On This Date in Bush History 12/10: Competence Punished

2001: President Bush says today, “I couldn’t imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.” Nor the 4th of July, one supposes.

2002: Today President Bush nominates William Donaldson to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), replacing the widely criticized Harvey Pitt. In the wake of the Enron and Worldcom scandals Mr. Donaldson would implement tough reforms, including a requirement that CEOs certify their financial reporting. Inaccurate reporting cost employees and investors huge amounts of money, as witnessed by the losses of Enron retirees, employees, and shareholders. Mr. Donaldson seemed the rarest of high-level Bush appointees; someone who was competent, qualified, and actually doing a good job. President Bush’s friends in the business world were not enthusiastic about Donaldson’s reforms; reforms designed to protect people who might otherwise be harmed by future Worldcom or Enron type corporate deceptions. As is usually the case when being given the choice of protecting the little guys (those who might be victimized by future Enron-like collapses), or the big guys (powerful, wealthy corporations) President Bush went with the big guys. It was good-bye to Mr. Donaldson and hello to new SEC head Christopher Cox (a man who, incredibly enough, was once a defendant in a lawsuit that alleged he misled investors; that suit was settled out of court).

2004: President Bush says today, “And so during these holiday seasons, we thank our blessings”.

On This Date in Bush History 12/9: Silenced Science

2001: The ever-delusional Dick Cheney says today, “It’s been pretty well confirmed that [9/11 highjacker Mohamed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service ... before the attack”. Most who looked into this came to believe it not to be true, but Cheney kept repeating this. After extensive investigation, the 9/11 commission said, “We do not believe that such a meeting occurred”. By June 20th 2004 even Mr. Cheney was admitting, sort of, that maybe what he had been saying for quite awhile now was false. Strangely, he chose to do this in his own unique, ever delusional way. In a CNBC interview Mr. Cheney is asked about Atta: “You have said in the past that it was, quote, ‘pretty well confirmed’ “. Mr. Cheney interrupts to say, “No, I never said that”. If that’s what you want to believe, Mr. VP.

2002: President Bush announces the nomination of John Snow for Treasury Secretary today, replacing Paul O’Neill. To help Snow push more tax cuts for the wealthy an analysis of unfunded future government obligations that had been ordered by O’Neill was removed from budget documents issued under new Treasurer Snow. Scott Burns of The Dallas Morning News said the removed data “shows the United States is broke”. Burns believes the analysis was deleted because the tax cut “sales job would be awkward if an official government document announced we were already $43 trillion in the hole”. Rather than be honest with the American people, giving them the hard facts of the nation’s obligations, the Bush administration removed those facts from the budget, thus advancing a more important goal: more tax cuts for the rich.

2006: The Union of Concerned Scientists announced today that 10,000 scientists have signed a petition calling on the Bush administration to cease muzzling of scientific findings that “are in conflict with the administration’s policies or with the views of its political supporters”.

On This Date in Bush History 12/8: A Soldier’s Plea

“Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.” Benjamin Franklin’s Thirteen Virtues

2004: To the cheers of his fellow troops, a soldier complained to President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, saying “Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass ... to put on our vehicles to take into combat”. Spc. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee National Guard added, “We do not have proper armored vehicles”.

While saying that work is being done to improve the situation, Mr. Rumsfeld added that “you go to war with the army you have”. The truth, of course, is that President Bush’s people picked the schedule for this fight. It didn’t have to happen until the Pentagon could provide U.S. troops with the protection they deserve.

“I think war is a dangerous place.” President Bush, May 7th 2003

Read more at the 2008 Calendar/Day Planner/Stocking Stuffer: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm

On This Date in Bush History 12/7: “foreign-handed foreign policy”

“I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy.” Presidential candidate Bush, speaking September 27th 2000 in Redwood, California

2005: In a speech dubbed “Ask Me No Questions, I’ll Tell You Some Lies” by Arianna Huffington, President Bush speaks before the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. While asking questions is a tradition at the Council, President Bush declined questions. In 2003 President Bush said “Today, in Iraq, there’s discussion, debate, protest, all the hallmarks of liberty”. Today, at the Council on Foreign Relations, given the opportunity to engage in discussion and debate, ‘the hallmarks of liberty’, the president declined.

2006: Republican Senator Gordon Smith (OR) said of the Iraq war today, “I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal”. Fortunately, after years of mismanagement that cost many lives, the situation showed signs of improvement in 2007.

2006: Seattle’s federal prosecutor, John McKay, was ordered to resign today by the Bush / Gonzales Justice Dept. Robert Lasnik, the chief federal judge for western Washington state said, “This is unanimous among the judges: John McKay was a superb U.S. attorney; for the Justice Department to suggest otherwise is just not fair”. McKay said no reason was given to him for his dismissal, though he had been told of administration dissatisfaction in his not using his position to go after Democrats aggressively enough in an election year.

Read more at the 2008 Calendar/Day Planner/Stocking Stuffer: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm

On This Date in Bush History 12/6: Gifts to the Rich

2002: Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill (and former Alcoa head) resigns today. A book on O’Neill by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, sheds light on today’s resignation. O’Neill was Suskind’s primary source.

In a ‘60 Minutes’ interview Suskind describes a White House meeting discussing yet another round of tax cuts for the wealthy. President Bush, surprisingly, expresses hesitancy. As Suskind describes it, Bush asks: “ ‘Haven’t we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut’s gonna do it again. Didn’t we already, why are we doing it again?’ After a bit Bush comes back to it again, saying ‘Well, shouldn’t we be giving money to the middle...’ “. Suskind continues: “Karl Rove is saying to the president, a kind of mantra. ‘Stick to principle. Stick to principle.’ He says it over and over again. Don’t waver”.

O’Neill’s opposition to more tax cuts for the wealthy gets him in trouble with the VP. Dick Cheney responded to O’Neill’s opposition by saying, “We won the mid-term elections, this is our due”. The tax cuts went through. When O’Neill said that he couldn’t support them in light of the soaring deficit and the expenses of a post-9/11 America, Cheney asked O’Neill to resign.

As for Mr. Cheney’s well-off friends, they got, yet again, what they consider to be their due. America’s kids will get the bill.

“Poverty wants some things; Luxury many things; Avarice all things.” Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1735

Read more at the 2008 Calendar/Day Planner/Stocking Stuffer: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm

On This Date in Bush History 12/5: Angering Allies

2005: Secretary of State Rice visits Europe today to “highlight ... U.S. efforts to partner with Europe”. Achieving such cooperation is not helped when Bush policies result in mistakes that put allies in difficult positions and undermine universal values. Such a stituation would crop up in this visit, resulting in German Chancellor Merkel extracting an acknowledgement of U.S. error from Rice.

The error was the CIA’s kidnapping of an innocent car salesman, a German citizen, on his way to vacation. Worse, when the U.S. realized, in March 2004, that they had an innocent man they kept him imprisoned anyway, delaying his release until late May while deciding how to handle things, according to NBC News. Former CIA counsel Jeffrey Smith told NBC: “It’s wrong morally, it’s wrong legally, and it violates the basic principles of the United States”.

Andrew Tyrie, working for the UK’s parliament said, “The U.S. cannot go around kidnapping people ... not expect there to be consequences”.

Bush actions such as this certainly don’t help promote Rice’s goal “to partner with Europe”. European police work has foiled numerous anti-U.S. terror plots and resulted in many legitimate arrests; the last thing America needs is to antagonize a very valuable partner in the war on terror.

“...transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” The Declaration of Independence, listing how King George has abused his powers in the Colonies, 1776

Also on this date, in 2002, a White House spokesperson says “The President [and Rumsfeld] ... would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it”. Read more at the 2008 Calendar/Day Planner/Stocking Stuffer: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm

“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

On This Date in Bush History 12/4: In Denial

2005: The world’s nations are together in Montreal today. A conference to discuss the problem of global warming is well under way. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University calls this time “the critical decade” for dealing with climate change, while there still is time to make a difference. “We do have a little time, but not much ... If we don’t get a serious program in place for the long term ... we will simply not make it and we will be crossing limits which will basically produce impacts that are unacceptable”, Oppenheimer says.

Given the importance of the topic, and the gathering of so many nations to discuss it, the Bush administration decides to send no one. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change is quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “Most people are ready to take the dialogue forward. The only place where that is not the case is the [Bush] administration”.

U.S. companies also send representatives to the gathering, despite President Bush’s apparent desire that everyone stick their heads in the sand and pretend that climate change is not happening. Dennis Canavan of Johnson & Johnson is quoted in the Washington Post, saying: “We feel climate change is very real”. Despite his company having grown by a factor of four since 1990, it has been able to cut its greenhouse emissions by 3.1 percent during this time. Johnson & Johnson: moving forward on dealing with climate change. The Bush administraiont: not so much.

“We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there’s not this kind of federal—federal cufflink.” George W. Bush, speaking about education, March 30th 2000

Also on this date, Laura Bush makes Christmas gift book recommendations ("Poor George’s Almanac” is not among them). Read more in the 2008 Calendar/Day Planner/Stocking Stuffer: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm