RedComrade
10th February 2004, 00:01
The State of the Union
On January 28th, 2004 President George W. Bush took center stage as he reported the State of the Union. The picture he painted was a rosy one, but all the same an incorrect one. From listening to Mr. Bush talk you would have no idea that over 3 million Americans had lost their jobs since he took office, you would be clueless to the fact that after 8 years of declining poverty the number of people living below the poverty line had increased by over 3 million, you would be in the dark over the 40 million Americans who lack health insurance. Sadly enough the list of Bush’s failures hardly stop there, in the pursuit of truth I decided to read up on our country today and what I discovered was a very different State of the Union than the one Mr. Bush and his Washington cronies would have you beleive.
Perhaps no area more clearly highlights the miserable faults of the Bush Administration than the way they have handled American’s civil liberties. In the wake of 911 Bush took advantage of the rightful concern for our nations security to pass the notorious Patriot Act. Besides giving unprecedented powers to law enforcementm that, in the words of the conservative Free Congress Foundation, “placed severe restrictions on the personal freedoms of Americans” the new bill violated and contradicted the Constitution itself, the single most important document in the entire land. Under the patriot act the Attorney General can now hold non-citizens indefinitely with no acess to a lawyer or gurantee to a trial in clear violation of the Bill of Rights and international law, the term terrorism has been redefined to include any act that seeks to influence the policy of a government by coercion, a definition so vague that it could potentially entail non-violent protest and other sacred rights we Americans hold dear, The FBI can now search your house, conduct surveillance, monitor your actions at places of worship including confessional, and acess your medical or financial records all without proving probable cause as the required by the 4th amendment through obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Service court, a court that does not require showing probable cause or even any wrongdoing and was previously forbidden from having any jurisdiction in America’s domestic affairs. Unfortunately the list of Bush’s various attacks on our freedoms don’t stop at the Patriot Act. Bush, borrowing a page from Orwell, he has also overseen the creation of an information database that keeps track of the employment, medical, credit, internet, and pay-per-view records of all Americans known as the Total Information Awareness Program, he has set up a monitoring system that gives airlines access to your credit, bank, employment, and criminal records as well as a rank of either red yellow or green that could be used to prevent you from traveling freely, and perhaps most terrifying of all he has locked up thousands of immigrants indefinitely refusing to release their names or the numbers of those held, yet in the process they have not caught a single terrorist. The list of Bush’s abuses on our civil liberties goes on and on.
It would be impossible to discuss the plight of our country today without mentioning the terrible shape the economy is in. Bush’s presidency has overseen the longest period of sustained job loss since the great depression, as previously mentioned this had led to the loss of over 3 million American jobs. By the end of 2002 over 8.6 million Americans were registered for unemployment ( indeed the real figures were much higher, the official statistics don’t take into account those who had stopped looking for work and were no longer registering for unemployment). The number of Americans living in extreme poverty has increased from 12.6 to 13.4 million. This doesn’t even include those in “normal” poverty, which is defined as any family of four living on less than 18,000 dollars a year, under Bush their ranks have increased by over 3 million, to include over 12.3 percent of the population. For the first time in over a decade the median income has dropped, down 2.2 percent to just barely 40,000$. With his miserable economic policy it should come as no surprise that under Bush the gap between the rich and poor has continued to grow, with the richest fifth of Americans now receiving half of all household income while the poorest fifth make just 3.5% of. These atrocities are a just few examples of what has grown to be an economic epidemic, the number of Americans without health insurance has increased by over 1.4 million to over 40 million in all, during Bush’s first year the stock market fell by over 35%, and in the twelve months between March 2002 and March 2003 there were over 1.6 new personal bankruptcy filings, countless more businesses and associations did the same.
One cannot speak on life in Bush’s America without touching on the vicious attacks he has visited on key social programs, while at the same time increasing defense spending to record amounts and yet cutting taxes. First and probably most important to the average American are Bush’s tax cuts right? Well chances are unless you’re an uber-rich multi-millionaire those tax cuts aren’t doing much, if anything at all. 40% of Bush’s tax cuts go to the richest 1% of Americans! So while a couple fat-cats at the top go out and buy their kids a new BMW, middle class and working class Americans, the vast majority of us, get nothing at all, nothing positive anyway. Itd be a lie to say we hadn’t gotten anything though, we’ve got a 4 trillion dollar deficit, a deficit that was a 5 trillion dollar surplus before Bush took office. We’ve gotten a 1.6 billion dollar cut to programs designed to protect the environment, we’ve been handed a 30 percent cut in funding to healthcare for children, we’ve witnessed thousands of our senior citizens be thrown off critical meals on wheels programs they depend on to eat and survive, we’ve sat in horror as Bush under funded our Nations schools by over 6 billion dollars under the recommended minimum.
After nearly 4 years of President Bush’s “gifts” I think it’s time we send the fat cats in the white house a present of our own. So when we look back and remember how Bush gave us the Patriot Act we’ll give his Democratic opponent this election season a vote, when we reflect back on how Bush gave us the biggest recession since the great depression we’ll give a friend the message of what Bush has done to our country, when we recall how Bush gave us a 4 trillion dollar deficit we’ll tell five others the same message. Now that we know the real state of the union we can no longer be content with the status qou, let’s give Bush a taste of his own medicine in Election season 2004!
On January 28th, 2004 President George W. Bush took center stage as he reported the State of the Union. The picture he painted was a rosy one, but all the same an incorrect one. From listening to Mr. Bush talk you would have no idea that over 3 million Americans had lost their jobs since he took office, you would be clueless to the fact that after 8 years of declining poverty the number of people living below the poverty line had increased by over 3 million, you would be in the dark over the 40 million Americans who lack health insurance. Sadly enough the list of Bush’s failures hardly stop there, in the pursuit of truth I decided to read up on our country today and what I discovered was a very different State of the Union than the one Mr. Bush and his Washington cronies would have you beleive.
Perhaps no area more clearly highlights the miserable faults of the Bush Administration than the way they have handled American’s civil liberties. In the wake of 911 Bush took advantage of the rightful concern for our nations security to pass the notorious Patriot Act. Besides giving unprecedented powers to law enforcementm that, in the words of the conservative Free Congress Foundation, “placed severe restrictions on the personal freedoms of Americans” the new bill violated and contradicted the Constitution itself, the single most important document in the entire land. Under the patriot act the Attorney General can now hold non-citizens indefinitely with no acess to a lawyer or gurantee to a trial in clear violation of the Bill of Rights and international law, the term terrorism has been redefined to include any act that seeks to influence the policy of a government by coercion, a definition so vague that it could potentially entail non-violent protest and other sacred rights we Americans hold dear, The FBI can now search your house, conduct surveillance, monitor your actions at places of worship including confessional, and acess your medical or financial records all without proving probable cause as the required by the 4th amendment through obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Service court, a court that does not require showing probable cause or even any wrongdoing and was previously forbidden from having any jurisdiction in America’s domestic affairs. Unfortunately the list of Bush’s various attacks on our freedoms don’t stop at the Patriot Act. Bush, borrowing a page from Orwell, he has also overseen the creation of an information database that keeps track of the employment, medical, credit, internet, and pay-per-view records of all Americans known as the Total Information Awareness Program, he has set up a monitoring system that gives airlines access to your credit, bank, employment, and criminal records as well as a rank of either red yellow or green that could be used to prevent you from traveling freely, and perhaps most terrifying of all he has locked up thousands of immigrants indefinitely refusing to release their names or the numbers of those held, yet in the process they have not caught a single terrorist. The list of Bush’s abuses on our civil liberties goes on and on.
It would be impossible to discuss the plight of our country today without mentioning the terrible shape the economy is in. Bush’s presidency has overseen the longest period of sustained job loss since the great depression, as previously mentioned this had led to the loss of over 3 million American jobs. By the end of 2002 over 8.6 million Americans were registered for unemployment ( indeed the real figures were much higher, the official statistics don’t take into account those who had stopped looking for work and were no longer registering for unemployment). The number of Americans living in extreme poverty has increased from 12.6 to 13.4 million. This doesn’t even include those in “normal” poverty, which is defined as any family of four living on less than 18,000 dollars a year, under Bush their ranks have increased by over 3 million, to include over 12.3 percent of the population. For the first time in over a decade the median income has dropped, down 2.2 percent to just barely 40,000$. With his miserable economic policy it should come as no surprise that under Bush the gap between the rich and poor has continued to grow, with the richest fifth of Americans now receiving half of all household income while the poorest fifth make just 3.5% of. These atrocities are a just few examples of what has grown to be an economic epidemic, the number of Americans without health insurance has increased by over 1.4 million to over 40 million in all, during Bush’s first year the stock market fell by over 35%, and in the twelve months between March 2002 and March 2003 there were over 1.6 new personal bankruptcy filings, countless more businesses and associations did the same.
One cannot speak on life in Bush’s America without touching on the vicious attacks he has visited on key social programs, while at the same time increasing defense spending to record amounts and yet cutting taxes. First and probably most important to the average American are Bush’s tax cuts right? Well chances are unless you’re an uber-rich multi-millionaire those tax cuts aren’t doing much, if anything at all. 40% of Bush’s tax cuts go to the richest 1% of Americans! So while a couple fat-cats at the top go out and buy their kids a new BMW, middle class and working class Americans, the vast majority of us, get nothing at all, nothing positive anyway. Itd be a lie to say we hadn’t gotten anything though, we’ve got a 4 trillion dollar deficit, a deficit that was a 5 trillion dollar surplus before Bush took office. We’ve gotten a 1.6 billion dollar cut to programs designed to protect the environment, we’ve been handed a 30 percent cut in funding to healthcare for children, we’ve witnessed thousands of our senior citizens be thrown off critical meals on wheels programs they depend on to eat and survive, we’ve sat in horror as Bush under funded our Nations schools by over 6 billion dollars under the recommended minimum.
After nearly 4 years of President Bush’s “gifts” I think it’s time we send the fat cats in the white house a present of our own. So when we look back and remember how Bush gave us the Patriot Act we’ll give his Democratic opponent this election season a vote, when we reflect back on how Bush gave us the biggest recession since the great depression we’ll give a friend the message of what Bush has done to our country, when we recall how Bush gave us a 4 trillion dollar deficit we’ll tell five others the same message. Now that we know the real state of the union we can no longer be content with the status qou, let’s give Bush a taste of his own medicine in Election season 2004!