| |
Public
Employee Press
Political
Action 2004
What's at stake in November
20 reasons to boot Bush
20.
Save the Supreme Court
By JACK NEWFIELD
When George W. Bush was running for president,
he kept promising to appoint more Supreme Court justices just
like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The good news is that Bush has not yet been able to name anyone
to the court. The bad news is that we have now had four years
to learn just how extreme Scalia is and how much of a menace
he is to honest elections, abortion rights, minority rights,
workers’ rights, gay rights and the Bill of Rights.
The need to prevent a Scalia clone from joining him on the court
is one of the most urgent reasons to defeat Bush this November.
In 15 years on the court, Scalia has not once found any form
of discrimination to be unconstitutional.
Scalia helped steal the presidency for Bush. After favoring
“states’ rights” his whole life, Scalia went
against states’ rights in 2000 when he issued the “emergency
order” that stopped the Florida recount just as Democrat
Al Gore was gaining.
In a blazing dissent, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
(who was appointed by a Republican, Gerald Ford) said: “Although
we may never know the identity of the winner of this election,
the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s
confidence in the judge as the impartial guardian of the rule
of law.”
When Scalia issued his stay, his son Eugene was the law partner
of Theodore Olson, who was arguing Bush’s case before him.
Eugene soon got a top job in Bush’s Labor Department, where
his anti-union bias was flagrant.
In another scandal, Scalia went duck hunting with Vice President
Dick Cheney in January while Cheney had an important case pending
before the court.
Behavior like this drains the Supreme Court of its legitimacy,
as Justice Stevens suggested.
Antonin Scalia is a cancer on the Constitution. Unfortunately,
he has a lifetime seat on the court.
But we can defeat George W. Bush before he has a chance to put
another Scalia on the court.
|
He’s a union-buster
1. In 2002, as he created the Homeland Security Dept., President George
W. Bush took away the collective bargaining rights of 170,000 federal
workers and denied union rights to federalized airport screeners.
2. Bush’s administration has revoked union representation for thousands
of workers in the Justice Dept., the National Drug Intelligence Center,
the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and the National Imagery
and Mapping Agency.
He’s bad for jobs
3. The country has lost 2.6 million jobs under Bush. In only one term,
he stands to set a record as the president with the worst jobs record
since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression.
4. His administration has refused to extend emergency federal unemployment
benefits for long-term laid-off workers.
5. The Bush Labor Dept. issued new regulations in April that will deny
overtime to millions of workers.
He supports overseas outsourcing
6. “Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade,”
said N. Gregory Mankiw, chair of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
“And that’s a good thing.”
7. Bush backs a Senate bill to give business $37 billion in foreign
tax breaks. The measure would hand corporations huge tax savings when
they shift income or operations to tax havens abroad.
8. Bush has resisted tying free-trade agreements to labor and environmental
protections.
9. Earlier this year, Bush’s choice for “jobs czar”
had to decline his appointment when it came out that his firm was
laying off its own workers to open a plant in China.
He favors the wealthy
10. Thanks to Bush’s tax cuts, millionaires will get tax breaks
averaging $123,600 in the next fiscal year. By contrast, the typical
household would receive $647. Who’s guilty of waging class warfare?
11. Under the president’s so-called 2004 economic stimulus plan,
about 226,000 households with annual incomes over $1 million would
get roughly as much as all 120 million taxpayers who earn less than
$100,000, said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
He impairs workplace safety and health
12. Upon entering office, Bush repealed ergonomic standards approved
by President Clinton, canceling protections for the 1.8 million working
people who are hit with carpal tunnel syndrome and other stress-related
injuries each year.
13. As thousands of dedicated unionized workers toiled at the Ground
Zero disaster site after 9/11, the Bush administration pressured the
Environmental Protection Agency to play down the health risks of working
there, said an EPA inspector general.
14. Bush refused to allocate the $90 million that Congress earmarked
in 2002 to monitor the health of workers who participated in the cleanup
at Ground Zero. His fiscal year 2005 budget would slash first-responder
funding at the Dept. of Homeland Security.
He backs privatization and crony capitalism
15. The administration aims to privatize more than 800,000 federal
jobs.
16. Up to one-third of the monthly cost of the military occupation
of Iraq goes to private companies, including Halliburton, which Vice
President Dick Cheney used to head, and the construction giant Bechtel.
Both were major contributors to Bush.
17. Chief Executive Kenneth Lay ripped off small investors in Enron,
the bankrupt Houston energy company, as he contributed $100,000 to
Bush’s campaign. Lay advised Cheney’s secretive energy task
force, which recommended energy industry deregulation and pillaging
the Alaska oil reserves. “By the time of its bankruptcy, Enron
owned — or perhaps was just renting — politicians in the
White House, Congress and state legislatures,” wrote Robert Bryce
in “Pipe Dreams.”
He doesn’t respect civil rights or civil liberties
18. The Bush administration supported a Supreme Court suit against
affirmative action. This year, hours before the Martin Luther King
Jr. holiday, Bush put an opponent of civil rights on the U.S. Court
of Appeals.
19. Two days after he became president, Bush tried to eliminate all
the regional offices of the Women’s Bureau in the Dept. of Labor.
20. President Bush said he hopes to name to the Supreme Court more
justices like right-winger Antonin Scalia.
| |
DC 37
| PUBLIC EMPLOYEE PRESS
| ABOUT | ORGANIZING | NEWSROOM | BENEFITS
| SERVICES | CONTRACTS
| POLITICS | CONTACT US
| SEARCH | 
