Monday
May012006
Republican $3 bills
Monday, May 1, 2006 at 3:00AM
By Ellen Ratner
This week, President Bush decided to recognize National Volunteer Week by calling for volunteers to help rebuild the mess that Hurricane Katrina left behind. Does Bush's call strike you as a day late and a dollar short? How about eight months late and billions of dollars short?
What rankles me personally about this is that last September, I sent a note to someone I see almost every day – White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan – pleading with him to persuade Bush to immediately call for an all-out volunteer effort by every American to help the rebuilding effort. When nothing happened, I didn't call for anything – instead, I teamed up with airline pilot Cholene Espinoza, and together we loaded up a van with food and health supplies and drove down to Mississippi.
This was nothing special – millions of decent Americans were doing exactly the same thing, on their own, answering only to their consciences and sense of humanity. And believe me, last September, other than flapping lips there wasn't much help from the White House. (To read about these efforts, see Espinoza's book, "Through the Eye of the Storm: A Book Dedicated to Rebuilding What Katrina Washed Away.")
Bush's call also struck me as being typical of this administration – its own lack of execution and follow-through and its refusal to ask the American people for help in crises that it claims are crises tends to undercut its own credibility. Think about the number of occasions during this president's one-and-a-half terms where this has been true:
The 9-11 attacks killed more people than Pearl Harbor. Why didn't the president ask for a Declaration of War? Instead, he rushed through a mealy-mouthed, open-ended resolution that has served as the basis for every unconstitutional claim for domestic surveillance and war powers since then. Why wouldn't he go to the people and ask them directly for war powers? Does he not trust us? Or rather, did he want to conserve his "flexibility" by obtaining the foolishly granted resolution rather than trust the American people by asking for their support, and pointing out that war takes real sacrifice and costs lives and money?
While the president was paying lip service to the "global war on terror," did he issue any meaningful calls for volunteers to help police the Northern or Southern border, to help inspect containers, or provide port security? Did he call for a meaningful public-service conscription, in which young people might be given a choice between military, domestic security or public health and welfare service? Of course not, and no doubt because Karl Rove thought it would damage Bush's re-election prospects. Bush is not what I would call a real wartime president.
To help finance the war in Iraq, has President Bush called for meaningful tax increases? Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt did, and under their leadership, the public agreed to make the sacrifice. The only wartime president who didn't call for these was Lyndon B. Johnson – he promised guns and butter, and what he delivered, after his presidency, was ruinous inflation. Bush hasn't promised guns and butter – but he claims guns and butter almost daily by pointing how the economy is "booming" and we're simultaneously "winning" the war on terror. Unfortunately, I predict that Americans can't have it both ways, and Bush's easy promises will at some point produce another bout of ruinous inflation.
Why are we up to our necks in Middle East nonsense to begin with? If it wasn't for oil, do you think any American would or even should care about a monarchy like Saudi Arabia, the Iranian mullahs, or those all those Persian Gulf kingdoms? Cue-While-U-Wait (for gasoline)? I don't think so. So why doesn't Bush do something (other than gum-flaps) to meaningfully conserve oil? How about fleet mileage standards? SUV taxes? Conservation incentives? Crash programs to develop energy alternatives and put the Saudi oil pimps out of business? With the right leadership, the public would back him to the hilt. But Bush won't do it, probably because he's afraid of alienating the gas guzzlers in his SUV-addicted constituency.
When the history of this administration is written, chief among Bush's failures will be his incompetence at discharging the first duty of a commander in chief in a democracy – his failure to ask for the peoples' help in making the hardest of choices.
This week, President Bush decided to recognize National Volunteer Week by calling for volunteers to help rebuild the mess that Hurricane Katrina left behind. Does Bush's call strike you as a day late and a dollar short? How about eight months late and billions of dollars short?
What rankles me personally about this is that last September, I sent a note to someone I see almost every day – White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan – pleading with him to persuade Bush to immediately call for an all-out volunteer effort by every American to help the rebuilding effort. When nothing happened, I didn't call for anything – instead, I teamed up with airline pilot Cholene Espinoza, and together we loaded up a van with food and health supplies and drove down to Mississippi.
This was nothing special – millions of decent Americans were doing exactly the same thing, on their own, answering only to their consciences and sense of humanity. And believe me, last September, other than flapping lips there wasn't much help from the White House. (To read about these efforts, see Espinoza's book, "Through the Eye of the Storm: A Book Dedicated to Rebuilding What Katrina Washed Away.")
Bush's call also struck me as being typical of this administration – its own lack of execution and follow-through and its refusal to ask the American people for help in crises that it claims are crises tends to undercut its own credibility. Think about the number of occasions during this president's one-and-a-half terms where this has been true:
The 9-11 attacks killed more people than Pearl Harbor. Why didn't the president ask for a Declaration of War? Instead, he rushed through a mealy-mouthed, open-ended resolution that has served as the basis for every unconstitutional claim for domestic surveillance and war powers since then. Why wouldn't he go to the people and ask them directly for war powers? Does he not trust us? Or rather, did he want to conserve his "flexibility" by obtaining the foolishly granted resolution rather than trust the American people by asking for their support, and pointing out that war takes real sacrifice and costs lives and money?
While the president was paying lip service to the "global war on terror," did he issue any meaningful calls for volunteers to help police the Northern or Southern border, to help inspect containers, or provide port security? Did he call for a meaningful public-service conscription, in which young people might be given a choice between military, domestic security or public health and welfare service? Of course not, and no doubt because Karl Rove thought it would damage Bush's re-election prospects. Bush is not what I would call a real wartime president.
To help finance the war in Iraq, has President Bush called for meaningful tax increases? Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt did, and under their leadership, the public agreed to make the sacrifice. The only wartime president who didn't call for these was Lyndon B. Johnson – he promised guns and butter, and what he delivered, after his presidency, was ruinous inflation. Bush hasn't promised guns and butter – but he claims guns and butter almost daily by pointing how the economy is "booming" and we're simultaneously "winning" the war on terror. Unfortunately, I predict that Americans can't have it both ways, and Bush's easy promises will at some point produce another bout of ruinous inflation.
Why are we up to our necks in Middle East nonsense to begin with? If it wasn't for oil, do you think any American would or even should care about a monarchy like Saudi Arabia, the Iranian mullahs, or those all those Persian Gulf kingdoms? Cue-While-U-Wait (for gasoline)? I don't think so. So why doesn't Bush do something (other than gum-flaps) to meaningfully conserve oil? How about fleet mileage standards? SUV taxes? Conservation incentives? Crash programs to develop energy alternatives and put the Saudi oil pimps out of business? With the right leadership, the public would back him to the hilt. But Bush won't do it, probably because he's afraid of alienating the gas guzzlers in his SUV-addicted constituency.
When the history of this administration is written, chief among Bush's failures will be his incompetence at discharging the first duty of a commander in chief in a democracy – his failure to ask for the peoples' help in making the hardest of choices.
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