132 Reasons 132
to
Vote Against George Bush
The Evil of Two Lessers

Howard J. Ehrlich

Cognitively and empathically deficient and psychologically disturbed, George W. Bush
(a.k.a. Shrub) is the President. Never mind how he got there, he became the President Select. He
is now racing John Kerry in a ruthless manner to become the President Elect.

I have amassed these 132 reasons why the Shrub should be voted out of office. They are
in no order; order doesn’t really matter. They are all documented, although I haven’t presented
the documentation here. Some of Shrub’s policy proposals, appointments and actions are gross;
some are grosser.

Of course you will read this item by item, but you need to comprehend this as a whole.
Put all together, this is a description of a sadistic vicious terrorist who has and continues to impoverish the poor and enrich the rich; to redevelop nuclear weapons on earth and to militarize outer space; to attack the civil rights of everyone on the pretense of maintaining our safety; to kill thousands at war while proclaiming a mission of peace. As he reiterated in many speaking engagements, the King of Peace is at his side.

Read on

Identifying the enemy: Having not found nuclear or chemical weapons, the Bush
propaganda mill redefined Saddam as a collaborator of terrorists. When asked how he knew, the Shrub replied “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”

Our enemies: Bush and Cheyney frequently declare, are scary “ideological extremists.” They are hiding “in caves and dark resorts of the city” and can only be controlled by the policies laid down by the White House. As Bush said in August, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and
our people, and neither do we.” [Whoops!]

Gearing up for war: Shrub was warned in July, 2001 that bin Laden’s organization had
planned an attack inside the US likely with hijacked airplanes. Nevertheless, nine days after the September 11 attack, the Shrub told Prime Minister Tony Blair that he wanted to go after Iraq. On September 17, 2001 he issued a directive to the Pentagon ordering them to draw up invasion plans.

Meanwhile, he ignored CIA findings that there was no link between Iraq and al Qaeda.
By late December 2001, Bush met frequently with General Tommy Franks and his war cabinet
to develop the plan of attack.

The administration ignored the findings of the investigating teams that there were no
nuclear weapons or means to deliver such weapons in Iraq. Further, the administration highlighted claims that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories knowing that the source of that information was unreliable and that there was no independent corroboration of the “intelligence.”

“We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized field commanders to use
chemical weapons–the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”

“We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We’re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVV for missions
targeting the United States.” (October 2002)

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime
continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” (March 2003)

“Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction,” Bush said in July, 2004, “we were right to go into Iraq.” .

The way to peace: In the Spring of 2004, Shrub sprung his theory of peace. “I call upon the Iraqi people to reject violence, band together to insist that the country move toward a peaceful tomorrow. Iraq is changing for the better. I mean, look at the soccer team.”

The casualties: In the 548 days since the invasion of Iraq to this writing, 20, 445
seriously wounded and injured American soldiers have been evacuated from Iraq. Deaths add to
1,001 Americans, 1,132 allied soldiers, and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians.

Political prisoners: In the first military order he issued, Bush gave himself the right to detain indefinitely any non-US citizen anywhere in the world.

Taking prisoners: Violated multiple international treaties on the treatment of prisoners of war subjecting them to physical torture, severe psychological stress, and unhealthy and pathetic prison conditions. This apparently started with a commando force authorized by the White House to capture and interrogate suspected terrorists, resulting in hundreds of people who were secretly imprisoned and presumably tortured. The torture tactics became common in Guantanamo and, later, Abu Ghraib with the authorization of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Rice, and President Shrub.

Privatizing torture: Authorized the use of private contractors for interrogating
prisoners–and defeated an attempt in the Senate to stop this.

The national debt: The Bush regime has added $2 trillion dollars to the national debt in the past four years. One economist estimates that if Shrub is given four more years, US indebtedness will be $10 trillion. On the domestic front, health, education, and social welfare expenditures have been eliminated or cut back.

The personal debt: The rich have gotten richer. For every $1 earned by workers, chief
executive officers earned $301 in 2003. Family income has shrunk by $1,500 since Bush took
office.

Class war: The Shrub’s tax cuts allocated twenty-percent to the wealthiest one percent. When accused of favoring the rich, Bush dismissed the charge by labeling it an attempt to foment “class warfare.” Speaking to big money Republicans (seen in Fahrenheit 9/11), Bush declared: “What an impressive crowd, the haves, and the have mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”

Healthcare: In his first campaign, the president promised a patients’ bill of rights. He has now threatened to veto any such legislation.

Medicare (1): Reduced Medicare payments for blood transfusions, pace-makers, cancer drugs, and pumps to used to deliver medicine to relieve severe pain, among other medical devices used to treat the elderly.

Medicare (2): Increased Medicare premiums by 17 percent, the largest increase in the program’s history.

Medicare (3): The administration illegally withheld data from Congress on the cost of the new Medicare law.

Canadian pharmaceuticals: Opposes allowing seniors and others to buy lower-priced
medicines from Canada claiming that prescription drugs would be unsafe without providing any
evidence of that claim. There is evidence to show that drug industry lobbyists and executives are
leading fundraisers for Bush and the Republicans. Meanwhile, drug prices are rising at three
times the rate of inflation.

And Australia: The Bush administration, covering all bases, negotiated a treaty with Australia which allows pharmaceutical companies to prevent the American import of
inexpensive drugs.

Health insurance: In the last three years under Shrub’s watch, the number of people
without health insurance rose by 1.4 million to 45 million.

Malpractice: Talking about the costs of malpractice insurance, the Shrub who has been
trying to reduce settlements, said: “Too many docs are getting out of business. Too many ob-
gyns are unable to practice their love for women.”

Block medical suits: The Shrub administration has gone to court to block lawsuits by persons who have been injured by prescription drugs or medical devices arguing that people should not recover damages for injuries if the products had been approved by the Food And Drug Administration.

Womens’ health: Closed the White House Office for Women’s Health Initiatives and
Outreach.

Abstinence only: Increased financing of abstinence-only programs while cutting back on
comprehensive sex education programs and representing condoms as ineffective in preventing
disease. The administration has limited and is trying to eliminate the distribution of contraceptive information by federally funded programs.

Health care for veterans: Veterans hospitals have a backlog of 300,000 claims and the
National Guard and Reservists fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq will also be eligible for care. The Shrub’s 2005 budget calls for cutting the Department of Veterans Affairs staff that handles benefits claims.

Privatizing Social Security: The Shrub’s proposal for social security would allow
workers to divert some funds into personal investment accounts if they agree to a reduced benefit when they retire. This is not only a windfall for Wall Street, but would likely bankrupt social security.

Kids and compassionate conservatism: Shrub cut federal spending on libraries;
proposed eliminating a program which gives free books to children; eliminated a childcare
program for women on welfare moving to work; reduced funding from a program to investigate
child abuse; and cut programs for training doctors who work at children’s hospitals.

Worker health and safety:
* Cut back worker safety programs.
* Weakened regulations to deny contracts to companies which violate environmental protections or laws regarding workplace safety.
* Made it more difficult to police or examine chemical plant accidents.
* Repealed ergonomic rules designed to improve worker health and safety.
* Canceled the Clinton administration initiative which would have strengthened tuberculosis-protection rules and help over 5 million health-care workers.

Collective bargaining: The Shrub denied collective bargaining rights to over 17,000
Homeland Security employees, several hundred Justice Department employees and those
working in the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

Return of the company union: Promoting a bill which would allow management to select “company unions.”

More work, less pay: Sponsored a bill (which was defeated in Congress) which would
have allowed employers to avoid paying overtime to approximately 8 million workers.

Strike not Supports a change in the Fair Labor Standards Act allowing employers to
permanently replace striking workers.

Working hard(ly) Bush has taken more vacation time than any other president. As of
August 2003, the Washington Post reported that he had taken 250 days vacation, which is 27% of
his presidency on vacation.

Abandoning those who need help (1): Cut back a program of assistance to low income
persons who needed help in paying their energy bills.

Abandoning those who need help (2): Cut back job funds for training programs for
dislocated workers.

Isolating America: Refused to allow the US to accept international agreements which
would limit his unilateral powers.
* Refused to allow US to participate in the world conference against racism and discrimination.
* Refused to endorse a major international treaty on the rights of women.
* Repudiated US affiliation with the International Criminal Court.

Abortion rights (1): Withheld money from UN family planning programs because the
programs permitted abortion counseling as an option.

Abortion rights (2): Insinuated into federal regulations the definition of the fetus as an unborn child (which would facilitate the criminalizing of abortion).

Education: With respect to education, Bush, despite his rhetoric, has seriously cut back
or eliminated numerous programs. As he said of education, “You teach a child to read, and he or
her will be able to pass a literacy test.”
* Cut back grants of financial aid for college students from low income families.
* Cut back programs for disadvantaged students.
* Underfunded the “No Child Left Behind” by $26 billion. This was to be the centerpiece of his education proposals.
* Did away with financial aid for college for students convicted of misdemeanor drug charges.
* Cut back programs which helped prepare middle school students from low income families for college.

Desperately seeking neocons: Made numerous Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointments to
persons who were hostile to the laws and regulations they were supposed to enforce. For
example, Attorney General John Ashcroft in his previous positions was opposed to affirmative
action, food stamps, MEDICAID, regulating tobacco, and people’s right to sue HMOs among
other things. Has attempted to pack the federal judiciary with lawyers and judges who were
opposed to organized labor, involved with ultraconservative organizations and perspectives on civil liberties, opposed to assistance to persons of disability, against consumer rights and student rights. In short, Shrub’s nominees reflected his own outlook on the world.

Civil rights: Allocated a budget to the ten federal civil rights agencies which combined was less than the cost of a single Comanche helicopter.

Gay rights: Sponsored a constitutional amendment to federalize and outlaw gay marriage.

Native American rights: Asked by the editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-
Intelligencer what was his understanding of Native American tribal sovereignty, Bush replied,
“Tribal sovereignty means that, it’s sovereign. You’re a–you’re a–you have been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity.”

The war in Afghanistan: This year only 9 percent of Afghans have electricity and 6
percent have access to safe drinking water. Violence against women in rural areas is as great as it was under the Taliban. Opium poppies, the base for opium and heroin, are the major cash crop
now supplying an estimated 75 percent of the world’s quantity of opium products.

War crimes: An International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan indicted Bush on
several war crime charges among which is the use of depleted uranium weapons. Although
virtually unreported in the establishment news media, depleted uranium is an extraordinary
potent substance in the creation of serious birth defects. These were used first in Bush senior’s
war in the Gulf.

Toxins in our food: Abandoned the control of the health threatening herbicide atrazine. It is banned by the European Union.

Israel-Palestine: The Shrub gave unconditional endorsement to right-wing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon plan to annex Palestinian-occupied territory. These announcements subvert UN Security Council resolutions and international law.

Doing God’s work (1):. Bush tells the story that he attended a sermon in 1999 and
became convinced that “the Almighty was speaking through the pastor to encourage him to run
for the presidency of the United States.”

Doing God’s work (2):. In a press conference on April 13, Bush declared: “I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom.”

Doing God’s work (3):. Speaking to an Amish community in Lancaster County, PA, Bush
declared: “I trust God speaks through me. Without that I couldn’t do my job.”

All God’s children: The Bush-Cheyney campaign has been soliciting local church
member lists, providing churches with voting guides, and urging ministers to speak out about
“all Christians needing to vote.”

Religion and government: Developed a “faith-based initiative” allowing the federal
government to fund programs saturated with religious teaching and practice.

How the Shrub exposes himself to new ideas: Washington Post editor, Bob Woodward,
reports that when Bush was asked how he gets his information, he replied: “The best way to get
the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my
staff.”

On Constitutional rights: Speaking at fund-raiser, the Shrub declared, “The Patriot Act
defends our liberty, is what it does, under the Constitution of the United States.”

Science and the environment: On his first day in office, the Shrub instructed his chief of staff, Andrew Card, to send a directive to the heads of all departments ordering them to put a hold on more than one dozen regulations left over from the Clinton administration. This
included the regulation of arsenic and the control of the dumping of raw sewage in drinking
water.

American exceptionalism: Called internationally for a waiver for the use of methyl
bromide, a pesticide and fumigant, scheduled to be banned in 2005. The treaty passed in 1987
has been signed by 160 countries. This is a chemical that filters into the upper atmosphere
thinning if not destroying the ozone layer.

Global Climate Change: The Shrub has refused to recognize the existence of global climate change, and has suppressed scientific findings of government researchers on global warming, rejecting a report of his Secretary of Energy and his Secretary of Commerce. They indicated that global warming was already causing drought, damaging farms, and changing the migration patterns of many species.

Kyoto: Refused to sign the international Kyoto Accords which called for the reducing of emissions of six greenhouse gases.

Science and politics: Sixty leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a
statement charging the administration with distorting scientific findings “for partisan political ends.”

National parks and wildlife areas: Shrub has implemented the greatest give away of
public lands and natural resources in more than a century opening 60 million acres of national
forest to road building and logging.

Endangered species: Bypassed the provisions of the endangered species act that required the Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether environmental interventions such as logging or road building would harm or threaten endangered species.

Nuclear power: The administration has set aside $11.5 billion to subsidize energy
companies building nuclear power plants and other nuclear energy programs.

Nuclear proliferation: Shrub lifted the ban on the export of enriched uranium even though this is a key ingredient in the manufacture of nuclear bombs.

The big one: Authorized the nuclear labs to begin designing a new generation of nuclear bombs.

Return of Star Wars: Bush is promoting Reagan’s fantasy of a missile defense system which will shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. Such a system not only fails to address the problems of terrorism, but Congressional auditors and 49 retired generals and admirals agreed that the system is totally unproven if not unworkable.

Return of street wars: Refused to support the renewal of the ban on the sale of assault weapons, permitting 19 varieties of assault weapons to go on sale to the public.

Diplomacy: The diplomacy of George Bush. In his first state of the union address, Bush destroyed diplomatic attempts at changing US relationships with North Korea and Iran labeling
them the “axis of evil.”

“For those who urge more diplomacy,” Bush declared, “I would simply say that
diplomacy hasn’t worked.”

Electoral strategy: At least three of the so-called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” which led the smear campaign against Kerry had ties to the Bush administration. One, the Bush-
Cheyney campaign’s top outside lawyer, was forced to resign after it was revealed he was also
providing free legal services for the Swift Boaters.

The economics of George Bush: Although the administration claims that the economy is improving (it got worse under his watch), job growth has in fact averaged 10-15 percent of what it is normally. In a healthy economy. The US should be adding 200,000 to 300,000 new jobs monthly.

Leadership: One week after the Democratic National Convention, the White House
revealed the identity of a spy who had infiltrated al Qaeda. This disrupted US intelligence and enabled countless terrorists to escape. The act, condemned by virtually all observers, was presumably motivated in order to justify an increase in the terror alert level and to get a soundbite for the campaign..

Road to freedom: As part of the “transfer of sovereignty” to Iraq, Bush lifted the 14-year weapons embargo so that US manufacturers can now contract to equip and train Iraqi police and military. Iraq has already purchased 50,000 side arms and signed contracts for military helicopters, rifles and assault weaponry.

Secrecy: The Bush administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to expand the ability of the federal government to operate in secrecy ignoring old laws and creating new categories of information to be held from the public. Congressman Henry Waxman in his report to the Committee on Government Reform Minority Office summarizes the major events. “Bush has
issued an executive order sharply restricting the public release of the papers of past presidents....expanded the authority to classify documents and dramatically increased the number
of documents classified....used the USA Patriot Act and novel legal theories to justify secret
investigations, detentions, and trials....and has engaged in litigation to contest Congress’ right to information.”

Mental health: In a book published this fall, Dr. Justin Frank, head of the psychiatry department at George Washington University Medical Center, found that Bush “consistently exhibits an array of multiple, serious and untreated symptoms” Dr. Frank went on to say that Bush “exhibits sadistic tendencies and suffers from character pathology, including grandiosity and megalomania—viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.”
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Howard J. Ehrlich is a writer and sociologist, editor of the Magazine of Social Anarchism and a member of the editorial group of Baltimore IMC.