Replies to post #64990 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Tom K]

The Selectric didn't have Times Roman.

[yayaa]

Pothead,you posting from Jamaica,time to get the crop in

[OrangeFluffyCat]

America Gets Privatized

What would President Bush do with a second term? Let's take him at his word. Bush is engaged in a bold (and, if you disagree with him, dangerous) project to dismantle the social advances of the New and Fair Deals, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. He wants to throw more risk onto the individual, free corporations and employers from regulations that protect employees and consumers, and reduce government's role in providing retirement security. He would further cut taxes on the savings and investments of the well-off and weaken the individual's right to sue corporations and heath-care providers for malfeasance.
Or, to put this same list in Bush's terms, he wants to "empower" individuals, end "junk law suits," expand "incentives" for investment, give the elderly "ownership of their retirement," and free businesses from "unnecessary" regulation. A second Bush term would be a big deal, if not necessarily a fair one. I write these words before the president has spoken to his national convention, where his aides promise he will lay out his new ambitions. But he's already told us a lot about where he wants to go.



He proposed partially privatizing Social Security in the 2000 election campaign, and has stuck to his position. He'd take a couple of percentage points off payroll taxes that now go the Social Security fund and allow individuals to invest the amount in private accounts. The transition costs of the plan--because Bush has also promised to allow those at or near retirement to stay in the current system--would amount to about $1 trillion. Retirement costs would have to be covered, even as revenues were cut by the privatization scheme. It's not clear where Bush would find the money, though he could just add to the deficit.

On Medicare, Bush would like to replace the current system that guarantees all seniors the medical treatment they need with fixed payments to subsidize the purchase of private insurance. He has not quite said this explicitly, but this is the direction in which his rhetoric (and his conservative allies) have pointed. For the wealthy, this program would be fine; they could supplement government subsidies with their own funds. The non-wealthy would be stuck with a guaranteed minimum.

This would be sold as "choice." But under the current system, seniors actually can choose their doctors and treatments. The only "choice" guaranteed by partial privatization of Medicare would be among health-insurance companies or HMOs. Which is the "choice" that health-care consumers really want?

The cuts in taxes on savings and investment Bush is likely to seek would mark yet another step in transferring taxation from wealth to work--from investors to wage earners. An ever larger share of government revenue would come from payroll and income taxes. Bush sees this as encouraging investment.

The president is also talking about "flextime." It sounds good. Individuals could cash in overtime pay for time off. But this is also a way to weaken laws guaranteeing that those who work more than 40 hours a week get paid time and a half for their extra hours. That's why employers love the flextime idea. Yes, there may be useful ways to encourage more flexibility in the time/money tradeoff. But can one count on an administration that dislikes regulation of business to guarantee that workers would not be pressured to give up the overtime pay they are now entitled to?

Bush will present these ideas under the appealing slogan of an "ownership society." An ownership society is a great idea. It's the very thing that unions sought: Pushing up wages allowed individuals to own their own homes and send their kids to college. The GI Bill, student loans, Pell Grants, Head Start, minimum wages--all were and are designed to help individuals gain the skills, income, and power to become self-sufficient owners. Reducing government help and protection for wage earners and senior citizens is likely to retard the goal of an "ownership society."

Would the planks of this Bush program be passed? As long as Democrats hold at least 45 seats in the Senate--they are likely to win at least several more than that, perhaps even a majority--much of this Bush agenda will be stillborn. But you never know. Enough Democrats caved in to Bush on his tax-cut proposals to make them law. Maybe the privatized world Bush seeks could happen if Democrats are intimidated by his reelection. That makes the outcome of November's presidential vote very important.

[OrangeFluffyCat]

Vengeance is His


A president who unveils his ideas for his second term in the last hundred days of his reelection campaign is admitting that he has no new ideas for the next four years. So why is George W. Bush bothering to run again, anyway? Perhaps to justify what he sees as accomplishments--principally, tax cuts for the rich and the occupation of Iraq. Perhaps for the chance to one-up his dad as a two-term President Bush. But I believe much of his second term will be given over to another motive--one that's more personal and political:
Vengeance.

If George W. Bush is given a second term, and retains a Republican Congress and a compliant federal judiciary, he and his allies are likely to embark on a campaign of political retribution the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.

How do I know this? I'm from Texas. Again and again, I've seen Bush turn a blind eye as his henchmen have leveled zealous attacks against his political enemies--assaults which the president himself has sometimes directly encouraged. Perhaps most disturbing, the subjects of these attacks have often been longtime Bush allies who ended up on the president's enemies list for minor slights.

Back home Bush had no better Democratic buddy than House Speaker Pete Laney, a quintessential Texas good ol' boy who ran the House through his mastery of both procedure and policy. Together with the late Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, Laney was responsible for Bush's success as Texas governor. (The governor of my state has little real power, but Bush teamed ably and admirably with Laney and Bullock.)

After the Supreme Court handed the 2000 election to Gov. Bush, it was Pete Laney who let him address the nation from the chamber of the Texas House of Representatives, even introducing Bush as a bipartisan healer. Bush made a point of praising Laney, whom he called "my friend."

Two and a half years later, Bush's "friend" was holed up in Ardmore, Okla., in a vain attempt to stop a bone-crunchingly partisan redistricting of Texas that could not have been brought about without the approval of his buddy George. The congressional map was redrawn just two years after the last redistricting--not because population patterns had shifted, but because political power had shifted. When Democrats fled the state to prevent legislative action on the redistricting plan, the Texas Rangers were called in to track them down. And when the Rangers couldn't find the Democrats, the Republicans called in President Bush's federal Department of Homeland Security, which found them by tracing Laney's private plane.

Today Pete Laney is no longer Speaker--with Bush's help, Republicans took over the Texas Legislature--and now Pete is in the fight of his life, running in a new, Republican district created with the support of his old buddy.

Thanks, George.

Laney's story is especially upsetting because Bush tried to destroy someone who had never crossed him--simply for the crime of being a Democrat.

Tony Sanchez's story is different. He actually dared to run against Bush's handpicked successor. The son of a typewriter repairman, Sanchez is a great American success story, rising from days packing produce on the Mexican border to eventual success in the very areas that had disappointed Bush: in the oil patch and, later, in banking. In 1994, Sanchez donated $300,000 to Bush's campaign, making him one of Bush's leading Democratic supports and putting him in league with Ken Lay as one of the largest patrons of Bush's early political career.

Sanchez stood by Bush when he ran for reelection, and then when he ran for president. But he just couldn't stomach Rick Perry, Bush's lieutenant governor, who took over when Bush went to Washington. So Sanchez decided to run himself, perhaps naively thinking his old pal George might be neutral in a race between his lieutenant governor and his most prominent Hispanic supporter.

Fat chance.

Bush not only actively campaigned for Perry, but he also allowed Perry's goons to run vicious ads against Sanchez. They portrayed Sanchez as somehow complicit in the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena because during the 1980s, drug dealers used Sanchez's bank (as they did most banks on the border) without his knowledge.

What the ads did not mention is that Sanchez helped federal authorities bust the bad guys, and earned the praise of the Reagan Justice Department. In fact, when the ads ran, David Almaraz, the DOJ official who handled the investigation, denounced them, saying, "Perry's claim is absolutely preposterous and completely false, without any foundation and fact."

But Sanchez's vast fortune was no match for good old-fashioned Texas racism. Do the math: Mexican American plus rich plus bank plus drugs equals disaster. Sanchez was crushed in the 2002 election.

We don't have to wonder what George W. Bush might do with four more years in the most powerful job on earth--and with no future campaigns to curb his enthusiasm. He's already countenanced the abuse of the federal anti-terror agency to hound Pete Laney. He's already smiled approvingly as racist ads were run against Tony Sanchez. And he's made vengeance a top priority in Washington already.

A prime example is the White House's treatment of Tom Daschle in late 2001. Up until that point, Daschle had been an amiable partner, working with Bush to craft compromises on several important early pieces of legislations and standing strong behind Bush after September 11. In those dark and desperate days, Daschle even earned a public hug from Bush on national television. But in November 2001, Daschle successfully blocked a Bush-backed "economic stimulus" bill which would have, among other things, given a quarter billion dollar tax cut to Enron.

Bush was mad. Just after Thanksgiving 2001, he directed his staff to attack Daschle publicly; shortly thereafter, everyone from Ari Fleischer to the National Review to the editorial page of The Washington Times pushed the White House line that Daschle was an "obstructionist." Rush Limbaugh did them one better: on his radio show, he started calling the Senate Majority Leader "Puff Daschle" and "El Diablo." The GOP attack machine funded aggressive, anti-Daschle ads in South Dakota--an unprecedented direct assault by a president against a sitting leader of the Senate. One particularly egregious ad, which complained that Daschle's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve threatened our national security, featured a photograph of Daschle next to one of Saddam Hussein.

Who will be the next unlucky enemy targeted under a second Bush term? I'd put my money on any Democratic swing-state legislator who seeks to accommodate him. Moderates like Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) might feel an even greater political imperative to accommodate Bush on his second-term agenda--from further tax cuts to privatizing social security--but if history is any guide, he will simply pocket their support and then viciously attack them. That, after all, was the fate of former Sen. Max Cleland who supported Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq. All he got for his goodwill was a ruthless general election campaign engineered by the national GOP on behalf of Saxby Chambliss, who ended up taking Cleland's seat after attack ads charged that the Vietnam triple amputee was soft on national security.

If Democrats are smart, they will instead steal a page from the playbooks of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and the late senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.). In the midst of tough midterm election challenges in heavily contested swing-states, both politicians stood up to Bush. Although the GOP attack machine whirred into action, it sputtered and failed against Harken and Wellstone. Even voters who disagreed with them on some issues admired their independence Harkin won his race easily, and Wellstone was well out in front when he died in a plane crash. Their toughness should provide a model to other targeted Democrats, even in states with split constituencies: In modern politics, as in war, there's simply nothing to be gained by accommodating the enemy.

Bush sees the world in black and white. You're either for him or against him; a saint or a sinner; a friend or a foe. If given four more years in the White House, there's little doubt that the politics of retribution and bitter partisanship will dominate every day.

[OrangeFluffyCat]

The Triumph of Anything Goes

We all know that George W. Bush's reelection would probably bring about more illiberal policies regarding social justice, education, the arts, economic fairness, environmental protection, consumer rights, racial equality, foreign policy, civil liberties, and workers' rights. Less obvious, but perhaps as consequential over the long term, is how a Bush victory in November would change the fundamental practice of democracy in Washington. If the public were to award Bush a vote of confidence on the basis of his first-term record, it would amount to a ratification of the ruthless style and philosophy that have underpinned Bush's presidency--what Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention called "the politics of anything goes."
An oft-quoted quip of Bush's--"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator"--certainly doesn't reflect any plan of his to abolish democratic procedures or principles. But it does reveal his impatience with those procedures and principles. Bush and his team have shown contempt for many of the bedrock elements of liberal democracy, including public access to information; a press that interrogates its leaders; a give-and-take between parties that represent different interests; a separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches; the preference for reason over the use of force; and the support of legal safeguards to prevent the arbitrary exercise of power by the executive. They have routinely violated the bounds of acceptable political behavior in a democracy.

The instances of this misbehavior are so numerous as to fill a small book; indeed, they've already filled many such books. Yet the anything-goes attitude comprises more than the sum total of these instances. It's a philosophy, a set of premises and prejudices, that scorns deliberation and dissent, exalts brute power, drips with disrespect for the spirit (if not the letter) of the law, stiff-arms compromise, and mocks the popular will.

It's hard to find a better exemplar of this attitude than George W. Bush. Nonetheless, Bush himself remains only, the reigning figurehead of this philosophy. Since Newt Gingrich assumed the GOP leadership in the 1990s, and since the party became nearly congruent with the conservative movement, this strain of ruthlessness has come to permeate the Republican Party. Republican behavior during three major national traumas of late--the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the 2000 Florida election recount, and the invasion of Iraq--was strikingly similar: In each case, their leaders rammed ahead, using means fair and foul, to reach a preordained outcome. Each time, they brushed aside not just the doubts of the American public or other nations, not just inconvenient facts, but also concern about the law itself. For these reasons, Bush has been eliciting comparisons to Richard Nixon, the last president who showed such contempt for democratic procedures.

Because Nixon was foolish enough to record himself committing high crimes, we now think of Watergate as an episode in which, as the cliché goes, the system works. The flip side of that statement, however, is that the system almost failed. Certainly, just after Election Day 1972, when Nixon had routed George McGovern, many Americans were despairing that his thuggery would go unpunished. Talk of "repression" and "gangsterism," which had just months before seemed like so much New Left sloganeering, now approximated reality. And Nixon himself knew well that his 1972 victory strengthened his hand to wreak revenge. Throughout that fall, he spoke privately about the viciousness with which he would retaliate, once reelected, against his political foes on the left and in the press.

Something similar could happen following a Bush win this November. For the electorate to turn Bush out of office would be to proclaim that it rejects this manner of politics. But to award Bush another four years--provided he really wins this time--would signal that a majority of Americans not only tolerates but endorses his anti-democratic style. And it could be interpreted by Democrats as a lesson that resistance is futile.

Already, despite losing the popular vote, Bush has governed as if he'd won in a landslide. "From the very day we walked in the building, [there was] a notion of a sort of restrained presidency because it was such a close election," Cheney has said, "that lasted maybe 30 seconds." And with a Republican-controlled Supreme Court and Congress, Bush and Cheney faced few checks on their power.

Should Bush win a second term, the politics of anything-goes would only intensify--because it would no longer be seen as controversial. It would no longer be noteworthy that an administration declassifies documents to embarrass opponents, as when John Ashcroft released a memo by former Clinton administration official and 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick. It would become more or less acceptable to threaten the jobs of bureaucrats who won't play ball in misleading Congress, as happened with chief actuary Richard Foster, who wanted to answer congressional questions about the price tag of the administration's Medicare plan. Or to toss aside legal and constitutional rights of the accused, as at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Or to interfere with the public's right to know, as the administration did in ordering federal agencies to provide fewer records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Fifteen years ago, conservatives put forth the "broken windows" theory of crime. If small street crimes are tolerated, the theory went, neighborhoods begin to accept them as normal and the result is more lawlessness. The same thing will happen if a democracy tolerates Bush's ruthless behavior as business as usual. If voters validate this modus operandi, it won't just accelerate; it will cease to draw even the modest level of scrutiny and outrage that the administration's transgressions have attracted so far. Failing to protest these breaches of the norms that govern political conduct will encourage more such violations.

Historically, second-term presidents have gotten cocky and overreached: Franklin D. Roosevelt with his court-packing plan, Nixon with Watergate (which began in his first term), Ronald Reagan with Iran-Contra. But no law of history decrees that the system always corrects itself. With no independent counsel and no Democratic Congress to investigate, with a press cowed into submission, with a court system loaded with Federalist Society apparatchiks, who will restrain Bush's ruthless agenda? Only the people. And the only time they can do it is on Nov. 2.