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The Articles:
China crash
and international law...4-16-2001
Texas trying to recover
from Bush era 4-15-2001
Map Maker fired for showing Bush's
false statements by accident - 4-12-2001
George W. Bush - His lies during the debates!
George Bush Jr. Successful record?
Or successful snow job?
Corruption: The Oklahoma Corporation
Commission
Corruption: Tax related issues
J.C. Watts: Fun Facts
Senator James Inhofe and his wild office staff!
J.C. Watts Sr. and his comments on his son
A Failure to Support the Troops
by Waloter M. Brasch
As usual, Donald Rumsfeld was in control. At a “town hall” meeting with almost 2,000 American combat soldiers in northern Kuwait, the Secretary of Defense and his PR machine were going to give a “pep rally” to troops about to go into combat. He would prove he cared about the individual troops, that the Bush Administration supported them, and that God and country, at least 51 percent of the mortal voters, were patriots who supported George W. Bush and, thus, the war.
But, just in case there might have been a problem—and in the Bush Administration there are no problems, no weaknesses, no errors—the Secretary of Defense didn’t allow any reporters to ask questions. He didn’t really need to impose that restriction. For more than two years, the nation’s reporters had lamely tossed cream-filled puffs at Rumsfeld, who effortlessly swatted each one into crumbs. Even the public enjoyed seeing the Secretary of Defense pose his own questions and then answer them, or tongue-lash reporters whose inane questions became indicative of how poor the media had prepared for this war.
In an aircraft hangar at Camp Buehring, a transitional camp for soldiers going into the quagmire that was Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld was smiling, joking, and mugging for the cameras, completely in control. And then a soldier spoke out.
“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?” Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee National Guard asked to the applause and cheers of hundreds of others. It was a question thousands of Americans had asked but were largely ignored by the establishment media and by sycophantic generals who should have, but didn’t, question post-war occupation strategies. It was also unusual for an enlisted person, drilled to obey orders unquestioningly, to even ask such a question, especially of the Secretary of Defense. But these Reservists and National Guardsmen were tired; tired of lies and deceptions from being told the Army would honor their contracts to how quickly they were be paid—and how little protection the sand-slogging soldier was given.
“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have,” said a slightly shaken Rumsfeld, who never acknowledged that it was the Bush Administration that decided how and when to launch the invasion of Iraq. Nor had Rumsfeld admitted it was the Bush Administration that didn’t have substantial plans to occupy the country, as Colin Powell and dozens of retired four-star generals and admirals had said prior to that invasion. And so friends and relatives of soldiers bought bullet-proof Kevlar vests to send to the war zone, and millions of Americans sent all kinds of personal supplies to the troops. But now the question to the Secretary was about the lack of armor protection that Americans couldn’t afford or couldn’t send to protect the troops.
It’s “physics,” said Rumsfeld, thinking he could dismiss the soldier’s question, just as he easily dismissed the questions of those who previously challenged his authority. “It isn’t a matter of money.
. . . It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it,” he said. The Army later claimed that at least three-fourths of its vehicles had protection. Gary Motsek, a civilian official for the Army Materiel Command and a former Army colonel, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that about one-third of all convoy vehicles are armored. An analysis by the House Armed Forces Committee revealed only about 10 percent of medium and light military trucks in combat zones were protected.
“The demand has gone up leaps and bounds since 9/11,” says Ray Toone, general managing partner of Elite Armoring Co. of Dallas, Tex. Toone says his company has had to increase staff by more than 40 percent in the past three years to meet demand. Most of Elite’s customers are CEOs and the wealthy who pay as much as $85,000 to protect their own Hummers, BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes, Cadillac Escalades, Chevy Suburbans, Ford Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators. When Elite finishes with a vehicle, it appears to be just like a floor model. Elite’s Level IV protection will stop a 147 grain 7.62 x 51 NATO-certified armor-piercing bullet fired with a velocity of 2,900 feet per second or a 220 grain .30-06 armor-piercing bullet fired at 2,400 feet per second.
During most wars, the United States required private companies to retool their production lines to produce war materiel not for the elite of other countries but for the American war effort. Elite doesn’t manufacture armor for the military. “We haven’t been contacted,” Toole says, but his company is supplying vehicles for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.
Elite isn’t the only company that provides vehicle armor. International Armoring Corp. of Ogden, Utah, in partnership with the Ford Motor Co., produces armored Lincoln Town sedans.
Even if Elite, International Armor, or dozens of other companies aren’t retooling for military production, a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is already producing armored Humvees as fast as it can—at least since August 2003, two months after the war began. However, at least two companies with military contracts said they were capable and willing to produce more armor kits for Humvees but were rejected. Matt Salmon of ArmorWorks in Tempe, Ariz., said his company was at 50 percent capacity “and we could do a lot more.” He told USA Today that the Pentagon was “aware of it.” Robert Mecredy of Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla., said his company, which also had a military contract, could produce at least 100 more armor kits to trucks per month. Dozens of companies are now providing at least parts of Humvee armor or bullet-resistant glass.
President Bush, trying to cover Rumsfeld’s comments, told military families, “We’re doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones.” More than 1,100 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq; more than 9,000 have been wounded. More than half of them were in military vehicles. It’s been 21 months after the invasion, and the mightiest military force in the world, with the mightiest intelligence operation, hasn’t provided for the needs of the soldiers. Instead of empty promises and misleading rhetoric, the Bush Administration might consider doing what it falsely claims the anti-war opposition doesn’t do—support the troops. --posted 12.12.04
[Brasch’s latest book is America’s Unpatriotic Acts; the Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (Peter Lang Publishing, Jan. 2005). You may contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website, www.walterbrasch.com]
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On the Right Hand of God...the Far Right Hand
by Waloter M. Brasch
She’s a pleasant enough person. Likes animals. Seems to care about people. Does an excellent job as an administrative assistant for a state agency. But she also has an impervious religious belief. The day after George W. Bush was elected to his second term, she sent an e-mail to several persons where she worked:
“Christians have MUCH to be thankful to God for after our national election. Many conservative, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage men and women were elected to seats in both the House and Senate. Most important of all, it looks as though Christians in every state of our nation turned out in records [sic] numbers to support our God-fearing President!”
Mary Ann Kreitzer of Les Femmes, a national evangelical organization which defines itself as “The Women of Truth,” was even more sanctimonious. The Bush victory, said Kreitzer in a widely-distributed press release, was “a rejection of the extremism of the democratic party, [a rejection of] the party of gay activists, radical feminists, lesbians, the Hollywood elite, pornographers, death-peddlers, anti-Christian bigots, and apostate Catholics.”
In letters to the editor, on radio talk shows, and in corner bars, the conservative religious wing of America is ecstatic over the election, praising God and Bush in the same breath. Bush is the savior who will redeem the nation from the immorality of liberals, the Hollywood Left, and other pagans. In their world of divine absolute truth, even moderate and some conservative theologians will go to Hell for the sins of preaching tolerance for those who have other views of God and mankind, something not even Bush himself ever publicly stated.
For his entire term, President Bush emphasized his devout faith, showcasing it like a personal World Series of Heaven ring. In 1999, he told a Baptist convention he “heard the call,” and believed “God wants me to be President.” God may not have taken a side in the election, but he was anointed by a 5–4 vote of the Supreme Court. Slightly more than a week after his inauguration, President Bush created a White House Office for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, and directed five cabinet agencies to do the same; he was the first president to officially blur the “separation clause” of state and religion. A year later, the Texas Republican party, apparently with no objection from the President, in its platform declared, “the United States is a Christian nation.”
President Bush constantly speaks of his love of God, and when asked if he had consulted his father before invading Iraq, Bush the Younger said he had consulted a “higher father.” It played well in the Bible Belt. Sen. John F. Kerry, a devout and practicing Catholic, apparently was wasn’t “religious enough”; Sen. John Edwards, a Methodist, was too liberal; certainly, to American voters, they didn’t practice the “right” religion. And, apparently, neither did Bush’s opponents from 2000—Vice President Al Gore, a Baptist; and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an orthodox Jew.
The President’s campaign staff did a brilliant job of motivating the nation’s evangelical White conservatives to turn out in record numbers to vote for a person who heard the incessant thunder that “moral values” were more important than social justice. And so, a slim majority of voting Americans picked President Bush based upon what they believed were “moral values,” according to a post-election poll conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. “Moral values” edged both the fear of terrorism and the state of the economy, a surprising result since the focus of the campaign was primarily upon who would be a better commander-in-chief rather than a better president.
For most, “moral values” centered around two areas—abortion and gay rights. Bush opposed abortion; and he had innumerable times supported a proposed Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, an amendment that itself might be unconstitutional. In Ohio and Michigan, key states for both candidates, voters overwhelmingly reinforced bans not only against gay marriages, but also against rights of domestic partnerships. Nine other states also voted against gay marriages. Bush, a Methodist, like Edwards, also opposed his own church’s philosophy that gays should be allowed in the military, that the death penalty should be illegal, and that the war against Iraq should never have been launched. Kerry, a practicing Catholic, was pro-choice, and came from a state that had recently legalized gay marriage. That got the fundamental Catholic voters to unite with the conservative Christian Right, which usually doesn’t believe Catholics are “true Christians” anyway.
However, if Catholics agreed with the Pope that abortion is wrong, that marriage is only between a man and a woman, they certainly didn’t agree with him in condemning the immoral war in Iraq that killed or wounded more than 10,000 American, and, perhaps, 100,000 others, most of them civilians.
In their rush to judgment, most voters didn’t believe the President was immoral for accepting the views of corporate polluters over the views of environmentalists or that his policies would harm the nation’s wildlife. They didn’t think that “moral values” extended to the President’s decision to try to destroy a federal program to assist low income families get housing, or to helping the poor and marginalized, the underemployed and unemployed, and more than 45 million people who can’t afford health insurance. The President’s campaign staff managed to convince a nation, already gripped by fear, that an unjust war was moral, and that obscene war profits on no-bid contracts to the Vice-President’s former company was somehow spiritually in the national interest.
The Rev. Jim Wallis correctly pointed out that the Religious Right “fought to keep the focus on gay marriage and abortion and even said that good Christians and Jews could only vote for [President Bush].” Wallis, editor of Sojourners, official magazine of a national organization that integrates spiritual renewal with social justice, argued, that moderate and progressive Christians “insisted that poverty is also a religious issue, pointing to thousands of verses in the Bible on the poor.” He pointed out, “the environment—protection of God’s creation—is also one of our religious concerns.” The Rev. Dr. Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, agreed. “The agenda of the church must always respond faithfully to the Bible’s timeless mandate to minister to the poor, the marginalized and the outcast; and to be seekers and makers of peace,” said Edgar. About 59 million Americans disagreed.
“Long before there was a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson or even a Tom DeLay, there was a Martin Luther King Jr., a Dorothy Day, and an Abraham Heschel,” said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, at a “Faith and Progressive Policy” organizing forum. For King and millions of others, said Podesta, “justice and fairness in the community was inseparable from their faith in God.”
The Christian Right may say they support the Constitution, but they select which parts of which Amendments they want to accept. They may preach the Ten Commandments, but they don’t follow all of them. And, most of all, by deciding to vote for a President primarily on the basis that he showboats his faith, and that he opposes abortion and gay marriage, while neglecting, opposing, or shredding dozens of other social issues, they have also said they don’t truly understand the Bible.
A day after the election, with about 51 percent of the vote, President George W. Bush said he had “political capital” he intended to spend, that he had a “mandate” from the people. Perhaps this born-against-social-justice Christian and the people who are in rapture at his election might reflect upon Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” --posted 11.30.04
[Walter Brasch's forthcoming book is America's Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (Peter Lang Publishing, January 2005). You may contact Brasch at Brasch@bloomu.edu, or through his website, www.walterbrasch.com. Rosemary R. Brasch assisted on this column.]
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,p> Bush, Heal Thyself
by Rosemary Brasch
I heard it.
I knew I would.
John Kerry said it.
George W. Bush said it.
And myriad others will join the chorus.
They told us it’s now a time of healing. But, I don’t want to heal, and I don’t intend to be healed.
“Healing” is merely code for shutting up and allowing the President to do whatever it is he plans to do. But we did that for four years.
Four years we waited for the President to stop rending this nation apart and be a uniter not a divider, as he promised. Four years we gave him the benefit of the doubt as to his truthfulness. Four years the subservient press went along with whatever he and his minions said; there was almost no investigating, no insisting on substantive answers to important questions, no in-depth reporting on the effect the Bush administration was having on the country. And we kept watching.
Now we should “heal”? I think not. It’s ludicrous to even use that word given the state of our country’s health care, with 45 million Americans unable to afford medical insurance.
Possibly, I’ve mistaken the spelling of “heal.” Perhaps what the politicians want from us is not to “heal,” but to “heel.” Like subservient pets, we’re supposed to be quiet, walk behind them, and continue to obey their commands without question. I don’t want to obey. I don’t want to agree with this President’s immoral war. I don’t want to quietly accept the unnecessary deaths and maiming of our good young men and women and innocent Iraqi children. I don’t want to be forced to stand in a “Free-speech zone” to disagree—about anything. I want to protest wherever and however I can. It used to be a right under the First Amendment in the pre-Bush and Ashcroft era. I want to dissent even more fiercely and disagree more loudly than before. My voice still isn’t being be heard in Washington. I want my civil rights—I want your civil rights—returned.
I don’t want to accept that my liberalism is worse than leprosy. I don’t want to accept that my Christian, Baptist, background is boiled down to immoral heathenism because I don’t agree with many of the President’s followers and their views of religion. And, as a registered Republican, I don’t want my political views to ever be equated with those who think they have a God-given mandate to crusade against all who see things differently.
George Bush again says he’ll reach out to Democrats. How about reaching out to all good Americans—regardless of their beliefs—who disagree with his first four year reign of terrorism? The last time he reached out to all of America, he patted us with a tax refund with one hand and with the other hand swatted away our civil liberties by shredding our Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. A second term, with a conservative House and Senate, will give him the opportunity to add to the PATRIOT Act with even more restrictions in the name of “freedom.”
No second term “honeymoon.” Four years was long enough. And, while we wait for the next election, the war against Iraq rages, destroying lives of Americans and Iraqis while al-Qaeda flourishes and grows. Our environment continues to reek with Presidential destruction. Our health care system continues to deteriorate. The President, more of a “tax and spend” fanatic than any liberal ever was, will continue to weaken our economy by adding to the national debt he created. And, most of all, our rights and liberties will continue to wither under the guise that the “war on terrorism” means we have to sacrifice our country’s principles, while the upper classes become even richer through tax cuts and no-bid contracts.
I want the world’s people (I think God may have even created them—hard to believe he made such a huge mistake with everyone but us) to see massive demonstrations throughout our country against an unjust and inhumane war and against a president who lied to get us into it—while deceiving us about how well it’s going. It’s not going well—and the rest of the world knows it—while we Americans get the purified propaganda spoon fed at “briefings” and “press conferences” about the wonders of a new democratic Iraq by a scared-to-be-called-liberal press. Read the opinions of the rest of the world about Bush—not America, but Bush. We need to protest and demonstrate loudly and constantly until the Administration, the House, and the Senate—ever fearful of not being reelected—are moved to act. I want once again to be a proud American.
So heal/heel if you want to—but it behooves those millions of Americans who disagreed before to do so even more vociferously now. Patriotic citizens need to be the nation’s watchdogs—we’ve allowed ourselves to be lapdogs too long.
[Rosemary R. Brasch is a national disaster family services specialist for the Red Cross, and a former union grievance officer and university labor relations instructor. You may contact Brasch at espyrose@hotmail.com] -30-
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AN UNCIVIL ADMINISTRATION
by Walter Brasch
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was furious. Once again, the Bush Administration managed to subvert not only American civil liberties, but the democratic process as well. Nadler, one of the nation’s leading advocates of social justice, and whose district includes the area where the World Trade Center once stood, called the Republican leadership “shameful,” their tactics “corrupt.”
“For all of their talk of patriotism, the Republicans showed something quite different,” said Nadler. It was nothing less than “an abuse of power more likely to be seen in a police state than in a democratic society,” he said. In the 15 minutes usually allocated to voting on an issue, the House apparently had passed legislation to cut off funding for enforcement of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. Section 215, one of the most controversial sections of one of America’s most controversial laws, permits federal law enforcement, without going through the common judicial system, to grab “any tangible thing” in any investigation. This could include taking the sales records from bookstores, demanding from libraries the records of who checked out which book, and forcing internet service providers to release e-mails not just from suspects but from all persons the suspects contacted, thus dragging thousands of innocent persons into the FBI web. A “gag” order prohibits anyone from disclosing the FBI even asked for the information. In addition to liberals, thousands of prominent conservatives oppose the act. Among them are Newt Gingrich, former House speaker who engineered the mid-term Republican victory in 1994, and Bob Barr, a representative who was one of Bill Clinton’s harshest critics in impeachment hearings.
In March 2003, Rep. Bernie Sanders had introduced the Freedom to Read Protection Act (H.R. 1157) that would minimize or repeal Section 215; within a year it had more than 140 co-sponsors, extraordinarily high for any proposed legislation.
“One of the cornerstones of our democracy is our right of Americans to criticize their government and to read printed materials without fear of government monitoring and intrusion,” Sanders said at the time he submitted his bill. More than three dozen of the nation’s largest organizations of librarians, booksellers, journalists, and publishers filed a joint statement that declared their support for the proposed bill.
When it appeared it was stalled, Sanders and Reps. Nadler, John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), C. L. Otter (R-Idaho), and Ron Paul (R-Texas) tried another way to limit the PATRIOT Act. To the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Bill of 2005, they proposed an amendment to cut off funding to the Department of Justice for searches conducted under Section 215. The amendment didn’t diminish the government’s capacity to investigate possible terrorism. The federal government could still obtain records, as long as it went into a court of law and showed there was “probable cause” to request such records.
But, even if the amendment passed, it might only have been symbolic. In the Summer, the House passed legislation proposed by Otter, 309-118, to cut off funding for Section 213, the “sneak-and-peak” section that allows the government to raid a business or home, without the owner present, and to delay for months before even notifying them that materials were seized. The vote never moved forward in the Senate.
As with the Otter Amendment, it was unlikely the Senate would accept the House amendment about Section 215. Further, the Department of Justice could use the equally-restrictive National Security Letters, which weren’t subject of the amendment prohibition, to gain access to records; or, it could also manipulate its own budget in several ways to disguise use of funding to enforce Section 215, especially since the Department has an obstructionist attitude, except when it was politically beneficial to the Bush Administration, to release of any data about enforcement of that section.
What the Republican leadership did with the Sanders amendment was indicative of the Administration’s tactics. A day before the vote, the President’s budget office sent a memo to House members warning them if they passed anything to weaken the PATRIOT Act, the President would veto the $39.8 billion bill. It would be the first veto in the President’s term.
By the end of the 15-minute voting period, even with the President’s assurances of a veto, the amendment had 219 votes for passage, 201 against. But, the Republican leadership at that point held the voting open for an additional 23 minutes while Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), House majority leader, and his aides, bullied Republicans into changing their votes. (The House leadership had previously extended a vote by three hours to arm-twist members to reverse their vote opposing the President’s Medicare package.)
Among the tactics on the Section 215 amendment, the leadership suddenly produced a letter written by the Department of Justice that claimed a member of a terrorist group tied to al-Qaeda used the Internet at a public library. There were no specifics. Since the Department of Justice continually claimed it had “no interest” in going to libraries, how it learned of computer use at a library leads one to question if the Department lied to the people or if it lied to the Congress. The final vote, a 210-210 tie, doomed the amendment.
In public statements, members of Congress expressed the same outrage as Jerry Nadler. “You win some, some get stolen,” Otter, a conservative Republican, said. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.) the House minority leader, lashed out at “Republican leaders [who] once again undermined democracy,” and declared them to be “thoroughly un-American.” Sanders called the vote “an outrage” and “an insult to democracy.”
Another representative was even more hostile to the tactics of the House leadership: “[It is] the most heavy-handed, arrogant abuse of power in the 10 years I have been here. . . . [The Speaker of the House is] a heavy-handed son of a bitch and he doesn’t know any other way to operate, and he will do anything he can to win at any price. There is no sense of comity left.”
However, it wasn’t July 2004 but October 1987, and the profane-enhanced tirade was directed not against current Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) but against Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas), who had briefly adjourned the House to allow time to “convince” a couple of Democrats to switch their votes on a pending budget bill. The man who had scoured Wright, identified by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) after the vote on Section 215, was Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyoming)—the same Dick Cheney who, with George W. Bush, campaigned on a mantra of bringing civility back to the White House, and who less than a month before the vote on Section 215, in the Senate of the United States, told Patrick Leahy to do something anatomically impossible to himself.
One thousand American soldiers are now dead; more than 5,000 are wounded, some permanently disabled, because of Bush’s lies about weapons of mass destruction poised to attack America, where terrorists really were being protected, and of his egotistical belief that he is the world’s commander-in-chief. This administration’s policies about the underclass, the environment, health care, worker rights, and dozens of other critical and important domestic issues, has done far more to destroy this nation, and the respect of the Oval office than anything Bill Clinton ever did. The tactics used against an amendment to restore civil liberties is indicative of why this Administration doesn’t deserve a second term. --posted 07.30.04
[Walter Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, is an award-winning journalist and author. A chapter about the PATRIOT Act appears in the recently-published “Big Bush Lies” (RiverWood Books), edited by Jerry ‘Politex’ Barrett. Brasch’s 14th book, to be published about November by Peter Lang Publishing, is “America’s Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights.” You may contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu
China crash and international law...4-16-2001
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US Seriously Violates International Law: Signed Article
A signed article titled "A Look at Plane Collision Incident From Perspective
of International Law" published Sunday stresses the U.S. side's breaching
of international law in regards to the collision between a U.S. military
reconnaissance plane and a Chinese fighter jet.
The article by Li Qin presents an in-depth analysis of the airplane collision incident from the perspective of international law.
On the morning of April 1, a U.S. EP-3 military reconnaissance plane conducted military reconnaissance in the airspace near China 's island province of Hainan, and the Chinese side immediately sent up two military jets to track and monitor the plane, the article says.
During the flight, the U.S. plane violated flight rules and veered suddenly towards one of the Chinese jets, bumping into it and causing it to crash. The pilot of the Chinese jet was missing and there is now no possibility of his survival, it says.
Right after the collision, the U.S. plane intruded into the Chinese airspace and landed at the Lingshui Military Airport on the Hainan Island without permission from the Chinese side, thus seriously infringing upon the territorial sovereignty of China, the article says.
The article says that after the incident, the United States not only did not apologize for the serious consequences of the illegal acts of its plane, but also made up various excuses to shake off its responsibility for the illegal acts of its plane, even rudely making various unreasonable demands on and accusations against the Chinese side in a threatening tone.
Whatever lame excuses the U.S. side might use, the illegal nature of the acts by the U.S. plane cannot be denied. Consequently, the demands and accusations by the U.S. side are absolutely groundless from the perspective of law, the article stresses.
First of all, the United States turned a blind eye to relevant stipulations in international laws, and the U.S. military plane abused the freedom of overflight, which is the major cause of the collision incident, the article says.
The U.S. side argued the April 1 incident took place in the international airspace, in which U.S. planes have the right to fly over. The article says it must be pointed out that the incident occurred in the airspace above the waters merely 104 kilometers to the southeast of the Hainan Island, which is above the exclusive economic zone of China.
In accordance with the current of international law, although foreign aircraft enjoy the freedom to fly over the exclusive economic zone of a certain country, such freedom is by no means unrestricted and foreign aircraft have to observe the relevant rules of the international law while enjoying the freedom of overflight, says the article.
According to Article 58 of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea promulgated in 1982, foreign aircraft enjoy the freedom of overflight under the relevant provisions of the Convention.
The article says that Section Three of the article made it clear that foreign planes, while enjoying the freedom of overflight over an exclusive economic zone of other countries, " shall have due regard to the rights and duties of the coastal State and shall comply with the laws and regulations adopted by the coastal State in accordance with the provisions of this Convention and other rules of international law in so far as they are not incompatible with this part."
According to Article 56 of the Convention, the coastal country concerned not only has the right to exploit, utilize, maintain and administer natural resources in its exclusive economic zone, but also enjoys other rights concerning exclusive economic zones laid down by the Convention, it says.
In accordance with Article 301 of the Convention, a certain country, while enjoying its rights or carrying out its duties stipulated by the Convention, "shall refrain from any threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of United Nations," the article says.
This article demonstrates that the "other rights" concerning exclusive economic zone of coastal states include that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of these countries should not be infringed upon, and they have the right to safeguard its national security and maintain peaceful order as stipulated in international law.
The article says that a plane of a state, while it exercises freedom of overflight in the air over the exclusive economic zone of the other state, should respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the coastal state.
It can't infringe upon national security and peaceful order of the coastal state, and any act ignoring the above rights of the coastal country will abuse the freedom of overflight, says the article.
It needs to expound that the above provisions, stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, are the generally acknowledged principles of international law. Even the non-signatory countries should also abide by these principles, because it is confirmed by international judicial practice.
The article points out that during the collision incident, the U.S. trouble-making plane is not a common aircraft, but a military surveillance plane equipped with advanced electronic surveillance facilities.
Moreover, the U.S. plane did not exercise a common flight over China's exclusive economic zone, but a reconnaissance mission. The U.S. act is not a single and accidental one, but a continuation and part of the frequent U.S. reconnaissance activities in recent years in the airspace over China's coastal waters, the article notes.
Such U.S. military activities during peace time are characterized by its hostility towards China. These activities constitute threats to Chinese national security and peaceful order, and the provocation to Chinese national sovereignty. The U.S. act violates the fundamental principles of international law, that stands for all states to respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other, the article stresses.
The article says that China is firmly opposed to such provocative and threatening acts of the U.S., and lodged protests many times, and made solemn representations in this regard.
The article says that after the collision, the U.S., on several occasions, criticized China for tracking and monitoring the U.S. military surveillance planes, and after the U.S. crew members were released, the U.S. attributed the incident to Chinese plane's tracking operation, trying to shirk its responsibilities.
It is obvious that the criticism is unacceptable in the political, military and law sense, says the article. According to international practice and law, when a foreign military plane is engaged in activities which could threaten a state's national security in the airspace over coastal waters of a coastal country, it has the right to take relevant defense measures, including sending planes to track and monitor the foreign plane.
The article says that the purposes of the activities of the coastal country are: firstly, to exercise the right of sovereignty authorized by international law, prevent foreign planes from entering the airspace of its own country and safeguard its territorial airspace and waters; secondly, to alarm foreign planes not to conduct any activity threatening the territorial integrity and national security of the coastal country.
In fact, the article points out, it is the common practice for all countries of the world to track and monitor a foreign military aircraft when it flies into a country's territorial airspace, and the U.S. practice in this regard is particularly obvious.
The article says that the U.S. has designated Air Defense Identification Zone in the airspace over its coastal waters, and the sphere of the zone is much wider than that of the exclusive economic zone of 200 sea miles.
The U.S. demands that any foreign planes in the Air Defense Identification Zone should fly according to the U.S. stipulated course, and should obey the procedures the U.S. has prescribed, and if any foreign plane violates these rules, the U.S. will send its planes to intercept it.
The article says that as Francis Boyler, a U.S. professor of international law, pointed out that the U.S. would not tolerate it if China took similar actions like the U.S. military plane has done in the airspace over Chinese coastal waters within the U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone.
The U.S. plane, after ramming and destroying the Chinese plane, entered the Chinese territorial airspace and landed at a Chinese military airport without authorization, seriously encroaching upon the Chinese territorial sovereignty. According to the set principles governing international law, a state has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the sky above its territory. Without permission, it is absolutely forbidden for foreign military planes to enter the territorial airspace of other states. This principle was first stated in the Paris Convention on the Regulation of Aerial Navigation of 1919. The Article 1 of the convention stipulates that "the contracting States recognize that every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory." Based on this principle, the convention stipulates that military planes of a signatory to the convention cannot make unauthorized flights over or landing at the territory of another signatory, it goes on to say.
Article 3 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, concluded in Chicago in 1944, not only sets the same rule, but also states clearly in this article to strictly tell civil airborne vehicles from military airborne vehicles. According to Article 3, "No state aircraft of a contracting State shall fly over the territory of another State or land thereon without authorization by special agreement, or otherwise, and in accordance with the terms thereof." It has been a set rule that foreign military planes cannot enter into the territorial airspace of another country. Practice against this rule is deemed as encroachment upon the territorial sovereignty over a country, which has the right to curb this encroachment with any means according to the international law, it continues.
In this incident, the U.S. plane which collided with the Chinese jet did not apply to the Chinese side for entering the Chinese territorial airspace and landing at the Chinese territory, according to relevant regulations governing emergency cases. Without permission from the Chinese side, it entered into the Chinese territorial airspace and landed at a Chinese military airport. Obviously, illegality is clearly seen in this case of encroaching upon the Chinese sovereignty, the article says.
The U.S. side contended that after the collision, the U.S. plane was in a state of emergency, and under such a circumstance, it was not illegal for the plane to enter into and land at the Chinese territory, out of needs of averting emergency. Such kind of contention is not tenable according to the law. The international law has only references to civil airborne vehicles and have no reference to military airborne vehicles. All countries have strict procedures on this, because state sovereignty and national security are involved. International law also does not acknowledge what was called by the U.S. as an emergency landing right owned by military planes. Under special circumstances, which call for an emergency landing, foreign military planes must follow domestic laws of the country concerned and get a definite approval before landing, it says.
It should be pointed out that the telecommunication system of the U.S. plane was working properly, and the U.S. side had sufficient time and ability to request the Chinese side to approve its plane's urgent entering into and landing at the Chinese territory, during the more than 20 minutes from colliding with the Chinese plane to its landing at the Lingshui Military Airport in China's Hainan Island.
Without requesting, the U.S. plane made an unauthorized intrusion into the Chinese territorial airspace and an unauthorized landing at the Chinese military airport. This is a practice that completely ignores China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The "avoiding of an emergency" alleged by the U.S. side cannot at all be considered as a legal proof to exempt the illegal nature of encroaching upon the Chinese territory by the U.S. plane. What's more, the state of emergency was a result of the practice of the U.S. plane itself. To such a foreign military plane that illegally entered into the Chinese territorial airspace and landed at an airport demarcated as a military forbidden zone of China, the Chinese side has the self- protection right granted by the international law to take necessary and forcible measures. The Chinese side, however, did not take resolute measures against it after it entered the Chinese territorial airspace, and this was out of humanitarian considerations, the article says.
After the collision, the U.S. side did not voice any apology, instead, it asked China to return its aircraft and the crew which caused the collision and even threatened that China should not board the plane and conduct investigations, says the article.
To work out legal excuses for this kind of outrageous demands, the U.S. side went so far as to fabricate nonsenses like the aircraft is part of the U.S. territory and part of U.S. state assets, so it enjoys a sovereign immunity, the article goes on.
The so-called saying that the aircraft is part of the U.S. territory is another version of the extraterritoriality theory popular in the 19th century, says the article.
This theory has long been abandoned by modern international law, it stresses.
Established principles of international law on this issue are that all foreign military forces including military personnel and facilities can possibly enjoy sovereign immunity in a receiving country only after getting permission from this country, which means they are not subjected to the administration of this receiving country, notes the article.
If foreign military forces crash through the gate of another country without permission, such military forces can never claim a sovereign immunity in this country, continues the article.
The Restatement (Third) Foreign Relations Law of the U.S., the most authoritative international law document in the U.S., even holds that only getting a permission to enter is not enough, and a special agreement should be reached between a receiving country and a foreign country on the basis of such a permission to ensure this foreign country to enjoy sovereign immunity in this receiving country, points out the article.
So, in this case, the article emphasizes, China -- the vicitim of the collision, the site of the occurrence of the U.S. illegal acts and the country the U.S. plane landed on, is completely entitled to administer the treatment of the U.S. aircraft and the whole incident, and conduct necessary inspections on the plane and necessary inquiries with the crew members, so as to find out facts about the incident.
In a summary, the article states, the U.S. aircraft misused the freedom of overflight in the airspace off China's coast, flew against flight rules, crashed a Chinese jet, and entered into China's territorial airspace and landed at China's military airport without permissions, which have constituted a case of seriously violating international law.
In this incident, the above-listed illegal acts of the U.S. side have brought about a severe infringement upon China's rights, interests and dignity, notes the article.
In accordance with international law, the article points out, the U.S. should bear state responsibilities for its illegal acts, including suspending infringement, compensations for China's losses, promising a non-recurrence of similar incidents and an apology to China.
The U.S. government should see this point clearly, conduct active and
earnest cooperation with the Chinese government to carry out investigations
into this case, and shoulder all responsibilities arising therefrom.
Texas trying to recover from Bush era 4-15-2001
Bush successfully pushed for tax cuts in 1997 and 1999 that set up his run for the presidency nicely but left Texas without a nickel to spare. It turns out that one of his parting gifts was to bury that we could only pay for 23 of the 24 months of Medicaid for nursing homes.
Sen. Eddie Lucio proposed cutting off the '99 property tax cut. More startling, Republican Sen. Chris Harris of Arlington (who is having quite a peppy session) proposed a constitutional amendment to roll back the 1997 property tax cut.
The state has a potential shortfall of $700 million just two years after Bush's last $1.8 billion cut. The Lege is not likely to be forced to raise taxes until next session, but the Senate budget passed last week includes $6 billion worth of unfunded items, including making it easier for children to enroll in Medicaid, helping school districts with building bonds, finally getting mandatory kindergarten statewide and almost $1 billion worth of highway construction that has to be postponed. We are also unable to cover teachers' health insurance or a raise for state employees.
Texas' performance, or lack of it, on Medicaid is already the subject of one federal court order and is likely to attract another as we continue to lag in providing health insurance for poor kids.
According to the Legislative Budget Board, the state share of public-school funding this year is 44 percent, the lowest level since Texas began education reform in 1984, despite the pledge that Bush ran on to make it 60 percent.
On other old Bush battles, Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston is finally about to get a statewide indigent defense system. Bush vetoed the Ellis bill two years ago, but the publicity that Bush's own campaign brought to the weakness of the state's criminal justice system has helped make this a fairly easy sell.
There is still a possibility that the Lege will act on executing the retarded (another bill opposed by Bush) and providing life-without-parole as an alternative to the death penalty. The public supports both reforms already, according to state pollsters.
A more surprising vote was the House's decision to put a two-year moratorium on one of Bush's signature issues: charter schools. Bush was red-hot on charter schools and pushed them through the Lege willy-nilly. It was the willy-nilly part, the lack of state supervision, that proved to be the problem.
According to an interim study, 163 of the 192 schools chartered so far
have severe problems. One-fourth of the charter schools are rated "unacceptable"
by the state education agency, and only 59 percent of the charter students
passed their Texas Assessment of Academic Skills tests in '99, compared
with 78.4 percent statewide.
Thursday April
12, 2001
The Guardian
For some people, maps are an obsession. They may be drawn in by the
bright colours, or the vicarious sense of adventure, or the impression
of order that maps impose on the world. Whatever it is, Ian Thomas is one
of those people. He is fanatical. Thomas makes maps for a living and stays
up until midnight making them in his spare time. He has a gift for it,
no doubt inherited from his father, who analysed aerial photographs for
the RAF nearly half a century ago, scrutinising Egyptian troop movements
during the Suez conflict.
Now the son, Watford-born but a naturalised American, stares at the
world through a computer screen, summoning up a satellite image of just
about any corner of the globe he chooses. With a few more clicks and a
bit of web browsing he can conjure up some relevant data, put it together
with the image and make a picture that tells you something about the world.
By his own estimate he has done this 20,000 times or more in his short
career as a hi-tech cartographer.
It is a skill that has earned him a living and a good deal of respect from his colleagues at the US Geological Survey (USGS). But it has also taken him on to a particularly nasty political battlefield, and he has consequently been sacked and become a cause célèbre - mapmaking's first modern martyr. All this because of a single map the size of a postcard. He put it together on the evening of March 7 with some data he had collected about the calving habits of caribou - North America's oversize version of reindeer - in a remote corner of Alaska for a project that had failed to win funding.
It turned out that his map was far too clear for his own good. It charted, for all to see, where the Bush administration was going with its environmental policies - and the price it was willing to pay to get there. The map depicted, in brilliant red, the area of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where caribou most often go in spring to have their calves. It was a narrow strip along the state's northern coast, adjacent to the Canadian border. It was also known as Area 1002, and it was precisely the strip of land that the new US government was proposing to open up for exploration and exploitation by the oil companies that had backed George Bush's election campaign.
Thomas now swears that when he put the map on the internet he had no idea where the administration wanted to drill for oil. Sitting in a Washington pub, looking back on the extraordinary chain of events of the past two weeks, he says: "If they had just told me, I would have taken it down. I didn't want to cause any trouble. I loved my job."
Unfortunately, it was too late for Thomas, whose timing could not have been worse. His map appeared on the internet just as the new secretary of the interior, Gale Norton, was being briefed on the Arctic refuge's ecology. Norton's job is to champion the cause of Arctic drilling. On the evidence of its environmental policies to date, this administration is not merely pro-business; it actually appears to hold a grudge against the natural world. It has rejected the Kyoto treaty on global warming, ruled out statutory limits on industrial carbon dioxide emissions, dropped a ban on building roads through indigenous forests, closed down wildlife research centres and even lifted federal limits on the permissible level of arsenic that mining companies are allowed to leave in the water table.
Throughout, it has maintained the same Orwellian tone of reassurance. The soothing message on the Arctic wildlife refuge was that oil prospecting would only affect one small part of it and that the animals would hardly notice the derricks.
Thomas's map showed that the supposedly small area under consideration was critical to the refuge's wildlife. All the experts briefing Norton knew this, but the map made the point in public, and its appearance triggered alarm bells at the higher reaches of USGS management, which was already worried about its future funding. The word went out that the people at the top were demanding the head of the mapmaker responsible.
When Thomas came to work the following Monday, there was a note on his door ordering him to see his supervisor. He had failed to see a warning from a colleague in Alaska telling him to take his map off the web. Two weeks on, the sense of shock remains.
"I'd never been in trouble before," he says. "No one had complained before about any of my maps. They way overreacted."
Thomas asked for the right to provide a written explanation and defence of his actions, but his employers refused to accept it. Thomas decided he would write it anyway, for his own satisfaction. So he stayed behind that night clearing his desk and working on his letter.
"I stayed to 5am on Tuesday morning, and I thought, 'I'll just send out the letter on the internet, just to explain what had happened.' By 5.15 am, I got my first email letter back. It was from someone in South Korea, saying, 'This is terrible and I'm going to send it to everyone I know.' And I thought, 'Oh shit.' "
Thus a green icon was born. The tale of Thomas's martyrdom spread around the world via internet chatrooms in a matter of hours, and he received 2,000 emails of support. His cause was taken up by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Defenders of Wildlife and a host of other pressure groups. By his own admission, the mapmaker is an unlikely and an entirely accidental hero. Thomas would probably not even have come to the US had he not been in the University of London student union bar to see a band called The Telescopes one night in 1991.
He fell in love with an American girl doing temporary work for the union, and followed her back to the US the same year when he finished his engineering degree. By chance, the National Audubon Society, a private conservation group, was looking for someone with a knowledge of hydrology for a research project on Nebraska's Platte River, a route taken by many migratory birds.
That triggered his interest in wildlife, which in turn got him a job at the Nature Conservancy (the US version of the National Trust), where he learned to make maps. In 1998 he ended up at the USGS, where he found his niche at the migratory birds department at Patuxent, a set in 20 square miles of protected Maryland wetlands.
Furthermore, Harlow said, the map was plain wrong, a gross simplification of out-of-date information. For that reason, his contract was terminated by local management, without any interference from above.
Throughout his three years at Patuxent, Thomas's skills were highly regarded. He was encouraged to put together maps for all departments. He was even given an USGS award for his far-reaching work. "I used my contract money to get him to do things for me on the things I was doing," says Sam Droege, a researcher on amphibians at Patuxent. "We are all of us working outside our job descriptions in our general mandate of promoting conservation. Ian was very highly regarded. He was a person who could do all sorts of novel and interesting things and he was really good at finding information."
It looks as if the order to get rid of Thomas came from outside Patuxent. The warning email he had failed to read the weekend before his dismissal came from a colleague who had taken part in the Alaska meeting with Norton. He said the reaction "would not have been so great had the subject matter not been one of the three USDOI (department of interior) super hot topics with the new administration and had we not been briefing the Secretary at the nearly exact time your website went up".
The charge which does stick, however, is that the map was inaccurate. It was based largely on 1999 data, but as Thomas points out, that was the latest information publicly available. Meanwhile, Brad Griffith, a caribou researcher on whose work the map was based, is annoyed that Thomas did not consult him and says the bright red "hot spot" area for caribou calving should really be much bigger. Thomas pleads guilty. "If only I had managed to find Griffith, I could have put it right," he says. "My map is actually good for the oil companies. That's the irony."
In last month's briefing on the wildlife refuge, Norton was told that caribou tend to stay at least 4km from any human infrastructure. According to briefing papers obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and made available to the Guardian, the interior secretary was also informed that: "When naturally restricted from the coastal plain, calf survival averages about 14% lower than when calving occurs primarily on the coastal plain."
For that reason, "while the 1002 Area is only 8% of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it is an important component of the biological integrity for the entire refuge".
Despite this unambiguous warning, Norton told an appreciative audience of oil executives last week that she had returned from the Arctic refuge more convinced than ever that drilling could proceed with minimal impact.
The future of the refuge still hangs in the balance. There is little support in Congress for drilling, and Bush recently signalled he might be flexible on the issue. However, his powerful vice president, Dick Cheney, remains hawkish, as does Norton. An energy task force is expected to back Arctic drilling in the next few weeks.
Thomas, meanwhile, has found another job - making maps for the World Wildlife Fund, where he continues to pore over satellite images of the world's rapidly diminishing wildlife habitats. Shrinking even faster is the amount of publicly available information about the Arctic and other US national reserves - the sort of information Thomas used to post on the internet for free. A map of probable drilling installations in Area 1002 vanished a few days ago. The Fisheries and Wildlife Services,anxious not to offend, has also stripped its website of pages dealing with the potential environmental impact of mineral extraction.
"You don't have to burn books now," says Thomas. "You just press the delete key."
• Additional reporting by Plathel Benjamin
-------> The Third debate:
Bush: "I brought Republicans and Democrats together...in the state
of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through."
Fact: "In 1995 Bush vetoed a patient's bill of rights in Texas, one that contained many of the provisions that he praised last night: report cards on health maintenance organizations, liberal emergency room access, and the elimination of a gag clause forbidding doctors from telling patients about more costly treatment options than HMO coverage. At the time, Bush said these provisions would be too costly to business. Bush did sign some of the provisions into law two years later. But he opposed the right to sue HMOs in court, a right last night he termed ''interesting.'' But a bipartisan, veto-proof majority in the Texas Legislature supported the right to sue. Bush let the provision go into law without his signature." (Robinson and Mishra, Boston Globe, 10/18/00. RM below.)
2.
Bush: "We're one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for
denying you proper coverage."
Fact: "He did not say that he strongly considered vetoing the bill that subjected HMOs to malpractice suits and eventually, facing the prospect of having his veto overridden, allowed the measure to become law without his signature." (Kessler, Wash. Post, 10/18/00. KWP below.)
3.
Bush: Stated that "prescription drug coverage should be "an integral
part of Medicare."
Fact: "An odd description of his plan, which is notable for encouraging private-sector choices that may be outside the Medicare system." (Woodward, Washington Post, 10/18/00. WOOD below.)
4.
Bush: "Bush, who opposes a national health insurance program, says
the Clinton administration pushed such a plan in 1993."
Fact: "While the Clinton administration did propose an overhaul of the nation's health care system, it would not have been a national health care system like the government-run programs in other countries. Instead, it would have required employers to offer workers insurance, or pay into a fund to cover them, while creating a system of purchasing pools for businesses and individuals to buy coverage." (Welch and Drinkard, USA Today, 10/18/00.)
5.
Bush: "Bush said the number of uninsured Americans has been rising
for seven years."
Fact: "The number declined in 1999 for the first time since the Census Bureau began collecting data in 1987, according to a federal report last month. About 42.5 million people, or 15.5 percent of the population, lacked insurance in 1999, compared with 44.2 million, or 16.3 percent, in 1998, the Census Bureau reported." WOOD)
6.
Bush: "50 million Americans get no tax relief under his [Gore's] plan."
Fact: "Although a precise figure is very difficult to determine, this number is reached by labeling roughly half of Gore's tax cuts as spending programs." (ABC, 10/18/00. ABC below.)
7.
Bush:"Bush...repeated a charge from Republican ads that Gore is proposing
to spend three times as much as President Clinton.
Fact: "The Clinton spending he is talking about, however, dates to the president's first budget proposal for 1993. Back then, the budget deficit was near its peak; today there are huge surpluses that allow for higher spending. And on paper, Bush would use up more of the surplus with his tax cuts and spending than Gore." (WOOD)
8.
Bush" "You propose more [spending] than Walter Mondale and Michael
Dukakis combined."
"This charge--which manages to lump Gore with a pair of liberal Democrats--is a fine example of fuzzy math. Bush came up with these facts by taking inflation-adjusted estimates for Mondale and Dukakis proposals--on average $127 billion a year--and then comparing that figure with estimates of Gore's spending proposals by organizations that the Gore campaign has dismissed as partisan, such as the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee and the National Taxpayers Union. The Gore campaign figures that it spends only about $88 billion a year--far less than the Bush camp's assertion. There is another, more accurate way to look at government spending--as a percentage of gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy. By that method, both Gore and Bush are rather meager spenders--not surprising, because they are trying to balance a budget while their successors felt free to run up big deficits. Gore's budget would amount to growth of about 3 percent of GDP, and much of that growth stems not from Gore's initiatives, but from simply letting government spending keep pace with inflation. In fact, Bush's spending plans would amount to about 2.6 percent of GDP, not significantly different from Gore's." (KWP)
9.
Bush:" "Bush said the wealthiest Americans will pay a higher percentage
of taxes under his proposal. This is technically true, but barely." Fact:
"As Bush's tax plan is structured, there is a slight increase in the percentage
of taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans.
"This occurs because Bush opts not to address a looming problem with a part of the tax code called the alternative minimum tax, which is affecting growing numbers of taxpayers as incomes rise. Because Bush lowers tax rates but does not adjust the alternative minimum tax, some 27 million middle-class and wealthy taxpayers would receive less in tax cuts than expected. Many experts agree Congress will eventually have to address the problem if a tax cut along the lines of the Bush plan is implemented." (KWP)
10.
Bush: "Bush suggested the largest percentage [of tax] reductions under
his plan would go to the lowest-income earners."
Fact: "This is misleading. People making $22,000 may get a 100 percent reduction in taxes, but they only pay $110 in federal income taxes. Unlike Gore, Bush in general would not give additional tax refunds once a tax liability had been erased. Meanwhile, someone with $200,000 in tax liability might get a 10 percent reduction in taxes, but that would mean $20,000 in tax cuts." (KWP)
11.
Bush: "Bush is correct that Gore's spending proposals exceed his."
Fact: "However, the combination of Bush's spending plans and tax cuts would eat up more of the surplus than Gore would with his more modest tax cut and his larger spending plans." (RM)
12.
Bush: "In response to one question, Bush embraced diversity, finishing
his answer by declaring his support for ''affirmative access.'' When Gore
accused Bush of opposing affirmative action, Bush said he is against only
quotas."
Fact: "Bush has opposed racial preferences. And he endorses the GOP platform, which opposes affirmative action programs." (RM)
13.
Bush: "Bush boasted that since he has been governor, violent crime
in Texas has gone down."
Fact: "Just this week, the latest federal statistics, comparing 1999 with 1998 crime, show that all crime increased in 12 large Texas cities." (RM)
14.
Bush: "Vouchers are up to states. If you want to do a voucher program
in Missouri, fine."
Fact: " Bush's education plan forces states to divert money to vouchers at federal discretion." (ABC.)
15.
Bush Investing some Social Security money "under safe guidelines...get
a better rate of return than the paltry 2 percent that the federal governmen
gets for you today."
Fact: According to Paul Krugman in the 9/13/00 NYT, that rate of return "ignores a multitrillion-dollar debt [created from taking that money out of Social Security] that somebody has to pay" and Bush has not accounted for. (Bush Watch, 10/18/00)
16.
Bush: "Bush also got himself onto shaky ground when he accused the
Clinton-Gore administration of failing to deliver a middle-class tax cut."
Fact: "The administration negotiated a budget bill with the Republican
Congress in 1997 that included a children's tax credit that reduced taxes
for the middle class." (E.J. Dionne, Jr., Houston Chronicle, 10/18/00)
--Politex, 10/19/00
27 Bush Flubs in the Second Debate.
1.
Bush: "We went into Russia, we said, 'Here's some IMF money,' and it
ended up in Viktor Chernomyrdin's pocket and others."
Fact: "Bush appears to have tangled up whispers about possible wrongdoing by Chernomyrdin--who co-chaired a commission with Gore on U.S.-Russian relations--with other unrelated allegations concerning the diversion of International Monetary Fund money. While there has been speculation that Chernomyrdin profited from his relationship with Gazprom, a big Russian energy concern, there have been no allegations that he stole IMF money." Washingon Post, 10/12/00
2.
Bush:"We got one [a hate crime law] in Texas, and guess what? The three
men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them? They're
going to be put to death... It's going to be hard to punish them any worse
after they get put to death....We're happy with our laws on our books."
Fact: "The three were convicted under Texas' capital murder statute...The state has a hate crime statute, but it is vague." LA Times, 10/12/00. "The original Texas hate-crimes bill, signed into law by Democrat Ann Richards, boosted penalties for crimes motivated by bigotry. As Gore correctly noted, Bush maneuvered to make sure a new hate-crimes law related to the Byrd killing did not make it to his desk. The new bill would have included homosexuals among the groups covered, which would have been anathema to social conservatives in the state." Washington Post, 10/12/00
3.
Bush: "Bragged that in Texas he was signing up children for the Children's
Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as "fast as any other state."
Fact: "As governor he fought to unsuccessfully to limit access to the program. He would have limited its coverage to children with family incomes up to 150 percent of the poverty level, though federal law permitted up to 200 percent. The practical effect of Bush's efforts would have been to exclude 200,000 of the 500,000 possible enrollees." Washington Post, 10/12/00
4.
Bush: "He [Gore] is for registration of guns."
Fact: "Gore actually favors licensing for new handgun purchasers but nothing as vast as registering all guns." Salon, 10/12/00
5.
Bush: Said he found Gore's tendency to exaggerate "an issue in trying
to defend my tax relief package. There was some exaggeration about the
numbers" in the first debate.
Fact: "No, there wasn't, and Bush himself acknowledged that the next day on ABC's "Good Morning America" when Charlie Gibson pinned him on it." Salon, 10/12/00
6.
Bush: "I felt during his debate with Senator [Bill] Bradley saying
he [Gore] authored the EITC [earned-income tax credit] when it didn't happen."
Fact: "Actually, Gore had claimed to have authored an "expansion of the earned-income tax credit," which he did in 1991." Salon, 10/12/00
7.
Fact: Gore noted that "Texas "ranks 49th out of the 50 states in healthcare
in children with healthcare, 49th for women with healthcare and 50th for
families with healthcare"
Bush: "You can quote all the numbers you want but I'm telling you we care about our people in Texas. We spent a lot of money to make sure people get healthcare in the state of Texas."
8.
Fact: Gore said, ""I'm no expert on the Texas procedures, but what
my friends there tell me is that the governor opposed a measure put forward
by Democrats in the Legislature to expand the number of children that would
be covered....And instead [he] directed the money toward a tax cut, a significant
part of which went to wealthy interests."
Bush: "If he's trying to allege I'm a hardhearted person and don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong."
9.
Bush: "The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to
happen to them? They'll be put to death. A jury found them guilty."
Fact: Two of the three are being put to death. The other was given life. Bush Watch, 10/12/00
10.
Bush: said he favored "equal" rights for gays and lesbians, bu not
"special" rights.
Fact: "Bush has supported a Texas law that allows the state to take adopted children from gay and lesbian couples to place the kids with straight couples." Salon, 10/12/00. "Bush supports hate crime protections for other minorities! So Bush doesn't believe that gays should have the same "special" rights in this regard as blacks, Jews, Wiccans and others. Employment discrimination? Again, Bush supports those rights for other Americans, but not gays. Military service? Bush again supports the right to military service for all qualified people--as long as they don't tell anyone they're gay. Marriage? How on earth is that a special right when every heterosexual in America already has it? But again, Bush thinks it should be out-of-bounds for gays. What else is there? The right to privacy? Nuh-huh. Bush supports a gays-only sodomy law in his own state that criminalizes consensual sex in private between two homosexuals. New Republic, 10/13/00
11.
Bush. "We ought to do everything we can to end racial profiling."
Fact: The Texas Department of Public Safety has just this year begun keeping detailed information about the race and sex of all people stopped by its troopers, the sixth year Bush has been in office. Salon, 10/12/00
12.
Bush: "Got caught not giving the full story on Texas air pollution
laws. He was correct in saying the 1999 utility deregulation bill he signed
into law had mandatory emissions standards.
Fact: "What was missing, as Gore's campaign pointed out, was that many more non-utility industrial plants are not mandated to reduce air quality. The issue is an important one because Texas ranks near the bottom in air-quality standards. Bush instead approved a voluntary program allowing grandfathered oil, coal, and other industrial plants to cut down on pollution." Boston Globe, 10/12/00
13.
Bush: About the Balkans, "I think it ought to be one of our priorities
to work with our European friends to convince them to put troops on the
ground."
Fact: "European forces already make up a large majority of the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo." Washington Post, 10/12/00
14.
Bush: "One of the problems we have in the military is we're in a lot
of places around the world" and cited Haiti as an example.
"Though approximately 20,000 U.S. troops went to Haiti in 1994, as of late August this year, there were only 109 U.S. troops in Haiti and most were rotating through as part of an exercise." Washington Post, 10/12/00
15.
Bush: "I don't think we ought to be selling guns to people who shouldn't
have them. That's why I support instant background checks at gun shows.
One of the reasons we have an instant background check is so that we instantly
know whether or not someone should have a gun or not."
Fact: "Bush overstates the effectiveness of instant background checks for people trying to buy guns.... The Los Angeles Times reported on Oct. 3 that during Bush's term as governor, Texas granted licenses for carrying concealed guns to hundreds of people with criminal records and histories of drug problems, violence or psychological disorders." Washington Post, 10/12/00 "He didn't mention that Texas failed to perform full background checks on 407 people who had prior criminal convictions but were granted concealed handgun licenses under a law he signed in 1995. Of those, 71 had convictions that should have excluded them from having a concealed gun permit, the Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged." AP, 10/12/00
16.
Bush:"Said the number of Texans without health insurance had declined
while the number in the United States had risen."
Fact: " A new Census Bureau report says the number of uninsured Americans declined last year for the first time since statistics were kept in 1987. About 42.5 million people, or 15.5 percent of the population, lacked insurance in 1999, compared with 44.2 million, or 16.3 percent, in 1998, the agency reported. Texas ranked next-to-last in the nation last year with 23.3 percent of its residents uninsured. But that was an improvement from 1998, when it ranked 50th at 24.5 percent." AP, 10/12/00
17.
Bush:"Some of the scientists, I believe, Mr. Vice President, haven't
they been changing their opinion a little bit on global warming?"
Fact: "Bush's dismissive comments about global warming could bolster the charge that he and fellow oilman Dick Cheney are in the pocket of the oil industry, which likewise pooh-poohs the issue. [While] there is no consensus about the impact of global warming,...most scientists agree that humans are contributing to the rising global temperature. "Most climate experts are certain that global warming is real and that it threatens ecology and human prosperity, and a growing number say it is well under way," wrote New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin." Salon, 10/13/00
18.
Bush: When Jim Lehrer asked Bush if he approved of the U.S. intervention
in Lebanon during the Reagan years, Bush answered a quick "yes" and moved
on.
Fact: "Lebanon was a disaster in the history of American foreign affairs. Next to Iran-Contra, it was the Reagan administration's greatest overseas fiasco. Quoting from the Encyclopedia of the American Presidency: '[In 1983] Reagan stumbled into a disastrous intervention in the Middle East when he sent U.S. Marines into Lebanon on an ill-defined mission as part of an international peacekeeping force.' In December, according to Reagan biographer Edmund Morris, 'two days before Christmas, a Pentagon commission of inquiry into the Beirut barracks bombing humiliated [Secretary of State] Shultz [who had backed the intervention], and embarrassed Reagan, by concluding that the dead Marines had been victims of a myopic Middle Eastern policy.'" Tom Paine, 10/11/00
19.
Bush: "I thought the president made the right decision in joining NATO
and bombing Serbia. I supported him when they did so."
Fact: The bombing of Serbia began on March 24, 1999, and Bush did not express even measured support until April 8, 1999 - nearly two weeks later. Prior to April 8, 1999, every comment by Bush about the bombing was non-committal. Finally, he offered a measured endorsement: "It's important for the United States to be slow to engage the military, but once the military is engaged, it must be engaged with one thing in mind, and that is victory," he said after being pressed by reporters. A Houston Chronicle story documented the Governor’s statements on the crisis and reported that "Bush has been widely criticized for being slow to adopt a position on Kosovo and then for making vague statements on the subject." Houston Chronicle, 4/9/99
20.
Bush: Discussing International Loans: "And there's some pretty egregious
examples recently, one being Russia where we had IMF loans that ended up
in the pockets of a lot of powerful people and didn't help the nation."
Fact: Bush’s own vice presidential candidate, Dick Cheney, lobbied for U.S.-backed loan to Russia that helped his own company. "Halliburton Co. lobbied for and received $ 292 million in loan guarantees to develop one of the world's largest oil fields in Russia. Cheney said: 'This is exactly the type of project we should be encouraging if Russia is to succeed in reforming its economy...We at Halliburton appreciate the support of the Export-Import Bank and look forward to beginning work on this important project.’" PR Newswire 4/6/2000. The State Department, armed with a CIA report detailing corruption by Halliburton’s Russian partner, invoked a seldom-used prerogative and ordered suspension of the loan. The loan guarantee "ran counter to America's ‘national interest,’" the State Department ruled. New Republic, 8/7/00
21.
Bush "There's a lot of talk about trigger locks being on guns sold
in the future. I support that."
Fact: When asked in 1999, if he was in support of mandatory safety locks, Bush said, "No, I'm not, I'm for voluntary safety locks on guns." In March of 2000, Bush said he would not push for trigger lock legislation, but would sign it if it passed. [Washington Post, 3/3/00;ABC, "Good Morning America," 5/10/99] Bush Let Trigger Locks Bill Die in Texas. When Bush was asked, "when two bills were introduced in the Texas legislature to require the sale of child safety locks with newly purchased handguns, and you never addressed the issue with the legislature, and both bills died. If you support it, why did that happen?" Bush said, "Because those bills had no votes in committee." When asked again if he supported the bills, Bush said, "I wasn't even aware of those bills because they never even got out of committee." NBC, "Today Show," 5/12/00
22.
Bush: "Africa is important and we've got to do a lot of work in Africa
to promote democracy and trade."
Fact "While Africa may be important, it doesn't fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them," Bush said earlier. When he was asked for his vision of the U.S. national interests, he named every continent except Africa. According to Time magazine, "[Bush] focused exclusively on big ticket issues ... Huge chunks of the globe -- Africa and Latin America, for example -- were not addressed at all." Time, 12/6/99; PBS "News Hour," 2/16/00; Toronto Star, 2/16/00
23.
Bush: "There's only been one governor ever elected to back-to-back
four year terms and that was me."
Fact: Prior to Bill Clements, whose first term as governor ran from Jan. 1979 to Jan. 1983, governors of Texas served, by law, 2 year terms, not four year terms. Alan Shivers, for example, was elected governor three times to Bush's two, and served an additional 1 1/2 years of a previous governor's term. Bill Clements was elected to two four year terms, but not consecutively. Since the four year term was instituted, there have only been four governors, Clements, Mark White, Ann Richards, and Bush, and two of the four have been elected to serve twice. Bush, however, is the only governor of the four whose initials are GWB. The governors who served three consecutive two-year terms are: Coke R. Stevenson August 4, 1941-January 21, 1947. Allan Shivers July 11, 1949-January 15, 1957. Price Daniel January 15, 1957-January 15, 1963. John Connally January 15, 1963-January 21, 1969. Dolph Briscoe January 16, 1973-January 16, 1979. Texas State Libraries and Archives Commission.
24.
Bush: "We spend $4.7 billion a year on the uninsured in the state of
Texas."
Fact: The state of Texas came up with less than $1B for this purpose. $3.5 came from local governments, private providers, and charities, $198M from the federal government, and just less than $1B from Texas state agencies. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
25.
Bush: ""Our CHIPS (children's health insurance) program got a late
start because our government meets only four months out of every two years,
Mr. Vice President. May come for a shock for somebody's been in Washington
for so long, but actually limited government can work in the second largest
state in the Union, and therefore Congress passes the bill after our session
in 1970 --'97 ended. We passed the enabling legislation in '99."
Fact: Texas governors can call special sessions of the legislature to pass specific legislation at any time. Bush could have done so with CHIPS. "But more important is that Bush could have gotten CHIP sign-ups under way without the Legislature. As governor, Bush could have drawn up plans for enrolling kids, lined up providers and filed an amendment to Texas' Medicaid Plan with the Health Care Finance Administration, which handles Medicaid and CHIP nationally. With HCFA's approval, he could have started enrollment at once.Instead he waited for the Legislature to convene in January 1999. Then, Bush failed to exercise another gubernatorial option to speed things up. CHIP would have been among the first things considered by the Legislature had he declared it "an emergency," as he did with his tax cut for oil producers. Instead, Bush sparred with legislators about how much a family could earn for their kids to qualify for the program. His first proposal was to make CHIP available to families whose earnings are between 100 percent and 133 percent of the poverty level. Those whose earnings are at or below the poverty level supposedly qualify for Medicaid, but Texas' record in enrolling those eligible has been so bad federal courts have twice ordered the state to clean up its act. When even the Republican legislators balked at Bush's miserly eligibility proposal, he raised it to 150 percent, which would have made about 280,000 kids CHIP-eligible. It was well into the 1999 Legislature that the 200 percent of the poverty level eligibility was approved, which expanded the number of eligible kids to 500,000.Now that it is a national embarrassment, state officials are rushing to sign them up, but at last count, only 100,000 kids have CHIP.Bush could have started signing up poor kids 15 months earlier." San Antonio Express News, 10/15/00
26.
Bush: "We need to make sure that if we decontrol our plants that there's
mandatory - that plants must conform to clean air standards, to grandfather
plants. That's what we did in Texas, no excuses. I mean, you must conform."
(Also, claims credit for the "landmark" Texas Clean Air Act of 1999, http://www.georgewbush.com)
Fact: The legislation he supported calls for only "voluntary compliance" by the old plants that were grandfathered in the Clean Air Act of 1971 (Houston Chronicle 6/19/99). Efforts by concerned legislators to mandate pollution reductions on grandfathered non-utility plants in the 1999 session of the legislature were thwarted by the Governor's support of SB 766 that he allowed the big oil and chemical companies to draft. This voluntary approach has failed. An Environmental Defense Fund analysis of the data compiled by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation concerning SB 766 found that the Governor's bill had resulted in these plants implementing and promising to implement reductions of less than 1% of their grandfathered emissions. http://www.texascenter.org/aircrisis/index.htm
27.
Bush: "If you want a trigger lock to make your gun safe, come to--come
and get one for free. And so we're distributing in our state of Texas for
free."
Fact: The gun locks are not being distributed in Texas. Although the
freee trigger lock program started in May and plans are to hand out one
million free trigger locks each year for five years, only 10% of this year's
locks have actually been handed out to Texas law enforcement agencies to
date, and those have gone to only 15 of the thousands of lawy enforcement
agencies in Texas. Reports from those 15 agencies show that few of the
locks have actually been given to Texas citizens, and there are two problems
with those locks. First, they can only be used on unloaded guns. Secondly,
according to the AP, "the locks spring open when bounced or hit in a particular
manner," rendering the locks useless for the purpose intended. Distribution
of the gun locks has been halted. This information was found at thegovernor's
web site.
SMEAR OF GORE CAN'T HIDE BUSH'S FUZZY NUMBERS.
"Following Gore's one-sided win over the poorly informed, inarticulate
George W. Bush in last week's debate--if it'd been a prize fight, they'd
have stopped it--the assault began. By the weekend, both The New York Times
and The Washington Post had run tendentious dispatches about Gore's alleged
tendency to embellish. It was Whitewater all over again, this time with
psychologists instead of anonymous "federal investigators" as sources.
Bush's incoherent performance was air-brushed out of the picture. So were
well-documented articles showing that every charge Gore made against his
save-the-rich tax schemes was on target. Bush's claims fail to pass the
basic arithmetic test.
Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut would consume not "one-quarter" of the projected $4.6 trillion budget surplus as he claimed, but 35 percent. So was Bush lying, or can't he do eighth-grade math? Your choice. Gore also charged that "under Gov. Bush's tax cut, he would spend more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent than all of the new spending that he proposes for education, health care, prescription drugs and national defense all combined." Bush derided Gore's "fuzzy Washington math," a phrase his supporters have been chanting all week.
But the Citizens for Tax Justice, whose figures the Gore campaign uses, calculates that 42.6 percent of the Bush tax cut, including the estate tax repeal, would go to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers by income--those making $319,000 or more. GOP spinners convinced certain gullible journalists that Gore's claim was false by omitting Bush's repeal of estate taxes affecting only millionaires' heirs. But Gore had it right. Readers who think the George W. Bushes of the world need additional yachts, private jets and country estates more than the nation needs classrooms, hospitals, medicine and military pay raises should vote Republican. (Gore didn't say so, but Dubya's own taxes would decrease about $60,000 a year.)
Bush's surprising admission that he intends to pay for "privatizing" Social Security out of the (possibly imaginary) budget surplus hasn't yet sunk in. Gore should hit it hard in tonight's debate. For months, Bush has been talking about letting taxpayers invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in the stock market. Like Democrat-Gazette editorial writers, he sometimes pretends he's talking about 2 percent of tax revenues, a comparatively trifling sum.
But as Gore made clear, Bush is really talking about one-sixth of the 12 percent SSI tax--potentially as much as 16 percent of what the government takes into the Social Security Trust Fund. This, while also claiming that the system's going broke and pledging not to cut benefits. So where's the missing $1 trillion (a thousand billion) over 10 years supposed to come from? For months, Bush wasn't saying, and the supposedly liberal press, with the admirable exception of MIT economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman, wasn't asking. During the debate, however, Bush casually allowed as how "the trillion dollars comes from the surplus." In effect, Bush wants taxpayers to send $1 trillion to his pals in the investment firms while paying Social Security obligations out of general revenues.
Encouraging saving may be a good thing, but check the basic arithmetic.
After the richest 1 percent get theirs, he'd dip into the remaining $2.5
trillion of the projected surplus, funds both parties have agreed to set
aside in a "lock box," protecting Social Security, Medicare and paying
down the debt. So what if there's a recession? Would Republicans call for
increased taxes? No, decreased benefits. This is no "reform." It's a sneak
attack on the fiscal integrity of the nation's social safety net.
Information from: www.bushwatch.com
Well I'll start with George Bush jr. He's the nightmare that
ran for president, but rather than throw insults lets take a look at his
record in Texas (which he claims to stand behind but refuses to talk about).
Here are some stats I found out about the state of Texas since Governor
Bush has been in power.
Texas is:
1st in Children without Health Insurance %...1st in Toxic Air Releases...1st
in Smog Days (Houston)...1st in
poorest counties(3)...3rd in Hunger %...5th in Highest Teen Birth Rate...41st
in Breast Cancer
Screenings...45th in Mothers Receiving Pre-Natal Care...46th in Public
Libraries and Branches...46th in High
School Completion Rate...46th in Water Resources Protection...47th in Delivery
of Social Services...48th in
Literacy...48th in Per Capita Funding for Public Health...48 in Best Place
to Raise Children (29th before
Bush)*...48th in Spending for Parks and Recreation...48th in Spending for
the Arts...49th in Spending for
the Environment...50th in Women with Health Insurance...50th in Teachers'
Salaries plus Benefits...
*Children's Rights Council. further documentation
Only one accredited child-care center exists for every 2,637 children.
A fourth of children still are not
immunized by age 2.
--Texas Freedom Network.
Well we know why he won't discuss it now. I just wonder why some
half intellignet reporter hasn't latched on to these facts and drilled
him at a press conference. He sends mixed messages (when he can communicate
a message at all) with his be straight with kids, then saying don't tell
kids you did drugs, then joking around about smoking pot. Come on
George, I realize you were raised as a rich little playboy, by politicians
and have been groomed to serve big money, but at least try to look like
you know what you're saying. At least if you faked it better I could
make myself believe you were fooling so many people and not that they were
really just that stupid.
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J.C. Watts was elected to the post of Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner
in 1990 and resigned his post in 1995 in order to serve his term in the
U.S. House, as he was first elected in
1994. Along with the other commissioners, Watts regularly violated
the commission's oath of "to protect the interest of the public generally
and to safeguard the user of essential services
from exploitation, inadequate performance or waste" by catering
to the needs of rich corporate lobbyists (as do most elected officials).
During J.C. Watts tenure on the Oklahoma
Corporation Commission (a board that oversees the utilities and other
such industries), he, in at least two instances, agreed to take bribes
(err...campaign donations) from a lobbyist later
convicted of bribery. William Anderson, a lobbyist and lawyer for utility
companies that included many smaller telephone companies in Oklahoma, was
sent to prison on charges of
bribery after being convicted of bribing a different member of the
Corporation Commission. While one commissioner was convicted, Watts was
not indicted, evidently because he had
already been warned by another commissioner to be careful about taking
money from Anderson (this commissioner was acting as a mole for the FBI
to help root out those who were
allowing themselves to be bribed).
In at least two instances, there are records of J.C. Watts accepting
campaign donations from Anderson, the convicted lobbyist. In both instances,
he seems to have gone after the money
himself and acted in the interests of Anderson. The first instance
occurred in Watts' 1990 election bid for a position on the three member
board. Watts called Bob Anthony, the
commissioner who was working with the FBI to expose Anderson's bribes
to other commissioners, regarding a $5,000 contribution that had evidently
been earmarked to be funneled to
his campaign through Anthony (by the lobbyist William Anderson). Anthony,
a Republican who wanted to see Watts take the seat away from its current
holder, a Democrat, warned
Watts not to accept the $5,000 donation from Anderson because Anderson
was dirty. This was after Anderson had delivered the $5,000 to Anthony's
office a few days earlier, with the
intent that it be given to Watts. Watts was evidently suitably warned
off of the donation. Anthony mentioned that the FBI watched campaign contributions
and even had FBI agent Danny
J. Harrell "explain" campaign financing to Watts over breakfast. Its
unknown to what degree the donations were "explained" to Watts, but he
didn't take the money. If he had taken it, its
unlikely he would currently be serving as a representative in the House
and would probably be enjoying a stint in jail. In another instance, after
Watts' phone had been tapped by the FBI,
Watts is heard discussing a campaign contribution with Anderson and
what Anderson will get out of it. Watts told federal investigators (before
he knew his line had been tapped) that
Anderson had given him small contributions ($200 or under) from small
independent telephone companies and that Anderson never tried to influence
him. This statement was a blatant lie,
as on February 21, 1991, Watts called Anderson about the donations
from the companies Anderson represented. During the call Anderson
discussed a bill that was before the
commission where the companies he represented stood to lose about $16
million a year. The following is a transcript of the conversation that
shows Watts pushing for a donation from
Anderson while Anderson asked for Watts' help on the bill (originally
published in the New York Times November 16, 1998):
On March 1, there was another telephone conversation between the two,
where Watts was hesitant to pick up the donation from Anderson because
he was with State Representative
Kevin Cox. Anderson said "And hell, I'll just, if he's with you, you
just come to the door and I'll just hand you the cash. Kevin needn't know.
You, just tell him you need to come by and
get a message from me or something". When questioned about this by
FBI agents, Watts, much like many of our great politicians, said he could
not remember the conversation or picking
up the $1,500. He did remember, though, that Mr. Cox had said they
once stopped at the house to get a regulatory manual. The FBI agents in
question later informed him that they saw
him come to Anderson's house that day. Mr. Watts explanation of his
lack of memory, as given to the New York Times, was "Every dime I received,
thousands of dollars in
contributions, went into the campaign. I cannot identify any single
contribution". It's convenient how many politicians seem to have amnesia
regarding unusually incriminating points in their
past.
In later years, after the scandal kept resurfacing and tarnishing Watts'
name, Watts exerted pressure on his college friends who worked at a United
States Attorney's office. In January 7,
1994 Gary Richardson, a former federal prosecutor and friend of Watts,
asked federal prosecutors to issue a report on Watts' status in order to
clear his name (at Watts' behest). A letter
came from another friend of Watts (from his college football days)
who worked in the Justice Department that said they did not know of any
ongoing investigation of Watts. At the
request of yet another friend of Watts, the entire US Attorney's office
in Oklahoma City was removed from the investigation case after they had
caught Anderson and one commissioner.
They said they did this to ensure the appearance of impartiality, evidently
because Watts knew individuals within the attorney's office.
J.C. Watts also had other problems while serving his tenure on the Commission.
When he founded Esquire Properties, an apartment rental company created
in 1993, Watts falsely
claimed to Oklahoma reporters that one of the small partners
in the apartment complex business (there were three partners: Watts, who
holds about 76% of the company and two others
who divided the remaining 15%) had no interests that were regulated
by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. He told the Daily Oklahoman that
"One of them is a medical doctor and
the other is in the construction business, so they have no dealings
with the Corporation Commission whatsoever." However, the construction
company owner, Ted Campbell, owned a
truck hauling company at the time that was overseen by the Corporation
Commission. Watts obviously knew this, but decided not to inform reporters
of this under direct questioning.
J.C. Watts has had a wide variety of tax-related problems, ranging from
defaulting on debts to failure to report taxes. In regards to his failure
to pay taxes, Watts, as a fiscally
conservative Republican, evidently enjoys trying to cut taxes for the
american rich (the traditional tax cut) while doing a little free-lance
cutting of his own taxes. In 1995, evidently for no
particular reason, Watts decided not to report his wife's income of
$14,320 in 1994...but mentioned it in 1996. Watts also failed to disclose
on his personal disclosures a partial sale of
equity in Esquire properties, his apartment complex company, which
was in need of cash to pay back taxes, and the fact that he owned another
company called Esquire Management.
Esquire Management also failed to pay property taxes in 1994 and 1995
J.C.Watts' financial problems have hardly been only tax-related. Simply
put, the man can't seem to balance his own budget, much less help balance
the nation's. In the 1980s, two
properties owned by Watts were foreclosed on and sold at Sheriff's
sales. In the same time period, he was also pursued for debts ranging from
a doctor's bill to a $25,000 loan for new
oil and gas investments. Watts has also taken a loan of $15,000 to
$50,000 from a Florida real estate magnate, Jerome Ansel, who is
one of his and the Republican Party's biggest
donors. Charles Lewis, director for the Center for Public Integrity,
which investigates political corruption, said in regards to this matter
"I think it's always curious and potentially
worrisome when lawmakers get money personally from their campaign donors".
Watts was also sued by a former employee because he decided not to pay
her for six months because,
supposively, he was going through financial difficulties. They quickly
settled out of court.
Despite all of these financial problems, J.C. Watts had little problem
in the early 90s getting a $4 million in tax-free bonds through the Oklahoma
County Finance Authority. This is
despite Watts' history of poor financial judgement, ranging from defaulting
on loans to having the sheriff take away some of his property in the early
80s. Basically, if any other individual
tried this, they would, in all likelihood, be laughed out of the office.
In addition to the fact that he was loaned the money to begin with, he
was evidently given far more money than he
actually needed. Watts and the rest of Esquire Properties used the
money to purchase an apartment complex called Woodside Apartments for $2.7
million and then had about $1.3
million left over. According to a lawsuit brought against the Oklahoma
County Finance Authority by citizens of the county, the revenue from the
bond sale was used by Watts to repay a
$1.9 million load from another bank, which is a violation of bond management.
The bank that sponsored the loans, Liberty Bank and Trust Company of Oklahoma
City, also allowed
Watts to be "short $ 6,958.91" on a monthly payment of $ 26,812.50.
The remaining payment was made on June 4, according to the records. As
some may know, banks are rarely this
gracious about individuals failing to pay back parts of their loan.
Many theorized that the banks generosity was due in no small part to the
fact that Watts serves on the House Banking
Committee.
A good portion of the information for the first two paragraphs of this
section came from an article in the Hill from December 16, 1998. This is
courtesy of:
The house of Crooks website
***J.C. Watts has not endeared himself to his fellow blacks. In addition
to being the only black not to join the Congressional Black Caucus (which
is, admittingly, is one of the more leftist
caucuses in Congress), J.C. Watts is also one of the few minority members
in Congress to wishwash on Affirmative Action. In reality, Watts probably
supports affirmative action but is
"encouraged" by Republican leadership into being the "House Negro"
and occasionally speak out against affirmative action. However, perhaps
most importantly in
angering fellow blacks (and others), was his reference to, shortly
before he gave the GOP response to Clinton's State of the Union address
in 1997, Jesse Jackson
and Washington DC mayor Marion Barry as "race-hustling poverty pimps".
He called them this because their careers, he said, depended on keeping
black people
dependent on government (unlike many Republican policies, which seek
to remove the poor's dependence on the government at the cost of pushing
them onto the
streets and into an early grave). After Watts had caused a great deal
of outrage among the masses, he later recanted and claimed he wasn't talking
about either man
(which the Washington Post, who was interviewing Watts when he gave
the quote, stated that he was talking about them).
***J.C. Watts is one of the big sponsors of the Promise Keepers, a Christian
Fundamentalist men-only group whose ideology revolves mostly on the subservient
role of women in a
Christian society and the promotion of male dominance. All this behind
the cheery facade of "caring and understanding".
***Recently, J.C. Watts has stated, in regards to Bill Clinton, "Morality
is what you do when nobody is looking,". He was, unwittingly, also describing
his own past. J.C. Watts was the
proud individual who got two women pregnant within 30 days of each
other in his senior year of high school. One of them he married. The other
he abandoned. When the girl's family,
who were white, wouldn't take care of a mixed race child, Watt's Uncle
Wade and his family took the child into their family.
-------------------------------------------
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.): After having put a hold on ambassadorial nominee James Hormel because Hormel is gay, Inhofe had to explain how three of his staffers reportedly crashed his office computers by downloading too much porn. Inhofe, who had pilloried Hormel's private life, refused to comment upon his Hot Nude Babe-loving staffers out of "deference to legitimate privacy concerns."
-----------------------------------------
J.C. Watts Sr.: The father of J.C. Watts
(R- Okla.) said: "A black man voting for the Republicans makes about as
much sense as a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."
-----------------------------------------