Bushiness As Usual

By: Richard A. Stitt

Making their Faustian pact with tyrannical, repressive dictatorships such as Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikstan has been easy enough for Bush/Cheney to pull off in the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

They call this a coalition, selling it to the American citizens as if it was a diplomatic tour de force on the level of the Yalta Agreement in W.W.II Europe. Turkmenistan, of course, has always been important for promoting Cheney's personal fortunes when he represented Halliburton during his tenure while working on deals for an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea. Hence, his refusal to provide the GAO with any details of the names of attendees at the Energy Commission meetings earlier this year.

Bush/Cheney understand that the longer the "war" goes on the longer the public approval ratings will remain at their stratospheric 90% level. At least, that is their hope. Understanding well the American peoples' concern and fear over the anthrax threat, Bush/Cheney can pretty much wage their war on terrorism with whatever means and however they wish, having been given their own dictatorial powers and have so easily stripped Americans of many of their Constitutional rights. The more the focus is on the health scare from anthrax exposure, the easier it is for the Bush/Cheney junta to deflect from the increasingly undefined, fractious and inept campaign against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The best interests of the country, therefore, are subordinate to maintaining high approval ratings for their fraudulent and illegitimate takeover of our democracy.

We are told that the war on terrorism will continue for years, thereby ensuring that 90% approval ratings (read adoration) for Bush/Cheney will continue indefinitely. They have successfully deflected the questionable military mission and the nonstop bombing of Afghanistan by spewing out daily screeds issued by the likes of John Ashcroft, warning Americans, and now the rest of the world, of impending nuclear and biological attacks. These proclamations are subject to credibility revisions, depending on how much political hay can be made from them.

In the meantime, the Republican owned and controlled media continue their water boy role with a steady cacophony of Bush/Cheney propaganda which is being released almost daily, showing film coverage of the bombing and redistribution of the rubble in Afghanistan. Since we should never expect to be told truthfully about what is actually being destroyed or bombed, we can more or less expect those cross hairs of "smart bombs" hitting targets we see on the evening news to just as well be the same file footage from the Persian Gulf War. Afghanistan, viewed from all the archived film seen even before the bombing campaign began, is indistinguishable from the way it looks now. Can anyone, even with a trained eye, really tell the difference?

One recent variation that distinguishes this campaign, however, is the presence of the Northern Alliance Cavalry, which was showcased on last night's news, ostensibly leading the charge against Taliban strongholds in Kandahar. Now, in addition to the US Air Force dropping leaflets, transistor radios and MREs (Meals Ready To Eat), they will be air dropping OREs (Oats Ready To Eat), presumably to sustain the Horse Brigade in this high tech, smart weapon war, through the harsh Afghan winter.

The main focus it seems to me, is not coalition-building anymore. It's G. W. Bush legacy-building. Why else would the Republican cadre of apologists and media factotums elevate his words to the level of a Winston Churchill or Franklin Roosevelt?

Recently, toward the end of a press conference which included encouraging American school children to send a dollar to help the kids in Afghanistan, in response to the question as to what Americans can do to recognize some of the terrorist threats, Bush stated, "If you see somebody who you don't know getting into a crop duster that doesn't belong to you, report them". When one hears this kind of inane statement coming from a person who purports to be leading our country, is it any wonder that his cerebral credentials are in serious question? "Oh please", we can hear Karen Hughes groan in the background, "stick to the script!".

How many times do we need to hear about kick-starting and stimulating the economy, especially now that Bush/Cheney have plundered and squandered the surplus and caused our country to sink into a deficit in the quickest time in the history of the world? You just know that the hyperbolic Newt Gingrich would really be having a good time with that one had Clinton/Gore been in office.

Just as Republican Feeding Chairman, Alan Greenspan, long since abandoned good fiscal policy, bolstering the fraudulent and illegitimate Bush/Cheney junta by larding up the Wall Street looters with their tenth interest cut, which comes to a magnanimous 70% reduction of their borrowing rate since Bush/Cheney took over, so too has the Republican Congress pandered, predictably, to the corporate demands for privatizing the airport security for Americans.

But no matter, they will not eschew their below-the-belt politics even for one moment, pursuing a hard-line, in-your-face insistence on privatizing the airport security force in lieu of a federalized system which was approved by a 100-0 vote in the US Senate, 214 votes in the House of Representatives and endorsed by over 80% of Americans.

The federal Secret Service is good enough to protect Bush/Cheney, and the federalized security force is good enough to protect members of Congress in Washington, DC, but when it comes to the protection and security of the American people who take approximately 10,000 flights per day, it is not to be provided. Let's face it, those who would like some benefits like decent pay, health benefits and job security can't possibly be the "Heartland" people Bush/Cheney are talking about. Rather, we must absolutely have the privatized version according to the wishes of Bush and the likes of Texas Representative Tom 'DDT is as safe as aspirin' DeLay, and their government-hating extremists, the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation.

Their sole purpose and defining philosophy is to disassemble federal agencies such as the EPA, OSHA and Dept. of Interior by cutting off their funding and privatizing Social Security. The long hit list of assaults including the weakening of environmental laws, oil drilling in previously protected national parks, eviscerating worker safety rules, trashing energy conservation (just a "personal virtue", according to Cheney) and on and on.

According to Labor Department statistics, approximately 10% of the entire US work force is unionized, which is one of the sticking points that Bush and Republican congressmen fear would happen if we had a federalized airport security system.

That fear is immediately translated to mean they would all vote Democrat! The truth is, Republicans have always fought tooth and nail against fair and livable wages for workers in this country, just as they fought and voted against a minimum wage raise and the Family Leave Act which allowed workers to have time off to care for their sick child or relative and then return to their normal jobs without the threat of being replaced or fired.

These are just a couple of the main protection provisions in the Senate bill, that workers would have good pay and job security. It is similar to many European countries where most of the airports are owned and operated by the governments that oversee, and are responsible for, aviation operations and security.

Unlike some of the European and Canadian systems where government workers can and have gone on strike, it has always been illegal for US government workers to strike. Just ask the air traffic controllers whose union, PATCO, under the advice of PATCO president, Robert Poli, went on strike and resulted in the firing of several thousand FAA workers by then President Ronald Reagan. The additional fear that these unionized workers would all vote for Democrats is unfounded as well. Many members of the UAW and Teamsters unions, to name just two, voted strongly for Republicans as the 2000 election results show from Michigan, for example.

No, the real reason is the same one that has always defined the Republican Party: Money. The $12 million per year airline CEO's and other corporate interests continue to enjoy a strong lobby in the Republican Party and are huge contributors to their reelection campaign coffers. Any incursion by US workers into their control of airport security is seen as a threat to be staved off at any cost, even at the expense of jeopardizing the safety and security of the citizenry of this country.

This is no longer trial and error. The proof is that the private sector controlled the hiring, firing and quality control of the privately paid McWorkers for the past twenty years and they have failed the test, miserably and reprehensibly. Republican congressmen, striving mightily to wrap their duplicitous and deceptive version of airport security in Red, White and Blue, cannot escape the glaring truth: their version is totally wrapped in Green but they are choking on their own greed.

Once again, I'll end by quoting two world leaders, who, upon encountering their experience with G.W. Bush, made these comments earlier this year: Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, observed Bush as "...a naive, reckless cowboy".

And the other, by his newly found comrade and coalition partner, China's Premier Jiang Zemin, described Bush as "...logically unsound, confused, unprincipled and unwise to the extreme".