...and I must ask everyone to please vote for John Kerry. Some of you may vote for Bush; I will quote the case against him below. Some of you may want to vote for Nader or another third party candidate. Unfortunately, throwing away votes is a luxury we should not have right now.Why Bush Should Not Be Reelected:
"On Tuesday, November 7, 2000, more than five million Americans went to the polls and, by a small but undisputable plurality, voted to make Al Gore the president of the United States. Because of the way the votes were distributed, however, the outcome in the electoral college turned on the vote in Florida. In that state, George W. Bush held a lead of some five hundred votes, one one-thousand of Gore's national margin; irregularities, and there were many, had the effect of taking votes away from Gore; and the state's electoral machinery was in the hands of Bush's brother, who was the governor, and one of Bush's state campaign co-chairs, who was the Florida secretary of state. Bush sued to stop any recounting of the votes, and, on Tuesday, December 12th, the United States Supreme Court gave him what he wanted. Bush vs. Gore was so shoddily reasoned and transparently partisan that the five justices who endorsed the decision declined to put their names on it, while the four dissenters did not bother to conceal their disgust. By ignoring them- cutting off the process and installing Bush by fiat- the Court made a mockery not only of popular democracy but also of constitutional republicanism.
"In January, 2001, just after Bush's inauguration, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published its budget outlook for the coming decade. It showed a cumulative surplus of more than five trillion dollars. At the time, there was a lot of talk about what to do with the anticipated bounty, a discussion that now seems antique. Last year's federal deficit was three hundred and seventy-five billion dollars; this years will top four billion. According to the C.B.O., which came out with its latest projection in September, the period from 2005 to 2014 will see a cumulative shortfall of $2.3 trillion. Even this seven-trillion-dollar turnaround underestimates the looming fiscal disaster. In doing its calculations, the C.B.O. assumed that most of the Bush tax cuts would expire in 2011, as specified in the legislation that enacted them. However, nobody in Washington expects them to go away on schedule; they were designed as temporary only to make their ultimate results look less scary. If Congress extends the expiration deadlines- a near-certainty if Bush wins and the Republicans retain control of Congress- then, according to the C.B.O., the cumulative deficit between 2005 and 2014 will nearly double, to $4.5 trillion.
"'Most of the tax cuts went to middle- and lower-class Americans,' Bush said during his final debate with John Kerry. This is false- a lie, actually- though it at least suggests some dim awareness that the reverse Robin Hood approach to tax cuts is politically and morally repugnant. Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington research group whose findings have proved highly dependable, notes that, this year, a typical person in the lowest fifth of the income distribution will get a tax cut of ninety-one dollars, a typical person in the middle fifth will pocket eight hundred and sixty-three dollars, and a typical person in the top one percent will collect a windfall of fifty-nine thousand two hundred and ninety-two dollars. This Administration's most unshakable commitment has been to shifting the burden of taxation away from the sort of income that rewards wealth and onto the sort that rewards work. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, another Washington research group, estimates that the average federal tax rate on income generated by dividends and capital gains is now about ten percent. On wages and salaries it's about twenty-three percent... this is widening the gap between the richest and the rest.
"Bush signalled his approach to the environment a few weeks into his term, when he reneged on a campaign pledge to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, the primary cause of global warming. His record since then has been dictated, sometimes literally, by the industries affected. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding a key provision of the Clean Air Act, known as a "new source review", which requires power-plant operators to install modern pollution controls when upgrading older facilities. The change, it turned out, had been recommended by some of the nation's largest polluters, in e-mails to the Energy Task Force, which was chaired by Vice-President Dick Cheney. More recently, the Administration proposed new rules that would significantly weaken controls on mercury emissions from power plants. The E.P.A.'s regulation drafters had copied, in some instances verbatim, memos sent to it by a law firm representing the utility industry.
"The most important Presidential responsibility of the next four years, as of the past three, is the "war on terror"- more precisely, the struggle against a brand of Islamic fundamentalist totalitarianism that uses particularly ruthless forms of terrorism as it main weapon. Bush's immediate reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, was an almost palpable bewilderment and anxiety. Within a few days, to the relief of his fellow-citizens, he seemed to find his focus. His decision to use American military power to topple the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who had turned their country into the principal base operations for the perpetrators of the attacks, earned the near-unanimous support of the American people and of America's allies. Troops from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Norway, and Spain are still serving alongside Americans in Afghanistan to this day. The determination of Afghans to vote in last month's presidential election, for which the votes are still being counted, is clearly a positive sign. Yet the job in Afghanistan has been left undone, despite fervent promises at the outset that the chaos that was allowed to develop after the defeat of the Soviet occupation in the nineteen-eighties would not be repeated. The Taliban has regrouped in the eastern and southern regions. Bin Laden's organizatin continues to enjoy sanctuary and support from Afghans as well as Pakistanis on both sides of their common border. Warlords control much of Afghanistan outside the capital of Kabul, which is the extent of the territorial writ of the decent but beleaguered President Hamid Karzai. Opium production has increased fortyfold.
"The White House's real priorities had been elsewhere from the start. The bottom line, as Bushs' former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said, was that the Bush-Cheney team had been planning to carry out regime change in Baghdad well before September 11th- one way or another, come what may. As a variety of memos and journals have made plain, Bush seldom entertains contrary opinion. He boasts that he listens to no outside advisors, and inside advisors who dare express unwelcome views are met with anger or disdain. He lives and works within a self-created bubble of faith-based affirmation. Nowhere has his so-called lipsism been more damaging than in the case of Iraq. The arguments and warnings of analysts in the State Department, in the Central Intelligence Agency, in the uniformed military service, and in the chanceries of sympathetic foreign governments had no more effect than the chants of millions of marchers.
"The decision to invade and occupy Iraq was made on the basis of four assumptions: first, that Saddam's regime was on the verge of acquiring nuclear explosives and had already amassed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; second, that the regime had meaningful links with Al Qaeda and (as was repeatedly suggested by the Vice-President and others) might have had something to do with 9/11; third, that within Iraq the regime's fall would be followed by prolonged celebrations and rapid and peaceful democratization; and, fourth, that a similar democratic transformation would be precipitated elsewhere in the region, accompanied by a new eagerness among Arab governments and publics to make peace between Israel and a presumptive Palestinian state. The first two of these assumptions have been shown to be entirely baseless. As for the second two, if the wishes behind them come true, it may not be clear that the invasion of Iraq was a help rather than a hindrance.
"The United States has become mired in a low-intensity guerilla war that has taken more lives since the mission was declared accomplished than before. American military deaths have mounted to more than a thousand, a number that underplays the real level of suffering: among eight thousand wounded are many who have been left seriously maimed. The toll of Iraqi dead and wounded is of an order of magnitude greater than the American. Al Qaeda, previously an insignificant presence in Iraq, is an important one now. Before this war, we had persuaded ourselves that our military was effectively infinite. Now it is overstretched, a reality obvious to all. And, if the exposure of American weakness encourages our enemies, surely the blame lies with those who created the reality, not with those who, like Senator Kerry, acknowledged it as a necessary step toward changing it.
Why John Kerry Should Be Elected Instead:
"In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush's curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they'd most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.
"Throughout his long career in public office, Kerry has demonstrated steadiness and sturdiness of character. The physical courage he showed in combat in Vietnam was matched by moral courage when he raised his voice against the war, a choice that carried political costs from his first run for Congress, lost in 1972 to a campaign of character assassination from a local newspaper that could not forgive his antiwar stand, right through this year's Swift Boat ads. As a Senator, Kerry helped expose the mischief of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, a money-laundering operation that favored terrorists and criminal cartels; when his investigations forced him to confront corruption among fellow-Democrats, he rejected the cronyism of colleagues and brought down the power brokers of his own party with the same dedication that she showed in going after Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal. His leadership, with John McCain, of of the bipartisan effort to put to rest the toxic debate over Vietnam-era P.O.W.s and M.I.A.s and to lay the diplomatic groundwork for Washington's normalization of relations with Hanoi, in the mid-nineties, was the signal accomplishment of his twenty years on Capitol Hill. Kerry has made mistakes, but- in contrast to the President, who touts his imperviousness to changing realities as a virtue- he has learned from them.
"Kerry's performance on the stump has been uneven, and his public groping for a firm explanation of his position on Iraq was discouraging to behold. He can be cautious to a fault, overeager to acknowledge every angle of an issue; and his reluctance to expose the Administration's appalling record bluntly and relentlessly until very late in the race was a missed opportunity. But when his foes sought to destroy him rather than debate him they found no scandals and no evidence of bad faith in his past. In the face on infuriating and scurrilous calumnies, he kept the sort of cool that the thin-skinned and painfull insecure imcumbent cannot even feign during the unprogrammed give-and-take of an electoral debate. Kerry's mettle has been tested under fire- the fire of real bullets and the political fire that will surely not abate, but, rather, intensify if he is elected- and he has shown himself to be tough, resilient, and possessed of a properly Presidential does of dignified authority. While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America's mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that the election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half-century. That insistence is a measure of his character. We hope for his victory."
-the editors of The New Yorker
So please, please vote for John Kerry. Thank you.
-Sheeba
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Hello everybody! I used to be QueenofSheeba and then I was Apollo and now I am QueenofSheeba again (and I'm a guy in case you didn't know)!