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Bush
X-Files Primer There's seldom a presidential campaign where the hint of scandal is not in the air. Next year is no exception. But how often do these scandals actually affect the outcome of the election? In truth, not that often. Look at recent history: Iran-Contra had no affect on George Bush the Elder's 1988 victory; nor did the Whitewater mess hurt Clinton in 1992 or 1996. As for Watergate? The June 1972 Watergate break-in brought down Nixon — but that was in 1974 after he was elected. It wasn't a defining issue at all in the 1972 presidential race against McGovern. So how we manage our anger about what Bush knew (and when he knew it) on countless conspiracy theories is no small strategic matter. We need to pick our spots. Yes Virginia, they cheated in Florida. But will the soccer mom in suburban St. Louis we need to sway against Dubya care to discuss this historical fact next November? No way. Yes, they lied about the rationale for war in Iraq. But will this win us votes on the margin? Read on friends — the handy Bush X-Files primer is here to help focus your attention on the brewing scandals worth tracking — and the blind alleys we need to avoid.
CHAD II, THE SEQUEL? If you are not over Florida yet, I suggest you read Jeffrey Toobin's Too Close To Call. It will make you realize that Gore's chief strategist, Warren Christopher, was outmaneuvered, pure and simple, long before we reached the Supreme Court. If that doesn't help, work your anger out this way: Lobby for passage of HR 2239, which is designed to stop another national voting scandal before it starts. This X-file is happening right now: Faulty computer voting machines are being installed across the country, financed at taxpayer expense, under a post-Florida "election reform" law passed by the Republican-controlled Congress. The machines are built by a major Bush contributor and are called "inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering" by Stanford computer experts. This scenario would be laughed out of Hollywood but it's happening before our eyes. Ready to get busy? See www.verifiedvoting.org for the full scoop — and tell all your friends who vote by computer next year to save (or get) a hard copy. LOOKING BACK AT 9/11 This is a toughie. There's a lot of smoke over whether President Bush was warned in his Daily Intelligence Briefing about the hijackings in July, 2001. At this writing, several congressional investigations and commissions are hard at work on this matter and may prove that the president could have done more to stop 9/11 from happening. Is this sin of omission on 9/11 as big a deal as Bush's many sins of commission by hyping us into the current mess in Baghdad? While an important historical matter, I seriously doubt that the election will swing on what the president did before 9/11 (after all, Bush folks can just say that Clinton let Osama run wild on his watch). The election will be a referendum, however, on what Bush has done since 9/11 to make the world a safer place. On that score, I'd like to know: Why the White House is exempted from questioning by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the matter of who cooked the books on over-hyping the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. Who in the White House deliberately "outted" CIA agent Valerie Plame in July of this year as a way to intimidate administration critic Joe Wilson (who is married to Plame) and was getting national attention for exposing the Bush lies on the war. Why we just named an oil industry lobbyist with no foreign policy experience to be the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. And uh, where in the hell are Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein?
STOPPING AN OCTOBER SURPRISE We all would like to see bin Laden and Hussein brought to justice. Sooner than later, of course, but we'll take them when we can get them, right? So is it paranoid (or unpatriotic) to worry a little about Bush producing a handcuffed Osama in October 2004 just in time to win Americans' hearts and votes? I don't think so — not with a Bush family history that includes a verifiable cover-up of the Neil Bush Silverado S&L scandal that went down in October 1988, weeks before George Bush beat Michael Dukakis. Yet can we even inoculate against such a so-called "October surprise"? Is it even productive to worry about something we can't control? Let me mull on that a bit from my secret bunker in Cave Junction and report back. Until then, over and out. Dan Carol is a Democratic political strategist and a founding partner of CTSG (www.ctsg.com)a progressive consulting firm based in Eugene, Ore., and Washington, D..C.
Private
Rights Mist is gathering around Mount Pisgah's summit and we're on the far side of dusk. A black shape is bunched below on the north slope. Is it a small conifer? A person pausing on a cross-country walk? The shape shifts and flows silently up toward us and into the woods. One deer. The moment a gift. Think of all the gifts. Every breath of air, every drink of water, every piece of food, every season, every sunset that ever stopped you in your tracks, every bird you ever heard migrating south, every cell in your body, has been a gift to you from Earth. And then think of how we are constantly lobbied to regard Earth's gifts as some human's or corporation's "private" property. But what, ecologically speaking, is "private" about incinerating oil in one's private automobile? Does it not insert poisons into the one atmosphere shared by all living beings on Earth? What is "private" about growing a genetically altered crop that will pollute the native genetic pool of plants off-site from the farm? What is "private" about draining a wetland given that species eliminated by the cumulative loss of "private property" wetlands are not owned by any of the private wetland-drainers? What is "private" about putting Drano into our region's shared water system via one's private kitchen sink?
It's an interesting exercise to try to think of anything any of us does physically that can be considered truly private. Maybe having children. Really? There are not public, ecological consequences of six billion humans and more each day consuming Earth's food, space, and energy? Going on the Atkins diet. There are not public, ecological consequences of eating fish when the oceans are being desertified and farm fish are being fed fish from the ocean? Hmm. Going to the bathroom! THAT's private! There are not public, ecological, consequences of peeing caffeine, birth control pills, or mood or chemotherapy drugs into the Willamette River? For good or harm, no man, woman, child, or property is ever, at any moment, an island. Neither socially nor ecologically. Yet much of the motivation behind the writing of our nation's Constitution was to keep "government" from interfering with "private property." Much current political rhetoric deifies human "rights" to grasp "private property" and decries the evil of "takings" of "private property" to conserve Earth's ecological diversity and health. But, wrote ecologist Aldo Leopold in 1934, "The crux of the problem is that every landowner [or private property owner/user] is the custodian of two interests, not always identical, the public interest and his own." What does a person do, who understands ecology, but lives in a society that grants humans and corporations "rights" to lay waste the Earth of all beings, and then, with a straight face, labels those rights "private"? My only answer: bring change to such concepts with skill, effectiveness, and other people who acknowledge both humans and the Earth.
As a starter, in this winter season of gift-giving holidays, I would suggest we each remember the procession of gifts we have been given by Earth and what support we are giving Earth in return. Through our purchases, money, time, jobs, volunteer efforts, political decisions. If you love to know that polar bears are on Earth, are you working for policies that will reduce global warming, which is driving them to extinction? If you love children, are you supporting organized efforts to reduce the load of industrial chemicals they now have to struggle with while they are assembling their bodies and brains before being born? If you love public places of nature, are you insisting your legislators gather funds for their protection? If there is anything public that you love — lands, information, social support in difficult times, health, news, biodiversity, water, transportation, education, elections — are you helping insure it remains healthy and public in the face of current aggressive political campaigns to strangle and privatize it? Perhaps, for 2004, place above your desk or in your wallet some saying that daily reminds you of your intimate friendship with Earth. And then consider what that can mean for you this coming year. Here's one that might work: "Give to the Earth as you would have the Earth give to you." Mary O'Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist for the past 23 years. She can be reached at mob@efn.org
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