insight

Bush, anything but patriotic

Jamie dickerson
jdicker5@mscd.edu

Patriotism lies in the heart of the beholder. Over time, President Bush has proven that he is not for the American people as he acts and establishes policies that carry out only his self-serving interests.

Two devastating events have occurred under the current Administration: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and most recently Hurricane Katrina. Both times Bush sat and did nothing while destruction and devastation devoured two major cities. In both cases, a finger can adequately be pointed directly in the face of the president.

Despite several warnings of the pending attacks on Sept. 11, from France, Britain, Egypt and Italy, Bush did nothing but wait. Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator, revealed the content of FBI intercepts, which contained the names of several high-profile American politicians and heads of government agencies. Federal judges threw out her testimony, suggesting that they are also under the influence of this administration. Edmonds is now under a gag order and has been threatened with arrest. Last year, while I was listening to Air America Radio, Edmonds phoned in to tell Randi Rhoads, a host on the station, that she has sued Donald Rumsfeld for wrongful termination and has yet to go to court. This suggests to me that the administration had knowledge of the attacks and that a major cover-up has been in the works.

Not only did Bush steal the election in 2000, he perfected his fraudulent scam by doing it a second time in 2004. Alex Jones, an investigative reporter and radio talk show host on Denver's KLMO 1060 AM, interviewed a BBC Newsnight reporter, who revealed that Bush's cronies did not count the votes of the soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq, cut the number of polling stations in Democratic and minority areas and some 50,000 black votes were missing from Broward County in Florida. That's right, Florida, where brother Jeb Bush is Governor. For Republicans to say Florida's voting catastrophe happening twice is coincidental is just plain ignorance.

Bush continued with his anti-family ploy and deceitfulness when he introduced his "No Child Left Behind" plan. Soon after the reporters and cameras left, he pulled the plug on his plan by asking for $12 billion to continue financing, $6 billion less than the legislation authorized. Other unpatriotic actions include, but are not limited to, lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's involvement with Al Queida operatives and links to Osama bin Laden. Bush has also undermined family leave, overtime, the 40-hour workweek and family protection pay for soldiers. He also cut funding to fix the levee in New Orleans three years in a row.

According to an article written by Gus diZerega, as Governor of Texas, Bush deprived subsidized health insurance from 200,000 children from poor, working families, which left Texas with the highest number of low-income, uninsured children in the country. Also as Governor, Bush used eminent domain to force families to sell their homes so he could build a tax-subsidized baseball stadium. For the first time in Texas history, eminent domain was used to enrich a group of private citizens at the expense of others.

Thanks to Bush, the poverty rate is rising for the first time in over a decade. The gap between the rich and poor is getting wider and wider, as our concerns are over debt, high gasoline prices, high unemployment rate and other countries that hate us.

If you were a citizen in another country, wouldn't you hate America? After all, our government is a reflection of us and acts on our behalf. With our concerns being over other things, rather than what affects us down the road, our government has used this as a diversion to act only for its own self-serving interests. Due to the Patriot Act, our rights are steadily dwindling away while more power is given to the federal government. Republicans are apparently under some ignorant assumption that the Republican Party is on their side, having the same moral compass and objectives, while Democrats are for the poor. This may come as a shock to some, but if you are not a millionaire, you are poor. To those who do not think they are poor, I ask the question: how many paychecks are you, or your parents, away from foreclosure? Big corporations are steadily outsourcing jobs to other countries while the standard of living in America steadily declines.

Patriotism is clearly in the heart of the beholder. George W. Bush has proven time and time again that he is as unpatriotic and anti-American. Keep this in mind: it is the duty of a true patriot to overthrow their government when it is not acting for the people, by the people.