it or leave it.”
Let me say this as clearly as I can: I was born in Washington, D.C., as an American, I want to die an American, I love my country, and that’s why I speak out against the attacks on our constitutional rights and violence done in our names. That’s why I work so hard to expose the real stories behind the Bush administration. I want to preserve my country that so many died for, that Jefferson and Washington and Franklin and Paine and many others created. My main contribution to that goal is to help the truth become more widely known. After that, let the chips fall where they may.
How I long to once again hear our leaders talk about reaching out to the less fortunate, widening the safety net, and bridging the racial divide, not send us careening to the edge of World War III.
Where is the more civil and moral federal government that Bush – who on the 2000 campaign trail called another person a “major league asshole” in public - promised us during that 2000 campaign? Why did we not use our budget surplus to help the less fortunate, not squander it on a tax cut plan where more than half of the money went to the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans?
Why does the Bush administration not support the United Nations target for industrialized countries to spend 0.7 percent of national income on international aid for poorer countries, when we are one of the least generous rich nations, earmarking a mere 0.1 percent on such aid? Isn’t helping the poor and needy – not the rich and politically-connected - the moral thing to do? And why did we bomb the hell out of Iraq again – and dig ourselves deeper into the World War III morass and Orwellian perpetual war - when even the CIA admits that Hussein had nothing to do with September 11, 2001?
All I have seen from the White House since January 2001 are tales of corporate paybacks, the Enron lobbyists who wrote the Bush administration’s energy policy with Dick Cheney behind closed doors with no input from consumer and environmental groups, the broken campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the scrapping of ergonomics rules to protect workers, the dismissal of the Kyoto Protocol that would reduce emissions that contribute to global warming, the campaign to drill for oil on protected federal lands like in Alaska, the cutting of federal funding for programs like the Boys and Girls Clubs that help the less fortunate to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and so on, and so on….
How can Bush claim to restore morality when little in his background suggests he ever held a moral compass? He drank till he was 40, possibly snorted cocaine and slept around with many women, reportedly got several pregnant and paid for abortions, lied about his drunk-driving arrest, used the taxpayers of Arlington to become a millionaire after he sold his interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team to a campaign contributor – who he later helped further enrich as governor - following his campaign to build a taxpayer-funded ballpark, completed questionable business deals, including an insider stock sale when he was on the board of Harken Energy, and engaged in dirty campaigning that culminated with the 2000 White House heist.
Even Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein said in a speech to the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association in 2003 that Bush did little but tell dirty jokes while on the board of Caterair, a company owned by Carlyle, in the early 1990s. Rubenstein added that Bush wouldn't make a list of the top 25 million people he would have suggested for U.S. president. 2
While supporters laud Bush’s “conversion” to Christianity, I remain unconvinced that Bush is a sincere Christian, as his actions betray the words he speaks. What has he ever done for the poor? He was the “loyalty enforcer” in his father’s presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992, two of the dirtiest campaigns in modern history [2000 also ranked up there]. In 1992, the Bush campaign even used government employees – reminiscent of Watergate - to search passport records of Clinton and other documents to try to dig up dirt, according to records from the National Archives and other sources. 3
Bush Jr. helped convince his father to engage in the infamous negative, misleading, and race-baiting Willie Horton ads in 1988. No wonder his campaign even maligned fellow Republican John McCain in 2000.
Despite the dark events of the past few years, I still believe in the sentiments expressed by Tom Paine more than 200 years ago, that the “cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” This country is still a great experiment, a melting pot of many different kinds of cultures, races, religions, and beliefs. Few other countries in the world exude such diversity. Our challenge is to create real liberty and justice for all here.
That’s why I have written this book – which grew out of columns, letters and other writings I authored since 2001 for various media and Internet ezines and sites like BushWatch, Democratic Underground, Smirking Chimp, Democrats.com, American Politics Journal, Online Journal, Buzzflash, AlterNet, Liberal Slant, MikeHersh.com, Information Clearinghouse, Znet, Dream Forge, Moderate Independent, IndyMedia, America Held Hostile, Global Free Press, Oped News, and others.
That’s why I refuse to get over the events that sent Bush into the White House. I refuse to follow the lead of Democrats like Bill McBride, the 2002 failed Florida governor candidate who told the far-right Washington [Moonie] Times that he wasn’t influenced to run against Jeb by the 2000 recount battle. “I think more people went to the polls to vote for Al Gore than for George Bush,” McBride was quoted by the Times as saying. “But to argue it on and on is like arguing a call in a basketball game after the game is over.” 4
Well, I am 6-7 and a former small college basketball player. And even when I was more concerned about my slam dunk than voting in a presidential election, I would not dream of comparing the sacred right to vote with something as relatively trivial as a basketball game. Stealing people’s right to vote and have their votes counted is not the same thing as being called for double-dribbling. We’re not talking petty theft here. We’re talking the crime of the millenium, the pilfering of one’s most basic democratic rights. Excuse me if I don’t just shake this one off in the same manner I shook off missing a potential game-winning jumper.
I haven’t always been an avid opponent of Republicans like Bush and Cheney. Before the 2000 election, I met Bush on the campaign trail and considered him likable on the surface, although I knew he had a darker side underneath. I considered myself independent during the Clinton years, but I usually voted for Democrats. But after the 2000 presidential heist, my independent stance changed, although I have slacked off from being too aligned with the Democrats, many of whom sicken me in their own ways.
While some friends consider me to be a diehard liberal, I consider myself to be more of a populist in the mode of Paul Wellstone. I attempt to work for liberty and justice for all - not just for rich people, not just for white people, and not even just for Americans - and try not to get bogged down in labels. But sure, I'd rather be associated with the so-called liberals than conservatives.
As a journalist for more than 20 years, I have been trained to “see both sides” and write in a cold, detached manner, trying as much as possible to eradicate my opinions from my work. This book strives not for journalistic impartiality, but for providing a bit of balance to the Bush-supporting trend that permeates the mainstream U.S. media. These times are too critical, too important, to smugly sit on the sidelines and blame everyone equally for the mess we’re experiencing.
I have tried to see things from Bush’s viewpoint, and all I have come away with is that he mostly cares about his wealthy, politically-connected, selfish cronies. And almost everything he does – from visiting Iraq on Thanksgiving 2003 to posing with African-American kids at a Boys and Girls Club - is cynically geared for political gain. Most politicians execute a similar agenda, but Bush takes it to the extreme.
Republicans have controlled the upper echelons of the three main branches of government, as well as the media, at least since 2001. They like to talk the talk about “taking responsibility,” but when something goes haywire under a Republican regime, most point the finger at Democrats. While I am inspired by the actions of many people I have met in recent years, such as Angie, who labors to make people aware of the problems associated with the Bush administration in one of the most conservative states in the country, more people need to stand up to such hypocrisy. More people need to get mad. More people need to take some action against Bush and other Republicans, even if it’s just to help circulate some of the points made in this book.
And don’t let people tell you to “get over” the Republican pilfering of the White House in 2000. Let me ask you something. If you had lived in the colonies in the 1770s, would you have told Paine and Jefferson and Franklin and Adams and the rest of the Sons of Liberty to “get over” the Boston Massacre of 1770? To “get over” the Stamp Act? To “get over” other indignities at the hands of the British? Would you have fought with the Patriots, or would you have joined the majority of colonists who opposed them as Tories and even fought with the British?
Would you have told Patrick Henry, “Hey, c’mon, Pat, don’t get so riled up over this ‘liberty or death’ stuff. Yeah, we don’t like the British treating us like slaves, but hey, it’s not good to keep arguing about it. That’s like arguing over calls in a game of horseshoes after the match.”
As Jefferson and Franklin and Washington and Henry and others roll over in their graves, I know my answer. I refuse to “get over” the Republican-led Florida voting roll purge, the Election Day counting of 10,000 spoiled absentee ballots in 26 Republican-dominated counties, the Republicans denying African-Americans and others their voting rights even when they had their legal registration cards, the discarding of legal, mostly Democratic votes, the illegal Republican effort to change absentee ballots that had already been mailed to election offices, the polling sites being moved without notice, the voters denied their rights to second and third ballots, the non-English speaking voters who were not supplied with interpreters, the phone lines to central voting databases being blocked, the Democratic voters given misleading instructions by Republican election officials, the carpools taking voters to the polls stopped by police and harassed for not having taxi licenses, the Election Day police checkpoint near a largely African-American voting site, the voters told there were no more ballots, the Republicans forcing military overseas votes that did not have witnesses’ signatures or postmarks to be counted but denying mostly Democrats’ votes who made similar errors, the U.S. Supreme Court partisan decisions, the Bush campaign’s violation of the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the partisan decisions by Katherine Harris to certify Bush as Florida’s victor, the butterfly ballot and other two-column ballots that confused voters, the lies and propaganda that included blaming Gore for delays when Republicans filed the lawsuits blocking and delaying the legal vote-counting process, the burial of Margie Schoedinger’s strange death, and the multitude of other Republican-inspired injustices that occurred before and since the 2000 election pilfering.
During Clinton’s tenure, many Republicans refused to “get over” his outright election victories, simply because he beat their candidate. If Republicans can do that to Clinton when he wins his elections fair and square, I can return the favor to Bush when he steals the 2000 election and continues to deceive the American people and the world.
I will fight back with the truth uncovered through long hours of research. I will stand up to the Bush administration and venture down back alleys that few may dare to trod. I will keep working towards a society that truly practices “liberty and justice for all” – not just liberty and justice for Bush’s wealthy, selfish cronies.
Footnotes
1. Orlando Sentinel, May 7, 2001, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/orlandosentinel/72511476.html?did=72511476&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&desc=MANGLED+BALLOTS+RESURRECTED+THOUSANDS+OF+SPOILED+VOTES+WERE+COUNTED+--+THANKS+TO+A+HELPING+HAND.+Series:+EXPOSING+THE+FLAWS+1+in+an+occasional+series+on+Florida%27s+election; also try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themanisreport/message/119
2. Speech to the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, Reprinted in part by Progressive Review, April 2003, http://prorev.com/bushcarlyle.htm
3. Consortium News, “Bush Family Politics,” Oct. 5, 1999, http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/100599a1.html
4. Mark Byron blog, April 9, 2002, http://markbyron.typepad.com/main/2002/04/quip_du_jouri_t.html
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© 2004 Jackson Thoreau