Bush Lies...

[9 Trillion Dollar Republican Natio]

Austin, Texas... Politex's for BUSH LIES ...www.bushwatch.com
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Bush lies So often and in so many different ways that I've never had
the patience to keep a list of them. However, when I write something
and include the generalization that Bush lies, some readers will write
in and say, "Oh, yeh? What did he lie about? I don't believe it." What
follows, then, is an informal listing of just some of the lies he
typically tells, starting from 2/01. Now, of course, we all know that
Gore lies, Lott lies, Cheney lies, etc. But the difference between
those liars and Bush is the Resident tells us that he is telling the
truth when he is lying. Hence, he will tell us what he is going to do,
like get his proposed tax cut from the surplus, then try to get his
proposed tax cut from military and medicare funds, instead. Or, once
he has actually begun a program, tell us lies about how or why the
program has begun. Or tell a closed-door Dem meeting something and
then swear up and down the next day that he didn't say it. Or saying,
"Yes, Mam" and meaning "No, Mam." Or having a spinner say the opposite
the next day. Or, or...you get the idea.

Some Bush backers claim he's not a liar, he's just not very bright and
doesn't remember things very well. That may be true, but we're sure
Bush would not allow such an excuse in his "responsibility era." We're
sure Bush would agree that if he's that dumb, he shouldn't be
President. Other Bush backers claim that some of his lies are
"technically correct" or "tailored to fit the audience," or some such
circumlocution. What they're talking about are lies of omission rather
than lies of commission. In lies of ommission it's what they imply,
not what they say. For example, the other evening Bush told Congress
and the American people that he was putting a "lock box" on Social
Security. Now, it's very clear that Bush wanted us to feel secure in
the belief that he was protecting all of our Social Security funds for
the future. No question, right? Yet, the very next day when his budget
book was released, we learned that Bush told a lie of omission. What
he didn't tell Congress and the American people is that he would later
take from $.6 to $1 trillion out of that "lock box" to cover his tax
cuts. No doubt, Bush lied. He wanted folks to believe something that
he knew was not true. Of course, politicians do this all the time.
It's second nature. In sum, the thing that really bothers us about
Bush's lies is that he is also a hypocrite and pretends he's above
lying. As a liar, he reinforces our assumptions about politicians. As
a hypocrite, he reinforces our assumptions about his character. --
Politex

lielielielielie

Last month Bush looked at Cheney's proposal to drill for oil in
Montana's Lewis and Clark National Forest and decided that it was a
good idea, since the desire to drill for oil was the wish of the
people of Montana. However, the people of Montana have gone on record
as being against the drilling, and the group that supports drilling
consists of oil companies from outside the state. Here's how it went:
"The 1.8 million acres of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, which
includes some 380,000 acres of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, could be
redesignated by the Bush administration for drilling without coming up
before Congress. All it would take, according to Cheney?s task force,
is repealing administrative protections that former controversial
Lewis and Clark National Forest manager Gloria Flora spearheaded
during the Clinton years. Such a change could be made by Norton. The
rub, according to Jeff Juel of the Missoula-based Ecology Center, is
that Flora?s moves to preserve the Front included an extensive public
commentary period, one that provided...overwhelming public support.
'It?s a pretty big irony, really,' says Juel. 'The comments on this
issue were divided among outside oil interests that wanted to keep
[the Front] open to drilling, and Montana citizens, who said ?No this
should not happen.? Now Bush is saying the federal government is the
outside interest and that the oil companies represent local control.'"
--Missoula Independent, 4/26/01

lielielielielie

"Thursday found the president in Houston, landing at Bush
Intercontinental Airport and proceeding to an event of the Barbara
Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. There, he was greeted by his
proud parents, and his father called it "a special year for the Bush
family." The two Presidents Bush and their wives took the stage, and
the elder Bushes played a video about their post-power lives -- the
former president complaining that his golfing buddies won't allow him
"gimmes" anymore, and the former first lady forced to go through a
security check at a restaurant.... A fact sheet for the event
implausibly listed the president as one of 38 "author alumni." Bush,
whose campaign book, "A Charge to Keep," was ghostwritten by an
adviser, was listed along with Michael Crichton, Robert Ludlum, Frank
McCourt and Scott Turow. The president mused aloud that "some people
think my mom took up the cause of literacy out of a sense of guilt
over my own upbringing," and he quipped that "we all make our
contributions in the world, and I suppose mine will not be to the
literary treasures of the Western civilization." --WP, 4/28/01

lielielielielie

"In defending the Bush administration's proposal to drill for oil in
the wilderness of Alaska, [Cheney recently] maintained the "key fact
to get across -- the ANWR -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 19
million acres, roughly the size of South Carolina. The amount of land
that needs to be disturbed on the surface to develop that resource,
2000 acres, roughly half the size of Dulles Airport. The notion that
somehow developing the resources in ANWR requires some sort of vast
despoiling of the environment up there is just garbage. It?s not
true." Cheney?s statement was not true. The 2000 acres are not
contiguous -- as is the acreage at Dulles Airport. According to a 1999
report of the U.S. Geological Survey, the oil located in this region
is in at least 35 discrete sites spread across a wide swath of coastal
plain. To extract the oil, drillers would have to construct roads
connecting the far-flung sites and a 20-inch pipeline across 135 miles
of wildlife habitat and rivers. And the particular portion of ANWR
eyed by the oil companies happens to be the biological center of
wildlife activity for the refuge. Why would the Vice President -- an
intelligent, civil and hard-working (look at his ticker!) fellow who
is part of the team that wants to improve the tone of Washington --
purposefully misconvey this crucial fact in a vital public policy
debate? Would beyond-the-Beltway bumpkins be wrong to wonder if it was
because of his ties and those of the administration to the oil
industry? --David Corn,4/13/01

lielielielielie

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush told an intimate audience in
Washington Thursday that he stands behind his campaign pledge to give
parents more ability to remove their children from unsafe or
academically inadequate public schools. Such ability, he said, could
be in the form of school vouchers, a hot-button issue among Democrats
and some educators. Bush told those assembled in an Eisenhower
Executive Office Building auditorium he was "strongly committed" to
shifting federal money directly to parents if the schools their
children attend cannot meet the standards set by local officials. "I
campaigned vigorously on this idea, and I think it is right," he said.
That was somewhat more direct than what he said Wednesday as he
launched a reinvigorated push to persuade Congress to support his
agenda to overhaul the nation's public school systems. He told a
middle school audience in Concord, North Carolina, that he wanted to
avoid some of the so-called choice issues, saying that choices such as
vouchers would prompt an extended, spirited debate in Congress. --CNN,
4/12/01

lielielielielie

"On Feb. 21, President Bush told teachers and students at Townsend
Elementary School in Tennessee that

'in the budget I submit, the largest increase of any department will
be for the Department of Education.'

Six days later, Bush told Congress that

'[t]he highest percentage increase in our budget should go to our
children's education.'

"In both instances, Bush's apparently sincere pledge prompted
spontaneous applause. But when Bush's budget was released this week,
the Education Department did not get the biggest proposed increase,
even though CNN and the Associated Press both reported that it did. In
truth, calculated by percentage, the biggest proposed budget increase
(13.6 percent) went to the State Department. (This is actually quite
difficult to find in the OMB's budget documents, but if you go to this
page on the State Department Web site and scroll down to Page 6,
you'll find a "Summary of Funds." On that chart, scroll down to "State
Appropriations Act" and compare FY 2001 to FY 2002.) Calculated by
dollars, the biggest proposed budget increase ($14.2 billion) went to
the Defense Department.

"So, how big is the proposed Education Department increase? The Bush
administration is claiming it's 11.5 percent, or $4.6 billion. But if
you read on, you'll see this puzzling language:

'Corrects for the distortion of advance appropriations, provides a
$2.5 billion, or 5.9 percent increase, for Education Department
programs, the highest percentage increase of any Cabinet agency,
consistent with the priority the President has placed on education.'

"Ignore, for a moment, the erroneous claim that the Education
Department is getting "the highest percentage increase of any Cabinet
agency." (We've just established that it isn't.) What "distortion of
advance appropriations" is the White House budget office talking
about? Well, back in December, before George W. Bush became president,
Congress appropriated about $2 billion for the Education Department,
to be disbursed the following year. It did this as an accounting
gimmick, in order to stay under a spending cap for the current year
that was imposed by a 1997 balanced budget agreement. Gimmick or no,
though, the money was spent before Dubya moved into 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, making it entirely ludicrous for Bush to take credit for it.
The real budget increase Bush is proposing for the Education
Department is $2.5 billion, a 5.9 percent increase. (Or $2.4 billion,
a 5.7 percent increase, according to the Democratic staff of the House
Education and Workforce committee, which used slightly different
numbers from Congress' own budget office.) "The bureaucratic
gobbledygook quoted above therefore translates to 'Our claim to
increase the Education Department budget by 11.5 percent is laughably
wrong, but we're doing our best to make sure no one will notice.' It
seems to be working on Bush. Here he is on April 11 speaking at North
Carolina's Concord Middle School:

'In the budget I submitted to the Congress--one which one body of the
House listened to pretty carefully, and one body of the Congress
listened to carefully, and the other decided, well, they're going to
listen to some of it, but they decided to increase the size and scope
of the federal government--we put a lot of money in for public
education. The biggest increase of any department was for public
education.'" --Slate, 4/13/01

lielielielielie

WASHINGTON - Breaking his second campaign promise on the environment,
President Bush has abandoned a pledge to invest $100 million a year in
a program for rain forest conservation, according to the budget he
released yesterday. Bush announced in a foreign policy speech last
August that he planned to greatly expand the Tropical Forest
Conservation Act, which allows poor countries to restructure their
debt in exchange for protecting the disappearing forests. ''Expanding
the aims of the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, I will ask Congress
to provide $100 million to support the exchange of debt relief for the
protection of tropical forests,'' Bush said in the speech, delivered
in Miami on Aug. 25. But in the new federal budget, Bush has arranged
for just $13 million for the program. Even that sum isn't new funding;
instead, it is diverted from the Agency for International Development.
''They've zeroed it out,'' said Debbie Reed, legislative affairs
director for the National Environmental Trust.... The broken pledge
has an extra sting for US Representative Rob Portman, a Republican
from Ohio and a close ally of Bush throughout the campaign. Portman
was a chief sponsor of the bill that established the program in 1998,
along with Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana. According
to sources familiar with the program, both Portman and Lugar have for
months been asking the White House for full funding for the rain-
forest program. Bush introduced his expansion of the program at a
critical time in the campaign, one week after the Democratic
convention, as Vice President Al Gore's numbers were sharply on the
rise. Attacking Gore for what he described as a weak commitment to the
issue, Bush presented himself as the more practical and compassionate
steward of the environment. --Boston Globe, 4/10/01

lielielielielie

"ELLSBURG, Iowa ? Harlyn Riekena worried that his success would cost
him when he died. Thirty-seven years ago he quit teaching to farm and
over the years bought more and more of the rich black soil here in
central Iowa. Now he and his wife, Karen, own 950 gently rolling acres
planted in soybeans and corn. The farmland alone is worth more than
$2.5 million, and so Mr. Riekena, 61, fretted that estate taxes would
take a big chunk of his three grown daughters' inheritance. That might
seem a reasonable assumption, what with all the talk in Washington
about the need to repeal the estate tax to save the family farm. "To
keep farms in the family, we are going to get rid of the death tax,"
President Bush vowed a month ago; he and many others have made the
point repeatedly. But in fact the Riekenas will owe nothing in estate
taxes. Almost no working farmers do, according to data from an
Internal Revenue Service analysis of 1999 returns that has not yet
been published. Neil Harl, an Iowa State University economist whose
tax advice has made him a household name among Midwest farmers, said
he had searched far and wide but had never found a farm lost because
of estate taxes. "It's a myth," he said. Even one of the leading
advocates for repeal of estate taxes, the American Farm Bureau
Federation, said it could not cite a single example of a farm lost
because of estate taxes. The estate tax does, of course, have a bite.
But the reality of that bite is different from the mythology, in which
family farmers have become icons for the campaign to abolish the tax.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries are the heirs of
people who made their fortunes through their businesses and
investments in securities and real estate....While 17 percent of
Americans in a recent Gallup survey think they will owe estate taxes,
in fact only the richest 2 percent of Americans do. That amounted to
49,870 Americans in 1999. And nearly half the estate tax is paid by
the 3,000 or so people who each year leave taxable estates of more
than $5 million. In fact, the primary beneficiaries of the move to
abolish the estate tax look less like the Riekenas and more like Frank
A. Blethen, a Seattle newspaper publisher whose family owns eight
newspapers worth perhaps a billion dollars." --NYT, 4/8/01

lielielielielie

"Jonathan Chait pointed out recently in the New Republic that the
press maintains a bizarre double standard about factual assertions by
public figures. When the subject is someone's personal life, reporters
will go to great lengths to establish that he or she is lying. But on
matters of public policy, journalists become radical agnostics who
refuse to classify any statement as untrue. If some politician
declares that two plus two is five, reporters might note that this
position is not without controversy. Indeed there are critics,
including politicians of the opposite party, who contend that two plus
two may actually be four. Then perhaps they'll wind up the discussion
by citing yet another pol who is confident that a compromise can be
struck when the bill goes to conference. Or they will quote an
anonymous aide who says that the differences are still too great. "Or
sometimes the lie is permitted to lie completely unmolested. There was
a nice example of this phenomenon this week. Wednesday's Washington
Post and New York Times had carried an ad from a group of black
businessmen supporting repeal of the estate tax. The group was
organized by Robert L. Johnson, chairman of Black Entertainment
Television. The ad declared: "The estate tax is unfair double taxation
since taxpayers are taxed twice -- once when the money is earned and
again when you die." A Times article yesterday about the ad noted
correctly that this "repeats one of President Bush's familiar themes."
Indeed it is probably the most tediously repeated sound bite of the
estate tax debate. It is also false. Not "controversial" or "disputed"
or "misleading" but out-and-out false. Most of the accumulated wealth
that is subject to the estate tax was never subject to the income tax.

"This is so obviously, overwhelmingly true that anyone with the
slightest business or financial experience surely knows it. Even
George W. Bush. Well, probably even Bush. [No, even George W. Bush. --
Politex] Yet he keeps on repeating the lie. Bob Johnson -- a real
businessman -- must surely know it, since he is a walking example of
wealth accumulated without the handicap of taxation. I don't mean to
suggest that Johnson has done anything wrong or even sneaky. The point
is the opposite: The rules are such that Johnson would have had to go
out of his way -- way, way out of his way -- if he'd wanted his wealth
to be taxed as he accumulated it. The same is true of almost every
fortune large enough to qualify for the estate tax, probably including
that of every other signer of that ad. If they read what they were
signing, they knew they were signing a public lie." --Michael
Kingsley, 4/6/01

lielielielielie

"'If you count every vote, Gore wins.' So says Doug Hattaway, a former
Gore campaign spokesman. So where did Hattaway get his facts?
Amazingly, they came from the Miami Herald/USA Today recount. Read
carefully from the Herald's lead story: 'Had all canvassing boards in
all counties examined all undervotes, thousands of votes would have
been salvaged in Broward County, Palm Beach County and elsewhere long
before the election dispute landed in court -- and the outcome might
have been different,' The Herald found. 'In that scenario, under the
most inclusive standard, Gore might have won Florida's election -- and
the White House -- by 393 votes, The Herald found. If dimples were
counted as votes only when other races were dimpled, Gore would have
won by 299 votes. But if ballots were counted as votes only when a
chad was detached by at least two corners (the standard most commonly
used nationally), Bush would have won by 352 votes.' Under two out of
three scenarious - depending on exactly how you count hanging chads -
Gore wins. So why did the Miami Herald's headline read: "Florida
Results: Ballot Review Shows Bush Retaining Lead" And why did USA
Today declare: 'Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed In Fla. Vote
And why did the New York Times report: 'An Analysis of Florida
Balloting Favors Bush' Why? Because after they counted ALL of the
dimpled and hanging chads, the Herald and USA Today decided to
highlight only SOME of the results. Which results did they highlight?
The ones that favored Bush. Which did they bury? The ones that favored
Gore. In journalism, there's a four-letter word for that kind of
reporting: BIAS. On the street, it's a three-letter word: LIE. Once
again, the media has rushed to declare Bush the winner - regardless of
the will of the American people, as expressed through their
votes." [And if folks don't know how members of the Bush
administration are paid big bucks to spend their days pressuring
reporters and editors they're either not reading the papers or they're
smoking funny stuff. --Politex] --Bob Fertik, 4/4/01

lielielielielie

"Again and again, the new president has argued his policy is based on
"sound science" and common sense ? presumably the same common sense
that once considered the burning of witches to be a good idea and
thought the sun revolved around the earth. On the emissions issue, for
example, he wrote to the Republican Senator Chuck Hagel last week
arguing that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and was not considered
as such by the Clean Air Act. Not only does this fly in the face of
received scientific wisdom, it is untrue. In a barbed response to the
Hagel letter, the National Resources Defense Council ? a respected
environmental lobby group ? cited two passages in the Clean Air Act
that specifically mention carbon dioxide." --Independent, 3/30/01.
Thanks to Ted.

lielielielielie

I strongly believe we need to drop the top rate from 39.6 to 33
percent. (Applause.) I've heard all the rhetoric about what that
means, and so have you. But overlooked in the political hyperbole that
tends to take place in our process is the fact that dropping the top
rate from 39.6 to 33 percent serves as a stimulus to small business
growth in America. "The Treasury Department released a report earlier
today on small business owners who pay personal income taxes and small
businesses which pay at the highest rate of 39.6. According to the
Treasury Department, nationwide there are more than 17.4 million small
business owners and entrepreneurs who stand to benefit from dropping
the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 16 speech to small business
owners.
"Most small businesses pay at the 39.6 percent rate."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 22 speech to the National
Newspaper Association.
"In fact, fewer than five percent of these 17.4 million individual and
business owners and entrepreneur pay the top rate. A total of only
691,000 taxpayers in the nation (including taxpayers who are not small
business owners) paid the top rate in 1997, the latest year for which
these data are available." --March 20 press release by the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities.
--Slate, 3/23/01

lielielielielie

I strongly believe we need to drop the top rate from 39.6 to 33
percent. (Applause.) I've heard all the rhetoric about what that
means, and so have you. But overlooked in the political hyperbole that
tends to take place in our process is the fact that dropping the top
rate from 39.6 to 33 percent serves as a stimulus to small business
growth in America. "The Treasury Department released a report earlier
today on small business owners who pay personal income taxes and small
businesses which pay at the highest rate of 39.6. According to the
Treasury Department, nationwide there are more than 17.4 million small
business owners and entrepreneurs who stand to benefit from dropping
the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 16 speech to small business
owners.
"Most small businesses pay at the 39.6 percent rate."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 22 speech to the National
Newspaper Association.
"In fact, fewer than five percent of these 17.4 million individual and
business owners and entrepreneur pay the top rate. A total of only
691,000 taxpayers in the nation (including taxpayers who are not small
business owners) paid the top rate in 1997, the latest year for which
these data are available." --March 20 press release by the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities.
--Slate, 3/23/01

lielielielielie

"On March 12, The Washington Post reported that "the Bush
administration will delay action on parts of its plan to channel more
government money to religious charities," quoting Don Eberly of the
office of faith-based initiatives as saying: "We're postponing." Two
days later, President Bush said that "reports about our charitable
choice legislation not going full steam ahead are just simply not
true." But that day the Senate, with the White House's agreement,
decided to postpone the financial aid plan for several months to a
year." Washington Post, 3/26/01

lielielielielie

"Retreating from a campaign pledge, President Bush told Congress
Tuesday that his administration would not impose mandatory emissions
reductions for carbon dioxide on the nation's power plants. In a
letter to Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., the president made no mention of a
campaign promise to require reductions in emissions of 'four main
pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon
dioxide.'...Last weekend, Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Christie Whitman said the administration was moving
ahead with plans for regulations in line with the Bush campaign
pledge." --CNN, 3/13/01

lielielielielie

President Bush's position on how much of his tax cut would accrue to
the very wealthy is "objectively untrue," Jonathan Chait writes in the
New Republic. "And yet journalists have not exposed the lie. In some
instances they have actively propagated it." That's because "the rules
of newspaper 'objectivity' hold that on questions of policy there must
always be two sides, and that both sides must be treated equally,
regardless of their relative merits." The fact remains that the
wealthiest 1 percent of Americans "may pay a slightly higher share of
income taxes under Bush's plan, but they would pay a significantly
lower share of total taxes," including the estate tax and the payroll
tax. Joshua Micah Marshall makes a similar point in his "Talking
Points": It's "just hard to understate how profoundly dishonest a
person House Majority Leader Dick Armey really is," Marshall writes.
"Armey is the poster boy for a particularly troublesome Washington
phenomenon: because of the canons of journalistic objectivity, it is
generally okay to lie brazenly as long as it's about public policy.
(If it's about your personal life, watch out!)" --Chris Suellentrop,
3/9/01

lielielielielie

"On most days, the political director of National Association of
Manufacturers dons a suit and tie. But at a GOP tax cut rally outside
the Capitol yesterday, Fred Nichols was sporting a faded blue "Farm
Credit" hat, a striped rugby shirt and olive-green slacks. The
sartorial switch was not accidental. Nichols's trade association,
which pushed for yesterday's passage of President Bush's proposal to
reduce income tax rates, circulated a memo among business groups this
week urging lobbyists to show up in full force at the photo
opportunity. And it urged them to be "dressed down" so that "a sea of
hard hats" could flank Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and other
House GOP leaders to help buttress Republican arguments that the plan
helps blue-collar Americans. "The theme involves working Americans.
Visually, this will involve a sea of hard hats, which our construction
and contractor and building groups are working very hard to provide,"
said the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.
"But the Speaker's office was very clear in saying that they do not
need people in suits. If people want to participate -- AND WE DO NEED
BODIES -- they must be DRESSED DOWN, appear to be REAL WORKER types,
etc." --Wash. Post, 3/9/01

lielielielielie

Call it a "Bush trillion." It's a sum that is either much more or much
less than $1 trillion ? whichever is convenient ? but one that George
W. Bush thinks he can get away with calling "a trillion dollars" in
speeches. During the campaign Mr. Bush, to emphasize his moderation,
claimed that he was matching a trillion dollars in tax cuts with a
trillion dollars of new spending. In fact he proposed less than half a
trillion in new programs, and now he proposes no real increase in
spending at all. The tax cut, on the other hand, turns out to be $1.6
trillion, except that it's really $2 trillion once you count the
interest costs. And it will be $2.5 trillion if it is accelerated,
something Mr. Bush has urged but not factored into his numbers, and if
a major wrinkle involving the alternative minimum tax is ironed out.
Meanwhile Mr. Bush has come up with another trillion, this time his
"trillion-dollar contingency fund." It comes as no surprise that the
actual number in his budget is only a bit more than $800 billion. And
more than half of that consists of funds that Medicare was supposed to
be setting aside for the needs of an aging population. So maybe we
also need to define a "Bush contingency," as in: "Gee, people might
get older, and they might have medical expenses. We can't be sure ?
but it could happen." --Paul Krugman, 3/7/01

lielielielielie

"It's a nonsense set of statistics"
--Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, commenting on the Citizens for Tax
Justice study showing that 43 percent of the proposed Bush tax cut
(since revised upward to 45 percent) would go to the richest 1
percent, as quoted by Charles Babington in the March 1 Washington Post

"In truth, the number is neither difficult to obtain nor highly
disputed. The richest 1 percent of Americans would get between 31.3
percent and 45 percent of Bush's tax cut. Without the estate tax cut--
which is about a quarter of Bush's tax package--the haul for the
richest 1 percent would be 31.3 percent, according to Citizens for Tax
Justice. Even a conservative economist such as the Heritage
Foundation's William Beach agrees with that. 'It's not a controversial
number,' [O'Neill] said." --Dana Milbank, "Tax Cut Statistics
Disputed," in the March 2 Washington Post

lielielielielie

Last week Bush called the U.S. air strikes in Iraq "routine" and so
did his spinners, including Condi Rice. Now, as the Village Voice
reports, the Bush air strikes were anything but "routine." "Pentagon
officials revealed the recent air strikes in Iraq were designed to
take out a fiber-optic network, being built by the Chinese, that would
link the different parts of Saddam Hussein's air defense system. The
military aid violates United Nations sanctions against Iraq. This bit
of news raised ticklish questions for Bush, since his administration
was just beginning to take up relations with the Chinese government.
Things quickly took a chilly turn, as the president issued a stern
statement. "Let me just tell you this," he said. 'It's risen to the
level where we're going to send a message to the Chinese.'" Politex,
2/24/01

lielielielielie

Bush "still seeks to play to his right wing, and despite a stated
desire to "move on," last week gave the go-ahead for a criminal
investigation of the Marc Rich pardon." --Village Voice, 2/21/01

lielielielielie

"The administration pretends that it is offering broad tax relief for
working families. Last week Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill declared
that the plan "would focus on helping those people who are close to
the low-income and middle-income brackets," adding that "it would
affect every American that currently pays taxes." This statement isn't
technically a lie [but it sure is a lie in its implications]: "close
to" need not actually mean "in," and "affect" need not mean that a
family's taxes are actually reduced. But one has to say that Mr.
O'Neill, whom the press has portrayed as a straight talker, is
learning his new trade very quickly. --Paul Krugman, 2/11/01

lielielielielie

Bush "said throughout the campaign [that] the huge surpluses forecast
for the next 10 years make a massive tax cut only fair and proper. On
the other hand, he warns now, the declining economy requires a massive
tax cut to prop it up. Believing that the country faces, at the same
time, a declining economy and huge unending surpluses is the trick
that the Bushies manage effortlessly. It's a belief that while a
recession is about to reduce our tax revenues now -- or might already
be doing it -- we can confidently dispense the ones projected for
2010." --Oregon Live, 2/8/01

lielielielielie

"President Bush scrambled yesterday to defend his commitment to race
relations after his chief of staff [not] mistakenly said the office
devoted to that issue would be closed. White House officials insisted
chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. had been misinformed when he told
USA Today that the office created by President Bill Clinton, would be
shuttered. The officials said Bush will...continue to focus on race
relations with a Task Force on Uniting America that will not have its
own office but will involve senior officials from several parts of the
White House. The confusion marked the first significant stumble of a
White House that has basked in mostly favorable reviews for its smooth
and disciplined performance. The episode also marred Bush's careful
effort to repair his relations with African Americans, many of whom
remain embittered about the vote in Florida." --WP, 2/8/01

lielielielielie

"Several House Democrats who attended a private retreat at which
President George W. Bush spoke Sunday said the president appeared
confused about one of the first executive orders he signed after
taking office. The White House, in turn, called it a simple
disagreement over policy. According to Democrats in the room, Bush
stumbled as he answered the last of a series of nine questions by
House Democrats. "He was boxed into a corner," said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-
Florida. Others said the president seemed uncomfortable, with one
noting, "He turned bright red." The question came from Rep. Nancy
Pelosi, D-California, who asked Bush about an executive order banning
U.S. funding for international aid groups that provide abortions or
abortion counseling, even if the U.S. funds are not directly used for
the abortion work. Bush signed the executive order January 22. Pelosi
asked the president if it was a "double standard" to prohibit that
funding because the administration opposes the groups' abortion
activities, but allow funding to faith-based charities which conduct
religious activities using private funds. Bush's response, Democrats
said, implied he thought his executive order had outlawed only the
direct financing of abortions. --CNN, 2/5/01

lielielielielie

"Had Bush wished to be forthright, he should have said, "It is my
conviction that any group that actively supports abortion rights
should be punished by being denied taxpayer assistance for its other
endeavors." That would have been a much more accurate explanation. He
could also have argued that in the real world all funds are fungible.
Consequently, if you provide millions to an overseas family planning
program for non-abortion services, that allows it to divert other
funds to its abortion-related work. But if Bush depended on that
reasoning, he would undermine his own faith-based initiative, which is
predicated on the assumption that the government can give money to a
religious outfit for social services without subsidizing the religious
functions of the group. (Money for soup kitchens, but not for
proselytizing between courses.) Instead, the president falsely
depicted his action. --David Corn, 2/5/01

lielielielielie

"In his premier action in office, Bush reimposed Ronald Reagan's
global gag order that prohibited U.S. government family planning funds
from going to overseas groups that provide abortion services, lobby
for abortion rights, or counsel pregnant women that abortion is an
option. In his two-paragraph statement explaining the decision, Bush
noted, "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to
pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either
here or abroad. It is therefore my belief that the Mexico City policy
should be restored." This was a disingenuous remark, for the funds in
question -- $425 million -- do not underwrite abortion-related
activity. Yes, some family planning groups that do offer or support
abortion services would have received a portion of these millions, but
that money would only support non-abortion activities. Bush's
"conviction" was misapplied. His revival of the gag rule was a
punitive step aimed at outfits that engage in legal health services
and advocacy." --David Corn, 2/5/01

lielielielielie

"The military overwhelmingly supported Mr. Bush; officers thought that
they had an understanding ? nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more ? that
defense spending would quickly expand once he reached the White House.
Indeed, senior officers have been telling Congress that they need a 30
percent increase in their budget. Guess again. Last week, according to
newspaper reports, Mr. Bush told lawmakers that there would be "no new
money this year for defense." Karen Hughes, a counselor to Mr. Bush,
conceded that "we may in fact need resources" for the military ? may?
after all that martial rhetoric? ? but made it clear that there was no
rush. One officer bitterly declared, "It sounds like campaign promise
No. 1 being broken." --Paul Krugman, 2/4/01


BUSH WATCH...BUSH LIES...............

Austin, Texas... Politex's for BUSH LIES ...www.bushwatch.com
Bush Watch ... bush millions... bushreport... cocaine... comedy...
commentary... headlines... issues... press comments...

lielielielielie

"President Bush had business ties with Enron and its predecessor
companies, and first met Kenneth Lay, its chairman, sometime in the
late 1980s, according to public records and interviews. Previously,
the president had not mentioned his business dealings with Enron and
had said that he got to know Lay after he was elected governor of
Texas in 1994. On Tuesday, White House communications director Dan
Bartlett told the Tribune that Bush's relationship with Lay probably
started when Bush was in Washington in 1987 and 1988, working on his
father's presidential campaign. It could have started earlier, he
said. "He does not recall specifics" of the first time he met Lay,
Bartlett said. 'He met him through his father and through his father's
political activity.'" --Chicago Tribune, 03.06.02.

lielielielielie

"About three weeks ago, I received a tip. The attorney general was fed
up with having his picture taken during events in the Great Hall in
front of semi-nude statues. [One statue has a breast exposed, the
other has a cloth over his loins.] He had ordered massive draperies to
conceal the offending figures. But initially not only could the story
not be confirmed ? it was strongly denied....According to my original
tipster, [a November photo of the Attorney-General with one of the
nude statues in the background] was the final straw for Ashcroft, and
he ordered that the statues henceforth be draped.

"Public affairs people however denied any such thing. They stoutly
maintained that the attorney general had never complained and that no
draperies had been ordered....The draperies have in fact been
ordered....[and] installed last week at a cost of just over $8,000.

"And it turns out that they were indeed ordered by someone in the
attorney general's office, who delivered the request to the Justice
Management Division and asserted it was the attorney general's desire.
I'm told she was the only person in the attorney general's office who
knew about it. She's his advance person, and she said it was done for
"aesthetic purposes" ? she just thought it would look better when
staging events in the Great Hall. --Beverley Lumpkin, ABC News,
01.25.02

Public Affairs "noted that former spokeswoman Mindy Tucker always
hated the statues; Mindy told me Thursday it was her view that half
the women in the department were offended by them and the other half
considered them art. [Mindy Tucker was a secondary press spokesperson
for Governor Bush and was given the post of spokeswoman for Justice
when Bush came to Washington. In that position she made some
controversial announcements to the press on free speech matters, and
has since been replaced and moved to a similar position for the
Republican National Committee. --Politex].

lielielielielie

Bush's visit to West Virginia last week included a chat with Bob Kiss,
Democratic speaker of the West Virginia House of Delegates....Kiss
told Bush that if he wasn't doing anything the next morning, he could
come by for [his infant twins'] 3 a.m. feeding. Kiss said Bush joked,
"I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go
to war." --CNN, 01.27.02

Bush was a member of the Texas Air National Guards between May 1968
and October 1973 and never left the country in relation to his duties.
He was discharged 8 months before his six year term expired. "During
his fifth year as a guardsman, Bush's records show no sign he appeared
for duty." (Boston Globe, 05.23.00) According to a 06.18.02 story in
the Sunday Times (UK),"Documents obtained by The Sunday Times [UK]
reveal that in August 1972, as a 26-year-old subaltern in the Air
National Guard, Bush was grounded for failing to "accomplish" an
annual medical that would have indicated whether he was taking
drugs...." The Boston Globe story on Bush's military service adds,
Bush "refused for months last year [1999] to say whether he had ever
used illegal drugs. Subsequently, however, Bush amended his stance,
saying that he had not done so since 1974." According to the Boston
Globe, "In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973,
Bush did not fly at all." --Politex, 01.28.02MORE Here and Here

lielielielielie

"Wasn't that the best?" said a laughing Ann Richards this week, when I
asked her reaction to President Bush's effort to hide behind her skirt
when questioned about Enron. "It was so silly. Why didn't he just say
Ken Lay was a strong supporter and gave him a half-million dollars and
is a good friend, and he's really sorry Ken's in these terrible
circumstances?"

Good question. As the world knows now, George W. Bush told two lies
when first asked about his ties to the top guy in what may prove the
largest corporate flimflam in history. The president said (1) that he
only "got to know" Mr. Lay in 1994, when in fact their relationship
goes back at least to 1992; and (2) that Mr. Lay "was a supporter" of
Governor Richards, when in fact Mr. Lay told TV's "Frontline" last
year that he "did support" Mr. Bush over Ms. Richards in their Texas
race.

This is the president who promised to usher America into "a new era of
personal responsibility"?

What makes the dissembling so strange is that there is no evidence of
any administration illegality in the Enron affair. And yet each day
brings a new half-truth or seeming cover-up. Appearing on CNN last
Saturday, Lawrence Lindsey, the top Bush economic adviser and a former
Enron consultant, seconded the president's effort to pin Ken Lay on
Ann Richards, but somehow forgot to say what would become public four
days later ? that he had overseen an administration study of the
impact of Enron's travails in October. Earlier, Mary Matalin had
visited the Imus show to defend her boss, Dick Cheney, but instead of
vowing to open the books on the secret meetings between Enron and the
vice president's clandestine energy task force, she asserted that
Enron got "not one thing" from the administration's energy plan
(actually it got plenty) and tried desperately to dismiss the entire
ruckus as lacking an intern's "blue dress."

Hard as it is to believe, it was only 10 days ago that Ari Fleischer
declared, "I'm not aware of anybody in the White House who discussed
Enron's financial situation." Now we're painfully aware that the only
White House inhabitants who may not have discussed it are the
president, Barney and Spot ? or so we must believe until future
investigators turn up a smoking pretzel. --Frank Rich

lielielielielie

"After Sept. 11, says Laura Bush, divorce is down, weddings are up and
``families have come together.'' In fact, fewer folks are taking vows
and more are splitting up, says the available data, and hounds are
twice as likely as husbands to get wifely attention....``Divorce cases
have been withdrawn at higher rates, and more people are buying
engagement rings and planning weddings,'' the first lady told a group
of New York women. Mrs. Bush was referring to a news report out of
Houston that was retracted four days before her talk. In fact, the
federal government hasn't tracked divorce and marriage on a monthly
basis since 1995. The only information is on the county level." --AP,
01.16.02

lielielielielie

Despite President's Denials, Enron & Lay Were Early Backers of Bush

Enron PAC & Executives Gave $146,500 to 1994 Gubernatorial Campaign

Austin--President George W. Bush revised history yesterday when he
said that Enron CEO Ken Lay "was a supporter of Ann Richards in my
[gubernatorial] run in 1994." While Richards reportedly received
$12,500 from Enron sources in that campaign, Bush received far more
Lay and Enron money.

In fact, in an interview with PBS?s "Frontline" taped on March 27,
2001, Lay said, ?When Governor Bush, now President Bush, decided to
run for the governor?s spot, [there was] a little difficult situation.
I?d worked very closely with Ann Richards also, the four years she was
governor. But I was very close to George W. and had a lot of respect
for him, had watched him over the years, particularly with reference
to dealing with his father when his father was in the White House and
some of the things he did to work for his father, and so did support
him.?

Mr. Lay and Enron's PAC were early donors to Bush?s 1994 race,
contributing $30,000 to Bush's gubernatorial committee as early as
November 1993. All told, Enron's PAC and executives contributed
$146,500 to Bush's first gubernatorial war chest in 1993 and 1994.

"President Bush's explanation of his relationship to Enron is at best
a half truth. He was in bed with Enron before he ever held a political
office," said Craig McDonald, Director of Texans for Public Justice.

Total Enron Money To Bush?s 1994 Gubernatorial Campaign Committee:

Contributions from Ken and Linda Lay???. $47,500
Contributions from the Enron PAC ????.. $20,000
Contributions from Other Enron Executives ?$79,000
Total?? $146,500

Total Enron Money to Bush?s 1998 gubernatorial campaign = $166,000.
Total Enron Money to Bush?s two Gubernatorial Campaigns = $312,500.

Source: Texans for Public Justice and the Texas Ethics Commission.

Texans for Public Justice is a non-partisan, non-profit policy &
research organization that tracks money in Texas politics.


As Enrongate Closes In, Bush Misleads Reporters About Relationship
With Lay

"The president said he first met Lay in 1994, when the businessman
worked for Democratic Gov. Ann Richards." --AP, Jan. 10, 2002.

"In addition to being one of the single largest financial backers of
George W. Bush's political career, Ken Lay can count himself among the
president's closest friends. Letters written while Bush was governor
of Texas and obtained by Mother Jones reveal that the Enron Corp.
chairman regularly wrote Bush and called upon the governor for favors.
Lay recommended appointments to state boards and asked Bush to meet
with visiting dignitaries from countries with whom Enron was hoping to
do business. In fact, the relationship between the men dates back to
the first Bush administration, when George W. used his family name to
promote Enron ventures in Argentina ("Don't Cry for Bush,
Argentina")." --Mother Jones.

"A few weeks after the U.S. presidential election in 1988,
[Argentina's Minister Of Public Works Rodolfo] Terragno received a
phone call from a failed Texas oilman named George W. Bush, who
happened to be the son of the president-elect. "He told me he had
recently returned from a campaign tour with his father," the Argentine
minister recalls. The purpose of the call was clear: to push Terragno
to accept the bid from Enron." --Mother Jones.

lielielielielie

Bush "said yesterday: "I saw an airplane hit the tower - the TV was
obviously on - and I used to fly myself, and I said, 'There's one
terrible pilot.' And I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.'"
Of the second strike, Mr Bush told the youngster [,third grader,
Jordan,]: "I wasn't sure what to think at first."...The story that he
was watching TV contradicts reports from correspondents at the time
that he got the news in a phone call from his national security
adviser, Condoleezza Rice. It also adds further puzzles: why he was
being made to wait; why he did not at least delay his entry into the
classroom; and why is it obvious that an elementary school would have
a TV set in the corridor?" --Guardian, 12.5.01

EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT..."Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe
what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in
Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card -- actually I was in a
classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was
sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane
hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and
I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a
horrible accident." But I was whisked off there -- I didn't have much
time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy
Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, "A second
plane has hit the tower. America's under attack." --CNN, 12.04.01

"Mr. Bush was informed that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in
a telephone conversation with Ms. Rice shortly before walking into a
second-grade classroom at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in
Sarasota, Fla. White House officials said he knew only that it was a
single aircraft and not necessarily a terrorist attack. The president
did not appear preoccupied until a few moments later, around 9:05
a.m., when his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., entered the room
and whispered into the president's ear about the second plane attack.
At that moment Mr. Bush's face became visibly tense and serious." --
NYT, 9/12/01.

I was watching the major news channels right after the first plane
struck the first tower at around 8:45. My recollection is that footage
of that accident was not made available until sometime after the
sceond tower was hit by the second plane. That's because any shot of
the first plane hit would have been happenstance and probably recorded
by an amateur, which turned out to be the case with the footage shown
at around 10:00 on network TV. If that's correct, Bush's thought when
he saw the footage, "There's one terrible pilot," would be stunningly
inappropriate, since it could only have come after phone conversations
with Rice at around 8:55 (first plane), after seeing the first tower
on fire at around 9:00, and after getting Card's whispered message
about the second plane crash at around 9:05. Given that scenario,
Bush's viewing of the second plane hitting the second tower could only
have taken place after his classroom visit, which ended before 9:15.
At around 9:15 he addressed the nation. The only way Bush could have
seen the first plane crash prior to seeing the second plan crash would
have been to have seen it on a non-public Secret Service TV
transmission, which he didn't say had happened, but then, where did
the secret service immediately get the pictures and send them to Bush
within ten minutes of the crash? None were available to the public
until around 10:00, if memory serves, and those weren't reported to
have been supplied by the government, but by an amateur. By 10:00 Bush
was leaving Saarasota. Given the available facts, the most benign
conclusion, then, is that Bush was not telling the truth when he told
Jordan that he saw the first plane hit the first tower prior to his
going into the classroom. He actually could have seen the tower on
fire, heard the reporter say that a plane hit it, and concluded,
"There's one terrible pilot," making his remark too typically
inappropriate, but not stunningly so. This would be just one more
example of Bush's problems with his use of language and facts, which
we have beem calling to our readers' attention for quite some time. --
Politex, 12.09.01

lielielielielie

The entire public rationale for the tax cut was not merely wrong or
reckless, but outright dishonest. When Bush took office, remember,
most people wanted to pay off the national debt and spend money on
things like education and prescription drugs far more than they wanted
tax cuts. Bush was only able to make his tax cuts acceptable by
convincing the public that he first planned to take care of popular
priorities and only cut taxes with all the leftover money. So, last
week a reporter asked Fleischer what, given projected deficits, Bush
planned to do about his promise to enact a prescription drug benefit.
He replied that "anything dealing with large spending increases,
particularly creation of new entitlements, has to be done with an eye
toward what is achievable." In other words, it turns out we can't
afford a drug plan, so too bad. If Bush's you-can-have-it-all
budgeting was merely a miscalculation, he could scale back the tax cut
to make way for more debt reduction or spending. But the truth?which
subsequent developments now expose?is that Bush always placed his tax
cut ahead of debt reduction or the various government policies he
endorsed as a "compassionate conservative." It wasn't just some giant
miscalculation. It was a lie. --Jonathan Chait, 12/4/01

lielielielielie

"In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Friday, Alberto R.
Gonzales, the White House counsel, defended the {Bush tribunals],
saying they would be fair. Mr. Gonzales continued with an assertion
that appeared to liken the commissions to courts-martial. "The
American military justice system is the finest in the world," he
wrote, "with longstanding traditions of forbidding command influence
on proceedings, of providing zealous advocacy by competent defense
counsel and of procedural fairness." Some critics say the
administration appears to be fostering the confusion to blunt
criticism of the tribunals. "The confusion benefits the
administration," said Eric M. Freedman, a professor of constitutional
law at Hofstra University School of Law in Hempstead, N.Y. "If the
government can spread the impression that the tribunals are like the
courts- martial, that would allay many fears." In the battle of
perception, both sides have been making statements that may not be
accurate. Critics have said tribunals will conduct "secret trials."
Mr. Gonzalez wrote that the commissions "will be as open as possible,"
though the president's order permits closed proceedings. --NYT.

lielielielielie

"Those who watched NBC's "Meet the Press" Nov. 18 heard national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice say that President Bush has been
"very supportive of the Nunn-Lugar program." She said, "The funding
was not cut. . . . All the way back in the campaign, the president
talked about perhaps even increasing funding for programs of this
kind." Rice said Bush has asked for as "much money as is actually
needed." Perhaps the usually well-informed security adviser was
misinformed, but what she said was wrong. The administration's budget
request cut the Department of Energy part of the Nunn-Lugar program
from $872 million to $774 million and the Department of Defense
portion by another $40 million. The "materials protection and
accounting" program that safeguards and monitors Russian nuclear
materials was cut $35 million; the program to subsidize research
facilities for jobless Russian nuclear scientists and keep them from
working for terrorists, another $10 million. Nor is it true, as Rice
claimed, that no more money could usefully be spent. Veteran
professional staff people in Congress and the administration tell me
the Russians have never been more receptive to American help in
locking up or disposing of these materials. On Sept. 26 the Russians
agreed to give U.S. inspectors access to nuclear sites never before
opened. The window is open, but money is short. The program for
disposing of plutonium -- a basic ingredient of nuclear weapons -- is
essentially bankrupt. Some in the Bush administration argue that
current disposal methods -- burning it in nuclear power reactors or
storing it in glassified form -- are too expensive. I cannot judge.
But last week, 20 senators wrote Bush "strongly urging" him to give
"full and adequate funding" to the plutonium disposal program. Among
the signers were 10 Republicans, including the party's senior defense
and budget spokesmen, Sens. John Warner and Pete Domenici. This is a
stupid place to try to save money." --David Broder, 11/25/01

lielielielielie

About the White House proposal to drill in Alaska in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, page 5-9 of the Bush-Cheney "National Energy
Policy" at http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy tells Americans that:
"Estimates indicate that no more than 2,000 acres will be DISTURBED if
the 1002 Area of ANWR is developed...the developed area is estimated
to be less than one-fifth the size of Washington D.C.'s Dulles
International Airport."
In August, the House passed an energy bill (H.R. 4) allowing drilling
in Area 1002, but limiting certain oil production activities to 2,000
acres. However, the 2,000 acre (non-contiguous) limit only applies to
the area where "oil facilities" actually "touch" the ground. This is
the kind of lie politicians tell all the time. It's factually correct,
but totally misleading. It's like saying a bullet through your head
will only "touch" 1% of your body, implying that the rest of your body
will be just fine. As you can see by looking at the map and
explanation of proposed activities on our Alaskan Drilling page, the
proposed Bush-Cheney plan will render over 1,000 square miles of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pretty much useless for anything other
than drilling and support activities, causing grave and permanent
damage to the environment. --Politex, 11/21/01

lielielielielie

"Hiding behind a bogus claim of expanding openness, Bush issued new
rules that will greatly complicate the Presidential Records Act, a
post-Watergate law intended to ensure the release of administration
records 12 years after a president leaves office ? in this case, those
of the Reagan administration. Under the law, Reagan documents were due
for public release this year. Instead, Bush chose to stack the deck
against disclosure, abolishing rules the Reagan administration itself
wrote and replacing them with new roadblocks....Both Bush and his
staff pretend they're increasing access to the documents. In
introducing the rules, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that
under existing law and procedures a former president has the right to
withhold any documents for any reason. "But thanks to the executive
order more information will be forthcoming," he said. That's true only
if you pretend that the 1978 law isn't already in effect, implemented
through Reagan's executive order. --USA, 11/11/01

lielielielielie

On ABC News this evening a report reminded us that Bush's Sec. of
Health, Tommy Thompson, said two weeks ago that his department would
be able to respond to any threat of bioterrorism. When challenged
about his statement today in the face of the Anthrax crisis and the
limited availablility of both anthrax vaccine and Cipro, he reiterated
his statment with a stress on the word "respond": "Yes, I said we
would be able to RESPOND." You're in a car that crashes at an
intersection. Those who see you crash would be sure to RESPOND, but in
what way and to what end? --Politex, 10/17/01

lielielielielie

Bush lied. About the cost of his tax cut. About who benefits. About
his budget. He lied when he claimed he could throw money at the
military, fund a prescription drug benefit, pass his tax cut and still
not touch the Social Security surplus. And he's lying now as his
budget office cooks the books to mask the fact that he's already
dipping into the Social Security surplus--without counting the full
cost of his military fantasies, or a decent drug benefit, or the
inevitable tax and spending adjustments yet to come. Democrats have
every reason to rail about Bush's lies and to condemn his
irresponsible tax cut--about a third of which will go to the
wealthiest 1 percent (and for which, it should be noted, twelve
Democratic senators voted)....Democrats should be indicting Bush for
turning his back on working families by enforcing austerity in a time
of need. They should be making the case for extending unemployment
insurance, aiding poor mothers (the first to be laid off), making
investments in housing, schools and mass transit that can help jump-
start the economy. And they should be taking credit for the tax rebate
that people are getting--that was a Democratic idea that wasn't even
in the Bush plan. Instead, Democrats are whistling Calvin Coolidge and
ceding the growth argument to Bush. Bush says his tax cuts are needed
to help the economy revive; that's right--only he's lying about his
tax cut. Most of it doesn't kick in for years and goes to the already
rich. Those cuts should be reversed, particularly the ones in the
estate tax, which is paid only by the wealthiest families. Now we have
a dishonest debate: Bush lies.... --Robert L. Borosage, 9/7/01

lielielielielie

"This was supposed to be the administration that was going to "restore
honor and integrity to the White House." Two days after taking office,
George W. gave his troops their marching orders on ethics: "I expect
every member of this administration to stay well within the boundaries
that define legal and ethical conduct," said W. "This means avoiding
even the appearance of improper conduct."

"Maybe Cheney and Rove just weren't paying attention. That could, at
least partly, account for Rove's penchant for attending meetings on
issues involving companies in which he owned stock. He took part in
multiple energy policy meetings while owning stock in energy companies
such as Enron. And in March, he met at the White House with the
chairman of Intel and a pair of lobbyists who were pushing for
approval of a high-tech merger the White House endorsed shortly
thereafter. Three months later, Rove sold his Intel stock for
$110,000. But when congressional Democrats questioned whether Rove had
violated federal conflict-of-interest laws, White House counsel
Alberto Gonzales defended him by claiming that the meetings fell
outside the scope of government ethics rules because they were of a
"general" nature. And what Rove's defense really means, of course, is
that there was "no controlling legal authority." So much for "avoiding
even the appearance of improper conduct."

"The tasty tidbits go on and on, such as how [the White House task
force on energy] included a Bush appointee whose wife was raking in
$60,000 lobbying for electricity companies at the same time her hubby
was helping craft the energy plan. And how the only time Cheney
deviated from his refusal to reveal the names of those helping him
shape the plan was when he met with representatives from solar, wind
and geothermal power, and then proudly trotted them out to meet the
press.We also learn that a section of the task force's final report
dealing with global warming was lifted almost verbatim from a policy
paper put out by an energy industry trade group. I say almost, because
in one sentence, the industry group used the phrase "both for" while
the task force went with "for both." A complete syntactical reversal
-- now that's some independent thinking! The fresh air that W promised
to bring to the White House has grown so foul that...it's time for a
refresher course on ethics and conflict-of-interest issues." --Arianna
Huffington, 8/31/01

lielielielielie

Bush Lied About The Effect Of His Tax Cuts On The Economy During The
Campaign, And He's Lying Now... "Dishonesty in the pursuit of tax cuts
is no vice. That, in the end, will be the only way to defend George W.
Bush's deceptions. Let's remember the way the debate ran during the
spring. Back in May, The New Republic's cover showed a picture of Mr.
Bush, with the headline "He's Lying." Inside were two articles about
the tax cut. One, by Jonathan Chait, showed that -- contrary to
administration claims -- the tax cut would mainly go to the richest
few percent of the population. The other was an excerpt from my own
book "Fuzzy Math," refuting the administration's claims that it could
cut taxes, increase military spending, provide prescription drug
coverage and still avoid dipping into the Social Security surplus. The
New Republic cover caused much tut-tutting; the magazine's editors
were accused of hyperbole, of rabble-rousing. But the headline was a
simple statement of fact. Mr. Bush was lying. It was obvious from the
start that the administration's numbers didn't add up. And in case you
were wondering, the administration is still lying. I could explain at
length how the Office of Management and Budget has cooked the books so
that it can still claim a surplus outside of Social Security over the
next two years. But here's an easy way to see that the numbers are
bogus: O.M.B. claims that the budget will show a surplus of $1 billion
this year, and another $1 billion next year. Ask yourself how likely
it is that revenues and outlays in a $2 trillion budget would line up
that exactly. Then ask yourself how likely it is that they would line
up that exactly two years in a row. The O.M.B. numbers are the result
of desperate backing and filling -- shift some revenue from this year
to next year, then move some of it back, then change accounting rules
that have been in place for 65 years, then bump up the estimate of
economic growth -- all so that the administration can pretend that it
is keeping its promise." --Paul Krugman, 8/28/01

lielielielielie

Though President Bush campaigned for election by promising the
military "help was on the way" after what he called years of neglect,
his administration is now finalizing proposals this week for making
big cuts in the armed forces.... The Pentagon has been laying the
groundwork for these changes by saying it is essential to cut forces
if the United States is going to realistically meet overseas
commitments. But as the services themselves fight the proposed cuts,
bitter opposition is anticipated on Capitol Hill, even from the
president's own party. "They did take the president as a campaigner at
his word that 'help is on the way' and to find out that help is now on
the wane is not a good thing for them," said Daniel Goure, senior
fellow at the Lexington Institute. The cuts are needed to pay for the
administration's proposed missile defense system....Though Bush came
into office promising to help restore the military, economic reality
has overtaken campaign rhetoric." --ABC, 8/21/01

lielielielielie

"The Great Stem Cell Compromise. "This is way beyond politics," said
George W. Bush while pondering his verdict. What's more, he told the
nation, he had found a solution to please everyone. His plan will at
once "lead to breakthrough therapies and cures" and do so "without
crossing a fundamental moral line." In fact, everything Mr. Bush said
is false. His decision was completely about politics. It will slow the
progress to breakthrough therapies and cures. It did force the pro-
life movement he ostensibly endorses to cross a fundamental moral
line. And yet the politics were so brilliantly handled ? and
exquisitely timed, for the August dog days ? that few vacationing
Americans bothered to examine the fine print, which didn't arrive
until the final seconds of an 11- minute speech. Few have noticed, at
least not yet, that the only certain beneficiary of this compromise is
George W. Bush. --Frank Rich, 8/18/01

lielielielielie

"Recently Mr. Bush was asked about the decision of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries to reduce output by a million barrels a
day. That's about as much as the Department of Energy's estimate of
peak daily production if we drill in the Alaskan tundra ? a peak that
won't come until the middle of the next decade. And OPEC cut
production in order to keep oil prices high despite slumping world
demand, which would seem to be against U.S. interests. Yet Mr. Bush
was remarkably sympathetic to OPEC's cause; it seems that he feels the
oil exporters' pain. "It's very important for there to be stability in
a marketplace. I've read some comments from the OPEC ministers who
said this was just a matter to make sure the market remains stable and
predictable," he declared. Just in case you wonder whether this was
really an endorsement of price-fixing, or whether Mr. Bush was just
being polite, his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, left no doubt: "The
president thinks it's important to have stability, and stability can
come in the form of low prices, stability can come in the form of
moderate prices." This is the same man who boasted during last year's
campaign that he would force OPEC to "open the spigot." Did OPEC take
Mr. Bush's remarks as a green light for further cuts? According to one
oil analyst interviewed by Reuters, Mr. Bush's apparent expression of
support for their efforts to keep prices high "excited a lot of OPEC
ministers." Funny, isn't it? When California complains about high
electricity prices, it gets a lecture about how you can't defy the
laws of supply and demand. But when foreign producers collude to
prevent prices from falling in the face of an oil glut, the
administration not only signals its approval but endorses the old,
discredited theory that cartels are in consumers' interest." --Paul
Krugman, 8/4/01

lielielielielie

"DURING the final presidential debate last fall, Al Gore accused
George W. Bush of opposing a patients' bill of rights. "Actually, Mr.
Vice President, it's not true," Mr. Bush instantly replied. "I do
support a national patients' bill of rights. As a matter of fact, I
brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the
state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through. It requires
a different kind of leadership style to do it, though." Texas, he
added, was "one of the first states that said you can sue an H.M.O.
for denying you proper coverage." ...Mr. Bush in 1995 vetoed the first
version of the patients' rights bill that the Legislature sent
him....two years later he let the section of the bill granting the
right to sue go into effect without his signature." --NYT, 7/29/01

lielielielielie

"The past few days have featured an extreme version of the [Bush]
equivocation strategy. At the weekend summit of industrialized nations
in Genoa, Italy, President Bush gave his fellow leaders the impression
that he would come up with a global-warming proposal by October, in
time for the next international meeting on the issue. But
administration officials have since accused the Canadian and French
leaders of making up the October target out of "thin air," and have
even quibbled about whether U.S. ideas on the subject will amount to a
'proposal.'" --WP Ed, 7/26/01

lielielielielie

"Washington is awash these days with avowals of concern for children,
especially on the Republican side. Whatever the issue, it's really
about the kids they say. President Bush referred to children 11 times
in a single speech-on tax cuts no less. In a speech on federal money
for churches-excuse us, "faith-based initiatives"-the count was up to
35 (not counting "kids" and the like). "The values of our children
must be a priority of our nation," Bush said in a budget speech in
March. But exactly what values was the President referring to? He gave
the impression it was the traditional ones of hard work,
abstemiousness and the rest. But look more closely at the
administration, and a different meaning emerges. Whenever an issue
pits kids against corporate agendas and big money in Bush's
Washington, it is the kids who lose. And that means pretty much all
the time. Corporate leaders in the U.S. are bent on reducing children
to free-floating appetites for stuff, and the new crowd in Washington
is cheering them on-often because it's the same people. Speechifying
about "values" notwithstanding, no previous administration has so
embodied the aggressive commercialism that has parents feeling under
siege. If the administration really was serious about standing up for
kids, it would go at this commercialism like a shark at blood. It is a
direct assault on everything Republicans claim to hold dear. It
subverts both the sanctity of the home and the authority of parents;
and it turns the entire culture into a nemesis for parents rather than
a support for them. Corporations approach kids not as potential moral
beings, but as bundles of inchoate desire whose inclinations to self
gratification are to be stoked and magnified-the amorality of the
Sixties in corporate drag. But since the perps wear suits, the
administration calls it the American Way. --Boulder Weekly, 7/15/01

lielielielielie

"Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, was the Salvation Army's
first White House contact in its effort to win approval of a
regulation allowing religious charities to practice anti-gay workplace
bias, administration officials said yesterday. The revelation
contrasts sharply with the administration's initial insistence that
senior officials were not involved with the charity's request, which
was hastily rejected Tuesday evening after a news account about the
proposed regulation. An internal Salvation Army document obtained by
The Washington Post said the White House had made a "firm commitment"
to issue a regulation protecting religious charities from state and
city efforts to prevent discrimination against gays in hiring and
providing benefits. To secure this commitment, the charity proposed
spending nearly $1 million on lobbyists and strategists, and those it
retained included a key player in the Bush presidential campaign and
one of the campaign's top fundraisers. The White House has denied that
it promised the charity anything. But a White House official involved
in the matter said yesterday that there was "an implied quid pro quo."
This official said that Don E. Eberly, the deputy director of the
White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, had given
the Salvation Army "an implicit understanding" that the administration
would seriously consider the change....

"A White House official close to the matter...said, "Rove was
intimately involved in courting the Salvation Army." A second
administration official close to the matter confirmed that account.
Both officials said Rove knew all about the regulatory request.
"Literally nothing occurs around here without his blessing," the first
official said. "He's the air traffic controller. He says, 'Here's your
problem. Here's your answer.' " Officials involved in the decision to
drop consideration of the regulation said it was reached at about 4
p.m. Tuesday after a strong consensus was reached among the half dozen
or so officials who were reviewing the request. Bush had traveled to
New York that day. The issue and the way to handle the public
relations crisis were hotly debated in meetings and calls to Air Force
One as Bush traveled back from New York. As the White House worked to
calm the furor over the Salvation Army flap, the House Ways and Means
Committee yesterday approved a component of Bush's faith-based plan, a
proposal to allow those who don't itemize their taxes to deduct
charitable contributions. The committee scaled back the plan to just
$6.3 billion over 10 years from the $84 billion Bush proposed. The
White House nevertheless hailed the passage by the committee as a
major victory. "This legislation will stimulate more charitable giving
and support faith-based and community organizations in their efforts
to help those in need," Bush said in a statment. --WP, 7/12/01

lielielielielie

"George W. Bush ran for president pledging not just a change in
policies but a change in the way those policies are made. There was no
mistaking whom Bush had in mind when he denounced decision-making by
poll and promised an end to the "permanent campaign." Five months into
his administration comes a surprise: Bush's White House at times bears
a striking resemblance to Bill Clinton's. The signature of Clinton's
White House -- and a key to his survival during impeachment and a host
of other crises -- was the way policy and politics were routinely
interwoven in his decision-making process. Clinton's top political and
policy aides met weekly to pore over polling and to plot strategy.
Senior Bush aides acknowledge they convene weekly to do precisely the
same thing." --WP, 6/26/01

lielielielielie

"Bush, playing an active role in targeting vulnerable Democratic
senators in next year's election, aimed his latest criticisms toward
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Calling for greater authority to set U.S.
trade policy during a speech Wednesday to the Business Roundtable,
[Bush] said: "There are some who want to put codicils on the trade
protection authority for one reason -- they don't like free trade.
They're protectionists and they're isolationists." The remarks came as
Baucus was chairing hearings in which several senators questioned the
wisdom of granting Bush "fast track" authority to negotiate trade
deals. Baucus spokesman Michael Siegel said Friday that the senator
"just couldn't figure out what was meant by [Bush's] comments." Baucus
has a "progressive" record on trade policy, including calls for
normalized trade with Cuba, Siegel said. "Certainly the Senate is not
isolationist or protectionist," he said. --WP, 6/25/01

lielielielielie

"The European Commission's anti-trust chief has ordered politicians to
quit meddling in his affairs, following criticism by chiefs including
US president George Bush of his probe into the General Electric/
Honeywell merger. EU competition commissioner Mario Monti has
condemned as "entirely out of place" comments over the tough line he
has said to have taken over the $42bn deal, between two of America's
biggest companies.... "This is a matter of law and economics, not
politics," he said...." I deplore attempts to misinform the public and
to trigger political intervention."... Last week Mr Bush said he was
"concerned that the Europeans have rejected" the merger....Mr Bush's
office on Monday appeared to be attempting to calm US/EC tension,
denying that the president had sought to interfere with Mr Monti's
anti-trust procedures. "[Mr Bush] reiterated the American position,
which [was that] the American government already cleared the merger
so, of course, the president said that," White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer said. --BBC, 6?20/01

lielielielielie

"'Something will happen when I'm president,' Bush told a Jewish
lobbying group a year ago. 'As soon as I take office I will begin the
process of moving the U.S. ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as
its capital.' The Bush campaign in October slammed Vice President Al
Gore for backsliding on the move."

--Al Kamen's June 13 "In the Loop" column in the Washington Post.

"Pursuant to the authority vested in me as President by the
Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 7(a)
of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-45) (the 'Act'),
I hereby determine that it is necessary to protect the national
security interests of the United States to suspend for a period of six
months the limitations set forth in sections 3(b) and 7(b) of the
Act."

--June 11 presidential memorandum delaying the congressionally
mandated relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Timothy Noah, 6/19/01

lielielielielie

CLINTON'S NIGHT DEPOSIT..."As the Bush administration has moved
ambitiously during its first months to reshape the government
according to its conservative values, the president and his aides have
explained their decision to reopen dozens of federal rules by saying
they were deluged by President Bill Clinton with controversial, last-
minute regulations. "The night deposit" is how Office of Management
and Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. refers to Clinton's final
regulatory work, spanning drinking water and medical records, workers'
safety and national parks. "Actions like this, undertaken at the very
end of an administration, carry . . . the risk that they were ill-
considered or ill-intentioned or both," Daniels said. An examination
of the rules that the new administration has begun to rethink -- and,
in some instances, recast -- suggests that Clinton did complete a
large number of regulations near the end of his second term. But there
is little evidence any of them were new ideas that sprang up in the
weeks and months before the White House changed hands. In fact,
virtually all the regulations finished by federal agencies shortly
before Clinton left office had been developed over years, according to
government documents, outside policy analysts, and officials of the
Bush and Clinton administrations. Some had been delayed by lawsuits or
because Republican-led Congresses of the mid- to late-1990s had
explicitly forbidden federal agencies to work on them. Moreover, the
regulations completed during Clinton's final weeks in office were in
step with a brisk pace of regulatory work throughout his two terms --
and with a longstanding practice in which presidents of both political
parties have issued many regulations just before they departed." --
Washington Post, 6/9/01

lielielielielie

"As OPEC meets, it has become apparent that President Bush is breaking
his campaign pledge to "jawbone OPEC," to increase production. Last
year Bush said OPEC was the "main reason," for high gas prices, but
this year, as gas price have reached $2 a gallon in some regions, his
Administration is rejecting "begging or publicly bashing to get more
oil," with a "gentler approach" to OPEC. --Grand Old Petroleum, 6/6/01

lielielielielie

ARI FLEISCHER PURPOSELY DECEIVED HIS PRESS COLLEAGUES RE CLINTON WHITE
HOUSE BEHAVIOR

"NOT LONG after George W. Bush was sworn in as president, many were
aghast to read in newspapers and hear on television that in the final
days of the Clinton administration, employees had trashed the White
House. Democrats were embarrassed, and Republicans, stroking their
wallets, gloated that they knew all along the Clintons were
hillbillies. The story began as a gossip item in The Washington Post
that the letter ''W,'' Bush's middle initial, had been removed from
keyboards, and within days it had mushroomed to a scandal reported
prominently on TV and the front page of the Post. The details were
startling: Walls had been desecrated with obscene graffiti, file
cabinets glued shut, telephone wires cut, presidential seals steamed
off doors and pornography left on fax machines. So extensive was the
damage that a communications worker was said to have been reduced to
tears and a national magazine hinted that the White House was spending
$10,000 a day to repair phone systems damaged by departing Democrats.
Talk-show hosts from the nutty right, like Jay Severin in Boston and
his audience of dumb and dumbest, all congratulated themselves on
having been proved right that the Clintons were trailer-park trash.

"And what of the Globe? At a time when Bush aides were privately
promoting the story, Anne E. Kornblut of the Globe's Washington Bureau
was filing stories that were skeptical. For example, at a briefing
Jan. 25, Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer deceptively encouraged
reporters' suspicions while refusing to confirm or deny reports of
damage. The next day, in a 620-word account, Kornblut wrote: ''No
public evidence exists that Clinton and Gore staff members vandalized
the White House or Old Executive Office Building.'' For that
statement, she was denounced by some for political bias and for not
reporting in greater detail what one reader said was further evidence
that under Clinton, America had seen the greatest moral decay since
the founding of the nation. ''Kornblut either knows the truth and she
wrote a blatantly dishonest, biased story,'' wrote Lee Vincent of
Groton, Conn., ''or she is incompetent or inexcusably clueless about a
widely known set of facts.'' Now, three months later, buried in the
national briefs column in the Globe a few days ago was an AP story
four sentences long that said an investigation by the General
Accounting Office found no evidence of vandalism, no evidence of wires
slashed, no evidence of equipment damaged, and no evidence or anything
to match the allegations.

"Knowing how difficult it is to write against the current and risk the
wrath of readers, not to mention the censure of editors, I called
Kornblut to congratulate her for having covered the story with
temperance and, above all, for having gotten it right. 'Just basic
reporting,' she said. 'What made me suspicious was the fact that the
White House wouldn't give specific examples and wouldn't say, on the
record, that this happened here or that happened there. I made phone
calls to people who told me it just wasn't true. Also, there were no
pictures, and they never seemed to be able to say on the record, in
public or at a press conference, here is what happened.'" --Boston
Globe,5/28/01

lielielielielie

The General Services Administration has found that the White House
vandalism flap earlier this year was a flop. The agency concluded that
departing members of the Clinton administration had not trashed the
place during the presidential transition, as unidentified aides to
President Bush and other critics had insisted. Responding to a request
from Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, who asked for an
investigation, the GSA found that nothing out of the ordinary had
occurred. "The condition of the real property was consistent with what
we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an
extended occupancy," according to a GSA statement. No wholesale
slashing of cords to computers, copiers and telephones, no evidence of
lewd graffiti or pornographic images. GSA didn't bother to nail down
reports of pranks, which were more puckish than destructive. Among
those pranks was the apparent removal, by aides to former President
Bill Clinton, of the "w" key from some computer keyboards and the
placing of official-looking signs on doors, saying things like "Office
of Strategery," after a popular "Saturday Night Live" spoof on Bush.
But the vandal scandal, tales of torn up offices and items stolen from
the presidential jet, was the hottest story in town during the early
days of the Bush administration until White House furniture and last-
minute pardons pushed it off the front page. "I think it was this
calculated effort to plant a damaging story," said Alex S. Jones,
director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and
Public Policy at Harvard University. "There was a sort of fertile
ground for believing anything bad." Typical was Tony Snow, a
syndicated columnist and former presidential speech writer for
President Bush's father, who wrote that the White House "was a wreck."
He also said that Air Force One, after taking Clinton and some aides
to New York following the inauguration, "looked as if it had been
stripped by a skilled band of thieves -- or perhaps wrecked by a
trailer park twister." He went on to list all manner of missing items,
including silverware, porcelain dishes with the presidential seal and
even candy. "It makes one feel grateful that the seats and carpets are
bolted down," Snow fumed. Except none of it happened. An official at
Andrews Air Force Base, which maintains the presidential jets, told
The Kansas City Star at the height of the controversy that nothing was
missing. Bush himself acknowledged the same a few days later. And now
GSA has made it official. --Kansas City Star, 5/17/01

lielielielielie

"During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month,
Theodore B. Olson, President Bush's nominee to become solicitor
general, sought to dissociate himself from the "Arkansas Project," the
effort by the conservative magazine American Spectator to uncover
scandals linked to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton,"
the Washington Post reports. Olson told the committee that he
belatedly became aware of the undertaking, but that he was not
involved in the project's origin or management. But "former Spectator
staff writer David Brock has told the Judiciary Committee that Olson
was directly involved in the Arkansas Project." Brock said that he
told Olson that a piece about Vince Foster was unsubstantiated, and
that Olson told him "while he didn't place any stock in the piece, it
was worth publishing because the role of the Spectator was to write
Clinton scandal stories in hopes of 'shaking scandals loose.' " The
Post piece is a follow-up to a piece Jake Tapper wrote in Salon. MSNBC,
5/10/01

lielielielielie

"W promised the world a "humble" [foreign policy], leading by example.
It was, surprise, a lie. There is nothing humble about declaring that
we don't give a damn about global warming, and that we are, in fact,
going to boost our use of fossil fuels and to hell with the rest of
the world. There is nothing humble about declaring the right to waste
energy to be a central tenet of the "'Murican way of life." Like
everything else about W, the "humility" was a ruse, and the
"leadership" is a joke. Americans were supposed to feel confident that
an experienced hand like Colin Powell was at the wheel at the State
Department. From day one, Bush and Cheney have belittled Powell,
contradicted him in front of the world, and left him swinging in the
wind to be battered like a big Pinata by every foreign minister he
deals with: "America will work to see the Rio protocols and the Kyoto
Agreement changed so they can be adopted." WHAP! "Uh, no we won't
Colin." "America will continue to seek dialogue with North Korea."
WHAP! 'Nope, sorry big fella.'" --BuzzFlash, 5/11/01

lielielielielie

"Wrapping up a meeting with the emir of Bahrain today, President Bush
said conservation would be part of the national energy policy Vice
President Dick Cheney will propose next week. "We'll have a strong
conservation statement," Bush said. But White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer was adamant today when asked whether the president would ask
Americans to stop using so much energy. "That's a big 'no,'" Fleischer
said. "The president believes that it's an American way of life, that
it should be the goal of policy-makers to protect the American way of
life. The American way of life is a blessed one." The president, he
said, considers Americans' heavy use of energy a "reflection of the
strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people
have come to enjoy." --ABC, 5/7/01

lielielielielie

"Q: Admiral, how [are] the Chinese reading those memos from the
secretary as far as the military-to-military relations with China? Is
this kind of a warning to the Chinese from the U.S. that you better
behave in the future?

"Quigley: No, I wouldn't interpret it that way at all. What you've got
is a misinterpretation of the secretary's intentions yesterday by a
member of the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] staff, and it
simply misinterpreted the secretary's intentions and his guidance. So
this was an honest misinterpretation, nothing more, nothing less.

"Q: But how did it come to the secretary's attention that his guidance
had been misinterpreted?

"Quigley: Reporters started calling yesterday afternoon. Somebody had
gotten a hold of the original memo. And we started taking queries here
on the news desk from reporters, and then that brought it to our
attention, and we started working it here internally and --

"Q: But it was not complaints from the White House or the State
Department?

"Quigley: No, not at all. Not at all. "

--May 3 Defense Department press briefing concerning a Pentagon
directive banning all military-to-military contacts between the U.S.
and China. The policy was hastily altered to require such contacts be
approved on a case-by-case basis.

"White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday that after seeing
the reports about the suspension of military relations, White House
officials he would not identify had called the Pentagon and said:
'This seems inconsistent with what we know the secretary's policy is.
Can you look into this?'"

--"Calls Led To Pentagon Reversal" by Mike Allen in the May 4
Washington Post.


In the Bush administration "the negation of truth is so systematic.
Dishonest accounting, willful scientific illiteracy, bowdlerized
federal fact sheets, payola paid to putative journalists, 'news'
networks run by right-wing apparatchiks, think tanks devoted to
propaganda rather than thought, the purging of intelligence gatherers
and experts throughout the bureaucracy whose findings might refute the
party line -- this is the machinery of mendacity...The point here is
not the hypocrisy involved, though that is egregious. The point is the
downgrading of truth and honesty from principles with universal
meaning to partisan weapons to be sheathed or drawn as necessary. No
wonder the Bush administration feels no compunction to honor the truth
or seek it; it conceives truth as a tactic, valuable only insofar as
it is useful against one's enemies." Russ Rymer

Bush Lies In State Of The Union Speech

Bush: "By the year 2042, the entire [social security] system would be
exhausted and bankrupt."

In what the BBC calls "highly unusual," a State of the Union Speech
was interrupted by a chorus of "No's," booing, and heckles from some
of the members of Congress in attendance. This happened immediately
after the above Bush lie. As Shields mentioned on the PBS wrap-up, and
as Brooks concurred, if adjustments are not made, by 2042, as they
have been made before, 3/4 of the funds promised would still be
available. The entire system would neither be exhausted nor bankrupt.
-- Politex, 02.03.05

29 Bush Lies About Iraqi WMD

bush lies... lies... lies... lies... lies... lies... lies... lies...
lies... lies... lies... lies... lies... lies... lies... lies...
lies... lies... not lies... lies... lies... lies... lies... lies...
lies...
Bush Lied About Lots Of Things

Sure Did. Here's Even More

Today's Bush Lie

"[Castro] welcomes sex tourism," Bush told a room of law enforcement
officials in Florida, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Here's how
he bragged about the industry," Bush said. "This is his quote: 'Cuba
has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.'"

"As it turns out, Bush had lifted that quotation not from an actual
Castro speech but rather from a 2001 essay written by then Dartmouth
University undergraduate Charles Trumbull. In the essay, Trumbull did
appear to quote a Castro speech about prostitution. Sadly, the student
made the quotation up.

"According to officials, the actual quotation from Castro's 1992
speech reads as follows: 'There are hookers, but prostitution is not
allowed in our country. There are no women forced to sell themselves
to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist. Those who do so do it on their
own, voluntarily. We can say that they are highly educated hookers
and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number
of AIDS cases.'"

"...And this isn't the first time the Internet has baffled Bush. Back
in 2003, the President cited another student's thesis when making a
case to go to war. The student's [plagiarized and "sexed up"] work
ended up in a government document describing Iraq's weapons
capability. Not exactly the kind of hard intelligence needed to
justify an attack on another country." The Register, 07.28.04

10 Minute Rice: Three Lies And No Apology

Condi Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, appeared on 60 Minutes
Sunday evening, but, unlike Bush anti-terrorism adviser Dick Clarke at
the 9/11 Probe, she did not swear on the Bible that what she would say
would be the truth. While Clarke on 60 Minutes last Sunday allowed
himself to be probed and turned inside and out for nearly the entire
program, the edited tape of the Rice interview with Ed Bradley lasted
around 10 minutes, and she said nothing new. The short episode came
across as political spin to control the bleeding, and nothing more.

Rice's Lie #1 (transcript)

DICK CLARKE (video):
I said 'Mr. President, we've done this before. We - we've been looking
at this. We looked at it with an open mind, there's no connection.' He
came back at me and said, 'Iraq, Saddam - find out if there's a
connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean, that we should
come back with that answer....

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I - I have never seen the president say an - anything to an - people
in an intimidating way, to try to get a particular answer out of them.
I know this president very well. And the president doesn't talk to his
staff in an intimidating way to ask them to produce information - that
is false.

OUR RESPONSE:
Clarke and two others were in the room with Bush. The others have gone
on record as agreeing with Clarke's description of the meeting. Condi
was not present.

Rice's Lie #2 (transcript)

VOICE OVER:
All week long, the White House said it had no recollection that the
September 12 meeting ever took place, and that it had no record that
President Bush was even in the situation room that day. But two days
ago, they changed their story, saying the meeting did happen.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
"None of us recall the specific - conversation....

OUR RESPONSE:
Actually, two lies here. First, the White House said the meeting
didn't happen, then they changed their story. Second, Condi misleads
Bradley by saying "us" did not recall the specific conversation. Of
course "us" didn't since it has already been established that "us" was
not in the room at the time of the conversation.

Rice's Lie #3 (transcript)

ED BRADLEY:
Clarke has alleged that the Bush administration underestimated the
threat from - from al Qaeda, didn't act as if terrorism was an
imminent and urgent problem. Was it?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
Of course it was an urgent - problem....

ED BRADLEY: :
But even the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General
Hugh Shelton, has said that the Bush administration pushed terrorism,
and I'm quoting here, farther to the back burner.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I just don't agree....

ED BRADLEY:
After 9/11, Bob Woodward wrote a book in which he had incredible
access and interviewed the president of the United States. He quotes
President Bush as saying that he didn't feel a sense of urgency about
Osama bin Laden. Woodward wrote that bin Laden was not the president's
focus or that of his nationally security team. You're saying that the
administration says fighting terrorism and al-Qaeda has been a top
priority since the beginning.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I'm saying that the administration took seriously the threat - let's
talk about what we did....

ED BRADLEY: :
You'd listed the things that you'd done. But here is the perception.
The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at that time says you pushed
it to the back burner. The former Secretary of the Treasury says it
was not a priority. Mr. Clarke says it was not a priority. And at
least, according to Bob Woodward, who talked with the president, he is
saying that for the president, it wasn't urgent. He didn't have a
sense of urgency about al Qaeda. That's the perception here.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
Ed, I don't know what a sense of urgency - any greater than the one
that we had, would have caused us to do differently.

OUR RESPONSE:
It's clear that Bradley wants to discuss the Clarke charge that the
Bush administration changed terrorism from the top priority to one of
secondary concern, and Rice attepts to twist the question of giving
terrorism "top priority" to taking terrorism "seriously," which are
two different things. Then Bush is quoted as saying terrorism was not
"urgent." Rice ignores this documented quote and goes on to disagree
with Bush. As such, she is attempting to mislead by changing the terms
from "top priority" to "seriously," and to simply ignore the evidence
presented that Bush disagrees with her. As such, she is on auto-pilot
as she lies, spinning the implicit scenario she wants Bradley to
accept.

Finally, Bradley repeatedly gave Rice the program's forum to apologize
for 9/11 to the millions of viewers watching the show, like Clarke did
on the show last week and previously to that under oath in front of
the 9/11 Panel, but she refused each time. (transcript)

--Jerry Politex, 03.29.04

Why The Public Believes Bush's Lies

"When interviewed by Tim Russert, Vice President Cheney asserted that
Iraq was "the heart of the base" for the 9/11 terrorists and went on
from there with a series of half-truths and outright deceptions about
almost every topic broached, including his supposed lack of current
"financial interest in Halliburton ." Mr. Cheney, a master of the
above-reproach dead pan, just kept going, effortlessly mowing right
through any objections by the host. The vice president was banking, as
Dr. Dean did on "This Week," on a cultural environment in which
fiction and nonfiction have become so scrambled  and can be so easily
manipulated by politicians and show-biz impresarios alike  that
credibility itself has become a devalued, if not archaic, news value.
This is why the big national mystery of the moment  why do almost 70
percent of Americans believe in Mr. Cheney's fictional insinuation
that Saddam Hussein had some hand in 9/11?  is not so hard to crack.
As low as the administration's credibility may be, it is still trusted
more than the media trying to correct the fictions the White House
plants in the national consciousness." --Frank Rich, NMYT, 09.28.03

Listening To Bush Lies Since 1998

Bush lies So often and in so many different ways that I've never had
the patience to keep a list of them. However, when I write something
and include the generalization that Bush lies, some readers will write
in and say, "Oh, yeh? What did he lie about? I don't believe it." What
follows, then, is an informal listing of just some of the lies he
typically tells, starting from 2/01. Now, of course, we all know that
Gore lies, Lott lies, Cheney lies, etc. But the difference between
those liars and Bush is the Resident tells us that he is telling the
truth when he is lying. Hence, he will tell us what he is going to do,
like get his proposed tax cut from the surplus, then try to get his
proposed tax cut from military and medicare funds, instead. Or, once
he has actually begun a program, tell us lies about how or why the
program has begun. Or tell a closed-door Dem meeting something and
then swear up and down the next day that he didn't say it. Or saying,
"Yes, Mam" and meaning "No, Mam." Or having a spinner say the opposite
the next day. Or, or...you get the idea.

Some Bush backers claim he's not a liar, he's just not very bright and
doesn't remember things very well. That may be true, but we're sure
Bush would not allow such an excuse in his "responsibility era." We're
sure Bush would agree that if he's that dumb, he shouldn't be
President. Other Bush backers claim that some of his lies are
"technically correct" or "tailored to fit the audience," or some such
circumlocution. What they're talking about are lies of omission rather
than lies of commission. In lies of omission it's what they imply, not
what they say. For example, the other evening Bush told Congress and
the American people that he was putting a "lock box" on Social
Security. Now, it's very clear that Bush wanted us to feel secure in
the belief that he was protecting all of our Social Security funds for
the future. No question, right? Yet, the very next day when his budget
book was released, we learned that Bush told a lie of omission. What
he didn't tell Congress and the American people is that he would later
take from $.6 to $1 trillion out of that "lock box" to cover his tax
cuts. No doubt, Bush lied. He wanted folks to believe something that
he knew was not true. Of course, politicians do this all the time.
It's second nature. In sum, the thing that really bothers us about
Bush's lies is that he is also a hypocrite and pretends he's above
lying. As a liar, he reinforces our assumptions about politicians. As
a hypocrite, he reinforces our assumptions about his character. --
Politex

BUSH IS A LIAR, SAY....

Milbank... Krugman... Cohen... Politex... Mac Arthur... Jensen...
Begala... Brauchli ... Nyhan ... Alterman ...

SATURDAY SNEAK...BUSH LIES...Trailers Of Mass Destruction, Part
Two..."You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in
front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs
to build biological weapons....They're illegal. They're against the
United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And
we'll find more weapons as time goes on, But for those who say we
haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons,
they're wrong. We found them." (italics ours) --WP, "Bush: 'We Found'
Banned Weapons. President Cites Trailers in Iraq as Proof, " May 31,
2003

At the time of this statement, no such weapons were found, and no
such weapons have been found to this day. On this point as well as the
use of the captured trailers as biolabs, the WP said this in the above
article: "U.S. authorities have to date made no claim of a confirmed
finding of an actual nuclear, biological or chemical weapon. In the
interview, Bush said weapons had been found, but in elaborating, he
mentioned only the trailers, which the CIA has concluded were likely
used for production of biological weapons." There was no statement of
fact, there was no smoking gun. The CIA's finding was advanced as an
opinion based on its own particular process of elimination, and it was
immediately challenged by both U.S. and U.K. intelligence analysts who
had seen the trailers. --Politex, 08.09.03 (italics ours)

Now comes this..."Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence
Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two
mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather
balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials
say.

The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts
differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May
28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that
the trailers were ["likely used"] for making biological weapons....

The State Department's intelligence branch, which was not invited to
take part in the initial review, disputed the findings in a memorandum
on June 2. The fact that American and British intelligence analysts
with direct access to the evidence were disputing the claims included
in the C.I.A. white paper was first reported in June, along with the
analysts' concern that the evaluation of the mobile units had been
marred by a rush to judgment." --NYT, 08.09.03

"I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said
that Iraq had nuclear weapons."
?Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at a hearing of the Senate's
appropriations subcommittee on defense, May 14, 2003

"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
?Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC's Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

Used, abused, and lacking credibility with the White House press corps
and the public, Ari Fleischer calls it quits as the 2004 presidential
campaign begins.

End Of The Road (story)

For Bush Liar (lies)

Fleischer's "ability to repeat a lie even after it's been shown,
repeatedly, to be false is what separates him from the amateurs." --
Timothy Noah, Slate

"Like any skilled craftsman, Fleischer has a variety of techniques at
his disposal. The first is the one he used to such great effect at
Ways and Means: He cuts off the question with a blunt, factual
assertion. Sometimes the assertion is an outright lie; sometimes it's
on the edge. But in either case the intent is to deceive--to define a
legitimate question as based on false premises and, therefore,
illegitimate. Fleischer does this so well, in part because of his
breathtaking audacity: Rather than tell a little fib--i.e., attacking
the facts most open to interpretation in a reporter's query--he often
tells a big one, challenging the question in a way the reporter could
not possibly anticipate. Then there's his delivery: Fleischer radiates
boundless certainty, recounting even his wildest fibs in the matter-of-
fact, slightly patronizing tone you would use to explain, say, the
changing of the seasons to a child. He neither under-emotes (which
would appear robotic) nor overemotes (which would appear defensive)
but seems at all times so natural that one wonders if somehow he has
convinced himself of his own untruths." --Jonathan Chait, New Republic

Burned Out... Evasive Bore... Whopper Walloper... Robo-Spinner...
toons

BUSH LIES...Trailers Of Mass Destruction..."You remember when
[Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and
he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological
weapons....They're illegal. They're against the United Nations
resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more
weapons as time goes on, But for those who say we haven't found the
banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We
found them." (italics ours) --WP, May 31, 2003
more lies

At the time of this statement, the U.S. position was that some
analysts thought that the trailers could possibly have been used for
menufacturing weapons. --Politex, 06.09.03

"The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that the
units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill
artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by
Britain in 1987." --Sunday Observer, June 8, 2003

"No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents
were, where they were stored," Rice told on NBC's "Meet the Press." --
Sunday, June 8, 2003, AP

"Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary...told ABC's This Week that
banned weapons were not in areas controlled by allied forces. 'We know
where they are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and
east, west, south and north of that,' he said." --Guardian, March 31,
2003

Bush Stands Out In An Era Of Liars

"President Bush proclaimed that a report by leading economists
concluded that the economy would grow by 3.3 percent in 2003 if his
tax cut proposals were adopted. No such report exists." Gordan
Livingston, 06.03.03

On April 26, President Bush said in his weekly radio address, "My jobs
and growth plan would reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income
tax."

That turned out not to be true. According to the nonprofit Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities, an unspecified number of low- and middle-
income families received no tax cut at all because they'd been
excluded from an expansion of the child-care tax. --Timothy Noah,
06.03.03

As always, the purpose of propaganda is to distract the public from
the facts, which means denying that oil has anything to do with our
intentions in Iraq. The administration has hammered away at this, with
designated dove Colin Powell declaiming, "The oil of Iraq belongs to
the people of Iraq." Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's undersecretary of
defense, said on Fox News on February 25, "This is not a war about
oil. This is going to?if we have to use force, it's going to be to
liberate Iraq, not to occupy Iraq. The oil resources belong to the
Iraqi people." Rumsfeld himself is quoted as saying, "An Iraq war has
absolutely nothing to do with oil." And on Meet the Press on February
23, Perle, in a retort to presidential aspirant Dennis Kucinich, said,
"Allow me to say: I find the accusation that this administration has
embarked upon this policy for oil to be an outrageous, scurrilous
charge for which, when you asked for the evidence, you will note there
was none. There was simply the suggestion that, because there is oil
in the ground and some administration officials have had connections
with the oil industry in the past, therefore it is the policy of the
United States to take control of Iraqi oil. It is a lie, congressman.
It's an out-and-out lie."

Four years ago Perle was singing a different tune. On January 26,
1998, Perle, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, along with several others,
signed a letter to President Clinton that said, "It hardly needs to be
added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of
mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along
the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of
our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a
significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at
hazard." --Ridgeway, 03.06.03

ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS INDICATE BUSH IS LYING ABOUT HIS WAR
DECISION. "President Bush has continued to say he has not yet decided
whether to go to war. [Today Bush said, "If we go to war..."] But the
message being conveyed in high-level contacts with other council
governments is that a military attack on Iraq is inevitable, these
officials and diplomats said. What they must determine, U.S. officials
are telling these governments, is if their insistence that U.N.
weapons inspections be given more time is worth the destruction of
council credibility at a time of serious world upheaval....In meetings
yesterday with senior officials in Moscow, Undersecretary of State
John R. Bolton told the Russian government that "we're going ahead,"
whether the council agrees or not, a senior administration official
said...."You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or
not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. 'That decision is
ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only
question now is whether the council will go along with it or not.'" --
WP, 02.25.03

Bush Buys Votes Of Weaker Nations

Some critics say Bush's zeal for running Iraq and transforming it into
a democracy sounds just like the nation-building efforts he campaigned
against. On Oct. 11, 2000, then-Texas Gov. Bush said: "I think what we
need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to
build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're
going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely
not." But yesterday White House press secretary Ari Fleischer proved
the critics wrong once again. "During the campaign, the president did
not express, as you put it, disdain for nation-building," he said. So
there you have it." --Kamen, 02.28.03

DEMS HAVE DECIDED TO FOCUS ON BUSH'S LIES "After months of searching
for a unified political attack against President Bush, congressional
Democrats have settled on a new and, some say, controversial strategy:
questioning the president's truthfulness.On an almost daily basis now,
congressional Democrats are warning of a "credibility gap" between
what Bush says to the American people and what he does through new
government policies....Last week, with most members away for the
Presidents' Day recess, Democratic leaders circulated "Caught on Film:
a photo history of the Bush credibility gap," highlighting "various
examples of the Administration making promises at various photo-ops
and then slashing funding for the very priorities it stressed." It
covered everything from education to programs for the poor." 2.24.03
www.bushwatch.com
wp |related stories

LATEST BUSH LIE: HE CITES REPORT THAT DOESN'T EXIST "There was only
one problem with President George W. Bush's claim Thursday that the
nation's top economists forecast substantial economic growth if
Congress passed the president's tax cut: The forecast with that
conclusion doesn't exist.Bush and White House Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer went out of their way Thursday to cite a new survey by "Blue-
Chip economists" that the economy would grow 3.3 percent this year if
the president's tax cut proposal becomes law. That was news to the
editor who assembles the economic forecast. "I don't know what he was
citing," said Randell E. Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip
Economic Forecast, a newsletter that surveys 53 of the nation's top
economists each month. "I was a little upset," said Moore, who said he
complained to the White House. 'It sounded like the Blue Chip Economic
Forecast had endorsed the president's plan. That's simply not the
case.'" 2.24.03 www.bushwatch.com
newsday |related stories

BUSH LIED ABOUT THE AIDS FUNDING HIS ADMINISTRATION IS PROVIDING, AS
WELL AS ITS TIMING "Mr. Bush's other foreign aid initiative, announced
in his State of the Union address, is $10 billion in new money to
fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over five years. But his budget
falls short of that promise. He is proposing only a $550 million
increase over the global AIDS money in this year's spending bill now
in Congress. Since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria would be an effective channel for the aid, there is no excuse
for the initiative's leisurely start. Mr. Bush's 2004 budget for the
Global Fund, $200 million, actually cuts in half what Congress is
likely to do in 2003. Mr. Bush has also found part of the money for
his AIDS programs by cutting nearly $500 million from child health,
including vaccine programs. Child survival is the biggest loser in the
foreign aid budget ? a scandalous way to finance AIDS initiatives.
With the budget dominated by defense spending and huge tax cuts for
the wealthy, the White House should not be forcing the babies of
Africa to pay for their parents' AIDS drugs." 2.17.03
nyt |related stories

"45 percent of all of the dividend income goes to people with $50,000-
or-less incomes, family incomes. Nearly three-quarters of it goes to
families with $100,000 or less family income."

?White House senior adviser Karl Rove, discussing the Bush tax
proposal in a meeting with reporters, as reported by Dana Milbank in
the Jan. 28 Washington Post.

"Not exactly. It is true that 43.8 percent of tax returns with
dividend income are from households with less than $50,000 in income
and 73.8 percent of such returns are from households with less than
$100,000. But that doesn't mean the little guy earning less than
$50,000 gets '45 percent of all the income' or that the Main Street
earners below $100,000 get 'three-quarters' of dividend income.

"In fact, those earning less than $50,000 get 14.7 percent of dividend
income, and those earning less than $100,000 get 32.7 percent,
according to a Brookings Institution/Urban Institute analysis. The
former would get 6.8 percent of the benefit of Bush's dividend plan,
while the latter would get 20.9 percent."

?Milbank, in the Jan. 28 Washington Post.

WHITE HOUSE CONTINUES BUDGET DOUBLESPEAK "The budget differs from
those of other recent presidents in two important ways. Nowhere does
Mr. Bush make balancing the budget an important goal. And he makes no
claim that the era of big government is over, or even nearing an end.
"This is a president of big projects and big ideas," his budget
director, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., said today....Paying no heed to the
notion of a balanced budget, Mr. Bush advocates deep tax cuts on top
of the large ones enacted two years ago. By contrast, when big
deficits began to appear after President Ronald Reagan drove tax cuts
through Congress in 1981, Mr. Reagan approved offsetting tax
increases....Mr. Daniels said this morning, "A balanced federal budget
remains a high priority for this president." But unlike the
submissions of recent predecessors, this budget describes no plans to
reach that goal. " 02.04.03
rosenbaum | related stories

Blix again denied an allegation by Secretary of State Colin Powell
that inspectors knew of cases in which Iraq had moved banned items
around before inspectors arrived on the scene. "I am sure that Colin
Powell speaks on the basis of notes given to him, but this is not
correct. Our inspectors have not seen that the Iraqis were moving
anything away from the sites that we are visiting," he said. --
Reuters.

"Asked about legislation introduced to re-institute the draft on the
eve of war, Rumsfeld was emphatic: 'We're not going to re-implement
the draft. There is no need for it at all. ... We have people serving
today -- God bless 'em -- because they volunteered. They want to be
doing what it is they're doing.' Sounds good, except that it is not
true. Two days after these unequivocal words, the United States Marine
Corps -- which reports to the secretary of defense -- froze for the
next 12 months every one of its 174,312 members currently on active
duty. Marines who had completed their voluntary enlistments or their
20 years and had chosen to return to civilian life or retirement will
instead remain, involuntarily, in the service. Marines being Marines,
they will answer their country's call. But let us be clear: This
action, along with other more limited freezes affecting other
thousands in uniform imposed by the other services, means the
volunteer U.S. military is no longer all-volunteer." --Mark Shields,
01.19.03

Bush's Family Of Four Has Little To Do With His Tax Cut Plan
"How does he do it? Every day Ari Fleischer takes the stand--so to
speak--but, luckily for him, it's not under oath. That is, he provides
a briefing in the White House press room and emits--oh, how to say it
politely?--the most creative statements in defense of his boss's
policies. A plainspoken fella--someone like our tax-cutter-in-chief--
might feel compelled to brand a deceptive answer a "lie." But in the
case of Fleischer v. Truth , I'm going to let you be the
jury....Fleischer has not been the only dissembler. In his speech
unveiling his tax plan, Bush sold his package by noting that a family
of four making $40,000 would see its taxes in 2003 fall a whopping 96
percent from $1,178 to $45--mostly due to the expansion of the child
credit. (Funny, Bush didn't tell us how much a single-parent HMO CEO
would save.) As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes,
Bush's example could come true. But it adds, "the tax cuts that would
benefit this family constitute less than one-quarter of the overall
cost of the bill." In other words, you could dump three-quarters of
his package and still assist middle-income families. To suggest this
package overall is of direct assistance to middle- and lower-income
individuals is dishonest. Only pieces of it--the smaller pieces--do
that. Like press secretary, like president. The Bush tax cut is
literally class warfare by numbers." --David Corn, 01.14.03

Bush's War Against Women Began With A Campaign Lie
"Running for the White House in the fall of 2000, George W. Bush did
not talk about ending the right to abortion. To avoid scaring off
moderate voters, he promoted a larger "reverence for life" agenda that
also included adoption and tougher drunken driving laws. Voters were
encouraged to believe that while Mr. Bush was anti-choice, he was not
out to reverse Roe v. Wade. Yet two years into the Bush presidency, it
is apparent that reversing or otherwise eviscerating the Supreme
Court's momentous 1973 ruling that recognized a woman's fundamental
right to make her own childbearing decisions is indeed Mr. Bush's
mission. The lengthening string of anti-choice executive orders,
regulations, legal briefs, legislative maneuvers and key appointments
emanating from his administration suggests that undermining the
reproductive freedom essential to women's health, privacy and equality
is a major preoccupation of his administration ? second only, perhaps,
to the war on terrorism." --NYT Editorial, 01.12.03

"Bush opened his final radio address of the year this way: "In 2002,
our economy was still recovering from the attacks of September the
11th, 2001, and it was pulling out of a recession that began before I
took office." Bush concluded 2002 with the same dishonesty that
defined his economic policy throughout the year?a mendacity that
ranged from denying the tax cut had anything to do with the re-
emergence of the deficit to arguing that the terrorism insurance bill
would create 300,000 construction jobs. In fact, there is no evidence
that the economy was in recession when President Bush took the oath of
office on Jan. 20, 2001....

"[To define a recession,] economists rely on the...measurements of the
National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of
recessions and expansions.NBER has been run since 1977 by Harvard
economist Martin Feldstein, an architect of the Bush tax cut and an
intellectual mentor to many prominent Republican policy-makers,
including Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the White House Council of
Economic Advisers. According to NBER's definition, the recession did
not begin until after President Clinton left office....According to
NBER, the economy peaked and started shrinking in March 2001, two
months after the Bush presidency began. "The determination of a peak
date in March is thus a determination that the expansion that began in
March 1991 ended in March 2001 and a recession began in March." So
according to NBER, the most recent recession did not start during the
Clinton administration. (Nor did the expansion begin under Clinton;
rather, it launched during President Bush the Father's term.)

"The current President Bush is probably not conversant with NBER's
"recession dating procedures." But it's a sure thing his economic and
political advisers are. So shame on them for feeding him dishonest
lines." --Daniel Gross

41 Lies About Iraq And 43 Matches It

A horrible story spread widely by the first Bush administration prior
to the Gulf War about Kuwaiti babies pulled from incubators by
invading Iraqis turned out not to be true. The current Bush
administration may be also misinforming the public in its efforts to
justify a possible second war with Saddam Hussein.

One example of misinformation, according to physicist and former
weapons inspector David Albright, was the Bush administration?s leak
to the media in September about Iraq?s attempt to import aluminum
tubes which administration officials claimed were headed for Iraq?s
nuclear program.

?I think it was very misleading,? says Albright, who directs the
Institute for Science and International Security. Albright says the
tubes could be possibly used for a nuclear program, but were more
suited to conventional weapons production. Government experts thought
that too, Albright tells Simon, but administration officials ?were
selectively picking information to bolster a case that the Iraqi
nuclear threat was more imminent than it is, and, in essence, scare
people." --60 Minutes, 12.06.02

Bush Lies And Fox Swears To It

"Toward the bottom of last Friday's Washington Post story on the
Woodward book by Mike Allen, the reader learns that Bush was
"preoccupied by public perceptions of the war, looking at polling data
from Rove, now his senior adviser, even after pretending to have no
interest." How remarkable to be told so bluntly about this Bush
obsession -- after hearing so many blabbermouths on cable TV and in
opinion columns insist that this president, unlike his predecessor,
"doesn't care about polls." The difference between Clinton and Bush
isn't that one doesn't care about polls and the other did. The
difference is that Clinton never pretended that polling data wasn't
part of his political work, and didn't expect anyone on his staff to
lie about such trivia. [And didn't lie about it on the campaign trail,
as Bush did. --Politex] (This matrix of deception is likewise exposed
in Woodward's scoop about the back-channel advice on public opinion
provided to the White House by Fox News chief Roger Ailes. An old Bush
family employee, Ailes runs a network that frequently promotes the
false but uplifting notion that Bush has no interest in polls.)" --Joe
Conason, 11.18.02

Bush's Trifecta Of Lies

President Bush, speaking to the nation this month about the need to
challenge Saddam Hussein, warned that Iraq has a growing fleet of
unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the
United States."

Last month, asked if there were new and conclusive evidence of
Hussein's nuclear weapons capabilities, Bush cited a report by the
International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Iraqis were "six months
away from developing a weapon." And last week, the president said
objections by a labor union to having customs officials wear radiation
detectors has the potential to delay the policy "for a long period of
time."

All three assertions were powerful arguments for the actions Bush
sought. And all three statements were dubious, if not wrong. Further
information revealed that the aircraft lack the range to reach the
United States; there was no such report by the IAEA; and the customs
dispute over the detectors was resolved long ago. --10.22.02,
Washington Post

Jeb Bush Is A Liar, Too

Jeb Bush's "office also released hundreds of letters and e-mails to
and from Bush that also highlight the division over the
nomination....New DCF Secretary Jerry Regier once wrote a string of
articles that provide a blueprint for turning religious values into
public policy, suggest that households headed by women may produce
homosexual children and complain that taxpayer-supported day-care
centers could put religious day care out of business....A spokesman
said the office received 2,999 e-mails, with about two-thirds in favor
of Regier.

"The e-mails also show Regier and the governor were discussing his
salary and his appointment even before Kearney was fired, something
the governor has flatly denied." --South Florida Sun-Sentinal, Sept.
7, 2002

"You Don't Introduce New Products In August"

An agitated Vice President Cheney, in a t?te-?-t?te with NBC's Tim
Russert on Sunday, said it was "reprehensible" that people would think
the administration had "saved" its ammunition on Iraq to bring it out
now, 60 days before an election. "So the suggestion that somehow, you
know, we husbanded this and we waited is just not true," Cheney said.
Now where would people get such a ****amamie idea? Well, maybe from
White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and Bush political
adviser Karl Rove, who made the case to the New York Times's Elisabeth
Bumiller last week that they pretty much did what Cheney said they
didn't do -- waited patiently and deliberately to launch a long-
planned rollout. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce
new products in August," Card said. Added Rove: "The thought was that
in August the president is sort of on vacation." --WP, Sept. 10, 2002

Scowcroft Says Bush Incubator Untruth, Repeated Five Times, "Was
Useful In Mobilizing Public Opinion" For First Iraq War

In the fall of 1990, members of Congress and the American public were
swayed by the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known
only as Nayirah.

In the girl's testimony before a congressional caucus, well-documented
in MacArthur's book "Second Front" and elsewhere, she described how,
as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops
storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies "on the
cold floor to die."

Seven US Senators later referred to the story during debate; the
motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah
spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying
that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler revisited."

But just weeks before the US bombing campaign began in January, a few
press reports began to raise questions about the validity of the
incubator tale.

Later, it was learned that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the
Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwait
hospital.

She had been coached ? along with the handful of others who would
"corroborate" the story ? by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in
Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the time, which had a
contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the
case for war.

"We didn't know it wasn't true at the time," Brent Scowcroft, Bush's
national security adviser, said of the incubator story in a 1995
interview with the London-based Guardian newspaper. He acknowledged
"it was useful in mobilizing public opinion." --CSM, Sept. 6, 2002

Cheney Lied About Iraq Photos

? When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf ?
to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait ? part of the
administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening
to roll into Saudi Arabia.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in
mid?September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on
the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial
Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no
Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border ? just empty desert.

"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist
who broke the story.

The White House is now making its case. to Congress and the public for
another invasion of Iraq; President George W. Bush is expected to
present specific evidence of the threat posed by Iraq during a speech
to the United Nations next week.

But past cases of bad intelligence or outright disinformation used to
justify war are making experts wary. The questions they are raising,
some based on examples from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, highlight the
importance of accurate information when a democracy considers military
action....

That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending
troops in there, and it just didn't exist," says Heller. Three times
Heller contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (now
vice president) for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis ?
offering to hold the story if proven wrong. The official response:
"Trust us." To this day, the Pentagon's photographs of the Iraqi troop
buildup remain classified....

"My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that
you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven
by the intelligence," says former US Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) of Indiana,
a 34-year veteran lawmaker until 1999, who served on numerous foreign
affairs and intelligence committees, and is now director of the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. The
Bush team "understands it has not yet carried the burden of persuasion
[about an imminent Iraqi threat], so they will look for any kind of
evidence to support their premise," Mr. Hamilton says. "I think we
have to be skeptical about it." --CSM, Sept. 6, 2002

How a Bush appointee Manipulated Farm Subsidies.

"Responding to a series of corporate scandals last month, President
Bush castigated businessmen who practice moral "relativism" and "cut
ethical corners." "Our leaders of business must set high and clear
expectations of conduct," he said. But this month, Bush appointed to a
top post in his Agriculture Department a confessed corner-cutter: a
businessman who has admitted to pushing the limits of the law to boost
his farm subsidies. Bush used his power of recess appointment to make
Tom Dorr undersecretary of agriculture for rural development on Aug.
6, while Congress was out of town. He made the appointment in this
unorthodox way because the Senate Agriculture Committee, with nine of
10 Republicans choosing not to vote, had already declined to approve
Dorr's nomination....Bush's hypocrisy about high ethical standards is
only half the story. The other half is his administration's hypocrisy
about farm subsidies." --SLATE, Sept. 2, 2002

Last week, {Bush's} Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill stood before a
packed audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to address the
continuing scandals of corporate irresponsibility, banking on his own
history as chief executive of Alcoa Inc.

"When I was at Alcoa I never sold a single share of Alcoa stock," he
said, repeating a claim he had made on CBS's "Early Show" the day
before. "I wanted my financial success and the company's success
inextricably linked. Other executives should do the same."

But O'Neill did sell Alcoa stock, 662,547 shares in April 1999 worth
nearly $30 million, when he was the company's chairman and chief
executive....

"He didn't sell a share. He sold a lot of shares," said Marc
Steinberg, a law professor at Southern Methodist University and a
former SEC enforcement lawyer. --Washington Post, July 18, 2002.

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Bush Lied About Harken Stock Sale Knowledge

Asked later if his [Harken] stock sale had been related to the
company's impending setback, {Board member] Bush replied, "I
absolutely had no idea and would not have sold it had I known."

In fact, SEC records show that Harken's president had warned board
members two months before Bush's sell-off that the company had
liquidity problems that would "drastically affect" operations. --SF
Chronicle, 07.05.02

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BUSH TRIFECTA QUOTE CAVEATS FOUND...

"'Barring an economic reversal, a national emergency, or a foreign
crisis, we should balance the budget this year, next year, and every
year.' [the presidential candidate] said that to the Economic Club of
Detroit in May 1998, then repeated it at least twice more, in speeches
in June and November of that year."

BUT BUSH LIED ABOUT WHO SAID THEM

"In this space last week, it was noted that President Bush often tells
audiences that he promised during the 2000 presidential campaign that
he would allow the federal budget to go into deficit in times of war,
recession or national emergency, but he never imagined he would "have
a trifecta." Nobody inside or outside the White House, however, had
been able to produce evidence that Bush actually said this during the
campaign.... Now comes information that the three caveats were uttered
before the 2000 campaign -- by Bush's Democratic opponent, Vice
President Al Gore." --Wash. Post, 7/2/02

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BUSH'S TRIFECTA OF LIES: "It takes a brazen politician to make up a
story that can be proven false and then to keep lying about it after
being busted repeatedly. A case in point is President Bush's
repetition last week of a story about a fictitious Chicago campaign
statement, just days after his budget director was called on it by
"Meet the Press" host Tim Russert....Bush's claim that he listed three
exceptions under which he would run deficits during a 2000 Chicago
campaign stop -- war, national emergency or recession -- is blatantly
false" --Brendan Nyhan, 06.18.02

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Washington Post Buys Into Bush Ohio State Lies

COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 14...The president who spoke here today was not
the same president who spoke in New Haven a year ago. Bush aide John
Bridgeland told reporters this morning [Friday] that the president's
speech, serious and grave, was inspired by the writings of Alexis de
Tocqueville, Adam Smith, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, William
Wordsworth, Pope John Paul II, Aristotle, Benjamin Rush, Thomas
Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Cicero -- although
the president mentioned none of them by name. The former C student,
Bridgeland said, "actually discussed Nicomachean ethics" in the Oval
Office, not to mention the Patrick Henry-James Madison debate. --Dana
Milbank, Wash. Post



COLUMBUS, Ohio...A senior administration official told reporters
[Friday] that Bush "derived" his speech in part from the teachings of
a wide range of philosophers, from Aristotle and Adam Smith to de
Tocqueville and Pope John Paul II.

Asked if Bush had ever read any of their works, the official said:
"We've fully discussed all these ... issues." --Adam Entous, Reuters,
06.14.02



Politex: Bush Discusses Nicomachean Ethics In The Oval Office

Bush: I don't care if our budget deficit will be $100 billion this
year, I promised my millionaire buddies big tax cuts, and they're
gonna get 'em.

Bridgeland: Money can't buy happiness, sir.

Bush: Ya got that right!

"Having determined that happiness is the goal of life, Aristotle then
concerns himself with the activities in which humans engage in order
to obtain happiness." --from a summary of "Nicomachean Ethics"

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White House Admits Bush Lied "When Bush was asked about [the
Environmental Protection Agency's report] last week, he dismissively
remarked: 'I read the report put out by the bureaucracy.' ...White
House press secretary Ari Fleischer fessed up: President Bush didn't
actually read that 268-page Environmental Protection Agency report on
climate change, even if he said he did. Fleischer was asked Monday at
his daily White House briefing about Bush's comments that he'd read
the report. "Whenever presidents say they read it, you can read that
to be he was briefed," Fleischer said, producing laughter. --AP, June
10, 2002

REACTIONS

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Ari Fleischer Lies For Bush

Like any skilled craftsman, Fleischer has a variety of techniques at
his disposal. The first is the one he used to such great effect at
Ways and Means: He cuts off the question with a blunt, factual
assertion. Sometimes the assertion is an outright lie; sometimes it's
on the edge. But in either case the intent is to deceive--to define a
legitimate question as based on false premises and, therefore,
illegitimate. Fleischer does this so well, in part because of his
breathtaking audacity: Rather than tell a little fib--i.e., attacking
the facts most open to interpretation in a reporter's query--he often
tells a big one, challenging the question in a way the reporter could
not possibly anticipate. Then there's his delivery: Fleischer radiates
boundless certainty, recounting even his wildest fibs in the matter-of-
fact, slightly patronizing tone you would use to explain, say, the
changing of the seasons to a child. He neither under-emotes (which
would appear robotic) nor overemotes (which would appear defensive)
but seems at all times so natural that one wonders if somehow he has
convinced himself of his own untruths.

One month ago, for example, a reporter cited the administration's
recent plan to build an education, health, and welfare infrastructure
in Afghanistan and asked Fleischer when George W. Bush--who during the
campaign repeatedly bad-mouthed nation-building--had come around to
the idea. A lesser flack would have given the obvious, spun response:
The Bush administration's policies in Afghanistan don't constitute
nation-building for reasons X, Y, and Z. The reporter might have
expected that reply and prepared a follow-up accordingly. But
Fleischer went the other way, bluntly asserting that Bush had never
derided nation-building to begin with. "The president has always been
for those," Fleischer said. The questioner, likely caught off guard,
repeated, "He's always been for..." when Fleischer interjected, "Do
you have any evidence to the contrary?" In fact, Bush had denounced
nation-building just as unambiguously as Archer had endorsed the
national sales tax. "I don't think our troops ought to be used for
what's called nation-building," said candidate Bush in the second
presidential debate, to take one of many examples. The offending
reporter, of course, didn't have any of these quotes handy at the
press conference, and so Fleischer managed to extinguish the nation-
building queries.

To take another example, after the coup in Venezuela last month,
Fleischer announced that "it happened in a very quick fashion as a
result of the message of the Venezuelan people." But once the coup was
reversed, the administration's seeming support proved embarrassing. So
at the next press conference, a reporter asked Fleischer, "Last
Friday, you said that it--the seizure of power illegitimately in
Venezuela--`happened in a very quick fashion as a result of the
message of the Venezuelan people'; that the seizure of power,
extraconstitutionally, that is, dissolution of the congress and the
supreme court happened as a result of the message of the Venezuelan
people."

Fleischer could have acknowledged the underlying fact--that the Bush
administration initially endorsed the coup--but then expressed regret
at its anti-democratic turn, a turn that the United States presumably
opposed and perhaps even tried to prevent. Instead, he replied, "No,
that's not what I said." And indeed, it wasn't exactly what he said--
after quoting Fleischer verbatim reacting to the coup, the reporter
went on to describe some of the things that happened after the coup.
And that gave Fleischer his opening: "The dissolution that you just
referred to did not take place until later Friday afternoon," he
noted. "It could not possibly be addressed in my briefing because it
hadn't taken place yet." By focusing on the latter, subordinate part
of the reporter's question, Fleischer negated the verbatim quote of
his earlier remarks--and thus neatly cut off discussion of the
administration's early reaction to news of the coup.

The problem with this tactic is that it's always possible to get
caught in an outright lie. Speaking to reporters on the morning of
February 28, for instance, Fleischer said of Middle East peace
negotiations under Clinton: "As a result of an attempt to push the
parties beyond where they were willing to go, that led to expectations
that were raised to such a high level that it turned to violence." The
story went out that the administration blamed Middle East violence on
its predecessor's peacemaking. That afternoon, Fleischer insisted he
had said no such thing. "That's a mischaracterization of what I said,"
he protested. But Fleischer's earlier statement was too fresh in the
press corps's mind to simply deny, and the press continued to hound
him. Later in the day he was forced to issue a statement of regret.

What this episode illustrates is that stating unambiguous falsehoods
carries certain risks--and no press secretary can afford to have his
factual accuracy repeatedly challenged by the press. So while
Fleischer may employ this tactic more frequently than most press
secretaries, it is still relatively rare--the p.r. equivalent of a
trick play in football: While spectacular to behold and often
successful, more frequent usage would dilute its effectiveness and
risk disaster.

The greater feat is to put yourself in a position where you don't have
to lie. This can be accomplished in lots of ways--spinning is the
preferred approach for most flacks, but that isn't Fleischer's style;
candor, obviously, is out of the question. Fleischer's method of
choice is question-avoidance. After all, you can't be accused of
answering a question untruthfully if you haven't answered it at all. --
Jonathan Chait. 06.04.02 (More)
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