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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (174603)	8/27/2001 1:12:06 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

..."Republicans Are as Antigovernment as They Can Be James Hall - From the Left Sartre has clearly hoisted the Republicans on their own petard. The party of "less government" pushes programs that actually increase the federal government's control and involvement in a number of areas. Look at the Bush plan for HMO reform, which would destroy a number of better state regulatory laws already in place. Look at the Bush initiative in public education which insists that states adopt high-stakes testing without giving them the money to do it. Or examine his efforts to inject the federal government into private religious charities. Or his promise (as yet unfulfilled) to provide a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. If this is less government, then I'm a huge fan of Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms. Not! The Republican Party's ship of state plainly flies false colors. But as I've said before, it's largely because the American people are satisfied with the status quo. Since the 1960s, Republicans have butted heads with reality. It fought with the Democrats time after time on Social Security only to learn that most American voters want a social safety net. It opposed Head Start and CHIPS to help poor children succeed in school and get healthcare only to appear mean-spirited. It fought against affirmative action programs only to see them succeed in righting two centuries of wrongs imposed by slavery and segregation. It opposed immigration and tried to deny benefits to migrant laborers laboring in the American workforce for pennies. After making one boneheaded move after another, the Republicans in the Bush administration seem to have learned a few lessons. They now talk about supporting Social Security and boosting Medicare with a prescription drug plan. They argue before the Supreme Court in favor of affirmative action and against racial profiling. They support a national education policy, a national energy policy, even a national powergrid that can only be created by creating a national right of imminent domain, confiscating the necessary land from property owners. They propose efforts to support Mexican migrant workers and grant them work permits. The Bush Republicans would revamp our national defense as well. No Democrat would or could have made the steep cuts in the military proposed by President Bush's defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. More than a decade after the Cold War ended, Secretary Rumsfeld would finally take the military off of Cold War footing and start to dismantle obsolete Cold War weapons systems, creating a smaller, lighter, more responsive military. It's clear from all of these policies that the Republican Party is no longer the party of states' rights or smaller government. Republican legislators are linked into the Congressional gravy train and this Republican president lacks the ideological rigor to insist on the libertarian principles of individual liberty, local government, and smaller government. One can't blame this entirely on Bush. Ronald Reagan, when he was president, articulated these principles but actually grew the size of government during his tenor. If St. Ronald could do this, then why not his successors in the eastern establishment-linked Bush family? It should be clear to anyone with a libertarian bent that the Republicans are a poisoned well for their principles. Republicans, despite their rhetoric, have bought into Democratic ideas of big government and a social safety net. They are as antigovernment as they can be with today's electorate, which isn't very antigovernment at all. "http://quicksitebuilder.cnet.com/sartre/TWINS/id11.html

To: puborectalis who wrote (174603)	8/27/2001 2:10:34 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 769670

The US is the least socialist state in the world. Outside small islands and tax havens. The whole Reagan tax revolution is utter BS. We gave it a chance once and all it did was give us massive debts and BIGGER government and let the S+L thieves steal our money. Now GW and Cheney are trying to do it all over again with Big Energy instead of the S+Ls sticking it to us. Wake up, people. The experiment failed. And Clinton's 7.5 years of prosperity and surpluses shows fiscal conservatism, stability and balance works much better. Besides the very rich don't need the tax breaks, they're already sitting pretty. And they just got half of the one GW "gave us". Why anyone but rich misers votes for these people is beyond me. He does nothing good for America. Nothing. He's just a front for the Energy Cartel and a walking propaganda spin photo op machine. People are really stupid to believe one word of his dishonesty. Unless of course you're a bigshot in the energy or pollution business, then you gain.