[Mb-civic] The State of the Union By William Rivers Pitt

[Michael Butler]

    The State of the Union
    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 31 January 2006

    i knew that i was dying.
    something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become
    them, accept.
    then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
    bit.
    it needn't be much, just a spark.
    a spark can set a whole forest on
    fire.
    just a spark.
    save it.

    - Charles Bukowski

    "He shall from time to time," reads the Constitution, "give to the
Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." And
so it shall be. George W. Bush will be speaking tonight from the podium in
the House of Representatives. Before him will be arrayed Senators,
Representatives, generals and judges. The balconies will be filled with
observers, luminaries, reporters and a few so-called "special guests" whose
presence will be used to reinforce some argument or another.

    It shall be quite a thing to see, a show worth watching if only to
observe exactly how many lies, distortions, threats, taunts and smirks can
be crammed into a single speech. This will be Mr. Bush speaking, after all,
and the truth is not in him. It will be in every pertinent sense a mere
commercial, a television advertisement from a failing company, a
whitewashing of ugly truths by a staggering CEO whose sole desire is to keep
the stockholders in line for another quarter.

    In the interests of truth, the actual state of this union deserves to be
displayed for all to see. This is the deal. This is how it is.

    The Real Economy

    Since 2000, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen to
nearly 37 million. More than 13 million of these are children. More than one
in four American families with children make less than $30,000 a year. Look
within that number and you will find 46% of African American families with
children and 44% of Hispanic families with children fall below this mark.
Average annual income for Americans fell once again in 2005. 46 million
Americans live without health insurance.

    The response to this? Vice President Cheney, three days before
Christmas, cast the tie-breaking vote on a spending reduction bill that will
fall most heavily on the poor, the infirm and the elderly. Funding for
health care, child support, and education subsidies for low-income families
has been gutted. Medicaid benefits for the poor were cut by $7 billion, and
Medicare programs for the elderly were cut by $6.4 billion. Federal
student-loan programs were cut by $12.7 billion.

    On the very same day, the Senate passed legislation that drastically cut
funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education. The Head Start program was hit especially hard: the cuts here
eliminate some 25,000 slots for low-income children. All in all, these
spending reductions are expected to save $40 billion.

    Meanwhile, recently-passed tax cuts ravage the budget far more deeply
than these drastic budget cuts. Two tax cuts in particular that went into
effect on New Year's Day will cost $27 billion, more than half of what the
spending reductions are supposed to save. These cuts will cost more than
$150 billion over the next ten years. 97% of the money from these cuts will
go to households making more than $200,000 a year. Households with incomes
under $100,000 will get 0.1% of these cuts.

    If all of Mr. Bush's tax cuts are stopped or allowed to expire, $750
billion will be added to the federal budget. That is more than enough to pay
for the programs that have been eviscerated. It won't happen, not with the
priorities of this administration, but that is the simple math of the
matter.

    New Orleans Drowned in a Bathtub

    The first weeks of September brought to all Americans a devastating
tragedy. The city of New Orleans was all but obliterated by Hurricane
Katrina when levees meant to hold back the waters failed. The failure of
these levees came, in no small part, because of unprecedented budget cuts
for the Army Corps of Engineers, which was tasked to keep the levees viable.

    The tragedy was compounded by the utterly incompetent management of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency and its head, Michael Brown, whose
experience with disaster management came while he was serving as an attorney
for owners of Arabian horses. In the weeks to follow, lavish promises were
made by Mr. Bush. "We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it
takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives," he said
on September 15th.

    Those promises have been broken. We have gone from oaths to revive this
cherished city to this: "I want to remind people in that part of the world,
$85 billion is a lot," said Bush on January 26th. Hundreds of thousands of
Americans remain displaced, many holding on by the skin of their teeth in
cramped trailers. Thirty million cubic yards of debris remain uncollected -
the Washington Post estimated over the weekend that this was "enough to
build a five-sided column more than 50 stories tall over the Pentagon."
There is not even a plan in place to begin to attack the problem. The Bush
administration has left New Orleans to rot, and the next hurricane season is
four months away.

    Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist once famously stated that he wanted to
shrink the federal government to the size where it could be drowned in a
bathtub. As evidenced by the budget cuts and tax giveaways described above,
many within this government feel as Norquist does. Thanks to their actions,
to the cuts in the Army Corps of Engineers budget, to the nomination of
useless cronies like Brown to vital positions of civil defense, to a war in
Iraq that has bled the budget further and left Louisiana without sufficient
National Guard troops to help the population, it is New Orleans that has
been drowned in Norquist's bathtub. A major American city has been
shattered, and nothing is done about it.

    To add insult to injury, the Bush administration utterly refuses to
answer any questions on the matter. Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut,
perhaps the most widely-known Democratic defender of Mr. Bush, is the
ranking minority member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee. Even Mr. Lieberman is flabbergasted by the stonewalling
of the White House.

    "My staff believes that DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) has
engaged in a conscious strategy of slow-walking our investigation in the
hope that we would run out of time to follow the investigation's natural
progression to where it leads," Lieberman said last week. "At this point, I
cannot disagree. There's been no assertion of executive privilege, just a
refusal to answer. I have been told by my staff that almost every question
our staff has asked federal agency witnesses regarding conversations with or
involvement of the White House has been met with a response that they could
not answer on direction of the White House."

    Mark Folse, a New Orleans native, operates a blog called "Wet Bank
Guide." On Monday, Mr. Folse posted a message for Mr. Bush. "I've never lost
the deepest allegiance I've ever held: to my city," wrote Folse. "We have
always known we were a people different and unique, as divided as we may
seem. That sense of identity as a New Orleanian is the powerful bond that
draws me on. It is the deep love of country that drives me - of my country,
New Orleans and southern Louisiana. It is the irrational emotional
attachment to my piece of America that leads men and women to go willingly
up Bunker Hill, to follow General Pickett, to volunteer for Iraq."

    "A life of assured privilege has protected you from having to take these
sorts of risks," continued Folse, "to find the strength to get up and go
into the maw of uncertainty, to risk and gamble your own and not other
peoples' lives or money. You can pledge allegiance or sing the anthem or
give a stirring speech as well as any, but you know you have no allegiance
except self-interest."

    "If nothing moves you except your own self-interest," concluded Folse,
"then consider this. There are hundreds of thousands of us, scattered
throughout most of the United States. We are everywhere you and your party
will go to campaign: Arkansas and Atlanta and Austin, Dallas and Detroit and
Denver, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Baltimore and Boston, Chicago and
Charlotte. Many will remain there indefinitely, unable to go home, precisely
because you have lied to them and betrayed them. We will not let you escape
from the net of lies you have woven. Wherever you turn, you will find us,
ready to call you out."

    The situation in New Orleans is a problem that will not go away. Men
like Mark Folse will make absolutely sure of that.

    "Scandal" Is Too Small a Word

    The Abramoff scandal directly touches some sixty Republican
congresspeople, according to campaign finance records that show where the
disgraced lobbyist sent his money. Mr. Bush recently promoted the lead
investigator in this case, effectively removing him from the investigation.
Despite this, the hard look into Mr. Abramoff's dealings continue. Mr.
Abramoff's plea deal has a lot of people in Washington suffering from
flop-sweat.

    Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of a deep-cover CIA
agent by administration officials continues apace, and has already cashiered
Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby. According to t r u t h o u t
investigative reporter Jason Leopold, Fitzgerald has "spent the past month
preparing evidence he will present to a grand jury alleging that White House
Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove knowingly made false statements to FBI and
Justice Department investigators and lied under oath while he was being
questioned about his role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's
identity more than two years ago, according to sources knowledgeable about
the probe."

    "Although there have not been rumblings regarding Fitzgerald's probe
into the Plame leak since he met with the grand jury hearing evidence in the
case more than a month ago," continued Leopold in his January 10th report,
"the sources said that Fitzgerald has been quietly building his case against
Rove and has been interviewing witnesses, in some cases for the second and
third time, who have provided him with information related to Rove's role in
the leak."

    None of this will be mentioned in the State of the Union speech tonight.
The Bush administration continues to stonewall these investigations with all
its might - Mr. Bush has denied ever knowing Jack Abramoff, despite the
existence of several pictures showing them glad-handing each other in the
White House - and the Republican-controlled congress will certainly do
nothing to advance the questions being asked.

    In contrast, a portion of the speech will certainly be dedicated to
moralistic sloganeering about values. Remember, as high-flown words about
truth and justice are spoken, what the Abramoff and Plame scandals
represent: a government run by thieves, stroked by swindlers, and staffed by
assassins who sing of defending the nation even as they cast us down into
greater danger.

    And, by the way, the Enron trial started on Monday.

    The Middle East

    2,242 American soldiers have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands more are
grievously wounded. Tens and tens of thousands of civilians are dead or
maimed. Scores more simmer in rage and pick up weapons to attack American
forces. American soldiers wishing to go around the Pentagon to augment their
meager armor have been threatened with the revocation of death benefits for
their families. A coalition of fundamentalist Shiite groups has taken over
the government, the two main parts of which are notorious terrorist
organizations with umbilical ties to Iran. Hundreds of billions of dollars
have been spent to do this. There is no end in sight.

    Three years ago, in another State of the Union address, Mr. Bush told
the nation that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000
liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons (which is 1,000,000 pounds) of sarin,
mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, mobile
biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for
use in a robust nuclear weapons program. Mr. Bush will have to work very
hard tonight to tell a lie as vast, dramatic and bloody as this.

    Certainly, Mr. Bush will sing the praises of bringing democracy to the
Middle East. It is worthwhile, however, to consider what his concept of
democracy has accomplished to date. Six months ago, a radical named Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran. Thanks to the intense feelings
within Iran's populace about the US occupation of Iraq, Ahmadinejad has been
able to unify his country behind the establishment of a nuclear program that
frightens the rest of the world. Ahmadinejad's election itself owes a great
deal to Mr. Bush's policies on Iraq.

    Last week, the terrorist organization Hamas was overwhelmingly elected
by the Palestinian people to run their government, leaving the Fatah party
shocked and displaced. While the success of Hamas has much to do with
Fatah's corruption and lack of progress on several fronts, the slow
radicalization of the general population in the Middle East once again can
be laid at the doorstep of Mr. Bush. It has been revealed that Bush's
decision to disengage from the peace process between Israel and Palestine
several years ago was a disastrous choice. Couple that with the occupation
of Iraq and the torture of its citizens, and few can be surprised when the
general population in the Middle East turns toward more radical elements.

    Democracy is a tricky thing. The fact that people in Iraq, Iran and
Palestine are afforded the opportunity to vote, instead of suffering the
absolute control of a dictatorship, is arguably a good thing in the main.
Yet methods matter. When the Iraqi people are given the vote by way of a
ravaging war that inflames the passions of the region and enshrines a
radical government, democracy becomes its own worst enemy. When that
ravaging war empowers a fringe president in Iran, democracy becomes its own
worst enemy.

    Methods matter. Democracy does not exist in a vacuum. When it is forced
upon a population at the point of a sword, that population will see the
sword as the best viable option to exercise its collective will. Almost
immediately, democracy will be used to elect radicals, and those radicals
will dispose of democracy at the first opportunity. The radicalization of
governments all across the Middle East has made the world substantially more
dangerous. Mr. Bush will speak of progress tonight. The only progress being
made is toward a general conflagration.

    On the other hand, Exxon Mobil has posted a $32 billion profit for the
last year. This stands as the largest single one-year profit in the entire
history of the world. Progress indeed.

    The Unitary Executive Tapping Your Phone

    Mr. Bush and friends have been jumping through flaming hoops to justify
the blatantly illegal policy of spying on Americans by way of the National
Security Agency. Their tortured arguments in favor of this action, and their
flat-footed declaration that the policy will continue, makes confetti of the
Fourth Amendment.

    More than that, however, it moves this nation one step closer to having
an Executive Branch that supersedes all others in power and scope. Not only
will Mr. Bush spy on whomever he pleases, but he will also torture whomever
he pleases. Put simply, the constitutionally-required separation of powers,
the checks and balances that have maintained the stability of this republic,
is being destroyed. This will echo down the corridors of our history long
after Mr. Bush has left his office.

    On Monday afternoon, Senate Democrats failed to muster the necessary 41
votes needed to avoid cloture on the nomination of Samuel Alito. The man
will be elevated to the highest court. Beyond the fact that Alito is hostile
to a woman's right to choose, hostile to privacy rights in the face of
unwarranted police intrusion, and hostile to the poor and disadvantaged,
there is the matter of his opinion on the powers of the Executive. In short,
he agrees with Mr. Bush.

    The Reign of Witches

    The state of this union is not good. We are poorer, frightened, faced
with the swelling ranks of enemies our leaders have created, and hell-bent
to do away with the most precious aspects of our system of government. We
are surveilled, propagandized, intimidated. We empower the radicals and
disenfranchise the common good. We are fed swill via the television and thus
convinced that what they tell us is what we already believe. We are bought,
and we are paid for.

    The radicals running this country have long desired to destroy the
government's ability to govern - they found things like taxes intrusive,
which is amusing when one hears them now defending warrantless spying on
Americans - and they are well along the path towards success. The budget is
destroyed, spent on tax cuts and the Iraq occupation, while millions of
Americans suffer the loss of necessary services. The one percent of the one
percent is making a killing, and the rest of us are left behind.

    If there is hope to be found in all this, it is in the words of Thomas
Jefferson, written 208 years ago after the passage of the Sedition Act.

    "A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over,
their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore
their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we
are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long
oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us
at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an
opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game
where principles are at stake."