Good list! It's not near complete, tho, & one could add a hundred items w/out completing it. A hundred even w/out leaving the area of coporate finance & regulation!
e.g., Bushies are in process of killing the Superfund by which corporations must pay for clean-up of toxic sites.
e.g., huge surpluses built up on federal & state levels over 8 years of Clinton administration could have been used for long-overdue improvements in health, education & welfare...but instead have already been dissipated in tax cuts weighted toward the wealthy...with more to come.
e.g., discontinued regulation of bank transfers out of the US...then had to re-instate them after 9/11...tho still no clear results of "following the money trail"
e.g. first financial priority of Bush after 9/11 was to reimburse insurance companies.
e.g., no response to DNA tests revealing innocent men on death row...or to dreadful prison conditions & flouting of federal injunctions in Texas, California & other places.
e.g., appt of ambassadors who are ignorant of culture & language (e.g. ambassador to France who can't speak French).
quibbles: #5 was eventually reversed...same arsenic standards back in effect.
#44 opposes redefinition of penalties for user-quantity drug possession, or for readjusting small amount of crack cocaine relative to powder cocaine required for long-term felony sentence.
#54 drastically cut all headstart & after-school funds.
*But it must be admitted, ANY President & Congress would have to cut funds for some programs which sound good but which have not been effective or which duplicate other programs...or which simply fall by the wayside in the give & take of budget-making (since appropriations come from congress, not the executive).
#64 more pertinent fact abt H. Pitts is that he was lawyer & lobbyist for big accounting firms who successfully prevented separation of accounting & auditing, & minimized regulatory functions of SEC. He's had to recuse (because of conflict of interest) from quite a few major cases...as have other SEC board appointees...and a recent case was thrown out because only a minority of the SEC board could authorize prosecution, the rest had to recuse themselves.
#76. Didn't Thomas White actually move from Enron executive job in the first place? I believe he was implicated in some of the Enron corporate misconduct. He is now in a position where he is handing out govt contracts. Likewise Dick Cheney moved from Sec of Defense to CEO of Halliburton...where he doubled defense contracts...to VP, as Halliburton got still more defense contracts.
#80 I think is unfair...tho you may have legitimate reasons to oppose war against Iraq, it's a serious problem worthy of serious & detailed discussion. I think people may disagree on this one without ascribing evil to their opponents. One might be on solider grounds to question Bush's bellicose announcements in lieu of an attempt to inform the public about the hard choices we face in regard to Iraq. But he is not wrong about Saddam Hussein or the stockpiling of lethal weapons, or the fact that he has already used some of them. Saddam is indeed dangerous, indeed a mass murderer & an absolute dictator...and by the way, it is by now clear that he has ample money to buy medicine & health care for sick Iraqi children...but chooses to use his resources otherwise. I do not accept his own interpretation of Iraqi suffering due to American persecution. They are suffering more from Saddam, his actions & his purposes.
Also I think the comparison of Bush to Hitler & the Nazis is a cheap & unfair & counterproductive style of rhetoric, perhaps providing a sense of righteousness to the ignorant but offensive to many more who are disaffected by Bush's corporate ties, elitist assumptions & seeming incuriosity about the realities of ordinary life around the world. Bad enough to be careless, corrupt or inadequate, to make wrong decisions which cost innocent lives and may endanger the planet...qualities, by the way, which apply to leaders left & right all over the world...but that in itself is more enuf to justify complete opposition.
Still, Bush is no Hitler...not to those who know about the life & doings of Hitler...or who know what it's like to live in societies that truly are dictatorships. One doesn't have to like him or support him to see that Bush is not on a suicidal mission to be dictator of the world & kill all his enemies. Not to make that distinction plays into the hands of Bush's mirror opposites, who are just as narrow & mean & ideological as he is, & guilty of a great many crimes that more than match his. It will not help defeat him and moderate the US course in 2004.
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