Where has she gone?

By Ellen Ratner
I had a perfect view of the Statue of Liberty from the vantage point of my U.S. Airways shuttle seat from Washington, D.C., to New York City last week. There she was in the distance, holding out her lamp – a lamp designed to shine a light to mark the path of justice, liberty, and human rights for all. I am a thick-skinned White House correspondent, so I normally try to avoid the luxury of entertaining my own emotions. This day was different.



I felt a profound sense of loss. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Extraordinary Rendition and the Bush administration's insistence that the ends justify any means, has given me cause for a deep sense of grief. Even what should have been a landslide decision to prohibit executing juveniles turned into a down-to-the-wire, 5-4 vote in the highest court of our land. Our nation has morphed into a nation of angry vengeful players in the Bush administration's theater of the absurd.

We can expect more of the same over the next four years. The man who opened the door to sanctioned torture, arbitrary detention and the death of due process is now the attorney general. The Anthony Gonzales confirmation went off like a Republican fund-raiser – smooth as silk. There is no accountability because this government and many Americans do not see a problem with torture when it comes to suspected terrorists. Guantanamo Bay is a great example of a complete lack of empathy. As my true-red Republican cousin says, "Only 10 zip codes in this country really care about what is happening there."

I realize it's hard for some to muster a sense of compassion for a "suspected terrorist" who was arrested several thousand miles away. But imagine if it was your son who was arbitrarily turned into the local police for a bounty of $5,000? What if the only cause for holding him was that he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if the local police told you, "I'm sorry Mr. Smith, we don't know when Johnny is going to be coming home. You see, we are fighting an indefinite war on terror and so we have the right to keep him as long as we need to."

The ends that are supposed to justify the means in the case of Guantanamo Bay have proven to be highly questionable on their best days. According to an article written by a former Army officer, Phillip Carter in Legal Affairs, titled, "Asking for Trouble – Why the counterterrorism interrogations at Guantanamo Bay have been counterproductive," intelligence experts (those who have been inside Guantanamo Bay) say that less than 20 percent of the inmates actually have ties to al-Qaida. Some might argue it's OK for 80 percent to suffer if we can prevent another Sept. 11. Given this logic, why don't we just prevent any Arab male from ever flying on an airplane or entering our country again?

Arbitrary detention and torture is useful for one thing: creating enemies. Our policy in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan has done more to recruit jihadists than any fire-and-brimstone spewing imam ever dreamed of. To use an expression Karl Rove is fond of, "It's the gift that keeps on giving."

There are no worthy ends to justify the means. The intelligence that we have gathered out of Guantanamo or through the policy of Extraordinary Rendition – where we outsource torture to our friends in Syria or Egypt and other Middle Eastern locations have yielded little if any useful intelligence.

In his book, Guantanamo, David Rose writes that less than one-third of the detainee population at Gitmo had any real intelligence value. Other reports have indicated that as few as 50 of the detainees at Gitmo, out of roughly 600, had intelligence value. There is a "blowback effect" to this policy – it ends up creating more terrorists. According to recent reports, 25 of the 202 prisoners freed from Guantanamo have rejoined the fight in Afghanistan as Taliban or al-Qaida insurgents.

I'm sure America is tired of hearing about Guantanamo Bay and Extraordinary Rendition and Abu Ghraib. We would rather punish the lowest person in the chain of command, promote those who enabled and encouraged them and chalk it up as, "war is hell." I am deeply saddened by the actions of our soldiers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but punishing them and leaving the civilian and higher ranking leadership in place is comparable to trying the Germans who processed Jews in Auschwitz, and leaving Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess to ski in Switzerland.

Given the complete lack of accountability on the part of this administration for a host of dangerous and harmful decisions that affect the daily lives of our servicemen and women, it's no wonder the military finds is necessary to offer some soldiers bonuses of over $100,000 to stay in the service of their country. Why would they stay, when they can be hired to do the same job as a "contractor" for four times the pay and they won't have to risk a court martial? I'm sure the contractors have armored vehicles and Kevlar and plenty of insurance for health care when they are injured, even if they have to leave their jobs as a result of those injuries.

America is not perfect, we never have been. We have betrayed the legacy of Lady Liberty before, but never in our history, has a government been able render human rights, the rule of law and justice to be "quaint and obsolete" principles. The Bush administration considers this gross breach of human rights part of winning a larger war on terrorism. There are no facts to support the claim that we are winning the war on terror. CIA Bush appointee Porter Goss told Congress recently that a terrorist organization is poised to strike again soon in the United States. He was dismayed to say that al-Qaida has successfully built a network of partners who are exceptionally difficult to track.

Perhaps our nation would do well to reflect on the words of Anthony Romero, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union: "We must remember what we are fighting for, not only what we are fighting against."

Ownership society

By Ellen Ratner
The president likes to talk about an "ownership society." Mr. Bush has a bold ownership agenda. It spans the American economic landscape from retirements to tax code to education and even to the skies by his support for privatizing the nation's Air Traffic Control services. His policies reflect an attitude that government should facilitate, not regulate. If you don't believe me, take a look at the pharmaceutical industry.



Big Pharma is need of a giant aspirin to cure its giant head ache brought on by lawsuits more numerous than Carter's Little Liver Pills. The pharmaceutical industry has a well-documented "partnership" with the U.S. government. The National Institute of Health's budget has soared four-fold during the Bush administration. These tax dollars go to partner with private industry so they can charge us more for their services and drugs.

The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for approving drugs, but the people who sign on the dotted approval line are often the same people who benefit from financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. One of the legislators who championed the Medicare Prescription Drug bill and created billions of dollars of taxpayer debt isn't a legislator anymore. Where is he working? Three guesses.

Yes, Representative Billy Tauzin, R-La., is president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a powerful drug-industry trade association. Billy used to make $158,000 a year as a little ol' U.S. congressman. Now, he is reported to be pulling in $2 million a year in his great new job. By the way, he will still draw a retirement from the taxpayers due to his wonderful service to his country as a U.S. congressman.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to making money. But I am opposed to profit on the backs of taxpayers. What is worse is we aren't just talking about losing a few tax dollars or jacking the federal deficit up a few billion dollars. The problem is that this cozy relationship between business and government is now killing people. Do the names Celebrex, Bexta or Voixx ring a bell? These drugs carry the side effect of death in some patients. Yet, they are have been put back on the shelf thanks to Big Pharma's pals at the FDA.

According to Friday's front-page New York Times, 10 of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers. If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have voted 12 to 8 that Bexta should be withdrawn. And without those consultants' votes, Vioxx would have also not returned to the market.

Yes. I agree with the president: He is creating an ownership society. The public and private sector work hand in hand. We have a society where the private sector owns the public sector. A major turn of events has happened in our country – industry now not only determines the destiny of taxpayer dollars, but the destiny of taxpayers themselves.

Better off with the lottery

By Ellen Ratner
Our traveling-salesman president went on the road this week to do what he does best: sell a bill of goods to the American people. He learned how effective he could be at sales way back when he was only Mr. George W. Bush, son of President H.W. Bush.



From convincing the citizens of Texas to fund his stadium and make him a millionaire in his own right, to selling a war and a tax cut in the same year, to now transforming the nation's retirement insurance plan of Social Security into a trillion-dollar-plus 401K plan, President Bush is the most comfortable and successful with the direct-marketing tactic. The problem with his latest product is that he isn't selling vacuum cleaners, he's selling an investment scheme that puts the nation's retirements and entire economy at risk.

Until now, unless you were in "mid-life," the Social Security debate was about as interesting as watching paint dry. I must credit the president with changing that. He's made Social Security a crisis. And Americans love to talk about crises. Like Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Social Security funding shortage is a looming threat for all Americans. If the president is great at selling his policies, he's even better at selling fear.

However, under the light of day – or weapons inspectors, as the case has been – most of his crises are not really crises at all. They are simply a distraction or justification to do what the president has long since wanted to do. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein, transforming the tax code, and privatizing Social Security, have been on this president's to-do list long before he had a presidential "to do" list.

And like Iraq, it's laughable to say that Social Security is in imminent danger. The giant Social Security piggy bank, called the Social Security Trust Fund, has been banking away extra dollars since the mid-'80s. Recent estimates show that the Social Security kitty is fully funded until 2042.

Putting the "non-crisis" element of the debate aside, I agree that the current Social Security system needs a slight makeover as it has in the past. As Paul Krugman, a leading economist, said in the New York Review article titled, "America's Senior Moment":

In 1983, following the recommendations of a commission headed by Alan Greenspan, Congress tried to prepare the program to deal with the baby boomers: It raised the payroll tax, so that Social Security would run a surplus.

They realized that since the 1970s, America went from 16 workers supporting one retiree to three workers supporting one retiree. As we move into the 21st century, two workers must support one retiree. This fact means that the system needs some adjustment. Many agree that this funding gap can be closed by a combination of policy changes ranging from raising the taxable cap of $90,000 on Social Security to means testing, to raising the Social Security tax itself.

These modifications amount to new taxes. But remember, our president is allergic to taxes. He would rather borrow hundreds of billions of tax dollars than ask wealthier Americans to sacrifice a little in order to ensure that the elderly have what they are entitled to.

The president's plan, or the alleged plan; because like Iraq, we know there's an invasion, but no plan for what happens afterward, is to borrow the "transition costs" and hope that the economy grows large enough to cover those costs and then some. I compare this to taking out a home equity loan to go to Vegas.

These transition costs can be anywhere between $800 billion and $2 trillion. I'm going to bet on $2 trillion given the administration's math grades to date. The Big Pharma giveaway, aka Medicare prescription-drug benefit is projected to cost twice of what the administration told us. And then there's the sore subject of Iraq. Larry Lindsey, Bush's economic adviser who was forced to resign because he told America that Iraq may cost as much as $200 billion, turns out to have been pretty much right on the money, so to speak.

President Bush, I must admit, is a brilliant salesman. He scares us with a terrible boogey man, and then convinces us he is the only one to save us, and that we don't really have to do anything except put our trust in George. The reality is that every time the president saves us, it ends up costing a lot of money.

In all likelihood, the hangover from the president's spending spree will end up burying the very Americans he claims he's saving. If I were a 20-something, I'd be better off buying a lottery ticket than trusting President Bush to invest my money.

Waffling toward Gomorrah

By Ellen Ratner
President Bush was asked, in an interview with the Washington Post on Jan. 16, whether or not he was going to resurrect the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He said, "The point is, is that senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA [Defense Of Marriage Act] is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I'd take their admonition seriously." This statement must have caused a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over in James Dobson and Jerry Falwell land.



If the president intended to spend some political capital in his second term, then the people who put that capital in his pocket were not going to be left behind, so to speak. Within a few short weeks, fire and brimstone spewed out of Mr. Falwell's mouth. No gay marriage amendment, no Social Security reform. Voila! In the blink of an eye, the president's gay marriage ban was born again.

The president's new commitment to the gay marriage amendment is troubling for numerous reasons, most of which have to do with what one evangelical friend of mine said last week, "An amendment created to discriminate against people is the most Un-American thing imaginable."

But there is one little discussed aspect to this amendment that has more to do with the man proposing it than the amendment itself. George W. Bush prides himself as being the non-waffling, rock-steady paragon of leadership guided by the convictions of his principles and the very hand of the Almighty. He doesn't even ask his "earthly" father for advice. George dials direct to God for guidance on matters ranging from killing civilians in Iraq to killing inmates in Texas.

God's voice is always at the other end of every George Bush policy, so the president tells us. So was God's line busy when George told Larry King in an interview way in February of 2000 that, "The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into"?

Perhaps God should spring for "call waiting," because he was busy again when George announced that he wasn't going to waste time proposing the ban to unconcerned senators. Perhaps God wasn't on the other line. Perhaps George W. is like all the rest. He's guilty of that original political sin of waffling under the pressure of a formidable constituency. It's time to move over neo-cons and make room for the neo-puritans. The president's moral compass is being skewed by the magnetic pull of a few well-armed Christian soldiers.

The power of the neo-puritan constituency is staggering. The president is so afraid of their wrath that he shaped his entire State of the Union address around their pet gay-marriage issue. The president seemed more like a cash-and-carry televangelist than the leader of the free world. As an American who grew up in the racial turmoil of the '60s, I found his language to be very, very disturbing.

President Bush:

Our second great responsibility to our children and grandchildren is to honor and to pass along the values that sustain a free society. So many of my generation, after a long journey, have come home to family and faith, and are determined to bring up responsible, moral children. Government is not the source of these values, but government should never undermine them.

Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.

The underlying message here is that gay people threaten freedom. If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then being gay is next to being a terrorist. Because as far as Mr. George Falwell Bush is concerned, gay people and terrorists both undermine the foundation of a free society. Excuse me, but I thought that protecting minority rights – ensuring that minorities have equal rights, not special rights, is one of the founding principles of our nation.

There are over 1,000 rights that married couples enjoy that gay people will never have under the president's proposed ban. The president's ban effectively means that gay people do not deserve the same rights as every other American. The president's incongruent logic reminds me of George Orwell's "Animal Farm," a book still read by almost every high-school student in America, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

The sad part about the president's inability to stand up to the neo-puritans is that there are real people with families and loved ones who are caught in the middle of a political manipulation that edifies no one. The same people who are demanding this amendment do not have lower divorce rates, less child abuse, less domestic violence or less addiction afflictions than in the rest of society. Perhaps they would do well to pull the log out of their own eye, before they attempt to find the splinter in the eye of loving and committed Americans.

End of the spin cycle

By Ellen Ratner
George Bush has barely begun his second term and the Republican hate chefs are heating up the old leftovers and spicing up a few old recipes with some peppery additives and preservatives. Karl Rove may credited by the president as being the "architect" of his second assault on the United States of America we once knew, but this is no solo act. Rove is flanked by a cadre of "evil sniffers" determined to keep America safe from the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants and Tinky Winky the Teletubbie.



This 21st-century Republican infinite spin cycle is made up of a diverse group to include paid political consultants, clergy, think-tank members, a few rent-a-journalists, Cabinet members, and wannabes from every corner of the American political landscape, to include some wannabe presidents. For example, you may have seen one of the hundreds of inaugural photos that show Sen. Santorum's mug in mighty close proximity to W's as President Bush began his second term.

The Democratic Party is on the eve of selecting a new party chairman. The task of rebuilding the party may seem insurmountable, but if the Democratic Party is going to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to first stop the Republican distortion machine. Here are a few starters. We can begin to respond to the common following attacks.

Democrats are whiners and hate America

Democrats love this country and that is why we recognize that just as we are economically interdependent with the rest of the world, we are also politically interdependent. We also recognize that one key to fighting terrorism is a strong, reliable worldwide intelligence network (which necessitates international cooperation).

The Team Bush mantra that the best defense is a good offense only works if you have a good offense. The latest estimates show that there are as many insurgents as there are U.S. troops in Iraq. Nice job for a mission that was dubbed "accomplished" by W almost 20 months ago.

Oh, but what about Freedom, Freedom, Freedom? Using the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq as the evidence to say these countries are free is like saying because Saddam was "elected" with over 98 percent of the vote, Iraq was free before. The United Nations had to monitor these "free" elections from Jordan due to the abysmal security situation in Iraq.

And as I said last week, U.S. credibility on the issue of democracy in the region is shaky at best given our gross blind spots when it comes to the hegemony in the Arab Gulf States and other authoritarian regimes that serve our economic interests. And I don't believe it's whining to admit that there is a problem. Perhaps the president has been sober too long to remember that, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Democrats want to raise taxes

The reality is, as I have said before, Republicans are the charge-and-spend party. Democrats want to balance the budget. They recognize you can't keep cutting $80 billion checks every few months to Iraq and to your wealthiest base and to your favorite industries. Now that sounds like a liberal idea to me.

Democrats are not strong on defense

Republicans support the military industrial complex while the Democrats support the troops. It's one thing to stick a magnetic flag on the family SUV and open the wallet to Rento War Toys Inc., it's another to sponsor legislation that guarantees medical benefits to the families of reservist, doubles combat pay and family separation pay for those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, reimburses troops for the out-of-pocket expenses to purchase the personal armor that the president's secretary of sefense didn't think was a priority before sending them into harm's way.

All of these troops-supporting initiatives were sponsored by Democrats after having been cut or stonewalled by a Republican Congress. The Democrats understand, because many of them vs. their Republican colleagues actually know what it's like to be in combat, that it's that 19-year-old soldier who is going to win the war in Iraq, not a 500-pound smart bomb in the living room of an alleged insurgent.

Democrats want to take all the guns away

No. Democrats don't think the founding fathers intended a citizen to have a personal armory the size of Mexico's in their basement.

Democrats are anti-family values

The reality is that Democrats agree with President Bush when he says that every person is entitled to equal representation and treatment under the law. Unlike the president however, the Democratic Party guarantees these rights, not with words, but deeds.

"I cannot reconcile my Christian values and vote for a Democrat"

Would Christ have invaded Iraq at all, let alone under false pretenses? By the way, false pretense is a fancy elitist word for lie. Would Christ have put 142 people to death, as George W. Bush did as the governor of Texas? As a side note, at least one of those 142 souls had had a jailhouse transformation and worshiped the same Christ as George W. Bush. Yet Gov. George said in a press conference that he had no regret in putting her to death because, "I prayed about it." I guess you could say that God told him to kill her. That statement is remarkably similar to a lot of death row insanity pleas I've heard over the years.

Democrats are elistists

I guess you got me on that one. Hum. I don't even know what this means. It seems that the elitists are the ones who want to shelter their children in voucher-sponsored schools, cut Pell Grants so the poor have no educational opportunities except for what is provided in the military (solves the volunteer army recruitment problem). Republicans think they know what "values" your child should be taught in school.

I'm for equal opportunity for all Americans. I don't think I have all the answers when it comes to the health or moral decisions required of an expectant mother. I think the most serious decisions of life are to be made between a person and their God. So if my way of thinking makes me an elitist than so be it.

My prediction is that the time is just about up on the Republican spin cycle. They have laundered the American psyche long enough.