How would President Bush answer a series of direct questions, if he really had to?
(BEND, Ore.) - Yesterday’s “Presidential Press Conference” mirrored much of what’s wrong with our system at the national level.
Our vaunted “free press”, performing perfunctorily and with little intensity its most essential function, failed to demand any clear and responsible accounting for a host of hot-issue and highly dangerous questions from the very person to whom they should turn, given full and very public opportunity.
What are those questions ?
Fortunately others elsewhere in our governance system have set many of them out in detail and with deep intensity.
This Op Ed seeks to share those thus available with you -- as if they had been asked when the Chief Executive of this nation, by his own choice, stood before interrogators charged with the democratic responsibility to seek answers for the entire nation.
He was placed in that position by some very questionable elective events clearly (if not cleanly !) hanging on decision by a Supreme Court of his own major choosing, given that opportunity in his first term.
That precise and very peculiar situation --yet unquestionable and historically highly sensitive-- multiplies and magnifies this mountainous situation that much more, now at the end of a world-recognized debacle, for the major media-men/and/women at work in our Capital.
You will naturally have your own set of serious concerns for which our Chief Executive must now stand both politically accountable and personally responsible. That’s an unavoidable consequence.
Where possible without damaging content, these “hot issues” and action-demanding situations are presented in question-form below. For some it is more meaningful simply to transcribe a factual statement, with the actual question clearly indicated by that content.
1. Tens of millions of Americans today are experiencing a decline in their standard of living, in an economy that you insist is “strong” and “robust”. Home foreclosures are now the highest on record --sir-- with millions of Americans thus already standing to lose their homes in the continuing collapse of the real estate boom. In addition, recent sweeping events in the economy, seen as closely connected to this real estate bubble-break, indicate a very dangerous economic recession is now wracking confidence and investment actions around the world. What are you doing, now, to remedy that situation for every American now threatened by continuing economic decline?
2. Five million more Americans have slipped into poverty, and both hunger and homelessness have increased on your watch. How have you acted to offset those trends, and to remedy and relieve that continuing surely unacceptable situation?
3. You have adamantly refused to raise the minimum wage for six full years, while millions of workers are continuing to work full time and live in desperation. What have you and your political colleagues accomplished to offset that lack of action on levels of compensation demanded for living in an increasingly costly economy?
4. The Washington POST reports today --sir-- that Blackwater USA, the private security company involved in a Baghdad shootout,, operated under State Department authority exempting the company from U.S. military regulations governing other security firms. Are you aware of that situation --sir-- and is it true that Blackwater was exempted ? If so, on what authority?
5. It is well-known, sir, that we now have both the highest rate of childhood poverty and the highest rate of incarceration in the industrialized world. What have you and your colleagues done to remedy that situation by legislative proposal or new and expanded federal action?
6. The next generation, we are told by public Senatorial statement, will be the first to have a lower standard of living than their parents. That same statement reports that from 2001 to 2005 --on your watch, sir-- ALL of the income growth in our country has accrued to the top FIVE PERCENT, while the bottom NINETY PERCENT of households experienced a FOUR PERCENT-PLUS decline in their market-based incomes. From 2001 to 2005, sir --on your watch-- the top ONE PERCENT of households gained $283 billion of total income --$183, 902 per household-- while the bottom NINETY PERCENT lost $272 billion --$2,071 per household. Many economists believe that dangerous and damaging status must be rapidly remedied if the great mass-markets so well-known in America are to be maintained. What has been done to reverse and remedy that surely highly unfair and unbalanced situation, sir, in a nation whose major principle has long been “an equal playing field for all”?
7. THREE MILLION Americans have lost their pensions during your presidency, sir. Have your advisors properly informed you on that striking fact, sir --thus making you properly aware of how terrified these older Americans are about how NOW to cope, somehow, in what should be their “golden years”? What has been done --or will now be done-- to set up some sensible mechanism or program or new protocol to prevent and remedy that intolerable situation in the world’s most powerful nation --sir ?
8. Most authoritative observers report that predatory lending practices encouraged by your administration have led to extraordinary levels of instability and volatility on the stock market. As always, that has crushed and confused “the little guy” while clearly many of the “big money” people are protected and even ”bailed out” by government action. What are you and your colleagues proposing as Congressional action to offset this peculiar turn of events --again-- in the ostensibly well-regulated fiscal system and its component companies and agencies?
9. Alan Greenspan, for eighteen years Federal Reserve chairman, has authored a just-published book --sir-- in which he seems to run away from his highly influential testimony supporting your heavily-consequential tax cuts, and your ongoing economic policies. Most authoritative observers see your tax actions since 2001 as regressive, pumping up the federal deficits, aggravating economic inequalities, and encouraging the now-collapsing housing bubble. You welcomed his comments in earlier times. What do you respond now to what this longtime veteran of Federal Reserve action is reported to contend?
10. Your home state of Texas has the highest rate of uninsured children in the country --sir. Yet today you have again threatened to veto the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing health care for THREE MILLION kids. Nearly SEVEN MILLION other Americans have lost their health insurance. How can you reconcile these two situations with your political themes of “compassionate conservatism” providing practical answers for all Americans?
11. As of yesterday --sir-- the cost of U.S. war and occupation of Iraq is reported to total $453,185,231,459. Another source-- a Reuters columnist, Bernd Debusman, right here in Washington, today-- sets costs at $333 million daily,, $14 million per hour, $231,000 a minute, $3,850 a second -- and concludes “Even for the world’s richest country, this is serious money.” Do you agree that it “is serious money” ? Can you tell us all how much longer you think it will be necessary to sustain such heavy drains on our treasure, at consequential costs for all else we need now to do?
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And so-on....for at least another twenty-or-so extremely serious questions....but "do not hold your breath" or otherwise inconvenience yourselves awaiting any possible answers --or even “the questions” themselves at the precise minutes in which they should have been asked, by those with Constitutional responsibilities to do so.
------------------------------------------------Reader’s Note:
Much materials herein freely adapted from “Earth to Bush -- There’s a Ton of Pain in Your ‘Thriving’ Economy”; Sen. Bernie Sanders; In These Times; 9/20/07.
Sen. Sanders is an independent Senator representing Vermont; his list was chosen since he is one of a very few declared-”independent”, surely a wiser choice than from others on either side of the aisle. “See with own eyes” for your own analysis at: alternet.org/story.
The Reuters dispatch is available also for your “see with own eyes” check at: alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk
Please note: Both URLs are very similar but there is a significant difference; be sure to copy them accurately --and be sure to visit them to “see with own eyes” for your own satisfaction and understandings.
Many other accumulated references were also used to shape these proposed questions accurately for your fully documented information.
Op Ed: Mr. President, Sir...:Salem-News.com