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Let's talk taxes!

Sure I know the first big Presidential debate is coming up in a few hours, but I want to go back and elaborate on what I wrote two days ago in my post "The 'unnatural' crimes of George W. Bush" about one of the other crucial issues, aside from foreign policy, in this campaign. Here's what I wrote:

"What Bush and the anti-tax ideologues around him are really after is the abolition of the income tax altogether. What Bush has called tax fairness and simplification would ultimately result in a government funded by user fees and consumption taxes (a fancy word for sales tax) which are regressive and by definition unfair, at least to people who aren't rich (most of us)."

What's a user fee? A simple example is a fee you pay to cross a bridge, or one you pay for using a road, which are fairly common back East. In the West, a good example is paying to hike in a national forest, or to camp or picnic in a state park.

But what about the tuition one pays to attend a public college or university? That's a user fee, and like all user fees, it limits access to public resources to everyone but the relatively well-off.
The Oregonian today ran an "In My Opinion" piece penned by University of Oregon student body president, Adam Petkun, who says "... that the likelihood of a young Oregonian's attending college is now 14 percent lower than a decade ago."

He goes on to say:

"Disinvestment in post-secondary education cannot persist if Oregon's economic viability and quality of life are to continue. Oregon already lags far behind other states in many measures of affordable, quality post-secondary education. For example, only four states west of the Mississippi River have higher tuition rates than Oregon, and only seven states nationwide pay full-time faculty less."

Responsibility for "disinvesting" in public services lies with the state legislature. The legislature is also responsible for the chronic underfunding of K-12 public education which has resulted in the emergence of several local option funding initiatives, and the temporary Multnomah County income tax. That tax is under attack by anti-government zealots-- Don McIntire--who want to repeal the final two years of the tax. The mantra of these anti-tax activists is always the same: Stop government waste! Stop higher taxes! You can bet those people will enthusiastically applaud the Bush agenda of phasing out all taxes except user fees and regressive consumption taxes to fund government services.

When I lived in California in the late 60's, college was virtually free for all state residents, but Ronald Reagan and Proposition 13, the first property tax limitation, put an end to that. In Oregon at the same time, college tuition was about $330 a year, less than one-tenth of what it is today. If the cost of college had increased at the rate of inflation, it would now be around $1000, not the nearly $4000 students pay today.

In the meantime, we're squandering $200 billion dollars on an unnecessary war.

I think we need to get our priorities straight.

Bush crimes: UPDATE

Here's the original Rolling Stone article By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about Bush's abysmal environmental record which eventually became his just-published book, Crimes Against Nature (see yesterday's post).
Not only is the record abysmal, according to Kennedy, it is crafted and executed through stealth, intimidation, and misleading rhetoric:

"Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats."

Although I said yesterday that environmental issues may never surface in the debates, there remains a slim chance that Kerry, with some deft maneuvering, could tie the Bush Administration's disastrous foreign policy with its even more disastrous environmental policies. Here's what Kennedy says:

"Furthermore, the deadly addiction to fossil fuels that White House policies encourage has squandered our treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people."

If Kerry could pull off that rhetorical coup de grace Thursday, the race for the Presidency would be completely redefined by Friday morning. Depending, of course, on how the media spins the event.

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Allthough primarily a music magazine, Rolling Stone comes up with some pretty good (and interesting) political pieces. The current issue features an examination of Bush's "lost year" in 1972 by Paul Alexander. Alexander also wrote a biographical sketch of Bush in 1999 during
his Presidential campaign. It's a surprisingly sympathetic coming of age piece about a floundering rich kid trying to live up to his father's expectations. But ultimately it paints an unflattering picture of an essentially unremarkable man whose "... greatest achievements all seem to involve an almost magical ability to position himself in the channels where the money flows, from the oil bailouts of the 1980s to the fortune he made off of the sale of the Texas Rangers and lastly to the staggering amount of money he has already raised for his presidential campaign."

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Coincidentally, Willamette Week's feature story this week is on the top ten most underreported stories of the year. Number 1 on the list is "Bush manipulates science", featuring none other than Bush's environmental nemesis, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.. Kennedy is quoted thusly:

"This is the worst president we've had on the environment in this country's history. There's no doubt about it... . Corporate power is driving the final nail into the coffin of Thomas Jefferson's vision of democracy. [But] because we have an indolent and negligent press, the American people don't even know about the issues that are affecting their quality of life in this country."

The "unnatural" crimes of George W. Bush

Thursday night's "debate" between John Kerry and George W. Bush is limited by a "memorandum of understanding" ("Debate over the debates") to issues of foreign policy, and of course, the war in Iraq.
That preemptive and unnecessary war (perhaps an oxymoron to those who believe no war is necessary) is reason enough to vote Bush out of office.

But there are two other equally compelling reasons to oust Bush, neither of which may be mentioned in the two remaining debates.

The first is the the Bush version of "tax relief", which entails more than hefty, and irresponsible, tax cuts for the wealthy. What Bush and the anti-tax ideologues around him are really after is the abolition of the income tax altogether. What Bush has called tax fairness and simplification would ultimately result in a government funded by user fees and consumption taxes (a fancy word for sales tax) which are regressive and by definition unfair, at least to people who aren't rich (most of us).

The other reason is what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. calls in the title of his new book, Bush's Crimes Against Nature.

Kennedy has become Bush's most outspoken environmental critic. As the chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and as an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Kennedy has concluded that George W. Bush is the "worst environmental president in history." The NRDC has compiled an exhaustive litany of the Bush Administration's environmental transgressions in "The Bush Record." The report called "Rewriting the Rules"

"...documents more than 150 destructive policy actions over the past year, describing a historic assault on the nation's environmental safeguards that has only accelerated through the course of the Bush presidency."

The report is especially critical of the role of industrial and corporate polluters in crafting Bush Administration environmental policy:

"The direct influence of industry on Bush environmental policies was made painfully clear through recent documentary evidence. The documents expose the direct role of major polluters in drafting Bush administration policy, and undercut industry arguments embraced by the administration. Industry's role in crafting the administration's plan to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants was exposed in January 2004, when it was revealed that at least a dozen paragraphs in the EPA's mercury proposal were lifted, sometimes verbatim, from memos sent by a law firm that represents the utility industry. A month later, a New Jersey official pinpointed additional verbatim and paraphrased wording from a report sponsored by an industry association representing two-dozen large Western utility companies."

If fascism can be defined, as it once was, as "the perfect merger of government and corporate interests", then we can legitimately characterize the Bush regime as fascist.

Earlier this year, Kennedy, Jr. wrote an article for the Nation entitled " The Junk Science of George W. Bush." In the article, Kennedy accuses Bush of politicizing science:

"Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda."

The article goes on to say:

"As a favor to utility and coal industries, America's largest mercury dischargers, the EPA sat for nine months on a report exposing the catastrophic impact on children's health of mercury, finally releasing it in February 2003. Among the findings of the report: The bloodstream of one in twelve US women is saturated with enough mercury to cause neurological damage, permanent IQ loss and a grim inventory of other diseases in their unborn children."

In other words, the Bush Administration poses a threat to the well being of American citizens.

The "debates", unfortunately, won't reveal any of this to those voters who decide to watch them in hopes of gaining a clearer idea of which candidate is best suited to lead our country for the next four years.

Frohnmeyer "defects" from Hatfield--and Bush!

John Frohnmeyer, brother to U of O President Dave, and a luminary in the moderate wing of the Oregon Republican Party (or what's left of it-- Remember Tom McCall?), is another who disagrees--vehemently--with St. Mark Hatfield's endorsement of George W. Bush. In this online public commentary in the Oregonian, Frohnmeyer announces his support of John Kerry:

"Four more years of an administration charging down a misbegotten path is a fool's errand. It's like Yogi Berra saying, 'We're lost but we're making good time.' The only way the United States can stem the blood flow in Iraq, change it into a functioning country rather than a training ground for international terrorists and, ultimately, make us safer at home is to change course, and the only way that is going to happen is if Sen. John Kerry is our next president."

And while we're in the Oregonian's cyberspace, here's another commentary from Ron Burley, a married father of two, who opposes Measure 36 (which Constitutionally bans gay marriage):

"A gay marriage amendment is also a misuse of the Constitution, which is supposed to protect our liberties. The United States of America is a constitutional republic with a Bill of Rights that affirms that the majority cannot, and shall not, abridge the rights of individuals. Our Oregon constitution is no different."

And lastly, I just fired off a letter to the Big O in response to a Renee Mitchell column, which damns, with "faint praise", the effort to "Stop the Repeal" of the temporary three year county income tax to adequately fund local schools and public services. Here's the text of the letter:

"Like Renee Mitchell ('Politicians have broken promises, but we shouldn't', Sept. 27), I too am the parent of two recent graduates of the Portland Public Schools. But unlike Mitchell, I'll happily keep my promise to sustain the final two years of the temporary county income tax for schools and public services, not for selfish purposes, but for the good of the community.

Mitchell claims that local politicians who support the tax are 'perjuring their way out of a crisis' and breaking their promises to taxpayers. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Mitchell herself admits, the money raised from the county tax is being used precisely as intended. It's going directly into classrooms and funding vital social services. And the promised negotiations with teachers over pay and benefits are not only ongoing, the district and the teacher's union have reached substantial agreement on most of the crucial issues.

The county tax was passed as a temporary local solution to the chronic underfunding of public education by the state legislature, with the expectation, not the promise, that the politicians in Salem would eventually find the money to fund education adequately. It's their Constitutional mandate, especially after the passage of Ballot Measure 5, which effectively eviscerated local fiscal control of schools.

I, for one, am keeping my promise. I will proudly vote to 'Stop the Repeal' of the temporary county income tax."

Debate over the "debates"

Yesterday I mentioned Bill Moyers interview with George Farah of Open Debates, an organization that wants to replace the safe "stage appearances" by the two major party Presidential candidates with actual debates, which the dictionary defines, roughly, as  a "disputation", an argument over both sides of an issue, or a contentious exchange of ideas. 

What we currently get, as negotiated by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a tool of the Republican and Democratic Parties, are formats which make it virtually impossible for either candidate to make an election-changing mistake, or to embarass himself beyond political redemption.

The negotiations result in "memoranda of understanding", which cover everything ( and I mean everything!) from topics and formats, to podium heights and the kinds of pens and/or pencils which are to be used for taking notes.

Paul Waldman of The Gadflyer examines the minutiae of the Kerry- Bush memorandum, and concludes:

In sum, Bush was successful in negotiating the debates down to be as dull as possible. At this point, Kerry needs something dramatic out of the debates, while Bush hopes that nobody watches and everyone quickly forgets about them."

Bill Moyers NOW provides this concise history of televised Presidential debates, once run by the non-partisan League of Woman Voters.  The League withdrew its sponsorship in 1988, "....refusing to give its name to an event 'controlled and scripted by the candidates' campaign organizations.' " But, as I said yesterday, I still plan to watch the "debates."

The Kerry campaign: It's about Bush, stupid!

As I've written before, this campaign is about ridding the country of the radically conservative George W. Bush, not about John Kerry, so all of us progressives should stop the whining and carping about the weakness of Kerry's campaign and just "pull the Democratic lever" come Nov. 2, as Doug Ireland puts it in his provocative and always interesting blog, Direland:

"I'll still cast an effective vote to defeat George Bush by pulling the Democratic lever--but I find that the clothespin I've put on my nose to take that position must pinch harder and harder as the weeks go by...."

Ireland's latest beef with Kerry, and with all but the most radical of Democrats, is that they "have now completely capitulated to the Republican advocates of supply-side economics--what the first President Bush once called 'voodoo economics' -- by overwhelmingly voting for Dubya's tax cut package."

I said recently that I may reconsider my earlier promise not to vote for Ralph Nader, with whom I largely agree on most issues. But now I don't have that option.  Nader was once again removed from Oregon's ballot, this time by judicial decree. 

Speaking of third party candidates,  last night Bill Moyers interviewed George Farah, the young and very articulate executive director of Open Debates, an organization which argues that the presidential debates " have been hijacked by the two main political parties:"

"The result? Moderators can't ask follow-up questions, important issues are never raised, and credible third-party candidates are excluded from the proceedings altogether."

That would include Ralph Nader.

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Tony Iovino, in a comment about my posts on George W.s (non)service in the Air National Guard asks, "Who cares?" 

He has a point, but you gotta remember that it was the Bush campaign, through surrogates, who "dishonorably and dishonestly", in the words of John McCain, attacked John Kerry on his record of heroic, and voluntary, service in Vietnam.  My advice to the Kerry campaign was to "take the gloves off" and hit back, hard.  I was doing it for them.

And who knows?  Maybe I'll do it again. 

And I will watch the "debates", no matter how circumscribed they may be, hoping that Kerry delivers the knockout punch that Bush so richly deserves.

St. Mark falls, AFTER his op-ed flip-flop

St. Mark Hatfield, the renowned pacifist from Oregon, fell Wednesday and was hospitalized with a concussion, but that had to be after his astonishing endorsement of Bush's war in Iraq and the abdication of his role as a principled pacifist.  So we can't attribute the op-ed piece praising Bush's leadership (yesterday's post) to the injuries suffered in the fall.  UNLESS....  whatever it was that caused the fall also seriously impaired his judgment.

Speaking of judgment, it must be noted that the spokesperson in today's Oregonian article was Hatfield's son, who got into the University of South Carolina on a quid pro quo, or bribe,  promised by St. Mark himself.   As a member, and eventual chairman, of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hatfield had a lot of clout.  He has so many buildings named after him primarily for his ability to "bring home the bacon."

Hatfield's inexplicable endorsement of Bush has angered a lot of people, as evidenced by a slew of letters in today's paper. One, from a Republican, said this:

"I once thought of myself as a Mark Hatfield Republican. His support of the most deceptive, secretive, incompetent and delusional administration we have ever known (Sept. 23) is saddening indeed.

"Yes, 9/11 may be said to have 'changed everything.' It made clear that America's wealth and military power alone cannot protect us against determined, fanatical terrorists. Nor can they alone be justly used to impose our will upon sovereign nations. ........

"This Republican will vote for Kerry."

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So as we're fighting a "war" on illegal drugs (coke, pot, heroin), which doesn't seem to be working, the Centers for Disease Control has just released a study showing that alcohol abuse killed 75,000 people in the U.S.  in 2001, making it the third leading cause of preventable death. Alcohol is a legal drug, or substance.  The leading cause of death is another legal drug, tobacco.

So what does this tell us, besides the fact that our priorities are misplaced?   I dunno.  I do know, however, as I argued in a previous post --"Wars, wars, wars!"-- that we "should stop wasting our money on failed policies", and that we should start funding programs here at home that just might work.  Like treatment programs and education!

What happened to Mark Hatfield's principled pacifism?

Did I read this guest commentary in today's Oregonian correctly?  Or am I hallucinatng?  "Mr Pacifist", retired Senator Mark O. Hatfield --he has more buildings named after him than Abraham Lincoln, at least in Portland-- announced "I will proudly cast my vote for President George W. Bush."

What?  Say again?  This is the man who boasts during his Senate career that he "never once voted in favor of a military appropriations bill."  He further claims:

"As a senator, I joined with Sen. George McGovern in an unsuccessful effort to end that war. I was the only senator who voted against both the Democrat and Republican resolutions authorizing the use of force in the 1991 Gulf War.

"In my final years in the Senate, I opposed President Clinton's decision to send American troops to Bosnia."

The world has changed, he says, because of the September 11 attacks.  Saddam Hussein was a much greater threat, apparently, than Brezhnev, Ho Chi Minh, and Milosevich.

The world has indeed changed when a principled pacifist (Hatfield was also the king of pork-barrel politics and he was completely unprincipled, or clueless on environmental issues) rolls over and endorses the Bush policy of preemptive war.

So much for the moderate Republican opposition to the Bush Administration.

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Hatfield's repudiation of his principled pacifism is a flip-flop of monumental proportions.  Or maybe he's just fallen victim to the right-wing "carnival con game" that Molly Ivins describes in this column.  Here she channels Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas) to explain how the political shell game works:

"The trick never ages: The illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. ... Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization."

Apparently Bush is courting  "soccer Moms" with promises that only he can make the country more secure, and "protect their families".  Ridiculous.  I don't know Moms of any stripe who fear for the safety of their children because of terrorist attacks.  School shootings, maybe, by deranged kids with access to guns.  On that issue,  John Kerry is their man. He backs an assault weapon ban, and has promoted a health care system that is much more kid and family friendly than anything Bush has proposed.

Where was "W." in 72? Part 2

Even the Air Force Times now says Bush has some explaining to do about his National Guard (non)service, especially his missed flight physical after which he was officially grounded. His grounding has been well documented, and not by the CBS "forgeries":

"Handwriting experts hired by many media organizations as well as other critics contend the document, and possibly all four, are forgeries. However, Killian’s order is confirmed by two documents that were not part of the CBS papers. The first is a White House-released letter from the commander of the 147th Fighter Group, Col. Bobby W. Hodges, to its Texas higher command dated Sept. 5, 1972, with a subject line of 'Suspension From Flying Status.' ”

"The letter documents the missed flight physical and the suspension, “effective 1 Aug 1972.” A Sept. 29 order from the National Guard Bureau further confirms the missed physical and the suspension."

Eric Boehlert of Salon has written a pretty succinct summary of the damning records, or lack thereof, covering the last two years of Bush's (non)service in the guard. Here's a sample of the discrepancies between the actual record and the Bush version of what occured back then:

"On Sept. 29, 1972, Bush was formally grounded for failing to take a flight physical. The letter, written by Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief, chief of the National Guard Bureau, ordered Bush to acknowledge in writing that he had received word of his grounding.

"But no such written acknowledgment exists. In 2000, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Boston Globe that Bush couldn't remember if he'd ever been grounded.

"Bartlett also told the Boston Globe that Bush didn't undergo a physical while in Alabama because his family doctor was in Houston.

"But only Air Force flight surgeons can give flight physicals to pilots."

And only George W. Bush knows what really happened.

Where WERE you, in '72, George W. ?

Maybe CBS and Dan Rather screwed up with distracting and inconsequential "documents" purporting to tell a story about George W. Bush's National Guard (non)service that had already been told by actual Pentagon records, but the ill-fated "rush to judgment" by the 60 Minutes network is not the end of the story, despite what you are told on TV.

Yesterday the New York Times ran a front page feature on W.'s "lost year", with this justification:

"This year of inconsequence has grown increasingly consequential for President Bush because of persistent, unanswered questions about his National Guard service - why he failed to take his pilot's physical and whether he fulfilled his commitment to the Guard. If anything, those issues became still murkier this past week, with the controversy over the authenticity of four documents disclosed by CBS News and its program '60 Minutes' purporting to shed light on that Guard record."

And today, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne challenges Bush to put the story to rest by just answering the questions that keep the story alive: Why did he miss his flight physical, and did he fulfill his National Guard duty?

"But, most important, there is only one reason the story about Bush's choices during the Vietnam years persists. It's because the president won't give detailed answers to the direct questions posed by the Times story and other responsible media organizations, including the Boston Globe. Their questions never depended on the discredited CBS documents.

"Bush could end this story now so we could get to the real issues of 2004. It would require only that the president take an hour or so with reporters to make clear what he did and did not do in the Guard. He may have had good reasons for ducking that physical exam. Surely he can explain the gaps in his service and tell us honestly whether any pull was used to get him into the Guard."

Why is the story of either candidate's service during the Vietnam war, well over thirty years ago, relevent now? Here's Dionne's answer:

"Oh, I can hear the groaning: 'But why are we still talking about Vietnam?' A fair question that has several compelling answers.

"First, except for John McCain, Republicans were conspicuously happy to have a front group spread untruths about John Kerry's Vietnam service in August and watch as the misleading claims were amplified by the supposedly liberal media. The Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to Bush's character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off. Why? Because the media were supposed to question Kerry's character but not Bush's."

Ultimately, it comes down to a simple question of character. Bush lies about his past, his performance in office, and his programs (taxes, the environment, etc.), and expects to get away with it. He needs to be held accountable.

And while we're in this hypercritical Bush-bashing mood, you gotta read this by A Prairie Home Companion's Garrison Keillor. I especially like his conclusion:

"Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader."

And I have spoken mine, and will continue to do so.